2024-09-08: When I Need My Best Friend
- Log: When I Need My Best Friend
- Cast: Naoko Suzuki, Shari Loom
- Where: Naoko Suzuki's quarters, Ra Mari II
- OOC - IC Date: 0099-09-08
- Summary: While the Ra Mari II is docked at Orb, Shari pays Naoko a short-notice visit. Though both Whispered have not fully processed their emotions in the wake of the Junius Seven incident, they are able to admit to their true feelings and find support in each other's presence. Though the world may burn, friendship endures.
<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.
"...Come here? Right now?"
That's the part that Naoko said out loud, but didn't text back, when Shari said she wanted to come visit. In text, she agreed readily, not really showing an indication that she had any doubts. And she doesn't, really, of course she'd be happy to get to see Shari. There's just... complications, right now.
Much of which of course has to do with the recent tragedy. Naoko doesn't feel confident about her ability to provide comfort in tough times. Especially not when she hasn't sorted out her own emotions about what happened.
Following the Junius Seven incident, where she expended all she had to try and stop the massacre, she'd been out cold for a few days. The only way in which she's managed to process things since then is in the sense of processing data. Shari had already contacted her while she was out, and while she's avoided talking about what she'd been doing and why it took some time for her to respond... well, Shari's smart, it wouldn't surprise her if it's obvious already. And that... is cause for no small measure of anxiety. Knowing that Shari probably wouldn't blame her doesn't make it feel any less like she should carry the blame.
...Moreover, such short notice gave her so little time to prepare! She likes to have Social Stuff all planned in advance, so she can have a good idea about what to expect. Make a whole activity schedule and just work down the list. But with this little time... she's got nothing. What the heck is she supposed to do??
At least she has a lot of practice where it comes to acting more confident than she is. And so, when she opens the door for Shari, she yet manages to be all smiles as usual.
"Hi, Shari! Come in, come in, hope the trip went okay! Just, sit anywhere, I'll get you a coffee!"
Okay, maybe the nervousness does come across a bit, in how hurried she is. Although she said 'sit anywhere', she probably doesn't mean the desk chair, but one of the two chairs set up at the coffee table. That's one more chair than used to be there! Another notable change from last time is the mobile mini-kitchen. It's a bit cramped, but she's managed to fit the basic means to make food and keep things chilled in her own room now. Other than that... things are normal enough. Usual amount of desk clutter, but otherwise things are perfectly tidy. And Naoko's fashion style hasn't changed a bit, still all denim all the time.
"Fair warning, I dialed up the coffee strength a notch as of late," she notes when she sets down the two cups, leaving it up to Shari to add milk (which she now does have) and/or sugar to taste. One might wonder if Naoko even tastes any more of the coffee than before, given the excessive amount of sugar she still puts in it.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"Yep," Shari answers. "I'm heading that way. I've got a lot of traveling to do soon... Might as well get started!"
So, Shari came to the Ra Mari II while it was in Orb. A lot has happened lately, and she definitely did fill Naoko in on most of it. But, she certainly didn't give her all that much time to prepare.
"Thanks!" Shari answers, and she looks--well, no. Shari usually looks like she could go to a funeral, as her pink hair has never stopped her from wearing a lot of black and putting on dark eyeliner, shadow, and lipstick. She's in even more black than usual today though--often she uses a pop of color, but not so much now.
So she doesn't look that cheerful, but she does smile at Naoko anyway. "It was fine," she says. "Coffee would be great."
She moves to take a seat at the coffee table. She does notice the changes! She has stuff in her own room...
"Coffee strength is good. I'm working on jet lag soon," Shari laughs. Her laugh is not quite what it should be--it's a little weak. Her mood is still pretty low, as it happens.
Shari doesn't add anything to her coffee this time, just lifting it up to inhale the aroma. "Mm..."
"Oh, yeah," Shari says, and sets down her purse. She starts to pull--candy bars!?
"Here you go," Shari says. "I brought you a present."
These are the good stuff. Only available in PPL vending machines!
"How are you feeling?"
<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.
Naoko doesn't understand that kind of spontaneity at all. Rushing into a fight, or a work project, sure, any day of the week. But rushing into social situations? That's such a foreign concept.
Especially when you're clearly not at your best. When Naoko saw the signs of that in Shari, she may not have outright panicked, but she sure was in a hurry to get those coffees. Coffee does make everything better, and maybe, somehow easier? Not having a plan is so bad, she has no idea what she should do or say right now. She has zero faith in the natural flow of conversation leading her anywhere, when she's not confident about the subject matter that inevitably will be coming up.
But, straight face, keep calm. Sip heavily-sugared coffee. Keep the mask on. ...Yeah, that only lasts for about as long as it takes Shari to offer her candy bars.
"Huh? Are you-- for me, really? Holy crap, these are from the Labs, aren't they?!"
Of course she'd know the Good Stuff on sight. She knows to appreciate it for what it is. She accepts the candy reverently, feeling happy enough she could cry...
Only for the guilt to immediately twist her stomach. How dare she feel happy even for a moment, at a time like this? She slowly puts the candy down in front of her, hoping the self-castigation isn't too obvious on her face.
...And then Shari asks how she is feeling. How she is feeling?
"...Complicated," she decides upon the most honest answer she can give, without putting the focus where she doesn't think it should be. "But don't worry about me right now. It's nothing compared to what you're going through. And... you probably want to get your mind off all that, right? I'll be honest, I don't have any idea how I can help, but... if there's any way I can, then just name it. Whatever you want to do, or talk about, we can do that."
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari can lead the way!!
The coffee is an improvement. As is Naoko's reaction to the candy bars. Shari beams when she takes the candy bars. "Yep," she says. "I knew you'd like them, so I brought extras."
But she does notice the self-castigation. She continues anyway--and--
"...Mm," Shari says. "Complicated's fair. But don't be so hard on yourself, OK? I asked because I wanted to know."
A wave of her hand. "You're already helping," she says. "You're being my friend. That's what I care about."
"And I'm not..."
"I mean, it's not like I got along with my parents, you know? They didn't really want me around, and I'd accepted that. I'm only going to the funeral because Dr. Kabuto convinced me I should, and because maybe it'll help my brother to have me around."
"...That's the real thing I'm worried about. What I'm going to do now that I'm responsible for him."
"So don't wring yourself up so much, OK? That's for starters."
<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.
It's difficult at the best of times for Naoko to not be hard on herself, but under these circumstances, it takes all she has not to wonder aloud why Shari even wants to see her. That surely wouldn't be the case if she knew the whole story. She can't be completely honest about her feelings. It wouldn't help either of them. Shari would hate her, and it would only cause Shari more pain.
But bottling it up doesn't help anything. Shari can clearly tell, for one thing. It's only going to cause more of the focus to be on Naoko, which reinforces her own spiral of negativity.
'Forget about me, just focus on yourself. You're the one who deserves sympathy, not me.'
She doesn't literally broadcast those thoughts, but she might as well have, considering how easy she is to read. And considering how quiet she remains in response. It speaks volumes that she doesn't speak up at all, keeping her head slightly lowered. Until it's Shari situation that the conversation turns to, which causes her to look up again.
"...I never got along with my parents either. They were never there for me. And yet, if I lost them... if I knew that, instead of not seeing them for years, I'd never see them again... I wouldn't just feel nothing. In spite of everything, there's still a connection, still something that... it would feel sad to lose."
She shakes her head. "I have no way of knowing what it's like for you, but I can't help but feel that... something irreplaceable was permanently taken from you, and from your brother. That's... upsetting, and it should be upsetting."
Of course Shari would never blame her. Of course not. But... shouldn't she, though? After all, this changes everything, ruins all of her plans. Naoko's eyes lower back down to the table, before she closes them.
"I really hoped... really wished... that nothing would happen. That you'd be left alone, to live the kind of normal life you wanted. Why did this happen...?"
So she says. But she's already made up her mind about who should be blamed, even if Shari won't.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari gets it. She can tell. Naoko doesn't think she deserves sympathy. That negativity makes her worry, but...
Naoko explains her own. 'Nothing', she says. And Shari looks down. Something irreplaceable, she says. And, well...
"...I feel..."
"I feel angry," Shari says quietly. "I'm--I'm mad. I'm mad as hell. I'll never get to tell them how much I hate them. I'll never get to get married and tell them they're not invited because they didn't want to see me anyway. I'll never..."
"...I'll never see them again, one way or the other. I'll never know if they even cared that I was still alive. And Gareth has to grow up without them, even though they actually cared about him. An that's... that's not right. If they were going to give their love to someone at all, they should've... They should've had the chance to..."
Shari wavers, and tears are gathered now at her eyes. "It's not fair! I shouldn't even know! It's not fair that they died, but--it's not fair that I know, either! That stupid Britannia cares so much about the rich and powerful that I get to know, while there are so many people who just--who just never got back up, and their families might never know what really happened to them!"
"And I--"
Shari breaks off, and takes a moment to just cry, holding herself with her arms. "I--I-I--"
"...."
"Don't," she says then, suddenly. "...Don't..."
"...Sometimes there's no reason," Shari says, lifting her face despite the tracks in her makeup. She reaches up to dab at her eyes with a tissue she's suddenly holding, trying not to ruin her eyeliner any worse than it already is.
"Bad things just happen. No matter what we want, no matter what we hope--they just... They happen."
"I don't know if there's anyone looking out for us. But I know there's things out there that want those bad things to happen. Things, and people. And that's why. Not because we failed, not because we didn't wish hard enough..."
"It's because evil is real. And it wants people to suffer. And fuck that! I won't just stand by and do nothing anymore!"
"...So don't pull back now, OK?" Shari asks, and her voice is quiet again. "Not now. Not when I need my best friend."
<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.
Though it was Naoko's goal to get Shari to open up about the way she really feels about what happened, she wasn't quite prepared for this to happen. She openly stares, wide-eyed, when it all comes spilling out, the full extent of the emotions that she never would have, never could have guessed. In spite of the similarities she thought to see, there's so much more to the situation. So many elements that she couldn't begin to factor in, because they don't apply to her in relation to her own parents - the brother who was loved instead, the complexity of Britannian nobility in addition to everything else... wondering 'what if'.
What can she do to help with any of this, at this point? Shari is crying. She should do something, say something to make it better, shouldn't she? What would a supportive friend do, at a time like this?
"Sh-Shari...", she begins, moving as if to extend a hand across the table. ...What right does she have to try and comfort someone she wronged, she can't keep the invasive thought from resurfacing. Her hand shrinks back, that awful feeling in her stomach returning with a vengeance.
Don't, Shari says. Don't worry, Naoko thinks, I won't. But it soon becomes clear that she misunderstood. Don't pull back. It's not as if she wants to. She treasures her best friend. She'd have a hard time saying that out loud normally, but especially now, with the way she feels... she can't manage to wipe the guilt from her expression. Sometimes there's no reason, no... but there was this time, wasn't there?
"...They made me," she finally says, quietly at first, before raising her voice. "They made me choose, they-- I-I pulled the lever, I had to, but I--"
She's too emotionally distraught to coherently form the words together. But she's decided to make the effort, to be honest about the way she feels. In response to that wish, Ariel wastes little time in leaving her perch on Naoko's left braid, and moves to flutter by her side. The mentally soothing presence of her Friends isn't enough to calm her down, this time. But they can interpret her thoughts, no matter how haphazard they are. And thus, Ariel is able to help Naoko explain, by providing the context.
>"...They forced a choice. Do nothing and let the plans of the instigators succeed, concentrating death and destruction on a fixed point... or act to reduce the impact as much as possible, at the cost of unpredictably spreading it across the entire planet."<
Never would Naoko have expected to need to directly deal with the Trolley Problem. She always knew what her answer would be, and at the time, she didn't hesitate to answer in that way. But she's seen it now, the personal consequences of her actions. And they do feel like her own, personal actions. Her hand was on that proverbial lever before many others. She actively encouraged people to choose action. And so...
"...I failed. I-I couldn't find a better way... I did everything, everything I could, with everything I had, but it... it wasn't enough. After all that, it still w-wasn't...! Then, what was it all for...?"
Ariel and Uriel can't dispel these feelings of guilt. Ultimately, they only know how to handle situations that Naoko could foresee in advance. Naoko didn't think she could end up in this particular pit of despair, and thus, they too have no idea how to get her out of it.
Uriel, however, can add in his own bit of perspective, fluttering into the air as well.
>"Hey, hey, were you even listening to her? She just said it, right? Evil is real, and it wants people to suffer. Don't you remember? Why things happened the way they did?"<
Naoko gasps, suddenly sitting straight up in her seat. "There was something, something! I-it fought back, denied the miracle from happening. I-I felt it. There was... one of us was with them, with the invaders. Is that how they...? But, I-- I couldn't-- I tried to make contact, but it was all weird, and I just, I couldn't figure out to--"
Knowing what she's doing doesn't make it any easier to stop doing it. This is simply the result of having emotionally walled herself off without fully processing what happened. The dam had to burst at some point, and of course fate would have that happen at the time she least wanted it to... the time when her best friend needed her support. With that kind of thought pattern, small wonder that her reasoning keeps going in circles.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Guilt. Shari sees it in Naoko, and it's... sad. It's sad to see her struck like this.
But Shari listens when Ariel explains; provides the context. They 'made her'...
"I..." Shari listens, and she nods. "I see. So, no matter what you did, you couldn't make it all better."
But Uriel does help. Naoko gasps, and Shari listens to that too. "...I... one of us, huh...? I guess they'd have them, too. Time-space isn't so limited as to only apply to Earth. But one of us..."
She pauses. "Naoko," Shari says seriously, and this time she reaches across the table. "...It's not your fault."
"...It's that 'other's'. This time..."
"...There was a miracle," she realizes in a flash of insight. "But it was their miracle."
"...I'm not... good at philosophy and all that. I couldn't tell you what it's all for, when you couldn't help everyone. But their actions aren't your fault. They're theirs."
"...I know..."
"I know that what matters is that we don't give up," she says. "We've still got an Earth. We've still got each other. So..."
"Cry if you want. I'm going to. But... if there's one of us with them..."
"...Then the 'us' with us are just going to have to work harder, right?"
"...That's the other thing I wanted to tell you. I brought the specs. I finished it. My 'Knight'. I'm..."
"I'm not going to stay on the sidelines anymore. And from what you just said, I'm even more sure that's the right answer."
"...And if anybody blames you for doing your best, then I'll..."
"Then I'll have something to say to them!"
<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.
Naoko's faith had been thoroughly shaken by the whole ordeal. She spent so long working on the machine that would be perfectly suited to her in every single way, that would at long last allow her to personally contribute in the way she always wanted to. To work miracles in the truest, most direct sense.
Yet when the time came where it really mattered... her best still wasn't good enough. She couldn't think about that. She couldn't afford to. There was no way she could keep moving forward if she had to accept that. And so, her thoughts just kept moving in circles, without concluding anything definitively.
Until, finally, that thought pattern grinds to a complete halt. At the moment where Shari reaches across the table, and touches Naoko's hand.
One might have expected her to pull back from that. She certainly would have, normally speaking. But right now, at this moment... there is only a sharp intake of breath from Naoko, and her attention is drawn to Shari. She's listening. Perhaps for the first time today, she is able to really, truly listen.
It's not your fault. There was a miracle, but it was their miracle.
Those words get through to her. All of a sudden, they don't seem very difficult to accept as truth. Of course, that's it. The only thing that can beat a miracle... is another miracle. They had more time to prepare theirs. Now that she knows, she can be better prepared next time. It's not over yet. There's still something she can do. She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath.
"You're right... you're right, but... I won't cry." Not right now, at least. "As long as there's someone who believes in me... I can keep going."
Naoko's eyes suddenly fly open, and she quickly draws her hand back, blushing fiercely. That's more like the usual Naoko. Ariel and Uriel, too, return to their usual positions, passively smoothing over Naoko's more common runaway emotions. Business as usual. Soon enough...
"A-ahem. I... I appreciate it. So uh, what was that, about the Knight? You're done, really? That's great, show me, show me!" She can't help but still feel a little bit guilty considering how it happened, but... she couldn't deny being happy about Shari's decision to pilot it herself. It only feels right. And besides...
"I can't wait to fight with you by my side!"
Three, two, one...
"...I-I mean, you know, not like-- it's because we'd be allies, right, that's all!"
Well, that too is business as usual, isn't it?
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari's faith has only just really finished forging. For a long time she felt like she was on the outside looking in on all these things--but she knows, now, that she can do something. ...Whether it'll be enough, that she doesn't know. But being in a position to try matters.
...Shari thought that description might get it. She's a little surprised that Naoko lets her touch her hand, but she smiles when she listens. The way that Naoko takes that deep breath... and Shari nods. "Yeah," she says. "Well, that's me. I believe in you, Naoko. You already gave me a miracle."
Then Naoko draws back quicklike, and Shari laughs a little. That's much more like her.
Business as usual, right?
"That'll be great," Shari agrees, and with a teasing note, "Because we're allies."
A pause, and she sighs. It's not a bad sigh, though. "Here. Have a look at the specs." She pulls a couple of data pads.
"...I think I've got more crying to do, but..."
"Maybe later. Right now I wanna show you what I did with the three-tier Void manifolds!"