under the stars

[anatural]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Their first night in the Spirit World and their first chance for an actual reunion. (nsfw)

[They trek for hours without saying anything, over terrain that varies with neither rhyme nor reason. Sometimes in a desert, other times in a forest, other times across a plain that seems to stretch for miles until suddenly a mountain appears. Hei doesn't ask why they're going the direction they are, for which Korra is grateful because she doesn't know the answer. She doesn't know anything. They're walking not to get anywhere in particular, but to give Korra a chance to figure out what to do, because she can't think while standing still.

Where would Raava have gone? Is there some way she can communicate with the light spirit? Is there anyone in the Spirit World who doesn't completely despise her?

Evening starts to fall, offering no answers, only a reminder that her body is human and, like it or not, needs rest. Luckily(?) they're in a forest. Plenty of material to make camp with.]

We should stop here for the night. [She has to cough a little mid-sentence; her voice rough from disuse.]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei doesn't laugh -- or if he does, it's a subvocal exhale. Unaware of any dire inner-struggle Korra might be wrestling with -- for now -- he lets her lurch off. Gathering the carved-out dragonfruit shells, he heads to the stream. Gives himself five minutes to wash off, stripping quickly, lathering and sluicing off speedily, missing only the bounce of dog-tags against his chest to recall his mornings in basic. Then he uses Korra's leather pelts, the fruit shells, and his wire, to craft more durable wineskins, something to be fastened around their waists and carried for long distances. He returns to the camp with the jostling containers, heavy with cold water, and a fresh supply of berries. He estimates that Korra will join the ranks of homo sapiens in another five minutes, but it will be closer to twenty minutes before she deserves another sapiens tacked to her name. ]

[ No problem; as long as the girl is ambulatory and dressed, sentient communication can wait. Hei prefers silence; another reason why he'd stopped his harangues. He'd learned that if he just helped quietly, nudging Korra through the morning rituals, they could proceed faster and without fuss. ]

[ Settled crosslegged at the camp, alert and clear-eyed, he listens to the ambient rustles of the jungle. The air has the same heavy grass-sweet tang as South America, and for a moment he's back in the war again, inhaling diesel and decay and spices, a mud that has caught in his mind the way it had once stuck in his boots. ]

[ Forcibly, he shakes it off. This isn't the same thing -- except for that fact that he is, once more, swept up in a war to be with a girl who's too precious and too strange for him. ]

[anatural]

[The first thing Korra notices when she gets back to the camp is the wineskins.]

You changed the waterskin things. [It hurts, though she knows it's stupid and she tries to make the comment conversational, not petulant. They do look better than the ones she made, but that's why it stings. Hers had been crude, but she'd been proud of the ingenuity it'd taken to make them. Of course it would be something Hei could do better. What can't he do better? He travels all over a strange world on his own, he can survive in any conditions, he whups her ass repeatedly in fights... In a weird way, it reminds her of when she first met Asami, and how every minute was like this big lit sign flashing THIS IS WHY YOU SUCK. She could picture it on a banner being hung from Aang's statue near Air Temple Island.

She knows it's just early morning grumps getting under her skin, but somehow that doesn't make it any better.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei pauses as Korra slews her gaze on him, dark within rings of blue. Full of hurt. He can't imagine why -- until she comments on the wineskins. Despite all Hei's efforts at mastering the nuances of insecurity that Korra brims with, it takes him a moment to comprehend why this matters. Korra's glum face -- just a flash, then gone -- seems to express that his modification to her invention -- to him an automatic, pragmatic necessity -- is to her an echoing sense of inadequacy, inadvertent but profound, a resonance of actions bouncing off that hidden iceberg of self-hatred she doesn't talk about. ]

[ Part of him wants to be irritated. To dismiss her fit of peevishness for what it is. But the other part of him knows what it's like to be where she is. Once upon a time, he'd spent every morning waking up feeling like he was never good enough. These days, it's a miracle if he wakes up feeling anything at all. He's not sure if that's progress. ]

[ Smoothing a hand over his face, he pretends to rub his eyes, before he says, almost dryly, ]

You still have ownership rights to the originals. I just ... accessorized.

[anatural]

[And now he's condescending. She glowers at him and throws herself on the ground.]

They look better. [Just acknowledge it and don't try to make her "feel better." Asshole. She reaches for the leftovers from last night's dinner.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Well. That failed spectacularly. ]

[ Silently, Hei pops the berries into his mouth. There is suddenly so much more to say that he feels stifled for time and space. The past few weeks, the past few months, the past few years -- something massed on the horizon, a cyclone of words heralded only by a breeze. He hasn't been talking to anyone lately, and he needs to talk. Given the right elements, he can master the whirlwind that demands release from himself, orchestrate its sturm und drang so that it spends its force without hurting Korra more, and without blowing down his own house of cards. ]

[ Except ... it is blown and scattered already, isn't it? His house lies in pieces; he's never admitted how flimsy it has been. Yet just once he needs to vent, to say, I missed you. I had no right to. But I did. You said you loved me and I screwed it up, because that's what I do. I screw up everything I touch -- but you still keep me around. I don't know why, because you're smarter than I am, Korra, you're a hundred times better. And I never let you in on this secret, one of too many secrets, which is that I'm so good at surviving only because I haven't got the knack to be a whole person like you are. Avatar or no, you have your knack – so you think I must have mine. Clue in, Korra. I'm half-dead most days, and some days more than half. And even on the days when I feel like I'm whole it doesn't help me push through to where I need to be with you. All I do is lie and keep secrets. While you -- you teach me all your truth -- teach me over and over because I keep going out of my mind and forgetting the lesson. ]

[ Hei swallows his words. He will never have a chance to say them here and now, because this speech is just a dark whirling smudge on the horizon, a momentary impression that has died away. Instead, gaze averted, he asks, ]

Which direction should we go?

[anatural]

[Oh just give her a hug already. Idiot.]

I don't know. [She reaches a bone and flings it off into the trees.] North. [Why north? Why not north? Any direction is as good as another at this point.]

We need to find other spirits. Ones that will actually talk to us. Somebody has to know something about Raava and where she might be hiding.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He would. But something, drawn in through the pinched ache of his chest, makes him wonder if, after disappearing for ten months, he has any right. What if, because of the circumstances, they're just going through the motions? What if they really just think they're still ready for each other, but... too much time has gone by? He's trying to fit himself in with her again because he has nowhere else to kill time. And she's trying ... because she has no one else? ]

[ The idea, which he doesn't know how to take, is like a banked itch inside him. Yet it feels so foolish, because everytime he looks at her, hears her voice, it makes all that time sort of crumple up into a little ball like nothing. She cuts through all the clutter of months in a pure blue blaze. ]

[ At Korra's words, it's clear she's operating on instinct, not strategy. It's the opposite of everything that ties Hei to survival (back-up plans, maps, exit routes). But the dreamsphere of the spirit world has stopped making him uneasy. More...cautious. It's not the first time he's been in a place that defies every breed of logic. ]

[ Instead, ]

Are you going to tell me what Raava is?

[ It's gentle, not rebuking. But a reminder, all the same: I'll take any available risk for you. But I need to know what's going on. ]

[anatural]

[She blinks at him, and it takes her a moment to realize Oh. Of course he doesn’t know. He's been following her all this time with no idea what they're chasing.]

She's the Avatar spirit.

[She struggles to find the right words to explain, when she doesn't even understand wholly herself. Some she remembers from what Jinora told her, most she got in flashes while Unalaq was pulling the spirit out of her.]

She's the spirit of order & harmony. She bonded with the first Avatar — she's the reason only the Avatar can bend all the elements. She's how we connect to our past lives. That's why it's the Avatar's responsibility to keep balance in the world.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Her words brim him with a sick insufficient alarm. During their trip, his strands of understanding about Raava had woven in loose threads that began and broke and picked up other strands. But now the pattern that forms is one of loss and setback and dire emergency. It's beyond the level of magnitude as a Contractor losing their power, like Carmine. Listening to Korra's stream of illogic, he realizes, dimly, that her very Avatar-ness has been wrenched from her -- like someone who's endured a crippling lobotomy, or a horrific psychic and spiritual theft. ]

[ His head whirls. Unthought of, a few hours ago, the necessity of finding Raava -- no longer an abstract word -- now becomes real to him, absolutely solid. Not because he cares about the legacy of the Avatar. But because he understands, something that Korra -- perhaps dizzy and still numbed-out from the shock -- might not admit yet. That if a spirit of order and harmony has been ripped from her, it signifies something tremendously, dangerously skewed about this world. ]

[ On another man, his expression, unmoving and unmoved, might signal complete uninterest. But anyone who knows the arts of camouflage will be adept at finding the concern hidden in the leaves. ]

... But if you two are bonded ... why would Raava hide from you? Maybe there's a chance she's looking for you too.

[anatural]

Were bonded. Unalaq broke the bond. He tried to kill her. [She still can't wrap her mind around that — how her uncle, who had always seemed like a stuffy ridiculous stickler for the rules, would want to destroy the being which represents order and harmony in the universe. It's insane.]

She's probably hiding somewhere so she can heal. [Without thinking about it, or realizing it, she mutters —] Who knows if she wants to come back. Maybe she's given up on us entirely.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei doesn't look up from the berries in his palm, but the rigid, expressionless manner in which he concentrates on the them is more conspicuous than a look would have been. It's not because he's being deliberately distant, or because he's completely gobsmacked by the news. The truth is -- he is processing all this information, in the same way Korra is, but differently too. It's only when her last sentence unfurls does he jerk his head up, his gaze sharp and unwavering. The air closest to his arms and shoulders seems to thrum, same way a hummingbird’s wings exist in a blur of motion. As if he wants to reach for her, but is temping the urge down. ]

She wouldn't give up on you. [ The idea is ludicrous. His tone has all the slow, warm drag of the way he'd sometimes murmur to her late at night, between rumpled sheets, face pressed into her shoulder, but none of the softness. ] If she's hiding, it's because she's avoiding your uncle. You have to focus on finding her before he does.

[anatural]

[...pulling that tone out on her now, rude. It bypasses rational thought and goes straight to her insides. Sense memory is a terrible thing.]

Yeah. [She nods and stands.] We should get going.

[mortemscintilla]

[ A nod in return, his gaze tracking her with a sentinel's focus as she moves. She reminds him of a child, impossibly small and wanting to be smaller. Shrinking with an acid wash of shame and self-doubt. At the same time, so keyed up, so brimful with emotion, she might pop like a bottle of champagne. Of course she can't let any of it out, because it would be too much, too painful. ]

[ Suddenly Hei can't sustain his calculated distance any longer. He rises, and there's a moment's faltering, which registers as no more than a rustle across the trees, before he curves a palm across her nape, his fingers curled around to bunch in the loose hair, resting there like an imperative. The familiar heat of her skin leaps through him in a spark, and suddenly he can't understand why he'd held back all this time. ]

[ Quietly, ]

We'll find Raava. I'm not leaving you until we do.

[anatural]

[Her breath catches in her throat. Not fair. Not. Fair. She just wants to be wrapped up in that warmth and never leave. Not for awhile, at least.]

But after that you will?

[mortemscintilla]

[ She still hasn't forgiven him for that, has she? Another time Hei would meet the suggestion with irritation, dismissal. Because that's not what this is about. Because she's completely missing his point. Instead he exhales, gathering her in close. He's gone from low-key warmth to a broken-open tenderness in a fast zero to sixty; it feels like flu but he knows it isn't. He swallows, a splinter of regret catching in his throat at the idea that even now, she imagines he'll take the easy way out and abandon her. If he were that selfish (or maybe the better word is selfless?) he'd have done it ages back. His right hand strokes the slope of her neck, her spine, and his forehead flirts its long hair millimeters from her warm skin before butting gently into place. ]

After that I'll watch you do what you do best. Pick yourself up out of nowhere. Make your own way. [ His left hand smoothes her hair back from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear as if to make sure there is nothing to muffle the words from her. ] I know nowhere like the back of my hand. And you're not there, Korra. You'll never be. Avatar or no Avatar, you'll be all right.

[anatural]

[Well it's his fault for wording it like the only thing keeping him around is Raava's absence. You disappear for ten months, suddenly reappear, and then talk like that — what else is she supposed to think?

She shivers and winds her arms around him. She wants to believe him so badly.]

I missed you.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei passes his arms around her. It's light at first, before the reality that he's here, holding her, hits him. The embrace tightens, a warm animal clasp bridging the space between their bodies. He might as well be sixteen again, sprawled in the charred grass next to Amber, watching the stars, alert for enemies in the periphery, but also honed in utterly on his desire. He feels desire now, no longer incognito, but faced and named. He doesn't welcome it. It is inappropriate, given the situation, given that Korra is still radiating a high-pitched distress. But against his will, he dips his head, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, before homing in on her mouth. ]

[ The kiss should be heated and intense,like the quality of his muscles and grip and gaze. Instead it's soft, a cadence lacking the thread of urgency -- sweet closemouthed kisses tremoring from his lips before taking wing into something deeper. ]

[ I missed you too. He wants to say it, but at the same time, holding her like this, there's no need to. ]

[anatural]

[Oh. The kiss may start soft, but it doesn't stay that way. Korra grabs his hair and pulls him closer, pressing as hard as she can against him. This is so not the time or the place, and she knows it. Still, she wants him so badly it hurts. He wants her too, which eases an ache inside and fuels her need.

Raava. She stops trying to pull his shirt off before it registers that she had started. You have to find Raava. She pulls away with a gasp.]

We...should go.

[mortemscintilla]

[ The kiss takes a darker shape in thoughtless impulse, and grows stronger as Korra opens her ready mouth. He anchors her close with an arm circled around her, loving the way she clings to him, her little fingers plucking the heavy fabric of his shirt, her warm face upturned and busy. Hei inhales and it's a small bubbling awe that she is right there with those sweet curves smashed up against him, skin smooth against the bristles sanding his chin, her lips light as cream puffs and more soft. ]

[ When she jerks back, he's disoriented. Wants to chase after her, openmouthed and relentless, to fold their bodies across the grass and recapture that sweet familiar friction between them. But -- ]

[ Raava. ]

[ Something shutters and falls closed in Hei's expression. On anyone else, it might look like frustration or disappointment. He won't deny that both are present. But she is right. ]

Yeah.

[ She is close enough that his words buzz softly against her mouth. An inhale, an exhale. Then he edges back, hands dropping from her body. ]

[anatural]

[It takes a lot of effort to step back. She takes a deep breath, willing the tingles to go away. She has control of her body.

She reaches for one of the water bottles.]

Let's go.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei nods tersely. He gathers up the supplies, then retrieves the grenades from their protective ring around camp. They head North, keeping abreast of the stream. As the day wears on, the woods change. Where before everything is a wintry green, shot through with the pink-lemonade shades of sunlight through the leaves, by afternoon it changes to the denser, darker green of pine needles so thick the light cannot penetrate: the sunlight lies on top of the foliage, making it seem as if they are insects picking their way across a saw blade. ]

[ No spirits ambush them. In fact, there seem to be no spirits in the region at all -- and Hei isn't sure if it's a good sign or a bad one. Something almost cricket-like chirps in the green gloom. Through the trees, the sky is bruising towards purple. He's forgotten the way night looms in the forest: more abrupt, unsoftened by headlamps or street lamps. The only light comes from stars that bloom in the velvet sky, sharpening as darkness closes around each shining pinprick. Night in the forest falls like a guillotine blade: quick and sharp, cutting you off from everything. ]

[ A cave lies halfway up an embankment studded with straggly pines. The incline is rinsed with grey stones each the size of a baby's fist. Cautiously, Hei picks one up and tosses it into the cave. It plinks somewhere past the mouth, giving way to a series of soft tinkles. Nothing -- no giant spiders or demon bears -- comes exploding out. ]

Sounds empty, [ he mutters to Korra, rotating his neck to get a crick out. ] We should stop here.

[anatural]

[Hei may not be sure, but Korra is — the lack of spirits is a very bad sign. There should be some kind of life here. Would every single spirit in the area have gone off to follow Unalaq into the psychical world? Or has something more sinister happened?

The possibilities are horrifying to contemplate. They take up so much of her attention, she barely hears Hei talking about stopping; she grunts in agreement anyway, and lets him take the lead.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei steals a glance at Korra, who looks both frightened and determined, two moods that can only be reconciled in a face like hers. He wants to ask what it means -- no spirits around, nothing to impinge on the eerily pervasive silence. But the texture of his concern is a different one. If there is nothing here, does it signal a mass exodus ... or an ambush? Would Raava be caught up in the movement? Or could she be hiding something, a spot of light on a dark horizon? ]

[ He wants to ask -- except it's clear Korra's guess is as good as his. It's too late to debate about the details anyway. They're both grungy, tired and hungry. By daylight, they'll revise their strategy -- such as it is. Right now they need food and rest. ]

Get some firewood, [ he advises Korra, with an ear cocked to the silent woods. ] I doubt there are rabbits here to hunt. But I can find us other things to eat.

[ Suri grubs. Birds, and the eggs in their nests. Fish, once he finds a good spot near the stream, and a nicely bloody chumline. A lot of fish are night-feeders; in his experience, the bigger ones bite more readily at this dark hour. ]

[anatural]

[The situation doesn't get any less creepy. Korra may not be one to run away from danger, but the implacable silence is an enemy she doesn't know how to fight. She's more than happy to settle back into the cave with a warm fire and the promise of food.]

Did you see anyone while you were out there?

[mortemscintilla]

No.

[ It's neither distressed nor dismissive. But like her, there's an icicle of wariness seated in Hei's chest. But to let it spread in a lattice of bright cold paranoia will do no good. Better to take this one step at a time. Stay in the now. It's a cardinal survival rule. It means to pay attention and keep an up-to-date mental model. Have a plan at hand, but don't fall in love with it. Your main task is to map the environment, map its patterns, and keep the two in harmonious balance. Without the balance, you're screwed. ]

[ The dark stream had a fine flow of water, and his bait of fresh bird-viscera had drawn a seething glut of fish to the surface and made strategy superfluous. He's returned with four birds the rough size of quails, a kerchief of berries and useful herbs, and a half-dozen rainbow-scaled trout that are doomed to give their lives to humanity be gutted and spit-grilled for dinner. ]

[ Settling across from Korra, he saws his blade across the trout's bellies, hacking through the gleaming knot of their insides. Next the quails are plucked and beheaded. Tossing the mess of entrails into the fire, he sticks the glistening bodies onto a set of sharpened skewers, and lets them sizzle over the flames. ]

[ At length, ]

We'll figure out where to go tomorrow. The stream has to lead to a spirit settlement somewhere.