no seriously / original bones don't steal / or commit arson

[roc_on]

The news gets worse.

The police nailed down a pattern - the guy found with the missing bones was one thing, but there were other missing persons, alternating genders, late teens to early twenties, all taken from the same part of town. Cops, including cops of the relevant age range, stalk the area, and one of them gives chase to a man who proves to be a firebender. He burns out most of a liquor store, proving it, and the cop loses him trying to meet him on the other side and goes back to help evacuate the units above the store.

There's security footage of the fire and some of the chase, rescued from the liquor store, and the media gets ahold of it.

Chali says this still isn't an Avatar matter. Beila, who has no detective skills anyway, defers to his expertise, meditates, reads her book - turns up to her firebending lesson.

Comments

[in_silk]

"Oh, of course, I never thought of that, I'll let you go right away," the bloodbender says dryly.

[thinklikethis]

Dao rolls his eyes.

[in_silk]

"To answer your question more seriously: you've seen my face, talked to me. I don't think letting you go at this point would be conducive to my continued freedom."

[thinklikethis]

"I dunno," says Dao. "You let me go, I don't tell anybody about you, seems like a fair deal to me."

[in_silk]

"And you suggest I trust you because...?"

[thinklikethis]

"Well, between the two of us, I'm not the one who just kidnapped somebody."

[in_silk]

"Proves nothing."

[thinklikethis]

"So why are you even letting me talk at all? Do you just really like random animal facts?"

[in_silk]

"Good question," says the bloodbender.

[thinklikethis]

And Dao finds that all of a sudden he can't move his mouth anymore. Fuck.

[in_silk]

The bloodbender smiles another one of those deeply chilling smiles.

They arrive at a house. Dao is not given a chance to see the address. The bloodbender makes him get out of the car and walk inside with his eyes closed.

[thinklikethis]

With his eyes closed. Lightly closed, even, it doesn't hurt or anything. Dao doesn't know all that much about bending, but he has the impression that the kind of control it would take to make somebody close their eyes by moving their blood around and not hurt them even a little bit is... really something.

He feels himself walking around inside a quiet house, going down some stairs, walking around some more, and then sitting in a chair. Somebody ties him to the chair. Then nothing else happens for a bit.

It takes him several minutes of extended internal debate before he finally opens his eyes, fear of not knowing what's going on having won out over fear of what he might see.

His first impression is of lots of bones, and then the bones resolve into a huge figure of a spider, half-finished, menacing and somehow ethereally beautiful at the same time. He stifles a shriek.

[in_silk]

"Art," says the bloodbender, from somewhere behind him.

[thinklikethis]

He shudders. "You're the - but - weren't you a firebender? Are there two of you?"

[in_silk]

"I think I'll let that stay a mystery for now," he says.

[thinklikethis]

Dao takes several deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

"Okay," he says. "Your giant horrible spider made of dead people is really pretty. Good job. Couldn't you have made it out of, like, anything else?"

[in_silk]

"I hardly think you're in the best position to make unbiased recommendations."

[thinklikethis]

He considers this assertion, and then starts giggling hysterically.

[in_silk]

[thinklikethis]

Once he starts it's hard to stop. He's terrified and uncomfortable on so many levels but there is something deeply, darkly hilarious about the entire situation.

By the time he winds down, he's not even sure the bloodbender is still in the room. His face is wet with hysterical-laughter tears, but his hands are tied down. He tries to turn his head and wipe his face on his shoulder, but can't. Okay, bloodbender probably still around, then.

"Look," he says. "Can you just - can you give me some credit here?"

[in_silk]

"What do you mean?" he murmurs.

[thinklikethis]

"I mean you're acting like the only reason I'm trying to convince you to stop kidnapping people and making statues out of their bones is because I don't want to be art materials, and it's not. I'm - you're not the only artist in the room," he says, and somewhere in the middle of that last phrase his voice turns soft and tentative.

[in_silk]

"...Go on," says the bloodbender. As far as it's possible to tell from tone of voice alone, he seems to have caught on that Dao isn't talking about woodcarving.

[thinklikethis]

He tries to think, tries to form thoughts into words, terrified of being killed, terrified of talking about this to someone who so manifestly does not have his best interests at heart, and at the same time feeling deeply sympathetic toward the bone-stealing bloodbender serial killer.

As the silence stretches, he gives up on trying to make it nice and settles for making it real.

"When we were sitting in the park and I felt weird about you being there, I kept thinking about stabbing you," he says. "I wasn't going to - I'm not - I've never actually done anything like that. But I think about it. A lot. I think... it's something I could do. I could be the kind of person who does that, if - I don't know what if, I've been going nuts for years trying to figure that out, because I don't wanna cross that line but it's kind of hard to avoid it if I don't even know where it is. So. Don't say 'art'. Why are you doing this?"

[in_silk]

There is a long silence.