driftfleet | One fish, two fish...

i. hallway

[Asuka's not in a foul mood, exactly, but she's also not pleased. Years on board the Wunder and years spent grudgingly at NERV mean she's used to enclosed spaces, but the handholding planet's spoiled her. It's like the day after a feast, except all the leftovers have been thrown out. She's anxious, too, which is even worse, uncertain about everything, herself included.]

[She's on her way to her room, something tight and mostly-hidden in her arm, with only a bit of red cloth sticking out. At least, that's how it starts out, until, on her blind side, she walks straight into someone, promptly dropping the totem that's more puppet than doll, really-- her gift from the tree.]

[Scrambling to pick it up, she hisses without apology--]

Hey!

ii. kitchen

[She's really no cook, but she had spent a fair amount of time on the planet waitressing at one of the restaurants. A day or so before they'd left, she'd spent the last of her acorns on a gallon or so of some sort of chowder, and brought it with her back to the ship. Now that they're most definitely not getting anything fresh for awhile, she's assessing her stock and pouring out a portion in a plastic bowl. Not having to eat doesn't keep her from sometimes wanting to eat.]

[Unsurprisingly, the chowder's not quite as good heated up in the microwave as it had been fresh, but it's still a dire improvement from the cubed crap that's usually in the kitchen. She stops, mouth and spoon about a half-inch from each other, and says, slightly grudgingly--]

You want any?

[OOC: If you'd rather have a custom starter, PM me! Asuka, like Visa, is everywhere you want to be.]

[the Red Fish's resident Halloween decoration isn't exactly in the best state of mind either. at the moment, his enemy is sleep deprivation, and turning a corner only to have someone bump into him is enough to startle him out of his stupor.

maybe that's why he suddenly tries to snatch up that thing on the ground at the same time she does--without even really knowing what it is.]

[He reaches the doll before she does, her hand closing on nothing but air. No. He can't get her. He doesn't deserve to touch her. Nobody does.]

Give her back!

[The doll's age is obvious, despite Asuka's attempts over the years to preserve it-- at least, those times when she wasn't throwing it angrily to the side, or yanking out the seams only to resew them later. The red dress and hood are faded, and there are pulled stitches and ratty seamstressing around the arms especially. The doll doesn't have a torso or legs beneath the dress-- really, it's closest to a puppet, but semantics don't matter when she's fighting over what's hers. Reaching up, she grabs Zhas by the shoulders, hold way too tight for someone so small and gangly.]

She's mine! Drop her right now!

[he barely gets a chance to examine the toy (??) in his hand before the screeching thing (therefor recognizable as Asuka) gets a grip on his shoulders with the same monster strength he felt all the way back when she'd clung onto his arm at the pier.

whether from lack of self-preservation or simply because he's a dumb boy, his first instinct is to raise the doll higher over his head to where she can't reach it.]

You bastard!

[Seriously? Seriously? Is he really doing this to her? Asuka's mouth hangs open for a quarter-second, face going from a violent red to something stopping short of purple. Her fingers clamp like a pair of pliers around his shoulders, only to almost immediately release them so she can jump for that doll.]

[There's only one problem with jumping and yanking it-- she's afraid of damaging the fragile stitching (the plastic head and arms should be fine) in the process. So she's left impotently yelling and reaching and hopping, coming nowhere close to tugging it away.]

Give her back! This isn't a game, asshole!

[he suffers silently through being clamped onto, fascinated by whatever is going on with her face (he's lived mostly with the undead, you see, and they don't have a whole lot of blood for things like blushing or turning red in indescribable rage).

and then with her failing to snatch it up, he can finally get half-a-look at the thing. at least he knows what a doll is; his little sister used to with things like this, he thinks, though this one has a strange, cartoonish face and seems to be missing its lower half...? or maybe it's supposed to be that way...

her words have thus far fallen on deaf ears, but he finally clamps down on her shoulder with similar force--only because he wants to keep her from clawing his hand off as drops his other arm and holds up the doll for her to take. no tricks or anything.]

[Ow. Asuka winces as his hand clenches around her too-thin shoulder, a small hissing sound emitting from her throat. She's got the look of a cornered kid on her face, wary, waiting. Any minute now, he's going to make fun of her and keep playing this stupid game of keep-away. Any minute. So she won't rise to the bait. She won't reach for her doll. Asuka stands there for several seconds, ignoring the continuing sting of his grip, before finally realizing he really is waiting on her to take it. It's only then that she snatches the doll out of his hand.]

[There. Safely out of harm's way. The color really doesn't drain from her face much, though, and the next second sees her shoving him back in an effort to force him to let go of her shoulder. As usual, she's not being very careful.

Don't ever touch her again!

[thankfully, he lets go of her, too. and he takes a whole step backwards, raising his arms in as clear an, "Okay, okay, no touching!" posture as one can get. despite her obviously being mad at him, he looks nothing but curious.

his version of curious, anyway. he never emotes much.

he even tilts his head a little, like he expects her to talk about it even though he was being a complete ass just a couple of seconds ago.]

What do you want?

[The doll's cradled in one arm like an actual baby, which is actually a dire improvement from the way she usually holds it in the privacy of her room, making it talk to her like the puppet it is. But face to face with anyone, even she can't carry on with such juvenile behavior.]

[She looks at him carefully, expression caught and irritated, apt to bolt at the slightest wrong comment. The doll's supposed to make her feel secure, not humiliated.]

Sorry.

[he keeps his hands up. his shoulders are going to be sore, he can feel it--but that's nothing new for him, especially not on this ship.]

Just curious.

[not a terribly convincing argument, but at least it isn't... making fun of her? strange age and super-strength aside, Asuka's always seemed to act very normal to him. he really is intrigued by why she'd be cradling a children's toy like that.

she called it "her". the thing has to have a story.]

She's my doll. [That much is killingly obvious. Her eye's a barely-visible slit by this point, but at least her breathing is going back to its usual dull rhythm. Even though he hasn't made fun of her yet, and even though his hands are up as if in surrender, she's still on the defensive, sure he's just waiting for the proper opportunity to mock her.]

I got her back from the tree.

[That much of an explanation is almost gritted out. Her face is burning up, and his confusion, maybe even interest, isn't helping. It's not the biggest secret she's kept, but it is the most embarrassing. More than twenty years with a doll in her room, a doll she still conversed with. It was wrong when she was fourteen, and it's wrong now.] I've had her since I was three, okay? Satisfied?

Oh.

[which means a lot, coming from him. after running that through his filter of reality, that... checks out without a problem. makes a lot of sense. a toy is one thing, but a catalyst of sentimentality is another.]

Yeah.

[he lowers his hands, somehow looking and sounding a little more apologetic about it than he had when he'd actually said he was sorry.]

Yeah.

[He's probably seen enough of the crude stitching from when he looked at it earlier, the word "ASUKA" embroidered in bold, misshapen letters towards the bottom of the doll's dress. You don't need any of them, Asuka. Go it alone, Asuka. God, she's such a fucking child.]

I'm going back to my room.

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[despite the way he hovers in the doorway, he shakes his head at the offer. don't worry--whatever she's eating, it's safe.

but, unlike the purposeful way he usually lurks around, he continues to just kind of loiter at the threshold of the room, looking aimless. like he's not entirely sure why he's there.

maybe he's there because he's hungry, or maybe he's just tired. he doesn't know.]

Come in.

[A frown flits absently on her face as she waves him in with her spoon, the thick soup dribbling back into the bowl. From there, she remembers herself and takes a bite. Fish... God, before getting to that planet, she hadn't had real fish since maybe being commissioned... and potatoes, and something fatty-- bacon, maybe? She's not sure.]

[Coil looks like his usual glum self, only worse. He tends to look sneaky, underhanded, as if he's trying to do or find something under everyone's nose. Like the most morose magician's assistant. Right now, though, he's just there. Blank.]

What is it?

[he can't even sit at a table like a normal person--instead, just sort of slouching down into the chair and pulling one foot up onto the seat. that vulturine look he's mastered is in prime form right now.

and despite all that, he still seems a little surprised by the question, raising his brow in confusion. what is what?]

[Okay. Is this about what happened at the tree? Asuka takes another neat swallow of the chowder, considering. It's possible, sure. She hadn't gone out of her way to avoid him afterwards or anything like that, but maybe what he'd seen, or what she'd seen, or both, had bothered him more than she'd been aware of. It had definitely bothered her. The only thing that helped was knowing the invasion went both ways, and that she hadn't revealed anything half as bad as she'd been afraid of.]

What're you doing here, if you don't want food?

[no, the mess at the tree had been something he could handle. it was a shock, and of course it'd bothered him, but it had also been invited (and yes, not nearly as revealing as he had feared). the thing that is eating at him now, he has even less experience with than mental sharing.

and when she asks him about it... he sort of takes a look at himself and what he's doing, and maybe realizes just how useless he's being. not quite embarrassed about it, but it might have gotten to that point if he'd had the energy for it.

after glancing aside, and looking at the lunch that he is clearly interrupting, he shakes his head.

'I don't know,' he finally signs. and dropping his foot back onto the floor, he pushes himself away from the table again. maybe he should go mope somewhere else.]

Hey, wait.

[It's no good eating alone. She wonders if Coil's noticed that she almost never eats in the ship (almost never eats at all, really), or if it matters. He already knows she's just pretending at being human. He doesn't seem to mind it much.]

[Another swallow, lowering her gaze to the mix of clams (maybe?) and vegetables in the soup, as if to let him save a little bit of face here. Too bad she can't keep her eye off anyone for too long out of force of habit. Her voice is a little less commanding, though.]

You want to talk, right? We can do that.

[he does wait--standing with one hand still on the back of his chair--because he doesn't really want to go retreat somewhere by himself, for once. with people leaving, and turning, and dying, he's actually had enough solitude for a while. he's found that bad things happen when he's upset and left alone for too long.

but being around another person also doesn't make logical sense to him. he doesn't understand why hanging around here seems like the thing to do. it's a new and stupid feeling. he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with this. it feels like something that he shouldn't have, maybe.

he signs simply, 'I don't talk.']

You knew what I meant.

[She gets up, though, to get some water. Two glasses, not that she exactly expects him to drink his, even as she pushes it towards him on the table before sitting back down herself and sipping absently from her own glass.]

You look like you want to tell me something.

[he did know what she meant, and he'd said it anyway. he'd privately meant it to include more than just his missing voice. because mute or not, he just doesn't talk.

so, he accepts the glass of water and shakes his head no. he doesn't have thoughts that he can effectively put into words and say to her. that would be too much like healthy communication.

he knows he's being weird and inexplicable, though. he's probably annoying her. he's behaving out of character when he should really just cloister himself somewhere else until he can behave sensibly again but he doesn't want to go and he doesn't know why...

to explain himself, he just signs 'Slept bad.']

Did you have a nightmare? [Asuka doesn't exactly sound concerned, but she does sound attentive, and not defensive. Definitely not derisive, either. She gets plenty of nightmares herself, which is some of why she barely bothers to sleep. Not that it's hurt her any.]

[With her spoon, she pushes around a potato wedge in circles in her bowl, considering. He can be such a pain sometimes, wandering around the circumference of the truth, but at least she's dealt with slyer.]

Exercise some. It'll distract you.

[he nods absently--possibly to both statements. summing it all up as a nightmare is close enough to the larger truth, and he also knows that exercise is a good idea in theory. he flexes his fingers as he thinks about it, tightening them into a halfhearted fist. he'd tried running a few rounds on the punching bag with fists and his quarterstaff, but it just hadn't been enough. with his strength and energy still low from healing, he just hasn't been able to unleash the sort of violence that would normally make him feel better.

'Still can't sleep.' if he'd been stronger, he could have kept working all of the demons out of his nerves, but he just loses momentum before managing to exhaust himself, now.

it's maddening.]

There's stuff in the med bay. [But the way she says it, barely biting back a grimace, shows just how high she rates that form of help. Remembering Shinji's dependence on sleep aids makes her stomach coil up, and thinking about pills in general makes her sour.]

[That suggestion rejected as soon as it's uttered, at least by her, she surprises herself by pushing her bowl across the counter, towards him, without fanfare. It's not as hot as it was when she'd first pulled it out of the microwave, but it's still plenty warm.]

Then eat. That's supposed to help, too.

Asuka Shikinami Langley | OTA

Hallway!

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kitchen

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