2023-10-05: )instar)

• Cast: Asciel Colette, Ai Martel
• Where: Fujinomiya City
• Date: U.C. 0097 10 05
• Summary: // Then we'll just make a new promise.

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<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        Slowly, surely, steadily, the frontline against the Mechanical Beasts shifts in favor of the OCU's defenders from their holding point at the ~Assault Fortress Neo-Parthenon~ (no matter how much the news and internet totally know it's the Macross 13!). It's a long and difficult process of entrenchment...and through it all, the silent eye of its operator has overseen, has guided from afar, to the current defenders of humanity.

        It's a microcosm of what Asciel wanted, isn't it? To be at everyone's side endlessly, to guide their every action, to keep them secure and maintained and resolved.

        It's something Asciel's good at, isn't it? Losses are nearly nonexistent. Supplies are distributed impeccably. Why, it almost feels as natural as operating her own body, to be guiding the movements of the masses, to be whispering in their ears, to maintain an orderly flow.

        ...Approaching the base isn't difficult, and anyone mysterious who claims to be here to help is immediately let in with almost dismissive speed from Asciel's direction. There's a bit of frustration on the part of OCU and Cathedra officers at how their field commander is, you know, a famous terrorist who partly caused this whole mess and is operating out of stolen property while acting so reclusive and short-spoken, but they also (frustratedly) concede that it's working. And the guidelines for 'don't enter these sectors' are pretty well coded as 'so this is where you'll find Asciel'.

        ...Indeed, one of those is the obvious center of operations - the Neo-Parthenon's bridge/head. Upon which, entering...meets anyone with rather loudly playing music.

o/` -<________https://youtu.be//jrx94X4gIwY______>-
o/` -< Feryquitous / Aitsuki Nakuru - Monodrate >-

        ...The Codarl Asciel so often inhabits is utterly surrounded by interfaces at the bridge's center. Two strategic overlays for coordinating ground troops against the endless hordes of Mechanical Beasts. Access ports for the main cannons. Internal communications and external guides with other contacts. ...And at the center of it all, an outright rhythm game, its inputs keyed to all the windows. Yes, Asciel is essentially playing tactical command to the beat of these songs, calibrating this massive body to physically interface with the tune - of course she could just autoplay any rhythm game perfectly but that's not the point is it?


                wakarenokotoba naku kieta
                You disappeared without saying goodbye.


                anata no koto o yurusu made no jikan o
                I wonder if I'll live long enough to forgive you.


                watashi wa iki reru ka na
                Will I be able to survive at all?


                maibyou itami ni taete kurushimi ni mogakunara
                If I struggle with pain and suffering for every second


                suna ni hisomu mono ni natte
                I'll become buried in the sand

                kowareru toki ni imi o
                I want to know what it meant to break

                shiritakatta, shiritakatta, shiritakatta no
                I wanted to know - I wanted to know, I wanted to know...

                kowarete shimaitakatta
                I just wanted to be broken too.

        ...it's a bitter song about a difficult parting, and Asciel's singing along with a little bit of heart-tightening struggling. Passionate, but a little off tune, because...it's reminding her. Of everything she did wrong, of everything she's been trying to find a way to do, trying to bring herself to make up for.

                kore de saigonara dorehodo, ~sukuwa reta~ no darou
                If this were the end, would it have ~saved~ me, I wonder

                nigetakatta yo
                Since I wanted to run away

                anata ga jigoku ni ochirunara
                But it sent you falling into hell

                nani demo yokatta, aaaaaaah...
                No matter how hard I tried, aaaaaaaaaa...

        Each emphasized word to the crescendos in the chorus brings Asciel's eyes to squeeze utterly tight, every single screen lightning up in sequence as they're cascaded upon by her fingertips...by the end of it, she pauses the playlist for just a little while, gripping onto a steely superstructure. This isn't the time and place to be regretful, she assumes...and yet...

<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.

Ai Martel has been watching the news. Of course she has. Asciel may have left her behind, but... it's not so easy for her to reciprocate the gesture, as much as she meant it when she said she 'wouldn't trouble Asciel anymore.'

It was this morning, while she was still laying in bed, that Ai Martel made a decision.

Half a century ago, in Kyushu, everything slipped out of her hands. There was nothing she could have done. No way she could have known what would happen. She was frozen, as 50 years passed between two instants. But she is no longer trapped.

She's been watching the news, and following things on the ground at Fujinomiya through her own intelligence; of course she has. She couldn't let go so easily. And now, Ai Martel will demand to be heard. She refuses to be abandoned without so much as a word. She refuses to let something so precious to slip through her fingers again, the way it did in Kyushu.

Today, she's foregone her normally ostentatious dresses, in favor of a dark red pilot suit, hugging her figure provocatively. Never mind that she hasn't brought a machine to pilot. Questions are dismissed, simply identifying herself as someone 'here to see the commander'--which gets her inside far more easily than she expected.

It's lucky for her that she's been here before. She knows how to open the doors Asciel's sealed, following them as signposts to where she must be. She can hear the song well before she gets there... and a melancholy overtakes her, even as she realizes there may be hope.

She enters the passcode to the bridge... and waits, finger hovering over 'enter', as Asciel's song ends.

Silence.

She presses the button. A pang of anxiety crosses her heart as she sees the Codarl standing there, facing away from her, and takes a step forward.

"I believe it was you, ma petit chouette, who disappeared without saying goodbye," she says quietly, past the lump in her throat.

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        -She feels the intrusion before she hears it. A cold worry races up Asciel's center, as the door to this secure space slides open. She's not facing away for long - a profound icy silence fills the cold, mechanical bridge. Every interface halts at once, when Asciel whirls around, only to see-

        -only to hear-

        Sucking in a staticy, breathy noise, Asciel's eyes dim momentarily gazing at Ai down at the doorway, a hand flying to her heart. The tension of believing she's been compromised is replaced with an entirely new one. After burning so hard to think of just how to make up to Ai, at how thoroughly she let a gap into her heart open wide and begrudgingly accepted another's help in asking how to make it right...

        It'd gotten so much more complicated than 'just go to her house and apologize' in Asciel's conceptions, in the spare moments she had between then and now.

        The silence is palpable. Is she running away again? One might wonder...but no. Fingers curling tight, iris wavering between Ai and her immediate surroundings - but always returning to her, Asciel grimaces widely, the sound-dampening on her heels scuffing upon the bridge's steely floor...and she whispers out...

        "...I...I know that I did."

        ...it's an opening of a pressure valve that's been built up to boiling.

        "I know I ran away without telling you anything! I've barely been able to think of anything else!! I know that it was unfair! I know it was selfish of me to call pulling away from you and feeling too awkward to call some sort of possibility of forgiveness! ...I...I...I..." Lips parted, Asciel's legs give out just a little, sending the Arm Slave to its knees, both hands rising up to splay her fingers over her face.

        "...I thought all I was able to do...was hurt you. I...didn't think you would understand. That anyone would want to understand...all that I felt at that time. ...if...if I told you my real feelings...wouldn't it have felt less like running away, and more like shoving you backwards?"

        Her hands fall down limply to either side, eyes closed pensively. "...what I did was wrong, because I was...terrified of hurting you. ...as soon as I found out how much you cried over me, I...I wondered if leaving you was worse."

        "...but now you're here. ...you came out all this way. ...I don't know why you would do that. All I can imagine is that you want me to feel what you did. That you want me to know how badly I did make you suffer all the same. And...if so..."

        "...then do it."

<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.

Ai watches, a moment's anxiety rising in her breast as Asciel remains motionless, eyes darting this way and that... but... Asciel remains, instead of trying to run once again.

She listens. Her boots click on the floor as she steps forward when the Arm Slave drops to its knees, looking up, arms crossed with one hand cupping the other elbow. "When you left, the way you did... I was vulnerable, opening myself up to you. With the belief that you were there for me. That we could talk."

She looks down, eyes glistening with tears. "I trusted you to be honest with me. Trusted you to do exactly that, to tell me your real feelings. Maybe you would have tried to push me away, but... whatever it was, we could have talked about it, about why you feel that way, about why I..."

She lets out a sigh. "What you did was the most hurtful thing you could have done."

Her eyes meet Asciel's again, and she steps forward again, tears streaming down her cheeks as she straightens, arms at her sides. "But I REFUSE to be abandoned!" she yells, her voice echoing through the empty bridge, lips trembling, upset. "I will NOT allow you leave my life without so much as a goodbye, Asciel Colette! You are the most precious thing in my world, and you will not be rid of me so easily!"

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        Something dizzy and unfocused enters Asciel's gaze - a spiral working its way around the perimeter of her left eye, like a comet trailing across a dimmed star.

        Why does so much terror enter her at Ai getting closer and closer? Why is her first instinct to pull backwards? Why - when she's telling her so sternly that she refuses to let that happen?

        ...Ai's crying. Right before her. ...she remembers. The first time a human cried for her. Before she was Asciel. ...It was a memory so ancient that she didn't understand the meaning of it. That she could even be cried over. Why...

        "...why do you...care for me so much to the point that it makes you cry...?" It's an embarrassing admission of emotional misunderstanding, and Asciel knows it immediately. "...why have I never been able to grasp it? Why, when it feels so close? ...why do we feel so far apart when...when...we...we might have the same thing...in our..."

        Her fist tightens.

>pathetic. pathetic pathetic pathetic. this thing i felt for her when i rejected that first attempt to help, so many years ago...

>...now it's all for me.

        "...I hated how much I needed you!!!" Asciel whirls the side of her hand around to an oversized railing beam with a loud clang - the first sound echoing through the bridge, jolting their feelings back to reality. "...I hated that despite how much I need you, all I wanted to tell you was how overwhemingly sick I always feel of every other person! How I felt like I was betraying the only reason I'm alive with wanting to be with you! When you poured your heart for me, when you let yourself be so vulnerable, that all I could think about was my purpose, my promise to everyone in the world except for you-!"

        "...I...I started to think you were foolish. And I thought if I told you that, it would hurt you. Because I started to assume you were weak." Sliding downwards with each utterance, Asciel's knees pull up to her front, head lifted to stare skyward.

        "...I thought if I ran away, you'd find someone you could actually be happy with. ...the love I have, this curling, thorny, acidic thing, this bile I keep pooled up...I can't imagine it's something you actually want."

        All the artificial tendons in Asciel's neck fall limp, gazing over her knees down at the slowly nearer Ai. Asciel hasn't moved an inch. "...but here you are. Not wanting to be abandoned by something that's always found humans kind of disgusting. I...I thought someone as amazing as you could've had anything, anyone else in the world!!! It's...it's unfair, it's cruel, it makes me sick to think that we live in a world where...even you're lonely, too."

        The back of Asciel's hand lands with a gentle thud, only a few feet from Ai, palm outstretched. "...aaah. ...it's a bad joke. ...you, who cries more than I've ever seen because you kept getting left behind...me, who feels nothing more terrifying than having someone close to me...why'd it have to be us who fell in love with each other this bad?"

<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.

Ai flinches as as Asciel strikes the railing, but stands firm. She listens, she watches, eyes glancing toward the hand as it falls near her.

"I could have handled being told I was foolish." She chuckles. "I am foolish, after all. Weak, as well." Her eyes meet Asciel's. "If I weren't, perhaps I could have taken the hint. It's because I'm weak that I'm here... I'm afraid of being abandoned. Afraid of being alone."

She looks down at the hand in front of her. "I... can understand that you feel sick of everyone else. And I understand that I seem to be at odds with your purpose, that... your love for me is at odds with everything else you were before me."

"And... even if I were infinitely desirable, my dear... I don't want anyone else. I want you." She looks up again. "I care so much for you because you are a beautiful, singular existence, a woman of single-minded dedication and limitless passion. Every time I see you learn something new, every time *I* learn more about *you*, it fills me with joy. I find you... adorable. Sexy in ways you never crafted. I want nothing more than to make you happy, to be happy *with you*. I want to learn everything there is to know about you, I want to help make you as great as I know you can be, I..."

She exhales, and places her hand on Asciel's thumb, sitting on her palm. "I want to spend as long as I can by your side."

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        As much as Asciel's hand was presented to Ai, open and accepting - the moment Ai stands upon it, there's a noticeable tightening in the Arm Slave's posture, shoulders pulling inward defensively.

        As ever, she's uncomfortably warm to the touch. Especially in times of strain, where her core struggles to process overwhelming feelings - they just keep building and building and building. The closest thing she can get to releasing them is the venting of heat through that cooling hair.

        -Is it the closest she's truly done to crying?

        It's painful to love, after all. It's terrifying to have someone so close, to be so near where Asciel is most vulnerable - and in turn, for her to be made vulnerable that way. "...ah...that...storm of uncertainty is clouding my eyes again. ...This...is what I hated, Ai. The...tightness and heat I endure whenever I'm with you. That unsealing of everything I never wanted to feel. ...the urge to judge you, the urge to put you a safe distance away from me, the urge to judge myself, the urge to flee a safe distance away from you. ...the spiral of intoxicating addiction and withdrawal. The way I've never felt more able to breathe than when I'm with you. The way that very freedom feels like it's drowning in you."

        "I don't want to be so reliant on you that I have to hold onto you for dear life from now on..."

        "...but the only thing I want is that very urge to hold you tight."

        Fingertips trembling, curling slightly, rising up to gently brush their metallic-tipped ends over Ai's surface...Asciel's vibrating with every second she spends trying to make this right. With the ever-looming tension that she's going to make something wrong again. That it's just around the corner. That the bond they share is under such immense strain at this tender moment. That the urges and swelling of acrid and sweet yearnings are about to pop. That, that, that, that-!

        Oh so suddenly, Asciel's hand pulls Ai right up against her chest, against the oven-like core that houses her center, tucking her face in to brush those rubbery lips against the top of Ai's head. "...It...it...it's impossible for us to be as close together as we want-!!!"

        And just by saying that- Asciel's head throws back in the tense pain of making it inevitable that they'd never stay apart.

        "Right here, right now, I'm making another promise that we're staying together-!!!"

        And just by that oath - Asciel's arms tighten from the burden of that responsibility. The same weight upon her shoulder that the entire planet's fate is born upon - it is doubled, from the addition of this promise to Ai alone.

        "...it hurts to say that, it hurts so much, I didn't want to make another promise, but - - it hurts more to see you in pain, it hurts more to think you needed me this much, it hurts more to think about betraying your love, it hurts more than every tragedy I want to prevent..."

        "But if that pain lets me transform into something that can make you laugh, that can bring you comfort, that can warm your loneliness, then...then...!!!"

        A flash of light, as though a shooting star, crosses Asciel's left eye, re-igniting the shimmering sunset to a luminosity that bathes Ai in its orange glow. "...I want you to have a place to belong. From the moment we met, it was so obvious that someone with your kind of smile, with your kind of conviction, with your kind of cherishable unfettered ferocity - that somehow, that place would have to be in this very cocoon I made. ...there isn't a lot of room. The parts of me that'll touch you are incomplete, inhuman, insufferably thorny...but...if this is where you need to be...then I will let you in."

<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.

Ai seems to relish that heat, if only because she knows its source. She smiles softly. It's painful, indeed. Love means to open oneself up... and she's been hurt.

"It's scary, isn't it? These emotions you're unused to, tugging your brain in directions you don't know how to move in... the fear of being changed, of hurting me, or worse." She presses against Asciel gently, shivering a little bit as she feels those lips touch her.

"A promise," she murmurs, biting her lip, watching as as Asciel's body language changes. She's briefly tempted to apologize for that pain--but she thinks, on the other hand, that perhaps... that pain is all right. Pain is a part of life.

She smiles more, looking up at Asciel from near her chest. Emotion swells in her, tears running from the corners of her eyes, sparkling in the orange light. "If you must bear pain in loving me, then it's only fitting that I must as well," she replies, dragging gloved hands down the Codarl's chest. "I accept you for all that you are. The inhuman, the incomplete, the thorny... your love is worth the poisons I might bear to feel it."

"However... you hurt me. I forgive you, but you damaged my trust. We can't be the same as we were, yet... it'll take time to build that back up. But I know you can, because I know a promise is not something you make lightly."

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        "...I...almost...don't want to be forgiven," Asciel admits quietly, her words coming out at a stuttering, staccato sort of rhythm. "...nn. ...forgiveness. ...I...cannot say I've ever forgiven anyone. ...I cannot say I've ever let anything go. ...in part...it's because I felt that I couldn't forgive you for the inherent flaws of being human that I made myself run away from you to begin with."

        "...and yet, I am forgiven all the time. Why, just look at my position now. Ruining everything and enabling the very crisis we're at the center of, aiding and abetting its mastermind - but somehow I've been entrusted with dispelling it, and those I was rather merciless in trying to destroy were just willing to accept me the other day."

        An awkward little laugh washes over Ai's head, Asciel giving her just a little bit more distance from her face - hand shifting to provide a more comfortable platform. "...is it supposed to be a 'fair' process? Is anything about this supposed to be 'fair'? ...we're...so different, so uneven, that...ah...it can feel like you are the one who risks everything between us. Maybe that's why...it's so difficult. I'm accustomed to bearing all responsibility. ...but whenever we're together, it's you who winds up pushing yourself so hard for my sake."

        "...or...is that just it...?"

        A flustered warmth comes across Asciel's face. "...is it exactly because I'm that near-impossible to love as an equal that a triumphant beacon like you takes it as a challenge, rather than as something kind of pathetic...?"

        Shaking her head, tousling the side-extrusions of hair along Ai's face, Asciel tries her best to put that tendency of placing Ai on a lofty pedestal aside, even if she cannot stop thinking that this woman is clearly the most amazing and powerful and indomitable human ever for being willing to put up with this. Some things might never change...

        "...I wouldn't want it to be the same. ...if it were, I'd just repeat the same mistake. ...I...will become something anew, so that our bond can be something more adapted to each other. ...if you're truly to be this tight within my boundary, then the shape you take is inevitably going to permanently mold the result of metamorphosis..."

        "...s...saa...but...right now...the idea of that sounds wonderful...something Ai-shaped forever imprinted on me...~"

<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.

Ai frowns lightly. "Well... we'll need to talk over what you ran away from, then, won't we? ...somewhere I might be more sure you'll stay the whole time. And not while you ought to be helping coordinate military action. And as for *them*, I'm unsure they've forgiven you so much as you are the enemy of their enemy... and you are excellent at fighting the Machine Beasts, it seems."

She reclines comfily in Asciel's hand. "Perhaps that's it," she replies to the idea that it's a challenge. "As I said before, you are a *singular* existence. So very beyond me, so alien, even as you approximate humanity so closely. I suppose I do take it as a challenge... to understand you, to meet you on your level. Perhaps I'm not on your level... in some ways, I don't believe I ever could be. But I do, truly, see you as an equal. We are of different worlds, different origins, different eras, different *substances*..."

"But I don't believe we're so different." She smiles.

"I do believe that you'll change me, as much as I change you," she agrees. "That... I think, is something you will need to learn. Neither you nor I are static... and telling me I am a fool, telling me I am wrong, isn't something to shy away from. Perhaps something to be delicate about, however."

"Mmn. Something Ai-shaped imprinted upon you... and something Asciel-shaped imprinted upon me." Her grin grows wider. "Two hearts, interlocked.... the gap between us may seem insurmountable. And it may be hubris, but I believe I we can bridge the gap, or find our love within it. Or... perhaps it's more narrow than you fear."

"I love you, Asciel Colette. And I will never let you go..." And she adds, with the weight it deserves, "I promise you that."

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        "...You're the first and only one I've ever loved, Ai." Asciel replies, just to absolutely affirm it. Not just to Ai, but to herself - before she can persuade herself, like she's done before, that her feelings are something that aren't quite love. "...it can be hard to think of why. When I first saw your smile, I couldn't help but tremble with this overwhelming want to reach past that barrier that divided us. I couldn't stop wanting to lunge out of that little rectangular window into the world you lived in. ...it may have been...the first time I pursued such a feat because I wanted to, rather than because I felt...obliged to."

        "...you, a refined woman made of the elegance of days gone by, the picture of eternal noble grace, who regardless believes in a brighter future, the kind of woman the humanity of today presumes to be a romantic fairy tale from the distant past..." Asciel's fingertip carefully traces Ai's face - the level of control and precision she has to just barely brush even at this difference in scale and material, such that even that metallic digit feels like a mere gentle raking...

        "...me, a reckless thing made to live in a world yet unformed, an avatar of the lights still imagined to be years to come, who regardless can only want a return to what once was - the kind of entity the humanity of today fears as a horrible portent of the far-flung future..." Her hand retreats to rest upon her own shell, a pensive look in her eyes.

        "...this world would refuse what we are harshly enough. Neither of us belong well in it. ...I...am so dearly sorry that for even a short while, I...led you to believe you didn't belong with me either. ...I don't want it to happen ever again. Even if your entire world falls apart, I want to shelter you in my arms. Even if everyone else refuses me, I want to be sure I'm together with you..."

        ...So shortly after Ai mentions that there is a broader context to this meeting, that there are greater demands placed upon Asciel - a little window pops up with a communique about proper placement of supplies, and with a frustrated glance, Asciel replies to it with a simple poke and a long-automated message. "...don't worry about any of that. I've streamlined the process of managing this base to where - mm. You saw it. I was practically making it into the form of a game, given how repetitive it became. ...Stay with me as long as we desire. Please...I missed you quite vastly, after all..."