mortemscintilla | IC Contact

[In the meantime, the hapless sender is going to be buried under her covers, wishing she was dead because she was going to die of humiliation.]

[ Why ]

[ Does this ]

[ Keep happening ]

[ To him? ]

[ (Seriously, he must have the word Clingwrap Magnet tattooed on his forehead, magically visible to all but himself.) ]

[ First he thinks the card is the City's version of junk mail. (Except he's already checked the Network earlier. He knows there's a schmaltzy curse in the air. The law of averages dictates that it's his turn to squirm and fume.) The letter feels heavy, like a subpoena. As a precaution, he scans it meticulously for any loaded traps -- poisons, wires, explosive disks. When he opens it, that song nearly has him zapping it on the spot. As predicted, the words make a bare minimum of sense. He can pick out an odd character here and there -- but that's it. What he manages to decode only twangs him with unease. ]

[ He could ask Mao to install a translator on one of his computers. Decipher the whole thing. But he doesn't care for Mao's inevitable snark. Not when he suspects what the message conveys. ]

[ Especially when he's sure who sent the card. ]

[ Dealing with the issue by Not Dealing, he tries ripping the card up. No dice. He tries setting it on fire. Nothing. Even tossing it out the window doesn't work. The card flies back in like a boomerang. Finally, frustration boiling, he grabs his jacket and quits the apartment -- card in tow. He spends the day carrying out quotidian tasks. First topside, then Underground. He tries not to focus on the card in his coat. Out of sight, out of mind, etc. But like a toothache, the issue reasserts itself -- a sharp pitch between irritating and unignorable. ]

[ By evening, at a cyberpunk-themed caff, he finds the software he's looking for. ]

[ Reading the translation, a frisson he'd like to call relief but what is really dread sparks through him, beginning at his tingling scalp, ending at his twitching fingers. Deeply wrong with you. Out of balance. Want to help. It's only touching when you want it to be touching. He doesn't want this. This is the opposite of touching. ]

[ What the hell is up with her? ]

[ To him, this isn't a sweet offer of help. It's practically a suicide note, inked in Korra's blood. Bad enough she seems to enjoy buzzing around a killer. Now she wants to play armchair therapist? What's next? Juggling hand-grenades? Playing hopscotch in a crocodile moat? Her budding interest in 'helping' him can only be a softer alternative to a bullet in the brain.]

[ (We do not touch enough. He can summon but one rejoinder. We should not be touching at all. ) ]

[ It's very late at night when he finally contacts her. Waving the card at the screen, he is all business. Hard, cold-eyed, unsmiling. ]

Explain.

[ Tell him the curse manufactured this message. Tell him she doesn't mean this. ]

[WHAT IS MAKING THAT BEEPING SOUND?!?!?

Korra had just tumbled into bed after spending several hours training intensely, hoping to be able to fall asleep straight away. No such luck.

Eventually, her sleep-addled mind remembers that's the sound of her device beeping. She resists an urge to hurl it across the room and instead flips it open.]

What?!?!

[It takes her a moment to register who's on the screen. And what he's holding.

Fuck.

Her.

Life.

It's not hard to tell that he's Not Happy. Not cranky unhappy, not stressed out unhappy...cold, ugly, tie her up and threaten her friends angry. It leaves a cold pit in the bottom of her stomach, a nauseating fear. She's sorely tempted to slam the device shut and hurl it away, avoid the conversation entirely.

But she's not the same person he threatened before. She's not afraid of him... No, she is afraid -- of him, of change, of losing their peace & strange connection.

This time, though, she isn't running away from it.]

It's a card.

[Sometimes bravery requires baby steps.]

[ It's a card, she says, and part of his brain begins firing up like crazy, his front-polar gyrus, the portion that deals with anger. He should've been smarter, but deep down he hoped her interest in 'helping' him would be cremated and scattered on the winds with time, set on fire by his negligence. He knows he's jagged and imbalanced. He knows he's guarded. But she makes it sound like he's on the other side of a very cold, very sterile glass. Or in a goddamn prison. ]

You know what I'm talking about.

[ His words are quiet but that same glass wall turns to stone. This isn't bravery. This is a headlong collision into solid walls and barbed wire. An inability to respect boundaries. ]

[ There's a lot of that going on lately. It seems to be all human interaction devolves into. ]

[It'd be easy enough to blame the curse. She never would have written the stupid letter otherwise. But the curse didn't tell her what to feel.]

I've said everything I have to say. I told you I wasn't going to push.

[Her voice is resentful. He could have just taken her at her word, pretended he never saw the card, and everything would have been fine. He's the one who's pushing now. He's the one who's making this a problem.]

[ Hei's head pounds. He slumps back in bed, staring up at the blank void of the ceiling before returning his gaze to the Network device. The walls feel like they're closing in. He feels claustrophobic. Bad relationships make the world claustrophobic. Bad decisions make you choke on the noose of consequence. This is both. He can't accept -- much less digest -- what Korra is giving him: such unrestrained warmth, such tactful trust. It's a warpath carved into his skull: Do Not Enter. It's his prerogative to keep her -- or anyone -- at an arm's length. ]

[ He's not interested in fixing and healing. He's interested only in living with it, in having the choice to live on with it. ]

[ His free hand curls into the bedsheet as if it's her neck. ]

So what are you suggesting? I unsee what I just saw?

[ Ignorance is bliss. But denial isn't quite so effective. ]

You're old enough to make up your own mind, Li.

[There's a petty satisfaction in throwing his own words back at him. She's tired of being the only one tied in knots, unable to tell up from down, unsure what to do or how to feel. Now it's his turn. (There's always the risk -- the extreme probability -- that the end result will just hurt her worse. But she'd rather take the pain than run from it.)

This time she does slam the device shut. Rolls over to stare up at the ceiling, but any hope of sleep is gone. Sighing, she pushes herself out of bed and heads outside to where Naga is sleeping. She doesn't want to be alone with her thoughts.]

[ A mess. ]

[ That's the word that flits through Hei's mind as she shuts the device off. ]

[ A big. Fucking. Mess. ]

[ He's honed the art of making sure another person's nonsense doesn't mix with his own (which is, in fact, shorthand for honed the art of detachment). But polished as it is, it's never going to be perfect. Worse, it feels like the skill is deteriorating hour by hour -- atrophied by weeks of oozing tranquility and easy routines. Glowering, he tosses the device away, with the same instinctual recoil from anything that might jar a bruise. Old enough to make up your own mind. Too fucking right. If he has any sense, he'll contact her again tomorrow Arrange for a meeting face-to-face. And terminate their little fling. Once and for all. ]

[ But then there would be an implication that the card bothered him, that he felt neck-deep in this suffocating sentimental bullshit, that there was something further than sex in the works between them. Yet he didn't want that implication to exist. ]

[ Too bad, as he's said already, denial's lost its charm. ]

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