[hatch log / mission: hyrypia] the winds that will be howling at all hours

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - Naerstone House
WHEN: DAY :002 - :003
SUMMARY: New hosts hatch on the Station, are briefed, then make their way to Hyrypia to join the rest of the hosts… while they attend a very important history lesson.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :002

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP are are suddenly changed. --No. That's not right. You're you and there's no suddenly about it. It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or surfacing up from the darkness of some wine dark sea. Nothing is different and everything is because right there in your own head there's something both familiar and strange. You know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye.

But here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small, faintly hexagonal chamber with a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. If you were injured during your escape, those injuries have been healed. If you were anxious or frightened or distraught, those feelings have been calmed. There's something peaceful about waking up here - like you belong. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But once the tube's disconnected? Things get loud. A wave of emotion fills that peaceful void - fear, uncertainty, relief, a sense of purpose or loneliness or anxiety. A matching dread. An easy comfort. Maybe some of these emotions are yours, but they can't all be. After the initial sensory overload, the mental buzz elongates: stretches out into a murmur like the sound of a party happening behind a nearby closed door.

You can sit up - barely -, and shift out of the pod. There’s a ladder at your feet and a little cubby just before it with anything you brought with you as well as a set of crisp, loose-fitting white clothes; while your injuries are healed, whatever you’re wearing is in the exact state it was before. Maybe it's time for a change? Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone.In fact there are lots of you and none of them are the strangers they should be. Some even seems like people you've known for a very long time.They are as familiar as this place you've never been is.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room it's quiet and still, feeling for all the world like a hollow shell.

--Or it does until a voice separates itself from the white noise in your head:


BRIEFING
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD isn't really a voice at all. It's the warm tang of camaraderie, tinged with a flash of impatience like ticking hands on a clock face and a flicker of wonder: a falling star. It says:

( My, you're all very fresh aren't you? Unfortunately, the multiverse waits for no spring chicken. Once you've figured out which way's up, won't you all join us? )
Join 'us' where is the question. And yet, once you're ready to meet the owner of the voice in your mind, your footsteps simply lead you there naturally. Two strangers sit in a small circular briefing room - a tall being covered in short brown fur with a rigid demeanor, and a pale alien with yellow washed frills at her jaw and throat who is smiling cheerfully.

"Hey there, sunshine," says Rhan, her frills humming as she speaks. "Why don't you take a seat so we can get started?"

[ooc note: please see here for the catch-all briefing thread]


THE STATION
WITH A LITTLE UNDER 24 HOURS before it's time to make the trip to Hyrypia, this is as good an opportunity as you're going to get to familiarize yourself with Station 72 before you leave it. There's plenty to see, but a distinct lack of people to make conversation with. It's lonely and quiet and there's a sensation of dust gathering even where there is none. Maybe studying the briefing files on your databank and going over your mission kit is the most proactive distraction, but if not? Well there's plenty of places to get lost...

HYRYPIA - NAERSTONE HOUSE
DAY :003

MEETING
A SINGLE SHIP LANDS in a field the color of burnished gold, returning to the place it had until late the night before occupied. It's carefully inserted beside dozens of other spacecraft bearing more than faint similarities, though each has its own unique aesthetic. When the gangplank drops, the loud engines powering down, it reveals--

New hosts. Seven fresh faces - obscured as they are in layers of intricate fabric - are led down the gangplank by Rhan There to greet them is a number of other hosts - any who answered to the sweet crystalline ring of Collector’s voice in their heads hardly a half hour earlier, speaking with certainty born of truth:

( Rhan and Siva’co are returning. Shall we see what stories they have to tell? )

Despite the solidarity that both combined groups provide, there's a feeling of eyes here. A number of guards along the edge of the shuttle field are watching the reunion like hawks. Better perhaps to return to the apartments where they'll be able to speak in private and teach the new hosts what it is that has been learned since their arrival. --Or explore, for those who prefer not to rest. Naerstone House's grounds are vast and they are almost entirely open to the parties of the pilgrims to explore.

THE PERFORMANCE
AS THE SINGLE RED SUN of Hyrypia dips low on the horizon there is a long, low, mournful sound. A deep bell-- or a horn? Or maybe it's something else entirely, but the call is heard and answered as any nearby servants inform the guests of the house:

“There will be a performance of the First Journey in a quarter turn. All guests are invited to attend.”

There's no mystery as to where the event is occurring. A steady trail of guests and servants lead out past the Veranda into the central garden where a number of pillars have been mounted and a large tiered platform festooned with with numerous draped curtains and abstract representations of trees and mountains - a great stage - now sits. The stage is surrounded by numerous low settees and tables, piles of thick cushions and richly colored rugs around which guests can be found clustered, lounging while sipping thick, syrupy drinks.

Each table is illuminated only by a single glowing orb at its center. Otherwise, as the sun sets it pitches the garden into darkness as even the castle itself has been left unlit. There are no lights in distant windows or on Naerstone House's high walls; these small orbs and the glitter of stars in the black sky might very well be the only points of light in the whole universe.

The allotted time passes and the performance begins. A sun rises over the stage. It's a much larger, more intricate glowing orb and reveals a number of players dressed far more simply than the Hyrypians the hosts have met. They wear complex machine masks upon their faces that shutter into different expressions as their hands flitter across their faces: dramatic caricatures to accompany the droning sound of their singing voices as they unfold the tale at the center of the performance - the one which drives this pilgrimage and for the Nest's very presence in the universe at all. It's the story of lost Rabadoceans coming to a planet near barren intent on brutalizing them - about loss and hardship until finally a single player separates from the rest. The orb of the sun over the stage turns, it's mechanical face shifting and resetting to indicate the passage of time as the very central platform of the stage begins to turn so that this lone player might walk. And walk. And walk through deserts and scrub land, through dark woods and dark caves, against the wind and with it. Through it all, the orb over the stage slowly lowers until at last this lone player can take it in their hands.

It cracks like an egg and brilliance streams from it. Braziers catch fire in the darkness. The garden illuminates itself. Every light in Naerstone House comes to life.

With that, the silence of the crowd breaks. There is applause -- each culture in its own unique fashion -- and then there is a rise of chattering conversation as the guests are served several small dishes and talk about the show they’ve just seen - and whatever possible clues it might give to the pilgrimage they themselves would soon be undertaking.

---

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for all new hosts as well as the evening's performance. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care to. You can find a more detailed overview of the host hatching process HERE and additional setting information about the Station HERE. Please be sure to review the MISSION: HYRYPIA ooc information. If you have any questions, please hit up either the mission's question thread, the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[ryohji]

[ he feels insofar as she does. the depths of human emotion, every extreme from one end to another, he feels only after having witnessed her feel it first.

kaji watches her cry, his mouth a harsh slash of grief across his face. his face twists severely at the salvo of tears, the onslaught of uninhibited sensations -
fear, yearning, betrayal - overwhelming him in an instant. emotional contagion: her heaving makes him heave. he doesn't need to think about what her words mean, he comprehends at once. when she tells him to come, he goes at once.

the distance between them is closed in three strides. three strides separates the kaji that watched her from outside the door to the kaji that falls on his knees. he takes her fist from her, his fingers caressing the grooves of her knuckles to coax them open and into his palm. he hangs his head low, temple pressed against her knee, a crude, primitive dogeza. the extremes of japanese penitence he performs now with acute, single-minded devotion. never has he apologized like this. never has he felt the need to prostrate himself before anyone until now. what more does he have to hide? for what end? for what end? ]

I understand. [ he knows he is. does she think for a moment he pretended to be anything else, but an fool? he offers her a memory, a secluded phone booth, an isolated part of town. the words　( After I caused you so much trouble, I'm sorry. After I caused you so much trouble, I'm sorry — 　 over and over he rehearses it again for her like a cultish chant. still it isn't enough. ] I understand, Katsuragi. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, [ that you have to hear this now — ] but I love you.

[wille]

[ It is her lot to decipher her life only in hindsight. A story lived forward but told backward. Sixteen years later she beheld her father's sacrifice in the right exposure to finally reveal the bold outlines of someone she could begin to understand, someone she could love. A hero, not a coward. A man, not a monster. Ten years later, eight years of turning a blind eye to what she refuses to see, she accepted the heart and the mind of the only one who came closest to knowing the entirety of her. Who saw the true face of her and didn't leave. She did, she left. When her sobs grow louder, it is for herself she weeps. A foolish, selfish woman.

The signs were always there, miracles by any other name (magic, science). Her father and him both, paving the way, setting up the signposts, handing her the scripted parts, coming to her rescue at her hour of greatest need. Now here she sits, cast in the part of the judge with a penitent before her, him, her lover, her causa sui, her god with his head against her knees, neck exposed for her to sever. His apologies are ill-suited, when she is the one in need of absolution. ]

Don't-- Don't. [ Words and actions diverge as she returns his grip on her hand, desperate, like someone drowning. She kisses the top of his head, once, twice, thrice, how many times does it take to undo a promise broken? She covers his nape with her hand, because his is the space she should occupy. ] I didn't water your flowers. 

[ I haven't done what I should. I didn't do the right thing. That he would keep his promise when she thought it was a parody of a promise, when she has failed to figure it all out soon enough. She didn't stop the Instrumentality. She failed to go forward. She was too late, too weak, too cowardly. ]

[ryohji]

[ he had no well-meaning defense that could justify these eight long years. his excuse is the same excuse used by all the unremarkable men that came before him, and the unremarkable men before them. it's an excuse as old as courage, and as old as cowardice. he was afraid. he took a base, self-defeating enjoyment on some level, keeping it from her. she wouldn't say it back. she would be disgusted with him. it didn't belong to him. he didn't deserve it. she didn't deserve it. the relief that seizes him now isn't contingent on her response, be it acceptance or revulsion. the relief he feels now exists independent of her, and is as much physiological response as it is a psychological one, not unlike the respite that follows a bout of nauseated vomiting. turns out, suppressing everything for as long as he did poisons you just as well as any toxin, and will kill you just as well as any toxin, provided you don't beat it to the punch.

that was his plan. strains of shame threaten to dirty his relief like spores on a petri dish. like the shame that follows the relief that follows the forceful vomiting. ]

What are you saying? [ kaji shuts his eyes, his words a low murmur against the thick fabric of her knee. did she catch that? ] Listen to yourself, Katsuragi...

[ that's okay. flowering was beneath her, anyhow. he lifts his head as much as allowed given their cumbrous positioning, feeling for her face with his face, bunching up the extra fabric of his sleeve, and wiping away the streaks of tears inelegantly. he wants to hug her, and kiss her, but that would require him rising to her level, or her stooping to his. he stays put. ]

[wille]

[ No one will ever love you for everything you are, when the mind's eye leaves out details in hopes of creating a coherent idea of the other. When a person is anything but coherent. To hear him say the words -- the words she can't say -- is to hear a promise from the one who has most diligently collected the pieces to grasp at the shape of her, only to find that even he leaves out the parts he can't swallow: her shame and weakness, her as anything but the epitome of animus. Her as action, her as the unstoppable force. All this sadness built upon a lie of ever knowing anyone or having them know you, and yet, maybe it proves him right and proves him wrong, that the cold hands wrapped around her heart only prompt her to challenge it. Let him see, and judge for himself.

Misato removes her hand from his neck to lift his face, a firm and precise maneuvering to allow her to unfold her legs. If it so requires him rising to her height, or her stooping to his depth, then the choice is clear. She slips into what little space is afforded between him and the bed, knees on the floor, an arm looped about his neck like a brace. She speaks most urgently with her lips against his cheek, right by his ear, each voiced vowel and each muted sob sending shivers through his hair. ]

Listen to me then: the truth you've been looking for, I've found it. I have it here with me. [ If her mind now betrays the faintest trace of victory, it is only a vain attempt to soften the landing. She grips him tighter, afraid of the fall. ] But I ran out of time, I couldn't stop any of it. It's all as you predicted, the Instrumentality, the Eva series, everything-- so see, you're here now, you can figure out a way to turn it back. I couldn't do it, but you can.

[ It's an unfair request, hinging on the unspoken do this for me, the adjoining if you love me trailing close behind. ]

[ryohji]

[ it takes a village to perturb him. even when he was a small boy, he was slow to anger, more liable to give up his place in the line than stand his ground. the months after second impact he surrounded himself with rabblerousers and instigators, punks and hotheads to do the brawling and fighting for him, making him seem inviolable by association. by all definitions he was a patient, unflappable man. but when misato speaks, he feels hot insult rip through his stomach. his side of the connection bristles like a wick dipped in kerosene.

it's the gravity behind her voice, together with her ludicrous sense of timing, the effects of which are almost comical, that disturb him. no, he knew it. he knew it all along. it's nothing personal. he knew it at the motel - she only used different words to say the same thing - and he didn't endure this pathetic, pained reaction. it's the connection, kaji rationalizes, the din of disordered emotions running through his head without respite. his arms clasp against her shoulders, his grip stern, as he shoves misato off him. he stares at her with hard eyes, the room casting shadows where his lines of his face wrinkle the hardest.

he's clumsy when it comes to transmitting things over the connection, but he strains against his inexperience to propel them forward.

first is a familiar face. tokita shiro of japan heavy chemical industries. ikari gendo's sonorous voice over the phone, thanking him for siphoning funds from the jet alone project. but there was still more to be done, you see. months after the fallout, tokita is brought up on charges of embezzlement, to his complete and utter shock. he commits suicide two weeks later, by then his reputation so far ravaged it doesn't even merit a scrolling headline on a black marquee.

the next memory kaji imparts with a great deal of condemnation. the image of a humble briefcase, tagged in his name. the gentle rocking of a ship. gaghiel's inconsolable thrashing, kaji's luggage on it's mind. the combination of numbers that he used to open the briefcase, to reveal ADAM encased in amber bakelite.

the last one, but not for lack of examples. september 19th, 2015. a large power grid. a large modern power grid controlled by a series of supercomputers that in turn control tokyo-3's power supply. he runs a linpack benchmark code off instructions fed to him over an earpiece, compromising multiple redundancies and fail safes, pulling hundreds of megawatts, ebbs and surges. two hours later, he weasels his way into her elevator.

say that again, misato. you wants him to do what? ]

[wille]

[ This is vindication, white hot like his fury, at the outcome of a test so steeply rigged toward his failure and her unhappiness. This is what she wants him to see, her when she is no longer pure nor a creation of his mind, her and her machinations lest he think her incapable of trickery. She has been using him all this time, back then for escapism and now for her selfish agenda. That he refuses to hear it makes it no less true. That it isn't the entire truth doesn't mean it's a lie. That the words she withholds from him are just as true, doesn't lessen the gravity of this side of her.

His eyes (hateful, she thinks) kindle a searing ache in the back of her throat, his hands on her are barricades to keep her out, away -- and she relishes every bit of it. This separation, this confirmation of her greatest fears.

Even so, her mind grasps the connection he offers greedily, returning his brisk memories with only hints of her side of the story. Hope in the face of certain calamity, the knowledge that she would die, the disappointment when she didn't and not by her doing. The sickening slow sway of the ship, he must know, the gut-deep fear of him, above and beyond her dismay over being out at sea. Her ire, subsiding at first when she realizes why he had to flee in the heat of battle, before it erupts twofold when it makes sense to her. Traitor, and worse than that. What does that make him? An apostate against his own kind. That he thinks to keep her company, back then in the dark elevator, to remember such kindness in the face of his multitude crimes is insanity.

She grabs him by his neck most urgently, her anger rising to the surface, a mask against the fear of seeing him slip away after this denouement. He has always seemed to her on the edge of vanishing, a leaf on the surface of water, to float away or sink should she try to grasp too fervently, but she grasps him most fervently all the same. ]

Was it what you wanted all along? This? [ The dissolution of all souls. Consummate destruction and the false promise of rebirth. Her voice may tremble, but she hisses out the words to arm them with fury. ] Kaji-kun. Tell me. Is this it?

[ryohji]

[ sweet absolution feels like a pair of hands around his neck. he opens his mouth, as if to blurt something out, then closes it again. when he looks at her he does so sightlessly, a forty yard stare that meets her fury from across separate ends of an empty plane and challenges it to a shootout. he murmurs. ]

Does it surprise you? [ it scares her, that much is clear, it outrages her, it scandalizes and insults and revolts her, but does it surprise her, once she pares down the aggrandized display layer by layer, once she reduces it to it's most irreducible self, is she surprised? she said it herself, didn't she? you don't care about others, but. what he knows is that the world, and their stake in it, never belonged to mankind in the first place and to pretend otherwise amounted to egomaniacal delusion. no matter how loud they shouted, i, i, i, no matter how hysterically they yowled and beat their chests, the world was never theirs to protect or destroy. any solution that doesn't address the paradoxical injustice that mankind has wrought, that doesn't name it and seek to prosecute it for all the suffering and pain it has caused, to the angels and fellow man, any solution that refuses to acknowledge the absurdity, the hypocrisy, the selfishness, that fails to look and confront all of the ways in which they kill without license - ( it's doomed. it's doomed, katsuragi. do you understand that? can you understand that? ) the better question isn't whether he wanted it - she should know better than to ask that of him - the better question was whether their mindless claim to survival made as much moral sense as it. the better question asked what they ought to do, what was only fair, what was only right, what was only just.

the better question is why she expects anything more of him. at the end of the day, he just wanted to see her happy, even if it meant spitting in the face of what he knew to be true, even if it meant death. the better question is why she doesn't squeeze harder, if what she really wants is vindication. ]

[wille]

[ To hear him ask that question is to confront the idea that she is at fault for allowing herself to be deceived. It takes two, after all, one to utter the lie and another to believe it. One to speak the truth, and her to deny it. Her grip tightens, thumb over his trachea, right here, where she could press against the cartilage and silence him for now or for good. Yet the gasp comes instead from her own lips. It pains her, it pains her more than it does him, what does that say? When she loosens her hold, her fingers catch against his collar as her shoulders stoop, a puppet with her strings cut. ]

No. [ It's barely an exhale. We can fool ourselves a little, not them, but us, ourselves. One struggles into existence on the premise of a lie that something in the future will make noble the past that's lived, understood, disappointing. The false promise that one day that illusory something will make the striving, the yearning, the laboring worth the while when that, too, is a mass delusion. As if happiness gives man the right to take what rightly belongs to another, as if anger is any justification, as if wanting validates taking. ]

I want to live. Here. Anywhere. [ As absurd a choice as his preference for the opposite. Even less defensible than his despair, this hope. Anywhere can be heaven as long as you have the will to live, is that so? She raises her hand again, the knuckles he caressed so gently before now turned to trace his jawline, a mimicry. ] Do you?

[ The echoes: Will you do it? For me? For me? Or does death's call sound sweeter than these false notes sung by an effigy of her own creation? ]

[ryohji]

[ for all things one wants to say there is an inexpressible center. those two words hammer him like a mallet, because they gesture at an unwelcome truth misato would be loath to accept. at the first brush of skin kaji twitches like a wounded animal before turning into stone. he cranes his head towards the opposite wall, straining as far as his neck allows, a fine tremor working through the clench of his jaw in way of response. the display is but a poor facsimile of tightly reigned composure, something he feels is seeping from him apace. the follow-up questions come unbidden - will you do it? for me? for me? - her voice much too clear to dismiss as fantasy. he wants to tell her that there are some things that they cannot change. some things she cannot change, no matter how valiant or lion-hearted her efforts or intentions. the past is one of them. they cannot change the past. and this part of him feels just as immutable as the past. he wants to tell her that it's not her fault. it precedes her by years.

he wraps his arms around her all the same, unwilling to break the silence. ]

( It doesn't have anything to do with you. )

[wille]

[ To have stepped through another person's defenses is to see all the thousand little rejections for what they are. Her hand against his jaw, an easily weathered inconvenience from any other person, or a small question easily brushed off with a lie, becomes intolerable for the weight and meaning it holds, because of the weight and meaning she holds. She takes pleasure in this, this knowing that she is substantial enough in his world that her hands and her words can wound (anything, anything to keep her mind from venturing into questioning why she wasn't enough to change his mind and his past and his future too, this well-worn habit of taking on the impossible). It is a currency of her significance that she can more easily measure, as loathsome as it is, and for this small victory, she can allow herself to lean against him when he holds her.

The silence is a beast that threatens to swallow both of them whole, but she won't let it, no, never: ]

When you say the words like that, it's a promise, don't you know? It means that you will. [ Love me, the words she leaves out because of the gravity of them that she can't yet bear, even if she utters her definition of his actions with such well-worn conviction, as rigid as the fist she clenches against his side. ] I won't suffer the love of a dead man.

[ryohji]

[ because past experience has left her the most bitter aftertaste? some men come alive only after death, and the contrapositive also holds true. some men live only in name alone, distinguished by reason of their still beating heart. ]

Ah. [ his agreement sounds anemic, foiled by the way his arms constrict around her ribs, a soft kiss supplanted against her head. the shampoo she uses is nothing that strikes him familiar. ] You have my word.

[ does she need anything else? is that it? is this what it's like? he'd never imagined the aftermath to feel so... businesslike. (he never imagined the aftermath, period, because he wasn't planning having the conversation that predates the aftermath.) it suits her well, he realizes idley, this matter-of-fact, pragmatic and one-sided emotional exchange. it suits her more than the flowers she's never watered, a formal love confession, a dogeza, or the folksy smell of earth and soil. maybe that's where he went wrong; perhaps he's had he wrong idea from the very inception.

there is so much he needs to ask in way of help, questions that concern her time in the nest, affairs back home, what and why they've been brought here. his conversations with cathaway, siva'co, and rhan had been woefully insufficient, his broodmates equally unhelpful. but the questions can't gain traction necassary to leave his mouth. instead he rocks with her under his chin, watching the shadows dance on a spot on the floor beside them. ]

[wille]

[ Misato releases her clenched fists to return the embrace more fully, loose-limbed, comfortable in the undertaking, no longer so grasping and uncertain as before.

Now her mind is a horizon, a dormant and all-encompassing line in the distance that shows itself to him only when she allows dawn to break, first the pinprick of light, slow then sudden in its reveal, a warmth that blooms from within one's skin. His gentle rocking, like the swaying of a ship only this time with the fear removed to leave behind its hypnotic restfulness. Objects shed away the darkness to retrieve their colors, the sea blue-green, the soil a rich brown, the sky white-blue, the flowers (lavender, her shampoo of a different kind) taking on shades of purple, until it becomes nearly impossible to imagine them ever being in monochrome. He was gone, gone forever, she thought she had lost him for good but now here he is, more real than ever, and she can no longer imagine a time when he wasn't.

She shows him himself seen through her mind's eye: the air she now inhales against his neck, a lightness in her head. He could make it storm with but a turn of the face, the slightest shift in temperature, did he know?

When she hums in affirmation, his word is good to her, her fingers press against the back of his head to find the elephant in the room, the symbiote. ]

Here, we can be closer than ever. I'll show you.

[ryohji]

[ a lance of disagreement slashes a gaping, sober wound across his side of the connection as misato runs her hands over the very same place where the symbiote was - purportedly - planted. the vision, artlessly pleasant, then sickly so, first feels like something he's about to recall, and then it feels like a sledgehammer. at once kaji realizes misato has no qualms with it, the symbiote, despite it being an unlicensed modification carried out without their permission. not only that, but she was much better at him at it than he, and had used it against him before, which meant that she could use it against him again, at any moment, awake or unawares, probe every recess and crevice of his mind, unearth any memory he'd repressed, or maybe excised.

here, we can be closer than ever. kaji closes his eyes and resists the mistrust before it has time to form. it's the uncanniest thing about her, her tendency to rush, to skip steps, or to rearrange them according to her liking. there is an order to love, a give and take, and her contempt of that order feels as disorienting as a law turned around back into mere conjecture, or a plane flying backwards.

kaji huffs at her breath on his neck, steeling her with a hand clamped down her shoulder. he doesn't push her off. he's learned his lesson. ]

Wait. [ stop; he wants to say. not now; he wants to say. this isn't natural; he wants to say. is this what you really want?; he wants to say. ] Katsuragi. Doesn't this remind you? Of the Angels. 'Mental contamination.'

[ and more importantly, doesn't it bother her? ]

[wille]

[ They are picking up where they left off. Like a turntable, spinning on silently during the pause in between, the needle slotting right into place the moment it is dropped onto the disc. The music resumes. She breathes in the scent of cigarettes on his skin, turns her head to rest it against his shoulder, and closes her eyes. They are back there at the motel, pretending to be lovers as cover for plotting under the shadow of a looming apocalypse as excuse to play at being lovers. Her voice is low and droning, meant only for his ears. ]

We would use even the tools of our destruction to ensure our survival. The Angels. Eva. This symbiote. That's what it means to be human.

[ Prometheus and the theft of fire. Her father manipulating Adam into its near self-destruction so that another (Ikari, the old men of SEELE) can wield it for their own purposes. She won't be the first nor the last of a very long line. 

Cathaway said she has a pointed mind, eyes fixed upon the finish line, hands already grasping at victory right from the start. The undertakings required of love, the nurturing and growing of things, the patience and unexpected pleasure of seeing something bloom that was never what she planted-- none of it becomes her. She has tried it on for size, her charade of a family, and found it ill-fitting. ]

Kaji-- [ She pulls away to tip her head up and seek his eyes, a child beseeching approval. ] Do you think it's all wrong?

[ryohji]

That's what Ikari wanted you to think.

[ dead cow eyed and blunt like the end of a point deadened to uselessness. gendo had the blessings of affect on his side. fire with fire sounded like vindication, and the retribution must be served frozen lest it fall to feel like winning. that's all they cared about - the grand production of feeling, the feeling of winning, feeling that that agreed with instincts however base. gendo invested into the emotion, and not the reality, of winning. they never had a chance. ]

It makes strangers feel familiar, and fools you into believing those thoughts belong to you alone. Then, we need them [ breaking for air are the images of cathaway, rhan, and siva'co - ] to tell us who our enemies are. With the symbiote, maybe we wouldn't be able to tell otherwise.

[ when you love everyone, you love no one. when you hate everyone, you hate no one. kaji's voice doesn't rise, but it carries just as much conviction as she's ever seen from him. the hand on her shoulder slides down to the crook of her elbow, a thumb burrowing into the crease. ] I'll find a way to remove it.

[wille]

[ He means Ikari-shirei. That is, she wants to think he means so, dismissing his lack of specifics as being due to his view from the outside, the ombudsman, the man in the walls. The commander was never his commander the way it was for her, so it's to be expected. He doesn't mean Ikari-kun, surely, not Ikari-hakase.

Misato wears a furrow between her eyebrows when she looks down to think. There is something cold in the pit of her stomach, something that coils and sinks, threatening to pull her down with it. She names it dread or guilt or regret and thinks it insufficient, such small words for something so heavy. She places her hand over his to keep it against her elbow, an accord. But when she looks up, her face is an entreaty, her eyes a silent rebuke, and she raises both palms against his cheek, bracing through the sting of his stubble to meet skin. She thinks of digging through layers of lead paint to find a man, somewhere beneath all that. ]

If I didn't know better, I might think you sound gallant.

Well-- [ Well, her smile is timid, eyes falling to his lips. Well, she is beginning to wonder if it's also a kind of strength to resign oneself to certain inevitabilities. If perhaps it's a kind of strength too, to allow things unfold as they will without her strangling it to death for the sake of exercising agency the moment it shows signs of dying. ] You kept your word. I didn't think you would.

[ryohji]

[ how to tell her? how to tell her that his only motivation is to return back to how he was, when there was nothing standing in between him and what he really wants? how to ask? how to ask her for something more from their arrangement? how to feel? how to feel anything except the strangling weight of disappointment? what was he thinking, taking that man's hand the way he did? squeezing the way he did? was it his cowardice again, rearing its ugly head?

gallant. with her palms sandwiching him he has no choice but to return her gaze. he has no choice but to return her small smile with one of his own, in understanding this is as good as he's ever going to get. a small smile, like one that anticipates the happiness from a warm gun. ]

I know. Don't give up on me, yet.

[ these, these are simply words. now what is there left to do? he wants to smoke, and sleep. he's already smoked through his entire pack, and he's not certain he can find another one on this strange, foreign planet. he's not certain if he can fulfill this new promise to her, though she deserves that much and more. and sleep will evade him, as it does time and time again. so what's left but to ask of her? ]

Do something for me, Katsuragi.

[wille]

[ Anything, isn't that what she should say? Anything at all. Name it and it's yours. Your word is my command. And so on and so forth. The idea of a relationship stripped of uncertainty, how pleasant in conception, how terrible in reality, when she can think of a thousand of his wishes she would decline for every single one she could be convinced to oblige. What could be worse than finding oneself bound to an unwanted promise to be left nursing a secret resentment for the person one claims to love? Nothing, surely. Nothing.

And he so rarely asks that she realizes -- a belated realization, eight year's worth of settling dust in the making -- that she is incapable of even guessing what he could want from her. She draws in a breath, letting her hands slide down his cheeks, to his shoulders. ]

Say it first.

[ryohji]

Misato.

[ her hearing isn't playing tricks on her, and neither is it deception on part of the symbiote. she wants him to say it first, that's fine. that's fine by him. it won't be the first time, and it won't be the last.

her hands on his shoulders, his on hers. he squeezes through the heavy fabric, feeling more fabric underneath. reminders abound. ]

Just say my name.

[wille]

[ Her reaction is immediate, painfully obvious. A startled blink, a strangled gasp, a flinch as if slapped. What takes longer is the recovery, the will it takes to reciprocate, hesitant. How strange for such a simple name to feel so difficult on her tongue. ]

Ryohji. [ Easy, see? Emboldened by her first attempt, she leans in to speak it against his lips. Ryohji. See. She laughs like a man who only just averted danger. ]

You're an idiot, Ryo-chan. I thought you were gonna ask me to jump off a cliff with you.

[ryohji]

[ it's funny, how could it not be? eight years later and the request only serves to draw more attention to the years in between, rather than the significance the names hold, however symbolic or illusory. that's how it goes, he knows: the longer you wait, the more it becomes about the waiting in turn, and the more the request inflates to near mythic proportions, untenable to their imaginations. all cycles tend to be vicious. time had a way of being selfish like that. kaji's small smile grows and then disappears entirely from view, formless and wisping into evaporated gas once the shape is taken away and the bows are untied. at the end of its short life it was only still, just a small smile.

he crashes his lips on hers, pressing them against the wall of her teeth and gums, hands grasping for things against her face that have eluded him for so long. ryohji. it's a proxy to the words he wants to hear, a surrogate-word, a wire mother substituting the cloth mother substituting the real, flesh and blood thing. intimacy, not the kind that requires a singularity of thought, but premeditated and effortful. ikari wasn't the only one invested into the grand production of feeling, even if it runs afoul of reality. ]

[wille]

[ Her fear stems from not knowing. The words she withholds could be a mere mirror, a reflex, a good day to you too, or and you, simpler still me too. If saying so would lessen the meaning, she would have said them already. The fear stems from the weight she knows it should carry. The words are deeds to an estate, keys to a treasure box, and she's terrified of finding hers empty because she never learned how to, never had anything to fill it with. He would see it then, this thing she lacks, and he would resent her for the false promise.

When she breaks the kiss it is only to remind him that lips can be gentle, too, kisses can stop and start and linger without grasping ( don't hold me so tight, I'm not going anywhere, silly ) but if this is what he wants, this clumsy way she threads her fingers through his, the conscious way she lists her head to avoid his nose, the exacting pull and stretch of muscle to allow two lips to fit together, the reality of it, every bit grounded in conscious choice. Then so be it.

She withdraws her mind, leaving behind the hum of absence, interrupting the kiss to speak as people speak: ] Wait for me.

[ryohji]

[ ( Can you really blame me? )

she has a way of luring his smile, the wayward prodigal son, back home after a night's despair. what's eight more years?

(hold on a moment. what's eight more years, really?) preempting the question and its partner dread before it has time to break for air, kaji suspends it deep within a crevice where it cannot be detected. a crevice where he will have to distend himself to retrieve again. ]

And tomorrow, help me find a box of cigarettes. [ this request, he's saved for very last, where the most salient requests so often go. better to ask for apology than permission. propping himself on a knee, kaji slows to a stand with great deliberation, as if the conversation sapped him of his strength. ] - The early bird gets the worm. Tell me about the show, in the morning.

[ too tired for equivocals. too tired to fall asleep on her bed, with her, right here, what with the possibility of her dissecting his dreams at night, only to find the sunken spot in the sheets signaling her absence in the morning. too tired to find within himself the courage to accept these risks, however small, when those muscles have been strained to collapse. too tired to put himself through an performance for a mission he has yet to see the point in, the motivation to see through. ]

[wille]

[ In the days after his last gift, she dreamed of him often. Him at the base of a building with a slow growing pool of blood like a halo. Him drowned, face down at sea, hair moving along with the current. Him an inert object in a field, an aberration, an offense the cicadas try to drown out with their screaming. In all these instances, she feels nothing but relief. It's the other kind of dreams that leaves her gasping awake and in tears. Him at her door, having forgotten his white tie from back at the wedding. Him on the other side of the table, nursing his third glass after she has finished her tenth. Him beside her on the futon, placing a warm palm on her forehead when she tells him she's had a nightmare.

And then she wakes up. Isn't it so terribly sad how reality can never compete with the dream?

She doesn't rise with him, letting her legs fold to sit on the floor, catching his hand to imprint the way his fingers curl around her fingers. Everything is drudgery and burden these days, each step restless, a life dotted with uncertain glories. She draws a breath to smile wider, and squeezes his hand at the mention of cigarettes. ( Imp! Brat! ) ]

Ja. [ Is this it? She releases him by letting her hand fall away from his, lingering last at the tip of his finger. Then she lets him go, free to become an idea again. ]

Good night.