"Mom?" Tahno called. His voice echoed through the almost empty house, past the hallway where no picture frames hung-as if any reminder of being a family would break their bones and blow their wolf skin away to settle with the winter dust-and into the living room where no warmth waited for him.
The rocking chair stilled as he knelt beside it. "I can't bend anymore." He tried to take her hands into his own, but she pushed him back and stared on into the dead fire. Not even embers burned for them. "Mom, I'm…sorry."
It was a weak word. No more than a whisper. Only ghosts heard it and they laughed.
"I can't bend." He said again for himself, his eyes going blank. He collected the gin she had tucked into the cushion and stood. He brushed back wisps of her graying hair and kissed the temple of her forehead before putting the bottle to his lips, draining it of its last drops and killing any love he had left for her and the place he had once known as home.
His hands were at her throat and he was struggling to come up for air in the oceans of her eyes. She collapsed onto him, shaking like the last breath of a flame. Propping herself up with an elbow she traced his collarbone with her long red nails and with the flutter of his eyelids dragged them down his chest. Tahno inhaled slowly, a smile debating on his lips. Her fingers walked lazily, on the side of boredom and mockery over the fading marks on his skin. She rolled off of him, searching the accent table for the quietest of her addictions. "Want one?" When he didn't answer she pulled the sheets over their goosing flesh and lit the cigarette.
"Korra?" He wasn't aware he had moaned her name, lost in the etchings of a fantasy drawn by the blackness of his tightly shut eyes and the feeling of her skin on his. There was something about her tone, standing barefooted on the road of advice and not giving a fuck. The whore was judging him. "That's the Avatar's name. You're in love with her?"
"Or something,"
"I've never had a guy do anything like this because of me."
"I could be that guy." He smirked, giving her breast a squeeze.
"Pretty as you are I don't see younger men, unprofessionally."
In truth she wasn't much older than he was. Poverty had slapped her around, made her eyes distant and her words bitter. Even while wearing the prettiest dress she remembered who she really was and where she came from. They belonged to different worlds, but the same longing and guilt rested in their hearts.
She was too pretty. Her eyes were blue, the second prettiest he had ever seen, and she had dark skin and brown hair, but she was too pretty, too soft. The illusion was fading with every billow of smoke.
"Put it out." His voice was dark, but he was so still. He had his arm draped across her and his face was burrowed in the crook of her neck. She did as he said.
It was the only thing he paid her for.