Cold comfort for change

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Parting is such awkwardz.  

[ The days leading up to his departure pass in a blur. ]

[ He has enough to do. Arrangements and plans, between drifting from crowded walk-ups to cheap lodging houses -- (His and Korra's 'date' stretched entirely too long. Long enough to snap Tenzin's already-frayed temper. When they'd returned to Air Temp Island, he demanded, red-faced and practically frothing, that 'Li' pack up and leave the following morning. Hei was all too happy to oblige.) -- travel papers, guides and useful information on the colonies beyond Republic City. He's purchased tickets for the train journey. He's plotted out his routes on maps and snagged himself a reliable guide. ]

[ His separation from Korra isn't on his mind as much as he would have expected. But its absence seems linked to her lack of presence, because of course he'd think of it most when she's closeby, a visceral reminder of what he stands to lose. In the rare moments when he does allow the ideas to seep in, he's gripped by a vertiginous combination of sadness and dread, and wishes he could speak to her. ]

[ But he's said everything that required saying. She'd been sullen and resentful -- but she hadn't stopped him. (Would he have stayed, if she said Don't go? He wonders...) ]

[ The evening before he's meant to catch his train, though, he finds himself at the docks. Leaning against the rusted railing, he regards the lush green speck of Air Temple Island. The sun charts a course behind banks of iron-grey clouds. Though not especially bright, the day is pleasantly warm. The seawater doesn't glitter so much as take on a gleaming quality: long bands of ribbed light run across its waves the way light hits the reflective surface of a glass table. ]

[ It's unpretentiously beautiful, and Hei realizes he'll miss it. Realizes the city has sunk a bright hook into his chest, as surely as the constellation of red dots that link a part of his psyche to Korra -- as if she's a glittering lure from the dark sea depths, and he's the blindsided barracuda that opened his maw and bit. ]

Comments

[anatural]

Oh. [So soon. A part of her had been hoping he'd changed his mind.] Lucky I ran into you.

[mortemscintilla]

[ The disappointment in her voice is palpable. Hei would wince, if he were anyone else. He cares for her, it's true, and even with all the troubles between them he's come to accept the threat of Compromised that goes with it. Apparently 'care' is a long way from the love he feels for Pai, though, or for Amber. As far as he is from goddamn fucking Heaven. All her soft moans, her nails digging into his back, the way she breathes his name: meaningless, carrying him not one flight higher to that brilliant, elusive shade of love. It disappoints him, but it's also a wicked, staggering shock, because two years ago, he'd been doubtful he could feel anything -- nevermind affection. All those times he'd pushed her away, punished her, acted like an emotional meat-grinder ... it hadn't been pragmatism, it had been fear. ]

[ Fear of this sensation he has now. As if something's lodged in his throat that any breath could slip loose. ]

[ Quietly, ]

If things were different, you know I'd ask you to come along.

[ Is it a lie? He doesn't think so, despite how easily the words come. ]

[anatural]

You mean if the entire world wasn't waiting for me to vanish for another six months and throw everything in chaos? [Wry, sad smile.] Yeah.

How long's the trip?

[mortemscintilla]

[ He tips a shoulder in an unspoken, Well yeah. That. Even so, his mind dwells in itself, sketching a carnival-colored phantasmagoria of a thousand endless nights of traveling, a flash forward of cheap hotels, towering forests, starry skies and winding roads and tea and sake and scratchy linen sheets and Korra-flavored kisses. All the simple pleasures, stripped of complexity, as is often the case with her. It is laughable, a Road Trip From Hell if it actually happened. But there you are. Even in the privacy of his own fantasies, he cuts the ridiculous figure of a teenaged boy where she's concerned. It's like Amber's coaxing whispers in his ear all over again: Want to run away? Just you, me and Pai. Somewhere we can see the stars. ]

[ Reality is different from dreams. It hurts sweeter. ]

I told you. I haven't decided. [ There's a beat, before he offers a grudging estimate. ] It could be anywhere between five to ten months.

[anatural]

[Yep. Still doesn't like hearing those numbers. But she scowls at him for an entirely different reason.]

I meant how long's the boat ride. Three days? A week? [She still has no sense how far away that province is from here.]

[mortemscintilla]

Boat ride? [ Her scowl would be precious, if he weren't mildly appalled to realize how limited her knowledge of the colonies is. ] I'm taking a train. The provinces are further inland. You reach there once you're out of the United Republic territory.

[ He manages a half-smile, wondering when a geographically-clueless teenager became a novelty instead of How Things Are. Damn, youth is fleeting. ]

Crack open an atlas sometime, Korra. You might learn a thing or two.

[anatural]

Oh. [Well that's embarrassing.] Then what're you doing on the docks?

[mortemscintilla]

I --

[ As with all the best lies, though the facts are rearranged, the emotional essence should stay the truth. But he can't share that with her. Not at the risk of seeming like a ball-less pathetico, or worse, an obsessive stalker. (In bitter moments, a curling chagrin flushing through him, he thinks: She's turning me into both.) He scrubs a hand through his hair, which flops back across his forehead in a boyish fringe, screening his dipped eyes from view. ]

I was [ ...looking for the bathroom?... ] going to eat from my favorite noodle stand.

[ Hardly the truth. But not quite a lie, either. ]

[anatural]

[Not the answer she was hoping to hear. It stings, mixing with the lingering embarrassment to leave a very unpleasant feeling in her gut.]

Well I wouldn't want to keep you from your food...

[mortemscintilla]

[ Korra's expression moves through Hei in a strange way that feels like indigestion. He shifts, in a manner that's less like fidgeting and more a simple realignment of weight, glancing at the flower-stall beside them. Reaching out, he touches an orchid, lush and pink, its copious petals already dropping as he lifts it up to study it. He sniffs it like a bouquet, with a faint grimace, and eyes her intently over the top of the sprigs, a rather child-like peep. ]

You could eat with me.

[ It's less an invitation than a mild suggestion. ]

[anatural]

Tenzin's — [Expecting me back. But this is probably the last time Korra's going to see Hei for pretty much an entire year. Tenzin can wait. It's not like they're talking anyway.]

Okay.

[mortemscintilla]

[ She says, Okay, and it stirs a sparkly red flare to life inside him. After a beat, he sets the orchid down, and reaches to curl his fingers around hers. ]

[ Close to the central market, they find the crowded food stall. Wafts of fragrant steam, curses and chatter radiate everywhere. The patrons are all hunkered at rickety tables under the spreading branches of a tamarind tree, shoveling grub into their mouths from clay bowls. The menu is extensive: there is chicken, chicken or chicken. Chicken with lemongrass and coconut soup, chicken with mushrooms and sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf, grilled chicken with lime leaves -- in short, a whole lot of chicken. A considerable number of the items on the menu are running around, squawking between the tables and under people's stools. The smart ones are being cannibals, picking at the bones strewn on the ground, celebrating their last supper by dining on their buddies. Thank god for the ceramic pots of junmai. ]

[ He and Korra settle a few feet away from the hubbub, with their laden trays. Hei digs into his bowl of piping-hot noodles without preamble, mostly to offset the awkward silence between them. ]

[anatural]

[You could make an entire dictionary for their silences. The light & easy silences. The "too busy fucking to talk" silences. The heavy silences weighed down by words unsaid.

Ten months. When he'd first told her he was going, she thought it was just for a few weeks, maybe a month. Ten months is almost as long as they've been sleeping together. Ten months is longer than they'd known each other before having sex. Ten months is... a very long time. He'd said he's not going away forever, but that's just barely short of a year and a lot can happen in a year.

Or nothing could happen. The thought that makes Korra sick to her stomach and unable to do more than pick at her food isn't the idea of change, but the idea of 10 months of continuous monotony, banging her head against the walls of the Air Temple as she tries to be the Avatar Tenzin wants her to be. She can't do ten more months of that. She's not sure she can do 10 more days.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ They sit quietly, as if someone has hit the mute button on their usual idle commentary. But even with the awkwardness, the sight of Korra so close is like a heatwave cutting through a winterscape. Now he's finally with her, he can't imagine having to let go. He is afraid to break the silence. Words -- his especially -- tumble into the skew-whiff. He wishes he could reassure her that she'll see him again. But he is aware of the inarticulated anxieties hovering around Korra. A third presence, steadily increasing, though it ought to be almost nothing. Of course, in his experience, impossible things can come of almost nothing. Almost nothing is what he'd felt for Korra, when their affair was new. Almost nothing was the size of his capacity to feel when he'd first brought her to his bed. They've built their whole relationship together, his whole profound shift from indifference towards affection, on almost nothing. ]

[ Still, he's aware that while ten months can pass in a blur for him, time doesn't glide by at the same swiftness for others. When you're a teenager, ten months is a veritable lifetime. What if Korra fixates on someone else? What if the love he sees in her eyes evaporates as mysteriously as it blossomed? ]

[ He thrusts the idea aside. If it happens, it'll happen. No point focusing on it until then. ]

[ Eventually, ]

When I come back, there's a chance you might have all your bending back.

[anatural]

Maybe. [She doesn't sound too hopeful, but she's not in a hopeful kind of mood. Her mind is stuck on that idea of being stuck here, 10 months later, still in the same position, trapped with the same limitations. I can’t let that happen.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hope can be an elusive pest, and Hei is aware of that. He's always mistrusted it; that's long-since been established. But he hasn't lost that capacity for unwavering determination that attaches itself to fearful moments, either. He's aware Korra is at an impasse where her bending is concerned. But he's also convinced that it can be overcome. He's no pollyanna, but he is also the perfect anathema to pessimists. Small successes are still successes; he doesn't expect miracles here. That would be unrealistic, and if there's something he's trained himself into being best at it's pragmatism. ]

[ Still. There's no way a girl like Korra can stay helpless forever. Certainly not if she's surrounded by a bunch of naysayers who underestimate her. ]

Not maybe. Definitely.

[ His tone holds no false cheer. Only blunt matter-of-factness. ]

[anatural]

Well if you're gone for long enough...

[That was low, and she shakes her head to try and clear the mood.]

It'd help if I could connect to Aang again.

[mortemscintilla]

[ If you're gone for long enough... Something almost like anger -- like hurt -- edges Hei's flatlined expression. But it's gone in the next moment. Part of him wants to snap at her to get over this Poor-Little-Me teenaged tiff. To explain that he can't stay here, re-shaping his daily schedule to her availability versus her absence. He is peripheral to Korra's life, as he'd been to Pai's; a well-used accessory, the Blade Wielding Reaper, counterpart to World Devouring Star, each sold separately. But maybe that self-absorption is just the curse unique to Korra and to Pai, the one that balances out the selfless deeds. It is too easy ... especially when you are a damn walking miracle ... to forget that every individual is the star player in his or her own life. ]

[ Keeping his voice gentle, he stirs the noodles in his bowl around. ]

How'd you connect to him last time? Meditation?

[anatural]

[Hey, it is perfectly reasonable for her to be annoyed about him going "Hey I'm going to leave for 10 months" without even talking about it to her first. Okay that is not selfishness that is what it means to be in a relationship.]

Meditation sometimes. Dreams others. It seems to be more like luck than anything else.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Except he did inform her. Even if it was against his better judgement -- even if he has no patience for the messy rigamarole of Goodbye and I'll write to you. He's been a Syndicate operative longer than he's been her boyfriend. For better or worse, the tendency toward reticence remains intact. He's torn between affection and annoyance, as is often the case with Korra. But at her expression, a sadness tremulously balanced between futility and hope, the affection reluctantly wins out. He still tends to take this 'past lives' stuff with a pinch of salt. But at Korra's words, he's reminded, briefly, of all the times he's tapped into Pai's ability in extremis. ]

[ Quietly, ]

Or maybe some part of you contacts him intuitively. When you most need it.

[ He's said it before. There's more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. The psyche, the mind, isn't self-contained; it co-exists with the physical, and functions on an underpinning of logic in its purest form. ]

[anatural]

[Grumble grumble aaargh]

I could sure use it more often.

[mortemscintilla]

[ If Hei weren't privately amused by the sulk, he'd worry that Korra is going to jitter herself to pieces as the pressure builds. Reaching out, he briefly squeezes her hand -- struck in a moment of absurd whimsy how soft and warm the skin is, like the powder-fine sand glittering at a campfire's edge. ]

Maybe Aang isn't in touch [ like Aang is a long-distance relative ] because he knows you can handle yourself.

[ He's not sure of much, except the latter. Avatar or no, Korra isn't so easy to extinguish. ]

[anatural]

I've been handling it myself, and I'd appreciate having a little help from my past life!

[Sulky, but she squeezes his hand back with mute gratitude and a silent request to change the subject. They don't have much time left together.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei doesn't add anything else. He wants to encourage Korra, but he also doesn't believe in empty platitudes. As it is, this business with her past lives is beyond his frame of reference. His one unshakeable certainty is simply that she'll handle whatever her Avatar duties throw at her. It's enough. ]

[ Quietly, he slurps up the last few mouthfuls from the bowl. He still has room for seconds (or thirds or fifths, let's be honest). But he'd prefer to spend these moments with Korra doing something better than stuffing his face. He straightens, contemplating their separation, the afternoon darkening as if the angle of the sun has just changed, shaded behind the dappled canopy of trees. ]

[ At length, ]

Think you have time to walk me to the station?

[anatural]

[His words twist the knife in her gut, even as she smiles.] I think I can squeeze you in.

[She keeps a tight hold on his hand as they leave the noodle shop behind. The weather is beautiful, the streets lively but not too crowded, and everything is just about perfect. So of course it's almost over.]