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[ 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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