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

[mortemscintilla]

[ The voice hits him like a metal ball on a string, colliding with his eardrums as if flung from a great height. The sound of something trapped and terribly, infinitely grumpy, ricocheting off the silence, carrying across the cold, lonely expanse. Hei whirls, gaze narrowing on the grotesque bulk of the tree. It's like being caught in a periscope; one moment it's at a distance, a stark jagged shape silhouetted at the misty blue horizon. The next he's right up close to it, the atmosphere around the tree murky as well as impossibly brilliant. ]

[ Squinting, fighting disorientation, Hei pitches his voice loud enough to carry: ]

...Hello?

[anatural]

Hei? [Korra sags with relief — then she starts beating on the tree even harder.] Hei, get me out of here!

[mortemscintilla]

[ Un-fucking-believable. The surrealism of the whole tableau hits Hei like a neat hole punched through the center of his brain. This makes no sense, but logic isn't the same as truth, and that truth here is what the Spirit World sees fit to make of it. At truth so unthinkable, flying in the face of all logical thought, that most people would refuse to believe -- at least their rational minds would. It's only deep down, in those places where dark speculation takes root, that an ember of belief is quietly smoldering. ]

[ Everything in him surges toward Korra's frantic voice. It would be nothing to place his palm on the tree's scratchy bark. To let rip an electric volt and incinerate the whole structure sky-high. But a deep-seated caution holds him back. What if this isn't Korra, but another illusion? What if there's something trapped inside the tree, yes -- but so horrifying it defies all reasonable description? ]

[ Licking his dry lips, he says, ]

How did you get in there?

[anatural]

Unalaq put me in here. Hei, you have to get me out!

[mortemscintilla]

Unalaq?

[ Hei darts a reflexive glance around, as if he expects the man to be nearby. But let's be honest. If he were, he'd have attacked Hei before he could approach. (Unless ... this is a set-up. Unless there is something sinister in the tree, and trapping Korra in there is a convenient excuse to release it by proxy.) The thoughts gnaw at Hei like teeth in his brain, a terrible bright-red bloom, a dizzying pressure of suction. Shaking it off, Hei comes to a decision. He needs quick-cut instincts right now; a private triage room in his head. No place here for an overthinker. Overthinking matters may just be a harmless quirk in a civilian. Here, swift action is needed, or else the situation will start coming apart at the seams. ]

[ He backs a few steps, and places Korra's wrapped body on the floor. Gaze skimming the tree, down and up, before he settles a palm at the edge. ]

Hold on.

[ The smartest option is to disintegrate a small portion of the surface. To see if Korra can crawl out. He's not about to risk anything beyond that. His eyes glow a familiar red; something sparks from his fingers: less a flare, really, than jags of blue electricity crackling outward, scorching the tree from outside in. ]

[anatural]

[Somehow, when he hurts the tree, it hurts Korra too. Blinding pain, enough to make her throat raw from screaming. But then there's air and she's tumbling out, clutching her stomach and dry heaving.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She screams, and for a sick moment what is visible becomes a whitish-grey mist to Hei, around which other colors edge and expand crazily. Then something splits open in the pitted surface of the tree, and Korra spills out, tense and irradiant with pain. Seeing her, Hei's senses are filled with red, a scent and taste like blood, its drumming and surge. He lurches to his knees, one disjointed movement, and gathers her up. Stroking both his hands along the sides of her face, cradling its shape, palms easing through matted streaks of hair to feel the pulse at her throat. Searching, in the numb eye of horror, for signs of arrhythmia, for muscle contractions and burns. Smoke spindles in the air; the dissipating sparkage leaves an ionic tang. ]

Hey. [ His voice is tight, edging on raw, in the burgeoning silence. ] Hey.

[anatural]

[She clings to him. She can barely feel his warmth — one of the disconcerting elements of being in a spirit body that she hadn't noticed in the general madness of their earlier meeting. But what she can feel is comforting.]

I'm fine. [She coughs again.] I'm...fine.

[mortemscintilla]

[ The sound of her voice draws Hei's fractured attention together. With care, he circles an arm around her, nestling her closer. He hopes that his face doesn't show his horror. He is a Contractor. He has a decade of practice in schooling his face to stone. But with Korra in his eyes, he cannot make the raw surface of his face harden; he feels dizzily like he must be showing everything. There are fish-hooks of dread embedded in his chest. Too close. Way too close. In the back of his mind, cool-eyed logic is speaking to him, trying to draw him back from Korra's ragged breathing, the stretched rack of her skin, her pulse and her hurting. ]

[ Get her back into her real body. Before something else goes wrong. ]

[ Instincts war with rationality, but he pulls it together. Tipping Korra upright, cradled against him with one arm, he reaches for the wrapped bundle of her body with the other. Unfolding a sheave of cloth, his fingers close around the cool, slightly damp jut of her wrist. It feels bizarre, holding a singed yet incorporeal Korra in one arm, and a fragile bodily shell in the other. ]

[ Shaking it off, he says, ]

Look what I have.

[anatural]

My body.

[It's weird.... more than weird, it's terrifying, seeing her body like this. It's like being dead. But you’re not dead.

Get up. You need to stop Unalaq.

She shakes off the fear, the impulse to stay wrapped up in his arms, and pushes away.]

I don't really know how to do this... [But... She puts a hand on her body's forehead, and in a bright flash of light, they're reunited.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ I don't really know how to do this. He's heard that from her before. But she has gut-instincts for this sort of thing. Because the fact of the matter is, Korra embodies every quality braided with spiritualism; she doesn't need to spew a load of pacifist crap about it. She just does it. It's why she manages ninety percent of her Avatar status so effortlessly -- and the other ten percent she kills herself to achieve. ]

[ He watches her reach for the body. The air flashes, his nerves shriek, and he can almost smell it, the union of soul and flesh, forced together like a hot brand driven against the skin. For a moment he can't see; red and green marching dots blind him. Blinking slowly, he realizes the Korra-shape he was cradling is gone. All that remains is his fingers curled around the body's wrist. The flesh under his examining palm is cool and pliant, but beneath it, he's aware of a flowing warmth, a heavy drag of pulse -- like some complex engineering marvel restarting itself. ]

[ Excitement makes Hei's neck and shoulders tense, though he does an admirable job of remaining otherwise motionless. ]

Korra?

[anatural]

Yeah. [She sits up with a groan. Nobody ever warned her how alien her own body would feel after too much time in the spirit world. Geez. She moves slowly, giving her muscles time to acclimate. Not that they have much.]

I need to get moving.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Maintaining the razor's edge of ever-readiness is exhausting, as Hei knows only too well. But when Korra sits up, he unfolds himself smoothly to his feet after her, struck once again by how natural the situation feels: the weight of the weapons strapped to his frame, the blood and adrenaline hammering his chest, spiking through his heart. In the eye of madness. Where the wild things are. And he belongs -- operating for this girl at a level above duty or kindness or friendship. There is a terrible, steely kind of strength in such a simple code of conduct. Anytime. Anywhere. Anyhow. I will have your back. ]

[ His face is hard-edged, bright. Sharp and charged. ]

You think Unalaq is still in the Spirit World?

[ He hopes not. Because if the other man is back in the human world -- they can play by different rules. Which, in Hei's case, means No rules at all. ]

[anatural]

[She shakes her head.]

I don't know. But that's not the point. He took something from me, and I have to get it back.

[She's not making any sense and she knows it, but she doesn't care. There's a gaping hole inside of her where Raava used to be, a hole even more painful than when Amon took her bending. It's the difference between being cut on the arm and being stabbed in the gut. The one thing that makes it better is that she knows what to do now.]

[mortemscintilla]

Took something?

[ It's the most perfunctory of glances, a miniscule shift in the tension of his shoulders that's there and gone again when Korra doesn't elaborate. Whatever Unalaq's taken from her -- her bending, some other intangible essence -- it doesn't matter. All he needs to infer is that it's important, and that Korra needs to get it back. It elicits almost a non-response from Hei, his expression shuttering closed into something determined but not necessarily cold. Not yet. Things are how they are, and when push comes to shove, being a creature of electricity and bruises and revenge is how some of the best partnerships are formed. ]

[ (It's not hard to understand Korra's anger, if you've lost enough.) ]

Do you have a plan?

[anatural]

[She's not angry — she's beyond anger. There is something that needs to be done, and so she's going to do it. It's as simple as that.]

I'm going to find Raava. [That's totally a plan, right? It's as much of a plan as she has, anyway.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ His face shades into mild confusion. You can tell, because, well. He blinks. ]

... Is this a past life?

[ Does it matter? That thread of questioning is only tangentially related to their situation. She doesn't have a plan, but that's not largely surprising. Korra is spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment, driven by the force of her passions. It's Hei who operates while weighing every little detail, even if it's purely at a subconscious level. As he regards her now, a scheme coheres. It is crude, it is ugly, and it is improvised, but given the parameters, it might work. ]

Unalaq's probably at his base. [ Otherwise they'd both have been ambushed by now. ] I can get you in there.

[ He's still wearing the Northern military's fur-lined uniform. He still has the shroud he'd bundled Korra's body in. ]

[anatural]

[She shakes her head impatiently.]

She's not there. She's... I don't know where she is, except she's here, in the spirit world. Unalaq ripped her from me. He tried to kill her, but she escaped, and she's hiding, and I need to find her.

[It's as simple as that. Really.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ That's better. At least he knows it's a lost spirit she's after. That information is tangible, lets ease settle into his shoulders as he slips one hand into his pocket, his gaze steady and appraising as it skates the periphery. Finding Raava is a step toward the most tangible thing of all: destroying Unalaq. Because if there's anything Hei dislikes most, it's loose ends. ]

[ A hand cupped around his eyes, he blinks into the direction of the forest, a light shrug as he tips his chin and says, ]

She can't be far.

[ The I'll help you look is implicit. ]

[anatural]

[A laugh cuts through the air — or, more accurately, a giggle that is both nervous and condescending.]

Shows what you know! Can you catch a sunbeam in your hands?

Who's there?! [Korra looks around for the source of the voice. She's so fucking sick of the spirit world, of how strange everything is, the surreality of it. Nothing is what you expect it to be. Nothing behaves the way it's supposed to. Clouds grow dark and heavy above their heads.

A chipmunk comes out from behind a tree. A bright purple swirls in its otherwise grey eyes.]

You can’t. Raava travels light. She could be on the other side of the spirit world right now. You're just a human. [There's an extra level of disdain in its voice when it says human.] You’ll never find her.

[mortemscintilla]

[ ....It's a talking chipmunk. ]

[ Hei stares -- and it's not a live-wire sort of alertness so much as it's a half-weary, half-disgusted: What has my life come to? Overhead, low-hanging stormclouds gather, blocking out the light, etching the landscape in sharp-edged darkness. On reflex, he steps closer to the intruder. The way it sneers the word human lodges in his head like a string of gristle -- fray-edged and familiar. He's heard it often enough on the battlefield. His narrowed eyes are a cloudy blue, the face a mask of coldness. But around the edges, like a thin lip of light silhouetting a doorframe, there is defiance. ]

[(It's feigned. Why stop acting like the clueless hothead that enemies are used to underestimating? It always prevents them from seeing what is coming.) ]

I doubt any of your kind have a clue where she is, either.

[anatural]

Whaddya mean, MY KIND? WAH!

[Korra grabs the creature before it can dodge.]

Where is she? Tell me what you know!

I’m not telling you anything!

[mortemscintilla]

[ There's Korra for you. Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. And just as subtle. ]

[ Reaching out, he curls his fingers lightly around her wrist. His expression isn't disapproving, exactly, but it does communicate a faint discouragement. People always say torture and intimidation are what gets the information. But there are a lot of ways better than that to extract it. It's the way it had played out between him and Carmine: he didn't torture her just because he was after information on Pai. He tortured because he was enraged, confused, resentful -- and most of all because he wanted to torture. Most targets, faced with the threat of it, will bluster. Others will beg. Both types are really two sides of the same coin: their focus is the interrogator, and because of this they tend to crack easily. As soon as they see that their bluster and begging is useless, that they can't make a human connection that will stop the pain and torment, their psyches fold and information begins to spill out. ]

[ That doesn't work well with non-humans, though. To them, you're more an infection to be waited out, not something intelligent to condescend bargaining with. The better tactic is to play on their arrogance. ]

[ Mildly, ]

Let it go. I doubt it knows anything about anything.

[anatural]

[Korra reluctantly lets the creature go, and it runs. It's not sticking around to be waited out or manipulated — it's said all it wants to say.]

Hey! Stop!

[Korra turns and glares at Hei.]

Now look what you did!

[mortemscintilla]

[ In Hei's face congeals the cynicism of his voice. ]

That pest doesn't know where Raava is. Any more than you do.

[ Nor would it have any reason to be cowed into helping them. It's as ludicrous as a slaughterhouse owner making tremulous bargains with livestock. There's a beat, before he glances up at the gloomy spread of the sky. Deformed shapes swirl in the air above their heads. It's easy to mistake the spectacle for a particularly gruesome phase of the northern lights, until the air coalesces, attaining a splintered permanence, and a shoal of faces begin swimming out of the sky. Their aspect is hideous: eyes ripped of eyelids or punched from their skulls outright, noses bitten away, lips freakishly swelled, tongues long and lolling and eaten through as if by parasites. ]

[ Hei shakes his head irritably, centering his mind on something cool and smooth-shaped, and the shapes dissipate by slow degrees like smoke. ]

One thing is sure. The spirits are going out of their way to antagonize us. The more they succeed, the crazier things become.