sometime after day 5

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam’s never really reached out to the Nest in general like this before, but at this point - well, he’s running out of options. The work he’s done on his mental walls has paid off, and nothing escapes his thick cloud layer except his words, and the soft hint of wind and feathers that flavors his mental link. ]

( Seems like we got a bit of down time, and I’m looking to put it to good use. I’m getting better with my symbiote ability, but I need someone who’ll let me practice it with them.

Simple explanation is that it’s healing, with a side effect that means it’s gonna hurt. Most likely for me. I can get into specifics if you’re up for it. ) [ If it doesn’t bother them or they’re willing to overlook that it means Sam getting hurt, he means, but seeing as he’s communicating with the Nest in general, he’s not gonna say that.

He already knows more than who person who is bothered by it and never seems willing to let Sam use it on them. ]

( I’ll take as many as I can get, more training can’t hurt. )

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[wille]

[ Six or seven years ago she was in Berlin, needing to tell herself at the start of each day that she was accomplished and heading somewhere. They were grooming her for big things. Massive projects. She would have mankind's greatest creation, their one weapon against certain annihilation, under her command, and with it she can absolve herself of any debt owed to her late father. She had it all, see, she didn't need anybody, let alone a man, sad and alone, incapable of even calling out after her when she left him.

Misato grips Sam's hand too tightly, with surprising force despite her frame, and turns away to look at the far wall. ]

People like us, it's not important that we're happy. We bleed so others don't have to, so their children's problems will be puny and laughable. [ Her voice is low and level, cold as steel, it doesn't break. ] I don't mind. It suits me.

[ Too many others don't belong. Maya with heart as soft as her cat pillows, Kaji with his gardener's hands, her father soft and delicate, they were meant for life after the war, unlike her, battered and scarred, built to take a beating and keep going. Sam, now, she isn't sure Sam's made for it either. ]

What happened to you? What messed you up?

[sizeofyourbaggage]

That others may live.

[ It's the pararescue motto, and he says it in agreement, his own fingers curling through Misato's just as tight. They bleed so others don't have to, Sam's done that since he was eighteen. Even before, probably. ]

But that don't mean it ain't important for us to be happy. It means it's more important, to love the little moments that remind you why you're fighting. To feel alive.

[ But as for being meant for life after war... He isn't, is the thing. Oh, he'd made a good effort, he'd stepped away from the fight and carved out a life for himself where he could say he was happy and be honest - but he wasn't complete.

He still kept the classified file he wasn’t supposed to have like a resume, still jumped back in the first chance he got. All he'd ever needed was a good reason, one he could believe in. ]

You want an itemized list? [ There's a quick smile, an easy deflection, but despite that, he keeps going. He usually hedges around it, says shit like Riley got his ass knocked out of the sky by an RPG, and even though it's true, no one's ever understood what he really means. That it wasn't Riley's plane that got shot down.

It'd been classified, back when he worked at the VA, and after that - how the hell are you supposed to talk in detail about what it means to see your best friend ripped to pieces in midair, close enough to feel the heat of the explosion and too far away to do anything? But for Misato, he's blunt. He's honest. ] I had a wingman, a partner. We never worried about not wearing armor up in the sky; we were always faster than anything they could shoot at us. Until he wasn't. What they hit him with was meant to take out armored jets, and for all his claims to the contrary, Riley was only flesh and bone.

[ There was nothing left to bury, and no matter how many years it's been, Sam will never get the image out of his mind. ]

[wille]

[ That others may live. It sounds so noble. Her ever-changing reasons are less so, when first she held on to the promise of vengeance like a lifeline, only to realize that it is absolution she seeks, not retribution. It took her a decade to admit to herself that to take on her father's legacy is an act of love, not of hatred, that it is alright to love someone and lose them, that you never truly lose the ones you love. They remain, like broken bones calcified into something stronger, stiff, easier to shatter. Shrapnel in one's body, an ache occasionally remembered.

When Shinji told her he loved Kaworu, the enemy he strangled to death on orders from her, she told him it was deserved. Only those with the will to live get to survive. Kaworu wanted to die. Kaji wanted to die. Her father wanted to die, for her. The next day she got a call from Section Two, telling her, how the boy had tried to drown himself, wanting to be undeserving.

It's hard, admitting she was wrong. Admitting that, yes, it has been years and it still hurts. It's as hard to look at Sam and see herself reflected back, made noble, worthy. She despises this Riley for hurting him but understands that without the grief, there would be no Sam. Suffering makes one all the more capable of kindness, as someone very wise once said. 

She untangles her hand from his so she can gather him into her arms, palm cradling the back of his neck, uncharacteristically yielding. She doesn't say, I'm sorry, though her mind betrays pain to mirror his. ]

I won't live long enough for it to ever be okay, but I hope you do. You're much closer to it. [ Her eyes are dry and her voice steady, but her throat feels tight. ] When you find the answer, come back to me, and tell me. Promise?

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ It surprises him when she pulls him closer, and there's a flicker of it across their mental link - he's so used to trying to be there to give others support when they need it, but somehow it always catches him off guard when someone returns it. But he goes easily, rests his head on her shoulder and folds his arms around her back.

So many years past and he still sees echoes of it in his mind, is still called back to it every time he fails someone. He never quite seems fast enough when it matters. Distantly he wonders how Rhodes is doing, but no. He's not going there.

Her mind is an echo of his, the mutual pain of grief, and he understands without knowing the exact circumstances that she's lost people as he has, unable to do anything about it but figure out how to learn to accept that they died and you lived. There's an immediate, kneejerk reaction when she says that she won't live long enough for it to be okay, and he holds her a little tighter, makes them both a promise right there.

He won't let her become one of them, become one of those he has to accept is gone while he goes on. And he won't die on her - there are too many people willing to die for each other, not enough people willing to live for each other.

It's a stupid promise, maybe, even to make to himself, not one he can really uphold - but he makes it anyway, and hell if he won't try. ]

Promise. I don't ever give up, Misato. I think that's something you and I got in common.

[ He'd thought about it, for a while, after Riley. After leaving the military, after losing his wings, he thought about doing nothing with the rest of his life because nothing mattered anyway. But he wasn't ever made for giving up, and he'd always found something to fight for.

Sam looks back up at her, palms pressed lightly against her shoulderblades, fingers spread out like wings. ]

I won't ever give up on you.