Description: After a week of searching, K' finds Whip and puts a rather decisive stop to her intentions to hunt Igniz down solo. Over her vigorous protests, he forces her to stick around and listen to what he's got to say... because he has something to tell her that'll finally end her search for her brother.
It's been a week since K' hung up on Shurui's unsettling little theory, and he still doesn't know what to make of it.
K' had gone through the past few days in a blank haze, operating with the mechanical coldness of the machine he'd once been. His manner of coping with shit was just to shove it all down, letting the anger it triggered drift up to the surface as an obscuring, mind-clearing shield. He only ever let out his underlying doubts-- which, in the past week, had grown considerably in number-- when he had the time to brood on them; and right now, he really didn't. With time, he got really good at forcing himself not to think about it: so good he could almost forget it, half the time.
He knew her intentions already, a fact which made it easier to follow her trail. He tracked her through sightings in ammunition shops and meetings with weapon dealers, following one step behind her as she went through transaction after violent transaction. Nobody exists in a vacuum, especially in a city like Southtown; there's always somebody who sees you pass. Someone who can tell pursuers where you've gone.
Cut to the very fringe of Southtown, 2 AM: so far out from the city, it's barely even Southtown anymore. Standing stock-still, yellow eyes reflecting light in the gloom like a cat, K' is just one of many shadows criss-crossing in the street outside a dilapidated motel in the middle of nowhere. His leathers creak as he shifts slightly, head turning to regard the door. Gloved hands hook in the belt loops of his jeans, as the boy chews on the end of a half-finished cigarette and narrows his eyes on a nondescript car parked out a little ways from the motel entrance.
He'd been in the lobby five minutes before, just to confirm that there was somebody of Whip's description staying there at the time. 'Yeah,' the sleepy-eyed girl behind the desk had told him, 'but looks like she's leaving soon, she's been moving stuff into her car most of the night. You want me to ring her...'
He'd told her no. He knew if he let on he was here, Whip was going to take off. Instead, he just contented himself waiting outside, watching the car in question and working his way to the end of his cigarette.
It's begun to rain, lightly, coldly, and invisibly in the night. It is so dark that the chilly water is betrayed only by its light hiss as it anoints the world, seen only under the low, buzzing light of the motel parking lot that swathes the wide, low-lying buildings and sparse cars in a greeny glow.
For the last twenty minutes, that rainy parking lot has been silent, removed of any bodies and devoid of sound. Only a handful of cars are parked tonight, the motel's business slow and forgettable in the mid-week, and especially with the weather so sour. It's the perfect occasion for someone to slip in and slip out like a ghost, leaving as little evidence that they were there the next morning... much like the dawning sun will do to this falling rain.
Soon enough, one door opens on a corner room, and a lone figure steps out into the pouring wet. She closes the door behind her.
The rain doesn't seem to give her much pause. Without even so much as buttoning up her coat, she steps forward into the poor weather, her slow step and the angle of her back revealing that she's packed down with a heavy load. Balancing three over-stuffed military bags, she crosses the parking lot on swift strides, her body completely dark save for the ember-bright glow of a cigarette. Soon enough, she draws up to some parked, lonely, and nondescript car, rattling keys out of her coat pocket to open the trunk. There's duffel bags already inside. She adds more.
The trunk slams shut, the motion loud and firm enough, and she locks it back up in a precautionary way. And, no less smoothly and mechanically as before, she walks around the car. Passing under one blue-greeny light reveals her, and it's Whip, dressed in jeans that are getting heavy in the rain, a leather coat beading with water, and her dark hair ponytailed back, curling audaciously at the ends under the humidity. She doesn't seem to mind the weather for any reason other than what it's doing to her cigarette. Paused at the driver's side, she tries one last earnest drag, then, exhaling an annoyed huff of smoke, takes the soggy thing out of her mouth to squint at it. She tosses it away before moving to unlock the car door.
Whip reaches for the car door. A light thump later, the entire vehicle shifts infinitesimally, and her target sways downwards: dipping briefly out of her grasp.
-Something- has landed on her car roof. A glance up reveals a lean, looming figure mantling there disapprovingly, sunk deep in a crouch with one hand braced against the edge of the roof. The first thing that cuts through the darkness is the glow of a sputtering cigarette, dangling disembodiedly from an indistinct face; the second is the very familiar pair of yellow eyes set above that cherry-red point of light.
They're narrowed in clear purpose.
The darkness around that gleaming cigarette ember soon cracks into something terrible, a horrific sight baring whitely like the gleaming edge of a scimitar. It's that hated, insufferable, infuriating smirk, and it's haunting a familiar dark face with a distinctly cocky poise. Caught you, it says, without voice.
"Where the hell," K' starts, leaning down from his perch to invade right into Whip's face and give her a very critical look, "do you think you're going? I've been looking for you a whole fucking week, don't you know how to return calls?" Yeah. This is the important question. He's got to get this out of the way first, stop her from just feeding him some bullshit and running off-- and then, when things are a little more stable, he can think about the Other Thing.
Incidentally, his balance is carefully maintained such that at the first sign of that hated gun of hers-- or any other lethal implement she might bring to bear on him-- he can roll deftly right off her car and slide right out of range, preserving the integrity of his face from any gunshots or knife wounds. And, with any luck, the safety of his person as a whole.
It happens so quick she doesn't even think about it.
Something drops out of darkness. Her car moves. Her heart stops. Her hand moves so fast it blurs.
As K' leans close, his throat shakes hands with a gun, Whip's desert eagle glinting under the green light as it pushes its barrel right into his collar. Her finger lays on the trigger. She is one nerve impulse away from shooting.
That's when she sees it. In the nick of time, it's K''s shiteating grin what saves him from any violence. Because no one else can smile like that. Because so few in the would could dare rival such an esteemed degree of obnoxiousness. Catching that grin she so loathes in the little light, Whip's eyes widen and her trigger finger goes still.
She has the novice left to look shocked that he's found her. Thankfully, the look doesn't last long. Her surprise washes away in the race, that incredulous look on her face replaced with something heavier and angrier, everything about her body language changing... except for the gun she's got shoved against his throat.
It's not going anywhere.
Her eyes narrow when his voice cuts through the air, the questions, on some distant level, something she's been expecting. She was hoping she wouldn't have to see him before she left. She was hoping this could have been avoided. She doesn't have time for this.
"None of your business, that's not my problem, and apparently I don't," Whip replies all of K''s demands systematically, her voice cold, colder than the rain, colder that the gun barrel she's got pressed on him. "K', listen good because I won't say this again. Get off my car and get the hell out of my life."
That's the thing of it. To catch her, you can't give any advance notice of your presence, or else she'll take off without even giving you a chance. But to take her by surprise--
K' doesn't look shocked when her gun barrel shoves straight into the little hollow right between his collarbones. He already knew that springing on her out of nowhere would get that kind of reaction. He might even think -less- of her if she hadn't pulled the gun on him, because no well-trained soldier lets themselves be taken by surprise without essaying a swift defense.
Of course, then that gun refuses to lower even when she recognizes him, and K' starts to look annoyed. He knows that if she moves to pull the trigger, he'll be able to paw the gun aside fast enough it won't do more than rip a wide furrow in the side of his neck, but all the same he'd rather not attain any new sources of ventilation tonight. That, and she's certainly not being easy in the application of the barrel. She's shoving so hard that the weapon moves with his swallow: that it vibrates with his unimpressed words.
"It's my business when you decide to be a huge fucking idiot," he deadpans back at her, every word buzzing the gunmetal in her hand. The amusement's gone out of his eyes, and mercifully his smirk has disappeared. "Take on Igniz yourself? What a damned waste. Tell me what the hell you're going to accomplish by THAT."
Igniz, he says.
And absolutely nothing, she replies.
From eyes to toes to gun barrel, Whip flinches. Every inch of her recoils as though she'd been struck. Her eyes widen in disbelief. Her mouth tics at one corner.
She just moves. Quick as an animal bite, and just as unexpected, the gun barrel leaves his throat to be exchanged by her other hand. With no patience and even less mercy, Whip tries to grab K' by the collar and rip him forcefully off her car and far away, immediately letting go and trusting that his reflexes are about as quick as his god damned mouth
"You sonuva BITCH!" Whip's enraged voice barks into the night. "How the HELL do you--!"
Her snarl cuts itself off. The remnants of her good sense step on the coattails of her anger. She has no damn time for this. She's not going to stand here and argue with him. How the hell did he find her? How the hell does he even think he has the right to be here, preaching at her?
"So you know what I'm doing, and yet you ask me a dumbass question like that?! You know, out of all people, I thought /you'd/ understand...!" Whip's jaw snaps shut again. She shakes her head in a forceful manner, turning shoulder on him and moving quickly to open her unlocked car door. "Just fuck off, K'. Do me a favour and forget about me."
K''s light frame goes slack the instant Whip's hand fists in his collar. With a crafty sort of compliant bonelessness he lets himself get pitched off the car, but mid-flight he turns his progress into a controlled arc. Twisting like a cat and landing on all fours, he skids a foot or two as his momentum slakes off. His eyes narrow thoughtfully on her diatribe. He -is- listening. He'll answer in a moment.
One smear of impossible speed later, K' is right back in her personal space. He moves instantly to cut her off from opening her car door and getting in, knowing that if she manages to do so he won't be able to stop her leaving. The quickest route to doing this?
The boy attempts to pin his sister against her own car in a deft, well-trained blur of movement. His mouth flattens in a harsh line of disapproval and exertion alike as he tries to lock her in place, and in the midst of all his focused determination comes a single illogical thought that almost makes him laugh with its mundanity: he prays nobody sees this and mistakes it for a rape. How does he know about Igniz and her intentions? "I know," he answers shortly, eyes narrowing, "a lot more than most people give me CREDIT for..."
And then, cleverly enough, Whip calls K' on his own hypocrisy. But frustratingly enough, being a two-faced son of a bitch doesn't seem to bother the young man appreciably. That, and K' really -isn't- quite as recklessly hot-headed as he was in years past; that he's managed to survive independently for three years already is proof enough he's learned a thing or two about the dangers of complete imprudence. "I do understand revenge," K' tells her coldly. "What I don't understand is base stupidity. You could be going about this any number of ways that would be smarter and more useful than effective suicide."
What he doesn't say-- not immediately-- is that he can't let her go and get herself killed until he can know for certain if she's really his lost sister.
The car door opens.
--And then it SLAMS back shut when Whip's full weight is shoved against it, having the audacity to cough out a surprised breath when she's winded by the side mirror. For a heartbeat, she can't even think, frozen on the spot and staring mindlessly at the side of her own car. It's a miracle the look on her face doesn't strip its paint.
Wide-eyed, sneering, and furious beyond belief, she tries to turn back on her aggressor only to realize she cannot. K''s taller, heavier weight pushes up close and seals her against the side of her car, finding herself ironically trapped against the very thing that promises her escape. For the longest time, she's so pissed off she can barely even breathe, because there's no anger hotter than what's been stoked by a just outrage. He. Has. No. Right.
Teeth grit, eyes fixed, her breath fogging up against the car door, Whip is tethered on the spot and forced to swallow every one of K''s words. For a moment, she's so angry she thinks she sees stars. She can't believe what he's saying -- what he's doing. She has never been talked to like this in her life. Or what she remembers of it. She has to keep reminding herself that what she has is not a life. It's a mockery, and the only thing keeping her away from the truth of it...
One moment, Whip is quiet, pushed up against her car, getting rained on and talked to. Then she gives him his reply. "Who," she grunts, "the hell..."
The next, she is twisting one arm, trying to switch grasps and steal K' by the wrist. Emulsified by the slippery wet of the rain, she tries to turn against the car and on K', and punch the cigarette straight out of his mouth. "--Do you TAKE me for?!"
Reacting with sudden strength, using more than enough to try to extricate her brother off her, Whip reanimates into something fierce and terrible. "You fuckin' think I don't know there's other ways?! Well fuck you! I'm more than well aware of them, you asshole. Maybe I just don't want to take them! Maybe I just don't care anymore! Maybe I'm sick and tired of feeling like a god damned ghost! You ever think about that? You sanctimonious piece of shit, don't you even DARE. He says he's my father! He says he knows who I am! This might not look like a life, but it's MY life, and I'm TELLING you to stay out of it! Forget about me, K'! Because the second I'm out of here, I'm sure as hell forgettin' about YOU!"
Abruptly, K' finds the tables turned. Whip twists suddenly against him, using the fact that the rain makes his grip that much more treacherous to her advantage and turning clear around before he can secure her more firmly in place. She flips around in the cage of his arms, one hand shoving aside one of his wrists-- and the other slamming a crash course straight for his jaw.
He doesn't have a prayer of avoiding it, she's that close to him. It catches him low, nearly on the throat, and drills upwards, knocking his face to one side and clicking his jaw shut so hard he nearly halves his cigarette. In the aftermath he lets his head sway downwards sharply, a smoke-laden breath hissing out of him like steam from an angry dragon's mouth, and he spits the ruined cigarette to the ground. The embers die out in the puddled rain.
His hands nail down on her wrists as she struggles, the boy not willing to make the same mistake twice and leave her free to strike him again. One long leg shoves forward in an attempt to staple both of hers to the car, an ankle hooking in a quick lock to ensure she won't kick him anywhere it'll be a little hard to recover quickly from.
"You don't sound like you're going for answers or the 'truth.' Don't even bother trying to frame it like that." Somewhere, in the back of his mind, K' is wondering where the hell he's dredging up such coldness. Maybe he's finally starting to learn the lesson Geese has to impart-- how to seize his anger until it's a razor rather than an inferno. "You sound like you won't deal with your life and you're just looking for some easy way out of it. What about your -brother-?"
For a moment, his voice almost catches on the word: he blinks hard, forcing past the momentary hitch, and narrows a weirdly-intent gaze on her. He looks too personally invested in the question, and his hands are just a little too tight on her wrists. "You just going to go and blow your life? Leave him alone? That's fucking rich after you told me I couldn't risk mine and abandon my sister."
Red hot, electric joy carves through Whip when her fist smashes into K''s jaw, shutting him up the best way she knows how. There has been a no more deserving ache in the knuckles of her hand. But it is all short-lived. With a sharp breath, her spine meets the side of her car, and the Ikari finds herself caged once more, stuck between K' and a hard place. Her hands fist and her eyes flash with bloody murder, and she gives him a fight, struggling with every inch of her outraged strength against these makeshift shackles. But he's too strong and anger has made her too uncoordinated.
It doesn't take long until Whip is slammed back against the car, panting and seething, the cords in her wrists tightening with rage inside his hands. For a moment, she trusts her alleged captor enough to fall docile and catch her breath, the rain pearling down her flushed face as she glares holes through him. Unfortunately, the reprieve doesn't last long. She doesn't even have the patience to suffer K''s lecture. Breathlessly she shouts through them: "I don't care! I don't CARE! I don't care anymore!" Her body twists again with another livewire struggle, her seething breath misting against the chilled, rainy air. "Igniz took my life away! He took my memories from me! I have to get them back; don't you understand?! I can't live like this anymore! I can't take it! I need to know who I am! I need to know my name! He wouldn't even tell me my name!"
It's hard to see them in the rain, but they're there. The tears will always find Whip. Not even murdering for the Cartel or training with the Ikari has saved her from crying. It takes just one mention of her unknown brother to make the girl flinch. She replies in a broken sob, unable to choke back the peal of emotion in her half-sane state. But sadness mutates into an ugly anger, and she resurrects from hopeless tears into more frenzied struggling, trying to fight K' off her with whatever stength she has.
"Maybe he's better off without me!" Whip implies through her desperate fighting, her voice sounding gutted. Like she's already convinced herself. "Maybe I'm not meant to find him! I got YOU attacked once; I'd get him killed! They know how to find me! I'm sick of running and I'm sick of hiding!" Her arms give a sudden, enmaddened flail, her wrists trying to strain out of his hands. "So don't even fucking preach to me about the easy way out! This isn't easy! This isn't an easy fucking decision to make, you prick! It's taking everything I've got to get into that car! But it's my decision. I feel like everything before this has been decided for me, so don't you DARE try to take this away from me!" The struggling stops. But Whip brings her face in close, to let her words finish what her fists cannot. "Then you're NO fucking different than NESTS."
With the cold inexorability of a machine K' holds his sister in place, failing to move appreciably even despite her violent struggles against him. There is little pity in his demeanor for her stark emotionality. Where a normal person might long ago have succumbed to pangs of sympathy to see a fellow human suffer so, K' remains largely unmoved. Sympathy stings sharpest for the things people are not forced to endure frequently, and for K' this kind of agony is merely a fact of life. He's felt this kind of desperation himself, and all too often.
How would he act, were he in this situation? He can't say for sure that he would be much more rational than her: that he wouldn't fly just as desperately at Igniz hoping for a glimpse of the truth. But K' doesn't care about not being a hypocrite. He doesn't care about her rights or her reasons. He just doesn't want her to get herself killed, because if she's really his sister he could never forgive himself letting her walk away and die.
Those selfish motives, his understanding of her position, and his innate cynicism are part of why his verbal arguments are so weak. What's come out of his mouth so far aren't really -his- words, even if time, experience, and sheer NECESSITY have contributed towards making him a smarter and more discerning sort when it comes to picking his battles. They're Maxima's words, which he's heard time and again whenever he got too impatient: words of prudence and restraint. They're even, after a fashion, Geese's words: words that caution him against the perils of letting his rage govern him completely. "I know what you want. I know how bad you want it. But that doesn't change the fact there are other ways to get it. Ways that aren't suicide. If you would just WAIT and CONSIDER them--"
But inevitably, his everpresent anger comes seeping back the longer she shouts at him, his temper starting to fray as she continues to force him to be the calm and rational one. It's not easy for him to be level-headed or consistent, and perversely enough it's making him start to resent her. Why can't she just be the sane bastion he's come to expect her to be, instead of pushing the burden of reasonability onto his shoulders?
It's a burden which he finally drops at her last needling accusation. His unnatural calm breaks, and breaks hard. His held-back temper snaps so viciously at the comparison she throws in his face that one might almost imagine it made a sound. With an audible snarl he releases her, but it's only so he can vise a hand in her collar securely enough to lift her straight up: killing that half-foot of height difference so he can meet her gaze dead-on, eye to eye.
"Explain to me how not wanting you to -die- makes me NESTS." The anger is lurid in his eyes, and his tone takes on that oddly-personal note again at his next words. "Explain how you have the RIGHT to decide what's better for your brother."
"I'm sick of waiting--" Whip starts to hiss back, but her rebuttal doesn't live long. K''s hand steals her collar and her voice chokes off, partly because of the sudden tourniqueting twist of fabric and partly because she's too damn shocked to remember how to breathe. Pulled up off the ground, she meets her brother's yellowy eyes with an incredulous look. Her eyes don't even blink. Not from fear. Not even from the rain rolling down her face. Her lips twist and her jaw tightens. She says nothing now, because she doesn't need to.
Her only reply is there in her staring, crying eyes. All they say is: I warned you.
Her freed arm makes the slightest of movements. In under the time of a heartbeat, Whip shakes something free of her coat sleeve, and clenches the object inside her fast fingers. There is only the momentary glint of a blade, and while hard to see, it's easily-felt, as the girl tries to shove a knife into the shoulder that holds her aloft. Quickly and mercilessly, like ripping off a bandaid, she performs a mechanical one-two of a twist of the knife and then her body, trying to disable him, insert one boot, and then violently kick herself free.
"--Because it's not your CHOICE!" Whip will snarl upon her hopeful excision, trying to let go and even leave her weapon behind to make space. She rubs tenderly at her throat, the movement thoughtless and disconnected, and then finished when a memory makes her bristle. "And you shut UP about my brother! Stay the hell out of my life! Stop embarrassing yourself. You think we're friends? You think I care about you?" She pauses briefly, but never for long, and her voice resurges in a broken sob. "I don't have to explain ANYTHING to you! You hear me?! NOTHING. Leave me ALONE!"
Again, and much more quickly than before, she goes back for her car door.
His eyes twitch briefly, a reaction solely of instinct, when the knife bites into his shoulder. But on the whole, the reaction is considerably less than Whip might hope or expect. This is, after all, a boy to whom gunshots are of little issue: one knife wound can be endured. That doesn't mean it doesn't piss him OFF though. His eyes narrow, teeth parting in a rudimentary bare, and when she plants her heel against his chest and pushes away K' lets her go. He watches her malignantly and carefully.
He doesn't try to remove the knife. For now, it'll stop up the blood. He can deal with it later.
Were Whip anyone else in the world-- just about /anyone/ else at all-- K' would have already long since turned his back, waved her off, and decided that if she wanted to get herself killed that was her own prerogative. He might not even have come out here at all. Free choice and autonomy include the right to die, after all, and it's no business of his what other people decide to do with their lives. But she's not just anyone. She might be his sister. And he can't let his sister go.
That's why, when she goes right back for her car door, K' goes right back for her wrists.
He is done talking. He's done with reason or logic. There's something he has to figure out, and her getting herself killed is kind of an obstacle to that. But he isn't making the mistake of leaving her hands free a second time; he snares both wrists in a hand, progressing his grasp to a lock that destroys her ability to retaliate against him, and in total, angry silence he starts to drag her bodily away. He'll even knock her out if he has to. He just has to KNOW for certain who she is to him before she goes off and leaves him for good.
That fucking knife is still in his shoulder. Annoyed, he rips it out and discards it, and the sudden outpouring of blood streams down his arm. It probably gets on Whip by proxy, but K' is so incredibly far from caring about that in this moment.
Her hands get plucked off the door handle. Whip inadvertantly shuts the car door again with her hip as she veers on K', turning on him with a look that could crack glass. "What the hell are you doing?!" she grinds out thinly, lowly, dangerously as she tries to struggle away, grounding out a frustrated sound when her eyes catch her knife -- still buried in his body. She knows he was made of tough stuff, but she didn't think it would be this tough. Her surprised underestimation is her undoing, and before her surprised senses even realize it, she's caught. "What the HELL are you --" she huffs out, trying to decide whether to be confused or just pissed off. "You dirty son of a --!
"LET ME GO!" Whip rails as she's pulled along, her boots dragging against the concrete. She snarls mindlessly, both out of disbelief and sheer, blinding outrage, giving her damndest to struggle against his hold. Her tethered wrists pull madly and her hands flex in earnest, her ensuing frenzy probably earning K' a few elbows to the gut for his troubles. Breathing in and out through her bared teeth in strangled hisses, giving her head a shake to flick the rainwater from her eyes, she glares up at her captor, her eyes bright with homicide. For a brief instant, those lingering traces of disbelief smear across her face, the more rational part of her unable to believe K', or much less anyone else in the world, would put up such an effort solely to defy her. In her half-mad, half-hungover, half-murderous state, all she can think about is why, why is he doing this to her? Why is he keeping her from this? Does he hate her? Does he despite her so much he would keep her from the one thing she wants most? What did she ever do to him?
Soon, and quickly enough, the last traces of her shock and dismay assimilate into that deepening rage, her temper growing and mutating into a monster that even escapes Whip's own control. She is a master at diffusing rage. She barely ever gets angry and, less often, stays that way. She has no experience in handling anger. And, right now, she demonstrates just that.
"Let me GO!" she snarls, using words now that her hands can do nothing. And some of these words sting harder than any serrated knife ever could. "You can't run my life! You can barely run yours! You should be looking after YOURSELF, K'! Else I wouldn't feel so god damned SORRY for you! It's the only reason why I even talked to you! Do you HEAR me? The only reason! So why don't you go look after yourself! I don't NEED you! I don't WANT you in my life!"
Without warning, she snarls an unintelligible sound into the raining night air, twisting her body to one side and viciously trying to insert an ankle between is, trying to hook one foot and trip him up. She roars, half-crazed, desperate, and beyond all ration, "--GOD DAMNIT, K', LET ME GO!!"
Whip thrashes in his grasp, but for all K' seems to care or notice, she might as well be following docilely along. Resorting to the last weapons she's got when her hands are tethered and her feet busy keeping her balance, she slams her elbows into his back, his sides, his stomach-- but other than momentary flinches, her captor doesn't stir appreciably out of his single-minded purpose. This is sheer idiocy, and he means to keep her from it. And if he gets his way... he's even going to keep her long enough that he can drag Shurui in and force her eyes to tell him the truth of their relation.
When her physical attempts to stop him are rendered useless, Whip switches to the -true- last weapon she's got: her voice. She hurls violent vitriol at him with wild abandon, burying blade after blade of envenomed speech into him: each sally stinging more than that physical knife ever did. K' angles an expressionless yellow eye over his shoulder at her as she crests into a final crescendo of hurtful screaming, her words battering into his back, and for a long time, he just looks at her. The look in his eyes is blank, and for a few moments it's completely unclear what he intends to do.
Eventually he just fixes his gaze back forwards, turning away, and starts to drag her inevitably away again with that same dogged inexorability. But this time, he isn't silent. A low, almost inaudible chuckle starts in his chest on the tail of her cries, and it takes over as her voice flags: building into genuinely-amused and horrible laughter. For a few seconds all he can do is laugh, and laugh hard. It's the sort of crazed laughter you hear from those who aren't all there: the sort that mocks the world at large the same time it mocks itself. The sort Whip's heard before: from Krizalid. He sounds almost exactly like him, now.
"You think," K' abruptly cuts into the middle of his own morbid, self-decrying amusement, turning on her with a sharp stare thrown over his shoulder, "you're telling me anything I don't already know? That you're saying anything worse than I've already said to myself?" A last bark of laughter tears out of him. A sharp twist and drag on her wrists reels her closer in for his retort, the rawness in his voice the only indication he was touched by her flailing attempts to attack him with her words. "No. You're completely right. I'm a pitiable fuck who can't even get by day to day. I'm a nothing, a lost cause, a failure who can barely even handle his own life. But... I'm not the one throwing it away with both hands..."
That's all he cares to say to her. He's done trying to talk. In the next instant he stops dead as she tries to hook him to the ground, and-- his temper finally utterly lost-- he turns on her. A deft downwards yank on her wrists aims to unbalance her and open her up, and K' very sagely, very skillfully aims to knock his sister clear out.
There are few things in the world that could make Whip this angry.
And even fewer things that would make her forget it.
For all her outrage, all her fury, all her loathing, all her preference for some good ole home-cooked murder one, Whip's snarling shuts right up. Her struggles dull. Her hands fall limp. And her eyes focus, a certain clarity returning to them the way sobriety hits the dead-end drunk. All her roars and yells and snapping vocal dismay is cleaved through by sudden laughter, the sound of it so sick, so poisoned that she forgets all about being so damn pissed off. Dragged along, she goes eerily silent, spending moments just staring incredulously up at K'. That laughter does sound like Krizalid. It sounds so much like him. And with the same hair, the same build, the same darkness that obscures the littler details of his face, she could almost swear...
That laugh is so hauntingly familiar that, for a brief moment, Whip almost believes it's been Krizalid all along. Krizalid who found her, Krizalid who stopped her, and Krizalid who's dragging her away. Her joints lock up. Her heart finds its way up into her throat. And, that instant later when K' pulls on her wrists and yanks her close, his sister's face is shadowed in something very close to fear. She stares widely at him, with a naked expression on her face, torn between feeling relief that it is K''s face she's staring at and horror that it's K''s face that made that awful laughter.
Then it makes something else at her, something even worse than that laugh, and with blinking brown eyes, she takes in his self-deprecating words with a growing frown. Something starts to trouble her face, something that looks two shades away from concern... something she chokes off with a return of her sneering, her eyes narrowing once more and her mouth crinkling at the corners. In a much calmer voice, but no less angrier, she starts to spit back, "K'--"
Whip never gets to finish that thought. Without any warning, he pulls down, and with wide eyes and a surprised sound, she stumbles, and for an instant turns her head to look directly at him--
--until it's suddenly cracked to one side. She collapses right on the spot.
For all the quick brutality he employed in dispatching her, K' is surprisingly gentle about catching her slack form when it falls. He turns on his heels as she starts to sag, one arm slipping under her shoulders and the other catching up her legs with a neat quickness. Straightening up, he gathers her gently in his arms a little more securely-- and looks around again. Good. Nobody saw, and nobody's calling the cops about rape, assault, and kidnapping.
A few quick strides carry him right back to that car they started by, and K' deftly relieves Whip of her keys. Easing her into the front passenger seat, the boy even has the conscientiousness to buckle her up: it keeps her from kissing the dashboard, at the least. Leaning back out, shutting the door on her, and vaulting over top of the vehicle rather than do anything so sane as walking around it, K' agilely slides himself into the driver's seat with a conspiratorial playfulness painfully out of place in their current situation.
K' finds humor in very strange things. It's part and parcel of having had nothing -normal- in his life to find amusing.
His morbid mood is short-lived. For a few quiet moments, he just shares the car with her; and now that he doesn't have to focus on trying to talk to her or coerce her out of her suicide mission, everything he's felt and thought in the past week leading up to this very moment comes crashing right back on his consciousness again. The boy crumples. He drops his very tired head into one hand, leaning heavily on the dashboard, and just stares glassily at her: remembering, with some guilt, that look of fear on her face when he leaned in moments before. Angrily, he wonders why he cares so much about this girl, why he's even bothering-- and then, he reminds himself that he already knows the answer to that question. Some deeply-buried and forgotten part of him simply -cares- for her; and Shurui's explanation-- unwitting as it was-- of why that might be makes so much sense it hurts.
He reaches over suddenly, his ungloved hand stealing her jaw to turn her towards him, and he stares intently and desperately at her face in the half-light of the car's interior. It's as if he's hoping the truth might be written in some feature of hers far too similar to his own: as if he's hoping he might find some little indication that could confirm what Shurui said to him. As if he's hoping that if he looks long enough, he'll be able to remember enough of his dreams to match his sister's half-forgotten face to Whip's.
Time passes. K' eventually pulls back, defeated by his own hazy memory and the spectre of doubt. Tiredly, he just starts the car and pulls slowly out of the lot, wending his slow way back into Southtown-- and his apartment-- with God knows what in the trunk and a passed-out girl in the passenger seat. It's only because they're -in- Southtown that they get by largely unquestioned, the boy even managing to carry his sister up the several flights to his room without being seen.
He stops once he's in the door, frowning articulately around at the austere space-- and then down at the girl in his arms. Setting her down by the radiator, he joins her on the floor and puts his head in his hands a few aggravated moments, trying to think. "I can't believe this," he eventually says, the sound of his own voice sudden enough it nearly startles him for a moment. "I can't fucking believe -you-. What the fuck did you think you were going to do?! Why the hell am I even involved, why do I -care-!!"
Whip fails to answer.
Not really feeling appreciably calmed by that outburst, K' pushes to his feet and walks over to the table by the door, yanking open its top drawer and fishing through the various odds and ends he's collected that he thought might have some future use. Flashlights, lock picks, butterfly knives, other small items of dubious legality-- eventually he finds a slightly-battered set of cuffs, and the key to go with it, and he pauses visibly. He hooks it onto his fingers, pulling it out speculatively, and he dangles it a few moments as his yellow eyes half-lid in consideration.
Half a minute later Whip is securely cuffed to the radiator, and K' is perched like a restless, ruffled hawk on a chair nearby, furiously trying to think of what the hell he's going to do or say when she wakes up. Of course, the first thing he'll -have- to say is probably going to be, "Yes, this was fucking necessary, if I didn't you'd go and get yourself killed," but he knows he's going to have to have something prepared beyond that.
Hours pass.
And then dark eyes flick open. They blink against the bright, bleary world until their pupils finally adjust. Whip finds herself staring at the ceiling. Her eyes sting. Everything stings. She grimaces, and reaches a hand to find the side of her head. The skin there is hot and raw and the aching bone underneath seems to pulse with a beat of its own. The flare of pain and the rampant itch wakes her further, and she finds she is sprawled on the floor. Somebody's floor. She remembers now.
She sits up slowly with a patience learned from years of hard mornings, letting her hand go to help push her body up, her head falling to one side as she squints her eyes against the light. Her jeans, still half-damp from the rain, constrict painfully around her hips and legs like an old leather torture. Her wrinkled t-shirt's hem sticks to where her flesh is still clammy, and the flared inch of her abdomen cannot be described as having scars, more as scars that have occasional patches of free flesh. Her skin is a somber, ashen pale, the sun and the health gone out of it in these few weeks. With her new colouring, her peppering of old, faded bruises, and the rings she's packing as luggage under her eyes, the girl's on her way to looking ghastly.
But Whip's not worrying about beauty contests. She's not even thinking. She's all cold and smooth soldier training, a series of conditioned reflexes when one finds themselves in strange environs nursing stranger headaches. It's when the most crucial reflex doesn't happen does she finally start waking up.
The Ikari mercenary reaches for the holsters on her back and realizes two things. For one, she's been disarmed. Two, she can't move her fucking hand.
Metal bangs noisily on metal. The sound is close and loud enough that it seems to wake her up faster than black coffee. She slants an irritable glance toward the sound, and her eyes fix on bleary image of her wrist handcuffed to an old cast-iron radiator. She watches distantly, almost detachedly, as her locked arm pulls against its bind, once, then again, testing the familiar strain of steel against her thumb knuckle. That trapped hand flexes all of its fingers, then curls them up into a fist.
There's a beat. And then Whip pretty much loses it.
"You... HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"
In the interim, K' had had himself a look at what Whip was transporting in her trunk. The sight had exacerbated an already-prodigious anger. What was she -doing-? What did she expect she -could- do, even with all this shit? Deeply unimpressed, the boy had shut and relocked the trunk, and then driven the vehicle to a somewhat less prominent location than Southtown's downtown.
It takes him a while to secret the vehicle away, erase the traces left behind of his and Whip's presence within it, and walk back to his apartment. In the meantime, the disarmed and securely-cuffed Whip is left to her own unconscious devices. She awakens to a peeking, nascent dawn-- and an unexpected companion. The sound of Whip's angry voice eventually attracts something other than her hated captor.
A black face peeks in the window, gravely offended at the presence of this shouting foreigner within its sometime-home's walls. Soon enough the rest of what's attached to the face makes an aggravated entry, a tiny black cat flopping matter-of-factly to the floor and brazenly staring at Whip from a safe distance. It sniffs unimpressedly, apparently as blatantly rude as its chosen human companion, and marches away to make its impromptu bed on a nearby chair seat as if this were a daily routine (it is).
It dozes off. Whip is left alone to fume over her confinement for approximately another ten minutes before the hushed sound of steps approaches from outside the door. Even if Whip doesn't pick up on the quiet sound, the animal does: and its sudden rousing might alert her that her brother is incoming.
"Not so fucking loud..." K' admonishes as he opens the door, shutting it behind him and walking calmly across the room towards his guest. On seeing the boy, the tiny cat spins around, skitters up onto the chair's back, and turns around to craftily gauge the distance. K' passes by and the creature leaps, smacking against his upper arm and immediately scrabbling the rest of the way up to his shoulder. K' doesn't seem to notice or care.
"I don't need," he continues, ignoring the black fur shoved jarringly against his white hair, "neighbours coming up here to investigate, or calling the police. That would be kinda inconvenient, being inconvenienced gets me pissed off..." Crouching casually a safe distance in front of her, slinging his elbows across his knees, he examines her frankly. The cat sways precariously as its perch moves. "...And since my company is all you're gonna have for a while-- cause you're staying here as long as it takes for you to grow some fucking sense-- I suggest you not get on my bad side..."
Her eyes immediately turn on the first sign of movement that crosses her peripherals. And as she steels herself to expect just about anything a hardened, veteran soldier should, it's then she realizes she's staring at someone's stupid cat.
It looks back at her, Whip's look of askance more than mutual. Her left eyebrow twitches. She stares at the scruffy thing, bemused, the only part of her that's not furious attempting to consider the animal. She's not a cat person. At least she doesn't think she is. Then again, as far as she can remember, she's been more of a weapons person, a demolitions person, and has preferred their company widely over any sort of fluffy animal or even people. It didn't help her feeling lonely, but then again, weapons-as-friends don't cold-cock you in a parking lot and leave you leashed to the ventilation.
Her eyes narrow, the look on them gone glassy.
K'.
I'm gonna kill him, Whip thinks. She keeps saying it over and over in her head, even if doing so is pretty silly. She doesn't need further convincing.
She's going to kill him. She is really going to kill him. This is not happening. This can NOT be happening. She does not get stolen away and handcuffed to someone's god damned apartment radiator. She's a mercenary, and even more importantly, she's an Ikari. Ikari soldiers have enemies. A couple kidnappings here and there are routine setbacks usually covered by the medical plan. But not here. Not in a place like this. And not at the hands of one of the few, barest few she trusts wholeheartedly in the wide world.
But here she is. Not in her car. Not on her way out of Japan. Not beginning her international hunt through the circles of the Cartel unil she's hit the double-bullseye called Igniz. Not where she's been mentally and emotionally preparing herself for in the last few weeks. She's not anywhere near close to it. Instead, she's sitting on her ass in wherever K''s stashed her, cuffed to a major appliance with only a ribsy cat to witness this indignity of indignities.
She. Is. Going. To. Kill. Him.
She grits her teeth. She fists her hand, the trapped one, pulling it again in an assessing way against her steel bond. Strong as she is, furious as she is, she knows even her power can't break these kind of reinforced hinges. But since when has she ever relied on brute force? One subtle twist of her body clues Whip in to something K' has missed. It's a testament to how little he knows of her, and his underestimation of how many weapons she packs on her person. He's forgotten one, and she can feel it: the butterfly knife she keeps in her bra. She doubts it'll do much in a situation like this, but it -- oh.
It's that knife what clues her into to something better. A dark look unfurls across her face. He's forgotten two.
When she begins wondering what sort of time she has, Whip's racing thoughts get answered. Someone's voice permeates through the apartment, and though she doesn't need to look up to recognize the person behind it... she does it anyway. One look at K''s face and her anger is back in control.
Like any good guest, Whip is right where he left her, sitting on the floor and chained, looking no different except for that new look of homicide. She meets him with a glare, reflexively pulling against her tether with a metallic echo of steel on hollowed iron. She glares on through every one of his threats, ignoring them as fast as they leave his mouth. Her patience shot, she barks back, "What the HELL IS THIS, K'?! What the HELL are you doing? LET ME GO! You can't KEEP ME HERE!"
To tell the truth, K' prefers his own company over that of any animal or person as well. In fact, he probably prefers it even to the exclusion of forming attachments to inanimate things like weapons. After all, he -is- his own weapon; he certainly doesn't need external objects to augment his deadliness. But anyone who knows the first thing about cats would know that they-- like K' himself-- care very little for the opinions, feelings, or preferences of others. This stray, against K''s half-hearted protests, invited itself into K''s life and home.
Kind of like K' is inviting himself into Whip's life, right now. The boy scorns his black cat as a daft, useless animal, but that's just because he doesn't realize how much like it he himself is.
Leaned obnoxiously there in front of her, the very freedom of his limbs a mockery of her own lack of autonomy, K' patiently weathers his sister's barked, aggravated retorts. To his credit, he doesn't even seem perturbed when she fails to give his words their proper weight. "What I'm doing," he replies, very measured in his words, his eyes narrowing meaningfully, "is giving you some time to think over just how pointless and stupid what you're plotting is. You getting yourself killed isn't any more than a god damn waste. You couldn't take Igniz alone. You couldn't even take him with help. From what I've seen and discovered, even I couldn't: not yet."
His mouth hardens into a cold line, and K' continues in his coldly analytical vein; the utter rarity of this mood likely lost on Whip in her frenzied state. Usually K' leaves all this rationality to Maxima... but in the cyborg's absence, he's gotta do it himself. "So tell me what the hell you planned. To somehow corner a top-ranking agent? To somehow coerce any kind of answer out of him without first dying or being put back to work? What kind of leverage do you even have against him? Threats? Violence?" K' barks a laugh, startling the cat enough it vacates his shoulder. "-I- could kill you. It wouldn't exactly be hard for -him-. Even if he DECIDES to tell you anything, what then?"
She insists loudly that he can't just keep her here. A brow lifts. He leans just a little closer at that-- still hovering tantalizingly out of reach-- pauses a moment... and then asks her with a frank curiosity, "...can't I?" The look on his face might almost be unsettling; that is, up until it just threatens to pull into something worse instead. That hated grin.
Fortunately for Whip's sanity, it doesn't quite get there. His expression just freezes and planes off into neutrality instead, K' leaning back on his heels.
Their lost family name is of so little consequence. Names are meaningless for siblings like these, for a line to bear the likes of these two, centuries they must have been known for their tempers. Murderous, rageful, damning tempers that slew armies, broke homes, and incited amargeddons in miniature. Fuses that would make Atilla wince, Hitler squint, and Tybalt cower. And even the most angry of these ancient Celts would retreat in fear from the temper of their descendant.
And that's usually K'. K' who has received the lion's share of the genetic rage. K' who survives on his impassionated fury alone. K' who has been the last sight for so many unfortunates. K' who... is now in the crosshairs of Whip's incredulous glaring. Her snarling goes as silent as a death rattle, she merely sits there, holds her breath, and gives the Beast of Prey a look that could strip the chrome off a car.
Looks like kind, patient little Whip has a bit of poison in her gene pool.
Pure, unadulterated outrage makes her go still. Her eyes tic at the corners, her nostrils flare, and her mouth tightens down like a lock. She stares back at K' as he baits her from afar, blankly, dumbly, blinking at him as he reminds her of her idiocy, of her recklessness, of the sheer silly fact that he could kill her, and that all her anger and all her despair and all her revenge is a stupid little thing found wanting. And then she can only see red as he goes on to tell her that she is his indefinite guest, subject to his unique hospitality for as long as he sees fit. And she can handle all that. It's nothing that her infinite patience cannot weather. It's nothing that she can't swallow down and soldier through. But then he starts to grin. That fucking little grin...
The movement is so fast it blurs. One moment, Whip is staring a murderous highway straight into K''s eyes.
One moment later, a butterfly knife SNIKTS blade-deep into the wall beside his head. The base hums and vibrates from the sheer velocity of its strike. Her one freed hand, open and still outstretched, is the only betrayal to that silvery flicker of movement.
"No," Whip answers gravely. Dangerously. "You can't."
The knife hums straight in the wall right beside his head, its flexing blade shedding a few unfortunate strands of silver hair as it quivers to a stop. Very slowly, one of K''s black brows lift. His yellow eyes slide a look askance at the blade not two inches from the arc of his cheekbone, and for a blank moment K' seems to consider. Rage-filled and dangerous as he is, the last sight for too many murdered people as he is, the violent and willful dominance he throws around now that he's earned his freedom isn't often challenged. Most people are smarter than that-- but not, evidently, Whip.
He gives everything she's got to say due consideration, at the least. For a long few moments, he doesn't do a damn thing. But when he does, the reaction is somewhat unexpected: to say the least.
He leans forwards suddenly, never quite edging into easy striking range but coming quite close, seemingly fearless of any other knives she might have on her person that he's missed... fearless of any other reprisal she could bring to bear. He studies her again, the look in his eyes extremely intent-- as if it were searching for something in specific-- frustration bleeding more and more visibly into his gaze the longer he stares. He can't see it for sure... but he sees just enough to keep him thoroughly ensnared by the very possibility. If he could remember more clearly...
"Yes," he corrects her harshly, "I -can-." He pulls away, rocking back on his heels, and presently stretches to a stand. He stares down at her casually, seemingly absent the self-consciousness most normal people would have standing over another. "And. By the way..."
His right hand shuts on the knife vibrating in the wall, carelessly yanking it out without care for the sharp edge. Swapping it to his left hand to handle it more dextrously, he regards it with some interest. He spins it a few times curiously, flipping it open and shut, testing it as if inspecting a new possession (he is: it's his now); but eventually, he loses interest and folds it away. "Go ahead and keep discarding your weapons. It's nice of you to help me with the ones I missed."
A few steps to the left carry him over to the now-empty chair; he hooks it with a deft ankle, simultaneously turning in a motion that skids the thing across the floor to a spot in front of his sister. He drops into it, immediately sinking into a long-legged lounge, kicking the thing back on its hind legs in a way that doubtless makes Whip really wish she could reach him to push him over on his ass. "Now. What am I gonna have to say to convince you doing this my way is better than whatever suicide mission you had planned...?"
Sitting forward and staring hotly, Whip meets K''s pensive eyes inch for inch, moment for moment. He looks at her and she looks back, meeting his desperate searching with a test of dominance, too angry to back down and glance away. There's no hint of remorse in her for throwing a knife at his head. Might be because the realistic part of her would expect someone like him to dodge it. Might be because she wasn't really even aiming at him.
It's his arrogant correction what finally turns her indignant stare away. Whip rolls her eyes, her lip curling with an unspoken sneer. She ignores his idle toying of her knife, not seeming too pained to be without its meagre armament, whether it be because she's too pissed to care or that a weapons' handler like her, with their able sense of resource, are never without their trump cards and not to be trusted.
An annoyed sign leaves her as settles and props one shoulder against the radiator, her bind clattering noisily against its hollowed iron. Her snared arm hangs at her side, its tight leash forcing it into uselessness. But it doesn't keep her captive hand from clenching up into a fist.
With the same riveted intensity Whip possessed staring at K', she puts equal focus into looking away from him, ignoring the scraping of chair legs and the flicker of movement that remains contained to her peripherals. She very pointedly glares daggers somewhere else, insolently, aggravatingly, as if to prove to him how much of a threat he is to her. She'll just ignore him now. His interrogation receives a lesser response.
Whip laughs shortly, deeply, the sound grumbling up from the back of her throat. Drier than a martini, she chuffs back, "You knocked me out, you put all that effort into kidnapping me, and then you locked me up to a fucking radiator so that we can talk? For what? So we can have a civil conversation?" She rolls her eyes and lets her head flop back with a boneless insolence, her skull bumping against the grated radiator. "Jesus Christ," her gravelly monotone informs him, "I think I'd prefer torture."
Heaving a put-upon sigh that could make the top three of all put-upon sighs, the girl forks a hand through her dark hair, rubs bitterly at the bruised lump on the back of her head, and considers a response.
One dark eye turns on K'.
"I don't have to tell you shit," Whip says, rather pleasantly considering the situation. She continues, enunciating slowly as though she were lecturing to a trisomy 21 convention, "I'm /handcuffed/ --" then her word puncuates with a noisly CLANG of steel on iron. Without warning, she turns on her brother, rage darkening her features, the look on her eyes sharper than getting in between a pair of scissors. As loud and sudden as a door slamming, she SNARLS: "-- to a FUCKING RADIATOR, K'! You think even if I was willing to share intel, it'd be with YOU of all people? I TRUSTED YOU, you traitor son of a bitch!" Her handcuffs rattle as she roars.
The Ikari quiets. "It took me weeks," she draws out quietly now, voice like the slow slice of a razorblade along a throat, "to find the courage to do this, and you were the one who helped me with that. I kept thinking about Killarney, about you telling me about going straight back into NESTS, hitting them at their own turf, meeting your own maker... and I told you it was wrong." Her eyes crease. "Maybe you were right. Maybe that's what we're meant to do, people like us. We don't have lives. How the hell are we supposed to live like normal people? Are we supposed to pretend?
"We're ghosts!" Whip snaps with an expansive, gesturing wave of both arms, one tethered loudly by the steel handcuffs. She gives them an angry glance in detachment, before her eyes follow their angry incision back up to K'. She meets him with a frown that burns of disapproval. "We have nothing to look back on and nothing to look forward to! I thought YOU, you of all people, would understand. I thought that even if everyone else thought me crazy or breaking for death or whatever the hell they want to believe, you'd understand and you'd appreciate the sacrifice I made to get people like US closer to the truth!"
The rest of that angry breath just huffs out of her. Helplessly, she sags back against the radiator, breathing quickly and shallowly, her face flushed and her fingers flexing from her little display. She's still not finished. "But you took that away from me," she tells K', simply, coldly. "And now you expect me to sit here and having a meaningful fuckin' dialogue?" Her brown eyes slit.
"No offence, K'," Whip says before she lifts her free hand to give her brother the finger. "But why don't you take this finger. Shove it up your ass. And spin."
"You weren't," K' retorts evenly, pawing at the wound in his shoulder moodily, "very civil when I tried to talk to you before." His irritated ministrations open the wound again, blood smearing with a sudden hotness on his fingertips; with a sound of annoyance, he stanches it with a light pressure. "So yeah. I sure as hell 'locked you up so we could have a civil conversation.' I couldn't have one otherwise! And you're handcuffed... to a radiator..." he explains, with an enunciated slowness to match hers, "cause if you weren't, you'd be knifing me again."
He nurses his shoulder all through her little tirade, and all told... he looks rather attentive. But for all the attention he pays her, he certainly doesn't look -impressed- by what he's hearing. His eyes roll pointedly when she goes so far as to label him a traitor. He's already told her again and again he's not doing anything save preventing her being a suicidal idiot, and he is not about to waste his breath repeating himself yet again. That sarcastic expression should be evidence enough of how retarded he thinks the statement is.
And then, she tries to turn his own words on him. His eyes narrow, the boy leaning even further back in a slouch and hooking a hand in his jeans pocket. A rumble of amusement starts up out of his chest at her justifications. "-I'm- right? Ha... nice as it is to hear that from you, I have to correct you. I wasn't right about that. Uncharacteristic, I know, but not impossible."
The lazy smirk that patterns across his face at those arrogant words dies a quick death. K' does not stay lighthearted for long. "I did my own thinking since then," he scoffs, "and I came to the conclusion -you- were right. Attacking them in the heart of their own ground was the fastest way to make sure nothing ever changed. I needed a different plan. I came up with one."
He leans his head to one side, eyes hard. "So why the hell would I appreciate it? Why would I LIKE the idea of you killing yourself? It's not a sacrifice. It doesn't reveal any truth. It doesn't help shit. All it does is waste a good resource that could have been put to some ACTUAL use." It's a cruel way to put it, but it's how K' thinks; Whip is far more useful alive than she is dead.
But at her low insinuation neither of them have anything to look back on-- nothing to look forward to-- K''s expression sobers instantly, a cold directness settling into his eyes as he's forcibly reminded of the real reason he couldn't let Whip go. The chair's front legs smack into the floor with the sharp report of wood on wood, and he leans forwards. "'Nothing to look forward to?' 'Nothing to look back on?' You should really think twice before you do my talking FOR me... or, for that matter, before you write yourself off..." What the hell is he talking about? No worries; he'll clarify that in a moment.
And then, that delightful finger. K' looks at it for about two seconds before he writes it off, dismissing it and the sentiment behind it. "Is that," he asks, his eyes narrowing, his voice perfectly flat, his expression dead serious, "how people should behave towards their brothers?"
He's already more than half-convinced himself it's true.
Whip is struck silent by his words, staring at K', at his face, at his yellowy eyes with the timeless patience of falling snow. "What?" she asks in a papery voice, sounding dazed. Confusion brands her face as she stares at him, the look on her eyes sharpening with suspicion. What the hell is he supposed to mean by that? She doesn't know what he's trying to say -- or imply. Her confusion immediately mats itself up into an angry frustration, one that asks herself again and again why someone like K' would say such a thing. He should know more than anyone that her brother is a raw spot for her. He's in the same position she is. Is he making fun of her? Is he trying to insult her?
Anger locks her face back up, and Whip tries to stand so suddenly, so fiercely that she forgets the handcuffs around her wrist. With little warning, she pulls violently on her own arm, registering the pain too late, and only peripherally, by the reptilian parts of her brain. The higher cortices don't seem to notice. She only gets as far as her arm is long, stopped by the collaring rattle of the second cuff as it grinds along the half-painted iron. The entire radiator groans on its bolts but holds solid under the stress. The girl just pulls forward until her trapped hand pales, the flesh strangled bloodless by the steel ratcheting into the veins in her wrist. Her numb fingers flex in detachment.
Whip's still not noticing. She hurts, and it isn't from the dull, persistent ache in the side of her head, or the straining of her shoulder, or even the way sharp steel is bruising her hand. Looking at K', hearing him, Whip hurts, her chest tightening, and her eyes sting. She chokes out an unintelligible sound, half-pissed and half-pleading, her eyes searching his face in a desperate way, looking for any sign to tell her how she should feel. She's on the verge of an explosion. She just needs that last inch.
It takes Whip many moments to remember how to talk. Words are rare and precious gems when you're breathing so quickly, so shallowly it dries out the inside of your mouth and the simpliest noise at your throat will split the parched flesh. And the rest of you just feels suddenly so emptied, so hollow that it seems voice, along with thought, feeling, and common sense, have already long vacated this ghost town. She's crying and she's not entirely sure why, though the answer is very simple. She's pulling on her last unbroken seam of sanity, and it's sheer threads that are keeping the girl together. She's can count the hours on fingers she's slept in the last week. She's got nothing left in her, because she wants no more. She's overdue for the good nervous breakdown she hasn't allowed herself to take. She hasn't stopped since the moment she loaded Vanessa's unconscious body on her back and walked them out of the mysterious jungles of Thailand. She's been moving forward ever since, and presumably to her own demise.
And now she's shanghaied against her own will, shackled to a radiator by a boy she's legitimately known only days, and now forced to digest words that she can't hear right now. The only way she's been able to cope is to keep moving, and now she cannot. K''s invervention is forcing Whip to stop, and it just can't happen. She's already tremoring around the edges, and the tears are blinking free from her eyes, streaking down her face, as she pulls on her shoulder joint, stares at her captor, and tries so hard not to be confused. "What?" she grounds out again, her grainy voice taking a harsher edge, like she's now intentionally trying to make herself angry, because angry is easy. Angry doesn't let you stop and think. But that doesn't explain why she can't stop crying. The heavy words push out of her with a breathless force as though they were made of slough. "What the hell are you talking about?"
K' starts back minutely as Whip abruptly lunges up, leaving his seat and letting the abandoned chair skid back out of the way as he comes to a startled stand. He should have expected this reaction if he was going to be an ass about things, but somehow he's still taken aback at the silent intensity of it. His eyes twitch towards her trapped hand, watching it go bloodless as strain strangles it off, and a twitch of actual concern finally manages to make its way to the surface and get shown outright.
A frown seizes his features, murdering that softer look instantly, his expression finally freezing over and settling into something more level: more faintly stern. His arrogant flippance finally quiets, as he recognizes he can't push her any further. If he continues to be as irreverent as he has, he knows she's going to lose it entirely, and that would be counterproductive to him getting through to her. But more tellingly-- and more notably-- the weird pity stirring rustily in his disused heart simply won't -let- him snipe at her any further. Not with her in this state, anyway.
It's a strange and unaccustomed feeling, something he tries and fails to swallow down or think around. But he simply can't ignore it. This is his sister he's hurting, and not even he can get away with that with a clear conscience.
He'd been staying out of her reach for very practical reasons thus far, but he can't any longer. Because of his words, she's crying horribly and straining against her bonds hard enough to cause permanent injury to her wrist. Were it anyone else, were the circumstances different, he might have been heartless enough to just crack a thin smile: but here and now, he just feels vaguely horrified. He has never been and never will be the person to go to for consolation or pity, and even towards his sister has great trouble expressing anything that isn't straightforwardly destructive: either to himself, or to others. But in such an extreme situation as this?
K' presses forwards with a frown. With a sudden and awkward insistence, his hands light-- not ungently-- on her shoulders and attempt to force her back down, so she stops pulling her arm out of her socket and the nerves straight out of her wrist. He follows her down, stooping into a crouch in front of her; his hands don't leave her shoulders, but tighten like braces. He looks her in the eye, trying to get through that he's serious: his previous carelessness entirely gone.
"Maybe you don't remember, but a girl I know met you a week ago. There's something to her eyes that lets her see things normal people can't see." He talks slowly, levelly, his hands never leaving her shoulders: that bit of warm human contact serving as a brace both for her, and for him. "She said there's a certain way siblings always look, in her eyes, and that was how we looked to her when she saw us. She said she wasn't lying. Why -would- she lie? She knows what I'd do if she did." His hands, briefly, twitch on Whip's shoulders.
"I -want- to believe her. I... I thought about the possibility, long before she said it outright. It seemed so coincidental that we kept meeting each other, that we ended up in the same place when we looked for our pasts, that we were each missing a sibling. And I always--" It almost looks painful for him to talk at this stage, the boy now looking just as wrenched as his sister does: if for the slightly different reason that he's completely out of his element. He's a very defensive person by nature, prone to pulling in and protecting himself against the disappointments and mockeries of the world: this is the furthest he's ever put himself out there, and he feels so ridiculously exposed and foolish he almost doesn't finish. "...I always felt like you were somebody to me. Like there was something I had to remember about you. Nobody else ever reminded me so much about the dreams I have of my sister. You always wanted to know why I ever gave a shit about you at all; that feeling was why." Once he has it all out, his eyes narrow instantly, his expression hardening defensively almost as if he's daring her to just try and mock him. It's a protective reaction to rid himself of the awful exposed feeling that candidness always brings.
"So that," he finally finishes, once he's sure his voice can match the coolness of his expression, "is the real reason you're here. The only reason I cared enough to bother with all this. The only reason I didn't let you just go get yourself killed if that was what you really wanted."
She doesn't seem to feel K' put his hands on her. She doesn't seem to notice how his face comes in close. Whip stares up at him, perhaps through him, because it's easy to forget the words someone has told you when you ignore that they exist altogether. For a moment, she resists his careful pushing, her joints locking up as tightly and stubbornly as her jaw is grit and her eyes are narrowed... but it doesn't take. With little explanation as to why, Whip relents, her body going boneless as K' guides her down. She follows his motions, collapsing into a weary sit on the floor of his apartment, her last defiance whuffing audibly out of her in that last foggy sigh. Her weight settles back against the radiator. Her tethered hand returns limply, tamely to her side, her handcuffs falling slack with a metallic grind of steel on iron.
There she remains, looking cornered and feeling worse, watching K' with a watery gaze. More tears blink free from her eyes as she weathers his explanation. It seems so outlandish, that she happens upon a girl who can see impossible things, and that girl has cut her down right to the genetic quick. She doesn't remember it, not in the drunken haze she's spent the last two weeks, but the primeval part of her brain recognizes the strange familiarity of the story. Her gut can't quite disbelieve it. It feels like it happened. It feels true.
But then that means...
It means that she's possibly staring her long lost brother straight in the face. Her brother. Her only family. The only link she has left in the world, the one that proves she's a real person, or at least used to be one a long time ago. She had daydreamed of her brother hundreds of times, and in her thoughts, he has worn hundreds of faces. She had wondered endlessly what he would look like. And now she knows. It's always the face you least expect.
K''s quiet, earnest confession is met with silence. His squeezing hands don't even stir her. She is still and silent, sitting there and doing little. The only movement to betray her is when her eyes blink every so often, bringing a fresh deluge of tears. But though Whip looks a thousand miles away, she's still listening. She just doesn't know how to feel. Should she feel good? Should she feel relieved? She thinks she should... but she's not sure she knows how. It's hard to tell someone who's been searching their whole lives for something that it's OK to stop. That whatever they've been looking for has been found. That it's fine now, to let go, to sit down, to go on...
The whole point to Whip's life has been to reclaim it; all she's wanted was to figure out who she is and find her lost brother. She's searched so long for him. She half-convinced herself he wasn't even real, wasn't more than a figment or some dreary hope that kept her moving forward, but she still looked for him. Every day she thought about him, about finding him, about meeting him, about what she would do if she ever saw him... and it's silly now, silly because it might be happening right now and she is doing nothing. What the hell is she supposed to feel? She can't decide, because it's all hitting her at once. She feels relieved. She feels gutted. She feels shocked. She feels confused. She feels angry. She feels ecstatic. She feels like she's going to be sick. The last two weeks and all the years she can remember are quickly catching up. The news is like a hacksaw on frayed nerves. She doesn't know whether to take it well or take it badly, and then she can't even think to make the choice so--
Whip just takes it. She snaps.
Her dulled, dazed brown eyes stare at K' a moment more, and then finally slide away. For the first time in many moments, the girl moves, pulling in her legs, bending them as she brings her knees in close. Her arms do the same, and the handcuffs groan lowly against the radiator, her right arm trying to move and reminded that it cannot. The Ikari doesn't seem to notice. She makes due, and buries her face into her left hand in time for the sobs to start.
And with her head bowed, her forehead pressed against her knees, her face hidden in her trembling hand, Whip lets everything go and cries like someone who hasn't let herself cry -- not like this -- in a long time.
Neither of them remember it, but they were about six or seven when they were taken away by NESTS; old enough to have solidly and immutably formed that uncanny bond so many twins forge. And even despite all the trauma and erasure of memory that K' went through... much of that sibling bond lingered in the back of his mind. The last memory he had of his sister persisted, and eventually finally resurfaced in the form of that indistinct dream.
He knew it wasn't some new NESTS trick, because it started a year ago: long after he'd escaped the reach of their labs. And more than that, he somehow just -knew- that this dream was something wholly his own. Something from that time when he was a normal person, with a name and a normal life. The girl in it had to be his lost sister-- but he just could not make out her fact.
He's been trying hard, ever since he first started to suspect, to see the dream girl's features in Whip's own. He's been looking for that glimmer of familiarity or recognition that can confirm Shurui's words and his own suspicions. He'd never been sure... but now, that realization finally, conclusively comes once the sound and sight of her sudden, wracked crying sinks in. A jolt of memory jumpstarts his mind, clarifying the dream that has, until now, been little more than a hazy impression. He finally recognizes her.
Unlike Whip, K' never thought about what he'd do when and if he found his lost sister. His thoughts had focused entirely on the finding itself; it had never occurred to him to wonder what he might actually do if the search ever ended. Completely at a loss, he just looks at her as she pulls out from under his hands, curls against the radiator, and resigns herself to her endless sobbing. He isn't quite as shocked as Whip... but he is no less floored by the gravity of the revelation. For a few moments, he doesn't do anything. He can't even force himself to move.
Then, in a sudden motion, he twitches forwards. Confronted with his only family in the world, the one thing that links him to his life as a normal person, the one thing that proves irrefutably he existed at all outside of the shadow of NESTS, that old twin bond makes a strong resurgence in his instincts and obliterates all his attempts to remain cold and rational. Roughly, gracelessly, he leans forwards and tries to shut his arms about her, drawing her against his chest in some facsimile of an embrace. Perhaps it's an attempt at comforting her-- albeit a supremely awkward one, which blatantly reveals that he has no idea how to touch another human-- but more likely, it's just a selfish desire to know she is real and corporeal, and that she won't vanish: not like his dreams always did.
He holds onto her grimly, as if she were something he could lose again if he didn't grasp tight enough-- as if he were staking a claim, or making her a wordless promise. For the time being, he doesn't try to say anything. Neither of them, right now, are in any condition for words, and none are really needed. Not yet.
Log created on 07:33:38 04/27/2008 by K', and last modified on 15:16:37 05/04/2008.