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CHARACTERS: Asuka, Shepard, Seviilia
WHERE: Hyrypia - The Road (Specifically, a shared tent)
WHEN: END OF DAY :008
SUMMARY: Asuka's found that her least favorite person of all time has arrived. She needs to vent
WARNINGS: Potentially discussion of sexual assault; general mental problems.

Asuka's been very quiet since the arrival of the last ship. She's been moving almost on autopilot, trying to keep herself moving, trying to ignore the fact that Shinji Ikari is here. Alive and well and apparently doing just fine. It bothers her for a host of different reasons that she can't quite put to words. So she tries to work through it and then walk through it, but by the end of their first day of travel, she's still turning over their reunion in her head and thinking about everything that's happened - everything that might happen. She's not one to vent. Or at least wasn't in the past, anyway.

Still, as night closes in, she finds herself helping Shepard and Seviilia with the tent. She's quiet - more than usual. Even so, when she's in a good mood, she's usually a lot louder and outspoken, and they can probably feel the frustration and anger and all of the other negative emotions that are crackling through the link. By the time she slips into the tent, she wants to get rid of her veil and everything else and it starts coming off with a little frustrated noise - one that intensifies as her pony-tail gets caught. She spends a moment wrestling with it and then finally gets it off with a muted shriek of anger.

This is stupid. Shinji is stupid. She's stupid.

It's about then that she announces to her companions (in a rather flat voice), "Someone else from my planet showed up."

She doesn't sound happy.

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Still dizzy and sick and breathing, Seviilia remains pressed under the immense pile of cloth that Darkling had managed to swaddle her in. By now, she has found the rhythm of breathing, and sleep threatens to take her as it had taken her before a time she could remember. But Asuka's manner of barging inside and shrieking in anger is enough to pull her out of it.

She hadn't said much after Shepard had come to turn in for the evening, and so Asuka's arrival was going to be treated the same way. But even without her pain-sense, she can tell the younger girl is aching to speak on the newest of their number.

"How many is that now?" she asks, her voice sore and absent of its usual ethereal echo. Thankfully, the rest of her living self is hidden enough to avoid immediate questioning. "And do keep your voice down, darling. It would be a shame to blow our cover now."

Edited (english hard) 2017-08-03 04:52 (UTC)

"Four."

Shepard's distracted-- or maybe she's just using disinterest as an affect. That Asuka is in a poor mood is obvious, and exacerbating it will do no-one any good. But then, so is Seviilia, sick nausea and prickles standing out around her mental presence like a field of caltrops. Shepard's surprised that she spoke up at all.

"Misato, Kaji, New Guy, and you," This, with a nod for the girl herself. Shepard tilts her head in the direction of the discarded veil in a silent bid for keeping one's equipment in order, "Let's have it, then. What's the problem?"

Asuka's too wrapped up in herself to pay much attention to Seviilia's voice. In another time and place she might ask some questions and figure it out, but right now she's trying to deal with the crushing emotional weight of so much happening so fast. This was supposed to be a new chance for her. A place to start over. But it feels like her past is nipping at her heels, threatening to drag her back. Because it's going to happen all over again, she can almost feel it. Misato will love her darling, precious Shinji and somehow, somehow he's going to take the spotlight nad everyone is going to leave her by herself all over again.

It's as clear as day and she hates it. Hates him.

"Yeah. Four."

Asuka affirms Shepard's count and replies to Seviilia with with a muted, terse statement. The tension in her shoulders doesn't go anywhere. Instead it fills the tent, permeating every word and action.

"It's Ikari."

The name means nothing to them of course, but the way she says it and the barrage of emotion associated with it is intense. Anger, hate, disgust, fear, betrayal.

"...he was another pilot. Misato's favorite."

If that was the only issue she had with him, this conversation would go much differently. But there's more. There are flashes in her mind's eye - a hideously inoffensive and scrawny boy about her age.

"Pathetic little wannabe that everyone tripped over themselves to pay attention to and fawn over."

Seviilia listens as patiently as possible -- or perhaps she is feigning listening, and just trying to stop her head from spinning out of control. But yes, she picks up on Ikari, the image she presses forth into her mind. She remembers -- the boy she had reached up to, the boy who had his hands around her throat. Misato's favorite.

She sits up a little straighter with some effort, enough so that she is speaking to Asuka and Shepard rather than down into her various veils.

Weakened or not, she wasn't about to give up the last of her pride by dismissing what had obviously been bothering the girl since she woke up on the station.

"It was only a matter of time, darling. The Nest seems to favor your homeworld," she starts. She then adds in a (very) slightly wry tone: "Did you step on him?"

Edited 2017-08-08 05:30 (UTC)

"Competent people don't been that kind of attention," Shepard opines, turning far enough to reveal what's distracting her-- her weapon is spread out in a few pieces. She's doing a little maintenance, with the downtime, "Did--"

She's about to say something to the effect of did he say anything to you? Did he start shit, Asuka? Did he need to be taken care of? Seviilia beats her to a more acceptable alternative.

"Yeah, did you?"

Asuka's account of Shinji's time with NERV is, of course, horrifically biased. That doesn't stop her from spreading it around or being quietly pleased that both Seviilia and Shepard seem to be willing to take her side. There's a little pulse of satisfaction that comes from having her feelings actually affirmed and considered and catered to rather than dismissed or treated as somehow irrelevant.

"I wish it didn't," Asuka replies to Seviilia quietly. She'd rather that all of them had stayed in the human soup that humanity had become. She hates them all. Even Kaji, sometimes.

She lifts her gaze, first to Seviilia (wait, there's something different-) and then to Shepard. She feels her face start to grow hot.

"I - yelled at him. He just apologized like he always does. Acted like he was happy for me, but he just goes through the motions. He didn't remember anything about how he got me killed or what he did to me and how he used me for his stupid jerk-off fantasies-"

There's a flash of something; a deep, unsettling feeling of disgust, the knowledge that someone has done something to violate your sense of self, taken you and used you like some sort of toy.

"Little twerp."

Seviilia's attention is pulled easily by Asuka's account of Shinji. Its enough to rouse her from her lethargy, force her to sit up further and snarl in anger.

"What?" Its not nearly as intimidating as it usually is, without the feral echo given to her from undeath. Instead, her voice starts off hoarse before cracking. She'd known about him getting her killed, about how he'd been the one to finish her off -- but death was normal, where she came from. It permeated every culture she'd ever been familiar with, and it transcended itself into the existence she'd lived for so many years.

But the rest of it -- somehow that was worse than the idea of death. The violation of self she can feel dragging through her veins like sludge, causing her fingertips to grow hot. Perhaps if she had been at full living power, she might have called fire. Pure anger, righteous and endless on behalf of Asuka, forces her weakened limbs into action.

"Why did you not speak of this before?" she demands, perhaps more hoarse than before as she reaches up from where she sits to try and hasten the other girl closer. The veils fall from her hands, the rot of her fingertips gone and the runes etched there, changed. "Come -- closer, girl. Do not make me shout."

Shepard listens, at first with a grain of salt, and then a little more-- but even as her incredulity grows, so too do the problems. It's not a crime to be someone's favorite, or to be immediately successful with a difficult skill; annoying, sure, but not a real problem. But she keeps going. And going. And even if half of it is bullshit and half of the remainder is just bellyaching...

Shepard reassembles her shotgun with blind skill, ejects the heat-sink to check the action and then replaces it with a firm, noisy precision.

"Alright," Her tone is flat and calm, cold as graphite. Shepard has not spoken like this before. It's a warning, "Have you told anyone else about all this? The adults at Nerv. Any--"

Seviilia has always been a creature of one color only-- a pale, ashy sort of creature, black where she isn't that. But her hands, where they reach out are...

No. Focus. Save it for later.

"Asuka... Are you okay?"

Edited 2017-08-10 18:55 (UTC)

The reaction is unexpected. From both of them. The idea that someone in authority or in power would ever get angry on her behalf or side with her on anything is almost foreign. Even when she was the ace pilot of NERV, she was taken for granted and simply used as a tool, shoved back and forth to fit into whatever the master plan was. No one ever really stood up for her. No one ever fought for her. She had to do it by herself (and thought that she was happy because of that; because she shouldn't need anyone). Her gaze darts from Seviilia to Shepard and back and the question she has for Seviilia (her hands are different, everything is different) dies as she tries to figure out what to say.

Reluctantly, she scoots a bit closer to Seviilia within the close confines of the tent, gaze dropping.

She feels ashamed for some reason.

"They already knew. They had to know. I was in a hospital bed. And he decided that it was a good time to... use me for his fantasies or whatever. He didn't - he never-"

God, this feels disgusting. She feels tainted and used and talking about this just makes her feel like she's never going to be clean again. Her shoulders hunch, tightening up as she stares at the floor. They're going to hate her for this. She can tell. They're defending her now, but once they know, there's no turning back.

"He didn't touch me-"

Not strictly true, but turning her over in her bed hadn't seemed like such a violation as what he'd done after.

"I didn't care. I just wanted to die. I wanted the whole world to disappear. I didn't even really... notice. He just..."

She can't say it. She can't put it into words, because then it's going to be real again. She'd been near comatose at the time, drugged and hoping that she could just sleep through the rest of her life. For some reason, she feels a tightness in her throat and she doesn't want to cry again. Not here. Not about this.

"He just jerked himself off."

Over her. In her room, In a hospital where she should have been safe, even if she felt dead to the world. A shudder runs through her and she tugs her knees up to her chest, gaze locked on the floor a few feet in front of her.

"Misato knows. I told her-"

A flash of memory. Asuka's on the Station, cheek still stinging and bruised from a hard slap, Misato shoving Asuka away (and here Misato seems to fill her vision, taller and stronger and adult), releasing her grip on Asuka, eyes watering slightly, but her voice is cold: Stop saying things just to make others feel sorry for you.

And right alongside that is the fear that Seviilia and Shepard both are about to say the same thing to her. She wants to curl into a ball and die.

There is silence from Seviilia, but the anger in her chest is a thrashing dragon, chained impossibly to a wall. She doesn't know how to process -- any of this, simply doesn't have the experience or capacity to consider what step to take next. She lacks the physical energy to act on her anger, so she just lets her hands close into angry fists. She lacks the emotional knowledge and depth to reach out and comfort Asuka.

In truth, the only reason she had needled Misato so much early on was because it was easy, not because there was any real malice there. It wasn't as if she had really understood what was going on between her various acquaintances. But this--

The answer is to extract vengeance. Its an easy answer, one she doesn't even have to think about. Not just on behalf of Asuka, but for anyone who thinks they can just do as they like when others could not fight back. What could she even do? They were on a mission, and exacting the sort of punishment she had in mind for both this boy and Misato was impossible while they were all connected via the symbiote.

Suddenly, she feels like she understands Asuka's level of anger much more clearly, and there's next to nothing she can do about it -- other than seethe, which she does, purely and silently.

There's no hiding it. She wants to kill. She wants to pull something apart, though there's a distinct lack of hunger for it. To fill the void, she takes the nearest veil in her hands and starts to try and pull it apart. Her diminished strength means it is a slow struggle.

Shepard senses the anger in Seviilia; it's not hard, when she's feeling it so strongly. She feels everything coming off of them, physically near as they are, in waves of revulsion, rage, guilt, and anger. Oh no-- yes, she agrees, of course, that all of this is worth being angry about.

She has been this angry before. She will be so again. But even in her anger, Shepard is calm.

Asuka doesn't know what to do, that much is clear. She's likely only telling the two of them because no one can hold it in forever. Seviilia is no better-- all charged eezo core and no rudder to steer. But Shepard was used to standing at the center of that kind of maelstrom.

"Alright, just to recap," Her voice is still that hard, calm tone, the confidence of command belying the deep magma currents beneath, "Following a series of systematic micro-aggressions within your unit, you were, among other things, sexually assaulted while on medical leave. And when you reported it to your superior officer, you were ignored. Do I have that right?"

Shepard feels that this point, above all others, is most important to make. A lot of the shit that had happened was shady, most of it completely unnecessary, but that point. That point had teeth in it. It could be used to cut both ways.

"Because if so, I'd like you to leave the handling of this with me," If this had happened at home, Shepard and her Spectre privilege would have made short work of an otherwise tangled issue. But She wasn't afraid of paperwork or going through channels, "And in the meantime, I'd like you to stay away from Ikari Shinji, as much as you can."

The amount of anger in the tent is incredible. Asuka's not really sure she believes any of it - not Seviilia quietly trying to tear apart a veil or Shepard with her deadly calm. No one takes her side. No one supports her. She's not worth it. She's a waste of space, a spare, but here they both are. She's not sure how to respond to it, a part of her incredibly sure that this is all going to go away in a few moments. They'll decide that she's making it up or it doesn't matter and she'll be left all by herself again. Especially if she tells them more.

Asuka shrinks into herself a little more, feeling sick and ashamed, with a tantalizing hint of relief dangling in front of her. She's not sure if micro-aggressions is the right word. She's not sure there is a word to describe the way that Ikari looked at her, the way he tried to kiss her when she was asleep (and then the utter rejection when she'd tried to be an active participant later). It's just a mess. A complicated, twisted mess that she almost feels like she ought to blame herself for. Everyone else did.

"I didn't report it," she replies, voice catching in her throat, "I wasn't - I couldn't. I didn't care enough."

For a variety of reasons. Most of which involved suffering a mental breakdown and being sedated.

"But they had to know. He did it - it was in my hospital room."

NERV monitored everything.

"...besides, the world ended."

She doesn't want to absolve NERV of blame. She doesn't want to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's more for Shepard and Seviilia that she clarifies. A part of her doesn't want them to run off and do something on her behalf without understanding. And another part of her is scared that the more she says, the more they'll realize that she isn't worth fighting for.

"Misato didn't care, though. Not when I was here."

Which means she wouldn't have cared at home, either. It wasn't something she would have wanted to hear, was it? Not about her precious Shinji.

Her mind is in complete turmoil, boiling over with conflicting emotions. She doesn't know what to do besides keep talking. Now that the words are out there, she can't call them back and even if it hurts, isn't it better-?

She doesn't know. She's afraid and alone and she doesn't know.

"Stop."

Seviilia says it firmly, finally, in the same sort of commanding tone she usually carried. It isn't that she wants Asuka to stop talking about the problems she's had or had been experiencing since arrival. Instead:

"Do not make excuses for them."

She doesn't quite know how to put it to words, because on Azeroth, there would be no discussion of this. She would put an end to it, and they would all move on. That's the sort of justice she is used to, and with the memories to confirm it, she doesn't need any further explanation.

She knows what it is like to be a tool. To be used -- not like this, but to have her entire self be erased in one action. And sometimes, it was easier. But that was still her choice.

"Sev's right: Fuck that."

Shepard puts the gun down. Not far, but it folds up into its compact little transport state, a strangely striated egg of white alloy and plastic. Shepard gestures with both hands: come here.

"You reported it," On this point she is unwilling to waver, "On the station, you told Misato what happened? That counts. Her reaction was unacceptable."

She feels somehow, as if it shouldn't come as a surprise to her that Misato would behave this way. But Misato loves her lies as if they were her children, dearer than flesh and blood. Still, Shepard had...

God dammit, Misato. What are you doing?

"If we were at home, I'd ask you what you wanted to do, and if that included putting a bullet in the both of them, that would be the end of the discussion," Shepard stops, spares a glance at Seviilia, enough to confirm that yes, they were on the same page in this, "Now, I don't have that luxury here. But I am going to make damn well sure that this doesn't go past without consequences."

They're not blaming her. That's a surprise. Even if Seviilia's sharp tone almost makes her flinch. In the moment, she feels like a little girl again, helpless and alone, but there's a moment that comes after that where she slowly starts to realize that they're on her side. They're not running away from her. They're not telling her to simply "deal with it". They're promising support. Now they just have to keep up with that.

What does she want to do about it, though? She doesn't know. The vindictive, angry part of her wants to hurt them - Shinji and Misato both - but she doesn't know if it will actually be worth it. She does know that she doesn't really want anything to do with Shinji Ikari. If it was up to her, she'd never have to see him again, but they're both here now. They're both a part of the Nest. Getting away from him isn't going to work.

"It's not like Misato will listen to you," Asuka replies, voice a touch bitter, "She wouldn't listen to me."

The memory of their exchange a week ago on the way down is still sharp.

"Ikari will do whatever you tell him to do if he thinks it'll make people approve of him. He'll run away and hide because he's a coward."

What else does she say? She feels tired and angry and sad all at once and she can't really vent it in an appropriate way. She doesn't want to cry. She doesn't want to break down and show weakness in front of the two people who seem to actually give a damn - because that will just drive them away, won't it?

She leans over and falls onto her back, stretched out between the two of them, eye locked on the ceiling of their tent.

"I wish he was gone."

"We cannot erase him."

Seviilia grumbles, slowly coming down from her peak of fury. She wraps the veils a little closer to her body, glancing back to Shepard briefly to acknowledge her position before looking back to Asuka.

"Besides, that would be a kind solution..." she grunts. "Shepard is right. Let her do this for you. My nature is not conducive to such things."

"I don't give a shit what Ikari wants to do. He doesn't get to walk this off."

If that means Shepard has to go to each and every member of the Nest and inform them that Shinji Ikari finds ejaculating onto the bodies of injured children to be an arousing past-time... well, she's not above it. But Shepard feels relatively sure that it won't come to that. If nothing else, because it's really damn hard to lie, to another Host.

"I told you, let me handle it. We might need to shelve this until we get back to the station, but we've got your back. You trust me, right?"

Trust. Trust is a hard word for Asuka. She doesn't like putting herself (her heart) in the hands of others. It's never led to anything good for her in the past. It's never turned out to be a good idea. The only person she can really remember trusting in her recent past is Hikari - but Hikari couldn't really help her at the end of the day. But Hikari was only a school-girl.

Asuka misses her, honestly. She'd been a friend - her only friend.

She's not here, though. Asuka tilts her head to look at Seviilia and then Shepard, face twisting for a moment as she tries to control her expression and work through the many, many emotions she's trying to get a handle on. After spitting all of that out, she feels tired, even with the hard, hot pulse of anger hammering away at the back of her mind.

"I-"

If she says it, she can't take it back. She's opening herself to pain and hurt and to having her hopes dashed again. Her mouth clamps shut for a long moment. Then she finally nods, gaze sliding away, as if she can't look Shepard in the eye.

"...I trust you."

It's said in a small voice. Maybe if the universe isn't paying attention it won't hear and it won't be so cruel.

"For now."

The qualifier is unneeded, but Asuka has to convince herself that she's not being weak.

"...I don't want to kill him, anyway."

Edited 2017-08-11 00:41 (UTC)

Seviilia stays quiet then, because she very much does want to kill him. But it isn't her place. She was the wrong person to hear all of this information, because there is nothing she can do about it. Her ears lower under her veil, and instead of focusing on her anger, she goes back to forcing herself to breathe. The exhaustion comes back all at once.

"Lucky for him," she grunts.

"No kidding."

Shepard's no better at gentleness than Seviilia is, but she knows enough to reach out, and place one hand on Asuka's shoulder where she's sprawled.

"We've got you, Asuka. Thanks for telling us."

The hand on her shoulder feels warm and for a moment she's reminded of Clarke from a day or two ago. Asuka sucks in a breath, tries to breath, and all of her emotions are still there. A tangled knot that she can't unwind, just try to push against. She closes her eye, blinks and then rolls over against Seviilia, burying her face against her side and sprawling out so she can make contact with Shepard with her legs.

She's never been big on taking comfort from others, but this feels appropriate somehow.

"Dying means he doesn't feel anything anymore," she mumbles against the layers of cloth that swaddle Seviilia's body. Whether that's to make them think she wants to make him suffer or to convince herself of the same thing, she's not sure. Seviilia feels oddly warm, but Asuka doesn't comment on it. Instead, she's just going to be here, stretched out between them, trying to get a handle on herself. She wasn't lying when she said she trusted them, even if she'd had to force herself to say it.

The problem is that she doesn't really trust herself (and maybe never will).

There's another pause, "...thanks."

It's almost begrudging, but coming from Asuka it's significant.

Edited 2017-08-11 00:55 (UTC)

Seviilia blinks when she feels the weight of Asuka roll into her side. Briefly, she looks to Shepard for guidance before remembering The Darkling's reaction earlier in the evening. Building off of that, she tentatively reaches over and pulls her fingers free from the veil to comb them through her hair. Soft and slow, just as he had done for her.

Her comment causes her to chuckle. "Oh little lion..." she half croons, pulling one strand away from her eye so she can spot the smirk from under her veil she wears on her head. "You don't know how slow death can be."

And then she resumed her rhythmic combing.

Edited (Typing on phone is hard) 2017-08-11 01:06 (UTC)

Shepard's laugh chokes out of her, swiftly strangled because-- shit that's not supposed to be funny. They are discussing the idea of torturing a kid to death, here. A really shitty kid, sure, but...

Well, nevermind.

It's a lovely, peaceful silence between the three of them. Comfortable, even; Shepard's missed this kind of comfort, where you can just exist, and not always be jockying for... whatever. It's nice. Which means, of course, that she has to ruin it.

"So, Sev. I've gotta ask, why are you suddenly ginger?"

The first touch she feels against her hair is a surprise. She hadn't expected anything like that from Seviilia of all people. Maybe distantly hoped for it, but she'd been hoping for something like it from a lot of different people for a very long time. So there's a moment where Asuka tenses up and then slowly starts to relax. The feeling of those warm fingers carding through her hair is soothing and, for a little while at least, she can feel sort of at ease. Even if there's still a roiling pit of uncertain emotion deep down in her gut.

Little lion. She likes that. And she likes the way Seviilia smirks.

Then Shepard brings her attention back to a fact she's been sort of ignoring. She tilts her head to look up at Seviilia with a slightly confused blink of her eye. She opens her mouth, closes it, and then decides she'll let Shepard ask that question. She's comfortable.

There is a brief pause in her combing before she decides that dodging the question or making light of it would just cause confusion were it to happen again. So to answer Shepard's question, she gives a brief toss of her head and pulls the cloth over her ears so it sits around her neck. She looks about as good as she feels, but her skin is noticeably more sun-kissed than usual, and the holes in her ears have healed themselves closed. The various clippings that had been holding them together are still there, seemingly serving no purpose.

"One of our Nestmates has a curious power," she half-sighs, ears resting backward. By now, the panic of it has gone away, but she is no more pleased. "Or the Nest has a rather sadistic sense of humor."

She resumes combing Asuka's hair, partially for her own comfort.

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cw: sexual assault

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