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[ (He wonders, sometimes, if simple concern is this difficult for everyone else.) ]

[ Intellectually her response -- the utter lack of it -- isn't surprising. He's felt the way she looks a hundred times in his ultracompressed twenty-odd years. Wrung out, detached, verging on zombie-like. An automatic effect of brain chemistry, a defense mechanism against too many blows dished out at once. But what's surprising is his own disquiet -- at her monotone, her expression, the Doll-like nothingness of it. Numb suspension. She's never seemed numb in his presence before. Volatile, kittenish, goofy, brash -- but never numb. ]

[ He doesn't like it. It's too much like looking at Pai's face, superimposed. (Or maybe just his own?) He keeps his tone low and calm. ] Making sure you don't pitch yourself off the roof. [ It's inherently sarcastic. A knee-jerk deflection. But the interest is absolutely sincere. ]

Like it would help. [It almost resembles sarcasm. Suicide would never have occurred to her, even in a place where death was final. It's a darkness that has yet to touch her.

She doesn't have anything more to say to him. Everything that needed saying between them was said when he ended it. She'd been confused before by their cursed encounters afterwards, but she realizes now it doesn't matter. None of it actually matters.

She settles her head back on her arms and stares blankly at the door. He can stay or go as he pleases. She's beyond caring.]

[ His expression, a signature flatline, doesn't change. But his head tilts to one side in a semblance of concern. It's easy to pretend it's not there. Hei, more than anyone, is an expert at conveying emotions but never feeling them. But lately he's trying, very cautiously and by painstaking degrees, to not view sentiment as a threat but an unavoidable fact. Like death, taxes and some such shit. ] Sitting up on the roof in the cold won't help either.

[ It's more casual than cool. He steps closer, near enough to touch her sloping shoulder, but makes no move to do so. There was a reason he'd almost decided not to seek her out here. Because he has something to -- suggest? demand? He'd convinced himself it would be pointless, that the fallout would be ugly. But now he decides he'll deal with the fallout afterward. That's the way it's always been. It'd be easy to say he's doing it to shake her out of her torpor. But the truth is, he's been a predator for so long that he's always gauging weakness. ]

[ Even now, amid his concern, he's on the lookout for angles that suit him. ] I want to talk to you.

[I want to talk to you. Those words have never ended well between them. After saying that, he'd attacked her in her apartment. After saying that, he'd ended whatever thing they'd had. At another time, she could learn to really hate those words.

For right now, she just shrugs. Hugs her knees tighter, but that could just as well be the cold.]

[ The logical part of his mind intrudes that it will end badly. After all, what do you even say at a moment like this? Sorry I was a jerk. I'll try to be 40% less of one. Let's try again? Hei is good with weaving webs of words. But not at honesty. He can tell her a sob-story as part of a campaign to deepen an attachment, to warp her objectivity, cloud her judgement. But that feels like cheating. It already is cheating. That's why he's chosen this exact moment -- when she's shook up, unsteady on her pins -- to descend here like a caricature of a Worried Friend. ]

I know this isn't a good time. I'm just -- [ I'm what? Experiencing the equivalent of seller's remorse? He can't sell her the line he's only barely buying himself. He doesn't know how to begin what he wants to say, or even if he wants to say it. ] Breaking it off with you was -- I was hasty. I thought it was for the best. Now I'm not so sure. It's just -- [ He stops, frowning. Jams his hands in deeper into his coat pockets, not looking at her. ] You're either going to walk away. Or you're not hearing a word I say at all. Either option is perfectly understandable.

[ Is that hint of uncertainty genuine? Or is he playacting? Even Hei isn't sure. ]

[Something sparks inside her, perilously close to feeling. Worse still, perilously close to a thrill. She had hardly been pining over him, but rare is the dumped person who wouldn't feel some kind of satisfaction at being told "I made a mistake."

The sensation is both welcome and unwelcome. She doesn't want chips made in her defenses. Once you let one emotion out, you release them all.]

Why? [That could either mean "What made you change your mind?" or "Why are you telling me this now? It's up to him.]

[ Hei catches that shift in her temperature -- from frigid to reassuringly lukewarm. He feels an odd confluence of emotions; satisfaction that his manipulation is working, sympathy because of what Korra is struggling with, a tinge of self-reproach for taking advantage of her unhappiness. And beneath it all he is still attracted to her. ]

[ But if she thinks he's going to spill his guts in response to her vague question, she is mistaken. He doesn't play it that way. Not even for her. ] I like you as an asset too much for you to become a liability. [ Shit. That sounds beyond clinical. It sounds heartless -- even if it's true. For a moment he gazes past her, absorbed by the twinkling City lights beyond the roof. But then he turns his head, fixes her with a clear look. ] Try to understand something. People, in my experience, exist to damage each other. Over the years, I've developed the habit of preempting [ betrayal. disappointment. blackmail. loneliness. loss. ] damage. Of thinking the possibility of it, and defending myself against it, is paramount.

[ He licks his lips, eyes sliding away again. The next lie is almost impossible to catch. ] Maybe that's true for me. But it's not true for everyone. I don't think it's true for you. [ Except, like an idiot, I'm half-handing you the combination to crack my figurative safe. ]

[People exist to damage each other. That's not something she can disagree with right now. Or at least she exists to damage other people. That's pretty much all she's done since leaving the South Pole. All the fights she's been in, all the hurtful things she's said in fits of temper, all the times she's used her bending to hurt someone else, someone vulnerable. That Equalist in the park. The injured Li.

Chekov is just the the latest and most horrific victim of what she now sees as a lifetime of violence. There's a twisted, queasy feeling in her gut before the numbness mercifully returns. She looks away.]

You're an idiot.

[ He can track the racemose pattern of her thoughts as they take a darker dip. Not specifics, but a general scope, similar to how a shark scents a drop of blood. Of regret, of not living up to your own expectations, of doing more harm than good -- feelings that Hei hasn't allowed himself to experience for a long time. But he knows them well enough to recognize self-recrimination when he sees it. ]

[ You're an idiot. He raises his eyebrows. All right. That was unexpected. Except ...not. He knows Korra must be angry -- angry at his repeated retreats and maddening flip-flopping; angry about how he keeps pushing her away, only to seek her out again. Not only are his feelings half-baked, they aren't even consistent. He is the goddamn King of Inconsistency. He's never assumed she'd accept his explanation without a flinch. (A part of him is prepared to manipulate and lie in order to drag her into his arms, willingly or not. But the other part wants it to be her choice.) ]

[ Eventually, ] You should write for Hallmark. [ Except she wouldn't know what that is. ] I'm just laying the facts out for you. [ Such as they are. Waves of omissions and half-truths. ]

[The inconsistency isn't why she called him an idiot. It's him thinking she doesn't exist to damage people. Chekov is dying in a hospital bed only a few floors below them because of her. How much more damaging could she be?]

So what changed?

[She doesn't know why she's continuing this conversation when it would be so much easier to just sink back into the cold and let the numbness have her. The little spark inside her simply refuses to die and let her feel nothing.]

[ As destructive as anyone under the influence of a curse can be. Perhaps he'll tell her so, once he's got a finger on the pulse of her true misery. Korra can be snappish, disobedient, pugnacious. But she is an inherently good, conscientious girl. You don't need to be an expert on human psyche to tell. He's seen plenty of things happen to her in the City that would make her chilly up top. But she's never lost herself to that bleakness. She's simply clogged up with anxieties, surrounded by filth, so she thinks she's the filth. ]

[ Some monsters only emerge in flashes -- because that's all they are. Flashes. Everyone has them, but most of their darkness is quantifiable. Other monsters don't even need an excuse to spawn fully-grown and ravenous. Hei would know. He is what his profession has created. A multifaced Frankenstein monster. A hydra. ]

[ At her question, something shutters across his face. Expression unfocused, eyes dull, as if his thoughts are white-noise. But a beat later the look resettles into cool neutrality. He'd like to say he has no answer that comes from the heart and not the head. He's also likely to say that it's never been otherwise. Except, like most words that pass through his lips, that's a lie. He had relied upon his heart, once upon a time, a sweet, protective boy on the banks of a lake, watching Pai point gleefully at the constellations). ]

[ He's already established Korra isn't a replacement for Pai. But being near her gives him a sensation of fitting that is so rare in his disjointed life. It was good with her, that was the thing. Warm and sweet if not emotionally barbed. It wasn't what he'd had (almost had?) with Amber. But he knows, after five years of emotional turmoil and desensitization, that he's not going to have that ever again and he'd prefer to spend as little time as possible flagellating himself over it. ]

[ Going back to Korra -- wanting to restart something with her -- is selfish, true. If he cared for her more, he'd value her safety well enough to leave her alone. He can try to justify his actions. Convince himself that he's better off keeping her close than cutting her loose. That he's taking control of a volatile situation -- as he's been trained to do. Except that's only half-true. Everyone has their stupid moments -- rationalizations, even blindness, born of weakness and human need. That's what this is, in a nutshell. ] Nothing 'changed'. [ He feels like he's holding a live grenade, feeling it ticking. Dryly, ] Except, as established, I'm an idiot. An idiot who didn't know when he was well off.

[The wind picks up and she shivers, tugging the nurse's shirt more tightly around her in a vain attempt to keep out the chill. She doesn't know how to react. The little flame inside cracks and pops, sending out sparks of hope and fear and flattered vanity and traitorous happiness, sparks which die when they hit their icy cage of guilt & grief, leaving scorch marks. She's afraid of what will happen if she lets them out. It's safer behind her walls.

Her head buried in her arms, she doesn't look at him straight on, but peeks from the corner of her eye, something almost sympathetic in her gaze. She understands now, in a way she couldn't have before, why he would shut himself away.]

[ The lined shadows under Hei's eyes, an insomniac's bags, are permanent, too etched in to be totally erased. They deepen a little now as his expression shifts to watchfulness, studying her carefully. He doesn't particularly like the way she's looking at him. As if a bearing has slid into place in her mind -- not the full combination of understanding, but the first few digits. ]

[ He fights the irritation off. He can twig into where that look stems from, much in the same way he's been where Korra is, too many times to recall. He knows what it is to doubt and second-guess your own worth as someone human and decent. Knows what it is to look in the mirror and radiate waves of mistrust for yourself and everyone around you. It's hellish and awful but he's accepted it as part and parcel of his matrix. ]

[ Likewise, he's never been a bleeding heart for anyone who has terrible things on their conscience. Not beyond a token nod of recognition. But it is a shame to think of Korra carrying all this in her still-unequipped mind. It's one thing when you're callused by warfare to attack your own comrade. The fallout isn't pretty, but at least it goes with the field. This has a distinctly crueler pitch. But that's life, in the City, or outside. The world is far from perfect. ]

[ Reaching out, he touches her head, fingers loose in the dark strands. It's not a caress so much as a steadying contact. ] What happened to Pavel -- It wasn't your fault. I hope you realize that. [ Quiet. Matter-of-fact. ] There's a curse making people attack each other. You should see the bloodbaths Underground.

[The mention of Chekov is blindingly painful; she brushes off his hand like he's stuck his fingers in an open wound.]

I don't wanna talk about it.

[It's still too close for her to think about clearly. The curse wove its way into the fight they'd been having too neatly for her to be able to distinguish it from her normal behavior.]

[ Not quite time yet. ]

[ He doesn't press the issue further. It's excusable that Hei doesn't find this as tragic as it is, or extraordinary, because you don't grow up the way he has and not start to take for granted that such trauma is real, and the unspeakable is commonplace. But he also knows that it can be overcome. Even if there are no limits to the extent of what you've suffered, or just how wrecked you are afterward. Scarred, battered -- you can still keep swinging. ]

[ Even when you wish you could sink down and expire. ]

[ He won't tell Korra that. Safecracking is easier for him than reassurance. She's not yet ready to hear it, anyway. But he's a expert at (almost) everything else in his life; failure in this arena is not an option. Carefully, he crouches beside her. His right hand -- cool-warm, weathered -- takes her palm in his, squeezing lightly. Not entirely to comfort, but to see whether he is still to have this intimacy, to touch her anywhere. If she pulls away, he'll accept it for what it probably is, unconsciously. ]

[ A rejection of him, and of everything he represents. ]

[If he had pushed the issue, she would have pulled away, perhaps even gone so far as to leave the roof. But in his silence, the pain fades back into a dull ache. (It's one of the things she unconsciously likes about him, how he knows when to push and when to leave something be. If Chekov had just backed off when she told him to... No. This isn't Chekov's fault. He's the one dying in hospital bed. She can't blame him.)

When Li crouches beside her, she finds herself instinctively leaning towards him. She doesn't want to thaw out, would rather remain frozen, but her cold body can't pull away from his warmth. Much like that first time in the shed.

She lets him take her hand, even though it burns. He squeezes her palm and she instinctively squeezes back, drawing out a comfort she doesn't deserve but desperately craves.]

[ For a split-second, in Korra's deflated look, Hei sees the little girl he scolded in the Underground, all the wind taken out of her sails, all unaware of her future. For a moment he half-misses when she was that child. She was easy to handle then. As long as you offered food, piggybacks and smiles you could never be in the wrong with children. ]

[ In the next beat he brushes the idle thought off. Centers himself on the Now. Both his hands take hers in his, cupping around it so he can breathe quiet exhales. Not a particularly effective way of warming, but it is contact for contact's sake. He doesn't throw darts at a board in these moments. He maps every move out. The tenderness(?) isn't impulsive, much less accidental. He's testing the waters, seeing how far he can take this. ]

[ Once a vulture, always a vulture. He shakes it off. It would be easy to beastalize this as a ploy to take advantage of a vulnerable girl. And while it's true that it's on his mind, it's also true that he'd prefer to comfort her somehow, not add to her unhappiness. It's a want, soft-edged, not a cold and calculating need born out of pure self-benefit. ]

[ Rubbing a thumb over her knuckles, he says, ] Come off the roof. You'll catch a cold hanging out here.

[There's an instinct to resist -- what if something changes with Chekov? How will she know? At the same time, she lacks the energy to put up a struggle. And there is perhaps a part of her that wants to leave, to be warm and distracted rather than cold and wallowing.]

I can't go back there.

[Not now. Not yet. She'll go wherever he takes her, as long as it's not the beach house. Selfish as it is, she's not ready to face the horror of her friends or the blood in the sand.]

Edited 2013-03-15 05:51 (UTC)

[ Can't go back there. He realizes off the bat that she doesn't mean back inside the hospital's warmer interior. She means back home. Her voice is so soft; he feels what a hideous effort this whole night is for her, even as she pretends she isn't swimming around in misery, like Alice in her own tears. That she wants to take shelter in all sorts of unwise yet expeditious places (with all sorts of shady people) isn't astonishing. ]

[ It's not selfish. It's just another coping mechanism among the thousand. ]

[ Hei stays crouched near her, hands curled around her smaller ones. A beat passes and the look on his face slips to something contemplative; his eyes are in shadow, but his gaze stays steady on hers. He could take her to a cafe or a restaurant. Get her fed and warmed up. Or take her wandering through the City, so she'd get her mind off what she's going to do next, try to still her anxiety about the indeterminate future -- which will start in the morning and stretch on indefinitely, miserable and stressful and confusing. Or... ]

[ Or he can take her back to his flat. ]

[ Hei runs his tongue over his teeth, then stands, still holding her hands in his. He tugs at her to rise -- firm, but also coaxing. ] You don't have to. [ Another tug, ] Get up now. [ Whatever turn this night takes, he's determined to put Korra first, to try to turf out the words I and me. He's been thinking of them too much. He hopes to let them gather dust awhile. ]

[She lets him pull her up without struggle or complaint, and he'll quickly see that taking her out in public for long isn't an option. Her scrunched up pose had hidden the fact that she's still covered in Chekov's blood; it's smeared across her jeans and soaking through her borrowed shirt. She looks like someone who just came out of a horror movie...or who's still in the middle of one.]

[ It's the night shift. In the City. He doubts there's anyone left who isn't inured to the sight of a girl in bloodstained clothes. But there's also Korra's own comfort level to take into account. (That's what most choices come down to, don't they? Not logic but personal comfort.) If she'd feel better indoors, than to his flat they'll go. ]

[ In the circumstances, her lack of struggle isn't as disquieting as it should be (Except it is. Because this is Korra.) He tucks her hand with his into his coat pocket, and realizes that in the short time he's known her, this has already become a habitual gesture. He's quiet with her in the elevator down to the main lobby. (Funny; he's never stood in an elevator with her before, much less in a hospital.) When another couple gets on two floors down, at the maternity ward, Hei flashes one of 'Li's fake elevator smiles. The doors open on the false pink and peach serenity of the main floor. As if Monet prints and garish lights can mask the hypocrisy and panic in the air here. ]

[ Only when the swinging glass doors disgorge them into the cold freshness of the open air, does Hei squeeze her hand. ] Let's get you back to my place. [ After a quick detour to pick up coffee. Her fingers feel icy in his. ]

[Korra holds his hand loosely, bumping gently against his arm as they walk to the elevator. She ignores the nervous looks the couple from the maternity ward give her, stares down at her blood-soaked clothing. Dimly regrets putting on her undershirt from home this morning -- she's never going to get the blood out of it.

She inches closer to him when they return to the chilly night air.]

Mmm.

[She'll go wherever. She's not a leaf in the wind so much as a leaf in a river, moving upon someone else's power, drowning and frozen.]

[ A leaf in a river, carried away on the current of circumstances. Hei can accept that passivity. But that doesn't mean he has to pretend he likes it. There's an I don't care what happens to me or anything else anymoreness about her that's too strong an echo of others he's known and lost -- to despair, to dissipation, to death. Fortunately he's not one to succumb to pointless fussing. He's charged himself with keeping an eye on Korra. And he'll carry it through, regardless of her state of mind, or where it leads her. (Which is the reason he'd volunteered to be Pai's bodyguard in the first place.) ]

[ Streetlights glitter off the fine mist of snow. It's quiet enough that he can hear Korra breathe beside him as they wend their way down the sidewalk. A few blocks from his flat, he catches the enticing aroma of espresso. The open-air espresso bar is one of the last places still lit-up on the main street this late on a Friday night. He stops to buy two take-out cups at the window; the Irish coffee lets off a curl of aromatic steam as he pops the lid and slips it into Korra's free hand. ]

Drink up.

[ There's snow stuck in his hair, white against black and the blue of his scarf. He watches a snowflake land on Korra's cheek, there one second then melting away, like a tear sloping down the shape of her face. He wants to touch her. Wants to say something kind. It's all right, maybe. Except nothing is. He knows that perfectly. That's why she's with you at all. ]

[She accepts the coffee cup, ignoring the way it burns her frozen fingers, and takes an obedient sip.

She immediately spits it back out with a yelp of pain. HOT! HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT!]

I burneb by bung!

[She gives him a comically betrayed look. That hurt! (Still, the physical pain is a relief from the numbness, and much easier to handle than what's aching inside.)]

[ A smile, sardonic, amused, but soft too, twitches on Hei's lips. He hides it into the curve of his own coffee cup, blowing before he takes a slow sip. At least she's not totally catatonic yet. That's a good sign. ]

I said drink up. Not chug. [ He reaches to touch her face, fingertips cool and light against the cut of her jaw. ] I'll put a teaspoon of cinnamon on it later. [ Or she could chew on a mouthful of snow. But that's always squicked him out on a personal level. Too many pedestrians peeing in the slush etc ]

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