driftfleet | [text] your blue walls get in the way of these facts

Entry tags:

[text] your blue walls get in the way of these facts

Who: Asuka Shikinami Langley
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Handholding planet, if you want it.
When: 7/27

[It's not like her to post much, and it's not like her to post with text at all, unless it's as a response to someone else. But if there's one thing Asuka's confident in, it's that people tend to own up to a hell of a lot more on the network than they ever do in person, especially when they're typing it up. Something about the distance. Even Katsuragi always sounded far more imposing over email than in person, except for the last couple years.]

[Plus, she's curious. All those pilgrimages that it seemed as if the whole Fleet had made had to have earned some useful tidbits. Asuka's poor at cloaking her motivations in the best of times, so she barely bothers.]

If we stay here much longer, I'm learning to swim.

What did you get from the tree? Even if it's something crappy like the promo stuff we get sometimes, I still want to know.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[for as little time as he's ever spent trying to navigate the wilderness, he has spent earlier, more-formative years without the aid of two eyes, and has spent the entirety of his life paying obsessively-close attention to the lay of the land at his feet. tripping while bolting after vampires as absolutely unacceptable (and potentially lethal), after all. it also helps that the dimly-glowing eye of his sees exceptionally well in low light.

so, he's always a little startled when she stumbles, but he tries to keep himself from hesitating too noticeably. he doesn't want to embarrass her by appearing too ready to help.

and then, finally, they're at the tree. he scarcely looks at it before following her over to the log--not because he isn't unnerved or impressed by the thing, but because he is just more than ready to take a rest. once settled down, he is more focused on evening out the uncomfortably-tight breaths in his chest than the unsettling aura surrounding the tree, and certainly more than whatever she's asking. he nods without absorbing what it is that she's offering.

it's a good minute or so before he properly catches his breath, and when he does, he remembers the question that he'd had bookmarked in his head to ask her once they'd reached their destination. this isn't exactly how he'd pictured it--with him looking tired, her already feeling awkward, and there being absolutely no lead-up to it whatsoever--but it's important enough for him to know that he just... asks it anyway. kind of out of nowhere.

'Have you only killed monsters?' and he makes sure to use the most non-threatening, mundane sign for 'kill,' instead any of the shorthands that he and Zhas have come to use between the two of them.]

Yeah.

[Angels are monsters, definitely. (But Shinji isn't. Shinji never hurt anybody.) Over the past fourteen years, she's gotten rid of every last one (except Nagisa, who got rid of himself, and except for Shinji, and except for that part of her) without remorse or regret for anything except the mess they've singlehandedly made of her life.]

[But why is he asking about that now? Does he not want to hold hands with someone who murdered people? Does he think she's that bad? It's kind of late in the day to be concerned with that. Asuka frowns, her hands fidgeting on her knees while she watches his face. She really can't gauge his motivations at all, not when he gets so abrupt with what few questions he offers.]

Why?

['You remind me of someone,' and that someone happened to be a killer. but though those similarities drew him to her in the first place, they are becoming less important the more that Asuka distinguishes herself from her. and if Asuka is already having trouble tracing the ghost-trails of Coil's motivations, then an answer like that probably isn't going to help.

it's ultimately a useless response. so, after a hanging moment, he tacks on the rest of the thought. '--and because I have.'

so, it's maybe the opposite of what she's concerned about. he's not worried about what might be in her head--he's warning her about what might in his.

if she has any second thoughts about this whole thing, he's leaving an opening for her to voice them now.]

[Asuka's eye darkens a little at the first sentence. She's carved her own place in this world, and the thought of being reminiscent of someone else, of not being unique, stings childishly. At the second comment, she straightens up a bit.] Killed monsters? Or-- [and while she's saying it, she remembers and does the sign] people?

[Obviously he's killed monsters before. People puts a new wrinkle on everything, if that's what he's getting at, but it's still too late to turn back now. So he's screwed-up. So is she and everyone else she knows. Even though he's trying to warn her, she's not going back to the inn empty-handed after this long spent hiking.]

Look, whatever it is, I can handle it, got it? [It's not like her thoughts aren't vile cesspools whenever she's at her most miserable and petty and bitter when she's not. It's not like there aren't enough scary things in her brain already. His additions can't bother her as much as what she's so prone to replay on her own spare time. She exhales and extends her palm.] So take my hand.

[he doesn't blink while she susses out the meaning of what he'd been getting at... so, yeah. he does mean people.

and that's his disclaimer. he doesn't know what she'll find in his head, but if she ends up deciding that it's something too ruinous, well... at least it won't be a surprise. he's warned her. they'll both be braced for whatever comes of it.

so, pretending as hard as he can that he has no reservations about this at all, he reaches over and grabs her hand.

and despite having run through this once before, he doesn't know what to expect. him and Zhas were already so close, it had been like diving straight into something he'd already been half-connected to. it was a straight plunge to the bottom. he has no idea what bumping up against a new soul might be like.]

[Okay. Okay. Asuka already feels a little wobbly almost as soon as his fingers touch hers-- anticipating in almost the same way she would a shot. It is kind of like a shot, the foreign sensation of sharing. With Shinji it had practically sent her into tears, but with Coil, thankfully, it's different. The intensity isn't as painful, but it's still there, and it leaves her off and disjointed, like she's a spectator in the wrong movie theater, curious but wary of what she'll find in his head.]

[She's thinking about how she's grateful that so far it's not so bad. She's trying to be as bland and blank as possible, defiantly attempting to hide her feelings, but it's not working. There's an ever-present bitterness that's permeating her mind even as she wonders for the dozenth time what she'll get from the tree. Weird flashes of memory, of soaking in blood-red LCL, of splintered commands barked over a communications system, a purse full of smashed cosmetics... it's all a splattered jumble she can't coax into hiding from Coil right now.]

[Shakily, she gets up from the log, tugging him with her. It's sort of hard to speak at first, because she's not sure what's feeling and what's real, but then she manages, softly.]

C-c'mon, we have to stand up for this.

[even though he's unsteadily pulled to his feet after her, he still wants to know why they need to be standing. or why she's always just telling him to do things. he doesn't need to listen to orders from anyone but Zhas. and he also doesn't need to sign any of it for her to know that he's thinking it.

the rest of it--the rest of whatever he has inside--is kept somewhere deep and dark and small, where it's much easier for him to hide. and control. he can focus better that way, and everyone will leave him alone. he's thinking things and feeling things, but it's all still trapped somewhere far away. like hearing the roar of the ocean down in the bottom of a well.

right now, he's trying not to worry about what she might see if she lingers long enough. he's trying hard to focus on how much he wants to see. he wishes he could just reach in and pick something open, but he knows it doesn't work like that. he's also wondering how long it's going to take for her to get her gift, and he's hoping (for now; foolishly) that it isn't over quick.]

[Apart from what's on the surface, he's all locked up. Great. At least those superficial thoughts are a glad distraction from her usual mishmash. She tells him to do things because he'll usually do them, isn't that obvious? If he ignored her, she wouldn't take half as kindly to his company. No use imposing her will on someone who won't. It's kind of like Shinji, except Shinji's obedience is one part being bullied and two parts his own passivity, at least, when she's feeling uncharitable.]

[Thinking about Shinji is its own hateful spiral, though, because he's intrinsically connected to half her life, the half she fought in bled in lost herself in, and it all starts to mesh together again in sour, quick glimpses, a smashed wall, endless yelling. Gritting her teeth, knowing he's seeing and cataloguing more than he should, she tries to dig in deeper into his mind, but she might as well be trying to coax a flame out of the water. You're trespassing, she thinks, but she is, too. Just less successfully. Coil's dug every bit of himself too far beneath for her to get more than vague suggestions, while she's a sour but open book, tapping her foot irritably as every second passes with no gift in sight. She doesn't need to talk to him right now, but she opens and then abruptly closes her mouth anyway, wondering just what he's so damn curious about.]

[as quiet and grey as he is on the outside, his mind clicks along like a dark, exacting little clock. he's curious because he likes to know how things work. he wants to tug on her strings and see what moves; not like a puppet but like tendons and nerves working on bone. he doesn't find many things interesting, but he digs into them with fascination once he does. he finds her interesting. he doesn't mean to think it, but he does.

he also doesn't mean to dig at that thought of Shinji. not in the way that he could actually intentionally excavate thoughts from her, but in the way that she can tell that he would like to. he doesn't like the sound or the feel of it, and he doesn't like how he can tell just how plugged into every part of her it is. he can tell it's a heavy name, like how Zhas weighs in his own soul.

--and turning his attention even a little bit toward that skull-faced man threatens to drag thoughts and feelings up and into the open by the roots. he tries to quickly avert his mind somewhere else, sending an ice-water trickle of anxiety through their connection, but he already lets little fragments slip. they're the easy, most familiar ones. long, still nights in a grey place, and fast, violent ones spent running through the dark. they never run because of fear, however. it's always hunting. together like brothers, dogging after monsters until they can't feel their own limbs anymore.

just little glimpses, but they're important enough to him to be right at the top of his thoughts before he can catch them.]

[It's so weird. It's so weird being-not-being in someone else's head. She winces and she's not sure if she's really wincing in real time or not. The line between feelings and reality is so tenuous. It always has been. Has been since...]

[Since...]

[... and there's weird flashes now, the adjustment of what look like large headpins, a peer in a mirror, an awful sound like an engine smashing and a scream so high (Shinji) it has to be hers reality no reality something shooting through her eye and then a hospital bed. Fascination, huh, and she bristles, her emotion like a cold shoulder that only halfway softens. She's seen fascination before. She's seen scalpels and swallowed pills and performed every damn test they could think of. Her stomach churns-- stop it, it's not his fault and curdles as she tries to focus on him. They're like wild animals, him and Zhas, from those tiny snippets. Like those hunter-gatherers from thousands of years ago. And yet there's a weird security there, like soldiers, no, like a two-man pack. A connection forged of... what? She wants to know.]

[Her hand is slick with sweat, but she doesn't stop gripping his yet.]

[it's hard to absorb and defend at the same time, apparently. he can focus on keeping his mind clear and his emotions smooth and contained, up until his interest snags on something else. then, as he explores the foreign thoughts that come filtering through, he can't help but reflect little things back in the other direction.

the flashes he sees are all new to him, of course, but still familiar enough to remind him of things. stitches and knives and straps on tables--he has spent plenty of time on either side of that arrangement. people are just meat and skin, after all. soft, complicated machines run on blood and stand on bone. losing an eye, excising a tongue, closing a wound, wrapping the dead. that's what her thoughts remind him of.

and then she pulls the painted face of his partner across his mind's eye again, and it fits so perfectly into what's already in his head, that he can't help but bounce her worldless question right back with an answer.

their connection is formed of family--which is a sick, broken door with way too much behind it. he can't help but dwell on the meaning of it for a moment, since it sits on top of him like a crown, ruling literally everything he does. the oldest glimpses are of his family of blood, and they look so tall and dark with how small he is. then the images roll forward into a whole knew family, scooping him up out of broken glass and dropping a coat down to cover his shaking shoulders. he's been following that skullface ever since then. they're something like brothers, but it's so much more important than that...

and there is so much--such a surge at the bottom of that buried well--threatening to churn up and show itself, he squeezes her fingers with the effort of searching for something else to mentally latch onto. he'd closed his eyes somewhere along the way, and now they clench tight.

so, he fixes back on her. he thinks about their missing, mirrored eyes, and being something apart from human. he thinks about her heels bouncing idly against a railing, breathing big lungfuls of toxic air.]

[He's wrong. The feedback loop is pretty much endless, even if it's mostly intimations she's getting, they can respond back to each other. Arguing with him like this might even be easier. She doesn't shudder or back away from his flashes, surgeries, experiments, whatever, but there's definite revulsion there still because it's the soul beyond that's really hurt when those things happen. She knows damn well that's so.]

[Envy bubbles up, slow and low and almost silent. Family. Real family. Asuka's hungry as a starving child for every image that passes. The tall, dark ones and Zhas both make her want and want and want. Father's a shadow, a birthday call that stopped coming fourteen years ago, and Mother's a corpse and Asuka a crying brat neither wants. Zhas saved him. Zhas protected him. Keeps protecting him. Asking about signing the first time he was on the ship. Stabs of longing shoot through her like sparks, and they only stop when she finds herself there. There from the party.]

[But she hates thinking about herself and she's scared of what she'll see of how he thinks of her like the nervous coward she really is deep down. Because she's awful, just awful, and everyone must really know that. Asuka blinks back one watery, overwhelmed eye, looking directly at him, thinking that for his silence, for his stubbornness, his morbid curiosity, he's all right, far more than all right. There's a thump of something soft landing, right by the tree's massive roots, a sound that she barely hears.]

[it's funny how he hardly notices when thoughts of family come in from the outside, because the echo is so close that he has a hard time distinguishing hers from his. that father-shadow is one he'll never live up to (how dare he not even look like him; he looks too much like--) and his mother is dead.

he knows what it's like to be hungry. he knows what it's like to want and want and want and want, but she'd stopped smiling at him sometime when he was very small. it's hard to remember what it had even been like. he'd tried so hard, but it'd never been enough. he'd promised that he'd make her smile at him again, but he ran out of time. after all of her portends and prophecies, the guilt, the horror, and the love that she kept up high on a shelf, she died. impossibly, just like that. they're all gone now, and he carries their ghosts in his blood.

Mother, dear Mother. now, she (the new one) has red hair and long, cold fingers and she loves him, and she gave him Zhas, but he's never, ever, ever going to see her again, he just knows it--

and that thought, as it spirals in the way that his mind likes to do when he lets even one thing slip in his head, gains quiet momentum until the gravity picks up Asuka too. at the party, her in her silly pink dress, pretending to be a person.

he likes that she has to pretend. she wears it well enough, but he likes the little ways in which he can see it slip. he likes that she has red hair--

the sound over by the tree's roots goes unnoticed by him, but he loosens his grip on her hand anyway in an effort to get away.]

[There's one small, sad word that escapes her mouth the second before he severs the connection. Just one, quivered out in a high little tone that sounds too childish to belong to her.]

Mommy.

[Even once the tie between them is broken, she still can't seem to fit herself back in her own head. Maybe because it's too similar, too much of the same pain. Mother wouldn't even look at her in the end, no matter what Asuka did, no matter how she excelled. Pretty Mama, sitting in her chair, oblivious, then angry, when Asuka dared call her Mama at all.]

[His Ma-- his mother's not like that, is she, the new one. She must be good for him to long for her so much. Asuka's all jumbled. All jumbled. Thinking of her like that (pretending) he likes her, Asuka-- does he like her? Why should he like her? Why should anything...]

[She bolts forward, towards the tree. It's as if she's trying to run away from herself as she stumbles her way around the tree roots. Her eye's hot with tears by the time she finds what the tree's left her, small and red and easy to spot. It's her doll, intact as ever, with its familiar scuff marks on the plastic hair, the ragged stitching on her dress, the hood. It's all there. She's all there.]

[She picks it up, and there's the tune in her head, not a pop song after all but a German lullaby, soft and sweet, that almost makes her shake. She has to turn and yell just to try to drown out the sound.]

Coil! I-I got it. [A breath.] I got it.

[Coil stands there as she runs away, breathing wrong and looking at nothing, as if he isn't actually free. it's not until she calls back to him--something louder and much more tangible than what's in his head--that his eye focuses and hunts after her.

though, he still stares like he doesn't quite know who she is. he's maybe a little detached. that feedback loop of thought left tangles around him, and it's taking him some time to shake himself out of the coils.

the first nod he gives her is only shellshocked. but after a few shaken blinks, the wires actually connect in his head and he gets what she's saying. he nods again--more definite.

it's over now. she's got her prize. he doesn't hear any music, but he isn't supposed to hear any now, is he? she's clutching something in her hands and he recognizes the look on her face. that's how he'd looked, he's sure. that's what they had tried to warn her about.

without getting any closer, he waves his hand, motioning for her to come back. he doesn't want to get any closer to the tree.]

Coil.

[Asuka repeats his name though it's already obvious from the nods and the gesture that he's heard her. It's a bid to cement in her mind that this is reality. Not a mesh of scattered flashes of her past and his. Right here, right now is what counts the most.]

[The lullaby isn't one her mother sang. She can't remember any that she sung at all, doesn't remember a time when Mother was well enough to love her. But it's still one she knows, and it's still enough to make that eye keep watering up. Savagely, she rubs her good eye as she fumbles to join him. Asuka doesn't blame him for not following her to the tree itself. She wouldn't have, either, if she'd known.]

[Once she's close enough, standing next to him, she holds up the doll. Still too overcome and mentally exhausted to be more than a little embarrassed, not offering it to him, just showing. It's only fair. Without him, she never would have gotten it back. Coil deserves to see every handmade stitch, every scuff mark, the fading on the entirety of the doll that signals its age.]

[She's not sure how to feel about the gift. Not sure at all. Her doll's petted and spoken for her and spoken to her and been thrown up against the wall. An object of disgust as much as love. An object of immaturity and nostalgia and sick, sweet longing. She cups it tighter, almost like a real baby.]

You didn't have to come. [It takes a bit to say any more, and she swallows thickly.] Thank you.

[his expression is mercifully devoid of anything like judgement when she stands there, displaying the doll like a fresh wound that she doesn't know what to do with. he might have had opinions on some other occasion, but after everything he'd just had visited upon him? it just kind of makes sense. having steeped so long in debris from her mind almost makes that doll seem familiar to him too.

he hears what she says, but his eye is still on the toy. as rattled as he is, that object does have a way of anchoring, doesn't it?

a little awkwardly, he holds out his hand a little, and asks 'can I see?']

Here.

[She looks reluctant to give it to him even as she hands it over. But she's sure he'll take care of it. He won't make fun of her. Not after how overwhelming all those thoughts got. How vulnerable they both ended up.]

[He can see her name stitched on the dress in capital letters. She hasn't gotten any better at sewing since then, as he's discovered.]

I made her. A long time ago.

[yeah, he recognizes that stitch-work. when he and Zhas had gotten their gifts, he'd received a harp that he was only mostly certain was actually his old one, and his partner had received something entirely new. so, seeing those stitches and old, scuffed paint adds an unsettling level of authenticity. before, he'd been able to at least pretend that the tree was creating objects that were only similar to their memories. seeing this, though... it makes it much harder to fool himself.

accepting the doll, touching the clumsy lettering on her dress, makes him feel like a voyeur. he's trespassing. again. with the way that Asuka calls the doll "her," he can't help wondering if it has a name, but he doesn't ask. he scans over all the little details, looks into its painted eyes for a few long seconds, and then passes it back to its hovering owner.

and once his hands are free, 'Sometimes you don't want normal people to see whats inside.'

it's his way of responding to her thanks. he already knows she's a monster, so what's the harm in him looking in her head? it just spares her from having to show it to someone else in order to get something she wants.]

Yeah.

[The truth is, she doesn't want anyone to see what's inside. She doesn't even like to peer in herself. All she ever sees there is more evidence of her own rottenness. Better to push it away than face it. That's why the doll was so good, an intermediary and a cheerleader, even when she was far too old to need encouragement from a piece of plastic and cloth. The doll was there for her. Even the day of the attack, the doll was there, situated among all the makeup she never got to put on, all the cosmetics that signaled an adulthood she'd never have.]

[Asuka puts the doll under one arm, gesturing with her hand.]

Let's go back.

[he nods, stuffs his hands safely into the pockets of his sweatshirt, and turns to head back down the path. he tries not to seem eager to get away from the tree and out of the woods, but he certainly doesn't dally.

and this time--without him really even noticing--he's walking with Asuka on his blind side. it's not to ignore her, though. the other reason he ever turns his seeing side away from someone is the from the unconscious instinct to keep an eye out. their nerves are rattled, he's feeling wary, and he apparently trusts her enough to let her walk along where he can't watch.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[text] your blue walls get in the way of these facts

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject