Description: Immediately after Seishirou's departure, K' goes back upstairs to his sister: who sets about stitching his injuries. Recent events force the siblings to address a plethora of unspoken issues, questions, and misunderstandings.
Whip isn't left alone fifteen minutes before the key turns and the door opens again. Slow, heavy steps, bereft of urgency, mark somebody's slow progress into the apartment. But somebody doesn't get all that far-- it isn't long before those steps stop, and their owner seems to simply give up and sink to the floor.
Should the girl deign to emerge from her room, it'll be to find her brother just sitting in the middle of the (mercifully uncarpeted) floor. His jacket has been stripped off, and he's tiredly inspecting a pair of violent slashes -carved- deeply down his torso with a sort of long-suffering, numb-minded regard. The wounds aren't bleeding half as much as they could, the nature of Seishirou's attack having half-sealed the injuries with heat almost as quick as they were made, but K''s subsequent movements have partially reopened them.
The injuries certainly won't do much to assuage Whip's fears. But perhaps the fact that her brother-- one of the most paranoid men on the face of the planet-- isn't running about scattering blood and yelling about how they needed to leave immediately might calm her just a little. For now, K' simply looks deeply troubled, contemplative... and, obviously, in some considerable pain.
Sometimes fifteen minutes can feel like hours.
Whip spent half of it pacing, putting her newfound health and mobility into walking madly back and forth the length of her bedroom, both hands despitely swiping her bangs from her eyes. It couldn't have been Krizalid. Of course it was Krizalid. It means he knows she's here. It means he knows K''s here. How did he find them? That doesn't matter.
Still, she made a beeline for her laptop, opening the machine again to loom above it, bypassing her own security to desperately check mailboxes and financial information of some of her many assumed identities, especially those she suspects the Cartel operative would privy to in his peripherals. All turn up nothing. He hasn't tried to contact her. So what's this all supposed to mean?
Whip didn't know. But, as confused her feelings are concerning her old friend, she did know that he remains, above all, an operative of NESTS. Not to mention, he's a raving psychotic.
She tore herself back to her feet, gritting her teeth angrily, that good mood of hers already long forgotten and left to rot under six feet of freshly-laid worry. She's still not sure if it's Krizalid behind all this, who sent the doctor, who was even aware of her injuries, who knows she's boarding with NESTS' most infamous traitor... but this isn't something she can afford to leave to chance. There's only one way to find out.
And if her former friend is lurking about, there's only one way to protect K' in the interim. If Krizalid's got his eye on her, then she needs to get as far away from her brother as possible.
The remaining five minutes of those fifteen had Whip packed with the hurried efficiency of a trained soldier, who knows how to conceal any trace of ever existing anywhere -- even in a place they've come close to accept as their own home. It's when she's pulling her heavy duffel bag to her shoulder and moving out from her bedroom to the hall that Whip looks up at the sound of an opened door -- and her eyes crease when she hears that it does not close.
With a marked silence, she lowers her bag to the ground, and a twitch of her right arm lets a knife fall from the sleeve of her coat (which has been pulled on) to her fingers. Its handle warms inside her hand as she steps soundlessly forward, her body shadowing the wall and every muscle in her body tightening when she sees a flicker of white hair.
It's just not the white hair she was expecting. It's not Krizalid in the apartment. It's much worse: it's K', and he's injured.
A heartbeat later, Whip is emerging quickly, purposefully in the front room, her dark eyes locked on her brother and her mouth pursed in a grim line. She doesn't make a fuss. She doesn't get angry. She doesn't even raise her voice. She just moves to cover him, bringing herself between his sitting body and the opened door, a knife in one hand while the other pulls a Desert Eagle off a hidden shoulder holster. "Get to the bedroom," she just says, already switched to combat mode, and expecting this one to be far from over.
K' looks up sharply at the sound of sudden steps. When his eyes fall on Whip, some of the tenseness leaks out of them. He looks away again quickly, not seeming to want to meet her gaze. Seishirou was right, infuriating as his delivery of his message was. K' almost fucked up. He almost lost his sister. The Ryouhara had come that close to her-- put his -hands- on her-- and K' hadn't even known.
It's sobering, the sudden realization of how quickly and arbitrarily he could lose everything he's clawed for himself so far. Sobering, and frightening.
Get to the bedroom, she tells him. He can tell from her movements that she's anticipating further trouble. He wants to tell her that nothing more will happen-- that Seishirou Ryouhara was not necessarily adversarial to them, and could in fact prove a beneficial contact-- but the boy honestly doesn't know whether he can tell her that in good faith. So instead, all he does is rise slowly to a stand, a slight sound of pain and effort escaping him, and start to obey.
"That doctor that was here..." Wait. No, he hasn't quite left yet. Didn't think it would be that easy, did you? "No one sent him." -That- is one thing about Seishirou of which K' can be reasonably sure. He's heard all about the Ryouhara, and how he operates. "He came for his own reasons."
K' neglects to mention that initially, those reasons included killing him.
"His real name is Seishirou Ryouhara. The terrorist." Standing in the hall leading off to the bedroom, K' leans a hand against the wall and lets out a breathy sort of sound that could be called a chuckle. "From the sound of it he got himself in some shit with NESTS, and thought he could come beat some information outta me."
Whip doesn't even turn to watch her brother's retreat, though she's grateful that he's not putting up an argument. She's in no mood for one.
His sister is on autopilot now, all that gentled-faced emotion choked out of her for a return of the soldier who stands vanguard at the door of the apartment. Knife hidden in one curled palm, her heavy gun weighing down the other, she waits with hackles raised, her head turned and tilted to hear down the hall. She may not look it, but she's on edge now, and she's a hair trigger away from throwing herself completely at anything that would be slithering through their front door right now.
As K' journeys slowly to the living area of their shared home toward the bedroom, there's something joining him at one corner of the main hall. It's Whip's nondescript duffel bag, an old friend that joins her wherever she goes. It looks full. It looks heavy.
As does the look in Whip's eyes when they slide on K', drawn by what he says. When he tells her that the doctor arrived without summons, she looks honestly surprised. Then relieved. Then hopeful. Then dismayed. It means Krizalid didn't. But then it means the doctor...
But the doctor-- he--
Whip's frown returns at the mention of terrorist, and her hand tightens around the handle of her desert eagle. One corner of her mouth twitches. "Stay here," she utters, her voice darkened and gleaned of any of its usual humanity. "I'll give the perimeter a sweep and then return to assess your injuries."
K' looks down at the bag at his feet. His eyes slowly half-lid as he puts two and two together. What he said scared her. It explains why she looked the way she did when he told her he hadn't sent the doctor. She was about to leave. It explains why she hadn't put up a fight-- why she'd simply looked vague and turned to walk away. But what it doesn't explain is why such an extreme reaction was warranted. Is there someone else chasing here that she's -this- afraid of? That she'd just up and -leave- him over?
When Whip orders her brother to stay while she checks the area, it's K''s turn to sound a little distant and vague. He's thinking. "...You better," is all he's got to say in answer to her assertion she'll return to look at his injuries, and afterwards he settles a thoughtful heel on her bag. A slight push appraises him of what's within.
She packs light, he'll give her that.
He'll wait, patiently enough, for her to come back. His bleeding wounds and her packed bag should be enough in the way of hostages to ensure her return. But when she does, he's going to have some questions for her. She -told- him she wouldn't just run out on him. Why is she breaking that promise over (comparatively) so little an occurrence? Whip can't see it, as K' is already around the corner, his back turned... but he can't help but look betrayed.
Whip only waits to hear the first syllable of K's confirmation and she's out the door, ready to defend her very blood while getting a particular taste for another's. The doctor lied to her. She had believed everything he said to her. After all he did... she believed him to be one of the few honest people she had ever met. She would have been ready to put her life on the line for him. And it was all a lie. He puts on his airs then comes back to attack her brother.
She has murdered before, countless times, so often that the act could feel like nothing to her. Like breathing out. It's not rare for Whip to feel a return of that conditioned impulse to take more lives. But it is rare this urge to enjoy it.
But the young soldier makes the sweep as promised, hiding her gun inside her coat as her stern steps take her around the apartment complex. Her search turns up nothing.
As promised, within five minutes Whip has returned to the apartment, the door closing and locking behind her. Annoyed, she shoulders off her coat, but her shoulder still look burdened by something else, something invisible that cannot be shucked like old, battered suede. She returns her gun to the shoulder holster she still wears and steps inward, already looking and walking past her forgotten duffel in the hall. All thoughts of Krizalid and her would-be escape are gone. In their place is something just as grave, pulling her to the bathroom to retrieve the first aid behind the sink. The kit is no silly little thing. It's her soldier's field kit, prepared for all kinds of emergency trauma.
With that in one arm, she makes a beeline to her brother's bedroom. "Where's the worst of it?" Whip asks sternly, briskly from out of nowhere, still on auto-pilot.
In those five minutes, K' has pulled himself into the bathroom to grab a roll of paper towels and wash the blood off his hands. The evidence is still running long red streaks in the tub when Whip ducks in to get her first aid kit. K' himself back in his room by the time Whip comes in, sitting on the floor, still dripping both water and blood. There's a roll of paper towels next to him and a bunch held pressed tightly against his chest, but he's too busy holding his head in his free hand and looking burdened with some troubling thought to use them on the floor.
And for all Whip and K' live together, they don't see much of one another's bedrooms. Twins they might be, but strangers-- and private ones-- they are also. K''s room is as severe and spartan as its owner, bereft of anything but the bare requirements in terms of furnishings: more a habitation for him to crash in between fights and errands than a home. Fight tapes, books, and a few DVDs-- though only the fight tapes are regularly watched-- stack in a corner; the sole table in the room houses a number of electronics the inquisitive K' had found interesting enough to actually bother getting. A DVD player. An mp3 player. A cell phone which he mostly uses to play games.
But there's nothing of that more human side to the K' staring narrowly up at Whip now as she asks where he's most hurt. Regarding her in considering silence, it's a few moments before he actually answers her. Lifting his handful of bloody towels away from his chest, he wordlessly exposes the wide, raking slashes ripped across his torso. From the look of them, they were created by a pair of very keen, very heated blades.
To his credit, he gives it a while before he finally says, "...Going somewhere?" His tone reeks of sarcasm. His expression is patently unimpressed.
Looking like the most unimpressed Dorothy ever to step into Oz, she follows the red blood road all the way to the wet, hamburgered form of her twin brother. Whip stares at him a moment, the look in her eyes drier than a good wine, before the sight of all the butchery finally starts to pull an actual expression out of her. The dour soldier lets go little by little. Her face softens.
Biting down her rebukes against his choice for a quick dunk, because getting heavily-bleeding wounds wet is dumb, and getting your body temperate messed with in case of impending shock is dumber, Whip instead tries to be generous, moving briefly aside to grab one pillow from her brother's unremarkable bed. She lets it drop mutedly to the ground near to his head, a signal that she wants him to lie down, flat on his back.
She's moving to kneel at his side, placing her medic kit down when K''s words stop her. Whip pauses on the spot, giving her brother the the dumbest of dumbfounded looks. She stares for a beat. Then she continues her way down, averting her eyes to escape his surgical staring and letting a slight frown dust across her mouth.
Whip first opens her first aid box. Then she replies, quietly, matter-of-factly, "Not now."
She looks back over to him, and the look on her face is vaguely knotted with guilt. It doesn't help seeing her first up close eyeful of his new pair of wounds. Whip has to pull on her soldier's poker face a little to keep calm. She sits down with her infinite patience, instructing him gently, "Lie back, K'. Relax."
To be fair, K' hadn't gotten water anywhere near his bleeding wounds. He knew at least that much. But as to the effects of fluctuating his body temperature-- well, that he was a little more careless about, the water he'd used being extremely cold. He wasn't used to having to worry about his temperature changing too wildly, after all. For him, it was always the same: far too high.
He doesn't avert his eyes or look away even when the pillow whiffs softly down next to him, continuing to watch Whip. It's as if he thinks she'll cut, go for her bag, and run the instant he takes his eyes away. She says, 'not now,' and it's not good enough to reassure him: that guarded look lingers on her, even as he slowly complies with her last injunction.
His hand moves like it wants to peel the rent edges of his shirt out of his wounds; thinking better of it, K' just shifts and eases down onto his back, his tall frame lowering and stretching out before her. He lays his head on the pillow, but doesn't stop his quiet watching of his sister.
"What changed?" His voice cuts abruptly through any ministrations she might be tendering. "I thought I'd have to stop you wanting to come with me. Instead I find you trying to run out. What's different about this time?"
Whip doesn't meet K''s eye. Not even once. She'd like to think it's because her attention is focused solely on his angry pair of wounds.
Settled at her brother's side, she draws in her legs to cross them, silently luxurating in the novel painlessness of her body, free to move it however she wants. That strange doctor has crossed them both and left the wayward pair of siblings in a direct photo negative of this morning; now it seems she's healed in time to find him wounded, though she's got faith that this injury is not as grave as those she had to bear.
She hovers over K' as he finally settles back, her dark eyes intent on the way his ripped clothing is already beginning to dry into the blood. She knows this is going to hurt like hell. But there's only one way to get it done. After digging into the first aid kit to disenfect her own hands, Whip reaches in to begin gingerly pulling the fabric out of those deep lacerations. Her movements are slow and patient, but there are not very gentle. She works with the efficient quickness of a field medic, and for a stern soldier like Whip, excessive tenderness only makes an excruciating process go on longer. Her bedside manner is temperate but incredibly brisk -- and only ever pauses once.
It's when K' speaks to her.
Whip's oldest friend has returned -- that familiar frown of hers. But for the longest time she says nothing back, instead distracting herself with the precise excision of his clothing out of his wounds, preparing them to be cleaned. Her face reflects the difficulty of this task, and the focus she requires to perform it.
That and a lot of guilt. Finally, she reveals, her voice distant and strained, "It's complicated."
Translation: she's not going to tell him a thing.
"But it's no longer the case. Don't worry about it."
The first tug of Whip's quick hands against the dried cloth draws a grunt out of K', his eyes sliding shut and lean body resisting the impulse to pull away. His chest rises and falls with the hiss he draws past his teeth, but once the initial shock of the stinging pain has passed, he stills. He relaxes, inch by inch. And eventually, he cracks open one yellow eye to regard his sister as she works.
He gives it a few moments before he says anything. And she's content to give it a few minutes before she replies. K' waits with uncharacteristic patience, that half-open eye watching her in a manner distinctly and unintentionally unsettling, and when she rewards that patience with little more than a short 'don't worry about it...'
K''s eyes narrow on her. "If it's something I need to know," he eventually says, his sardonic voice heavy with a warning for her not to try his patience, "-I need to know-. I can't do this, Whip. I can't just sit here and wait for the day something 'complicated' comes up and I come home to find out you ran out without a word."
As far as he's concerned, that is the situation here. He said something seemingly innocuous to him-- something he thought they could deal with together-- and suddenly because of 'something complicated' it trigger Whip off and she runs out on him? K' shouldn't be one to talk, being the poster child for moodiness, but even someone like him can resent that level of uncertainty.
It's a test of Whip's patience, of her ability to sever her thought and action, because as her hands remain focused and steady, her mind is no less than a storm. As she leans in to very carefully disenfect her brother's wounds, knowing all too well that less than thorough work could leave him in a critical condition, she's asking herself again and again how she could begin to tell him about Krizalid. She can't. She doesn't know how.
There's no one in the world she's ever told about her old friendship with the NESTS operative, and how, for a time, he meant more than family to her. It's always been her secret, the friend he once was and the danger he now represents. How would she begin to explain a story? And does she even want to?
Whip knows how to be nothing if not private, even to the demands of someone who shares her blood. Pledging someone your loyalty and life is one thing; your secrets is another.
"You don't understand," she replies without looking at him, neatly sidestepping his rough demands; avoiding them like explosive landmines. She ends up sighing. "I need to protect you, K'. The day may come that I'll be a dangerous person to be around. It's complicated. But I know what I'm doing. You'll have to trust my reasons."
Whip's patience isn't the only one that's being tested. K''s has been strained ever since the first hints of doubt entered his mind regarding Whip's strange behavior, and the catalyst for its break finally comes when she replies. You don't understand, she says. You have to trust me. There's no response. K' just goes very still a moment, looking at her, his thought processes a mystery-- and then, very suddenly, he sits up. An arm lifts, brushing impatiently at her, trying to sweep her to one side as K' pulls himself upright and reaches for the first aid kit himself.
"Protect me." K' barks a laugh, digging violently through the kit, upsetting the careful order of things as he flips through bandages and comes up with a bottle of disinfectant. "How the fuck do you protect me by running away when I probably need you most? You think you can just excuse yourself out of my life?" Roughly, angrily, he starts tending to his own injuries, splashing disinfectant and ignoring the stinging agony. "Or do you just want me back outta -yours- and just never have the balls to say it?"
If he knows he's in danger of being left in a critical condition, he certainly isn't acting like it. It's entirely possible his 'ministrations' are doing just as much damage to his injuries as good, so violent and angry they are. "Fuck, Whip. I'm twice as fucking dangerous as you to be around, and you don't see me abandoning you -without a word-. Don't tell me I don't understand. You never told me a single thing TO understand."
Shaking his head, he finally caps the bottle again. He looks at the kit momentarily, as if considering putting it back nicely, but one look at the mess he's left and he gives up. In a sudden twitch of frustration, he flicks the bottle from him: it bangs against the door, hitting the floor and rolling sadly away. Hands freed, he lets his head fall into them. For a moment, he does nothing but try to get his temper back under control.
"It's not I don't trust -you-," he finally clarifies, his voice forcibly reined in. "I don't trust your reasons are -right-. I want a choice in this, Whip. You can't just sit here and tell me to follow your plan without telling me shit. I got done with that kind of thing when I left NESTS."
Hands and the rest of her suddenly pushed aside, Whip falls back on her heels, her cheeks flushed and her expression shocked. Her surprise pangs briefly with a look of hurt, but it burns away fast, her soldierly expression like a crucible when it comes to any great display of emotion. Especially when she's preferring to remain guarded, like right now.
Brushed back, she makes no move to corner her brother again, choosing to remain on her spot and give him his space. Still, she watches him with a barely-concealed vigiliance sheathed in her eyes, looking on with a transparent disapproval over the way he sits up and acts out around his bleeding wounds. But Whip knows how to be patient when the time calls for it. She looks like she's lingering, but she's really waiting.
Her solid expression only steels all the more against his rebuttal; she's doing her best not to let any of those words in to shake her resolve. Whip's made up her mind and she really, really doesn't want it changed. She conceals her surprised, tense twitch against the sudden BANG of the disenfectant bottle against the door, her hands in her lap and her nerves mostly unruffled. Perhaps used to his displays by now, or just more tolerant of them, Whip doesn't look pressed in the least by her brother's angry display.
It's, ironically, what he says while more composed that brings out the sharpness in her. He mentions NESTS and she suddenly looks at him.
"Well, K'," Whip replies, rather crispily, "not all of us are afforded such clean breaks." An untold something pushes gravity into that remark.
Her mouth ticks. "You want to talk to me about balls, brother? I think balls is being able to put aside what you want to make sure someone you care about stays safe. And that's what I would do. Now lie the hell down before I put you down."
Not all of us are afforded such clean breaks. What, she didn't cut off from NESTS as cleanly as he did? That phrase, and the gravity laid in it, finally draw his head up from out of his bracing hands. He turns it to give her a long look almost painful in its directness, staring straight into her eyes with an unreadable intensity, shoulders drawn up and hunched defensively.
What the hell does she mean?
K' doesn't have it in him to puzzle her out. He looks away, huffing a sharp breath, and just pushes a hand through his hair in irritation. Put aside what you want to make sure someone stays safe. How are the two separate? Shouldn't the safety of the person you care about -be- what you want? New to the experience of interpersonal relationships-- for that matter, new to feeling complex emotions at /all/-- K' just rasps a confused noise, shaking his head, his eyes closing.
"Fine. I don't understand," he finally says. Annoyed, he reaches up to close a hand in the back of his shirt, one-handedly tugging the thing off over his head and slinging it against the wall. A sort of sick, muted rip accompanies the motion as cloth is forcibly torn out of open wounds, but K' doesn't look like he cares much about treating the injuries delicately: a fact reiterated when he huffs a long breath and roughly falls back prone, taking absolutely no care in lying down again. "I don't understand what about you is so dangerous you have to leave. I don't understand why you look like you're -scared- of me sometimes. Is it something I did? Something about me? If I fucked up you're free to tell me. I'm fucking used to it."
Then Whip's just reaching out one hand in a pleading signal when K' starts moving. He isn't going to--
"Jesus--!" she starts to blurt out when K' reaches for his own clothing, but her words get shredded under the sudden, violent movement. She's seen all sorts of gore and depravity with her job, but Whip still turns her face away from the display, her eyes creased with an unsaid cringe.
She sets her jaw, already losing patience with K''s long gone lack thereof. Exhaling slowly, she forces herself to animate once more, and reaches out again toward her uncooperative brother. Whip's bark is much worse than her bite at the moment, because she doesn't do as threatened and attempt to disable her injured brother, but tries to clamp both hands on his shoulders, firm, so she can work on encouraging his head back to the pillow.
The look on Whip's face is a hot, mounted war between frustration and wanting so badly to show nothing at all. One side loses visibly when he accuses himself for her guarded ways, and a genuine look of shock slips past all her irritation. Eventually, it ends up joining it, adding to the slow burn of an upset temper ticking down across her face. She has to turn her eyes away to keep herself collected.
"It's not you," she says after a pause, her voice strained into softness. "It's nothing that you've done -- or meant."
Whip pauses noticeably, holding her breath. Something gives.
Then, she gives a sudden push down on K''s body to try to lie him out flat, the movement as brisk and abrupt and merciless as the next thing she has to say. "Sometimes you just look a lot like Krizalid."
K''s eyes snap shut, a slow exhalation pulled out of him as he bites back any show of the pain he's in right now. Blood starts coursing down his front again in the wake of that ill-advised movement, but-- too proud to admit that was a stupid thing to do-- K' says nothing about it. He just lets Whip get ahold of him and work him back to what comfort the pillow can provide.
His quick and violent temper largely, for the moment, spent, K' settles back into a sort of simmer. He carefully avoids looking at Whip's face, knowing that if he lets himself see the upset there he might be moved by it.
But he can't quite hide all the relief that flickers guardedly across his expression when she finally admits that whatever's troubling her isn't his fault. His eyes slip shut again, head turning listlessly until it faces away from his sister. He holds his silence. He can hear her distinct pause, and he's waiting for whatever might follow it.
When Whip finally finishes her thought, the name she drops sends a flinch jolting through K' that has nothing to do with her abrupt attempt to lay him out flat. Stunned, he doesn't even try to resist. Krizalid? Did Whip and Krizalid -know- one another? They had to, judging from Whip's behavior. He understands why she would be so afraid of him-- he himself can't say that he's entirely fearless of his 'brother'-- but what he doesn't know...
What did he do to you? K' has turned his face back to his sister. A sharp look haunts his features, that familiar thirst for vengeance starting to leak into his gaze.
With her brother finally back under control -- and it only took her revealing one of her worst secrets to ensure it -- Whip slowly, hesitantly settles back down, resuming her dutiful spot at his side. His pair of angry wounds stare up at her, and with her usual patience, the Ikari returns to treating them. She works quietly through K''s residual disbelief, ignoring the look on his face and busily retrieving handfuls of heavy, padded gauze from her med kit. Leaning in, she quickly packs his bleeding lacerations, adding layer after layer of dry cloth. Her hands start to stain with his blood as she pushes her palms down over the bandaging, applying firm, unrelenting pressure down on his injuries.
Whip is very insistently not looking her brother in the face, and it's not just because she's absorbing herself into her work. That question of his digs into her like a parasite, also persisting on bugging her until she's forced to get it out.
Not even realizing that her frown has slipped back over her lips, Whip thinks about what K' asked, the look in her averted eyes weighing briefly with old memory. Or as old as memory gets for an amnesiac like her.
She looks back down at her hands and their steady work, trying desperately to keep his bleeding at bay. But Whip is thinking about other things. She finally glances up on K''s face, becoming suddenly aware and recognizing the look on his face. She doesn't like it. She's already feeling like this is a mistake.
But there's no stopping now. "He... he gave me my first good memories," she replies, almost sadly. She pauses, and adds, with some brevity entering her voice, "I've never told anyone this. He made the Cartel bearable."
K' says nothing for a long time. His head has turned on the pillow, his face pointed away from her. Under her hands, he's completely still and quiescient, all the fight kicked out of him. He listens to the explanation she finally gives, processing the words being said to him... thinking about the implications. So that's why she looked at him like that. That's why she spoke Krizalid's name like that. She knew him-- and from the sound of it, loved him-- long before she ever met K'.
The taste rising in the back of his throat is familiar. It's the taste of envy. You win again, Krizalid, he's telling himself. You got to her first. She liked you first. You win.
K' still doesn't look back at her, but his body is expressive enough to convey the vague hurt he's feeling well enough. He's picturing Krizalid and Whip together, and from what Whip just told him he's getting a picture that's a lot happier than what he's been able to give his sister so far. The subtle fact that Whip seems to -fear- Krizalid now has flown his mind entirely, K''s dark mind immediately honing in first on that interpretation which could make him feel worst.
"Was he a better friend to you?" He still hasn't looked at her, but the flat quality about his tone suggests that Krizalid is an old and potentially touchy topic where K' is concerned. "Did he favor you? Is that why you got a name: like that Kula girl got a name?" Her nameless brother laughs a little, turning onto his side until his back faces her, curling a little on his left shoulder. "Did he make you happier? I wouldn't be surprised..." After all, Krizalid always did do everything better.
Her long-suffering patient rolls his wounds out of her reach. Whip looks up, her temporary triage forsaken once more, the irritation building in the corners of her face and sending down an angry nerve impulse that clenches shut her blood-greased hands. Her mouth opens as though to snap at K' to stay the hell put, but the words never quite make it. Because her brother has just asked a question she'd never thought she'd hear in her entire life.
Was Krizalid a better friend?
It's so absurd a thing to ask that she doesn't know what to say. What to think. Whip just stares dumbly down at K''s turned back, staring at his shoulder with her right eye slightly squinted. A better friend? A better friend than what? Krizalid was once her best friend, but that was a long time ago. She was a different person then. She didn't have a life outside of the Cartel. She also didn't realize her only friend had lost his mind.
At first, she's not too sure what K' is even asking. Was Krizalid a better friend than who? Than /him/?! What, does he want her to acknowledge who she likes more?
He's kidding, right?
Whip just stares down at her twin brother, looking and sounding wounded in more ways than the obvious; watching him brood and stew morosely in his own blood.
Then she reaches out to him. It's to backhand him firmly upside the head.
"Are you unhinged?!" she snaps, incredulous and outraged. "What in the hell are you talking about? I named myself, Kriz went fucking insane, and 'happy' isn't a word I'd use to define that relationship. How could you ask me something like that?"
Does he want her to acknowledge who she likes more?
He sure does.
K' has never been able to find a way to measure his own worth other than to hold it up in comparison to others. And Krizalid has always been the standard against which he was compared. Now, discovering his sister was so close with Krizalid, his first thought is naturally: which of them was better?
It's not a rational way to see things. But then, rationality was never something K' was known for.
He's turned away from her, so he can't see her dumbfounded look. He can't see how surprised she looks by the question. And so, when she reaches out and SLAPS him, he's completely unprepared for it. His moping form is rocked by the smack, nearly knocked onto its face; he catches himself with a hand, a shocked look angled down at the floor inches away from his eyes, before he shoots back upright, rubbing at the back of his neck, looking about as outraged as his twin.
"What the fuck what th--" he starts, only to get cut off by Whip's answer. He lapses into sudden silence, the anger dripping slowly off his face. A sort of exhaustion sets in, in its wake. How could he ask something like that?
"Because," he answers slowly, tiredly matter-of-fact, "I had to know. I only just found out you even -knew- him, remember? Besides." A bitter shrug. "He always outclassed me in everything else, anyway."
"You--" Whip starts, but her voice cuts out in an exasperated huff. The hand she used to slap K' now retreats back, clasping down briefly over her forehead and squeezing pressure against her throbbing temples. She doesn't even know where to begin wondering about her brother's strange, new insecurity, and she sure as hell doesn't want to discuss it. Past their similar features and colouring, Whip has never compared Krizalid against K'. They have been two separate entities in her life, two completely different people -- one the face of her past and the other her future.
She doesn't even dare start pondering K''s question, because she's not about to mentally compare him to someone like Krizalid. The very thought puts her nerves at edge. Even if she could, she still can't even sort her own feelings out over Krizalid to even make voice of them. And she's not about to start sorting them out.
Letting her hand lower with a strained sigh, Whip looks back up at her brother. She stares quietly into his face for a heartbeat. Then, her eyes glance away, and with a determined set of her face, returns to her duty of administering first aid to him, moving quickly to try to press dry bandages down and tape them over his deepest wounds before he moodily decides to flit away. At least then he can make a fuss without suffering certain blood loss.
It's a while before Whip speaks back to K', and it soon becomes obvious why. Her hands are gentle, but her voice is not. She doesn't like discussing this at all. "Krizalid is nothing like you," she gravels, frowning through her work. "He went mad, K'. He lost his mind. You're my brother, and he's my enemy." Her hands pause briefly. "He scares me," says the soldier who has never, and would never admit to feeling fear.
They might be two completely different people to Whip, who's never seen the two together. But the truth is, Krizalid has been a far greater part of K''s life than she might ever expect. He epitomizes all K' was meant to be... but failed to become. And NESTS has never been shy about informing K' just who, between the two of them, was better, more powerful, more complete, and far less a disappointment.
He doesn't say anything further. It helps that Whip herself doesn't offer any other words. When she looks at him, he looks back, but he doesn't really seem to see her. His gaze, for all its yellow-eyed intensity, remains a little distant: the boy ruminating quietly over this new information.
At the least, he stays still for the remainder of her ministrations. He doesn't move or speak until she decides to revive the conversation. Krizalid is nothing like you, she says; he doesn't make any reply. What she's saying isn't really anything he doesn't already know. He knows already that in many aspects the two of them are dissimilar. He knows that he went mad.
What he doesn't know is how this newfound revelation might change things. That's why he focuses in on her final words. "So... what," he eventually prompts lowly, his head turning towards his sister: grave eyes regarding her quietly from beneath an unruly fall of bangs. "He hate you now? He want you dead?" That seems the logical conclusion, if she's admitting to being so frightened of him.
Leaning over her brother, Whip focuses all her eyes, hands, and complete attention on his injuries, not even letting the gravity of their discussion interrupt her work. Getting his injuries stabilized until she can find him better medical care is essential. She only hopes he heals as fast as she does, though the girl has the sinking feeling that her brother would be able to walk away from injuries that would keep her bedridden for days. He's the stronger one of the two. That thought is normally sobering to her; only now Whip finds it to be a great relief.
With his two matching wounds packed with dry, heavy cloth, she forgets them for now, giving the bloodflow time to coagulate before she can go at it with rudimentary sutures. In the meanwhile, Whip hunts for the disenfectant, setting out to attend to the smaller welts and lacerations that have previously been ignored.
It's while she's pouring sharp-smelling alcohol onto gauze does that look in Whip's eyes change, that hard, austere look of work in them mollifying into a softer reminsce. She's considering her brother's question. Finally, she shakes her head no.
"No," Whip repeats a moment later, glancing briefly at K' then looking away. She leans in again to press the soaked gauze against his share of broken blisters, an angry combination of the release of his killing fire and his many subsequent, careless movements. In her mind, she's remembering the recent time when Krizalid saved her life. She woke up in a hospital room. He was so gentle. It felt like nothing had changed. "I don't think he wants that."
K' remains silent under her touch, barely reacting to the sting of the disinfectant save for slight, involuntary flinches where the cold liquid contacts raw injuries. He simply waits until Whip's ready to actually respond his question, exhibiting a docile patience in her presence that he wouldn't have had with just about anyone else. His eyes finally track over to rest on her in those last few moments before she finally comes to a conclusion. He watches her shake her head no.
The answer should have relieved him. He's disconcerted to find that it doesn't. In fact, all it does is aggravate him in a way he doesn't entirely understand. He doesn't quite realize yet that the answer makes him restless because it means Krizalid still loves her-- and thus, K' still has competition for her. His eyes narrow in disquiet and disgust alike, as he pictures Krizalid bestowing his affections and attentions on Whip-- and then Whip sticks a bit of alcohol-soaked gauze against his wounds. He lets out a hiss, twitching instinctively away-- and then he makes himself hold still.
Thinking about Krizalid-- about what he might want, about how he might feel about Whip-- sickens K' in a strange, irrational way. It puts entirely too human a cast on a man K' was content to leave as a mere obstacle: a hurdle he wanted to overcome. He finds himself -hating- what Krizalid and Whip have already had: and what he, by extension, has missed out upon. He feels gutted, like Krizalid has found yet another way to steal something from him.
His hand shifts, softly catching Whip's wrist, shutting there with an oddly childlike conviction. This is something Krizalid isn't stealing back... -whatever- his intentions towards Whip might be. "He isn't getting you."
Still none too used to K' reaching out on his own voilition, Whip stops her first aid when she's touched. Looking visibly surprised, she looks down at the hand around her wrist, then back up, watching her brother with dark, wondering eyes that crease slightly at the corners. K''s promise seems to surprise as much as worry her, and for many moments, she just looks on in silence.
Then, with cold and clammy fingers that smell sharply of hydrogen peroxide, Whip reaches out to affectionately squeeze her brother's shoulder. Her strange, hesitant expression warms instantly into a disarming smile, and she replies in an indulgent tone, "Don't be silly." Her left eye shuts, and she tries to light-heartedly wink away her brother's concerns.
Whip has never ruminated over that particular fear. She doesn't think she's in any real danger of Krizalid emerging from the darkness to pull her back into the Cartel. Her sketchy relationship with her old friend is much too complicated than that... and best as she knows of him -- psychopath or not -- the operative doesn't seem the type. She fears Krizalid for other reasons.
But, for now, she seems set on trying to placate K' of his. "But let's not talk about that any more. It's all ancient history. You're an idiot; worrying about me when it's you who's bleeding out all over the floor."
It isn't really a touch so much as it is a convulsive, fearful movement. If the feel of his grasp weren't already evidence enough of that, the way he avoids her eyes when she lifts her gaze to him should say it clearly enough. His sincerity is left to be expressed in the squeeze of his hand and the odd way he turns his face aside when she tries to look at him; the young man is still far too unaccustomed to earnest communication or nonviolent touch to know how to gracefully pull it off.
He permits her returned touch. But once he's told he's silly, his expression edges back into a distinct frown, and his hand pulls away. The wink doesn't look to calm any of his concerns, K' regarding her attempt at lightheartedness with a sober gravity. As far as he can tell, Krizalid and Whip were close once. And now Whip says she doesn't think Krizalid would hate or want her dead.
The only conclusions left are that Krizalid would disavow her and treat her as a stranger, forgetting about her entirely except as far as she is a traitor to NESTS; or that he's retained some sentimentality towards her. Perhaps he even wants to reclaim what the two of them once had. At first, K' isn't entirely sure which scenario frightens him more; then, he realizes it's the latter, and feels disquieted.
"That Ryouhara," he speaks up abruptly. Whip entreated him not to dwell on Krizalid aloud anymore, and oddly enough it seems he's going to comply. "He was here for information, like I said. Got in trouble with NESTS, remembered me, and thought he'd come find me again. But seems like he also had the nerve to think he'd teach me a little life lesson." A dry chuckle snakes out of his throat. "Isn't that funny."
Soon enough, Whip returns to her job at hand. She's finished with thinking about Krizalid for the rest of tonight, if not the next month. He puts her nerves on edge.
So she thinks about nicer things, calmer things, like the collection of traumatic needles she keeps in her soldier's field kit. Picking up a box of finely-curved, swaged needles, their assorted shapes ranging from ski curves to half-circles, she alternates eyeing them and her brother's pair of chest wounds, visually trying to gauge how she's going to suture them shut.
It's stuff like this what calms her.
Already arranging her prep supplies of alcohol and gauze, Whip's methodical movements only hitch momentarily at K''s change in topic. It's not Krizalid, but it's not much better either. A frown haunts the corner's of his sister's mouth, and her expression briefly darkens. Funny? They don't know what funny is. She's going to find Ryouhara and acquaint him to a proper punchline.
Selecting her surgical needle, Whip slants K' the shortest of glances, the look in her brown eyes patient. Slightly homicidal, but mostly patient. "A life lesson?" she asks him, immediately looking and sounding annoyed. Inquiring minds would like to know.
K' doesn't look in the least distressed by the way Whip holds a box full of savage-looking needles appraisingly up against his wounds. In fact, he's barely paying her ministrations any attention, merely accepting them with a quiescent docility that is a strange mirror of Kula's passiveness under the inspections of her handlers. His odd receptiveness might almost be eerie to Whip, who's likely to recognize it for what it is: a conditioning to quietly and uncomplainingly accept all modifications and tuning procedures performed on his body.
He's watching her as she works, at the least, which suggests he's broken himself somewhat of that old tendency to not even pay attention to what was being done to him. His yellow eyes hold no real trepidation towards the impending sutures. He's endured far worse in his time. In fact, by this point he might not even notice when the needles go in.
He's thinking, instead, about how to answer her request for further details. How to phrase it. "When he found out you were my sister," he starts slowly, both expression and voice uninflected, "he told me I failed as a brother. He told me how easy it was to find us; how if he'd wanted, he could have made sure I came home to a corpse." K' lifts a sloped shoulder, his head dipping, an exhaustion sinking into every line of him. "Then the questions. Did I check if you were okay before I came downstairs after him. Did I think to move you. Did I consider that I wouldn't be the only one suffering if I fucked up--"
His face drops into one hand. "Who the fuck does he think he is? Does he think I don't know?! Does he think it's his prerogative, his -right- to come -teach- me?"
Whip has similar conditioning to the butcherer's side of medicine, though not for the same reasons. Whatever orchestrations NESTS did to her body -- tampering with her on the genetic level -- escapes the girl's total awareness. Sometimes amnesia can be a healthy thing to have.
On the contrary, she doesn't balk against her private collection of needles because she's a soldier, and soldiers are well acquainted to their pains. She probably couldn't count the times she's taken a souveneir on her body from some mission either gone well or to hell. Whip hates hospitals but field medicine is an old friend to her, and somewhere into the thousands of stitches you just start to not notice the needle going in anymore.
She starts to prepare K''s minor surgery with that same impassive air, thinking analytically and moving reflexively, appearing to trust her own skill well enough to perform on her own brother. She imparts no emotion towards the wickedly-curved needle she selects, and its hard, waxy length of gut suture, or even the constant glances she awards his pair of wounds, checking on them constantly to see if their gouting blood has slowed.
The only emotion one will get to glean out of Whip happens when K' starts speaking again. She looks up distractedly when he answers her, and she ends up unable to look back down again, watching him with a sharpness that unsheathes across her dark eyes. He looks exhausted. She just looks pissed.
She doesn't even know what to make of that doctor now -- if he even is a doctor. In her confusion, Whip decides to hang onto the emotion that feels the most natural. And that's going to be anger. A lot of anger. She honestly doesn't know what kind of person gets off lecturing -- no, insulting -- her brother like that, but she promises to herself that she'll find out very soon.
In the meantime, one of her hands momentarily abandons amateur surgery to try to take K' by the hand, Whip trying to encourage him to look at her. "Listen to me, K'," she entreats, her voice low and firm. Her hand squeezes down. "I'm your sister and what I say matters. You haven't failed at anything, you hear me? I'd be dead now, or worse, if I haven't met you. Don't you remember how many times you've saved my life?" A resigned exhale rinses off some of the seriousness in her voice, and her mouth crooks wryly, indulgently at one corner. "Even though I've told you not to?"
Her smile disappears. "But I'm not your responsibility," she reminds, rather pointedly, "and I don't want protection, but... I feel safe with you. I know that you'll always be there for me."
Whip's hand lets go, and her gaze drops back down to her work at hand, busily cleaning her selected needle with disenfectant. After a pause, she adds lingeringly: "You don't need anyone teaching you how to be a good brother."
Unresponsive, K' simply bleeds-- slowly, thinly, and almost half-heartedly-- as Whip prepares her needle and eyes his wounds. She trusts herself to perform this minor surgery well, and that faith seems enough for K'; he permits her near him, allows her to touch him without first appraising him of her impending contact and ultimate intent, and barely flinches when she leans in and-- takes his hand?
Expecting the tiny beesting of the needle, K' is surprised to feel the warmth of a sisterly grasp instead. Her bid to get him to look at her succeeds, the young man glancing around at her in mild confusion, wondering why she's stopped her ministrations. Blandly, emotionlessly, he watches rather than meets her eyes as she speaks. He doesn't seem to hear her at first, her words not being anything he had expected.
His yellow eyes finally focus, however, at the momentary lighter tone to her voice. She tells him she'd be dead without him, reassures him that he's not been totally ineffective, and something like a shy, fleeting desire to believe her brightens his suspicious gaze for an instant. He looks at her, wanting to be able to trust his own ability like she does, wanting to feel for a moment like a real person. Not like some joke trying to act like a person who can remember farther back than three years.
Eventually, his gaze cuts away. He looks at the wall as Whip looks back to her work. He's come far since the days he thought himself little more than a castoff, artificial object that could do little more than programmed tasks. Since he thought himself a stark failure, when held up against Krizalid. But he still hasn't come far enough to entirely discard the fear he won't ever be enough.
Some days, he does feel that confidence-- some days, he does declare to himself he's his own person and he can live life just as any other whole, normal person does. But there's always something waiting to set him back. Something that comes along to remind him he can't ever catch a break. This is one of those things, and it's the reason he doesn't say much more than, "I hope you're right."
He's quiet a moment. And then, as if aware of what's expected of him-- or perhaps desirous of putting a more familiar mask back on-- he slips a bit of his customary arrogance back on, tugging a faint smirk back on. "He didn't say anything I didn't already know anyway. And who knows, if he's got problems with NESTS, he might turn out useful for something."
"Of course I'm right," Whip replies firmly, in a tone that tries to brook as much doubt as it does argument. Whether or not it's the truth, she seems to believe in her brother's usefulness. It's a hard enough fact to admit to herself, but she knows it would be foolish of her to deny it; if not for K', certainly she'd be dead by now.
And it angers her that someone could convince him otherwise.
Finally ready for her next step in this makeshift triage, Whip pulls herself closer to K', settling herself down somewhat comfortably beside him, swivelling so she can minimize having to reach across him to get at those wounds. Her bent legs plant up against his side, pre-emptively; it's a brace for him to lean back upon in case the pain gets too overbearing, because she's sure as hell not going to be taking breaks in this work. It's difficult enough as is.
Leaning over him to lift up the taped gauze from his wounds, Whip squints at K''s certain trauma than his face, frowningly assessing if the bleeding has stopped. It seems to satisfy her, because she's already quickly, smoothly passing the curved needle through flesh and beginning the initial stitches. Whip's bedside manner is all business. She seems to be honestly attempting to be gentle, but before that, she chooses to be efficient. Discomfort holds no candle to the threat of infection.
She's barely even listening to K' through her work, her concentration sharpened to a pinpoint. "Mmn," she replies automatically to his last remark, the words only and finally parsing to her when she finishes one stitch. K' is awarded a quick glance of her dark eyes.
"We'll see. I'd like to learn more about him before any further action is taken. He was..." Whip's eyes slit with intensity as her mind works in two different directions, thinking in between tying sutures. "He healed me with chi alone. I think it was chi. I'd never seen anything like it."
K''s head turns infinitesimally towards his sister as she nudges up against his side. It tilts, slightly, in the absently-curious manner of a dog, as her legs press in a brace against him. He says nothing, but leans into her trustingly once she begins to peel the gauze away. Her brother's body is impossibly warm, burning with heat from the fire seething continuously within him; leaning against him is like leaning against a radiator.
If the motions of the needle hurt him, he evinces no sign of it. In fact, he watches her hands as she does her neat stitches, seeming to be one of those types who'd rather see the needle going in than look away. He doesn't seem to expect any answer to whatever he says right away; once he's finished speaking, he simply waits for her to have enough of a break in her concentration to answer. Long silences don't trouble him.
"There's--" The word elongates into a hiss as Whip ties off the first suture. He draws a sharp breath, and then continues. "...not a lot to find out about him. International terrorist, responsible for that tournament on the ship a couple months ago... fucking hard to get to give you a straight answer in person..." He leans a little more heavily against Whip as she hitches the clean edges of his injury together: a quiet grunt resonates in his chest, against her bracing legs.
"If anybody could -heal- with chi," he eventually finishes, a little wryly-- because he could sure use that right now-- "it'd be him. Heard that tournament ended with some kind of chi nuke. If he's so pissed at NESTS, he could do some damage... or at the least, be a distraction. Ideally we don't even have to work with or talk to him."
"Ideally." Whip echoes half-heartedly, the grim clip of her voice suggesting already how she feels about allying with someone like that. She appreciates strategy in combat, and that victory sometimes allows for temporary coalitions with the enemy, but even the cool-headed soldier in her can't numb all her anger and all her outrage. The doctor came in here, masquaraded himself as someone so rarely kind and decent in this world, and left to savagely attack her own brother.
She's in no mood for negotiating with terrorists.
That lingering upset soon brings the first slight hitch to her seamless stitching. Whip has mended countless wounds: on herself, on allies over the years, even on civilians who made the mistake in trying to outrun the crossfire and were too far and too critical for medical attention. But while the procedure and the familiar sight of lacerated flesh are not new to her, this realization is: she's suturing up her only brother. It's him who's been hurt, and it's her own flesh and blood that's staring back at her in all its horrific injury. Rage hits her and Whip takes the flush of anger like a punch in the gut, and it takes her a moment to catch her breath.
And if that's not enough for conditioned military detachment, nothing is. While her hands work mechanically on their own, feeding the needle through and securing another knot, Whip comes to to find her eyes starting to water. Surprised and quickly annoyed by her own emotional flare, she looks completely away from K' and focuses directly on his injury, letting the fall of her hair disguise her face from him. He doesn't need to see her falling apart on a moment's notice like some silly rookie. If anything, K' needs stability in his life, and too much of her emotions is like throwing gasoline on a fire -- both figuratively and literally.
Her legs shift minutely against K''s back, accepting his weight with an unburdened patience. Soon enough, all her careful concentration pays off, and Whip ties off the last stitch of the first wound, reaching around to cut off the remaining catgut and begin taping fresh, dry gauze over the closed injury. Looking down, her heavy bangs hide her eyes. Whip isn't saying much more now, far too busy working and thinking about how she's going to shoot Ryouhara in both knees when she finds him.
K' doesn't precisely understand why it is Whip is completely unenthused by the prospect of using Ryouhara a little. He doesn't really get that Whip feels betrayed by Seishirou's deception... and outraged by his subsequent attack on her brother. Whatever desire K' himself had for vengeance against Seishirou has already been expended: Seishirou left that room in a worse state than K' did.
K''s anger is also tempered by the fact Seishirou -did- heal Whip... and by the fact that ultimately, their goals dovetailed more than they diverged. But were he to discover how Whip felt about Seishirou and his actions, he'd doubtless feel a surge of guilt that he just doesn't feel the same way over Kula.
Of course, there are vast differences between Seishirou and Kula, and between the respective situations... but K' would find a way to feel guilty and angry with himself anyway.
Silent, burdened under his own thoughts, K' is focusing too much on enduring the pain of the sutures to notice when his sister starts crying. But while she can hide her face from him, she can't stop an errant tear from escaping her attention and splashing his wrist.
There is a long and awkward silence, in which K' desperately tries to think what to do. In the end, instinct takes over, the preprogrammed affection of one sibling to another kicking in where a missing memory and a harsh, short life have provided no answers, and K' leans into his sister, his left hand reaching to brush her hair aside.
It reveals utter misery. Whip's skin is pale, her features are drawn, her eyes are red-rimmed and raw, and her cheeks are soaked with tears. She doesn't wipe at them, avoiding the chance of infecting her necessary first aid while her brother still has one open wound that still requires closing.
However, feeling K' and all his unnatural, pervasive warmth press closer to her, and knowing she's been revealed, her watery eyes flick him a quick glance. At first, the look in them is blank and unreadable, but after a moment of staring, they suddenly crease with guilty apology.
Instead of explaining to her brother why she's upset, Whip goes back to work, ignoring her own crying like some unnecessary burden and leaning away briefly to consult her first aid pack for a new line of traumatic suture. Looking away from K''s face on purpose, not quite finding the strength to look him in the eye, the tears continue to roll from hers as she gently begins to apply the first stitch in that second wound.
It takes a few knots before she summons up the courage to speak.
"--Please promise--" Whip's voice rises out of nowhere, sounding thinner than paper. She pauses minutely, her suturing hands twitching nervously. She waits for that moment to pass, and when her minstrations finally smooth out once more, the action of her hands returning to something safely automatic, her words continue. She starts to plead, "Promise me you'll never..."
Whip's hands start to tremble again. She just gives up on suturing for now, her hands stopped as her eyes stare holes into the backs of them, watching the way her brother's blood has dried on her fingers. She's spent years causing and witnessing all types of unspeakable gore, and this is making her stomach turn.
Her eyes close briefly, possibly to collect herself, then open again. The tears haven't stopped, but it's probably taking Whip all of her self-control to keep the emotion out of her voice. Numbly, tiredly, she tells her brother, "I can't bury you. I just can't. There'd be nothing left in me."
K' isn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't that. He hesitates a moment in surprise at seeing the sheer extent of her misery, dismay quickly sobering the curious cast to his features. But that dismay is just as quick to clear from his face as it was to appear. What replaces it is a troubled puzzlement.
Whip doesn't talk, and so neither does K'. He just watches her as she goes about her work, the expectant quality to his gaze seeming to suggest he's waiting for Whip to volunteer an explanation. He doesn't proactively ask because he doesn't even know where to begin. In fact, it's entirely possible he would panic if he actually got an answer.
A frown haunting his features, awkward irritation warring with muted concern in his eyes, K' holds his silence. Relief finally comes in the form of Whip's sudden words; when the girl finally speaks, K' looks to her instantly. He evinces no reaction until she finishes her statement, his expression not even letting slip any hint of pity for his sister's agonizing emotionality.
It takes him a few moments to grasp the meaning she finally arrives at. When he does, his awkward confusion degenerates into a tired look. But that exhaustion doesn't last long before K' abruptly forces himself to smirk instead. His back straightens, false arrogance claiming his features, a studied cockiness masking his face. His smile eventually wipes away, but that grim cast to his jaw persists.
"I don't have any intention of dying," he replies eventually. His eyes catch and hold hers, a fierce look smoldering in them. "-You- are not going to die on me either." It's a command. An absolute. K' cannot even let himself THINK that Whip's survival could not be a certainty.
Soon enough, that insistent life is breathed back into her hands which refuse to remain idle for very long. When Whip knows the worst of that emotion has passed, and she can hear herself think once more, her focus returns. The slow, careful stitching begins anew, and she gently passes the curved needle through her brother's skin with a timeless patience.
Soon enough, she finishes, cutting the line on the last knot. Whip exhales airily, letting go the breath she was holding, and relaxing out some of the tension from her arms and shoulders, where every muscle was padlocked tight with concentration. She turns minutely to exchange the used suture and needle for fresh, dry gauze, facing K' in time to -- pause.
Whip, with silly tears still half-tried on her face, stares bemusedly right into his smirk. She looks at him blankly, dumbly, not quite understanding what's so funny. At least until she realizes that it's not supposed to be. That familiar, god damned irritating smirk of his rates among Whip's five most disliked things in the entire universe. It bothers the hell out of her. It gets on her nerves. It even pisses her off.
And it's... also the most relieving thing she's seen in weeks. Whip is a realist, a sensible girl who analyzes life as a series of questions and answers. The logical part of her knows that no one can promise anyone that they will not die, and it is pointless and a waste of words for them to say. Everything dies, and there's no oath in the universe that could stand against the natural laws. But she's not too sure if she believes that now, because if there's anything that's truly indomitable in the world, truly anything that refuses to yield to anything, it's that fucking smirk of his. And if it promises her that her brother isn't going anywhere, Whip thinks she can believe it.
Whatever lingering logic is left in her makes sure she's taped gauze down over K''s remaining wound before she lunges forward to hug him, her arms wrapping around his neck. "I'm not going anywhere," Whip's soggy voice promises back.
Undoubtedly, were K' fully aware of the infuriating effect his smirk has upon his sister, he'd use it more than he does. As it is, he already suspects; he's used that cocky look to incense many other people over the years, and Whip sure seems to get irritated in much the same way when he aims it at her.
The subsequent promise he makes her is barely out of his mouth before Whip has got her arms latched around his neck. A quiet sound of mingled startlement and pain kicks out of him as her body, careful as it is, nonetheless still bumps up against his torso. Anyone else would've been snapped at for such sudden contact. But it's clear, from the way K' eventually relaxes even while wearing his weepy sister for a necklace, that he doesn't really mind either Whip's hug... or the brief stab of pain it causes.
"...Yeah, yeah..." K' mutters, more than a little awkwardly, against his sister's hair. Slowly, cautiously, he relaxes in the embrace. "You better not. Without you--" K' stops. Not even his mind wants to go any further down that path; he retreats before he can even think of the sentence's finish. Instead, he just falls silent, waiting for her to let him go.
Whenever he's released, he sits back: glancing away. But the shadow of that indomitable will-- that determination steely enough to challenge the very facts of life-- lingers in his brooding expression, carved into every grim line of him. He may not be someone most people feel safe around... but nonetheless, paradoxically enough, he's someone who can inspire an inexplicable faith. The type of person people simultaneously fear and trust.
While Whip knows she hasn't known K' that long, and sometimes doubts that she does any good for him and his life, she trusts him completely. Whatever life may bring her, she knows there will always be one place in the world she can go where she will feel safe.
Releasing her brother from the cage of an impromptu, deathgrip hug, Whip smirks a little crookedly and reaches out to affectionately ruffle his white hair. She leans back and finally attends to her own face, wiping the cooled tears away with her wrists. The girl appears to be feeling somewhat better, or at the very least, has been temporarily consoled by her brother's usual manner. Her tears have tried, her tension has passed, but her dark eyes still look burdened in a certain light.
Still, Whip smiles. "Well, all done," she announces, gesturing vaguely to K''s sutured wounds with a tilt of her head. She collects her supplies, depositing the used needles into a separate plastic box and, in her methodical way, returns everything to its proper place in her field kit. The soldier treats every object with a pre-emptive carefulness, as though knowing that she'll be using it all again all too soon.
Detaching herself carefully, her joints pop as she first moves, betraying just how tense Whip kept herself while sitting. She pushes herself up to her feet, and looking down at K', offers him a hand up. "How do you feel? I want you to take it easy for a while, all right? You tell me if you're hungry, and I'll get you want you want."
He needs to get injured more often.
Brusquely waving aside the offer of her hand, K' pulls himself to his feet with a muted, grumbling grunt. Inspecting the neat lines of stitches down his front, he frowns eloquently at them, visibly resisting the urge to touch them, seeming displeased by the way his mobility is impeded... but resigned to his convalescence. How does he feel? "Fine," is his response. And he does, really. It still hurts like fuck, but at the least the wounds aren't hanging open to the air anymore.
At her further admonishments and insistences, however, K' just turns a bemused eye on her. He stares down at her blankly a few moments, as if the idea of being doted upon is so utterly foreign he can't process it, before the notion that Whip is offering to take care of him finally sinks in.
"That's not necessary," he presently rasps in reply, moving away slowly-- a slight hitch in his steps-- in the direction of the couch. A hand pushes through the back of his hair, ruffling the strands and shifting down to work an ache out of the back of his neck. Settling gingerly into a seat, he leans forward, resting elbows on his knees and letting his head droop a little. "Probably be fine within a few days... and until then, it's not like I'm crippled."
The concept of 'milking things for all they're worth' doesn't seem to have occurred to K' quite yet.
Whip watches K''s journey up to his feet with the prickly uncertainty of a mother watching her child take its first steps; she can't help but tense in preparation, ready to catch him should he fall.
She's not too used to having to care for things. Not to mention injured things. She looks perpetually half-way into a cringe.
Fortunately, her wounded brother does not teeter, and Whip lets her caution go finger by finger. Still, she lingers close by, looking almost eager to help him feel more comfortable. For a soldier that gauges her own worth primarily by usefulness, this insistence is imparative.
..And, ultimately, brushed aside. Left behind in K''s stiff, pained tracks, Whip frowns at her brother's back. She's not sure why she feels hurt, but she takes it in stride. "All right," she says, letting him go and staying behind to clean up after her small mess. She calls after, "But you'll need to rest."
Closng her field kit and returning it to her bedroom, Whip's suddenly wishing she had more wounds to dress. Without something to occupy her mind, her thoughts are going back to that doctor. He gives her health and yet takes away her brother's. She doesn't understand why. She knows she'll have to find him. It isn't going to end here.
Log created on 01:37:50 08/22/2008 by K', and last modified on 03:22:15 08/28/2008.