The good that I want, I do not do

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra, Bolin & Hei
WHAT: Wherein Bolin gets into a pickle, and Korra learns the exact nature of Hei's 'work.'


[ Walking on his way to work -- his real work, not his factory-shift -- Hei buys a warm steamed-bun from a street vendor, enjoying the salty grease and hot dough. The sky is darkening, a filigree of dirty purple on the horizon. The lilac-gray cloudbanks remind him of a recurring dream in which skulls rain down from the sky like hailstones, millions of gleaming skulls covering him in a clattering drift of smooth bone and teeth. What's most puzzling is that the dream never disturbs him, as he imagines it would most people. At nights, sometimes, he closes his eyes wondering, with a sort of wistful curiosity, if it will come to him as he sleeps. ]

[ Crossing a warren of sooty alleyways, he feels the weight from the blades strapped under his clothes: an old Spyderco Clipit nestled in his front right pocket and his favored La Griffe with its two-inch spear point blade around his neck inside the shirt. The cold pommel nuzzles at him like an old lover. It's nothing to be proud of. Any fool can carry a knife. But it's a bigger fool who goes unarmed to jobs like his. ]

[ Funny, how he'd come to Republic City hoping for honest work. But when the purse runs empty, dishonest work has to do. That said, he can't say he's ever seen a place with a less honest look about it than this one. A deserted building. Heavy door and dirty bare windows. A dead juniper bonsai rests at the entrance. The sign reads: Moon-Queen. It's one of the newest Republic City phenomenon: the opposite of a tanning salon. Some young wife-to-be suffering from acne spots or sunburn? No problem. Fifteen minutes on a special bed, bombarded with whorls of therapeutic water-bending, and she's a dead-ringer for the Corpse Bride. The store is a front: drugs, guns, and stolen merchandise are hustled out the back. Half the beds aren't even plugged in. The others are actually tanning chambers. ]

[ One of Hei's contacts sits behind the reception desk. A posterboy for a bleaching salon: fat and fortyish, pale and hairless as a skinned lychee. He's a middle-tier triad guy, a pavement-pounder. He tracks high-ranking gangbangers, cons, cobblers, thieves and anyone too dangerous who winds up on the gang's blacklist -- an unhealthy list to be on. When Hei steps in, he nods, jerking his chin toward the back door. While  Hei heads down the hallway, the man slouches to the door and, to the utter dismay of all albinism-worshipping females in the area, turns the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. ]

[ The parlor room walls, ceiling, and floor are draped in transparent plastic. One tanning bed rests at the corner, white with the dimensions of a coffin. Beside it, shackled to a chair and gagged tight, is Hei's target for the night. A rich kid: male, early twenties, working on some patchy facial hair that blooms in dark thatches at his chin and cheek. Hei's seen him in the line-up at clubs, wolf-whistling at girls from his fancy satomobile and slumming it up in seedy brothels. Not him exactly, but he looks like a thousand other guys in this city -- a type. ]

[ Not that it matters. All he is, to Hei, is a conduit for information on Bolin's whereabouts. And it's Hei's job to extract it -- a task which he's already proven, among all the triads whom he freelances for, to be chillingly proficient at. Not a very glamorous job, sure. But at least the pay is good. ]

[ Slowly, he slips out of his coat. Rich Boy watches him, his eyes a cloudy brown. His face is a mask of defiance but around the edges, like a corona of light silhouetting a solar eclipse, he sees fear. Good. Hopefully the extraction won't drag on tediously. He's hoping to leave early. Retrieve Bolin, get some groceries, head home, maybe surprise Korra with her favorite lychee-flavored mooncake when she gets back. A dully-domestic train of thought. But hey. The Black Reaper doesn't have to be a monster during his off-hours, too. ]

Comments

[anatural]

Jinora would have found it. She can project her spirit. That kid didn't have to die like that!

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei exhales, his fingernails wearily scritching the stubble on his chin like a wooden match pulled over a striking strip. He's so damn tired of these moral reruns; so muddled up that he's not sure what the true problem is -- his rationalizations of his frequent brutality, or her denial that it's effective, much less that it exists. ]

She'd have had to scour the whole city. Point by point. That kid already knew where Bolin was. I just needed to extract those details. As fast as possible.

[anatural]

At least they'd both be alive.

[Korra doesn't deny his methods are effective. But are the results worth the cost — that's the question, the gulf between them. Hei sticks with the methods he knows, inhumane as they may be, and acts as though they are the only option, and to think otherwise is to be hopelessly naive. Korra believes a better way can be found, if you commit yourself to it. Why dive into the mud when, if you look around, you can find a bridge?

If it was impulse, she'd understand. If it was a knee-jerk reaction, ingrained habit, she'd understand. She still defaults to violence herself. Yet this isn't a bad habit he's having trouble breaking. This is a conscious choice he's made, and that he's lied to her about.

And maybe that's the part that really hurts — how he's kept her in the dark. He's lied to her, and even if it's far from the first time, it doesn't hurt any less.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Impulse. Ingrained habit. Default mode. She doesn't understand yet, that his propensity for violence is all those things. Because the way he grew up, there was no choice but to dive into the mud. There was never a bridge -- never a safer option. It's true that the child is the father of the man. And it's equally true that the way Hei grew up, he could never afford to be a child. Never afford clemency or honesty. ]

[ He doesn't know how to explain that to her. He can only think, in an abstract way, of men returned from war who have trouble sleeping without their boots on and a rifle close at hand, and how he can understand their difficulty. It's hard for the most primal, powerful regions of the mind to abandon habits that were once crucial to your survival, even when the higher mind recognizes those habits are no longer warranted. What can the habits hurt? the barbed aspects of his nature always argue. ]

[ And, sadly, things like a chance for peace and hope of redemption aren't responses it finds much persuasive. ]

[ Now, he watches Korra's face, wishing he could dispel its shadows. Feeling something in his chest surge, that stupid brim of heartache, reasonless and blinding. ]

[ Quietly, he says, ]

I know you're upset. And angry. And I wish I could say I'll make different choices. But -- [ He pauses, looking past her, at the slow spreading light in the sky. ] Once you've started on a course like mine, there's no right place to stop that means a thing.

[anatural]

[Well when you put it like that — what the fuck does that even mean?]

How hard is it to just not work with criminals? It's not like they're hiding what they are. What is so complicated about it?

[mortemscintilla]

[ It means that some things -- lifestyles, histories, deeds -- go beyond choice. Beyond the desire to change. They carry such an amplitude, such a terrible plangency, that they become your very nature, blotting out anything else you do. Hei may believe in the essential freedoms of choice and self-determination. He may function on a balancing act of debts repaid versus favors owed. But he knows some atrocities are so far-reaching that nothing you do will make up for them. ]

[ The most he can manage is to protect those close to him. To do everything in his power to ensure their lives aren't wasted -- or flung into the murk -- the way his own was. ]

[ At her question, he makes a small, exasperated sound, thumping the heel of his hand against the sandy floorboards. But the brief burst of irritation fades as fast as it blooms. When he speaks, his voice is both tired and gentle. ]

Have you ever seen a bunch of dead bodies after a war, Korra? Good men. Criminals. All stacked up after a battle?

[ It's not as much of a non-sequitur as it seems. There's something he needs to explain to her. Something she -- in her all-encompassing innocence, her penchant for thinking only in contrasts of black and white -- is blind to. ]

[anatural]

Yeah, I have. [Not in the impressive piles that Hei has, but the civil war wasn't sitting across a table politely bickering. She's seen dead bodies on the battlefield. She's helped clean up corpses. So please, explain what this has to do with anything they're talking about.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The civil war was no glamorous garden party. He's not denying that. Nor will he deny that many of those corpses were people Korra had known most of her childhood. But that's exactly what puzzles him. How, when faced with such a wealth of bleak evidence, can she clutch at such an infinite and convoluted idea of goodness and badness? ]

[ Unblinking, he looks at her lovely, stubborn face, set into lines that suggest the crystalline inviolability of raw diamond. ]

Did you notice the corpses of the 'good guys' glowed? That they smelled like roses? [ Of course not. Everywhere you go, death has the same putrid stench. ] The good men and the bad -- they all looked about the same, right? They always have to me.

[ He pauses, his gaze that blank cipher he's worn so often with enemies and allies alike. Neutral. Calm. Proving his worth as a soldier and a Contractor and a spy. ]

I've seen good people, who did the right thing every day of their lives. Who built things to be proud of so bastards like me could destroy them in a blink. And they made sure to say thank you kindly each time I kicked the guts out of them. Do you think when they died, and they were put in the ground, they turned into fairydust? [ Again: of course not. ] They turn to shit like the rest of us. And they leave behind nothing but things not done. Unsaid. Unfinished. Family and friends never protected. Hopes rotted down to nothing.

[ His gaze dulls then, as he tries to dial down the vitriol. But he can feel it leaking out, crackling at his edges. ]

I'd like to be a good man. I'd like nothing to do with criminals and killers. But if something happens to you -- to the friends I've brought here -- a defenseless do-gooder's chatter won't keep them safe.

[anatural]

[She looks at the world the way she has to. It's not just her job to keep individuals safe — she has to keep the world in balance.

And she doesn't know how to respond to that. She doesn't have an intellectual reaction that she can properly articulate. His logic is both sound and fundamentally flawed, but she feels helpless to retort.]

I can't — [Can't what? She doesn't even know. She takes a deep, shuddering breath and passes to head into the house. She just wants to go to sleep. Last night hadn't been good for sleeping.

Even so, she stops at the front door. Doesn't turn around.]

I'm glad Bolin's safe. [Thank you is unspoken — she's not sure yet whether she's grateful for his help. But Bolin is safe and Hei did have a part in that.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei knows he's not playing fair. At her age, you carry neither the fuel nor the fodder to fight off his arguments. She doesn't yet understand that his weapon is sophistry. That he can find any shape of logic to fit his needs. Maybe that's another way his profession, Heaven's war, has subtly ruined him. Like the rancid smell of corpses each morning that has cored a hole through his insides. Like the pressure of living and fighting and sleeping with five hundred caged animals that has carved deep lines in his flesh. ]

[ But even worse than the tenacity of his psyche is the stubbornness of his circumstances. It'd be great to wander around like a tinker with his cart, peddling goodness to anyone who'll take it. But it's hard to do a selling job when it can't even keep your loved ones safe. You can talk about being a good man, choosing the righteous path, hoping to convince yourself you're doing the right thing walking away from the bloodshed of the past. Breaking the circle. But it won't keep his friends safe, and that's a fact. The circle keeps turning, whatever you try. And slipping back into the Reaper's skin ... it might not answer any questions. It sure won't make the world a prettier place or the sun shine brighter. But it's better than the alternative. It's a damn stretch better. ]

[ He doesn't move when she starts for the door. It's only when she speaks does he lift his head. Her wording is ambiguous -- either grateful or uncertain or both. But he understands what it means. Her way of giving in. An inch's worth. It's more than he deserves. ]

[ Hei swallows, and counts to himself in the silence. Feels the tug of the invisible lead gathering momentum between them, energy zinging. Then -- yes. In another moment he is loping to his feet. Coming up close behind her, his hands skimming across her shoulders, his mouth questing through her hair to touch the nape of her neck. ]

[ Perhaps a You're welcome -- or I'm sorry -- or I'm glad you didn't leave. Perhaps all three. ]

[anatural]

[She stiffens and yanks her shoulders out of his grip. He's not that forgiven.]

Don't. [Not while his touch makes her see that kid from before, the smell of charred flesh fill her nostrils. Her stomach churns and she wants to vomit.

In fact, she's just going to head to the bathroom right now.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He jerks back as if singed, and it is as if she is all fire, as if her body is the channel for a heat trapped and vented from the earth's core. A quiet hurt suffuses him, but it's tailed by keen shards of acceptance and inevitability. It's too soon for closeness. Especially in light of what she'd walked in on yesterday. He wonders if she'll ever stop seeing it -- that flayed red grostquerie he'd never have wanted her to lay eyes on. Wonders if, as time passes, it'll lose its concreteness, dissolving into the layers of violence that made it up. Or maybe the opposite will happen? Maybe her affection for him will dissipate instead, extinguishing as unexpectedly as it'd sprung up. ]

[ The idea comes with a sorrow that is shockingly physical. Fuck -- he doesn't want that. He wants Korra: to touch her, to kiss her, to comfort her if he can, to fight with her if he has to. He understands his own twisted wellspring of love at this moment as he's never known it when they are merely happy. ]

[ Then she rushes to the bathroom -- and his mini-satori is replaced by concern. ]

Hey...

[ It's Are you okay? in one syllable. ]

[anatural]

[She's on her knees in the bathroom. Leaning back against the door, she closes her eyes and focuses on her breathing. Bathroom was a bad idea — that special bathroom smell just makes the nausea worse. I really should not have gotten those noodles on the way home...]

I'm fine.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Standing by the door, Hei wonders: Is that a 'Go away' or an actual 'I'm fine'? He wants to ask, but he's also wary of hovering. She seemed green around the gills when she went in, but he's not sure if it's a stomach bug, or a literal paroxysmal retch from his presence. He finds himself hoping it's the former. How messed-up, how pathetic, yet how unavoidable would it be, if his touch ended up making her literally sick? ]

[ He tries not to think about it. Instead, he says, in a tone of weary defeat, ]

I'll leave some ginger-lemon soda in the kitchen. [ A beat, in which he feels all the leaden exhaustion in his body arrowing up to his skull, which feels the general weight and proportions of a dumbell, at least. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he takes a step back. ]

I'll be in bed.

[ Their bed, he means. It isn't a motivational promise, so much as it's a test of how much distance she's going to place between them. ]

[anatural]

[The fact you smell like a distillery certainly doesn't help your appeal. Honestly, their positions should be switched — she should be in bed while he takes a shower.

His footsteps fade away; time passes. She doesn't notice it going by. Confusion and heartache have shut down higher order thinking, leaving her stewing in emotion. Eventually the smell is unpleasant enough to make her get up.

In the bedroom, she's assaulted with the acrid reek of smoke and the sickly tang of too much alcohol. She turns quickly and heads in the opposite direction, out the front door where the air is almost clear. She abruptly, intensely misses home: the pure air, the bracing cold. A landscape of deceptively harsh edges. Starkly black & white and yet full of color. Of course, that home is destroyed now, yet another casualty of the civil war. The South Pole rebuilt itself, but it's not the home of her childhood.

Naga meets her immediately outside, and Korra buries her face in the dog's fur.]

I'm fine.

[She is. Curling up outside, nestled against Naga's warmth, is comforting and familiar. The steady heartbeat of her loyal friend is the best lullaby a girl could ask for.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He both is and isn't surprised when she flees the bedroom. His clothes and his hair still have that soursweet bar-drunken fetor, and everything about him denotes the sticky, heavy-limbed languor of hang-over. Who wants to curl up next to that? ]

[ Even so, as he hears the front door click open and shut, there's a flare of something in his chest -- bewildered, angry, unhappy. The white ceiling undulates as he shifts restlessly beneath it, too spacey to feel the mattress under his back, fighting the hollow, watery sensation that makes him feel deliquesced in his head and guts. You drank too much. That's all this is. ]

[ Except that's a lie. There is no loneliness, he is quickly learning, like the loneliness of an empty bed, far from all you love, even if you're not that far at all. ]

[ Jerking himself out of the reverie, he lurches to his feet. Cautiously, he parts the slats of the blinds at the window and peers out into the sandy yard. There is Naga, fur glowing an unpleasant white in the bright dawn light, stretched out in a fluffy curl around the half-hidden shape of Korra's head -- a whorl of white cotton-candy around a dark dollop of chocolate. ]

[ Somewhat mollified, he steps away. She's holding herself apart right now, but he's hoping that sometime -- soon, not-so-soon -- they'll be able to fix that. Eventually. She has time, plenty of it, and so, he concedes, does he. But time can be both hot and cold, rich and thin, and somehow, nothing can convince him that his time with Korra isn't the same as his time with Pai's, with Amber's, with everyone who slipped away from him. ]