take a tiny step into another world

[anatural]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Months after leaving Republic City, Hei tracks down Korra.

[A lot can happen in ten months, Korra had thought as Hei left. And she had been right. Just a few weeks after he left, she'd gotten word that her father had been injured in an uprising in the South Pole. That her uncle's troops weren't there to protect the South Pole, but were there to control their sister tribe. She'd kicked herself for not realizing it sooner — hadn't Jinora warned her?

So against Tenzin's wishes, she had gone home to help her tribe. He'd told her that it was important for the Avatar to be impartial, that she was a representative of the world and not just her tribe. Bullshit. Home is home is home, and her home had needed her.

It had been a brutal slap in the face. Her attempts to resolve the situation peacefully had ended in failure. The Northern Water Tribe soldiers didn't acknowledge her as having any authority. Some people didn't even believe she was still the Avatar. The southern soldiers she fought alongside didn't say anything to her face, but she heard the whispers and knew that they thought she was holding them back, because she went out of her way not to kill any of the northern soldiers, because her uncle is the leader of the Northern Water Tribe.

She'd tried to prove her loyalty by kidnapping her uncle, and that plan had backfired. That's how she ended up his prisoner, brought up to the North Pole to open the northern spirit portal.

And that's how she ended up trapped in the spirit world.]

Comments

[anatural]

[The creature screams its rage, but Hei moves too fast for it to catch. All around him, spirits flee, all manner of shapes and colors, dizzying in their light and their dark.

When he finally slows down, he'll hear crying.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Heart thudding, Hei doesn't stop running until there's a good distance between him and the tentacled creature. When he finally allows himself a breather, he looks back down the tracks for signs of pursuit. He's heard no slither of movement, he sees no sign of threats. He bends over, hands on his knees, breath sawing at his chest, then takes himself off the muddy tracks to a sidelong tree and rests his forehead against the bark. Blood beats in his ears, and unseen shapes call in a metallic rhree-rhree-rhree: a sound like a rusty axe drawn across a cinder block. ]

[ Beneath that, though, is something else. Familiar. The soft, melting, almost musical flow of a child's crying. ]

[ It hits Hei's system, nerve endings a-tingle. Jerking his head up, he glances around. He can't be sure, but the scenery seems to have shifted, the way the sky darkens with the sinking of the sun. Eerie shades of black and red and green, replicating the South American wilderness. Bulbs of fetid plants hanging in long garlands from high tree boughs; scabby shoots and jagged knifelike edges of rustling weeds. The smell is dank, noxious -- a stench tattooed in his brainstem. Things rotting, festering, with a high sharp reek of fear that intensifies in the gathering humidity. ]

[ Hei swallows, shaking it off, his larynx feeling raw as if with last ropes. ]

Korra? [ A breath, then, louder. ] Korra.

[anatural]

[The crying stops for a moment, then there's a choked cough, like the effort to keep the tears in was just too much.

And then, through the coughing tears, a weak -] Hei?

[mortemscintilla]

[ As the Hei reaches his ears, a bolt of pure, unmistakable relief zigzags down his spine. But nothing here is what it seems. He won't risk hurtling toward a fresh threat -- Korra-shaped but harboring another destructive monster. Silently, he moves in the direction of the voice. In darkness there is only that infallible inner-compass to guide him, his boots crushing what feels like rotting fruit underfoot, filling the air with their sickly sweetness. An early twilight hangs suspended over the dense marshy land, patches of dull red burning between the trees. Everywhere, there is an eerie chittering, an endless susurration: shapes dancing through the foliage. It is their eyes that give them away: specks of slitted red glowing like well-stoked embers. Their brightness is such that they leave lingering contrails wherever they move, the way sparklers held by happy children do on the New Year. ]

[ Dry-throated, pulse a steady thub, Hei's hand hovers reflexively at his belt -- ready to grab the dagger. He can feel himself slipping, inexorably, back to the memories of Heaven's War. Fear and survival fighting against each other: survival winning the moment. Never had he felt so alive and so perversely calm as during those jungle nights. That is, until now, with these nightmare creatures flanking him left and right -- and Korra's voice like a small fragile chime luring him forward. ]

[ Now and then, he feels the same: energized and perfectly at home. ]

Korra? [ He's dimly confused by the grating quality of his voice. Almost adolescent, at once rasping and reedy. ] Where are you?

[ Please let it be her. He's so sick of shapeshifters. ]

[anatural]

[She emerges from the bushes, wiping her eyes and suddenly, strangely calm.]

How did you get here?

[Confusion, it seems, has temporarily displaced grief.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He blinks when he sees her. Not the teenaged Korra he'd expected -- fizzy energy and sleek curves of muscle running beneath smooth skin, realizing an essential, youthful symmetry. Instead it's the little girl, barely a baby, brown as a nut, radiant as a sunflower with her bright eyes and dark mess of hair clustered around her face. Deja vu jangles through him; it's like his first glimpse of Amber in Hell's Gate -- an apple-cheeked toddler with eyes of unnerving steadiness. Wary, Hei regards her for a moment. Not stepping closer, but staying alert as if for nearby threats. How is she a baby? It makes no sense. ]

[ (Except this is the Spirit World. No better than the City. He's not helping himself by refusing understanding. Look around. Nothing is normal. Why answer with his mind, which is conditioned to reject these realities? Better to rely on what his senses show him. ]

[ Not edging closer, he says, ]

Doesn't matter. I'm here to get you out. [ A beat, before he extends a hand. ] Come here.

[ Ostensibly a reassuring gesture. But it's really an excuse to examine her at close range. ]

[anatural]

[She doesn't move closer. She just looks at him with big, scared eyes.]

I can't. My body's gone.

[mortemscintilla]

Gone?

[ The words make no sense. He breathes slowly, keeping his gaze on her. It is a matter of shuffling the cards of his thoughts. A magic trick; a sleight of hand. Getting the right one to the top. ]

You're saying -- you didn't physically enter the Spirit Portal?

[ If that's true, it doubly complicates things. What if Unalaq destroyed her actual body? ]

[anatural]

[Nod nod nod.]

Unaloq locked me up. I couldn't get out, so I thought maybe if I entered the spirit world, I could get help. But nobody would help me and Unaloq moved my body and I can't find it and I can't get home.

[Her voice gets faster, more high-pitched and upset as she talks.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ A certain sour dread rises up like bile. Hei forces it down. Keep your shit wired. Because the high-strung, runaway-train quality of Korra's words makes it clear she's on the verge of losing hers. Distantly, there's a small flare of shock -- when he'd seen Korra, months ago, the idea of her entering the Spirit World was an impossibility. Yet here she is. (If this is indeed Korra.) ]

[ Hei hesitates, then unfurls a palm toward her. Come here. ]

It's going to be fine.

[ It might be a lie, but Hei's lived in conflicts built on lies, in political machines that run on lies, in situations where men tell lies to earn their bread and butter or to keep insanity at bay, so this particular falsehood trips off his tongue with slick ease. As it is, too much contemplation risks shrouding one stone-cold fact: I am going to find her uncle and kill him. ]

[anatural]

How? How is it going to be all right? My body is gone and it's dark and everything wants to kill me and I can't do anything!

[mortemscintilla]

[ It isn't until the outburst that a ripcurl of relief washes through Hei: This is definitely Korra. ]

[ Automatically, his hard closes around her bicep -- feeling the wild pulsation under the skin, anxiety like a miasma bristling in the air around her. So small and grubby and lost looking, and also, he thinks, so very there, so very powerfully herself, the most enormous thing in the universe. ]

Losing your head isn't going to help anyone.

[ His voice is rough but composed. A preternatural calm settling in, so the world recedes until all that remains is the pinprick of existence seen through a nightscope: calming Korra down, tracking Unalaq, then getting her real body back. Step A to Step B. ]

[ He gathers her in closer, both hands on her small shoulders. Quieter, ]

Right now, I'm just glad I found you.

[anatural]

[She shudders as he draws her in, tears clearing trails down her grubby cheeks. She takes deep breaths and tries to calm herself down. It's not as hard as she expects. Before he came, she hadn't freaked out because she couldn't afford to; when she saw him, it was the first time she felt safe enough to lose her shit, and she felt like it would never stop. But there's comfort in not being alone anymore, and it gives her the strength to steady herself.]

Where's Tenzin and the others? [She can't imagine him coming here alone.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He smoothes the hair from her blotched face, her skin cool-moist against his palm. Her nerves aren't firing panic-signals anymore, which is good. Any doubt from Korra threatens to swamp this whole endeavor; they're not in a situation where they can afford the Avatar melting down. ]

Hanging back in one of Varrick's ships. Unalaq's spies are watching everyone important to you. [ A beat, before he amends, ] That's why it was easier for me to slip in.

[ In the nearby bushes, something rustles, glowy-eyed and alive. Hei finds half his attention forking toward it, while everything else stays fixed on Korra. His plans aren't so much spinning in his mind as they are burning in his bones. The atmosphere of the Spirit World is entirely too ominous. He needs to get Korra and himself out of here, ASAP. ]

[anatural]

Tenzin's not very good at sneaking.

[She hears the rustling too, and nestles closer to him, all too aware of how vulnerable she is right now. She's just a big baby without any bending.]

You came through the portal, right? So you can still use your power?

i am sorreh 8'|

[scintillula]

You get sneaky fast if your life depends on it.

[ He can only hope Korra's friends and family tap into those inner-reserves. Otherwise they're all royally screwed. ]

[ Korra clings closer to him, and his arm circles her reflexively. The other drifts down to his dagger. At her question, he nods -- just a dip of the head. His gaze is fastened on the stirring shrubbery, adrenaline spiking through him as something crawls out. Initially, in the dim reddish light, it is as indistinct as the bushes and trees near its sides. Then it lurches forward, limping towards the glow of human bodyheat. Small, shrunken, it shuffles sinuously, as if it has taffy inserted into its limbs to encourage boneless motion. It looks human -- at least, it walks upright, and possesses the basic appendages of one. But something is fundamentally wrong with its face: it is black and glistening, as if the flesh has been stripped away. A shred of what looks like placenta, rotting dark, is perched atop its bulbous bald skull in a travesty of a baby's bonnet. The eyes are two puckered red holes, as if plucked at by hungry ravens. ]

[ It's the ultimate dead baby joke, Hei thinks distantly. Except the joke's on us. ]

[ He doesn't give the creature a chance to broadcast its intent. Malice radiates off it in sickly waves. In an eyeblink, his dagger is out. He slashes violently at the creature, one sizzling arc of electricity and a sound of something tearing, before rolling with agile quickness up and over, snatching Korra into his arms, lifting her off her feet -- and taking off full-pelt into the forest. ]

[ (Maybe when he stops again, he'll notice something off. Something that will connect seamlessly to the deja vu of being back in Heaven's War, and to the boyish crack in his voice.) ]

[ (Namely that he's shrunk down to adolescent proportions.) ]

nevah

[anatural]

[Korra screeches in surprise and latches tightly onto him as he runs. She can feel him changing in her arms.]

Hei! Hei, STOP! STOP!

<3333

[scintillula]

[ Pulse tripping, Hei skids to a halt at her screech. At some point their path has bellied into a circle of bare earth ringed by tall trees. At the far side is a jumble of bramble-covered branches, and a pike with the decaying head of what looks like a jaguar -- badly-burnt and fly-covered. In front of it is a ring of char-topped rocks -- an abandoned fire pit? Hei is rocked by a heady rush of disorientation -- at the scenery, which mimics perfectly his team's preferred encampment in Heaven's War -- and by his own placement, which seems off by drastic degrees. In his arms, the Korra-baby is big and solid, almost too big to be called a baby. She is warm and heavy and wriggly, moreso than when he took her on. ]

[ Bewildered, Hei stares at her. Drifts down a rocky daw, toward a clear narrow stream lying flat and silvery against the sky, his boots crunching through the dense grass. When he sees his reflection, his chest rises and falls in shallow swells. ]

Damn.

[ The face is like something risen from the dead. Narrow-faced and pale, with eyes like chunks of dirty ice and lips dark with the benzine tabs the Syndicate fed them for night-raids. Not quite fifteen years old, and short for his age, but with a surprising 140 pounds of fast-twitch muscle packed into a wiry frame. He stares, blinking slowly, and waits to feel something. Some overwhelming emotion like horror or confusion. But the change means nothing; it's just one more surreality piled atop the many in this place. ]

[anatural]

[He's taking it much better than Korra is, to be perfectly honest.]

But you came through the portal. You were in your actual body. How could you change?

[scintillula]

[ He raises an eyebrow at her, an unspoken, You're asking me to explain this logically? Part of him wants to believe he's either dead, in hell, or else in a very intense dream. And yet he knows he is not dead, not dreaming, and this is as real as any event in his life has been. As a soldier, you have to trust your senses: sight, smell, touch, memory. If you cannot trust them, you cannot trust anyone or anything. And if you can't trust yourself, you will not survive. So, just as in Heaven's War, in Hell's Gate, in the City, Hei is forced to believe what he sees, even if it means questioning every truth of the narrow rational framework a Contractor exists in. ]

[ (And perhaps that's why he's changed form. Because he is dimly terrified that his inner-voice of common sense -- the logical voice that he's listened to most of his adult life -- is one he's gradually been forced to abandon since entering the Spirit Portal. No. Before that. Since living in the City. Because an adult mind is too rigid, too brittle, to withstand repeated shocks like these. But not a child. Each trauma leaves a scar, but children are adaptive, their minds more elastic. That is the biggest difference between their survival strategies, and those of adults. Children can maintain a belief in the best-case scenario, or any scenario, from the rational to the improbable. It is when you lose that alacrity, when you're hedged in by the worst-case ones that you are doomed. ]

[ He hitches Korra more securely around his hip, and says, ]

Once I'm out of the portal, I should be back to normal. [ A beat, before he knits his brow. ] What about you? Would you stay the same if I brought you out? Or -- ?

[ He lifts a hand, stubby fingers starfishing, to mime her vanishing into dust. ]

[anatural]

I think... I think I would stay the same. But you wouldn't be able to see or hear me. At least, that's what happened to Aang when he was a spirit in the physical world.

[She trembles, clinging to him. She thinks she'll be the same, but she doesn't know that for sure. Maybe she'll disintegrate. Maybe she'll disappear forever.]

[scintillula]

[ Great. An unknown variable, which means the risk might not be worth it. She curls against him, sharp little knees digging into his flanks and chubby arms tight around his neck, and her heart seems to be buzzing for both of them. For a moment Hei can't find his voice; he just squeezes her hard, his nose in her hair. Her fear seems to soak through his skin. ]

Then we'll hold that back as Plan B. [ Or X, depending on how everything goes. He rocks her slightly, her head tucked under his chin -- an older sibling with a squalling toddler, all over again. His voice wants to take flight into an upper octave, but he keeps it at a steady, rough grind. ] We need to find somewhere safe. [ A beat, his gaze skating across the periphery, the air almost vibrating with a sinister potential. ] Safe-ish. That way you won't get lost -- and I'll know where to find you again once I've gotten your real body back.

[anatural]

[She wants to tell him Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone again. But she knows he's right. Nothing will change if he just stays here with her, but going with him is too much of a risk.]

By the portal. There are a lot of spirits there, but they'll be distracted.

[scintillula]

All right.

[ Resignation drops the pitch of his voice. It's hardly the best-case scenario. But so far it has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and this little addition is not disappointing his expectations. He readjusts his grip around her, moving through the alien tree-fronds and lapsing into a protracted silence. There is only the sound of his boots crunching the dense carpet of weeds, the sly, creeping-cautious noises all around -- like a thousand small animals skittering over a bed of corpses -- and his own measured breathing. All the trees look the same. The land seems to describe an endlessly-repeating loop, like a mobius strip. To anyone not familiar with freakish terrain, it would be impossible to tell if they are breaking new ground or retracing old paths. ]

[ But for Hei, that childhood training never fades. They're heading toward -- someplace, and it's not the endless forest. It isn't long before he's at a flat, rock-strawn plate of land underneath a purple-blue sky. In the distance, a starkly red tree, the hue of scabs and dried bile, rises like a tongue into the atmosphere. A steady wind blows coldly in their faces, carrying with it the scent of ... nothing. The air is completely sterile, scentless. ]

[ Frowning, Hei licks his dry lips. ]

Are you sure you'll be okay here?

[ His tone makes it clear he's dubious at best. ]

[anatural]

[She wiggles out of his grip, and when her feet hit the ground, she's herself again. Grown up.]

No. But it's the best chance we have.

[And they have a plan. Something like a plan. Enough like a plan that she feels better, more in control. Whatever comes next, she can handle it.]