Description: When two different personalities realize they're actually long-lost brother and sister, both find themselves having to change and adjust their behavior in order to make the whole work.
It's been about an hour since K' parted ways with his impudent Brazilian charge. In that time, he'd gone on to finish the dreary task for which he had originally embarked-- looking very mundane, trudging about with his dusty jeans and shopping bags-- and wandered his lazy way back to the apartment. He intended that he and his sister should stay home at least for a few days before deciding their next move.
Whip might be well enough to have been discharged from the hospital just this morning, but-- in K''s opinion-- she still wasn't well enough to be moving around a lot. As such, he hadn't yet told her some of the things Alma and Shurui had brought up when he'd seen them last, a day or two ago. Their words preyed on his mind, however. He intended to let Shurui see Whip-- to oblige her was as much as he and his sister -owed- the girl. But Alma's offer? That requires some thought.
The young man gives away no evidence of his weighted, troubled mind: especially not once he gets back to the apartment. Unlocking and nudging open the door, he eels through into the entryway and deposits his burdens on the kitchen counter as if nothing were wrong. Figuring he can just deal with putting things away later, the boy shucks off and hangs up his leather jacket: tiredly rumpling a hand through his hair as he meanders on into the apartment proper.
There is, however, something off about him.
He hasn't noticed, but his encounter with Pás left more of a mark than he thinks it did. It's noticeable even past the usual smell of leather and fire that suffuses him: a distinctly feminine, light scent. The kind of scent you'd get from an expensive lotion or a rather tasteful perfume. It's something K' would never be caught emanating, of course... unless he spent a half-hour holding hands with a mysterious young woman: and it's something to which he's completely oblivious.
The rest of the apartment smells like frying butter and eggs. A lot of eggs.
Whip's not well enough to be moving around a lot, but like hell that'll stop her. Contrary to doctor's orders that have demanded she take no more than one step away from her bed, she's stooped over the kitchen stove, clutching onto a wooden crutch with one hand and manning a spatula with the other. The window has been opened to let in the light and air of the sunsetting evening, the mess has been cleaned off the table to be replaced with a couple empty place settings and her opened, idling laptop, the radio has been turned on to play some loud AC/DC, and the maestro of this sinister orchestration is humming along in a fit of happy domesticity.
The Ikari soldier utilizes all her years of training to multitask poking at scrambled eggs and scratching at her itchy bandages. They seem to mummy up her arms and legs, the rest of her stuck in a tank top and boxer shorts, her dark hair messily ponytailed back with her usual don't-give-a-damn vanity. The most attention she's giving her appearance these days is poking at all her tape and gauze and especially the bandaids stuck down her left cheekbone. Those are driving her nuts.
But she's not about to let that shred her mood. In fact, she's done all she possibly can to make herself as happy as possible. The lead surgeon who spent ten painstaking hours saving her from the verge of death would be having an aneurysm seeing his patient switching one of her brother's stolen cigarettes with swigs of an open beer, and she smokes contently over her frying eggs, her eyes half-lidded and the other side of her lips absently mouthing the words along to Stiff Upper Lip.
Then she hears the door close. Whip tilts her head momentarily, something automatic making her pause everything and listen. She hasn't been staying with K' long, but she's been rooming long enough to recognize his familiar sounds. She loosens muscles she didn't even realize she had tense, leaning a notch onto her supporting crutch. She doesn't move except to take out her cigarette to exhale some smoke, letting him eventually find the kitchen and her in it.
K' -was- going to go into the bedroom to check on his sister, but something about the state of the apartment tells him she's not going to be in there. And the more he looks around, the more his expression-- initially graced with a look of placidity rarely to be seen on the sulky young man's face-- starts inevitably heading back towards something a little more familiar.
He frowns. Intensely. And he u-turns straight for the kitchen.
Whip's brother doesn't even say hello. He just pokes his head into the kitchen, looking distinctly unimpressed, and greets her with, "What the hell are you doing out of bed?" His annoyed gaze rakes her entire bandaged form, taking in all the spots where her worrying and poking and prodding's interfered with the wrappings, and his eyes hood.
"You shouldn't be up," he eventually continues. Straightening assertively, he shoulders into the kitchen more than he walks into it, invading Whip's space: and trying to ignore the fact that he actually is really hungry. With an amusing sort of determination, his eyes fix on the cigarette rather than the pan. "...and you shouldn't be smoking. Much less -my- cigarettes."
If the world were to be doomed by an apocalypse tomorrow, and the broken husk of the earth left crumbling in its wake needed a particular set of skills in order to ensure survival, and one of these skills were, oh, ignoring K' entirely, then Whip would very easily and very happily survive in this new age.
Because she ignores K' like she's been trained to do so, ten hours of day since the day she was born. She scrapes at her cooking eggs and nods her head along to AC/DC, her cigarette bobbing up and down in a smoky dance. Back turned on her brother, her dark eyes lidded and cast down on the stove, Whip expertly ignores his existence as with the rest of the world.
Then he gets nice and close. Indignantly close. And he starts to lecture. One moment, K''s sister seems to resemble drywall, her face blank and distant and unremarkable. Even if she's smelling something very new and very peculiar.
One moment later, she's demonstrating that his speed is partially genetic, because within a split second she's trying to jam a heaping spoonful of eggs right into her brother's big, wide, open, never shutting up mouth.
Whip slants K' a look from the corner of her eye. She exhales a heavy, defiant breath of smoke, and then asks around her cigarette, "Isn't having a girlfriend supposed to /calm/ you down?"
Getting more and more aggravated-- K' does hate being ignored when he demands attention-- K' resorts to something he knows is bound to make her snap. He starts picking at her. He nettles her with the expert precision of a lifelong brother, despite having been separated from her for years. And once he sees her start to turn, he knows he's succeeded in getting under her skin.
Smugly, K' might have been about to continue in the vein of how limited his stash of that particular kind of cigarette is, and how he'd therefore thank her to ask before going through all his things. He -might- have been. But the world will never know for sure, because in that instant Whip whirls around and forces a spoon straight into his face. Too startled to avoid the unexpected attack, K' finds himself-- quite amusingly-- thoroughly spooned.
Outraged, K' gears up for one of those famous losses of temper, eyes narrowing, all the telltale signs flaring up... and then, the boy just seems to deflate. Going off at his bandaged, beat-up sister is just not worth the effort. Especially since she did, at the least, just feed him. Mouthing the spoon irritably, he reaches up to wrench it out in a huff. A disgruntled swallow, and he pitches the spoon at the sink. "...little fuck."
Whip's subsequent comment, at first, doesn't even sink in. It doesn't even compute. K' just looks at her blankly for a few moments, before he finally realizes what she's going on about. "...-what-?" is all the eloquent response he can manage after, looking completely confused as to why this topic is even on the table.
"As well as you can look the part, don't play dumb with me, bro," Whip begins wryly, and isn't it nice that she's got her voice back? How awful it must have been for K' those last two days when her busted lung made it impossible for her to inhale deeply, much less talk back to him. But, ever so joyously, his dear sister is on the mend.
Probably doesn't help a collapsed lung to be smoking with it, but Whip prefers to celebrate life rather than coddle it delicately.
"You leave inexplicably at all times of the day. And night. You're sometimes gone for hours. You never tell me why..." Whip drawls onwards with her resurrected voice, putting all her Ikari agility into leaning on her crutch while dishing up K' a bowl of scrambled eggs. On closer inspection, they're mixed with fried potato and a fuckload of black pepper. It doesn't look like much but it smells heavenly. She shoves the food demandingly at him, continuing, "And now you come home smelling like a girl. So when do I get to meet her?"
She takes the cigarette out of her mouth, and her crooked grin, still bruised on one side, widens. "Come on. I swear the moment I get a boyfriend, I'll let you meet him too." That thought amuses her around the edges, lingering on as she reaches for another bowl to dish up eggs for herself. That's something she's never really thought about. Well, almost. Whip does wonder sometimes what it's like to go on a date.
It's true. K' doesn't like being talked back to at all. And the fact that his sister is well enough again to get right back to her defiant ways is a mixed blessing and curse. The muted relief in his eyes at the fact her voice is on the mend is tempered by the sheer irritation triggered by what her voice is -saying-. That Whip chooses to take her time with a few sisterly insults before even bothering to answer his damned question just makes matters worse.
In silence, he watches her as she rationalizes her way to her erroneous conclusion. His yellow eyes settle on her as she reveals she's noticed his habit of coming and going at odd hours... disappearing for hours at a time... never explaining why. He says nothing, his expression failing to change, as he attempts to consider the situation. He knew he wouldn't be able to get away with it, but now that she's erroneously attributed it to a girlfriend... he has an excuse. And he's wondering if perhaps it'd be best if he let her think that.
Eventually, however, he decides it's too annoying and too complicated a lie. And inexplicably, for a brief instant, a wry smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth. It's because he just involuntarily pictured Geese as a blushing girlfriend. "She's not my girlfriend..." he starts calmly enough, patronizing amusement flickering infuriatingly in his expression. He accepts the bowl as it's handed him, adding, "She's just some Pacific girl who just never stops bothering me... wants me to teach her."
But then, Whip just has to go and say the 'b' word. And K''s expression sours faster than a bowl of cream in the sun. Reaching forwards, he swipes at the cigarette: snagging it right out of his sister's mouth, just so he can put it in his own. His gaze goes aggressive. The look of somebody who senses competition and doesn't like it. "Like I said..." he notes, "you shouldn't be smoking." And he takes a nice long drag.
"Teach her?" Whip echoes, her brow furrowing and her mouth twisting up with a barely-suppressed laugh. Unable to disguise the amusement that sweats from her voice, she intones, "What've you been /teaching her/ about, you perv?!" The bandaged soldier laughs out a breath of smoke, her cigarette hanging from her mouth as she turns to sift through the cutlery drawer for a fork. "I can't beli-- hey!"
Her precious cigarette nicked, Whip turns on her brother, surprised and annoyed at his boldness. She tries to swipe at him, but she can't get an arm free between her crutch and bowlful of eggs. In the end, she decides her dignity is worth more than a cigarette, because there's no way going after it won't end up with her ass on the floor. She rolls her eyes, and expression drying up, transforms herself into a cold indifference, unmoved and even turning her own nose up at the sight of K' puffing away. Instead she indulges happily in the sight of her meal, and begins the slow and arduous process of hitching herself to the kitchen table. The way she moves, it's a wonder how she pulled herself out of bed.
Though the temperate Whip doesn't share in K''s moody hostility (in fact, she's completely oblivious to it,) she's not sure how to feel about the idea of her brother dating. He surely doesn't seem like the type... which means she doesn't know him well enough, if she's going to make that assumption. She finds it amusing, and certainly something to tease him about. She thinks it's exciting in a way, something to feel proud over, and a relief to know that he's made more a life for himself than she realized. But, in the end, she thinks if she were to see him out with a girl, she'd mostly feel envious. It'd mean he's on his way to a more "normal" life, and he's made progress that far exceeds her own. It'd be a sobering feeling. She'd have to try to keep up.
It's a good thing K''s not telepathic. It wouldn't help his mood any to realize that Whip, in her silly, oblivious, and entirely over-analytical way is thinking about the concept of a date, dissecting it mentally like she would visualize the process of cleaning a gun.
By the time she painstakingly moves to sit down, curiousity has already gotten the best of her. "You ever been on a date?" Whip asks almost absently of K', out of nowhere, looking at her eggs instead of him.
Whip gets the distinct pleasure of seeing K' nearly sputter. Like a cat, being laughed at infuriates him... and Whip does it not once, but twice. "-You're- the perv," he retorts, indignant at being so misconstrued. "All I've been teaching her is how to fight properly." An unimpressed huff escapes him. "I'm not fucking dating anybody... much less HER." Were he a weaker young man, he might even have shuddered visibly at the thought.
But in the end, he gets some measure of revenge. Her abbreviated attempt at reclaiming her stolen item draws an insufferable smirk out of K', the boy smoking even a little more ostentatiously than usual just to get her hackles up. But patient as she ever is, she eventually distracts herself from his show, and-- somewhat disgruntled at her determined indifference-- he frowns around his cigarette and rolls his eyes once Whip's back is safely turned.
In truth, K' really isn't ready to date. Not in any normal manner, anyway. And he himself knows it. He's held himself a little apart from girls because of that, ignoring them even though they do attempt to flirt with him (in their various fashions, some of which are... unconventional). He just is not prepared to let someone into his life like that, and the sudden thought that -Whip- might sobers him instantly. One of his moods seizes him, his eyes lidding and his brows knotting in that way he has when something troubles him.
He imagines Whip on somebody's arm, at somebody else's side, hanging out with some other man, and finds himself disconcerted at how jealously possessive the image makes him feel. No, he just isn't ready to share her yet. And it's for that reason that it's good he's not telepathic. It'd utterly dismay him to realize just how much she -is- thinking about the whole idea.
He's sunk so deeply into his thoughts, Whip's abrupt question startles him. His gaze flicks up a bit more sharply than strictly necessary, the combination of the topic itself and its sudden delivery throwing him off. "No," is his immediate reply, his voice pointed: his tone like a shutting door. "I haven't had the time or the desire for anything like that. Doubt anybody'd want to be inflicted with it, either, if they knew how much trouble I come with."
That tone finally earns K' a glance. Whip looks up from her half-finished bowl of eggs to slant her brother a strange look, her expression nothing short of completely bewildered. Where did that come from? Who knows; she's given up long ago on trying to track his moods. She'd have better luck finding the Holy Grail. She squints her right eye, aiming him a glance that borders amusement and uncertainty, and asks, humoured, "Inflicted? What are you, a veneral disease? You goof." She follows her remark up with a laughing chuff and a busy forkful of potato.
Either way, she's aware enough to drop the topic, not needing a Holmesian genius to deduce that he's getting ruffled. She's not entirely sure why, but even so, Whip has reasons for her own. She hasn't known K' for long, and especially as her brother, but she's already got that instinctive feeling that informs her that, were she to ever grow a social life with certain intimate leanings, he would be the /last/ person to know. Discussing romance with your own brother is an instant recipe for awkward.
Instead, Whip immediately guns down K' with a sudden, sunny look, a thought seizing her as a fantastic choice for ye olde topic shift. "Oh!" she exclaims, pointing at him with her fork, "I'm feeling a lot better today. I honestly think I'll be close to deuce by the end of the week. I'm going to celebrate it by signing up for the Saturday Fight. I need to get back into that." The last fight she had was when... Igniz. Whip can feel her mood start to curdle, but unlike certain K's, she fights the feeling off her front lines. "I wanted to tell you so you'll know when to watch. If I win, I'll bring you home something fun." That should cheer him up!
K' isn't looking at his sister, and so he doesn't catch her strange look. He's finished off the cigarette by now, and has graduated to poking morosely through his bowl: uncharacteristically enough, not eating its contents. He really, honestly just does not -think- himself enough of a person to really form that kind of relationship yet, and so when Whip just lets out that humored outburst he almost looks stung. It's short-lived: within moments, he just flicks his eyes upwards in a dismissive huff and... doesn't try to explain himself at all.
Instead, he just attacks his food with that distinctly ruffled air. He certainly doesn't look like the sort who'd take it too well if his sister was getting cozy with somebody. No, he looks more like the sort who would probably have... something of a poor reaction to such news. Awkward is the most tactful word there is for it.
And then, K' abruptly gets a return dose of his own moodiness. Whip flips the switch from pensive to beaming so damned fast he almost gets whiplash. Startling, K' directs a stare straight at Whip as she declares several things. One: she will be fine by the end of the week. A stretch, but not implausible. Two: she will be celebrating this by entering an SNF.
K' has a poor reaction.
"Like fuck you're in any condition to do that." Head lowered slightly, eyes narrowed, K' looks the very epitome of aggressive disapproval. "Even if you ARE fine by the end of the week... I doubt it's a good idea to give yourself that kind of exposure." And what if, a little voice nags at the back of his mind, she ends up in a match with Kula again? Who knows whether the child assassin might opt to try to finish what he perceives as her incomplete task?
Try as she might, Whip's sunny disposition falters under the torrent of K''s cloudy day. He pulls all that good cheer out of her faster than a maxi pad. Her happy smiling soon deteriorates into a deary look, and she abandons her appetite with a sigh and the clang of her fork inside her bowl, exchanging hands to support her head, and she leans her jaw sufferingly into her palm.
"K', you make it sound like I was living in a box before I met you," Whip points out, her voice drawing its remarkable sharpness, able to sound as sharp and frank as any of the hunting knives she carries on her person. "I've seen action on every inch of the globe. I've taken bullets, machetes, grenades -- hell," she turns around to veer him a frowning glance, "I survived Zero for god's sakes -- and I'm standing. I know how to get back up and get strong again. If I stay cooped up in some apartment, I'm gonna lose my edge.
Testament to Whip's lone wolf nature, she immediately sees K''s concern as an annoyance. She's not used to sharing domicile with others, and she's certainly not used to bowing to demands not out of the mouth of a superior officer. She's scowling as she rises from the kitchen table, irritably leaving her half-finished meal behind and crutching herself out of the room. She grunts that after like she's expecting him to thank her for her generousity. "You should be glad I even told you. I promised I would, remember? I could've not said anything." She pauses minutely, then adds on a toneless drawl, "Glad to know you got faith in me. Asshole."
Whip isn't the only one who has a lot to learn about how to live with other people. She's staring straight at the one person who's even worse at accomodating other people than she is. And up until now, K' has never, ever realized that his behavior might not be acceptable... or that it might have repercussions he actually doesn't like. When people had flipped out at him in the past for being a dick or a controlling asshole, he'd just shrugged them off. He could live without them anyway. If they were driven away, fine. He didn't need them.
Not so Whip.
Forced by his own attachment to her to actually give a shit about her feelings, K' is faced with a daunting task. He's had to learn to live with a constant sacred fire burning in his vein-- had to escape from, and successfully evade, one of the most sinister organizations on the face of the earth-- had to infiltrate all sorts of unimaginably hazardous places to execute the most delicate of assassinations: but this is by far the most difficult thing he's ever had to do.
He makes himself compromise. He makes himself amend his words. And the very act of changing his attitude because somebody didn't like what he said seems to pain him. Even if it IS Whip.
"Tch... come the fuck on." His very voice sounds reluctant and pulled-in. His eyes avert. He can't look at her dead-on. "Sit down. I didn't fucken mean it like that."
How -did- he mean it, though? He looks like he's having a lot of trouble figuring out how to frame it. "Just don't like the possibility of going back to how I was before," he finally says, and he leaves it at that: but the 'you' at the end of the sentence is blatantly obvious, despite the fact it's left unspoken.
Stopped by K''s call, Whip pauses at the threshold of the kitchen, turning on her crutch to slant K' a glance over her shoulder. The look in her eyes is both hopeful and challenging: hoping he'll tell her she's wrong, and challenging him not to, to resort to his usual manner. But temperate an individual she is, she doesn't storm off and ignore her brother in her anger; she waits there and very generously hears him out.
If hearing her brother make a compromise surprises Whip, her face doesn't show it. She narrows her eyes, her downcast frown looking fit to stay a while, and she watches him with a bitter uncertainty. She stares at him even if he won't look at her. Even if it bothers her that he can't meet her eyes, K''s admission adds a certain gravity to Whip. Unable not to be affected by it, she sighs on the spot, a lot of her anger sighing out of her. She doesn't move to sit down; instead, she lingers unsurely on the spot, nudging her crutch closer to her side and moving her free hand to rub through her dark hair. Her frown gets bigger and heavier. She's thinking.
"You think this is a good idea?" Whip asks out of the blue, very seriously, a conspicuous note in her voice betraying that she's been considering this a long time. "Living together like this. Maybe I should go back home. We might function better outside of each other's faces. I know you'll worry less."
K' looks extremely aggravated by now. It's because he's being forced to feel things he's unaccustomed to feeling, and being forced to deal with things he's never had to think about before. And his sister isn't offering anything in the way of help; a fact which draws his brows together into a distinct frown. Quietly, he just watches her as she frowns and thinks things over. He's said his piece already, and he's got nothing else to say until she replies.
When she does, he's honestly surprised. It shows in the way his dark, brooding expression opens into a look of genuine confusion. He hadn't figured that she'd been thinking about this at all. That she'd been doubting what they've been doing. She might want to frame it as just 'living together,' but K' had always thought of it as 'catching up.' He wants to know his own sister. He wants to learn how to not want to kill her. What does she mean, not a good idea? Does she mean she doesn't want to do that anymore?
A troubled look knots his brows. He lifts a shoulder in a helpless shrug. "We're gonna have to figure out how to deal with each other eventually. You running on back home and just letting things go isn't gonna help. Sounds like you're saying we don't even make a good brother and sister." And depressingly... there's something that almost sounds resigned about his voice. Like he had actually expected-- actually feared-- he might be too fucked up to really be able to have a normal family like normal people.
"That's not what I'm saying," Whip corrects, sounding pained. She scrubs a hand through her bangs and huffs out a frustrated breath, trying to find the momentum to get angry again, because it'd help her ignore that look on his face. Guilt infects her own, and she's already regretting bringing it up. But there's no way to get out of it now.
Searching for an eloquence she's not sure she's ever owned, Whip tiredly leans her back against the doorway, feeling too strangely shy to venture farther into the kitchen. It's her turn to avert her eyes, and she frowns sadly down at her own feet while thinking for the right thing to say. Eventually, she tells him, "I didn't mean it like that. You worry too much about me. I didn't like it even before I knew you were my brother. I don't know how to be a good sister. I just know how to be myself. And I don't know if that'll -- if I'll do your life any good." Still staring at her socks, Whip's eyes crease at the corners. "I can't even protect you from someone who wants you dead, for chrissakes."
K' already looks like he halfway believes it, even despite Whip's demur. His yellow eyes finally travel over to fix on hers now, and the look in them is equal parts frustrated and tired. Indeed, it looks like Whip won't be getting out of this particular conversation quite so easily. Perhaps it's for the best that it was brought up, really, if it had been gnawing at her quite so long as this.
That same narrow, exhausted gaze rests on her-- the expression in them never varying-- as she talks. And for a long time after she finishes, he doesn't say a damned word. He just keeps on looking at her, his turn to engage in some deep thought, his half-lidded eyes distant. "I'm just too used to not having anything, I guess," he eventually chuckles, a little breathily: though humor is distinctly absent from his voice. "Now I do I just can't take the idea of losing it all again. So I worry. Maybe once the novelty wears off..." A shrug, accompanied by a sardonic half-smile.
And then, Whip goes and tries to relieve him of the self-deprecation stick. K''s waspish voice immediately cuts her off. "You got to stop thinking you have to do me some good, or protect me. You already did."
Letting her crutch go to lean up against the wall beside her, Whip settles into crossing her arms, hunching up her shoudlers, and feeling irritated with the rest of the world, and especially her place inside it. It's not often she has her moments of doubt, and questions her own sense of worth... but they do arise. It's always been her way to analyze them, find solutions, and execute them properly. She's not strong enough? Get stronger. She doesn't have any memories? Make new ones. She's always been an exceptional survivor. After all, she rescued herself from NESTS, even at the cost of leaving Krizalid behind to his madness. Isn't that what a survivor does?
But what about a sister? Surviving was easy. This isn't. She doesn't know the answers to these doubts. Even K''s reply gets eventually brushed aside. His words draw her eyes, and she watches him steadily, trying to search his face; the look on hers remains no short than skeptical. Soon enough, she looks away again, having been infected with his exhaustion. For how different the two siblings look, now they're wearing the same expression.
"I doubt it," she says dryly. "It's you who found me. It's you who keeps saving my life. It's you who talked me down from crazy. It's..." Whip's voice strangles itself briefly with desperation, and pawing again at her hair, she goes on to blurt out of nowhere, "There's a lot I need to make up for. I wanted to make your life better. Or easier somehow. I don't know if I can."
K' doubts and questions enough for the both of them. No worries about there being a shortage of low self-esteem, where he's concerned. And where Whip sits and analyzes her own moments of doubt, K' is only just beginning to graduate beyond sheer visceral responses to things. He saved himself from NESTS, he rediscovered his past and made memories, he got stronger not because of any conscious plan to do so, but because sheer instinct and emotionality led him down those paths.
K' simply feels things, and acts upon those impulses. In recent months he's started to lean towards a more calculating mindset, due to a number of influences... but at heart, he still does things because he feels strongly about them. His manner of execution may have changed, but that which instigates his actions hasn't changed. K' just won't do something-- won't work on a task-- if he cannot care about it in some fashion or another.
And he cares about keeping Whip around. Almost... more than he -expected- to.
He says nothing as Whip winds up to the finish of her litany of self-deprecation. He just holds his silence a while, before his eyes turn up towards the ceiling: as if hoping to find some patience there. "What part," he eventually starts, "of 'you already did' don't you get?" His voice sharpens to match his eyes: narrowing more and more in growing irritation at her seeming inability to -get- it. "You already made it easier. Now, I know now I'm not just-- not just something they made from scratch. Something they put together piece by piece in a dish. I know I was somebody once, outside of NESTS. I know I had a family. That I still do."
Soon enough, her back starts to ache, and despite how astoundingly fast and efficient her body recovers from trauma, Whip's dour mood opens the door for exhaustion. Feeling too resigned to even return to the kitchen table, where her bowl of cold eggs still waits, she simply sinks down, finding a comfortable spot on the kitchen floor with her back against the wall. The girl bends up her legs and rests her hands in her lap, pretending to pay her blunted fingernails more attention than her brother's sharp words.
But Whip is listening to them. Her frown gives her away. Eventually, she looks up at him, her head rested back against the wall, tilted slightly as her uneven bangs fall over one of her sad brown eyes. But concealed in all her disarming, soft features is that same challenging look, one that does not want to be retired despite all of K''s arguments. It certainly sounds nice; that she saved him by simply existing.
When Whip spent her only remembered years searching for her faceless brother, she had daydreams about what it would be like meeting him. She would dream up scenarios upon stumbling upon some average, everyday boy who is happy with his life but also quick to welcome her into it. He would give her the normal life she had always wanted, her roots, and she would dedicate herself to protecting him: finally able to put everything NESTS and the Ikari taught her into personal use. It was a surprise to Whip that, in reality, her lost brother was even more secreted than she was, considered precious by the Cartel, and worlds more powerful. He doesn't need her protection, and she's still trying to adjust to the role change.
It leaves her wondering: what does she have to possibly offer him?
After a second, her eyes turn away, and looking elsewhere, his sister finally nods. She still doesn't look too convinced. Whip just doesn't have the heart left now to keep arguing.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, K' is wondering how on earth things came to this. Everything had seemed fine just five minutes ago-- and now, suddenly they've got in another argument and Whip is looking more miserable than he's seen her in a while. Agitated, K' shuts his mouth on his words-- not knowing what else he can say-- and pushes his hand through his hair. It scruffs up in the back, puffing up; he doesn't notice, and it stays that way.
Whip tilts that look up at him, and K' returns it in impassive silence. In contrast to Whip's endless daydreams, K' himself had actually had very few expectations or hopes as to what his sister might be like. He simply doesn't have the imaginative nature to spend his time lost in daydreams. Because of that, it wouldn't have been much of a shock to him either way whether Whip was a peer or not... and he doesn't understand why Whip seems to have a hard time with it.
In particular, he doesn't understand why she doesn't seem to think she has anything to offer. Why she thinks she has nothing of worth to give him. She's already given him a great deal, and K'-- always disinclined to waste his breath-- has already stated this over and over. He won't repeat himself again.
Instead, he just heaves a long, inaudible sigh, his gaze tilting down to watch Whip as she gives that hollowed nod. Feeling inexplicably guilty-- even though, on a conscious level, he still doesn't think he did -anything- wrong-- he eventually edges his way over towards Whip. With the stiff slowness of somebody still not accustomed to approaching or touching anyone in a nonmurderous fashion, he eases himself down to sit against the wall near her.
"You're a pain in the ass," he eventually tells her bluntly, not turning his head to look at her. "How many times am I gonna have to go over this. Anybody else, I'd have walked away long before I had to repeat myself this many times." Very briefly, his hand-- the one without a glove-- snares hers, holding tightly before slipping away just as quickly. "You're the only thing I got. Stop acting like that doesn't mean a fucking thing."
Hugging her hands around her waist, her knees bent up, and her miserable eyes cast elsewards, Whip does a good impression of pretending that their argument may not have even existed. Far from her profession, or even her weaponly namesake, Whip isn't naturally a fighter, and the challenge has already ghosted out of her. She's too tired to go on convincing K' of her insecurity; hell, the girl is already regretting having ever brought it up. She seems to be content there to wait for him to leave the room and finish the conversation for good.
Marinating in her own dour mood, it takes something pronounced to win her attention. And it happens. She doesn't catch one of K''s many exasperated movements, but out of her peripheral she sees the rare image of him with his signature white hair fluffed up. Her heart lurching, Whip reflexively double-takes on her brother, giving him a sudden, nervous glance. A heartbeat later, the reality hits her, and somewhat embarassed, she just as quickly looks away.
It scares her how he can remind her of Krizalid. That thought just makes her mood get worse. On top of everything else, now she feels unsettled.
Not unlike her own brother, now it's Whip's turn to flinch a little as K' suddenly gets close, momentarily wary before she just forces her body to relax. Even though he doesn't look at her, she's watching him out of the corners of her eyes, choosing now to remain strangely quiet, almost shy in a way. Whip looks away briefly when K' speaks, his words burdening her face... and then she feels him take her hand.
He touches so rarely of his own initiative that she has to look at him, surprised, confused, and a little touched, and her hand feels cold compared to his. It goes still, as does the rest of her, when Whip hears K' tell her that she's his only thing. She's deathly quiet, her hand merely dropping lifelessly when it's let go, her dark eyes lost and staring holes at nothing at all. Then they start to water.
She doesn't say a word back. Whip finally moves the hand he'd touched and reaches out, and somewhat quirkily pats K''s fluffed hair back down. Then she just starts rubbing at her eyes. Good lot that does; she couldn't stop her tears if she tried.
On the other hand, K' has enough confrontational quarrelsomeness for the both of them. Should the topic be something he cares sufficiently about, he can be shockingly tenacious in his willingness to pursue conflict up until it's all resolved. For better or for worse. And so, though Whip might wait passively for him to give up and just leave, he doesn't. He stands there, just looking at her, waiting to see where this impromptu quarrel of theirs will go.
And he catches that nervous look. His eyes narrow on it like sights focusing, a slight look of puzzlement peeking out from behind his impassive gaze as he regards her inexplicable expression. Does he scare her? Is she nervous around him? Is she angry at him, that she'd look at him that way? Troubled, he nonetheless says nothing. Perhaps he'd rather think on it and try to guess why before he ventures to ask her outright.
Instead, he just approaches her, and irritably sits himself down. He offers his blood sister that thing he never affords anyone else: an attempt to touch others like a normal human. It's visibly hard for him, and stiff in the execution. Like he's seen other people do it, and wants to imitate it now. But it's something. And it's enough, apparently, to get Whip to soften.
K' looks at Whip, finally, in the wake of her gente hairpat: a bit startled by the contact, and looking entirely too serious for the gesture. Then he catches sight of the waterworks starting back up, and a look of brief alarm enters his eyes. Making himself say what he did just now was hard enough. Having to try to talk down a crying sister, on top of that?
The boy vacates the area almost immediately. With a stiff, noncommittal grunt his only acknowledgement of her pat, he turns his face away from her and pulls himself back to his feet. Rather obviously not looking at Whip, he stalks back to the abandoned kitchen table. Seeming to think that her crying means their argument is over, he settles back in a chair and resumes picking at the cooled contents of his bowl. He's not paying attention to it, though; he's rather obviously just buying time until Whip stops crying or says something else.
Whip doesn't chastise K' for getting the hell out of there. She's pretty sure she'd do the same. She hates it when she cries. She especially hates that it seems to happen all the time, and always in front of other people.
Left behind, she merely hunches on the floor, wiping constantly at her eyes and doing her best to hide her face even though he's not looking. His sister spends minutes doing this, quietly, grimly, with the only sounds betraying her the small, half-hitched breathing of someone desperately forcing themselves to swallow back their sobs. No different than the countless other times the hardened ex-assassin has cried, it takes her a long time to get it under control.
Soon enough, her sobs die out like everything else, and with a shaky hand, she pushes her hair from her flushed face. She mechanically checks twice to make sure her eyes are dry, then Whip finally pushes herself to stand. Getting up is always harder than sitting down, and she shuffles a little clumsily, bracing her shoulder against the wall until she gets her crutch under the sore side that nurses most of her sutures. And, once again, Whip walks.
She follows K''s original retreat to the kitchen table, but doesn't join him there; instead, she quietly takes her half-finished bowl and turns away, moving stiltedly to, very methodically, scrape the rest of her cold eggs into the trash and deposit the dish to the sink. Whip's going back to domestic mode, returning exactly to the way K' found her when he came home this evening. She's trying to put them back to ease.
For the longest time the Ikari is quiet, preferring to swig at her beer than look at her brother, and soon finishes it in relative silence. It's not until she returns to the fridge, opening it to pull out another lager to satisfy today's nutritional requirements, when she finally speaks again.
"I'm sorry, K'," Whip says quietly, but doesn't explain for what. Arguing. Pitying herself. Crying. Who knows. Turning her eyes down, she rather ingeniously catches the neck of her beer on a tight corner of her crutch, like she's going to be using it as a bottle opener. It's probably the reason why she's still walking with it. "I won't take off on you. I've done enough of that."
K' doesn't look at Whip again, all the while she tries to control her crying. He pretty much just ignores her. He figures her crying will just pass, for one thing... and for another, even if he -wanted- to try to comfort her, he wouldn't have the first idea how. And when Whip finally quiets her sobs and tries to get up, he doesn't move to help her. Maybe it's his own way of acknowledging she can do things herself. Maybe he's afraid if he touches her again she'll burst out crying again. Whatever the case, he just holds his silence.
He continues to say and do nothing as she cleans up after herself (somewhere in the back of his mind, he's shaking his head at why she's not finishing her food) and tries to put things back to how they were before. He just lets her work. He -wants- her to restore things to how they were. He doesn't know what on earth it was he said or did that put things this way, but whatever it is he's ready for it to just blow over and for things to go back to normal.
Even somebody K' can sometimes find a tense setting unpleasant.
It's left to Whip to break the silence. When she does, K''s head slants downwards slightly, swaying his bangs across his brow. His eyes slide shut. "...Sit down," is all he says in response. He doesn't want her up and moving around and straining herself, is the most of what motivates his request. But hidden in that simple injunction is another meaning. You promised just now you won't take off. You had better cleave to it and stick around.
Popping off the cap of her lager, and imbibing of it gratefully, Whip has fallen back to old habits. Before K', there have been none that have taken up domicile with the girl, and no one can attest to her peculiar ways. By herself, she's as quiet as they come. For the first month of induction, no one heard a peep from the recruit all over the Ikari base. She likes to sit and think. For long periods of time. She has little idea how it can unnerve others.
Right now, she's drinking and sourly thinking about what inclined her to mention relocating back to South America, and why the option has been on her mind so often. It always seemed like a high road out for her, something to fall back on if her lost roots weren't able to be worked out. She's thinking about Krizalid now, morosely, and remembering that fateful day he blamed her for his insanity. She's not too sure whether or not to believe it. But she knows that she left him there. She took off when things got difficult, when NESTS became so much that she couldn't stay for the sake of her only friend, whom she thought she had already lost. Is she doing the same thing all over again? Is it in her nature to take off? Is it really her fault Krizalid went mad?
And what would be added to her list of sins if she left K' behind? Could he go the same route? Would he? They look so much the same...
Whip's constantly-moving, overanalytical mind can sometimes be a very scary place. Even she can't stay there for too long, and she shakes free from her own thoughts, pulled back into the waiting world by her brother's voice. He tells her to sit down. Whip looks over her shoulder at K', her eyes a little swollen but otherwise returned to their usual placid way. She pauses, looking fit to argue... but doesn't. Done with arguing for tonight, his sister complies wordlessly, moving slowly on her unhurriedly step to join K' at the kitchen table. She takes the seat nearest to him, lowering herself down with a tired exhale and setting that crutch-bottleopener of hers aside.
Whip tries not to look at K' for too long; the look on his face makes her want to apologize again. The look on his face is telling her that's probably not a good idea. Biting her lip, she picks absently at the label on her lager, trying to think of something to say that'll cheer both him and her own damn self. She's thinking about some heavy things. "Maybe we should take a break from Southtown for a while," she suggests, out of nowhere, after a quiet moment. "Go see somewhere together."
K' is hardly privy to what's going on in Whip's mind, and given that the name 'Krizalid' is swimming around in there so prominently, he probably doesn't want to be. For his part, he continues doing and saying nothing. He's not even keeping up the pretense of poking through his cold food anymore. His fork abandoned, his elbow propped up on the table, he leans his head in his freed hand and just does some deep, troubled thinking of his own.
Whatever else Whip might gather from his outward appearance, it's already obvious that her brother would be broken in half by her departure if she up and left him like she did Krizalid. After all, he already looks haggard enough at the mere suggestion she'd walk right back out of his life again, after he spent so long dreaming of his only family.
He doesn't move when Whip settles at his side. But soon enough, he finally talks: prompted by her sudden suggestion. "Maybe." A long, slow sigh, and a resigned shrug. "Or maybe you'll do your SNF. Maybe you're really well enough. Just..." It takes him a while to finish the sentence. "...do as you please. But fuck, try to -think- of me."
It sounds like it's a tremendous effort for him to let go like that-- to run the risks associated with -saying- that to his newly rediscovered sister. Like some kind of overzealous father, he just wants to hold onto her. He'd felt so glad, so relieved, when he first found her. He'd thought that now he'd always have -someone-. And he's only starting to realize, after that initial rush passed and reality started to sink back in, that he can't have her all the time. It's a hard lesson to swallow.
He stays in that morose, brooding mood a moment. And then, with another considerable effort, he lifts his head and tries to crack one of his familiar smirks. It doesn't quite make it to the level of a real smile. "...Maybe -I'll- sign up this week. Maybe they'll put us together, send us someplace we can look around after the match." He's obviously forcing this... and Whip should feel privileged, because she's the only person on the face of the earth he'd do it for.
What he -really- wants to ask her is if he scares her. He wants to ask her if she's -afraid- of him, that she sometimes looks at him with that strange fear under her lashes. But he doesn't want to ask her now, and so he holds his tongue on that until another time.
Whip reacts to that response, almost violently, turning a look so fast on K' that her neck pops. First she looks shocked. Then stung. Then guilty. And then she just looks hurt. "I think of you!" she exclaims, her eyes raw and her face flushed, looking good and ready to have all that emotion well back up.
She feels mortified. He doesn't think she gives a damn about him? Doesn't think that he's on her mind? Whip has been thinking of K' before she even knew him; her brother always occupied her thoughts. She would dream about him before he even had a face. It was constantly burdening her, the life she watched that was always outside of her reach, one where she had her family and could feel connected to something in the world. Of course she thinks of him. She wants to heal, fight, and get stronger for him. She wants to make herself worthy of their new, strange little family. She wants to find a way to make his life better. She wants him to be happy.
But, for now, she just wants to go sit in a dark room for a while. He really feels that way? Does she act like she doesn't give a shit? Maybe she is a bad sister. Probably was her fault Krizalid lost his marbles.
That morose, brooding moment starts to get shared like a viral infection, as Whip leans back in her chair, slumping a little, her eyes turned away and that monumental frown beginning to resurface. She's starting to think again, badly, and it's a godsend that K' eventually speaks again. It's what saves her from another poor mood.
She looks up in time to catch K''s smirk, its presence briefly confusing her. It's then she realizes he's making a concession for her. He's extending the olive branch, or whatever comes close to it in their family unit. For the longest time, she is quiet. Her face borders the unreadable. And, considering how unpredictable the Ikari soldier had become during her home confinement to recover, there's no telling how she'll respond.
That's when, without any invitation, she reaches out in a mirror of K''s previous gesture, her hand clamping down over his. Only Whip is less inclined to quickly let go. She hangs on to him, wordlessly touched, her eyes looking like another threat of tears looms on the horizon.
Smiling suddenly, her eyes looking down at the table, Whip replies, "Maybe."
By now, K' is very, very close to just writing Whip off as 'totally incomprehensible.' It seems like nothing he says is -safe-, and it's always the phrase he least expects to cause a stir that gets her the most upset. By his reckoning, asking her to THINK of how he might be affected if she went and got herself killed is hardly anything to get worked up over... but apparently, his sister feels differently.
Bewildered by her reaction, K' just sits and stares through it. He doesn't look like he -disbelieves- her, but he doesn't really look like he gets what there is to be so mortified about. Uneasily shrugging it off as 'just something to not say again,' he heaves a mental sigh as he attempts to consider just what it is Whip is thinking. He doesn't get far.
Shoving aside his uncharacteristic efforts at trying to take the feelings of another person into account, he just changes the topic in hopes of getting this entire thing behind them. And for a while, he isn't sure if it worked. He isn't even sure if Whip heard him.
His glance skates away. His yellow eyes come to rest on the tabletop. And it's because he's looking away that he doesn't realize Whip's reaching for his hand until he feels it grasped.
K' looks over at her at that contact and that touched assent, wearily expressionless. He regards her a moment quietly, and then-- saying nothing-- he just looks away again. The gesture, however, is more a quiet and tolerant thing than it is dismissive or petulant; and for the time being, he lets her leave her hand where it is.
Her hand, cold, clammy, and callused where it counts, squeezes down around his hand with a strength that belies her long, fragile-looking fingers. The gesture is flooded with relief. Whip takes K''s pained compromise as a blessing. Time to get back on the horse. The goal behind it is more than enough to push her free from her grim mood, and she's already thinking of her road to recovery. She needs to heal fast. She needs to make up on lost conditioning. She needs to get back into fighter and make herself stronger until she can prove every one of her doubts wrong.
His admission nearly makes his sister take a full three-sixty when it comes to her mood, and if she's not grateful for it. Now Whip has no reason to sit and feel sorry for herself. She has her usefulness waiting for her again on the horizon. It's going to mean a good protein-only diet until she's built back her missing muscle mass. It's going to mean a lot of chin ups, stitches or not. It's going to mean distance running as soon as she can walk. It's going to mean...
..that her hand tightens on his, and Whip is not so much tenderly sharing contact with her brother as using his arm to push her sore body up, and she's suddenly leaning forwards and coming in dangerously close... to give him a quick, happy peck on the cheek.
Whip tells K' what no one should ever, ever, ever accuse a traitorous runaway genetically modified killing machine. "You're sweet." With a new purpose, she resurrects as much as she stands back up, grabbing her crutch, though she moves like she needs it less than how she did a minute ago. Stepping out of the kitchen, she imparts her brother affectionately, "You eat your eggs."
Whip is left alone to her thoughts. The aforementioned ruthless, cold killing machine whose hand she's holding just... kind of sits there as Whip thinks to herself: looking as if he's losing energy as fast as Whip is regaining hers. Apparently, it took a lot out of him to make the kind of concessions and admissions he did, just now.
She's thinking on her road to recovery. He's just thinking about how impossible reconciling his need to hold onto her and her need for independence seems to be. The thoughts are bleak ones, and so when Whip abruptly applies that pressure and uses him as a crutch to stand, the shift in their positions comes as a welcome distraction.
Staying still, serving as a decent enough means of support, K' pushes a sigh out of his chest and starts turning his head to look at her. But before he can even properly begin the motion, Whip stops him dead in his tracks with something totally unexpected. The peck draws him up short in wary-- almost distressed-- startlement, a blink and a knotting of his brows revealing his utter confusion.
K' makes a face like he doesn't even know what just happened to him, but doesn't quite like it. Being told he's 'sweet' just deepens the scowl. "...ch... whatever," he surls back, harshly turning his shoulder on the girl and hunching slightly over the table. Moodily, he stirs through what's left with his fork.
But notably, he doesn't tell her not to do it again. Nor, for that matter, does he really object much at all. Only Whip...
Log created on 01:19:51 07/01/2008 by K', and last modified on 18:21:02 07/15/2008.