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[mortemscintilla]

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[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei swings away from the window, dumping the condom in the dustbin and reaching for his discarded clothes in almost the same sweeping motion. He feels both like a beast in a tiny cage; and also like he's taken a punch to the stomach. All wrecked inside. It's an old feeling, only now he can feel the fragments, sharp and cruel, ripping out of his skin. He can feel Korra's wide eyes on him. The room is so narrow, he's almost afraid that she might overhear his thoughts. He doesn't answer her question. Instead, he makes it halfway out the bedroom -- with an intention to get outside, maybe to the street, clear his head so Pai won't be disturbed and Korra won't be frightened -- when the trembling begins. Something he hasn't felt since he was a boy, caught in the red haze of Heaven's War. ]

[ Strength fades from his fingers so he can't button up the last of his shirt. Hands shaking so he has to grab something before they drop off his wrists. A delayed wallop. Inhaling, he clenches his fists, and his teeth, and screws his eyes shut. Not now, not now, NOT NOW -- ]

[ -- And, with a sudden, violent movement, slams his hands against the side of the wardrobe and shoves it over. Pai will hear that, a distant voice cautions, miles and miles away, while the wardrobe crashes to the ground with a resounding thud and a clatter of coat hangers falling inside it, the echo booming around the room. One of the doors slowly sags open, in a creaking anticlimax. ]

[ Hei stares at the damage, suspended, for the moment, like he's about to disappear off into himself. Drained of all colour and shaking so violently it looks like he might actually be struggling to stand up, supporting himself with one hand against the wall. His chest is heaving in and out with rattling speed, his breaths loud and almost panicked, the eyes wild and unseeing with an animal horror. He makes a noise, muffles it in the heel of his hand. ]

[ Not now. Never again. It settles cool and heavy as a thick blanket over his whirling thoughts, and Hei shuts his eyes tight, takes a deep breath in -- and this time holds it. ]

1/2

[anatural]

[Korra scrambles back in the bed, eyes wide and terrified. She's never seen him like this before -- not this angry and violent for no imaginable reason. They'd been having a good time together. They'd been feeling good. What happened?!

She doesn't know what she would have done if she had clothes on. Maybe she would have fled. Maybe she would have stayed. But naked and vulnerable as she is, with no idea what's going on in his head or what he's going to do next, the only thing she can do is remain frozen in place and hope against hope that whatever is going on with him will pass.

The helplessness is more terrifying than he is.]

[sleepingstar]

[She would have to be deep in her Renumeration to miss that crash. Pai leaps out of bed and runs to her brother's room.

It doesn't take her long to assess the scene -- Korra, paralyzed in fear on the bed, and her brother by the wreckage of his wardrobe, wild and tense and vibrating with restrained violence. Nudity aside, it's a familiar sight to Pai -- but not one she's seen in the City.

She wraps her arms around Hei's waist and holds him tight. Turning a dark glare to Korra, she says coldly] Leave.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's head pounds from the inside -- how can it pound like that, when his heart seems so still? He wishes he could drink acid, to erase the bitter flavor in his mouth -- a replica of the metallic adrenaline from the war. He barely registers it when Pai bursts into the room. Some tiny part of him curls and shrivels that she should have to see him like this again -- a salted slug, oozing in its own stew. He's not that friable boy he was, five years ago. He's not so easy to crush into powder. Yet, as Pai wraps her arms around him, he struggles against the cloud in his mind. It's like being drunk, it is worse than that. ]

[ Bowing his head against her glossy hair, he takes a breath. Not because he needs to. But because her scent grounds him -- an anchor of familiarity. ]

[ While he'd come apart, he could feel the air around Korra crowding with horror. But he knows watching him come together again isn't soothing. It's a sudden, unnerving process. Hei breathes in, slackens his muscles and wraps a loose arm around Pai, even as his chin lifts, his head like a snake's answering to a pipe. He blinks the wildness in his eyes back down to whatever locked cell inside him it has sprung from. The clearness which resurfaces in his gaze has an awful weariness to it. His hands settle on Pai's shoulders, still trembling but no longer wracked with the shaking spasms which had briefly overtaken him. ]

[ To Pai, regarding Korra, he says, ] It's not her fault. [ His voice sounds sore, like he has a bad cold or has hurt his throat yelling, but his words are clipped and calm. Leaning in, he tips a kiss to Pai's forehead: I'm sorry, I'm okay, thank you, I need time -- all in the same press of lips. Then with an unexpectedly fluid movement, he detaches and glides away from her, plucking his hoodie from where he had left it and shrugging it on. Then he steps into his shoes, foregoing socks. He moves in simple, sharp bursts of movement. Rehearsing normality. ]

[ Without looking at Korra, he says, ] ... You should go home. [ He doesn't add I'll talk to you later -- because right now he doesn't have the stomach for it. He can still feel the shock -- the fear -- slithering around his shoulders and hissing in his ear before it burrows straight down into his chest, twisting and sliding and squeezing the breath out of him. It's not Korra's fault; but she's the reason he's feeling it. ]

[ Shaking it off, Hei exits the room -- then the apartment. ]

[anatural]

[There's no relief when he leaves, and it's not just because Xing lingers, her gaze dark and threatening.

But the girl isn't leaving. Korra forces herself to ignore her as she hurriedly gets dressed, and in a few moments, she's bolting out the door.

She makes it about three blocks before she stumbles and curls up in an alley, sobbing. (She doesn't move from that spot until Naga finds her an hour later.)]