2022-10-21: You Can (Not) Reunite
- Log: 2022-10-21- You Can (Not) Reunite
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Shinji Ikari
- Where: Tsutsujidai - Starbows
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-10-21
- Summary: Two longtime acquaintances meet once again one-on-one, and have a more revealing conversation than either of them might have hoped for.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
This current strategy... this is honestly a lot better. Akane's tired of fighting, after what happened in France. This... this feels better. She never needed to make enemies of so many people... everyone had the potential to understand her.
Right now, in a rarity for her since changing tactics: she's alone. It's because she wants to be, to be sure; she's taken up enough of her new friends' time for now, she reasons. Better to have a day mostly to herself. She's in one of her usual haunts, and the one that makes her easiest to find -- a Starbows not dreadfully far from Tsutsujidai High School. She sips at a bottle of mediocre tea, rather than her usual, staring blandly out the enormous window.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji walks with more purpose than he's accustomed to, though he hasn't done so without latching to habitual comforts. Headphones on, music playing, he tries not to think while he moves. Only enough to know where he's going and what he's looking for.
If he overthinks it, he'll ruin everything. As he so often does.
But even with the music, his thoughts are spiraling out of his control. Everything he discussed with Yuta, Kaworu, and Orpheus... The way Ouka and Asuka were acting. The things Seolla had said to him... Right and wrong. Heroes and monsters. It's all misdirection.
Even once Shinji arrives and sees Akane -- not quite the Akane he remembers, but still Akane all the same -- he hesitates. The music turns off first. The headphones come off later. He steps up to her seat, his reflection visible in that window before he gets the courage to speak.
"Akane Shinjo," he greets, voice soft even for him.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Gaze turning up at the distantly familiar voice, Akane blinks once. "Really? Again? I kinda figured the welcoming party would be it for you." The idea of associations ending the second an interaction goes badly certainly isn't -- unfamiliar for her, to say the least.
She doesn't quite notice the way her heartrate jumps at his presence, the way she ends up looking not at him but past him for a few moments, seeing if the two of them are alone. After a moment of making that assessment, she notes, "I kinda expected you to bring either Kaworu or that woman with you. Huh."
Once she's satisfied that it really is just the two of them, she says, "Take a seat, I guess."
It's fine, she tells herself. He'd only ever encountered her as a third year -- that protects a lot of load-bearing things. "Are you here to ask about Asuka, or what?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji glances aside with Akane's statement, sighing. It would be like him, wouldn't it? An uncomfortable situation, and then giving up.
"I don't think Miss Misato would be a good idea," Shinji admits. He isn't here to be aggressive, which he worries Misato might be. And... he understands it, at least a little. Misato has specific priorities as their commanding officer -- and as their guardian.
He notably doesn't follow up a comment concerning Kaworu.
Shinji sits down as Akane makes the offer, not without a hint of surprise in his eyes. "...Thank you."
And even though he approached her, Shinji predictably doesn't find his words until it's Akane who invites a conversation starter.
"No. Ah, yes." Not just that, he means to say as he trips over his words. His fingers ball up against his thighs in his lap. He's looking more at the table than Akane. "Will you tell me how you convinced her to transfer here?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It's as good a starting point as any. "Oh, is that all? That one's easy!" She seems a little more enthusiastic once she gets a bit of a head of steam going, at least. "I just showed her that a dream could be better than everything going on out there, you know? It doesn't have to be complicated."
That's... a lot of steps elided into one very abstract step, but it's not a lie. "It turns out that a lot of people, especially in NERV, have had a pretty rough go of it. Who wants things to be hard, right?"
She takes another long drink from her bottled tea, asking, "Do you want anything? I'm buying, obviously," before getting back to it. She certainly seems more at ease than she used to be. "She's pretty sure NERV's going to throw her away once there's no more Angels to fight. Is that what you wanna send her back to? Endless fighting and then getting eaten alive by NERV?"
Sip.
"It's not just her, either. Alouette's got kinda the same deal. Renais and Ouka, too. Maybe even Dr. Ohta, depending on how you count it! They're only useful to NERV 'cuz they're good at stuff, and how they got there's kinda sketchy." She leans back slightly in her chair, gaze assessing, waiting for a reaction.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Dreams. Shinji heard that before, too. It feels like pieces are missing, or maybe he's not smart enough to grasp it. It's like... they're still dreaming. Asuka said she wanted to try again, but only if Shinji transferred to Tsutsujidai. Transfered into a dream.
"...Right," he agrees, still looking at the table. And everything is hard. He's always thought so.
"Oh... I'm okay for now. Thank you." This is a reflexive refusal, because this entire conversation has launched Shinji straight out of his comfort zone and following the most basic ideas of what he understands is polite to be fills in the blanks.
Does he want to send Asuka back there? Would he want to send anyone to NERV? These are the thoughts Shinji keeps bottled up. They're inconvenient. Unpleasant. Nobody wants to hear him whine. But Akane's opened that door.
"Not really," Shinji admits. "I hate it. But I didn't think she did." He glances to the window. "And Nagisa... The School is even worse." As far as he knows. NERV is a sketchy place. "We're all tools to them. I know that..."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"I don't think she hated it, but like, I don't think she's been happy in her entire life," Akane says, waving off the idea that Asuka didn't hate it. There's a faint clunking noise under the table, as Akane takes another drink. (It's a 500ml bottle. She's got time.)
'We're all tools to them.' He gets it, she supposes. "Why drag them back, then? Isn't it better..." Her voice drops a little lower, and her eyelids drop just slightly. "... to do something besides fight? I'm not even throwing any kaiju out there anymore... that's one fewer problem. Leave what's left over to the Evoluder or something. He can take it."
A single stocking-clad foot slides against Shinji's shin -- starting about at the knee. Toes slide over the kneecap -- then down. "We deserve better than that... right~? It'd be nice to take some time to appreciate pretty sunsets for yourself..." Those stocking-clad toes come to rest at the front of Shinji's ankles, pressing against them a bit. "... wouldn't it~?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Not happy... No, Shinji's never seen Asuka happy that he can recall. She smiled in that meet up, though. He's never seen her do that.
"I still don't know if I should." Talking it over with Akane seems a dangerous way to decide, doesn't it?! "But I know if I told her 'It's okay, someone else can fight the Angels for you, I can fight the Angels for you,' she would have been angry." He winces. "Really angry..."
If she wasn't dreaming.
Shinji Ikari is absolutely unprepared for what happens next.
First, a brush. He thinks he imagined it. Then realization, startled eyes on Akane to see her giving a look he has never been given before. Electricity fires up his spin, Shinji paralyzed in place, and all his thoughts jettisoned out of his head except for one:
So that's what Kaworu meant.
He tries to speak and it comes out a high pitched squeak strangled in his throat.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The strangled squeak is good enough; half of why Akane does this is to interrupt people's trains of thought. If Shinji is too focused on that, he can't focus on opposing her, she reasons. She puts her elbows up on the table, leaning forward a bit and smiling oh-so-pleasantly.
"Yeah, but what comes after that? For her, it's nothing. Just... nothing. That's definitely bad, isn't it? Is it fair to make her stay, like that?" Back to talking about the task at hand -- but her foot doesn't move off at all.
"But enough about her! Do you want to keep fighting? I'm pretty sure no. You're kinda a soft touch." She hasn't stopped giving him that look. "Maybe you need a soft touch, too...~"
... Yeah, she's not going to ease off.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Akane leans in, and Shinji reflexively straightens, which for his slouch before, is effectively leaning back. He swallows hard, as if wetting his throat might return some semblance of speech back to him.
She's definitely decimated whatever train of thought Shinji was forming. A hard won thing in such an intense conversation, gone in the blink of an eye -- or the touch of a foot, as it were. He can barely focus on her words. What comes after for Asuka? Shinji's never once thought about it, let alone what would come after for himself.
'After' has never existed in his thoughts at all. There was never light at the end of this tunnel.
And Akane's certainly right about him: Shinji hates fighting. He's terrified of it. The words of a 'soft touch' echo in his hazy brain.
"I..."
Shinji tenses up, jaw tight and eyes pinched shut as he tries to close Akane's look and touch out of his mind. "I don't! I'd rather never fight again! But!" His voice goes more shrill with his urgency to force it out of his mouth. He's not a smart boy. He's weak, and he's a coward, and he's not even kind. But...! "But this won't make the Angels stop coming! Or the war stop happening! We'll all still in danger! I don't... I don't know about NERV. Or my father. Or the School or anyone else! I don't even care about the world. But there's Asuka, and Ayanami, and Alouette and Kaworu..."
People on the battlefield with him. People who get hurt more if he doesn't fight. It's not fair. It isn't. She's right. But Shinji... mustn't run away.
He braves looking back at Akane, filled with clear trepidation. "...I can't know what 'after' looks like if we never get it at all."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The second Shinji starts to tense up again, Akane withdraws her foot. If it's not working, there's no point in continuing to do it, actually -- the only reason she ever starts playing footsie is to disarm people. There's a faint thunk of foot against table leg as she shoves her foot back into her shoe.
"Do you think it's really like that? People come and go. Sometimes they're just -- poof! Up and gone out of your life and you never get why. Maybe they died? Maybe they just don't care about you anymore? Though really it's the same either way." Akane pulls out her phone, doing her best to look disinterested as she says it. "Fighting for other people's kinda pointless. The only person you can rely on to do anything for you is you! Anything else is just people trying to keep inconvenient stuff from happening."
She doesn't seem bothered, but she's not particularly happy here, either, despite her... faintly 'off' yet chirpy demeanor. "I mean, it's not like you're any better, right? I bet half of why you're here is 'cuz you think you're too weak alone. And I mean: you are!"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
The thump of Akane's foot is in time with the skip Shinji's heart makes. He breathes out, his breath still unsettled in the wake of her efforts.
He's not so focused on trying to regain himself that he doesn't hear her, and she wins visibly unguarded pain on his face when she mentions people who disappear because they 'just don't care about you anymore'. Shinji's looking down again. He becomes smaller.
That seemed to hit him harder than when she calls him weak, although if he's already started to wilt this much, there's not much further to go, is there?
He closes his eyes again, trying to will himself against the misdirection. That's what it is, right? Even though she's not wrong, but...
That feels like something Asuka would have said before all this happened. And yet, here Asuka is, as if she depends on Akane now.
"But they're relying on you now.".
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Underlining that startles Akane out of her rhythm for a moment. She blinks, and stops tapping away at her phone in favor of looking at Shinji. Her eyes are a little wider than she'd like them to be, her shoulders just a bit too abruptly straight.
She starts to recover. "I mean, I'd be a crappy person if I made the pitch and then didn't help them get situated," she answers, giving a dismissive wave. "This is kinda the trial version of having your own dream. I don't think they'll need me at all before too long!" At least, that's the plan. She can just make more little worlds -- or teach them to do it themselves.
The way she was taught.
As she starts to recover, she decides to stand up, rubbing at the back of her neck and stretching out. "If that's all you have to say, we should probably stop here," she says. "But if you come around... I'd love to show you a dream or two of your own~." ... at this point she's fairly transparently showing off her chest, even if the movement is fairly casual -- rolling her shoulder blades back to show that the time that's passed has been...
... not kind to her, perhaps, but has certainly held some changes for what was once a slim, kind of gangly looking middle schooler not comfortable in her body.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji keeps his eyes on Akane once he realizes he's managed to say something that stuck.
And her answer tells him more, too. Under the table, his fingers curl tighter into fists. They won't need her, she says, and he thinks he might recognize a certain fear resonating in his own chest.
When she stands up, he doesn't try to stop her, his nerves so shot he's afraid to move from his own seat lest he merely fall right over on his face. But Shinji is, woefully, an easily confused teenage boy, and his eyes end up catching exactly where they shouldn't, exactly where Akane wants him to.
It takes some resolve to tear his gaze back to the table.
"... I don't know about that," he says. "But I'll talk to you again. ... Okay?"
His hands squeeze tighter as he tries to will himself into that promise.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane cants her head for a moment, noticing Shinji's struggle not to fall directly into her trap. That's fine -- she can wait. She doesn't need to get him all at once. He's weak and empty inside, she thinks, in a way that's decidedly familiar.
... Kaworu will be upset, no doubt. ... that's fine. She's sure he already is.
She plucks her bottle of tea -- about 2/3 drained at this point -- from the table, and starts to walk off. "Good luck," she says, rather than necessarily agreeing to a second meeting. ... she's accomplished plenty in this one, after all.