[ Hers is a makeshift sort of survival, made of a Frankensteinian array of tools for repression and sublimation depending on which best serves her purpose. Stepping away from herself is useful when she needs resilience against fear and pain above and beyond what most can bear, in the same vein hyper vigilance is an advantage when she rapid-fires orders to react within windows measured in milliseconds. Her skin turns into armor or the most sensitive of instruments, and time skips or slows down as she requires, see? If she can conquer even time, what could the past possibly do against her. This illusion of control is one she jealously maintains.
Through a lengthy and delayed chain of command, she wills her legs to move to help him, best as she can to convince him more than herself. And she does, even if the tempo is all wrong. She starts and stops. I can walk the rest of the way, or however she said that, her toes curling against the cold concrete, the wind uncannily dead. That scene is as close to reality as the rub of cotton against skin, his voice now as distant as then. ]
Don't ditch me. [ Self-deprecation isn't his exclusive domain. She reaches a hand to his face to feel the sting of his stubble against her fingers and it might as well be evening, they might as well be back in Tokyo-3 or deep in the core of Terminal Dogma. ] And we'll call it even.
no subject
Through a lengthy and delayed chain of command, she wills her legs to move to help him, best as she can to convince him more than herself. And she does, even if the tempo is all wrong. She starts and stops. I can walk the rest of the way, or however she said that, her toes curling against the cold concrete, the wind uncannily dead. That scene is as close to reality as the rub of cotton against skin, his voice now as distant as then. ]
Don't ditch me. [ Self-deprecation isn't his exclusive domain. She reaches a hand to his face to feel the sting of his stubble against her fingers and it might as well be evening, they might as well be back in Tokyo-3 or deep in the core of Terminal Dogma. ] And we'll call it even.