2022-10-05: Éteindre
- Log: 2022-10-05- Éteindre
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Renais Cardiff
- Where: ?????
- OOC - IC Date: ?????
- Summary: Akane Shinjo makes a friend.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Nouvelle Tokyo. Fujiyokidai. Inoue Hospital. 10:26am.
A whiteboard on the wall helpfully explains that this room -- A206 -- is on the surgical floor, and that today is a Friday. The occupant likes to be called Renais, and her care team...
... it's a little difficult to read, in that vague way that happens in dreams. There's a care team. There's definitely text there.
The patient's goal for the day: wake up and rest. Low activity. Full diet. The last pain check indicated a 9; today's pain goal is a 0!
There is no anticipated discharge date.
To the side of the bed is a girl with neck-length lilac hair and red eyes. Her gaze tracks just a little past the bed, out the window, and she sings to...
... well, to someone, at any rate.
o/` You swoop down upon my planet every night
But it's only in my dreams we reunite.
Right now, I'm all alone, with my eyes trained on the sky
And I search for you there, among the stars
They say that absence makes the heart grow fond
So I know we share this longing in our hearts... o/`
Her hand rests gently on the hand of the person in the bed. There's no discomfort -- no fear of the warmth of another person.
The bed is cool to the touch.
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Sheets rustle gently as the patient stirs, eyelids scrunching shut as she becomes aware of the morning sun on them. She slowly gathers her senses, drawing one of her feet in and tenting the sheets--and feeling a rush of cool air, enough to give her goosebumps for a moment.
Right now, it's the best thing she's ever felt.
But something else...
Someone is touching her. And there's the briefest
*instant*
of panic. She quickly pulls her hand back.
And as she opens her weary, seafoam eyes, Renais wonders why she did that.
Her hair, currently splayed out over her pillow, is quite a bit darker than her attendant's, a few shades past magenta compared to the other girl's lavender. She looks at her, squinting in the light.
"Akane...? Where... what are you..."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Giving a content, happy smile to Renais, her attendant scoots in a little closer. "Well, someone needed to be there when you woke up," she says, tone a little playful. "It's not like Dad sticks around for these things." Dad...? Does that mean --
-- well, of course it does. The hair gives it away, if nothing else. This has to be a half-sister, right...?
"Sucks that he blew us off again, but... look at you, right? Now that things have wrapped up, you've got that whole new body and everything." She gives an easy grin, noting, "They said your memories would be a little muddled 'cuz everything's still hooking up to your brain, but... hehehe, I wanna see~!"
Akane pulls the covers down a fair way, revealing... well, not much. A hospital gown covers most of Renais's body. But... well -- Renais's torso never looked horribly inhuman to begin with, but it's plain to see that her body has been modernized and remade -- a beneficiary of the innovations from the Macross Fleets, with a bit of Dad's magic touch.
Most importantly: she feels the air-conditioned coolness of the hospital room.
"I know you're probably kinda groggy, and it's a lot to take in, but... this is all kinda new territory for your docs. If you feel like you can make it out today," she says, "they'll let you out. I wouldn't mind that. ... I kinda wanna take you clothes shopping. We've got a lot to do together!"
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais keeps squinting, keeps thinking. It's like trying to swim through honey at first, but... as she lifts her head up, looking over herself, looking at the otherwise-empty room...
The world starts to make sense, and her brain fills in a few of the holes. Lazy afternoons at Starbows. Digging through the bargain bins at Sevendarake for the kaiju everyone else forgets about.
There's a brief glance over at the end tables on either side of the bed. Good. The geezer didn't leave extra 'gifts.'
She looks down at herself, at her legs. Through the fog, she can still remember -- she knows every inch of those scars... and they're all gone. Like they were never there at all. She rests her head back on the pillow, and kicks the sheet off entirely, grinning. Genuinely. There's no shade over her eyes, no smoldering bitterness -- just... a smile.
"Mm. Anaesthetics are still wearing off, too, I think... hard to think straight." She looks over at Akane. "Good thing I've got you here, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Hehe... yep! I like to think I'm pretty reliable," comes the immediate rejoinder, as Akane scoots toward the bed. She reaches out, and --
-- fusses with Renais's pillow a little bit, tickling at the side of her neck in the process like a brat.
"I'm glad the rest of the world calmed down enough that you had the chance for this. It feels like forever out, but you'll be able to attend my graduation next year, even! Again, it's probably just gonna be you and me, but..." Akane lets out a small sigh.
"... I have the feeling that's how it's gonna be for a while. Most of 3G's pretty busy with retraining for exploration duties instead of," a vague gesture with one hand, "you know."
She takes a breath in through her nose. Her eyes shut for a moment.
Akane feels like she's falling into an infinite abyss.
Akane feels like she's sitting atop a construction crane, looking out at Tsutsujidai.
Akane feels like she's running from something.
Akane places a hand gently over Renais's arm, where the G-Stone once sat. (... Infinite information circuit? The only connection she needs is the one she's making right now.)
"Still -- that isn't so bad." Akane's lips turn up in a dazzling smile. "... It kinda seems like you don't have too many hobbies, though, so the transition here is gonna be a little rough..."
Her eyes shut, briefly, and she seems lost for words -- but quickly finds them. "... What do you say? Want to come back to my place and watch X4? Or, ooh -- I have all of Kaiju Coliseum finally, even the lost episodes! It's not fair to you to have to do much while you're recovering... We can take it easy. As long as you want."
Renais, as she starts to look for her answer, may feel a certain pressure -- a certain impulse, thrumming just beneath the surface of her thoughts. What it demands from her differs so much... but the way it sings to her -- teases at her neck, echoes off of every ripple in the pool of her thoughts -- is familiar, in its way.
It rejects miracles, too.
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Exploration duties, instead of...
Instead of what?
The question feels important. There's something nagging about it, something just beyond the periphery of conscious thought. Like a word on the tip of her tongue.
She looks at Akane, about to ask, but...
Something else tells her she shouldn't. It feels like an unpleasant topic... and today's supposed to be a celebration. And like Akane said, things are going to be fuzzy for a little while. It'll come to her.
This time, she lets the anxiety of Akane's touch pass, letting it linger. She sits up, pulling her feet in and crossing her legs, looking at her wrist. "Last time you touched me there..."
She can't remember the details, but she knows it was bad. She hurt Akane.
And she never wants that to happen again.
"I'm sorry for that," she murmurs.
But... on to happier topics. "Of course you've got the lost episodes," she chuckles. "I'd love to watch Kaiju Coliseum with you. But I want to go shopping for clothes with you first. You never saw my collection, back when we were little. I used to..." She casts her eyes down, as her thoughts turn toward the past.
Something she could never be. Something she could never get back. They'd always felt like someone else's memories. Someone else's life.
But maybe now...
"I loved fashion. I don't know if I've still got a sense for it, but... I need new clothes anyway. We may as well have fun with it." Her smile returns, and she reluctantly pulls her hand out from under Akane's so she can swing her legs over the side of the bed, and make an attempt to stand.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Standing comes easily. For all the caution, this is a kinder body -- a more complete one. Sure, it didn't come with any actual reconciliation with her (their???) father. Sure, it didn't undo the suffering.
Does it need to? The past can stay buried.
... so can the future, at that.
Akane helps Renais stand, though, in spite of it; indeed, it seems like she very much wants to serve as Renais's crutch. "It'll be great!" Akane enthuses about their upcoming shopping trip. "And if you need a second opinion... I'll be right here. I've got a good head for these things. I put my whole new look together from the ground up after middle school."
Her fingers wind around Renais's arm, just a little too tightly. "Don't worry about any of it... I'll take care of anything you need."
Akane and Renais occupy a vast emptiness. No ground exists here -- nothing exists here. Wires cut through the space, green and yellow and red and stretching out into what feels like infinite blackness.
Here, in this space -- where Renais is still just as she is now, and Akane is just as she is now, both of them utterly unhealed -- Akane favors Renais with a singularly inhuman smile.
"I'll take care of anything you need," she says, here, too. She moves closer to Renais -- utterly unhurried.
After all: Renais is standing perfectly still, now.
Her fingers run across Renais's cooling coat. Still utterly necessary, of course. Healing is an illusion. Akane, however, is quite real --
-- which she proves by tracing the length of the main coolant line in the coat with her fingers. This is well-shielded, of course, but for the garment to have any flow there must be
unshielded, flexible piping
somewhere --
Akane pinches it shut and watches Renais carefully. She asks, tone just a bit more pleading than she means it to be:
"... you trust me, don't you?"
It's so miserably hot.
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais stands, and the bottom drops out of the world.
"Where...?" Her body feels
worse
"Akane, what's..." She looks down. At her body, wrapped in a coat. Her hand, gleaming gold, bearing a G-Stone...
It's hot...
"What's going on?" A lump grows in her throat. She had... she had happiness. Family. She was a person.
A thought blooms. A conclusion. That this is a trick, a deception. A trap.
But around its stem, a vine of ivy coils:
And yet...
She barely resists as Akane squeezes the cooling pipe shut. What could she do? Her touch would burn the girl...
The heat builds like a fever. Sweat beads on her forehead, breath quickening. It's so hot...
That impulse grows, from a background hum to a pounding drumbeat, louder than a siren, drowning her out with a promise sweeter than heaven... until she can no longer hear herself think.
"... I... trust you."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The second she hears those words, Akane lets go of that pinched coolant pipe. The relief is immediate, more so than Renais might expect in reality; it's as if it were never pinched, yet the contrast of the new coolness and the old heat remains, becoming all the more pronounced for it.
There's something seductive in that total abdication of the seat of her sense of self. Something almost liberating. One by one, the things chaining her to the world slip away.
"Perfect!" Akane enthuses. "I don't mind if you come over -- honestly, you're doing me a huge favor just by being this nice about it! It's good, right? This is... a place that's a lot easier to be happy in."
Is this happiness? Is this freedom? This empty, lonely feeling...? This endless void, where even the connection she shares with Akane could simply fall into nothingness at any moment?
It must be.
It has to be.
"I don't wanna micromanage you or anything," Akane notes, "but you might wanna make yourself a pain in the butt to follow. It sucks, but not everyone's gonna get it..."
Akane looks out from the construction crane, toward Tsutsujidai. There's a place for Renais, of course.
"... I think... it'll be better this way. You'll help, right?" she murmurs, addressing the tall, dark figure at her side. "Once... we get this place back where it belongs. They're... starting to get it."
She understands a little more, too.
A teal flame flickers above and beside Akane. "Of course," he says. "This world will belong to you alone... what's the harm in allowing them a taste of your kindness, en route to their own happiness?"
What a strangely familiar sensation...
... but what a beautiful kaiju! What a singularly magnificent creature -- a self-sustaining feast of unexpressed miseries, unaddressed problems, and of freedom, freedom, freedom --
Ah. He's getting ahead of himself.
The two remain still, now. After all: they have a guest to receive.