Description: K' and Whip adjust to their renewed life as siblings. Some mild personality clashes and arguments over seniority occur, but on the whole they don't seem to have much trouble catching up on twelve lost years of affection (and friendly torment).
Brother and sister had managed to coexist peacefully enough for some time after discovering their relation, sharing K''s spartan apartment and actually getting to know one another after years of separation and memory loss. Whip had needed a couple of days to recover, and K' had needed a couple just to think.
Once they'd both felt stable enough, Whip had taken off again. She needed to touch base with the Ikari, she said, but it shouldn't take more than two weeks; then, she'd come back. K', distrustful as he was, had made her -promise-.
It's been two weeks and five days. She hasn't returned a single one of his attempts to contact her, NESTS is out there on a rampage, and in the interim K' has had the distinct displeasure of being introduced to somebody specifically engineered, by NESTS, to murder him; and presumably anyone he knew as well. The net result is that K' is not happy with Whip's lying, unreliable ways now, mostly because he's in an agony of concern.
He doesn't spend -all- his time out of the apartment looking, probably because he's afraid of being absent if she -does- return to it. He's in it now, slumped moodily, nursing a mug of tea (coffee at this hour would kill his sleep) and turning his phone over and over in his hand. It's about midnight and he's largely given up hope she'll show today, which just means he'll have to go looking again tomorrow. In the meantime, he sends her yet another angry text.
Fifteen seconds later, something in the apartment's front foyer beeps.
It's the sound of Whip's cell phone catching a text message as she casually lets herself in, softly and politely closing the front door after. She's whistling to herself as she locks the deadbolt, otherwise ignoring her phone as well as the rest of the darkly-lit world around her. With a habitual carelessness of a mercenary soldier who has spent all of her semi-remembered life travelling, landing on strange, foreign soils at all wee hours of the morning, she casts her duffel bag down, wipes the rain off her shoes, puts her jangling keys away, and yawns. Hard.
The phone beeps again while she's stretching. Whip eyes it. She turns it off.
A loud clatter answers the second beep of Whip's phone. It's the sound of a cell phone hitting the top of a table. Hard.
Moments later, angry steps terminate in K''s sudden appearance in the foyer, the young man having known the entrant was his sister by the turn of her key. His tall frame blocks off her entry into the rest of the apartment proper, leaned forward with its characteristic aggression. Sharp yellow eyes flick to her phone-- in the middle of its shutdown sequence-- drop to look over her bag critically, and then lift to rudely scan her with a direct, tightlipped silence. Assuring himself she's got no injuries and nothing suspicious about her, he finally relents in his inspection: but doesn't quite lean out of his accusatory stance.
"Where," he greets her, quite hospitably, "the fuck have you been? You said -two weeks-, Whip. Count for me how long it's -actually- been."
The sneaking-in-past-curfew Ikari looks up at the distant, half-muffled sound. When K' rounds the corner and descends upon his hapless sister like the hand of God descending, she's standing there rather unceremoniously, looking tired, a little damp around the corners, but otherwise happy. Her face half-lit in blues and whites from the screen of her cell phone, she flares him a friendly smile.
It goes unreturned. Her smile starts to falter. When her tiny phone shuts off with a tinny little melody, Whip is looking a little uncertain around the edges before she returns to the more faceless midnight shadow. K''s interrogation is replied with the smallest of pauses. "What?" Whip asks back, a strange amusement couched in her voice, sounding awfully like someone who's never had to tell anyone before in her life where she's been, negating commanding officers and NESTS' officials that could break her neck as fast as they could clear their throats.
She tilts her head at all the aggression in his body language, and then just as determinedly decides to ignore it, facing away and placing one hand on the wall as she toes out of her heavy boots. One hand wrings a bit of rain out of her ponytailed hair. "It's been two weeks. Like I told you. I said about two weeks. You picked up some beer, right?"
"-About- two weeks? We agreed two weeks exactly. It's been nearly three. Two weeks, five days." The wind's somewhat taken out of his sails by Whip's nonchalance, but angry as he is at her lack of appreciation for his concern, K' doesn't let up in his somewhat selfish attempts to take that happy look right off her face. "I've been sitting around here the past five days thinking you got yourself killed. You could at least respond your damned messages so I know you didn't."
And when she turns away and just ignores him, K' just gets even more irritated. She always manages to shut down his attempts to get her to comply by simply turning a blind eye to all his posturing. Pride and stubbornness alike try to beat down the sneaking, sinking suspicion that he'll have to resign himself to his sister never being within his control, but they're not making much headway.
Eventually K' just snorts unimpressedly, kicks at the worn molding at the base of the wall with more moody petulance than real force, and disappears again. There's the sound of a closet sliding open and shut, and then a towel slingshots straight at Whip's head with rather more force than necessary. "I haven't had any time, got too many people trying to take off my head lately." The disembodied voice is distinctly sardonic. "Thought one of them might have got to you."
"We didn't agree on anything, /K'/," Whip is replying, her voice slow and direct and never quite losing its playful edge. "Any so-called agreements on your part are instruments of your own personal delusions." She continues, rather loftily, "As I recall -- and I do recall these things -- I said about two weeks. Give me a break! I spent half of that time about four hours away from the nearest road, and let me tell you all about Colombia's passing definition for 'road.'"
Whip slips off her coat in mid-rant, no ounce of tired limbs or the sticky way damp leather gets breaking up her smoothly-stated words. She fumbles in the half-darkness to hang up her coat, her heavy gun holster soon following suit, the girl sighting in relief to take her desert eagle off her back.
"--And what's all that about two weeks /and five days,/" Whip is starting up again, mimicking K''s voice as she grunts out the last three words in a grumpy lower register. She whirls on him suspiciously. "Have you been counti--HHGGKK!!"
Getting a direct faceful of towel, Whip angrily rips it away, already looking flushed and huffy, preparing to squint one eye and point a finger and -- get absolutely derailed at K''s last little addendum. She pauses very distinctly, her brown eyes blinking at her brother. The irritation on her face never gets a chance. Instead, she smiles faintly, sincerely.
And Whip just moves forward to trap her brother into a tight hug. "I thought I told you not to worry about me," she remarks dryly, but doesn't really mean it.
"Yeah I've been counting," K' growls back in the wake of his makeshift projectile, the additional irritation stirred by her mocking imitation of his voice having incited him to put even greater force behind the fling. "Counting ever since 'two weeks' came and went. I don't care what you thought you did or didn't agree to, -I- recall that I made you promise to come back after 'two weeks.' Not 'about two weeks,' not 'nearly three weeks--'" A pause, while he actually stops to process what she says (a rare occurrence: usually he doesn't even bother to listen), and then: "You didn't even tell me you were going as far as /Colombia/."
Aggravated anew at this discovery of other withheld information, K' mirrors Whip's earlier method of dealing with him; he simply turns his back on her. He adds on his sardonic last comments, slamming the closet door shut a little more roughly than he has to, and prepares to just sulkily ignore his sister, firmly convinced he's in the right no matter what she might say.
Of course, once he's resolved that, she hugs him.
It's a good thing his back is turned; it lets her pincer her arms shut around his torso before he even realizes what's going on. He stiffens perceptibly, almost pulling away as a sheer reflex; then, cautiously, he relaxes. He slants a flat gaze over his shoulder and down at her, the look in his eyes unimpressed-- but relieved of most of its bite. "Yeah, well," he starts eventually, not really knowing what else to do or say about this development, "let me know if you figure out a way to stop. I got enough to worry about without finding myself thinking about other people."
Whip has never really been big on the touchy-feelies. She prefers doing business outside the personal bubble. She's not a hugger. She's... currently clinging to her long-lost brother like her life depended on it, feeling oddly touched to hear his concerns. From anyone else it would be an inconvenience, if not borderline liability... and it still feels that way in the side of her that only knows how to live alone and take care of herself. But there's another side of her, a newer one, and it kind of likes the feeling of having somewhere to go home to, with a someone living there who's been worried about you. So she hugs her stupid, over-reacting brother who is being a big sulky brat.
"Oh, cry me a river," Whip replies affectionately as she crushes against him, feeling shockingly cold and wet from the weather outside. Her happy hug squeezes once, lets go, then... swiftly moves, as she attempts to mutate it into a sudden headlock, not yet forgetting about getting a towel cannonballed in her face. "So," she continues pleasantly, as though she were discussing the weather, "who's been trying to take off your head? Would they mind if I did it first?
K' hates the touchy-feelies. Most people never even get close to even trying to touch him, much less succeeding. But somehow, when Whip does it, he just doesn't mind as much. Probably those latent, lost memories of having grown up for just about seven years side-by-side with her, up until NESTS came into their lives and separated them.
And so, though his brows lower and his mouth thins, he doesn't protest her affection. It feels right... and more than that, it just feels good to have a -real- sibling; someone who can make him feel more like a normal person, with a normal life, a normal family, and normal concerns. Not someone who's hunted, or someone who's murdered and killed, or someone who can't remember most of his life from before sixteen.
But he isn't about to give up on his overprotectiveness. He's worked hard to come this far-- to scrape this much of a life out of the nothing he had when he first left NESTS. He'll be damned if he lets it go so easily.
Of course, Whip isn't letting him go easily, either. In fact, she's latching on even more tightly-- and then suddenly, that grasp transforms into a headlock. A short sound of surprise escapes him as he buckles under her momentum, stumbling a step or two. "Probably-- would mind--" he manages in a grit, before he abruptly tries to reverse their situations and pitch her-- relatively gently-- onto the couch, "--cause apparently they MADE her to kill me." K' apparently has no conception of 'keeping the mood light.'
Whip's pretty new to this whole physical scuffle thing, but she's discovering rather quickly that she likes it. It's a rare treasure for anything to feel genuinely natural for an amnesiac, and beating the crap out of K' because he deserves it feels as natural as natural feelings get. So, feeling of high spirits -- the best she's felt in months -- the Ikari headlocks her brother up so she can dig her knuckles right into his scalp. It's noogie time.
Except when it's not. One quick move and two seconds later, Whip's bouncing off the couch, as even all genetic tampering and years of hard training don't come close to K''s reflexes. But she doesn't seem to mind, as the furniture feels all too soft and inviting for someone who finds it impossible to sleep on an airplane. More fatigued than she'd ever admit, Whip sags where she was shucked, letting her long legs drape over an arm of the couch, her socked toes wiggling.
She doesn't even get a chance to say something appropriately smart-assed back at K', because Whip is too busy propping herself up on one elbow, turning on her brother and shooting him a concerned, suspicious frown. After nagging him about his worry, she asks, "Who's 'her'?"
Opting to just flop where he's tossed her, Whip sprawls out along the couch, taking up the entire thing... and K' realizes that's really the only comfortable seating in the entire apartment. Huffing an irritated-- but still faintly amused-- sound out of the back of his throat, he edges over next to the piece of furniture and contents himself with the floor, leaning a shoulder against the cushions and regarding her quietly.
She's turned around and started nagging -him- concernedly, right after having shrugged off all -his- worries about -her- activities... but K' doesn't seem reticent about explaining. Probably because he figures a NESTS agent sent to kill him is something she should know about too, so she can be careful herself. "One've NESTS' new projects," he answers presently. "Says they made her just to 'bring me back.'"
He looks troubled about it, more troubled than he would were the interaction merely 'kill or be killed.' It's evident he feels some sort of responsibility for her existence-- and some anger at having been forced into Kyo's position, in the sense of having someone's existence be his fault. "I believe it. She can stop everything I do, uses my moves against me... they fixed the mistakes they made on me, with her." His gloved hand twitches.
Listening, Whip looks troubled for other reasons. After living the life of a lone wolf for so long, the new and unfamiliar feelings are hard to stomach. The Ikari taught her about loyalty. Discovering her brother is teaching her protectiveness. Though she, the much more temperate sibling, hardly demonstrates her concern as overtly and obviously as her angry brother, it doesn't mean that Whip is so cool that she feels nothing. It sounds like something NESTS would do. She finds her brother, her only family and the closest link she has with the rest of the world, and they just-as-quickly assemble to take him away.
Over her dead body.
Shifting to prop her body up against both elbows, her face turned away and her dark eyes burning a pensive hole through the ceiling, Whip goes quiet and stays that way. After a little while, she simply asks, in a much more sobered voice, "What's her name?"
Whip knows well, perhaps because of her interactions with the Ikari, that giving information about things that threaten you to the people who care about you just get them raging and on the warpath. But K', unaccustomed to having anyone even -notice- him, much less care about him, doesn't realize he's already said a bit too much. Naive as he is when it comes to caring and being cared for, he thinks that he can simply tell Whip not to get involved.
Soon, he'll probably learn better.
Suspicion finally enters his gaze in some small amount as he glances over at her, seeing the way she's sobered and the way her expression has fixed. Suspicion-- and some small amount of regret that she doesn't look as happy as she did when she first came in. "Called herself Kula Diamond," he finally answers, warily, a heavy bitterness entering his voice as he states the actual name the girl was given. "...but I'm only telling you so you can stay away from her. She nearly caught me when we first fought." An angry, contemptuous sound kicks out of the back of his throat; his eyes avert. "I didn't know how specifically they built her, then. But I'll figure out how to kill her."
If there's a gene they've both inherited, it's stubbornness. Whip's already resolved she's going to hunt this mysterious Kula Diamond done. If this supposed NESTS' creation is as strong as K', it means she has little sensible chance against her. Funny, though, that common sense isn't making her heart feel any less differently or her head be any more undecided. Whip supposes common sense is a weapon only wielded by those who have only to worry about themselves and nothing to lose. In any case, if she can't take this agent down, she might be able to learn something.
Soon enough, and somewhat wearily, Whip shifts her weight down off her elbows, letting herself lie back against the couch, cooling herself back to her patient, analytical default. Action can wait for a little bit. For now she'll just enjoy feeling safe in a familiar place. It must be what a home feels like. She lounges and enjoys K''s company, even if she's spending it thinking about what he just said. He'll figure out how to kill Kula. The statement sounds specifically solo. He didn't directly request her not to get involved; he didn't need to. The implication is right there. Whip finds it strangely disenheartening. Does K' not think she'd be a good ally to him? Or does he just not take her seriously.
Whip doesn't bring it up. Instead she asides, "Next time I go on assignment, I ought to drag you along." She doesn't sound like she really means it. But she does mean this: "Now I'm starting to worry about leaving you alone here. I think I could put in a request to be stationed in this city. Maybe take domestic missions that wouldn't take me too far away." She stops there. There's a heavy implication saddled in her words, but she can't quite voice it.
K' looks at Whip slowly. There's something swimming there under the current of her words, but he isn't versed enough in reading other people to really pick it up. He's very suspicious, however, in that instinctive way an animal just knows something is up, and it shows in the slight narrowing of his eyes. He's finally starting to get an inkling that she might -not- just listen to him when he tells her to do something.
"You better not be thinking about finding her," he says eventually, leaning in just a little closer, his proximity bringing with it all his unnatural, startling warmth. "She looks passive, just like a little girl, but you attack her and she'll kill you. She might even attack you first anyway, you being a 'traitor.'" It doesn't occur to him, him not knowing about her relationship with Krizalid, that the influence of that man might force Kula to be more clement than she might otherwise be... but even if he did know, he still wouldn't take chances.
And when she mentions bringing him along on assignments-- mentions asking to be stationed here, so she can keep an eye on him, K' simultaneously bristles at the implication he needs babysitting... and is privately glad, because it means a chance for HIM to keep an eye on HER. Casting his gaze aside, he exhales a long breath. He'll have to make some concessions here. "I'll be fine. I lived this long. ...But I do think it's better we stay close. I guess two of us can handle more than just one."
Her brother's up close and personal interrogation earns him a glance. Whip's brow furrows briefly, a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth, the rest of her looking distinctly uncertain. Then, with a perception so clean and sharp that it makes her wonder if either they're twins or he can read minds, K' theorizes that Whip is out to take matters into her own hands. His question earns him a steady look, one that neither confirms nor denies.
Then Whip looks away a moment later, and that pretty much answers that. She's thinking about finding Kula. She's even thinking about what she's going to do after she finds her. She's always preferred to plan in advance. But she says nothing. She's too tired for the argument that's sure to follow, and she's already made up her mind. She doesn't want to be talked out of it. She doesn't want to be reasoned against trying to do good by her brother, the only sure thing she's got in the world. The Ikari merely hoods her eyes, tiredly staring elsewhere.
At least until K' finally looks away. Whip glances back on him a little petulantly, quiet and allowing him to say his piece. Her expression starts out as resistant, resolute, and guarded. But it only takes the smallest of concessions to mollify her. "I agree." She pauses a beat, and finally says what she's been wanting to say. "I want to live with you for a while, K'. It doesn't have to be for long. But I think it'll do us both good. Plus," she adds, a little airily, "if we're family -- siblings -- then it means I'm probabaly the older one. Means I'm genetically wired to be keeping an eye on you."
K' stares at Whip a long time, eyes narrowed. He can guess her intentions from her previous vigilante behavior of chasing off after problems, trying to solve them herself (Igniz), and her silence seems to confirm his suspicions. He's too burdened for this on top of all the other things he has to think about. He shouldn't have to deal with this. But he resolves to argue with her later, to try to stop her; and to keep such a close eye on her, for the next while, she can't possibly get herself killed.
The next topic is significantly easier to agree with. 'I want to live with you a while.' That's good, K' can comport with that-- though he might prefer that 'a while' be longer, rather than shorter. It means he can carry out his intentions to keep an eye on her far better than if she's running outlandish missions to Colombia. Mildly appeased, K' inclines his head slowly, lashes lowering, his version of a compliant nod. Yeah, that's all as he would demand it.
'Then it means I'm probably the older one.'
K' loses his mollified look fast. "What are you talking about, you're the older one?" K' bristles instantly, especially at the addendum that that means Whip's meant to be the one keeping an eye on HIM. "How do -you- know? For all we know I'm the older one, and you should be listening to ME." He even sits up straighter, leaning over her a little, even though physical looming has NEVER worked on Whip in the past, and in fact has usually only set him up to be grabbed. Someday he'll learn.
"I do know," Whip says, rather reasonably, looking and sounding painfully rehearsed. As though she was expecting K' to do something K'. "We don't need our own evidence when we can rely on the statisical mean."
He puffs up and looms. She folds her arms in behind her head, looking deeply thoughtful, pursing her lips and angling her dark eyes up on the ceiling. She doesn't even seem to notice his posturing. "If we pulled up the data, such as correlates between sibling order and personality traits, we'd find that the older sibling tends to be reserved, sensible, responsible, cool-headed, and enduring. Just as well, we'd find the younger sibling to be impatient, rebellious, reckless, with a total lack of respect, a big brat..."
Soundly ignored, K' visibly loses some of his threatening posture as time goes on. There's no point if it's not being properly appreciated, after all. With a deep, grumbled sound from somewhere in his chest he sits back and lets his shoulders slope. Pushing a hand into his hair, ruffling the strands irritatedly, he bemusedly lets her talk. This proves to be a mistake.
Somewhere around 'a total lack of respect,' K' loses patience and lunges. 'A big brat' only gets him to speed up. One arm tries to snake deftly under Whip and flip her right over, just so he can hook the other around her and get revenge for her earlier headlock with one of his own. "...so basically, we'd find the younger sibling to be just like you," he finishes for her, hopefully while she remains a captive audience to his opinion. An opinion which he may or may not be solely premising on the fact that she just never listens to him.
"...moody, melodramatic, a poor fashion sense, a h--AHH!" Whip shrieks, not so gracefully, not so Hardened Ikari Mercenary-ily, her sage wisdom unfortunately ended by a well-placed headlock. Like any good sibling should, she rages against this cruel and unfair torment, forcing her body in one deft, well-placed twist to try to stuff her sharp elbow right into K''s ribs.
With that, Whip tries to push away from her brother and into freedom, but not without one prepared arm swinging back around, so that she can WHOMP him straight in the face with one of the couch's pillows. "Suck it up, squirt. I'm the oldest." She's grinning crookedly. "Don't worry, I'll take good care of you."
Fairly self-satisfied with his chosen method of argument, K' coolly holds his headlock for the precious few seconds Whip's too surprised to retaliate. "I don't think so. So far I'm shaping up to be the actual -responsible- one here." Yes, he's impugning her tendency to run off without so much as a by-your-leave. "Someday, I'm gonna find some proof I'm older--" And mercifully, he's cut off there by Whip's sudden jab and twist out of his locking grasp.
Shoved back, K' tries to recover forwards-- and then the thrown pillow robs the rest of what precarious balance remained to him, knocking him right back on his ass. "Will you?" a muffled query shoots through the pillow in response, K' pawing his left hand up to drag the pillow from his face. First revealed are a set of crafty yellow eyes... and then a decided smirk. "Then when are you gonna make yourself useful and feed me? I got spoiled with you around before."
"See, we're gonna be using my definition of 'good care.' It means you respect your elders and I don't kick you ass," Whip ever-so-helpfully corrects her brother through tired smiling, her eyes creased happily at the corners. Despite whatever dark cloud may have threatened their strange, makeshift little household, she makes sure not to let it last for long. Both amiably and very annoyingly, she reaches out and uses K''s shoulder as a hand up to her feet, making all those grumbly sounds that cranky, arthritic old war vets do as she forces her tired body to move.
Whip makes sure to cuff K' upside the head, messing up that white hair of his before she moves away, stretching theatrically. "Food doesn't sound so bad right about now," she comments idly, her half-hearted hunger pangs probably the only thing left that's keeping her awake. Moving on socked feet, she ambles towards the kitchen, hitching a little as she moves on sore, overtired joints. "Anything else happen while I was away? Something that isn't someone trying to kill you? Maybe something constructive? Something you can pin to the refrigerator?"
"One. You're not my elder. Two. Like you could kick my ass, you little brat." Grumbling audibly, K' flips the pillow back onto the couch-- it lands upside-down-- and long-sufferingly weathers the indignity of Whip's hand on his shoulder-- and then in his hair. His head bops slightly to one side as she cuffs him, but as per his strange tolerance of her, he doesn't do more than sulk furiously, a frown stamped on his face, and reach up to push his hair back into place.
Pushing to his feet, he trails her as she heads off to the kitchen, drifting along a few steps behind and stopping in the entryway. A shoulder leans against the wall as he crosses his arms and continues his studied sulk. Whip asks him what else happened BESIDES people trying to kill him and he considers, needing a while for this sort of question, brow furrowing as he tries to sift past all the negatives.
He can't exactly tell her about Geese, even if he thinks the training is 'something constructive.' Instead, he settles on, "Not really. I don't 'get out' a lot."
Whip's smirking face peeks over the opened fridge door. "You?" she echoes, looking wounded, shocked even, "don't get out? But you're such a /charmer./" Her left eye winks and she disappears back into whatever Narnia exists inside the mysterious contents of K''s refrigerator. Things shift and clatter disinterestedly. "Christ, K', haven't you gone food shopping since I left? I ate better than this in Barrancomino, and I'm not sure who I'm insulting more by admitting that."
Put out and left hungry, Whip closes the door, squinting one eye and rubbing a hand through her messy, half-damp hair. She frowns to herself for a thinking moment. Either she's telepathically picked up on his reluctant thoughts about training with Geese Howard or, "Well! Guess what, you're going to be 'getting out' a lot more with me around. Because either I'm going right to bed or we're both going out and getting some beer and onion rings. Choose the lesser of two evils."
K''s face descends even further into its sulk when Whip shoots that wink and jibe over the top of the door at him. His brows attack one another petulantly, and with something half a growl, half a sigh, he rubs a hand across his face. He doesn't bother replying that little jab, feeling the breath to be wasted on arguing with her. It's not until she starts talking again that he peeks a yellow eye through his fingers. "It's called eating out," he retorts shortly. Not like either he or Maxima are cooking geniuses.
And it's 'eating out' that Whip seems to have in mind, right now. K' considers a moment, his paranoia instantly weighing the risks of walking around at this hour, pressing concern into the lines of his expression; and then, with an aggravated breath, K' tries to calm that part of him that will always be terrified and always be running. He can't let fear crush what life he's managed to scrape for himself forever; though a little caution should always be exercised. "...Fine, we'll go somewhere. Bring your whip," he knows he doesn't even have to remind her, but nonetheless he nags, "cause NESTS has got a lot less shy about running around, seems like." K', the eternal downer.
That genotyped paranoia seems evidently lost on his blood sister, who is already stepping back to the front door at her brother's agreement, one hand on the wall as she steps back into her boots. She's laughing while he's nagging.
"NESTS," Whip echoes, and she really shouldn't be sounding so amused. "You know what? I don't give a crap about NESTS," announces the girl who was so ready to give up her life to destroy them. "So they wreck lives, just like they did mine. So what. I managed to get back the only important thing they took from me. And for whatever memories I've lost, I only intend to make new ones -- real good ones -- while living a happy life. Am I right, or am I really right?"
While digging through her discarded bags, Whip pauses, and then intones a heartbeat later, happily, casually, matter-of-factly, "Someday we're going to go drinking where drinking means something. Like Vietnam. I'll show you this great little place. --I hope Schugerg didn't go back and destroy it. Creepy little SOB." Whip talks to herself as she loads up her arms, checking the clip in her Desert Eagle before reholstering it, then reaching back into her bag to retrieve the coiled length of her whip. She imparts it a thoughtless, affectionate little kiss of two friends saying hello, before she slips it into the second, wider holster at her upper back. Her coat gets shrugged on over top.
Whip glances back smilingly at K', her spirits on high mast. "You ready, Grumpy?"
Whip laughs off his paranoia. K' just looks nonplussed a moment, watching her as she casually preps to leave. There's merit in what she has to say, certainly, and it's true for her. She's found all she wanted to find, and now she can simply move forward. But K' doesn't think that's too true for himself. He's got back the most important thing to him-- his sister-- but there's still another important thing he hasn't got back. Real freedom. From his glove, and from being hunted.
But while K' would have coldly shot down just about anyone else with those bleak, depressing words, he finds himself a little reticent to do it to Whip. One look at the happiness she's got now-- happiness which HE had a part in bringing her, a decidedly foreign thing to a boy engineered solely to kill people-- and his will to rain on her parade withers. He just lets out a resigned sigh, following her over to the front door and reaching around her to snare his jacket.
"You're sort of right," is all he says on the topic, tempering the rather grim words with a smirk: as if to write them off as just another joke on their chronic inability to let one another win. He's got a lot of worries still weighing on his mind, but... looking at Whip's happiness makes him just want to keep it to himself. "Haven't been back to Vietnam in a while... wasn't too fun a trip last time I had to go," he muses instead as he steps into his boots, working them on properly and bracing himself against the wall. "Might be best not to be too tied down in one place, too..." A pause. Something nags at the back of his mind. "...Schugerg?"
She asks if he's ready, and his sole answer is to crack half a grin-- he's been ready-- and open the door. He doesn't hold it for her, though; he goes first, stepping out into the hall. Onlookers would have pegged this as mere rudeness, but in reality K' wants to be out first because he'd rather he get shot first than Whip.
K' letting himself out first doesn't seem to bother her; Whip was raised on efficiency rather than etiquette. But it doesn't mean she couldn't swat him over the head if she knew the reason why. Blissfully ignorant, she makes sure to lock the door behind them, looking up only after her brother speaks.
"Ha ha! So you like onion rings, right?" Whip very loudly and very amiably doesn't answer K''s last question, instead stepping forward to hook an arm roughly over his shoulders and making sure to be as irritating as possible. "If not, maybe the pub will let me order you a kid's meal. Would that be nice?"
Smiling crookedly, she walks along, seeming less and less likely to let go, as Whip tries her best to catch up on about a lost decade of pestering her brother, and tries her best to rub some of her good mood off on him, even if it's through osmosis. If they share blood, if they're truly going to try being a family again, then she has got to help shoo away that black cloud over his head, and make him lighten up a bit.
"Then we'll hit Vietnam soon. And a whole list of other places too. We've got a lot to catch up on. If we can't remember our old memories, then we'll have to make some good ones, right?" Whip's already clinging desperately to the littlest chance she may lead something of a normal life, just like anyone else in the world, clinging onto it as tightly as her arm is on K'. She pauses a moment. "Speaking of... I want to meet that girl sometime, K'. The one who... you know. Who helped us find each other. I want to meet her properly and thank her."
K' starts to object when Whip changes the topic. His eyes narrow suspiciously, the boy drawing a breath to ask her to answer the damned question-- and then she hooks an arm about his shoulders and solicitously calls him a kid. The strange name she dropped earlier is instantly forgotten in the sudden spate of offended temper, K' trying and failing to shrug her off. "Hey, fuck you, we're the same fucking age," he shoots back, his shoulders stilling but his mouth still going; he's resigned to Whip's physical affections, but he's certainly not putting up her with lip.
There's relatively little edge to the words, though, and eventually he just relaxes. A comfortable sort of silence radiates from him as they walk along, and he listens to her talk. It's been so rare for him to ever feel excited about something, in the sense that he actually looked forward to it; ever since he can remember, he's felt more like a machine consigned to complete a couple joyless tasks before he dies.
But what Whip's saying now makes him feel that way. It almost makes him feel like somebody who could deserve to make a few good memories for himself. "...Yeah," is all he says aloud that might hint at his thoughts, his head dipping slightly as he turns it towards hers. His jawline nudges against her hair. "It'll be hard, but I think I could handle being stuck with you a while."
Her tone soon sobers, and the sudden change draws K''s attention. His gaze slides down towards her, a pensive look replacing some of that surliness. "...we'll go see her," he eventually says, only now remembering that he's been too busy nagging Shurui and trying to keep her from being carried off by NESTS agents to thank her properly himself. Her safety -does- come first, but... it shouldn't take him that long just to tell her she was right about them.
"Good," Whip confirms, with a nod of her head and a decisive pat of her hand against K''s far shoulder. It's been bugging her to go for so long without thanking that mysterious girl for everything she's done. She doesn't know what she'd be doing know was she not given this precious gift of having a piece of her life returned. No, that's a lie. She does know, and it'd probably be along the lines of 'suicide missions' and 'NESTS' and 'unfathomable rage.'
The young Ikari hasn't forgotten her fight with NESTS; she hasn't brushed aside how prepared she was to throw it all away in order to try to make them hurt the same way she was hurting. Whip can talk away her old actions, but she can still feel them. They're able to be rationalized now, but they're not gone. She just has more important things to do now. Like go have beer and onion rings with her brother.
The rain has stopped, and at the dead of night, the city smells earthy and fresh. The streets are dark and silent, but Whip neither seems to notice nor mind. Night's always been her favourite time to work. She's walked down countless city streets on countless continents at 2 a.m. Southtown is no different, except that this time she has a grumpy brother in tow.
"And damn right you're stuck with me," Whip adds after a short pause, speaking off-handed through her squinting to find someplace open that isn't inclined to stop at serving sushi. "I gave you plenty of chances to split. So it's your own fault." She says that through a playful grin, but her own choice of words make her think. "You know, it was funny how you stuck around, even after all those times I told you to get lost. It's almost as if you knew."
For all he insists he's the older, he's certainly content to let Whip do all the looking for a decent place to stop in at: merely tagging along with a compliant docility as she sagely traps him against her. Assertive as he is in things he understands, he's strangely shy once it comes to things as normal as stopping in someplace for a drink, long after midnight, with his sister.
Instead of watching the shops go by, he's watching the city around them; and when he isn't warily prying into shadowy corners with his keen eyes, he's watching the girl at his side. The more he looks at her, the more he can remember and place her as the same girl that's drifted about in his dreams so long. If he had any leftover doubts, they're mostly gone by now.
"It was more fun to chase you when you didn't pester me this much, brat," he gripes in the meantime, one arm working free so he can mess her hair in a gruff and awkward show of affection. Her final words give him pause, however, and he takes a minute to consider his response. "I'm pretty persistent when I want something..." he says slowly, his way of admitting that he has an amazingly contrary nature. "And I guess there was one thing they couldn't totally erase. You just felt familiar."
"Ha! Brat?" Whip sputters back, her wide grinning dominating her face. She makes sure to laugh /that/ accusation off. "You've already resigned yourself as the token brat of the family." She pauses, then adds wryky, "Kiddo."
Her left eye squints when K' messes up her already-messy hair, its wind-and-rain blown layers giving an uneven frame to her face and accentuating how softly-featured she is. Battle-weary mercenary-for-hire, Whip looks not. She smiles it off, not minding her manhandling in the least. She's too busy getting distracted by the first Americanized pub sign she's seen yet on their walk, giving no warning as she tows suddenly on K''s arm to swerve them both inside. The place is packed. Southtown is shaping up to be a sleepless town. Whip just smiles much more widely.
"Well," she continues, raising her voice a little to carry through the din, "it's a good thing that one of us has some intuition. Good lot all my common sense did. If it were my choice, I would've never seen you again."
"It's bad form to peg me as a brat just cause I'm right most of the time," K' counters amusedly, arguing with her all the way up to the pub entrance and through the door. "I'm just calling -you- one cause you're annoying." Heads turn a little when the pair drop in from off the street, a few smiles cracked at how much they seem to be enjoying one another's company; but sadly, most people peg the young pair as dating, because the interactions are those of near-strangers still getting to know one another.
K' abruptly takes the lead once they're in, shrugging off her arm and easing forward, a quick glance around revealing nothing particularly untoward. He doesn't seem to notice that she's just implied he has no common sense; that, or he doesn't really take it as too much an insult. The randomness of his own life has shown him that sometimes, common sense and prudence just don't count for shit when the world is determined to give you a run of bad luck.
Finding a booth over in a marginally quieter corner, K' claims it instantly and cuts a grin at Whip over his shoulder as she continues her train of thought. "Che. Am I that unlikeable?" Settling in, he leans back and lets his smirk knife a little wider: but notably, the humor has leaked out of the expression. "Or that dangerous?"
Whip can't help but pause, her eyebrows furrowing and her analytical mind going on overdrive, as K''s demeanour suddenly takes the full three-sixty once they're among other people. She stares suspiciously at his turned back, trying to make sense of all his forced vigilance. She always thought she was on the cautious side. Either he's being completely unnecessary or... he's always this paranoid.
It's a sobering thought, one that reminds her just how little she knows about someone who is her own flesh-and-blood family.
Either way, she relents and allows her brother to take the lead, following him contently and appearing to visibly approve his choice of seating. It's a talent that borders the supernatural -- finding a good spot to sit in a crowded pub. As he sits, she remainds standing, already squinting towards the bar and trying to read the labels of what's on tap; Whip's eye only gets drawn back when K' mentions the possibility of being unlikeable. She glances at him, looking distracted but amused, but pauses, not yet so familiar with him that she's fluent with all his expressions.
Whip ponders the truth. She goes with a safer answer. "--That annoying," she answers wryly, before simply stepping away and heading towards the bar. Presumably she's off to order them their first drinks.
Much of it really is just paranoia. K' has always been extremely paranoid of many things: of being followed, of being mocked, of being played for a fool. But part of it is his air of forced bravado around other people, too. She got to see him with his guard down earlier, when they were in the privacy of their own apartment, but here-- with foreign eyes all around-- K' puts on a show of aggressive, low-key confidence.
He doesn't notice the way Whip considers him so thoughtfully, partially because her odd look is gone once he's turned around. He flops down first, sinking into the chair lazily, long legs idling under the table as he takes up far too much space in that irritating way boys do, and when Whip fails to join him immediately he cocks a curious eye up at her.
He seems reasonably satisfied by the answer he gets, an eyeroll and a flicker of a grin sending Whip off as she heads towards the bar. Once her back's turned, however, his expression just turns, very fleetingly, troubled. His gaze comes to rest on the tabletop. He lets her worry about getting them their drinks; and while her back is turned, he lets himself worry about... other things.
For an instant, it feels like deja vu; it's a mirror-like glimpse of that fated night that they both moved against their common sense and better caution and agreed to meet in some seedy dive on the wrong side of Metro. Just like before, Whip's gone in her compulsive need to emulsify the situation, even if it's with hard lager. What could have been a tense collaboration of intel between two amnesiac ex-assassins became a semi-sociable night of drinks; what is an awkward getting-to-know-of between long-lost siblings becomes a casual dinner and night on the town.
Just as she did before, Whip leans against the bar and flags the bartender down, giving out her request silently, her voice long drowned out by the crowds and the house music. She glances back at K' once during her wait, but spends the rest of it smilingly conversing with a group of young guys who occasionally point at the boxing match on one of the overhead T.Vs. Ikari soldiers were probably separately trained in pub smalltalk. So unlike her brother at the table, one of the nameless young men at the bar even makes her laugh.
A half-a-minute later, Whip is making her way back with a flock of lager in her wake. "No Guinness in this dump," she comments laughingly as she returns, "so we're drinking Mexican tonight." She's got them two each. And that's probably just the start. She slumps down into one chair, already twisting the cap off her first beer. "So are you gonna tell me what you're thinking about?"
It does seem like that night. At least, it does superficially. But unlike that night, when Whip returns-- overflowing with alcohol-- K' rewards her not with a distrustful stare, but with the vaguest hint of a halting smile. It even lacks most of the nastiness that K' usually associates with the expression: resembling a look a human being would wear, rather than the snarl of a threatened, hounded animal.
It's gone very quickly, easy come and easy go, shipwrecking back into his customary brooding as Whip asks what's on his mind. He opens his first beer instead of answering, tipping back a long drink as he considers how to frame it. "Nothing I wasn't already thinking about back home," he eventually says, indirectly answering her. "You probably know most've the things I usually dwell on already."
It would be so much easier, he thinks, just to forget about it all. To forget about his determination to best Kyo. To forget about learning to control his anger and his fire. To forget about having to bring NESTS down... about having to run from them until he can. To forget the uncomfortable feeling of now having people he wants to protect from them. But he can't. And most damningly, he can't forget his desire for revenge.
But maybe-- just occasionally-- he can. His eyes soften infinitesimally as he watches his sister, determinedly happy in spite of all they're facing. "I guess I can not think about them for tonight."
In the midst of K''s dour thoughts, Whip is busily tipping back her beer, underestimating its hops, and spilling a bit of it on herself. Through all his pessimism is his sister's half-muffled "goddamnit" as she wipes sulkingly at her t-shirt. She exhales, flashing him a quick, dangerous look that is burned with the mathematical logic: 'sharp commentary = painful death.'
Soon enough, her expression mollifies, Whip catching K''s brief, unguarded look long enough to return it. She smiles crookedly, leaning one elbow on the table and relaxing on the spot. "Now you're talking," she says proudly, reaching forward to knock her opened lager against his in a clink of glass. "You've got this life, and you need to spend it living for once. There's going to be a lot of shit out there, and we'll handle it as it comes. All right? So don't worry." Because I've got it handled, says the look in Whip's eyes, as she swigs back more lager.
K' doesn't even notice Whip's mishap until she's already shooting him a sharp look over it. His expression twitches towards amusement, but mercifully he manages to hold his tongue. This time, all she gets is a pointed grin: a little hint that he could've, but he won't.
Instead, he just watches her as she relaxes, grins, and expresses her approval of his reluctant unwinding. She sounds a lot like Maxima in those moments, telling him he ought to enjoy his hard-won freedom instead of spending it all mired in fear and thoughts of vengeance. He's tried, certainly, but the concern is always there in the back of his mind. He never quite manages to put it from his thoughts.
Leaning back a little, he lets his eyes drift half-closed. Oh, he's noticed that look in her eyes, but he lets it slide for the moment; just noting it down as something to keep an eye on, like any responsible /older/ brother should. A slow nod marks his eventual, general agreement with her words. "Someday we're going to have to handle it -before- it comes," he can't stop himself from adding quietly, but that's all the protest he puts up for now.
"Someday, someday, someday," Whip drawls on, her good spirits having little patience for K''s nagging reminders. She doesn't want to hear them. Not tonight. Too many of them and they might activate her common sense logic loop, and then there will be no relaxing for hours. And this lager is too overpriced to waste.
Exhaling deeply, she continues on, her light-hearted voice lowering an octave into the serious clef. "Listen, K'. I'm not near tipsy enough to get maudlin, but I'll give it a shot." Whip leans back into her chair, gets comfortable, and looks steadily across the table and straight on her erstwhile brother. "I can't promise you much, but I'll promise you this. Whatever your life was before I met you, I'm going to do my best to make it better. I'm going to help you in any way I can. From this point on, I want your life to be better and I want you to be happier." She points at him with the neck of her half-finished lager bottle. "OK?"
Nagging fatalism, constant paranoia, unending concern. Usually K' would just leave all the particulars and details up to Maxima, but as of late things have just got too overwhelming for K' to simply ignore the pressure. That, and he's now got some things he personally cares about... things he couldn't just shove onto somebody else's shoulders and forget about.
One of those things is getting serious with him now, lost patience with his morose nature. He blinks up at her as she talks, his level yellow gaze watching her without giving much indication of how their owner feels about her words. K' is quiet a moment, toying with his own half-drained bottle, before he finally draws breath to reply. "OK," he eventually says, very simply... but just as Whip might start to think that's all that's coming at her, K' adds, "but only if you let me promise you the same."
Whip's knowing smile evolves into omniscience. "No need to promise what's already been done," she answers, the barely-concealed emotion making her voice a little papery around the edges. "My life's never been better. I've never felt happier." She pauses. She drinks her beer. "So if you still wanna promise me something, it can be to stop being such a big asshole."
Log created on 20:54:23 05/21/2008 by K', and last modified on 01:52:55 05/30/2008.