[ Why does she love him? Everytime he comes back to that, it is like touching a wound. ]
[ He'd like not to believe their relationship was just a horror-show. That the mistrust and violence was just one little facet of their story, and not the most important. Except she still struggles with that rationalization herself, it is plain to see. He has no trouble imagining even his secret self -- that stone-cold killer -- falling in love with this girl, this pure pillar of righteous deadly power. It is the other way around he still can't fathom. So he'd helped her out of a jam once or twice, been a crying shoulder, a constant fixture, living and fighting at her side. Former enemies can become comrades, he knows that. ]
[ But to choose as her lover a man with such a brutal history? Who killed for a living? Who'd begun by hunting and planning to kill her? To lavish on him such tenderness, to so reflexively surrender herself, even choose to have his child? ]
[ The more he experiences it, the more perplexing, perturbing, disturbing it is. She can rage at him for days, accuse him of trying to explain away her feelings. But a girl meant to be the embodiment of balance and brightness, her life dedicated to eradicating monsters of chaos -- for that girl to want to lie down with one every day, to give herself to him so utterly ... There is something sordid in it. You can soften it and clarify it all you like, but there it is. ]
[ It's not her fault. The conviction rises through him like a bloodrush. It is just everything she'd endured in the City. All the isolation and misery. All the terrible ways her identity was battered, denigrated, downtrodden -- downright erased. It can take a good girl -- the strongest girl -- and warps her into... ]
[ Into what? a sly voice prods. Not into someone like him. He understands -- with an unshakeable conviction -- that no matter how misshapen or altered Korra becomes, she'll always be a hundred times better than he ever can be. ]
[ Her sex seems to ripple and clutch at his fingers: he works into her with two, in and out, as deep as his knuckles. His teeth suck purple rosettes of bruises everywhere he can reach -- across her throat, the swell of her right breast, the underside of her left, the soft skin of her inner-arm, the gleaming point of her shoulder. Her body is slippery and wild: the air is a waft of steam and spicy Korra-smell, and for a moment Hei is happy, blissfully happy, shining through his misery. ]
[ In moments like these, his misgivings shiver into dust. Carry him away from reality, and into truth. ]
no subject
[ He'd like not to believe their relationship was just a horror-show. That the mistrust and violence was just one little facet of their story, and not the most important. Except she still struggles with that rationalization herself, it is plain to see. He has no trouble imagining even his secret self -- that stone-cold killer -- falling in love with this girl, this pure pillar of righteous deadly power. It is the other way around he still can't fathom. So he'd helped her out of a jam once or twice, been a crying shoulder, a constant fixture, living and fighting at her side. Former enemies can become comrades, he knows that. ]
[ But to choose as her lover a man with such a brutal history? Who killed for a living? Who'd begun by hunting and planning to kill her? To lavish on him such tenderness, to so reflexively surrender herself, even choose to have his child? ]
[ The more he experiences it, the more perplexing, perturbing, disturbing it is. She can rage at him for days, accuse him of trying to explain away her feelings. But a girl meant to be the embodiment of balance and brightness, her life dedicated to eradicating monsters of chaos -- for that girl to want to lie down with one every day, to give herself to him so utterly ... There is something sordid in it. You can soften it and clarify it all you like, but there it is. ]
[ It's not her fault. The conviction rises through him like a bloodrush. It is just everything she'd endured in the City. All the isolation and misery. All the terrible ways her identity was battered, denigrated, downtrodden -- downright erased. It can take a good girl -- the strongest girl -- and warps her into... ]
[ Into what? a sly voice prods. Not into someone like him. He understands -- with an unshakeable conviction -- that no matter how misshapen or altered Korra becomes, she'll always be a hundred times better than he ever can be. ]
[ Her sex seems to ripple and clutch at his fingers: he works into her with two, in and out, as deep as his knuckles. His teeth suck purple rosettes of bruises everywhere he can reach -- across her throat, the swell of her right breast, the underside of her left, the soft skin of her inner-arm, the gleaming point of her shoulder. Her body is slippery and wild: the air is a waft of steam and spicy Korra-smell, and for a moment Hei is happy, blissfully happy, shining through his misery. ]
[ In moments like these, his misgivings shiver into dust. Carry him away from reality, and into truth. ]