anatural: Korra looks cheerful (Default)
Korra ([personal profile] anatural) wrote2018-07-20 07:32 am
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mortemscintilla: ∅♫ All these icons are keyworded to hooker songs :D (Hei - A Moment To Grieve)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-09 02:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Maybe one of these days, Hei will tell her not to be so transparent with her feelings. Teach her to play it cool, to understand the benefits of concealment. As it is, he can feel every iota of tension radiating along his flank as she walks beside him. But he doesn't remark on it. He's not her teacher, her friend, her anything. It's not his place to pass opinions or dole out advice. ]

[ They pass by shuttered stores, empty crossways and streets glittering with a light aftermath of rain. Hei doesn't speak, but once or twice, just at the moments when he's most aware of Korra's restiveness, he glances at her, mild and calm, and keeps walking. Eventually he leads her to the park, away from the streetlamps, to the edge of the pond. Ducks float on the bank. The stars are reflected in the water. The whole place is silent. ]


Come here. [ A request, not an order. Brushing a few wet leaves off the bench, he settles down. Gives her a sidelong glance, and pats the space beside him -- not too close, but enough to study her from his vantagepoint. ]
mortemscintilla: ∅ But if you make a move I won't think twice. (Hei - Emo)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-09 03:10 pm (UTC)(link)
[ There's a quirk to Hei's lips that might or might not pass for a smile. He leans forward, hands folded in his lap, and regards her. His level gaze inquires, assesses, though his head is pounding and exhaustion and nausea makes his stomach churn. There's a patch of thoughtful silence, unbroken except by the susurration of water, before his gaze falls. ]

I wanted to ask, [ he says, affecting a nonchalance despite the tension in his jaw ] if I said right now, that I won't come near you again, that taking up with you was a mistake, that I made a bigger one by refusing to acknowledge that, what would you do? [ A slow breath. ] Would you be relieved? Or just angry that I'm taking your choices away?
mortemscintilla: ∅ Until we close our eyes for good (Hei - Dead Eyes)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-09 03:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Hei resists the urge to rub his temples. There it is again, that defensiveness, that emotionalism, so unconcealed, and it makes him exhausted and apprehensive and frustrated all at once. He cuts his eyes to the side, watching the pindots of stars on the rippling water, not checking Korra for reactions. ]

I'm not 'dumping' you. [ Such a highschoolish word. Dumping. But it's an effort to remember that she's only eighteen. ] But I do wonder if that's such a bad thing. Not dumping you but agreeing to end ... this. [ A vague gesture, to encompass what this signifies -- ambiguity, futility, limbo. ] After what's happened tonight, can you honestly say being around me is good for you? For your friends? Or that you find me even remotely likeable? [ His face is so flat now, his eyes so dull, that his stare has something horribly empty about it. ] There might be moments where you think you like me. But it's no better than Stockholm Syndrome. You're stuck with someone awful, so you try to focus on positive things about them. But it doesn't take away from the truth of what they are.
mortemscintilla: ∅ Oh yes we all seek out to satisfy those thrills (Hei - Idiots)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-09 04:54 pm (UTC)(link)
[ When she picks up the stone, Hei braces himself to be pelted. It's not with a sense of dread, or even expectation. Just a passive sense of waiting, the way he sometimes used to wait, after Pai's disappearance, for his own death. Each time the bullets whizzed too closeby, each time the night was too suffocatingly still, some obscure part of him, that was ever-ready to take a swandive into release, struggled against struggle, saying, Just let it happen. ]

[ Except he'd never listened to that voice. His retort was always: Why should I? ]

[ He prepares to dodge, but the stone ricochets off the wooden slats. It skitters near the pond, and the ducks fly off, but Hei isn't paying attention. His focus is on Korra. He lets her explode. Lets her get what she needs to off her chest, to reveal whatever rationale she's clinging to. Whatever justifies this bizarro hookup of theirs. He can tell how strongly she resists the idea that it's a coping mechanism, even though, from a detached viewpoint, it's true in a lot of respects. ]

[ But Hei is aware that clinging to your own worldview is an intellectual imperative, the mind's equivalent of fighting, feeding and fucking. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They'll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self destructive. ]

[ Isn't that what you're doing too? ]


I don't mean 'stuck' like two people in a box, Korra. [ He doesn't snap it; his voice is quiet and reasonable. ] I mean two people who are obviously ill-suited for each other. But there's an idiotic alchemy stopping them from making the smart choice and splitting ways. [ He scrubs a hand through his hair, suddenly impatient. ] I've threatened to kill your friends. Threatened -- and nearly succeeded -- in killing you. Those aren't trivial issues. I know this is a tiresome conversation. And I don't want to give you the wrong impression. But think for a minute. Wouldn't you be better off with someone safer? More age-appropriate?
Edited 2013-05-09 17:05 (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅  I want your money not your life (Hei - Downcast/Uncertain)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-09 06:24 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Her words are pellets of acid, splattering his face. Hei jerks back, then quickly goes steely. ] 'Change.' That's an easy word to toss around. People talk about it all the damn time. But they just clang along doing the same stupid stuff year in and year out. [ Ice creeps into his tone. ] But believe me, I haven't. If you knew me five years ago, you'd think I was as foul as they come. And you'd be right. This person -- whose behaviour, according to you, needs fixing -- is here because he decided to 'change.'

[ But there's still enough filth left in him to leave nothing of you. That, he doesn't say. There's no need to. It makes a headache pound behind his eyes. Because however much he changes is irrelevant; they'll always be wrong for each other, and by that logic, they should finish this. The whole damn thing is nothing but diseased and inflamed, like a slashed wound that won't scab over. ]

[ At the same time, a voice, so much like Amber's, intrudes: Why is everything so negative with you? It's because you've never been tied to something larger than yourself, outside of Pai's safety. You don't believe in anything anymore. So you can't imagine someone who does. They must be either deluded or lying or naive. ]

[ He's been alone for so long, he's begun to conceive of himself that way. But slowly and inevitably, the conception has begun to include other people. The knowledge scares him, so some wretched part of him always searches for rationalizations, excuses, whatever it needs to pat itself on the back and say, See? You can't trust anyone. I've always told you. ]

[ Hei exhales a breath through gritted teeth. His whole body aches, and he can't account for the incredible sadness that suddenly comes up in slow bubbles that burst painfully in his chest, over and over. Exhausted, he says, ]
You want me to say that I need someone's shoulder to cry on? An intervention? Because I'm not going to do that, Korra. [ His eyes drift to hers then. There's a tinge of pain there. ] I can keep trying to change though. [ He's never stopped. ] But there's no guarantee I'll change into something that suits you.
mortemscintilla: (Hei - Sick Of This Crap)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-09 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
[ The look Hei gives her then is soft and blindish and bewildered, like he can't believe how dense she is. His body feels hollow now, a cold wind blowing through him even as his skin feels clammy in the still air. Remorse and I'm Sorrys have never been for the likes of him. But part of him feels them all the same, with a yearning sort of incomprehension, like an academic half-wit in a roomful of A graders, full of stymied willingness to try. His voice is suddenly cut down to the force and volume of a kewpie doll's. ]

I wouldn't be here if I wasn't sorry. [ For hurting her. For carrying on this mess with her. For touching her in the first place, that night in the shed. All of this could've been avoided, if he'd kept less alcohol and more wits about him. ]
mortemscintilla: ∅  If you're alive at thirty-three (Hei - Steely)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-10 02:35 am (UTC)(link)
[ Perhaps it's just as well that she doesn't touch him. He's not sure he'd permit contact -- not sure he could endure it -- just then. Instead he nods dully, offering her an oblique look out of tired red-edged eyes. Her anger has something magisterial to it now, with that eerie calm unclouding the blueness of her eyes. Hei can be imperious too, but that's not what this is about, really. It's not about tossing a rabid mongrel a scrap of meat on the stern warning to Behave next time, either. ]

[ It's nothing more or less than a second chance. He tells himself he ought to be grateful. ]

[ Still, there's something he needs to clarify. Boundaries he needs to establish. It's not a warning but a reminder, that she's been party to some bad choices too. ]
I don't know if you were cursed or not. But don't sneak into my flat again. [ His tone isn't accusatory, but it drops to a low, flat register. ] I'm not Chekov or Bolin. I don't have it in me [ maybe I never will?] to not retaliate to tricks. There wasn't a lot of 'playtime' where I grew up.

[ Only violence and death and one-upmanship. ]
mortemscintilla: ∅  She looked at me and this is what she said (Hei - Bleeding)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-10 03:00 am (UTC)(link)
[ A nod, not churlish but weary. He doesn't have it in him to contain all that resentment just now. His exhaustion is sudden and terrible; he can't feel his limbs. His gaze isn't steely but it's careful, studying the planes of her face, trying to reach some decision within himself. ]

[ When he finally speaks, the words are thick and blocky as if yanked from dried mud. ]


I'm going to give you some time to think this whole night over. If you're still sure you want to continue this [ because if there's one thing he's learnt, it's that distance and a full night's sleep can make you reassess a lot of choices made in the heat of the moment ] then I don't think we should carry on the way we have been.

[ Changes. That word again. There'll have to be changes made. ]
mortemscintilla: ♥ Was for you to know (Li - Sneeze)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-10 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
[ Hei takes her twitch for what it is -- a gesture indicative of imminent departure -- and manages a barely-there nod. He occupies the bench almost deadweight now, the bags under his eyes, the almost imperceptible sagging of his whole body, projecting his exhaustion. ] Go hom-- [ He starts to say, but he yawns quite suddenly, one of those wide spasmic seizures that signal the body's had enough of everything. ]

[ There's a very palpable threat of him dozing off on the bench. ]
mortemscintilla: ∅ Kiss me, kill me (Hei - The Sleep Of The Innocent)

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-10 03:22 am (UTC)(link)
[ There's no answer.

BK201. Interpol and Pandora's most wanted Contractor. Dreaded scourge of Heaven's War ...

...is asleep. ]
mortemscintilla: ∅ We got mouths to feed (Hei - Lost This One)

Dated to the Wee~Kend

[personal profile] mortemscintilla 2013-05-18 09:52 am (UTC)(link)
[ It's the first time since -- well, the Bad Night -- that he's found himself thinking of Korra. Not that, in the past, Hei has gone out of his way to avoid thinking of her. Rather, Korra always stirs up extremely situational feelings. They bubble up when she's there; they fade when she isn't. Out of sight, out of mind. But recently -- on the tail end of the bar-fight -- he's assigned everything Korra-shaped to a separate box. On top, bold and red, is a label: Handle With Care. Because each memory has become a shard now, double-edged. Cutting him up inside with doubt, anger, self-disgust. Everything he should have done that night -- it blurs up with what he shouldn't have yet did, an avalanche of introspection so awful and muddled that it pierces all through him, a migraine of the whole body. ]

[ Better to lock it up until the ache fades. Better to give Korra -- and himself -- some space. ]

[ But today, peeling lychees in his sunlit kitchen, Hei sucks idly on a fingertip. As the taste hits his tongue, sense-memory stirs with a bright jolt. It's a sensation almost like surprise, only warmer. Rueful too, somehow. Like he's finally understood that it's stupid to continue expecting her to just get over it and sek him out, or to shelve her away until he's got free time again with nothing else to waste it on. Stupid and short-sighted and selfish to think that because there's no name for what they have, it's just as easy to forget the affair in its entirety. ]

[ That evening, Korra will receive an attachment. With it is a message. ]

Green tea jelly with lime and lychees. Tastetester needed.

Interested?
bookbending: (Quiet: Smile)

/sneaks

[personal profile] bookbending 2013-05-18 04:03 pm (UTC)(link)
[Not too far away, Jinora's sitting just above the waterline, absently drawing spirals into the wet sand. The heat doesn't bother her much; it's a nice day to spend on the beach.

She looks over at Korra as she responds to the message.]
What is it? Work?
bookbending: (Smile: Friendly)

[personal profile] bookbending 2013-05-18 04:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Mm.

[She really shouldn't be nosy. It's been a good day; there's no need to ruin it, and one of them should have a social life.

Jinora's resolve lasts all of five seconds.]


Anyone I know?

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