fuse_box | Sharp sense of insecurity

[This is a really bad idea. Korra knows this, repeats it over and over to herself as she takes the elevator up to Hei's apartment.

Just a sad little girl willing to spread her legs for anyone who'd pay attention to her. A sad little girl who can only love people who hurt her.

She thought she had worked these issues out years ago. She's no longer ashamed of her sexual history or her turbulent relationship with Hei. She's comfortable with who she is. And yet ... The spirit's words clawed their way under her skin, turning her blood into slime. Making her feel tainted and deformed. She destroyed the spirit, but the wound remains.

She can't bear to go home to Mai and Asami like this. She's in no condition to really accept the comfort that Asami has to offer, without secretly wondering if the other woman was just blinded by affection. Most importantly, she doesn't want this taint to reach her little girl.

This is a bad idea. But she presses on because she suspects it's the irrational, self-loathing part of her talking and not her real self. Yet a sick feeling in her gut leaves her uncertain whether this is something she really needs ... or a terrible mistake.]

Threaded | Flat

[ Maybe she's lucky -- or unlucky -- that he's in, when she knocks. ]

[ It's been less than eight hours since Hei has arrived, knuckles raw and striped bloody. His lip is faintly split, but that will heal in the next couple of hours. He's bruised too -- a faint mottling of yellows and mauves -- but that's coming off light. By all rights, it's been a successful night. It had taken a measure of patience, cunning, and arm-twisting, to flush out the triad hitmen who had wrecked his right hand. When he'd found each one, he'd spent only a few moments with them, testing the conventional wisdom that you can't fit a square peg in a round hole, the peg in this case being their blades, the hole being their mouths. ]

[ It turns out the conventional wisdom is off by a little. In fact, the whole thing depends on how hard you jam the peg. ]

[ By nightfall, he's left a number of places -- dark little taverns and fetid alleys miles and worlds away from his high-rise flat -- in a state of blood-splattered disrepair. Heading home, surfing a tide of raw adrenaline, he isn't satisfied. Revenge is as un-tactical as it gets -- and tonight was nothing but a sanguinary indulgence to appease that seething monster in his nature. It's just a reminder that he can't modulate that aspect of himself. Impossible to keep the killer in check -- when he's always looking for a way back in. Tonight he finds a personal one. Tomorrow, by virtue of Hei's trade, he'll have professional opportunities on top of it. ]

[ What's wrong with you? The scathing voice sounds so much like Pai's. You always say you wanted out of your old life. So why do you find excuses to drag yourself back in? When are you going to be happy, when you get everyone you love killed? ]

[ Hei grits his teeth. His right hand is swaddled in bindings; not broken or swollen from the fight, but if he so much as grazes it on a solid surface, a serrated edge of discomfort rips all the way to his elbow. ]

[ Tonight was more than a personal vendetta, he thinks. It was necessary to get rid of loose ends. ]

[ This time, the voice jeers. Next time, it'll be a Delta Force. One part of you has to make a decision. I'm tired of you refusing to make it. ]

[ Numb, he showers, dresses in his faded gray t-shirt and shorts for bed. Wan cloud-filtered moonlight streams through the west-facing bay window to fall across the futon's striped sheets. The effect is more ominous than inviting. Blearily, Hei tips his moist forehead against the cool glass to survey the dull vista. Rain falls in endless gray sheets over the star-shaped metropolis. Unconnected images pinwheel through his mind: bloodstains and glazed eyes of strangers, brilliant blue veins of electricity, Mai gleefully smearing red fingerpaint across the walls, Korra's face blurring into Pai's before a lightning-flash of color swallows her. ]

[ Rubbing his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, Hei already knows he's not going to sleep tonight. He's not ready for whatever lurks on the other edge of his consciousness. ]

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