driftfleet | mk.05 (text)

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mk.05 (text)

Who: Kaworu Nagisa, anyone else!
Broadcast: fleetwide
Action: his bunk, the Vanquish
When: this afternoon

Need advice for when one's body is trying to kill oneself

[Shipmates may notice how he hasn't left his bunk but a couple of times in the entirety of this past week. This means he's been of no use as an engineer, which is bad news considering this mysterious bug business. Even without that, he should at least be tending to the ship's overhead lights, which have been flickering on occasion... (The particularly astute might note that this seems to coincide with the muffled sounds of what could be... sneezes?)

But, alas, he is dying. He's pretty sure of it.]

(augment glitch = baby's first flu!)

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I'm not.

[That day, the day she'd felt that maybe, she was really growing up, that maybe friends weren't so bad-- that day ruined everything. Bardiel had infected her through her eye, ramming up directly to her brain. She'd been stunned, out of body, knowing that things had gone wrong, very wrong, but the pain hadn't really come in full, horrible force until Shinji had crushed her entry plug.]

[They'd told her afterwards about the dummy plug system. But when it first happened, it hadn't mattered. When she'd screamed, when she knew it wasn't an Angel at all but another Eva, his Eva, putting her down like a rabid dog-- then--]

Don't. Don't be nice to me.

[This isn't what he wants to hear from her. She asked what he wants; what does he want? What she says, it's familiar in a way opposite to what he's after from her. He'd prefer her aggression. This sounds more like self-loathing.]

Why? Is it weird?

[God, he's projecting. He's projecting an ages-old infatuation. He's disgusted with himself, but what's new there.]

I'm just being honest.

[She's silent. She wants to stay silent forever, as far as he's concerned. She's... she's said her piece to him, told him off, told him to go be with Shinji, everything; it's enough, isn't it enough? Isn't it?]

[Sitting at the broken table, staring at her own ruin, the communicator still somehow lying there, she can't find a word to say. Her throat is too tight for anything but a series of harsh, raspy sobs to come through in miserable response.]

[He can't be surprised that he's made her cry. That's how he operates, it seems. It's uncomfortable to listen but he sits through it anyway, staring at the ceiling of his room, understanding her anguish and even then knowing that it won't help for him to say so. He's given her so much extra weight. He's told he so many things she didn't need to hear. That she's strong, at least, is something he felt she really should hear. (Her sobbing, by the way, doesn't detract from that. He's still certain of her strength; he still looks up to the glamour of her rawness.)

It's another few minutes before he texts her again. Maybe it will be for the last time today, or for the last time ever, if Shinji wants nothing to do with him, or...

Well, he ought to at least try to make it count for something. She deserves something meaningful after everything else he's foisted upon her.]

All of this, me and him, it's not your fault. And whatever he does next, or whatever I do or choose not to do, neither are those things your fault. You're not a bad teacher. I'm just a bad student.

I haven't taught you anything.

[She sends it at least fifteen minutes after his text. By then, she's stuffed the broken table into a cargo hold, smudged snot all over her face with the back of her hand, and gone to her room. Once there, she pulls her patch off and crawls under the covers, communicator still in hand. Asuka doesn't know why she shouldn't want to end it there. Triumph complete, the race won, all that. He's heard her cry, so it's all over. She's nothing. Just a stupid little girl hung up over a boy and an accident half her life ago. No rival to anyone. No use to anyone, unable to do anything but spew hateful words. But Kaworu's still...]

Why don't you hate me?

[Even at first, he doesn't honestly expect her to respond; and as the minutes pass, they just confirm the end of their conversation (or whatever their exchange should be called). He's still, of course, lying in bed. He's feeling his consciousness spread scarcely through reality like a thin coat of paint. The paintbrush is too dry. The canvas barely shows a streak of color. Kaworu huddles in his bed with his hands over his face, marinating in all the truths she's told him. So he doesn't expect her text, but...

...]

There are many cases where I have more reason to love than to hate.

[Apparently he's at least functional enough to be vague again.]

I'm in the way.

No.

[...]

Just because he loves you doesn't mean he d[......]idn't love me, too.

I think you are better than I am, but it isn't you that makes me angry with.

[He's wrong. He's perfect for Shinji. She can't even think about that time on the handholding planet, the way he'd confirmed that he did love her. All she can think about is her own miserable self.]

I wouldn't die for him like you did. That's what he said.

[He's glad she can't see the bitter twist of his mouth—]

And? My dying for him obviously didn't make him happy.

You didn't expect it to. The point is you'd do something for him I wouldn't.

Tell me something.

[That's not the point, Kaworu thinks, the point is he was and is unhappy. His headache hadn't really left, but it's beginning to worsen again.]

What do you want to know?

[Recovery's hard. She feels like a snail without its shell, all slimy underbelly, all lousy and helpless. Right now, she shouldn't want to ask anything of him at all. He'll do what he wants no matter what she says.]

I want to know why you bother talking to me.

I know it's not all because of Shinji.

[It's a perfectly reasonable question. Even more so now, because those words coming from her make him wonder, as well, why he does it, if it's going to hurt him so badly—if it's going to make him confront and acknowledge things he wants to bury like countless Lilin bones. He doesn't want to think about this. Her meanness, and the way she doesn't like him, and how he's sure she'd be more willing than anyone to hit him...

He doesn't want to think about this.]

I'd stop talking to you if you asked me to.

I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you why.

I like the feeling it gives me.

What, are you a masochist?

Edited 2016-08-19 04:23 (UTC)

You think it's all a bad feeling?

Isn't it?

It isn't. There is something nice, as well.

Tell me.

[Oh, leave me alone, Kaworu thinks in his angst and his achy irritability, but he doesn't actually want her to leave him alone at all. Shinji is leaving him alone. Kaworu already can't bear that; he doesn't want it to happen all over again, not even from her. Besides...]

It's just

You remind me of someone who taught me a lot.

Who?

[Of course she wants to drag it out of him. Of course.]

The first person whose opinion ever mattered to me.

Shinji?

I remind you of Shinji?

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