Match of the Millennium

Description: Healed up and released by Seishirou, K' and Whip return home to an anxious Shurui. After words have been traded and Shurui has gone to bed, Whip considers her brother's decision to remove his glove... and decides to take the problem of his out-of-control fire into her own hands. --very literally.

This day had the potential to be a lot more depressing than it actually turned out to be. Yesterday was filled with a painful night's sleep, Shurui's right hand encased in a tight cast to preserve the integrity of her dominant hand and its structure. Painkillers managed to kill most of the potential pain, but the dull *throom throom throom* was a constant reminder of what pain could come if she didn't delay its coming with the medication she was given. Shurui was lucky that she was at a hospital when she was smashing her hand into that door. While not life-threatening, lesser fighters have had their careers cut short by injuries like these.

Shurui just has to look like her hand is encased in a giant mitten of white concrete.

Hotaru's words and actions were like a light balm, soothing Shurui's rapid emotions to a point where she could at least concentrate. And, possibly, plan. So, when the door to K' and Whip's apartment opens and Shurui enters, left hand awkwardly clutching her key, the girl appears tired, but not with eyes red and bleary. Pocketing the key, she flips on the light and goes over to the kitchen area, her left hand fumbling for bottle of pills, marked with a giant neon orange dot to ease in identification. After taking a pill with a glass of water, she trudges towards the living room area, collapsing against the couch. She needs to sleep sometime, or else she'll be in no condition to search for K' and Whip tomorrow.

If she doesn't sleep, who knows how easy it'll be for someone to sneak up on her?



It's pretty easy even now, actually. This is probably only because the person who does the sneaking is -completely unexpected-, however, because he isn't even actually -trying- to sneak.

Shurui isn't even allowed to rest two minutes against the couch before the sudden sound of a door closing drifts down the hall. Quick steps make their way towards the living area, at a pace rapid enough Shurui might not even have time to prepare for whatever assault might be coming, and before too long they've carried their owner into sight.

K' looks harried and tired, and his flames still twist avidly about his right arm... but for the most part, he seems unharmed by his day-long disappearance. He's quick to notice Shurui, his yellow eyes fixing on her and his steps drawing to a pause; he stares a moment, as if confirming she isn't just a wraith, before he huffs a breath of relief-- he was concerned something might have happened to her in his and Whip's absence, or that she might have -seen- their abduction-- and shuts his eyes.

"Good. You're here." And then, without much further ado, K' turns shoulder and simply walks past Shurui, on his way to the kitchen. Perhaps he's feeling the need to pop a couple pills himself. And perhaps he feels that if Shurui didn't even know they were taken, she doesn't need to have her mind burdened with the knowledge.



The silence is like a blanket, so pervasive that, when the door opens and closes, it's as if that very door was next to the girl's sensitive ear. Shurui's eyes fly open, body tensing in an attempt to prepare herself for whatever assault may follow.

It's then she senes the impossible- the familiar flicker of K''s aura. There's no mistaking it, unless NESTS or whoever else made a clone so impossibly identical. No, not even clones can have auras so identical. Sitting up as K' fixes his eyes on her, too dumb-founded to speak as he makes his assessment, Shurui remains that way, her blank face unable to focus on what emotion to assume. Happiness? Anger?

If only K' knew what actually happened that night.

Finally, hearing him in the kitchen, Shurui snaps out of it, fumbling off the couch with a loud *thump* and scrambling to the kitchen, bracing her right upper arm against the door frame. ".... You're back. I thought..." Happy tears well up in the corners of her eyes, hot and stinging as she attempts to grit her teeth against them. No, she doesn't want to be *crying*, nobody wants to see that! .... So instead? "You fucking idiot! You should have let me help you somehow! I could do more for you than bring you food! Hell, I could have tried to give you some cold presses or *something* to make you at least not feel like absolute shit all the time!" Deflated of thin anger, Shurui collapses against the door frame like a limp balloon, a small smile creeping on her frowning mouth.

".... I was scared I'd never see you and Whip again, even if I searched for days and days." She sniffs and rubs her eyes with her other arm. "But you're back." But.... where's Whip?



K' is in the middle of poking around in a cabinet when Shurui suddenly appears in the doorframe, trying to hold back tears and yelling at him with all the emotionality a massively-relieved young woman can muster. Nonplussed, he just swivels a glance over his shoulder at her, staring at her unreadably as she goes on and on. Well, that sort of answers the question of whether she saw the kidnapping, doesn't it?

But something about her in these moments finally reaches past his cold impassiveness, spurring him to slowly turn around and let the cabinet slide shut. His fire-ridden arm shifts as if to brace against the counter, but at the last moment remembers itself and holds itself awkwardly aloof. She's really got attached to him, hasn't she? She really does give a shit. The feeling that brings is both soothing and fear-inspiring. Soothing because it conveys a sensation of being wanted, needed, and -valued- as a person: as what and who he is. Terrifying because here's yet another liability hung around his neck. Yet another person who could be used against him, just like Whip.

His internal uncertainty and blend of emotions translates, outwardly, to little more than a narrowing of those familiar yellow eyes. "So you saw what happened," he finally notes, perhaps unnecessarily. "...I didn't know you were there." Her insistence that she could have helped him he says little to, but briefly... his eyes look troubled.

Not really wanting to be popping painkiller while Shurui is watching, K' abandons the cabinet, pushing away from the counter to stroll slowly out of the kitchen. He pauses, however, once he draws abreast of the collapsed girl, and he turns his head to angle a glance down at her. Nothing happens for a moment... and then his left hand shifts, moving in an awkward brush against her hair. It pulls away too fast, the motion unnatural, but hey-- K' is still learning how to do these things at all. "She's resting. Go sit down. Get a grip."

He proceeds out of the kitchen, seemingly intent on going back down the hall again. His voice drifts back over his shoulder, though he doesn't look around. "There isn't much you can help me with. Help -yourself- by not getting too attached to me. I can't promise you anything." It might sound callous, but really... it seriously bothers him how distressed she looks right now because of him, even if on some level it's gratifying to know there's someone who'd care that much if he were gone.



Whip awakens to darkness and the distant sound of voices. They are both comforting stimuli, even to an old soldier like her, but even she's can't help but jolt up in bed and gasp shallowy as she rubs up and down her arms, making sure there's nothing attached, nothing growing out of them, nothing suspending them in medical fluid. But she's not in a cloning tank; she's in her brother's bedroom. They're back home. She knows this. She doesn't remember falling asleep here, however.

Swinging her legs over the bed, Whip ignores her old aches and pains to a more pervasive, persistent itchiness, her nerves already on a razor's edge. She feels like insects are crawling on her.

Scrubbing a hand over her eyes, looking up, she also realizes she's been left alone. Her stomach rolls over in a sick flop.

Seconds later, she's moving slowly, stiffly down the hallway, one hand brushing against the wall to level her step. She has enough strength to move now without any superb effort -- something she'll soon realize of Ryouhara's strange medicine later on -- but she doesn't trust the way her head wants to spin. Part of her wants to go back to bed, but Whip doesn't want to be alone. She's desperate to find her brother and remain within arm's reach of him. She doesn't want him out of her sight. She--

--pauses momentarily when she overhears K' telling someone about not getting too attached. It sounds like Shurui. And it sounds like he means it. Whip stops in her tracks, finding herself in the strange, objective position of evaluating every last bit of how she feels, how she must look, and especially how she must be acting. Her jaw sets briefly with thought.

When Whip steps into sight a few moments later, she looks extremely tired but gentle. Calm as always. Wearing a pair of old cotton athletic shorts that she probably uses to sleep in, as well as her brother's tattered t-shirt that drapes too large on her, she lingers on the edge of the scene rather than intrude on it, immediately and curiously turning a glance on Shurui. The sight of the girl brings an immediate pinch of guilt to Whip's face, but her sleepy tranquility doesn't break. Something anticlimactically, as though hoping not to aggravate the girl, she keeps her part of the reunion light. Like nothing happened. "Hey Shurui," she calls warmly, raising a hand. She switches a look back to K' a moment later. "Cigarettes?" she inquires of him. He keeps them and she wants one.



No tubes, no glass, no fluids. Just familiar voices, smells, and sounds. "You were out by the time I got there," comes Shurui's voice. "The guy who kidnapped you somehow melded the door shut, so I couldn't stop him."

And then, K' is there, standing right in front of her. Shurui's head turns upward, quieted by the silence, until she feels a touch to her hair. The motion surprises her, but, after the initial surprise, it's just as comforting. The action may not be as flexible and warm as Hotaru, but, in the context of who K' is, it's just as meaningful. He never learned to open up like she did, or like Whip. They both found their families, their foundations; he didn't. He wasn't allowed to. Now, he *does* have a family.

And Shurui? She feels needed. A purpose. Something she can grumble about, but do all too readily while holding a sense of solid purpose in her heart. That, and connection. A weird friendship. "Right," Shurui says, seeming relieved. "Sorry... kinda caught off guard. I thought you were a NESTS agent or something at first, before I saw your aura. I feel better now, though." Their auras may be dimmed or off, but they're okay. And that's really all Shurui could ask for. Hotaru is right. K' *does* get unsettled, even agitated when he sees someone in this state. Well, at least, someone he cares about.

"You don't need to," Shurui finally says, straightening. "I do these things because I want to." A pause, and Shurui walks over to the counter. ".... And because you and Whip'd die of malnuitruiton. You'll get your apartment back eventually, but I don't plan to leave you two to your own devices, tabasco eggs and all."

Out comes a bottle of pills, *also* marked with a bright sticker. "High-strength aspirin." She offers it out to K' with her left hand. "The one with the orange sticker's stronger, but it's limited. Use if you *really* feel like crap." And.... in comes Whip. Shurui's initial gut reaction is to run and hug the young woman in an ironic turning of the tables, but she holds back. "That goes for you too, Whip." Her face softens. "... Welcome back."



You don't need to, she says. K' makes no response, but that silence is in itself a form of acknowledgement for her words. He simply accepts the bottle she offers him, looking burdened by more than just the pain in his arm. Looking at it briefly, he reads the label... and then, for the moment, just sets it to one side on the counter. His lack of verbosity, by now, is probably so familiar to Shurui she can read messages out of his silence.

This particular message seems to convey that for now, he'll consent to let the status quo lie.

He's quick to turn when the sound of Whip's voice alerts him to her presence. Far from the torturous, slow process it was the first time it happened, his eyes swiftly soften when they land on his sister. He walks towards her quietly, her tearful injunction for him not to leave her still rattling around in the back of his mind. From anyone else, such behavior would have driven him away. But it's different when it's coming from Whip, because he's finding he needs her as much as she does him.

He never felt so worth something, in stark contrast to all NESTS's withering insistences he was a bit of trash, as when she clung to him the way she did. And he's expecting her to still need him; it's clear in the way he walks in closer to her than he ever gets to anyone else. It's as if he's expecting she might need or want to lean against him, and is preemptively offering her permission to do so.

"You shouldn't be up." In contrast to his behavior, his voice is rough, curt... as reserved as ever. "And you shouldn't smoke."



Whip's eyes have focused a little more when they slide back on Shurui a second time. The first time she saw the girl, the Ikari was only concerned to watch her face, and to wonder and feel apologetic for the worry that reveals itself so transparently on her. Now the younger girl gets a cursory look-over, and Whip pauses visibly when she notices the cast bulking up her hand. At first, she's not sure how it came to be.

Then she remembers. She hadn't noticed it at the time. She was too busy trying to protect her brother. Trying to take out her anger. Trying to murder Ryouhara in cold blood. But little Shurui was in the background, and Whip heard both her screams and the sounds of her fists colliding with that heavy door.

She only feels all the worse. Looking away, Whip suddenly feels too shy to even bring that cast up. She doesn't want Shurui reminded of whatever pain her poor body must be in. Instead, she just smiles faintly and encouragingly at the other girl, wanting so hard for her to not worry any longer.

Something moves against her peripherals, and dangerously hypersensitive from her recent nervous breakdown, Whip glances quickly at K' when he gets closer. She watches him curiously, her face a strange, out-of-place neutral for all that happened between them. She looks like she's back to her old self.

Even if the feeling is only skin deep. As her brother edges closer, it takes all of her self-control not to just reach out and hang onto him, some exhausted, nervous part of her needing physical contact to tell her that it's over and that everything will be all right. Her hand even flexes at her side with the quickly-aborted impulse. Whip can only remind herself of what she heard K' last say to Shurui. She doesn't want to add to her overburdened brother.

So she ignores what her frightened thoughts are begging her to do, and doesn't take that step forward to accept her brother's invitation. She doesn't even reach out to him. Instead, she just looks on at him in a steady way, and replies in a stubborn sigh, "But I want to smoke."

It's killing her to stand so close to K' and not touch him, so Whip steps past, walking slowly toward the kitchen. She snags a bottle of lager off the side of the fridge. Then, patiently, she crosses the length of the living room to find a place to roust with her prize. Somewhat impulsively, she heads for the window, reaching out to open the pane and let a breath of cool night air exhale quietly into the apartment. Whip takes a seat on the sill, leaning her back against one wall as her dark eyes gaze briefly out at the distant lights of downtown.

Whip's good at looking like nothing's wrong, but she's far from being talkative.



Half of what drove Shurui insane during that short expanse of time between K' and Whip's kidnapping and now was her own experience at being kidnapped, an event that left her in the same state as Whip. That's what drove her to such excessive lengths to try to intervene, despite the more rational approach of perhaps allowing the nice security team to futilely spray bullets at the door instead. It would have saved her hand, after all.

K''s choice of silence is readily translated; Shurui gives a nod to him in reply, as if he had spoken words instead.

They should focus on Whip now, and Shurui can make many guesses as to the reasons why. Following K' at a comfortable distance, she continues approaching Whip, pausing slightly as she passes K'. Almost, as if, she was silently asking permission.

"Whip," she says, making sure the shaken soldier knows she's there. As soon as she registers on Whip's radar, she nears closer, carefully, almost strategically. She thinks back to how she felt, coming back to her apartment after she was rescued and was checked out of the hospital. How she listened to her father's old records, comforted in the pulse of the worn plastic and the lingering smell of incense. She opened her window, just as Whip did, and listened to the dribbling of basketball between two anonymous students on the grounds below.

She wants to give that sense to her, now, even as Whip seems to be finding it on her own at her own pace. How did Hotaru do it? Comfort her? Maybe... Shurui can do the same. An arm gently hovers, allowing Whip to easily evade. It's about choice, right? She's not K'. If Whip finds comfort from her, it needs to be Whip's own decision. If Whip doesn't evade her, Shurui hugs her, careful of the weak points she percieves in the young woman's energy. "You're home."

Hotaru's words ring in Shurui's mind. 'You have to be strong.' Sometimes, to have something to be strong for is the best sort of need one can have.



K' barely even noticed Shurui's cast amidst all his brooding preoccupation. When Whip's eyes travel to it, so do his, and his gaze immediately darkens. He was out cold by the time Shurui even showed up; he has no idea why she's injured. Momentarily, his attention turns away from his sister, coming to settle heavily on Shurui. "What is that." His focused eyes make the subject of his question unmistakable.

No, K' doesn't have quite the tact his sister does. Though he can be excused in this instance; he doesn't know Shurui hurt her hand trying to get to them.

When he turns his attention back to his sister, it's to find a strange distance printed in her face and eyes. His brows threaten to knit in confusion, as he tries and fails to read just what is wrong with her. He's expecting her to behave as she did before, expecting that she -wants- to reach out, and he's willingly sacrificing a lot of his own standoffishness just to -oblige- her in her need for comfort: something he wouldn't have done for anything else. He can see her hand -move- with the want of it... but in the next moment she's gone cool, turning shoulder on him and walking away.

Why does she have to be so moody, he wonders, completely oblivious to the hypocrisy of that thought.

But where K' doesn't know what to do next or what his sister wants from him, Shurui seems unimpeded by any such uncertainty. The girl steps forward, past K', who watches her in bemused silence. And when Shurui cautiously reaches out to hug Whip, K''s mouth draws into a thin line. He stares unreadably for a few moments, nothing of his reaction showing through the sudden frozen look on his face, before he just turns and walks away, back down the hall and out of sight.

He pauses once he's sure he won't be seen, leaning heavily against the wall and staring into space. His right hand, the one coursing with flames, tightens into a fist until his knuckles crack, and it stays tense and coiled: wanting badly to hit something, to feel somebody's blood, but devoid of anyone to take out its frustration and anger upon. He's struggling with the emotions he's never been able to conquer or control: his own poisonous jealousy and inadequacy. Okay. Maybe she doesn't need him after all. That's fine. NESTS treated him like the failure he was often enough that he can deal with not being needed.



For these moments, Whip seems content to occupy her solitary corner of the room, finding a balance to satisfy both her frayed nerves and her pride. She can't stand to be alone right now. But she desperately wants to be strong again, so she'll sit on the window sill, admire the view, and slowly drink beer until she starts to feel somewhat calmer.

But never for long.

Despite all carefree appearances, Whip is painfully alert to every sight, sound, and littlest brush of movement. She notices Shurui heading towards her, and though she doesn't tense the way her brother does, her aura is inflamed with nervous energy. Whip can maintain a superb poker face, but she's yet to condition her life force to avoid detection against an eye like Shurui's. With tired, and somewhat bewildered eyes, she watches the girl draw close, looking like she doesn't quite understand -- at least, until Shurui extends her arms.

It's years of training that Whip looks as stoic as she does, because she's holding her breath. She knows what's going to happen, and she's nervously unsure as to whether she even wants to be hugged. She's considering stepping outside Shurui's reach, but a glimpse of the girl's cast again catches her eye. Guilt makes her heart hurt.

Whip doesn't stand from her seat on the windowsill. She doesn't even try to dissuade the younger girl. Suddenly afraid of even coming close to hurting her feelings, she merely waits with her timeless patience to accept the hug. And when it closes down, and she can feel Shurui's tiny weight pressed on her, doing her very best to be as gentle as possible, Whip realizes why she felt so inclined to escape. It was a good idea. At the first instant of contact, the tears are already welling up in her eyes. Looking down at Shurui, all she wants to do is cry.

Soon enough, her hand -- still a little cold from holding her lager bottle -- settles on the younger girl's shoulder. "I know," Whip replies, her voice strained, kept very thin and very light as to force out all the emotion. She's not going to fall apart. "I'm sorry, Shurui," she can't help but add, apologizing for many things. How she must have worried. What she must have feared. How much her hand must hurt.

Watching the girl indulgently, with a rare tenderness Whip reaches out to brush a lock of her white hair behind an ear. Then she glances back up, slowly warming to the rest of the room, glancing immediately for her brother -- to find him gone.

Whip pauses. Her eyes search every corner of the living room to find it empty. The confusion begins to weigh down her face. She goes oddly silent, even with her breathing, but there's one thing that cannot escape Shurui's certain sight. Her aura suddenly, dangerously, triples in nervousness. The gentle, patient Whip usually has such a dimmed, subdued aura. Now it's searing.



"This?" Shurui holds up the cast hand in question, before looking to the side in seeming shame. "..... I punched the hospital room door," she finally says, simply. ".... Many times." ... On the upside, she *was* somewhat satisfied with the amount of dent she was able to create in the door. More powerful fighters could probably chuck it with a single punch, but... still, impressive.

It's much harder to hug so gently, to be so careful and yet so firm that the emotions boiling inside you don't overwhelm theirs.

"It's... it's okay." Shurui looks down. ".... When someone had to rescue me... they had to do some things. Things someone in high school shouldn't have to face. Like killing a person. While it wasn't just for me, I still feel like I haven't given something back that was equal to that. So." She shrugs, despite the severity of her words and the memories behind them. ".... You don't have to say sorry to me. You and K' came back. You're both alive. That's what I wanted."

It's then, when Whip's aura explodes right in front of her, that Shurui realizes that K' has left. Damn it! Where the hell did he go? .... Almost eeriely, as if she read the young soldier's mind, the girl softly comments in a volume only intended for Whip, "I can't hug him like I hug you. I don't know how he'll react. And, besides, I'm not you. You're his sister." She looks to the side. "I think he needs you just as much as you need him, right now. Family."



That forgotten hand Whip has left on Shurui's shoulder betrays her. It starts to tremble. Soon enough, it carefully pulls away, as does the rest of her, as the soldier starts to draw inward on herself -- both emotionally and physically. The look on her face is nervously blank, almost guarded. She forgets her still-unopened lager and wraps her arms around her chest, hugging nervously down as though she were trying to protect herself against something. All those senseless fears of hers have been allayed, but they're far from gone. Whip can move, talk, and interact on her own, but she's still too exhausted and of a fragile emotional state. All she can think about is to wonder why her brother's not there. She can't stand to feel separated, not now.

She's starting to feel cold again.

Swallowing thickly, her eyes quickly glancing back and forth as though she's still trying to search the dark room for K', Whip's deteriorating focus is temporarily stolen by Shurui. She looks down, staring almost blankly as the girl entreats of her to find her brother. She wants to. He's the only sure thing that's convinced her not to be afraid. For a moment, she looks inclined to do as Shurui says. But then she remembers...

"I--" Whip starts, but a stutter steals her voice from her throat. Looking away, she just shakes her head no. Her expression tenses briefly, bracing in the way a person looks when they're expecting pain. That's when the shivering starts. Slowly, and somewhat apologetically, she finally rises to stand to edge away from Shurui. However, she does not look inclined to be finding her brother. She's looking for her own spot to be alone until this passes.



The more she's with Whip, the more Shurui wants to cry. Drawing upon her experiences on that horrible week can prove to be a double-edged sword; there's so many things that happened that week. Unspeakable, horrible things that touched upon all of the girl's senses. She locked it away instead of dealing with it, and, while the idea that Stasya shared in her pain, it was also a terrible reminder. A secret, that is only kept due to the weight of bringing it up. Shurui imagines neither of them could afford to; they had friends and companions who needed them.

She wants to ask what happened, to tell Whip that it's okay. But, more and more, she finds herself shaking, in anger, frustration and fear. When Whip shivers and shakes, Shurui says, softly, ".... I'll be right back." Cool, lonely moments pass, before the girl appears again, stepping into Whip's view. "Here." The voice alerts Whip to Shurui's presence, her dark eyes unreadable, as well as a blanket, which she presses against Whip's chest, letting it stay there whether the soldier grabs it or not.

A blanket. From K''s room. "I'm going out for a walk." She needs to leave them alone for a while. Both of them. Maybe a few minutes will do the trick; she could grab some ingredients for a morning breakfast. Something light and easy, perhaps. Sweet, even. "I'll be back." That's a promise. She turns away, walking towards the door, then stops. "If I can get away with it, I'll see if I can get some cigarettes." A pause as she considers. ".... And some ice cream. Double chocolate."

With that, the girl leaves, gently shutting the door behind her, bathing the apartment temporarily once again in blessed stillness.



K''s expression flickers when Shurui explains how her hand got so battered. She looks so ashamed about it. He averts his eyes, not knowing what to say or do, but now feeling a small hint of the guilt that plagues his sister. Still, it wasn't their fault Shurui had to see such a thing. If Seishirou had just left well enough alone, she wouldn't have had to witness K' and Whip being carried off, and--

--Whip probably wouldn't be as healthy as she is now. K' frowns deeply... and then banishes Seishirou from his thoughts. He doesn't want to think about Ryouhara right now.

Instead, he just focuses on the present. Shurui is probably consoling Whip, he thinks. Maybe that's for the best. He's just not good at this kind of thing; best to leave it to someone else. Still, some part of him doesn't really want to let Whip out of his sight too long, and after a few minutes have passed-- after he feels sure he won't spasm into jealous anger over seeing his sister prefer someone else's presence over his-- he feels ready enough to go back in.

He comes back to find Shurui just slipping out the door... and Whip holding a blanket, shivering the same way she shivered when she was first broken out of that tube. Startled by this deviation from his expectations, unsure of what to do or why Shurui left them, he hesitates... but then, his sister's shaking gets to be too much. He isn't quite sure what to do, and so ultimately leaves it all up to instinct and common sense.

He crosses the room slowly, approaching as if Whip were a doe apt to scare at the slightest provocation. And once he gets close enough, he reaches for the blanket, tugs it out of her grasp... and then slowly and self-consciously pulls it around Whip. She's cold; she needs to be kept warm. He hesitates then, failing to move for the space of a few moments... and then he reaches a hand for one of her shoulders, in a gesture that tries to pull her over to sit her down on the couch. She looks fit to collapse any moment now; she should be resting, not pacing around.



For as quiet and timid as Whip looks on the outside, there's a secret war going on. At one side, there's her rational mind, and it's telling her that there's nothing to be afraid of, not any longer. She's not in some strange chemical tank -- whether it's purpose was for healing or cloning -- and she's certainly not back with the Cartel. She's at home, in the company of two people she trusts, and no one is dead or dying. Aside from trying to figure out how -- and why -- Ryouhara chose to heal her again, as well as dealing with that persistant fire on her stubborn brother's arm, she has no aggravating worries.

However, at the other side, there's her heart, and it's refusing to be consoled. She was scared in a way she's never been by Ryouhara's well-meaning machinations, and all her restless, nervous anxiety refuses to go. It was K' that calmed her down the first time, and she needs K' to do it again. But she wants so desperately to feel strong again, and believes that he doesn't want the burden of her strange, temporarily-conditioned separation anxiety, so Whip merely stands on the spot, hugging herself and shivering lightly, rubbing at her arms to make the itchy, crawling sensations go away. Where did he go? Why did he leave? Christ, she doesn't want to be seen like this.

Too late. Shurui has already noticed. Whip is oddly quiet when the girl approaches once more, merely watching her with sad brown eyes. Her attention, however, gets sharply torn away by the littlest of sounds and stimuli, like the clicking of the refrigerator, the rattling of the radiator, and a sudden cool breeze wafting in from the open window. Fiercely alert, she looks tense enough to shit diamonds.

Whip accepts the blanket confusedly, glancing at it like she's not sure what it is or what it's supposed to do. Looking pitifully lost, she merely does as she's told and hangs onto its bundle. Then Shurui is leaving, going out the door, and Whip's heart pangs suddenly. She's leaving her alone too? But the traumatized soldier doesn't try to stop her. She merely watches her leave, only the smallest hitch of appreciation softening her face when the girl mentions cigarettes.

Then the door shuts and she's left alone. She doesn't know where K' is, and Shurui went for a walk. Whip's shivering gets worse. She glances down again at her blanket, her eyes trying to ask it for advice. It's not quite forthcoming. Exhaling noisily, she's determined to try to find herself some dark, comfortable spot alone in the apartment when movement brushes along the corner of her eye.

Her brother has returned, and is moving very slow, but Whip still tenses painfully at his presence, her guard already up. She glances nervously over her shoulder, then pauses, looking surprised to realize it's him. Then she realizes how she must look. His sister looks away, ashamed. Her annoyance battles silently with grateful relief, and she remains quiet and nervously distant until he takes the initiative and pulls the blanket free from her arms. Whip looks up at K' again when he arranges the heavy fabric around her, her shoulders and arms already feeling warmed. The touch on her shoulder, like Shurui's hug, is making her want to cry again.

It's not until Whip realizes K' is guiding her to sit that she starts to put up some resistance, locking her knees as not to be moved. "No," she says, her strained voice cut into by her persistant shivering. Her head apologetically shakes no. "You-- you shouldn't have to do this."



"Why not?" K' looks more irritated by the fact Whip is resisting his attention than by the fact he has to give attention at all. And he looks like he's decided that even if she's determined she doesn't need him, it's too damned bad; he's going to do what his instincts guide him to do anyway. He doesn't want his sister to just drift away because of what Ryouhara did to her. "You don't want me here?"

Something about saying it aloud makes it sound foolish enough to trigger off his temper-- but now, there's nothing to take it out on. He stands there, frustrated and needing that fire gone from his arm so he can even touch her. And for once-- perhaps due to that great need and desire-- his fire finally responds, in some small part, to his will.

Up until now, he had always attempted to control the fire the same way he'd controlled chi. He'd treated it as something outside himself, some outside force he needed to harness and direct consciously, when in reality he should have been handling it as a pure extension of his will. And he had never been really serious about his attempts to control it, either; the glove had always been there for him, an easy way out. It'd always been easy to just decide he was simply a failure, and to put it back on.

That glove spoiled him, configured as it was to let him control the flames with the ease he controlled chi. In reality, he could have learned to handle the flames himself with time, acclimation and practice... but NESTS had been quick to label him failed for his inability to immediately access them, and to give him the crutch that slowly atrophied the strength of his will.

He doesn't have that glove anymore. He can't hide from the hard path of learning the flames himself. And now that there's an immediate need for him to have that power under control, his will rouses from its dormancy to try to exert some command over the fire.

You shouldn't have to do this, she'd said. "I'm going to," is his ultimate decision on the matter. His voice rings that phrase with a bit more meaning beyond a simple declaration that he's going to get her to sit down. He wills the fire back, and it responds. It flares up his shoulder, spilling over to his shoulderblade, and collects there out of the way, searing the side of his throat: not entirely repressed, unfortunately, but not entirely unresponsive either.

K' doesn't give himself time to be surprised. He's already pushing into Whip's space, against her resistance, picking her up swiftly. "I don't give a shit what you say," he insists, even though she never actually SAID what he does next: "You -need- me." He says it like he's desperate to convince them both that it's true, because the alternative is to be the worthless thing NESTS always told him he was.

He doesn't hold her long. He's swift to put her down on the couch, afraid that he'll lose what control he has over the fire and that it'll rush free to burn her. He joins her shortly thereafter, his brows knitting with concentration as he tries to get a feel for just how it was he controlled the flames.



Involuntarily huddling into the blanket, almost wishing it could hide her, Whip can't help but cringe when K' all but entirely misinterprets her words. It's not what she meant. Of course she wants him around. She just doesn't want him burdened. He even admitted it himself. He's probably been too reticent to tell her himself, under fire of potentially hurting her feelings. Which are anything but stable at present.

Frowning, mirroring her brother's frustration identically, she wars internally with the decision of what to say to him. It kills her that, sometimes, her brother can be the easiest person in the world to talk to. However, other times, she's never felt so helpless trying to express herself, trying to muster what would be the right thing to say. Eventually, she just decides not to speak at all, and let her actions do it for her. Whip is stepping backwards, trying to ease her shoulder out from under his hand when... K' refuses to accept no for an answer.

His argument makes her look tired through her incessant shivering. Whip shakes her head no again, almost pleadingly, finding the voice to muster, "K'--"

She stops. Even her own argument wilts under the sudden, unexpected scene of K''s fire /moving/ over his body, walking along him as though it had a life and mind of its own. Her eyes widen. Her persistant shaking even wanes, as surprise momentarily overwhelms even her conditioned fear. Did he just do that? Did he control it? She's trying again: "K'. Your --"

Whip doesn't have time to wonder for long. An instant later, her brother is stepping inward and scooping her up, and she has no fight to offer him aside from a surprised gasp. Held aloft, and not getting burned in his arms, her eyes fix first on the fire that moves patiently at K''s shoulder, before she follows it up to stare into his face. He tells her that she needs him. She can only gaze helplessly back.

Ultimately, she finds herself seated on the couch. Whip just sags, a breath exhaling out of her, the blanket slipping off of her shoulders. His proximity is like a salve on her nerves. She's already finding it easier to think.

She hugs herself bemusedly, staring down at her knees. Many moments, but Whip finally admits it. "Yeah. I do," she reveals in a soft, scratchy voice. "But you don't want people attached to you. And... I understand it. I didn't want it either." It's scary to be needed. And even scarier to need. "So. Please." Her eyes close. "Don't be nice to me -- in that way. I don't want to be... tiptoed around. And you need to concentrate on other things. Your fire. You need to learn it."



Did she... she heard what he said to Shurui, didn't she. That explains a lot of things. Lifting his head enough so he can cast a deprecating glance at her, K' just looks at her for a few moments in the wake of her words. "I don't want -other- people attached to me," he eventually explains tiredly. "It doesn't do anything but get them hurt, and make more work for me. It's too complicated." What a charming guy.

He hesitates. He isn't quite sure how to explain why Whip is different; she just is. Eventually, he finally just phrases it the best way he knows how. "But you're my sister. I want you with me."

He lapses into silence, sitting beside her with that unusual comfort he's only learned to have around her, and no one else. He doesn't look at her again; he's busy watching his arm, looking at the fire as it cascades back down to flicker over his entire arm. He had it just a few moments ago, he's sure. He felt it move where and when he wanted it to. But now it's gone unresponsive again. It will take, he thinks, more practice than just that.

"Don't suggest," he finally says flatly, still not looking at her, "that there's anything more important to me than you." At least the sentiment's there, even if it's delivered almost in the form of a warning threat. K' has yet to learn to say things nicely, after all, and he's liable to master even those Kusanagi flames long before he ever learns to sweeten his words.



For the longest of times, Whip is silent. Silent and shivering. She averts her eyes somewhere else as she listens to her brother explain himself, telling her that he in fact wants her attachment to him, wants her to need him. It's a grateful relief for her current mental state, but she's not sure how it sits with her. She always knew that once she found her family, her lost brother, she would love him, she would try to take care of him -- but it was never her intention to ever need him. There was always a certain disconnect, with her life always being the solitary sort, and her relationships never exceeding business. She needed Krizalid once, to help with the loneliness she felt inside the Cartel, never quite knowing how to fit in. That didn't go well.

But whether she wants to or not, it doesn't erase that Whip does need her brother. All she can do is try to promise herself that it will never progress into something that may, ultimately, burden him. For now, she just allows herself to surrender to exhaustion, slumping over until she props up against K''s side, her weight leaned into him. Her arms wrap around his left. Her head pillows tiredly on his shoulder, her dark eyes joining his in watching that fire lap and wind around his other hand.

Her perpetual shivering finally starts to relax. Whip doesn't need sweetened words.



Shurui's gut instinct proves right- she just needed to temporarily remove herself from the equation. It wasn't as if she thought they didn't *care* for her- quite the opposite. If they didn't, it wouldn't be a matter of leaving, and she wouldn't be here in the first place.

The two get some time to themselves before the door opens with a quiet squeak, the rustling of a plastic grocery bag heard as the girl moves in, going to the refridgerator to begin putting away groceries. Various things needed to be replaced; vegetables that she's used up quickly, things that have gone bad, another gallon of milk, water, and...

Chocolate ice cream. For Whip. ...... and, well, K', if he gets his hands on it first.

After placing everything away, she carefully approaches the living room area, pausing when she spots the two familiar auras, hugging against one another. A weight lifts off her shoulders, and, if not noticed, she'll pace back to the kitchen, preparing the ingredients to cook something light. Something that would be easy on unsettled and tramuatized stomaches.



The long minutes slip past. K' doesn't say a word the whole time, not feeling the need to talk if Whip isn't. By the time Shurui sneaks her way in, K' has finally fallen into something of a doze, having become accustomed enough to the pain-- and utterly exhausted enough-- to succumb to sleep. It's a more controlled rest, one K' eases into like a swimmer dipping into cold water; his flames continue to burn, but they do so quietly.

Over the past week, it seems he's at least learned enough to keep them from exploding wildly in the conflagration Shurui witnessed when he first took the glove off in the midst of that fight. That is, if he isn't knocked out with nerve gas before he has a chance to even think about trying to rein in his flames.

Perhaps it helps, also, that Whip's presence against his side is oddly comforting.

Not even Shurui's entry wakes him. From the look of him, this sparse catnap is one he sorely, sorely needs.



This time, it's K''s turn to sleep and Whip's turn to maintain the quiet vigil. She was trained by the Cartel to be an efficient assassin, to remain silent and unmoving for hours when behind a sniper's scope, and she utilizes that skill now as she's pressed against her sleeping brother, motionless save for her soft and methodic breathing. Her previous shivers have been long extinguished, her upset calmed by his comforting presence alone. He watched over her while she slept in Ryouhara's turf. Now it's her turn to watch over him, keeping an eye on a fire as it burns.

Whip's thinking about it now, finding its constant companionship less and less inviting.

Soon enough, Shurui's reentry steals her from her thoughts, and though Whip remains unmoving, her eyes follow the younger girl. Once she eventually would turn a glance to the living room couch, Whip is trying to flare her a tiny, apologetic smile.

She glances back at K', biting her lip. She feels much more stable, at least enough to step outside arm's reach of her twin, and she's sure he'd probably sleep better without her leaning foolishly all over him. So, the soldier holds her breath and exhausts so many years of accuracy training into gently, so very, very gently inching herself off her sleeping brother's side, moving with the most excruciating tenderness and care as not to wake him. He desperately needs to sleep. But Shurui may need someone to talk to. Whip remembers her leaving the apartment rather briskly.

So she creeps away, gritting her teeth with concentration as she delicately removes herself from the couch, moving as soundlessly as soundless gets. A falling feather would disturb more. Pulling the blanket very gently to replace the lost heat from her body, Whip soft-footedly steps away.

Moments later, her head pokes into the kitchen. "Hi," she whispers lowly, but amiably to the girl. If not her face, Whip's aura looks a hell of a lot better.



The kitchen is already alive with the smell of chopped onion, the grilling sizzle a soft melody that's easy to sleep to. Even if they both fall asleep, she can always eat her share and store the leftovers, ensuring yet another meal to quell the overwhelming appetites of at least one of the occupants here. Tonight it's a simple stir-fry.

"Can your stomach handle some food?" The words are gruff, yet sensitive, the same as Shurui always seems to be when her cooking is at her best, disguising the satisfaction she gains from cooking for another person. Cooking for Muda, once she overcame her initial horrible attitude and apathetic manner, became something of an act of love, one that was returned when he did the same for her. They were both distant, gruff people, not given to free expression and affection until the very end. Cooking was a bridge, as it was here, a secret hug or gesture of comfort where touch seems too forward.

Dark eyes attempt to gaze pointedly at the quiet soldier, seeming satisfied in whatever she finds within the secretive gaze of hers. "I'm making some stirfry. Vegetables. If you want meat, better chose it before the onions are cooked." Whatever mood's there, it's to disguise that awkward joy, that sneak of a smile that could lead to happy tears if overindulged.

".... I was hoping you'd go to him," she finally says, after a gentle quiet settles. "Your aura's calmer. So's his."



Though years of cold, murderous training have erased all pretense of sound from Whip's step, it couldn't come close to erasing the expressive kindness from her face. She looks down at Shurui with a look of exultant appreciation.

Eventually, Whip glances away, her natural curiousity lending her to take peeking glances in the fridge. However, when Shurui outright mentions food, Whip looks back and bites down on her lip in sincere thought. Resting one hand on her very empty stomach, she admits honestly, apologetically, "I'm not sure. I don't have much of an appetite right now." She pauses, and then states the most incredible obvious, "But K' will when he wakes up. If you can, cut some steak into it for him? He needs the protein."

Whip doesn't even want to think how many calories it takes to keep that fire on perpetual burn.

Leaning over Shurui, she peeks down at the semi-prepared food, checking for herself if any of it will help move her stomach. No dice. At least not for now. But Whip has never had the most extraordinary of appetites, at least as long as she can remember. She always liked to eat light. It kept her fast on her feet.

"Know what I am craving..." she starts to aside, poking through the bags, and twisting her lips when they turn up empty. Whip pauses momentarily. Then she appends: "One sec." She disappears from the kitchen.

And she returns just as soundlessly, about thirty seconds later, the result of tiptoeing past sleeping brothers all to engage an involuntary search warrant on their bedrooms. But Whip knows K' well, at least well enough to deduce where he keeps his cigarettes. She's stolen one, and now she's leaning over the stove, using the fire from the gas element to light it. It's with utter relief that she exhales a breath of smoke (though she's very polite to turn it away from Shurui.)

Between K''s presence and this cigarette, Whip feels a million bucks better than when she woke up earlier tonight. "I haven't told you thanks, have I," she asides to Shurui, seemingly out of nowhere. "But thank you. You're good to us. Anything I can do to help?"



"Hn." Shurui nods in response. Steak it'll be. Lots of it, if only because there's some that needs to be used up. ..... Man, life sure is different when the cost of meat isn't so much of an issue. "Make sure you find something your stomach'll allow for. There's vegetables in the refrigerator. Snap peas, carrots, and broccoli." Some of the mentioned vegetables are being added to the mix. "There's ice cream in the fridge." Chocolate is better than nothing. Or, well...

.... better than a cigarette. Shurui's face falls as the slender piece of white turns red at the tip against the flame of the gas stove. ".... K''s going to kill me." Nevermind she offered to get Whip cigarettes. There *was* a guy who hailed from Shurui's streetrat days who now manned the registers at the convienence store, but he was off that night.

She allows Whip to smoke, either way. "Cut the steak," she directs, all too happily wishing to loan the iffy task of chopping things to another person instead of her wary hands. Shurui does well with slicing and dicing, considering her low vision, but she's understandably..... slow. Too slow for a stir-fry. "Get the package to the left," she directs. "We need to use that up."

Silence. "You've said thanks." She pauses, letting those words sink in before she adds, "Many times, it was in gestures that speak just as loud."

Eventually, despite the lack of one flexible hand, the food is done (hopefully without any stray ashes from Whip's cigarette) and Shurui spoons her fill into a bowl, she covers the wok, leaving it handy in case K' awakes. Once she's had her fill, Shurui leaves Whip be with a quiet good night, slipping past the tired K' towards her borrowed room for some rest of her own.

There, settled among the covers, the prospect of sleep comes all too easily to Shurui compared to yesterday, the marked creases in her face smoothing out until it resembles something far more peaceful and even younger, her mind and soul finally at ease as the siblings deal with the nightly hours.



K' doesn't sleep long. He never does, but this nap is even shorter than usual. Barely forty-five minutes go by before he stirs, wakened by the everpresent aching burn in his arm and the scent that's infused the apartment. One yellow eye cracks open, turning immediately to appraise that Whip has gone from his side, and for a moment confusion knits his brows.

He sits up tiredly, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He pauses a moment, and then shoves his hand through his hair, exhaling a long breath and trying to shake off the disgusting feeling of a nap that provides no restfulness. Finally pushing to his feet, he noses his way into the kitchen curiously, following the smell of food.

Distantly, he notices the smell of cigarette smoke also; and he wonders, with a muted irritation, if Whip went through his stuff.



One would think that an apartment full of sleeping brothers and friends would lull Whip off to sleep. She was certainly tempted by it, but found herself strangely wired, haunted by an out-of-place wakefulness that was no doubt the product of her past, trying week and its assortment of crises and mental unravelings. After all, didn't she recently spend a week unconscious in the hospital? She's slept enough.

Fortunately, Whip knows how to be a very considerate, light-footed night owl, and as soon as she bid Shurui good-night and was sure the girl was safe in bed, immediately took roust in the bathroom. She really wanted to have a shower, but eventually decided the water would be too loud in as small a place like this, and employed the sink in getting the remaining dirt and lingering smell of medical fluid off her body. It was also an advantageous way for Whip to finally examine the healthier state of her body, and assess all what Ryouhara did to her. Whatever he did -- though the method was anything but torturous -- has her body fixing itself seamlessly. She remembers the hospital, and even a week after Igniz, she could barely move. Even breathing took work.

Now she's sure that within a couple days, she'll be back to normal. Staring into the mirror, Whip had wondered: why did Ryouhara want to do this? Why would he want to help her?

When she finally reatreated from the bathroom, the apartment was still dark and silent. K' was asleep in the living room, his fire moving shadows against one wall. Whip was inclined to return to her brother, but wasn't sure if doing so would wake him.

So she returned to the only uninhabited room in the apartment. K''s bedroom. Whip is sprawled on his bed nonchalantly, chainsmoking his pack of cigarettes while marinating in the light of her opened laptop. Unable to sleep, she spends the night reading. She's already finding her nerves are calmer when she's keeping her mind busy.



In the interim, K' has cleaned efficiently through the entire wok left on the stove, not seeming to remember that there are other people in the apartment that might need feeding. At the least, he has the decency to leave the thing in the sink and run some water on it afterwards, but it's pretty certain that he only knows to do that because he's been yelled at about it in the past.

Feeling calmer himself now that he's been fed, he sets to roaming around the familiar apartment, letting himself wind down a little after the tension of the past few weeks. He eventually turns and heads for the bathroom himself, and lacking the consideration of Whip has few compunctions running the water for a shower.

Five minutes later, the water stops and K' pads out again in a towel, in a considerably better mood. Dripping unrepentantly all over the floor, he heads for his room-- and pauses in the door when he realizes that Whip is in there. Somehow, he thought she'd be in the living room.

He's not too embarrassed about his state of dress, or lack thereof. She's his sister. He's more focused on the fact that she's going through his cigarettes like there's no tomorrow. "If you're gonna do that," he eventually gravels, getting over his initial surprise long enough to drip his way towards the closet, "you're gonna get me a new pack tomorrow morning."



Whip is poking around on her laptop, looking to be in the middle of writing an email when her brother returns to reclaim his territory. She looks up, cigarette in her mouth, honestly surprised that the white noises around the apartment had escaped detection. A few hours ago, she felt like she could hear every sound happen in a quarter-mile radius. Being in her brother's room must be inherently reassuring to her. Either that or she's more tired that she realized.

"You're up?" she asks softly, with the barest edge of a nag barbing her voice. He didn't sleep long as she'd hope. "You're -- in a towel." She pauses.

K' may not bother none, but Whip is flushing a little sheepishly. Of course he's her brother, but she's still a bit of a prude. Or a big one. "Sorry," she says, averting her eyes apologetically, reaching quickly to fold up her laptop and snag her stolen cigarettes and ashtray. "I'll give you some privacy."

You think that the barracks life of the Ikari would have relaxed Whip a bit, being constantly surrounded by a lot of men and a lot more machismo. No such dice. She did her fair share of blushing there, too.

Moving quicker than she should, despite all of her healing injuries, Whip is out of the room and beelining back for the apartment proper, where the living room subsists as her bed. She's also conveniently ignoring his remark about the cigarettes.



"Don't sleep much," comes K''s absent reply. He doesn't seem to notice the nagging barb buried in Whip's voice; he's busy disappearing into his closet, looking for a pair of pants. He doesn't notice her blush and her discomfiture, either, and it takes Whip hurriedly stating she'll give him privacy and trying to vacate before he does. "What?" comes the muffled query. "You don't have t--" He pokes his head out of the closet to find her already gone, and-- nonplussed-- he trails off into bemused silence.

"Suit yourself," he eventually tells the empty room drily, before he finishes dressing. He doesn't bother with a shirt; he's likely to just burn it off, with the condition he's in, and he can't afford to go around ruining any more shirts.

A few minutes later he's followed her back into the living room, prowling to lean around the corner in a decidedly more playful, altogether -better- mood than she's likely seen from him in weeks. Even with that fire chewing up his arm. Maybe it's not hurting him quite as much as it used to, now. "Don't think you can get out of smoking all my fucking cigarettes, either," he warns her, before he finally rounds the corner proper and joins her whether she likes it or not.



By the time he returns, Whip is back at the opened window, sitting on the sill with her feet kicked up and planted flat against the wall. Her eyes are staring down at her lap. Moonlight glows one side of her face. Quietly and considerately, she sticks her hand out the window, letting the smoke drift out into the outside breeze. She's usually doing this every time she manages to swipe a random cigarette off her brother. She doesn't smoke often enough to buy packs for her own; his suffices when the craving kicks up.

She's only ever finding herself craving a cigarette when she's nervous or aggravated.

And this last week has warranted fair shares of both.

She looks up at the sound of her brother's voice, looking surprised and delighted by his change of mood in her patient, stoic way. She crooks K' an indulgent smile, her eyes only glancing away briefly at the fire that continues to flicker up his arm. "I didn't smoke many," she counters with tired amusement, his better mood improving her own. "You owe me at least ten packs by now, anyway. Sister tax."



There's no room left on the sill, so K' just opts for the couch; it's softer, anyway, and if he's careful about his arm he won't set it all aflame. He slumps back, watching his sister indulgently, displaying an odd tolerance for her smoking through all his cigarettes where he'd likely have defenestrated anyone else for the nerve. After all, he's the last person not to understand that that with nervousness and stress come certain needs.

"I don't owe you shit," he replies easily to her last assertion, his eyes sliding shut.

There's a pause, and then-- eyes still shut-- he asks, "Where's Shurui? Asleep?" The question is delivered casually enough, but that it was asked at all suggests that something is on K''s mind. He hadn't expected the girl to see them be carried off, and he's not so cold-hearted he can't understand how traumatic that must have been.



Soon enough, Whip finishes her stolen cigarette down to the filter. She wets two fingers and snuffs out the tip, before discarding it out the window. But she doesn't decide to close it nor vacate the sill; swinging herself over, she perches along it, leaning her back up against one wall and bending her knees close. There she contents herself by staring out the window like some watchful housecat, surveying the darkened, emptied streets and finding them peaceful.

Whip only looks burdened again when her brother speaks. "Yeah," she replies, that familiar frown of hers creeping back over her mouth and into her voice. Feeling a returning pang of guilt, she hunches forward to cross her arms over the tops of her knees and tiredly lean her chin against her wrist. "Hopefully for a while. She needs it."



Silence is all that meets Whip's answer for a long time. Agreement is implicit in that lack of reply.

In the meanwhile, K' fills the time with watching the flames move along his arm. Now that he's in a calmer state, it's not too much trouble to keep them from burning his skin... but the fact remains that he doesn't know how to put them away yet. Nor how to control them with any degree of fineness. Then again, he never did have that fine a control over it in the first place. The glove could only replicate the natural mastery of a Kusanagi so much.

When he finally breaks the silence, it's with something of a loaded statement. "...I didn't want her to care as much as she does." The bond between himself and Whip is one thing; it's a brother-sister bond, a bond of blood, one he wants neither to fight nor deny. But to have someone else care so much they'd be devastated if he were gone troubles him. He had been willing enough to protect Shurui, as a fellow victim, but to matter to her -that- much...? He doesn't want to have to think about the emotional care of anyone but his sister.



This is a heavy topic; it weighs down on Whip so much that she physically exhales against its burden. Leaning back again, rubbing a hand through her dark hair, she looks lost for a good answer, or at least a right one. "I know," she says, perfectly understanding K''s reticence about developing new personal attachments. After all, she's been spending the past how many months trying to convince /him/ to care less, to worry less about /her./ And it was her first time out loud even admitting that she needed K' in her life.

One part of her is inclined to play devil's advocate, but Whip don't have the heart to say it. "I like having her here. I want her here. But she had a cast on her hand. She was hurt. Maybe I'm being selfish." She hugs herself morosely. "But it's not like we can tell someone to care less. It doesn't work that way. I learned that with you."



"You're different," K' is quick to insist, a little snappishly. "You're my sister. Of course you couldn't stop me." But how exactly this is applicable to Shurui is harder for him to articulate; he gets quiet, and then he simply trails off. Moodily, he watches the flames move along his arm, not possessing the will to try to do anything about them other than look.

"She was hurt because she cared," he finally notes, moving his fingers in an idle flex in the midst of the flames. "A year ago I wouldn't have given a shit. She could have broken her arm and I'd just call it her own problem." He leans back, obviously troubled by the way things have changed-- troubled by the way life isn't quite as simple once you have your own free will.

"I miss that sometimes," he admits, with a dark sort of humor underlying his words.



"Who wouldn't?" Whip replies honestly, not one to judge K''s feeling as right or wrong. She's a heavy believer of right and wrong, but she's not sure if it can really apply to something like this.

Soon enough, and with a bit of a sigh, she hops down from the windowsill, rubbing distractedly at her arm as she wanders closer to the couch and its certain, brotherly occupant. Languidly, she crosses her arms and sinks in to lean on the opposite arm, watching him down the length of the furniture. "It's helluva lot easier. You only got to worry about yourself. You don't have to feel responsible or guilty about anyone else. You don't have to rely on anyone but you," she recites with a certain, solemn air, no doubt thinking and feeling her own personal experiences. But whatever wistful look threatens her eyes... Whip soon sobers. "But it's also pretty lonely."

Whip was lonely for a long time. She was so lonely in the Cartel that the first real friend she made was her own weapon. She remembers being so grateful for quirky, eccentric Krizalid, so happy to have him around. But it didn't last for long, and she was always strangely lonely, feeling bereft for not having a memory like people should. Even in the Ikari, Whip felt lonely.

Sometimes she does now. It's a feeling that, once it gets under the skin, becomes hard to shake. "I'm not sure what's the right thing to do. I guess in decisions like these, we just trust what our gut tells us."



When Whip frames it like that, K' can't help but miss it more. To not have to rely on anyone else, to be self-sufficient... life was significantly easier when he bore no responsibility. He's usually so devout about his belief in choice, in freedom, and in free will, but sometimes it all gets to be a bit much for a young man that's still mentally only three or four. Sometimes he remembers what it was like to be where Kula is now, and can't entirely say that there was -nothing- to envy about that.

"Loneliness didn't bother me," he presently says quietly, his eyes moving towards Whip as she joins him. His gaze has changed. There's something cool and mechanical about his yellow eyes as he angles her that unfeeling look: something that calculates with all the emotionality of a hawk watching a meadow. It's a shadow of that same look which was the last sight his assigned marks ever got to see, and it fits in with what he says next. "It was never put to me I should care about the company of humans."

There's an odd coldness about the way he says that, some of his old programming left in the cadence of that statement. It makes it clear that, like Krizalid, K' was taught that he was something apart from a human, even though compared to most of the other NESTS experiments he was a failure.

"I didn't come out here cause I was lonely," he finally concludes, his eyes turning away. Mercifully, some of that old killer's look drains out of him. "I came out here to get back a life of my own. Cause I was tired of NESTS and I wanted to get them back for what they did. I expected to be chased, but... I didn't think all this other stuff would happen."



Whip falls strangely silent, barely moving under the sudden change in her brother's eyes. She's never feared him, never even come close to acknowledge him as a threat, and casually dismisses his actions that would easily intimidate most people. But now, with that out-of-place look in his eyes that almost seems to cleanse any trace of humanity from his face -- it's coming close to invoking her prey drive. Her reptile brain wants fight or flight.

She doesn't like this. Instead of putting up her guard, she chooses to stand up and resettle at her brother's side, her presence forcing itself as the visible reminder that a new chapter of his life has turned, one that does not want him to be the cold, unfeeling killer any more. Whip knows that old feeling because she has it too. She hates how it was conditioned into her how to take a life while feeling absolutely nothing. She'll never forget the day when she became her own person and realized that it felt wrong.

"I didn't expect this either," she ends up replying honestly. "I'd always felt I had a family, and I spent so long thinking about the search that I didn't really think about how life would be havily someone else in it. It's an adjustment. And some days it's... it's really exhausting. I always knew that if I found my brother, I'd love him. But I didn't think I'd ever need him." She leans to one side to bump her shoulder against his. "But plans change, don't they."



K' doesn't seem to notice the effect his mood has on Whip. Not consciously, anyway. But somewhere in his subconscious he can sense the stirring of that prey instinct in her, and his own first instinct-- as a conditioned and fine-tuned predator-- is to instantly capitalize. It says a lot about what Whip means to him that that impulse never even gets close to the forefront of his mind. It would have, were she anyone else... but with Whip, his eyes don't even sharpen.

It helps too that she comes closer rather than opening distance, her presence an effective scourge to drive away thoughts of his previous existence. When he looks back at her, it's with that new look that's become familiar to Whip in recent weeks; that look that's just a little bit softer than what he shows everybody else.

"I didn't expect -anything- when it came to my sister," he says, even as Whip leans up against him. His head dips a little, white bangs feathering across his eyes as he leans back towards her, having finally become accustomed to her touch as something inherently nonthreatening... and thus, something he doesn't have to flinch away from. His voice turns wry. "I wanted to find her, but I didn't know things would change when I did."



"But of course they'd change," Whip replies dramatically, the first tinge of real humour beginning to crest her voice. She turns shoulder to settle back against her brother's side, using him as a perpetually-warmed pillow while comfortably extending her legs down the length of the couch. Pantomiming a grave, ever-so-forbearing sigh, she settles back and continues in her lofty, pear-shaped tones, "Once you met someone so giving, so patient, so endlessly enduring..."

Despite all that's happened, it's K''s presence that allows her to finally relax; K' can feel Whip sagging against his side, infinitely comforted and infinitely trusting. She doesn't feel the least bit inclined to move now, so she doesn't, her body still even as he mind ultimately wanders. Her light-heartedness, however enjoyed, doesn't stick around.

Whip rubs detachedly at a fading bruise on her knee. She pauses shortly, then has to ask K', somewhat out of nowhere: "Why do you think he healed me? Again?"



K' rolls his eyes as Whip lists off her endless virtues. Tolerating her shifting and squirming about, he eventually settles in a more comfortable position as she pillows up against his side. "They'd change once I met somebody giving and patient and all that shit, huh?" he muses, intentionally and innocently misinterpreting her, a smirk slinking across his face. "Well... guess I'll be waiting on change just a little bit longer, then."

Angling a glance down at the top of her head as she drapes against him, K' finds himself wondering at her comfort in his presence. He's never had anyone come so close to him with so much trust and so little fear before, and experiencing it now is a novel sensation. It goes without saying that NESTS scientists always handled him gingerly, like an animal that would rip a limb off if not muzzled correctly, and even the people he's met out in the 'real world' ever since his escape have walked eggshells around him, as if afraid he'd eat them at the slightest provocation.

Such a fear, he knows, isn't entirely unjustified... but that makes Whip's lack of it all the more curious. But where a lack of fear in anyone else would just cause him to conclude he's not trying hard enough-- and to immediately set about rectifying that-- in Whip, he just doesn't seem to mind. He almost likes the fact that she trusts him the way she does.

And he might have stayed in that indulgent, oddly-tolerant mood if not for mention of Ryouhara. The thought of the shinobi instantly sets K' to tensing: the girl will likely feel muscle pulling taut beneath her back. "...He said it was because he had a use for us cause we attracted NESTS. He has some kinda problem with them," he eventually answers, thinking back on his 'conversations' with Seishirou. "But I'm not sure that's all it is. He made a big deal of me not protecting you better after the first time."



"Huh," Whip replies at length, trying to assess how she feels about that explanation. Ryouhara kidnapped them both from the hospital, risking injury and possible capture, all to heal her through his own means. And it was all for some clinical reason, to better oppose the Cartel? It sounds logical, it sounds perfectly fitting a reason for someone cold and clinical like the terrorist, but... she's just not sure.

And that's when K' asides the most contrary of contrary statements. Whip is so curious and intested that she even forfeits her comfortable spot, leaning up and swivelling back around so she can flare her brother a narrowed glance. "He did what? Why would he do..."

Whip's voice lingers off as her eyes avert. She thins her lips with thought. Then, exhaling, she sits up, turning completely around to face K'. "I didn't tell you everything that happened that day... between me and that -- uh, alter ego of his, I guess you'd call it. Issei Miura."



It doesn't quite click with K' either... and he's certainly given it a great deal of thought in the past few days, brooding over it with his usual obsessive intensity. Maybe it -was- done merely for such a clinical reason as the one Ryouhara cited... but then again, Whip was recovering in the hospital well enough, and wasn't in danger of death by the time the kidnapping occurred. In fact, she'd make even better bait for the Cartel while weak and recovering.

So why heal her up? K' has a vague idea, though he doesn't realize any of the indications of Seishirou's own past that are left, like little hints, in what the shinobi says and does.

What the ninja told him, the last time they fought, lingered in his mind, branded in his memory. He's been reluctant to state them up until now. He's afraid that Whip might agree with them. "He said a lot of things," he eventually admits, very slowly. :"hat if I fucked things up, it wouldn't just be me that paid for it. That I didn't know how to protect you. That when somebody like you is hurt the world is worse for it."

K' looks away. "So sometimes I think he's just trying to prove he knows how to protect you better than me. That cause I never had a family, I need help learning how to keep it."

Whip makes mention of her first encounter with the 'Issei' persona, however, and suspicion leaches back into his gaze. It turns back to watch Whip intently. He's revealed what it was -really- happened between himself and Seishirou; now, it's her turn to reveal what interaction she had with 'Issei.' "What else was there?"



"Hey," Whip says, her voice darkening with a grave seriousness, wanting this understood if nothing else. She even pauses in their exchange of intelligence to reach out to her brother, taking his left hand in hers to give it a consoling, and yet similarly reprimanding squeeze. She watches him affectionately. "It's not your job to protect me, remember? Either way, I feel the safest when I'm with you. And I mean it."

Frowning slightly, she then looks away, ruminating on the rest of K''s words now that her piece has been finally said. She seems particularly confused with the notion that Ryouhara seems to genuinely care about her fate, perhaps even that of her brother's. For the longest time, she had merely disregarded that strange doctor guise of his as an act, a terrorist's ploy to gain entrance and trust of the enemy. But what if some of that -- just a bit -- was genuine?

Her hand still clasps over his, wanting the contact even if she's no longer conscious of it. "When he was here, he healed me within seconds. It was like the biggest relief, after not being able to move for days, and feeling like..." Whip doesn't continue the thought. "Anyway, I was grateful. And he was so kind... but at the same time, he seemed so sad. He..." She even pauses, a little unsurely, some part of her finding it disconcerting to be sharing this. It almost feels like she's revealing someone else's secret that she should have never been privy of in the first place. "I was grateful, and so I hugged him. He didn't seem to... want it. It's hard to describe. He told me he was someone who lost everything."

The young woman exhales, appearing only to have confused herself all the more by revealing this. "I'd like to talk to him." Oh, Whip, thinking she'd get straight answers.



K''s hand is tense when Whip first takes it. As she continues to hold it, it gradually relaxes a little, becoming listless: long and callused fingers slackening in her reassuring grasp. It's not your job to protect me, she insists, and while K' says nothing in reply that doesn't mean she's convinced him. In fact, his silence is probably just indication of his resolve to ignore her injunction.

He listens quietly as she explains Ryouhara's behavior in his Issei guise. "Somebody who'd lost everything, huh," he finally speaks up out of his silence, his voice rasping as if long disused.

"He was going to kill me," he finally notes, as bland as if he were discussing the weather. "Then he found out about you. He was happy to just tell me all the shit I was doing wrong, after that." A dry chuckle escapes him, the young man pulling his hand free to rub at a temple. "I got kinda mad... put a couple holes in him. I was gonna ask him to come upstairs to get bandaged after, so he wouldn't just get picked off by NESTS trying to limp away... but..."

He pauses. He's visibly trying to remember the exact words. And then, he finishes, "He said you didn't need to be troubled by his presence."



Whip lets his hand go when he pulls it free, letting her own fall slack in her lap. She turns away from K', and faces forwards, immediately leaning back against the couch as though her life depended on it. She suddenly feels more tired than ever. But it's helping her to hear this, even if she can't quite understand why. It's helping her put her previous, irrational fear of finding herself suspended in a watery tank in perspective. She wasn't in any danger. But can life possibly be so cut and dry?

She interrupts her own thinking when K' mentions Ryouhara's original intention, the world 'kill' immediately pulling her full attention, before further explanation salves her nerves. "I remember," she reveals eventually, in a softer voice, "back in the hospital. He'd knocked you out... and he told me to hate him. He almost ordered me to."

There's a strange, dissonant note in Whip's voice that implies that she does not. But she has the sort of heart that does not -- or cannot -- truly hate anything. Ryouhara may just be asking for a silk purse from a sow's ear.

"If he hadn't have stopped me, I would have killed him there. I can say that truthfully. But it wasn't from hating anyone, or even being angry. I was just trying to protect you at the time," she admits.

Soon enough, her eyes drip, as Whip bemusedly watches the calluses that line the knuckles of her right hand. "I'm still not sure what it is he wants," she says. "But I think he's sad. And maybe lonely."



K''s expression darkens when he's reminded of how easily he was knocked out then. How easily he was taken down. How quickly and smoothly he was prevented from protecting his sister. That familiar anger, all self-directed, seeps back into his demeanor. A distinct scowl claiming his features, his hands tighten... coiling like the weapons they are. He doesn't look too ready to grasp the concept of his sister protecting him, but he certainly looks like he'd like to get a killing grip on some other things.

He doesn't look like he's willing to take his utter exhaustion and the fact that, strong as he is, he still can't fight chemical warfare as acceptable excuses. And that anger is enough to snap him right out of whatever thoughtful mood he might have entered.

"I'm not interested in trying to psychoanalyze him," he abruptly growls, irritation serrating an edge onto his words. "He could be the loneliest fuck on the face of the planet and I wouldn't give a shit. I'd just rather know what the hell he wants and whether he can be reasonably trusted." He knows, however, as soon as the words are out of his mouth, that with Seishirou Ryouhara it's unlikely he'll get either.

He says nothing about the real reason his mood has gone downhill, but Whip can be reasonably certain he's not happy with the thought of having to be protected. Or the reminder that yet again, he failed to protect -her-.



And as K' slowly marinates in his own slow-burning anger, Whip is oddly feeling the most peaceful she has in hours. For so long she thought of Ryouhara as nothing more than a deplorable terrorist, and she was angry at him, so angry at the thought that he had tricked her. But now things are different. Possibly that Issei Miura was not a ruse at all. Possibly there was some truth to that character of his.

Either way, she finds it strangely cathartic to humanize the enemy. She doesn't feel inclined to hate him as he so asked of her. Whip only feels curious. Is he sad? Is he wishing he had something, or someone, back?

She's so deep in thought that K''s sudden emotional three-sixty startles her, and she twitches a wide-eyed look on him when he all but launches into a sneering tirade of how little he cares to understand the motives of a terrorist. Whip isn't sure just where her brother's bad mood came from, but this particular one seemed to have a hair trigger. She's not sure if it's something she said -- though she'd be the first not to bet against it.

Either way, Whip doesn't want K' angry. He hasn't had any sleep in God knows how long, he has fire perpetually crawling up his arm, and though she knows that her brother is particularly -- if not frighteningly -- strong, the human body can only take so much. He's going to stress himself out. "Hey," she calls, daring to reach out to turn his head to face hers, her concerned eyes trying to stare out some of that rage. "If you want, I can find that out for you."



K' doesn't seem to notice that his moodiness and quick temper don't make him the best company. He doesn't seem to notice how exhausted it makes him, either, but the wear of the past few weeks shows visibly in his demeanor. The boy looks far more haggard and weary than any teenager ever should... weighted down by concerns, racing thoughts, and his own everpresent anger.

He doesn't know that Whip wants to humanize Seishirou... that she's starting to pity him as a young man who's possibly lost everything, just as they have. He's still going in circles angrily around his own perceived failure, and he doesn't snap out of it up until Whip tries to do something so daring as to reach towards his face.

K' might have become used to her touching him on the arm or hand, but the face is something else entirely. The first settle of her palm against his jaw causes him to twitch violently away, startled and wary eyes flicking around immediately to appraise whatever potential danger might be looming, his right hand coiling in an instinctive defensive reaction; but once he finally realizes it's just Whip touching him, his tenseness slowly drains away.

He slowly allows his face to settle in her hand, letting her turn it. The expression he wears is still guarded, though now that wariness is beginning to shed away in favor of mere question. Her proposal, however, doesn't seem to sit entirely right with him. His eyes narrow, and he pulls his head out of her cradling grasp like a particularly willful horse. "If he really wants you to hate him that much," he starts, the disapproval in his voice already heralding his answer to her offer, "I wouldn't put it past him to attack you to help it along."



Whip is going out on a limb of her own. She's not a very physical person, and always her casual, somewhat awkward attempts to touch some person are meant for their benefit and not her own. She's acting entirely upon her own recent scare, where she learned physical contact to be a comforting, stabilizing thing, and wants to return it on her brother. She was hoping a meaningful touch of her hand to the side of his face would really help.

Rather the opposite. He startles, and she echoes his surprise, having habituated to her brother's growing tolerance to her and not quite expecting his initial behavior to resurge like an accidentally-snapped beartrap. She freezes reflexively, her old training immediately fixing her attention to his moving right hand. Instinctively, Whip is already readying to defend herself.

Eventually, and very fortunately, K' relaxes some of his guard, but Whip isn't so quick to drop hers. Feeling suddenly aggravated, she's unconsciously mirroring every bit of her brother's anxiety, letting it stoke her nerves back into upset like a fire poker on sleeping embers. When he finally pulls away to disapprove of her suggestion, Whip just lets her hand drop, feeling frustrated and a little hurt. "I know," she manages to reply, glumly.

Feeling swiftly like her presence is doing nothing at all to help her brother, Whip acknowledges her uselessness by logically removing herself from the equation, giving him the space she assumes he wants. She returns to the open window, pushing herself to sit back up on the sill. She frowns busily at the city outside. Then, out of nowhere, she's continuing, her voice cresting like some impassioned explanation is on the rise: "I just--"

No go. Stopping like she doesn't even expect to be understood, Whip just rubs at her arms to make the itchiness go away. She concedes defeat on a sigh. "Yeah."



K' himself isn't too pleased with his instinctive flinch. He isn't too sure himself why it didn't help to feel his sister's hand; she was the only person even in the room, and she's been slowly acclimating him to her touch for the past few months. He's learned almost to take comfort from it. And it's impossible to miss that she was hurt by the way he twitched back. He looks after her as she retreats, already regretting that he'd ever make her feel like she has to defend herself from him.

He doesn't try to make her come back, not really being in the mood to try and get his stubborn sister to do anything. If she feels useless, he hardly notices, not being much of a mindreader. But if there's one thing he -can- discern, it's that he's got her upset again.

And as is typical, she's not even explaining why.

He feels like he should just take her agreement as a victory and leave things at that. But some part of him, some new part that only came into being once his sister came back into his life, spurs him to justify why he IS right. "-I-..." he starts, his eyes turning to her back, "just don't want you to get hurt." A pause: and then, in a tone far more accusatory to himself than to her, he finishes, "Again."



Whip lets her eyes close when her brother says what she was betting he'd say. He doesn't want her to get hurt? /She/ doesn't want to get hurt, if only to prove to him that she's as capable as she believes herself to be. But she's too tired and too upset to argue; neither does she have the heart to try to purposefully worsen K''s bad mood.

Ultimately, it's his concession couched in that statement -- or really, what passes for one (or what Whip allows for herself to believe is one) -- that encourages her to try again. She glances back at K' briefly, thoughtfully, before she returns her dark eyes out the window, continuing her constant vigil.

Soon enough, she speaks. "All I know... is that if I thought, just for a moment, that you were dangerous? Or really inclined to hurt me? I'd have never been there at Metro." Whip pauses to purse her lips. "You wouldn't have ever found me again, and neither of us would have ever realized anything. I put blind faith in you, K'. I think I did the right thing... doing that. I want to do it again."



The thing is, K' doesn't doubt Whip's capabilities. He just doesn't believe they will be enough when confronted with what's out there in the world. There are so many things even K' has to admit he would have difficulty handling; how could Whip stand against them, if he can't?

Dimly, K' is at least -aware- that it's probably trying the way he keeps attempting to hold Whip out of danger. That it's patronizing, infuriating, and something he himself would have raged against were it directed at him. But his awareness that stifling Whip is just a little insulting can't outweigh his need not to lose her. Someday he might be able to strike a balance between obsessively protecting Whip and satisfactorily respecting her ability... but right now, he's erring towards the former.

But K' isn't given to complicated or circuitous thought. He doesn't say much of what's rattling around in his mind. When Whip finishes speaking, he's quick to say the first thing that comes to mind, of sheer impulse. She wants to put her faith in him? "Then do it."

..K' doesn't seem to quite be grasping all the intricacies that are going unsaid under the words spoken aloud. "You can trust me never to hurt you."



Slowly and steadily, she allows herself to relax back against the windowsill, looking short of inclined towards falling asleep on the spot. It's nothing new; Whip's caught herself napping on this strange, favourite little perch more often than not, especially after she happily gave up her bedroom to Shurui. She nestles her head into a curved corner between wall and frame, and letting many of her tense muscles go, she lets one long leg hang out the open window. Her toes wiggle purposefully in the cooler, open air.

Her swinging foot stops when K' says his piece. It's the last thing Whip would expect him to say, and she even has to glance over to make sure it's her brother sitting there. Did he just cast his approval? He's all right with her wanting to speak with Ryouhara?

She stares for a moment more. Ultimately, Whip looks away, a sudden shyness seizing her, and she busily watches her fumbling hands across her lap. "I do trust you, K'. I think I've trusted you since Metro. It's why I went."



He cast his approval for her putting her faith in him, sure. Approval for her desire to speak to Ryouhara, though? That's an entirely different story. But perhaps it's best for the preservation of their interactions if the misunderstanding is let lie. For now. Another quarrel at this juncture will probably do little for either of the twins' moods and dispositions towards one another.

She'd just better tell him whenever she decides to go corner Ryouhara. He might demand to come along; whether to observe the interaction, or actually participate himself.

Something about his demeanor softens, however, when she admits she has always trusted him. His yellow eyes turn thoughtfully to the lithe figure framed against the night sky. "You had funny ways of showing it sometimes," he notes wryly, perhaps remembering an old pain in his shoulder, "but I guess I believe you."



Whip is silent now. Every inch of her body betrays a tired peacefulness, but the moonlight slanting in through the open window reveals the worry on her face. She's only quiet because she's working up the nerve to ask this.

Remembering the way her brother looked at her when she touched his face, remembering all those time he's tensed up or jerked away to remind her that she's gotten too close, and always wondering quietly, dully on the back of her mind if it's because of her... Whip stares at the paint chipping off the window frame as she asks, very carefully, "Do you trust me?"



K' looks at Whip oddly. Then a passing cloud blots out the moonlight, casting his face into shadow before the particular expression in his eyes can be easily discerned. He remains facing her like this for a few long seconds, and due to the dark it's almost impossible to tell whether he's quiet because he has to think, or he's quiet because he can't believe she'd ask such a silly question.

Eventually, his bemused voice smolders up out of the dark. "With everything-- except being smart." He leans forward out of the shadow, and the look in his eyes is revealed to be... almost playful. Certainly teasing. He obviously doesn't realize how serious the question is to her. "Why would you think I don't?"

It seems clear to him, after all. He lets her live with him, he confides her just about everything... and though he initially flinches, conditioned to be wary of attack out of force of habit, he ultimately always lets her touch him. He trusts her more than anyone else. Why does she have to ask?



Whip misses that look on her brother's face. She's not watching him. Her eyes are staring out the window, distractedly watching an odd passer-by cross under the yellowy lamp-lit street. The placid night breeze moves her bangs across her brow. Tucked up in the window sill, nestled there like she's considering to sleep there for the night, his sister doesn't quite look morose. Just thoughtful. Sometimes that can be worse.

When that question follows it all up, Whip pauses somewhat honestly. Her shoulders tense, looking almost inclined to dismiss it all with some dispondent shrug. But he's her brother. And it might be better to get this out. "I don't know. Sometimes... I feel like you're not comfortable with me." Now Whip does shrug, awkwardly compelled do, as if she were already trying to dismiss her own reasoning. "I mean -- it's OK."



K' finally stands up. Quietly circling around so he can see her face, he slowly joins her in the windowsill, one elbow propping up on a knee as he leans forward just a little. He tilts, his head angling, as he tries to catch her eyes.

"I wouldn't let you close to me at all if I weren't," he presently explains, very levelly, his voice almost mixing into the dark for how low it is. "And I wouldn't come this close to -you-." He remains leaned in, as if solidifying his point, before he finally retracts. A mild exasperation has settled into his gaze, as if he's not quite sure he's liking this insecure side of his sister. Hypocritically enough.

"I'm not used to this yet, Whip." He leans back, settling against the windowframe, his eyes breaking away from hers to glance out at the street. "Used to be there was never any good reason anyone would try to touch or talk to me. Used to be there wasn't anyone I -wanted- interacting with me at all. It's not an easy habit to break."

He pauses. His tone thins a little. "Besides. For a while, you seemed pretty afraid of -me-."



Her brother's proximity catches her eyes. Whip turns her head to quietly, curiously watch K' with those sad brown eyes of hers. They always seem to look just a bit too expressive to have been a killer's. She listens alertly as he deigns to settle her nerves; she can't seem to remember her brother ever acting so patient and indulgent. He's explaining himself to her.

Touched, she smiles back. Suddenly compelled to, Whip doesn't catch herself reaching out to her twin brother until she's halfway through the gesture. Her hand pauses momentarily, trying to slow and, somewhat awkwardly, show him that she wishes so touch him, so he doesn't have to startle like the last time. There's a lingering hint of shyness mixed in the warm way her hand tries to muss his white hair.

Leaning back, Whip's eyes avert back out the window as she thinks about K''s last question. "I'm not afraid of you," she corrects gently. Her hands idly rub warm spots over her bare upper arms. "I'm afraid of getting you upset. Seeing you sad. It bothers me when you are."



K' is watching the fire move across his right arm. His head is turned aside, the high plane of his cheekbone and the firelit line of his jaw presented to her expressive dark eyes. Patiently, he indulges his sister. He wouldn't be so permissive with any other person on the face of the earth.

He doesn't immediately see it, however, when she reaches out to him. It's only when she pauses that he notices her leaning in; his head turns to her, retracting back a little bit instinctively like a cat inspecting a proffered pet, before he relaxes into her hand.

He's silent at first to her correction, looking quietly down at his own arm instead of at Whip. Ever since he first took off that glove, he's struggled to force those flames down... fought to contain them. It's been hard to exert the willpower to put that fire back under his skin, but it's simply something that must. be. done.

It hurts. It's hard. And that's why K' eventually replies tired, "You don't get me upset." But he makes no mention of being able to ward off sadness.



Whip notices that too. It's why her faint, distant smiling soon fades, and it's why her brown eyes regain their sad slant. After a moment of silent staring out the window, the time no doubt spent exclusively inside her own thoughts, she soon glances back at her brother beside her. She follows his eyes, and joins him in watching the fire move up and down his arm, looking less than inclined to snuff out or be moved elsewhere.

She bites briefly down on her bottom lip, thinking some more.

"So, what are we going to do about that?" Whip eventually asks out of nowhere, the tilt of her head and the gravity of her voice transparently indicating what she means.



K' glances up at Whip when she asks that sudden question. A momentary question lingers in his eyes before he realizes her meaning. A long sigh easing out of him, he averts his eyes again. His brooding nature is the result of many factors, some of which cannot be solved in an evening and some of which they already work towards as long-term goals. When he speaks again, it's to address the most immediate thing which is giving him grief.

"I'd start," he eventually replies, very drily, "with at least learning to repress this." His hand moves inside the flames he's talking about, turning over with a pained laboriousness. "Hard to think about anything else with it chewing up my arm." His fingers claw, coiling tensely... the flames burn a little lower, but soon enough resurge when his attention drifts for speech. "Sometimes I get it to go down if I focus hard enough. It's just a matter of will now."

His words reveal his mistaken impression of how best to control the flames. He talks about suppression, subjugation, and domination of the flames-- about forcing them to obey. What he doesn't realize is that all that this force is liable to do is bottle the fire inside him: obedient within him, yes, but inflexible and ultimately just as nonresponsive. Control of the fire is about comfort with it-- a willingness to let it live within oneself.



Momentarily, Whip looks lost while watching those flames. She doesn't know much about chi. It's never been of any particular speciality of hers; she chose to invest skill in weapons, ultimately choosing the power of a tool while others would find that in their own bodies. Ultimately, it's made her a little distrustful of the stuff. She can't defend herself against that energy; by no means is she close to knowledgeable about it.

Fortunately, her helplessness just makes her twice as willful to help her brother. "And in the meantime?" she replies, her voice taking a sudden, nagging slant through her frowning. Whip is always good for injecting doses of reality into everything. "How will you sleep? How will you relax? How will you be able to go outside anywhere? How are you gonna function? If you're set on living without that glove, then we'd best start dealing with it now. I'm not sure how much pain it is until someone loses their mind, but we all got our breaking points. And you're not going to hit yours."



K' slants a sudden look up at Whip when her voice cuts into that nagging, worrying tone. He knows she's hardly a chi sage... and neither, really, is he. But one thing she's got a good grasp on is reality (usually), and she's reminding him of it with every question she asks. With every answer he doesn't quite know how to give.

"It's been over a week," he finally says. "I think I got somewhere with this. I can't go back to it now, I'll lose any progress I made. Going out around other people doesn't mean much to me, I can do without until this is under control. Sleep... I can sleep a little. Now and then." He shrugs it off. "If you want to help, you could do the shopping a while," he notes wryly. "I don't know how else you're gonna help me deal with this."



Whip doesn't look convinced. "Sleep a little? You're not sleeping enough. And going out with people should mean something to you. How long do you think it'll take until you do get it under control? What happens if it takes longer than expected?"

Hopeful as she is, ever the eternal ye of much, much faith, Whip likes to see results. She likes to see realistic goals. It's eating at her more and more to have to see her brother constantly on fire, and he's the one having to live with it, having to feel it on him. She can't imagine anyone having the sort of untouchable, meditative will to survive that pain with their mind intact -- her moody, temper-prone brother least of all.

Sitting up a little, a trace of amber shines in her brown eyes as they reflect the image of K''s fire, watching it move along his arm. "I need to help some way. If you're set on doing this cold turkey, then I won't let you do it alone. You got it to move once. I saw it. Can you do it again?"



K' has no good rebuttal for Whip's deluge of good sense. So he does the only thing he can do. He weathers through it. Still staring at his wrist rather than at her face, he's only half-listening by the time she gets around to asking what'll happen if it takes longer than expected.

His attention's seized back, however, when Whip declares she's set on helping in some way. His glance lifts back to hers, at first surprised: and then guarded. His first instinct, bred by years of feeling he's got to hide his deficiencies and failures, is to declare angrily he doesn't need help. That he can handle it all himself. But something about his sister manages to worm past that defensiveness, and after a very long time K' glances back down: breaking eye contact.

"That time, I did it because I just had to," he finally admits tiredly. The words themselves are a concession to Whip; tacit permission for her to hear this from him, where he would have gone quiet and pushed away anyone else. "It wasn't conscious. I've -tried- to reproduce it at will." His hand turns over in the midst of the flames, and for an instant they dim and flicker, partially sealed back beneath the skin. Some of the pain eases. "This is about as far as I got."

He's quiet a few moments. "Makes you wonder sometimes if it's just a genetic mistake I can't change. It's always been the glove holding it in, or pulling it out when it didn't want to come." And K' doesn't realize it's the fact he's been spoiled by the glove that bars him from learning control for himself.



For a long time, Whip is silent. Silent and brooding. She relaxes out her legs, letting her bare feet push off from the sill to plant against the floor. She swivels to sit forward, the forced movement on her tired body pulling a reflexive sigh out of her. Frowning to herself, and no doubt whatever is going through her head, the young mercenary rubs unsurely at the back of her neck. Her eyes glance momentarily back on K', on his arm.

Whip then uncrosses her arms to brace both hands against the edge of the window sill. She tightens them down as she leans her head forward. Then, out of nowhere, she reveals, in a more decisive voice that he'd ever heard her: "I'm tired of you referring to yourself as a mistake."

Even after the week she's been having, Whip knows how to be fast. She reaches suddenly at K', and unlike before, she isn't pausing halfway to appeal to her brother's paranoia. Without invitation, she reaches out and tries to grab down onto his hand -- the one encased in fire. There, she reveals that she's much stronger than she looks. K''s sister has a grip like iron, half-soldered by her will alone, one that's out to prove that he can do this.

And she's betting her weapon hand on it.

Her hand seizing down as stubbornly as a bear trap, giving no indication that she is ever going to let go, Whip is already preparing for her brother's reaction with that stern, demanding look she gives his eyes. She must be in agony, but she still tells him in a soft voice: "Now this time, you do it because you want to."



Whip's sudden declaration stirs a memory in K', his eyes widening slightly at her decisive words. Abruptly, he's reminded of that match he had with Hotaru. Reminded of the way she'd been able to stop his attack with her bare hands, and how she-- holding his blazing hand in both of her own-- subsequently asked him why he kept feeding himself the lie he was a failed mistake. The thought distracts him momentarily, as he asks himself why he shouldn't be able to do what Hotaru did in mastering her power... and in that time, Whip's reached out.

K' doesn't realize what she's doing at first. Surprised and a little annoyed, he tries to break her grip on his wrist. He finds himself unable to do it, and that initial irritation turns to concern. He stands abruptly, trying to back away, pulling against his tethered arm like a leashed dog. But she's still not letting go... and if she doesn't, that's her weapon hand crippled for life.

"What the hell are you... Let go!" he insists sharply, loudly, heedless of who he might wake up. But when she makes that quiet statement, still calm despite the flames burning at her, he abruptly stills. His attempts to struggle free die out. K''s mind has long since been trained to effectively make decisions under stress, however, and right now he's got time for only two options and no more talk. It's either break his sister's hold, which will take time and will probably solve nothing... or try to do as she says.

His arm trembles as he stills further, his eyes unable to break away from the way his sister's livelihood-- her weapon hand-- is burning away in the fire. His entire consciousness focuses on the task of shoving those flames down, away from the surface, away from his sister, and this time he's spurred not out of fear... but out of a desire to protect his sister, and to keep his promise never to hurt her. Nor is he held back by trepidation. When the only choice is to do it or else burn away his sister, there is no room or time left for self-doubt and thoughts of inferiority.



When he stands, so does she, tugged along with every one of her brother's frantic struggles. But Whip does not let go. Her hand only tightens around his.

With a stubborn light to her eyes and her mouth locked up with a forbearing frown, she absorbs the defensive pulls and twists of K''s arm silently and unyielding, watching him with the tired patience a mother would look down on her temperamental child having a temper tantrum at her feet. She merely hangs on, no matter how much he fights her, how much he tells her not to, and how much it must hurt.

Because it does. The pain is sudden and torturous, hot enough and vicious enough to make her eyes water, and every reflexive instinct in her body is begging her to let go. But she thinks that this must be a taste of the torment that her brother is put through, every single minute since NESTS injected that fire into his blood, and being that she shares that blood in his veins, she deserves to know how it feels to be him.

And it hurts. It hurts so much. Her flesh is already blistering under that fire, and even if she wanted to let go, she would not be able to. Her skin is sticking down, her very fingerprints melting down on the spot. Whip's hand starts to tremble around K''s wrist, but it refuses to let go.

Instead she just pushes closer, reaching impulsively with her other hand for the back of his neck, bidding K''s attention from wherever it must have gone. "Keep -- focus," she pleads, an agonized gasp tripping up her voice. "Think of it. F-find it." Tears streak from her eyes. "It's there."



Whip doesn't let go. K' rears and pulls violently against her grasp, trying to dislodge her either through force or cunning twists of the arm, and she still doesn't let go. Forced to stop only because to waste any more time trying to pull free is foolish, K' finally stills, staring at Whip, unable to grasp how she can be so calm when forced-- all of a sudden, completely cold-- to experience the pain he's dealt with for so long.

If Whip wanted to know what it's felt like to be K', she's derived some measure of that: though her mere grasp can't communicate to her the pain K' feels inside him, where the fire flows. As if to make up for that, the physical burn against her hand is sharper than that K' has felt all these years every time he wields the flames... but that's only because K' has had protective gloves and enough control to keep some of the flames away from his skin. Neither of which is a benefit Whip can boast right now.

"Y-you idiot..." K' starts, seething visibly. Feeling the way her skin is melting against his, his scattered, panicked mind abruptly focuses down around the one mainstay that's always carried him through his brutally-short existence: anger. And that cold, honed anger forms the backbone of his sudden steel will. His wrist spasms in her grasp as his hand shuts, and a tortured breath kicks out of his throat as her hand finds the back of his neck. "/Idiot./"

Once Whip draws him closer by that touch on his neck, his straying eyes fix on hers. He leans in towards her unconsciously at the sensation, like a cat pushing towards a gentle hand, his intent face pausing moments away from her own. His firelit eyes look at the way hers spill over with tears. And soon enough, having a front seat to all the pain he's causing her is just too much.

His inability to hurt her resonates, briefly, with the fire in him. It overtakes the constant will to dominate he's tried to exert over them; which was, in reality, the source of much of his body's conflict with the flames, which are themselves willful and contrary. The fire moving along his arm cools, and then it stops. The last wisps of it trace away into the air.

K' drifts forward. His head comes to rest against her shoulder, and after an initial flicker of fear at seeming weak comes and goes... he simply leaves it there.



It must hurt so much, but Whip's eyes never deviate once from K''s. There's not even a flicker in her willful staring. She watches him indulgently, looking oddly peaceful for the way the skin over her knuckles is bubbling up into a highway of blisters, and for the way the room has started to stink of burning flesh. There is no hesitation in her. There is not a trace of regret. She watches her brother like she knows he can stop this. She's willing to bet her right hand on it.

But even her face, as impossibly trained it is to wear a soldier's studious poker face, is starting to break down from the pain. K' can see it at the edges of her features: the way her eyes tighten at the corners, the way her lips are twitching, the way she's holding her breath, and those familiar tears. It's killing her. She's on the verge of losing her hand.

And then, it stops. Whip's breath catches when the fire suddenly, silently snuffs away, ending her torment. She sighs in relief, and although her still-smoking hand relaxes from around his wrist, it doesn't let go. It can't.

Instead of even glancing at her sacrificial weapons' hand, not even wanting to see how it must look, Whip's attention instead turns to the weight of her brother's head on her shoulder. She accepts it welcomely, and her other hand cradling the back of his neck moves, stirred into an automatic measure of stroking her thumb down the ridges of his cervical vertebrae. The touch is a nurturing one, meant to soothe.

Some of the tears on her face accidentally rub off on his temple. Still, there's a smile couched in Whip's gravelly voice as it tells K', "You did it."



The struggle is clear in every line of him. It tortures the slope of his jaw, and his teeth scissor together to stop the tremble from becoming too obvious. His eyes tear away from hers eventually, shutting as they stray away. He can't look either at the look on her face, or at the pain that's starting to peek blatantly through the mask of indulgent resolution. He fights with the flames, trying to force them to go down, but the more he strives against them the more they seem to writhe out of his grasp.

Change comes suddenly to the patterns within him. It's the agonized shudder in the hand grasping his wrist that finally does it, finally transforms desperate force to genuine will. It's the fact it's not a will at odds with the flames, but one as free and clear as that of the fire itself, that does it; his mind clears abruptly, struggle replaced by clarity, and it's in that moment that the flames recede.

He slumps against his sister, barely breathing-- still half-holding his breath out of strain and fear. It's a tension that slowly drips out of him as Whip's patient touch strokes down the back of his neck.

You did it, she says. For a long time he says nothing, too exhausted and numbed for speech, and simply leans against the line of her jaw. But when he finally recovers, it's not to relief. It's to a sudden fear and confusion. "I--" he starts, his voice rasping harshly, and then he stops. He draws up stiffly, visibly troubled by something. His left hand lifts. A pause. Nothing happens. "...I can't bring it back," he says, and there is a wavering note in his voice.

Finally responding to his will, obeying his directive to submerge, the flames snuffed when he told them to snuff... but moments of control still do not entail perfect command. For a moment, K' skips instantly to fear that his fire has become inaccessible... and if he continues to be unable to get it back out, that fear may deepen.



When her brother jerks away from her, Whip stops everything, thinking, breathing, the tender movement of her left hand,, looking up at him now in startlement. Her still-teary face fixes with immediate confusion, not able to understand why such a victorious moment would trouble him so. She watches K', her surprise even allowing her to momentarily forget her burned hand which remains still stuck to his fireless wrist.

By that strange, anxious look on K''s face, she's already preparing herself for the worst, for some unforeseen backlash of his chi that refuses even his most resolute control -- is it coming back? Is it building up? Is he going to helplessly watch as he immolates them both?

None of the above. Whip's eyes lower to K''s left hand, waiting for something to happen, and realizing that now... nothing will. He announces grimly that the fire is not returning. And catching herself staring along dumbly, his sister is wondering herself how that is even a problem.

She pauses transparently, not sure what to say or even how to say it. "Maybe," she offers, in a stiff, scratchy tone, "you're just tired." But there's something left unsaid in that short, clipped sentence, and her voice sounds pregnant with the suggestion of something more. Maybe he's tired. Maybe they're not supposed to return at all. Maybe it's all for the best.



Maybe, months ago, the thought of being rid of his flames-- of being able to be normal, like everyone else-- wouldn't trouble him. But now, there are things he must do that would be easier if he had control of the powerful fires. There are things he has to protect that he isn't sure he can safeguard without the holy fire around which his fighting has come to revolve.

And there's some part of him, in the distant back of his mind, that -fears- losing the flames. Some part of him, that still listens to the Cartel, that would label him an ultimate failure were he to become something distinguished by little more than the strength of his bare hand.

When he looks to Whip, however, it's clear to see that she wouldn't consider it a problem were his flames never to return. Perhaps it's because she would feel more justified in becoming the fighter and protector of the two of them. Fortunately for the sake of K''s pride-- and an inevitable shouting match when he declared hotly he'd still be stronger than Whip even with his fire gone-- such a thought doesn't occur to him. He's too busy feeling for the familiar burn of the flames in his veins.

Her voice breaks him out of his reverie. He looks at her as if seeing her for the first time. "...Maybe," he finally replies, though there is little conviction in his tone. Not wanting to think about this until the morning, he turns his attention instead to his sister's hand. "For now, that needs to be taken care of. You idiot. I can't believe you did that."



Finally, and perhaps fortunately, Whip's eyes follow the direction of K''s chide and look down on her battered right hand. The flesh looks nothing more than a raw, blistered mess, and it feels even worse. But if her dreary, half-remembered little life has given her anything, it's a well-learned tolerance to pain.

It immediately hurts to even move her hand, but she knows she has to. It's her strong hand, the one she uses to guide her whips and aim her guns, and it wouldn't do her ability any good to get any infection in there. Finding her skin sticking a little where the heat seared her most, like over her fingertips, she prepares herself then quickly -- like a bandaid -- pulls her right hand free of her brother's wrist.

Whip leaves behind traces of her fingerprints. The action is so painful that she has to hold her breath to keep from crying out, and she can hear her own pulse thudding inside her ears. But the pain is good. She keeps telling herself it's a welcome thing. If she could feel nothing, it would probably mean nerve damage.

It's a good thing K' stopped that fire of his in record time.

"This is nothing," Whip finally replies, with a little sting of self-deprecation in her voice. She knows K''s not likely to agree. She also knows she probably won't be using this hand for a while. "...Told you I'd help."

But the fire is gone. Her brother looks free. She doesn't regret a thing.



K''s expression doesn't change as his sister tears her hand away, leaving little bits of it behind. He just watches carefully as she reacts-- or more accurately, fails to react-- and, for the time being, holds her silence as she recovers from the pain. He can tell there's pain... and he's glad of it. To not feel pain after a burn is deadly.

Feeling strangely empty and alone, a hollowing echo ringing in his perception where once the hiss of flames constantly burned, K' self-consciously lifts his right wrist back to himself, cradling it in his left hand. It feels crackly, scorched... and wet, where blood and raw flesh have been left glistening and bare to the air. Yet K' doesn't try to scrape the pieces of his sister off himself.

Instead, he suddenly presses forward. That hollowed-out look to him evaporates, replaced by a sharp-eyed insistence. Trying to herd Whip off towards the bathroom, he says shortly, "It's your weapon hand. It's something. You need to clean that." But at her told-you-so, he pauses. His eyes thin, but not in an angry way. Merely a way that doesn't know quite how to respond... or how it -wants- to respond.

"You couldn't find -another- way?" he eventually settles on saying quietly, visibly holding his tongue from harsher words and harsher tones only because he -does-, at least, owe her that much.



Her usual stubbornness gives, and Whip slowly begins to move towards the bathroom, submitting to the insistence of her twin brother. Her hand hurts too much not to. But the crippling, pulsing burn does not bother her as well as it normally would; Whip is taking the pain with the victory, and she's never felt so useful in a long, long time. She managed to do something meaningful of his brother. Perhaps she even "cured" him of that fire of his.

Only Whip would be inclined to think of chi as some foreign infection.

But she's almost willing to think of it in the case of her brother. Without the Kusanagi fire, he may have something that neither of them have ever had. Whip starts to imagine K' living a normal life, something devoid of the Cartel, it's overzealous agents, and even the added responbility of having to protect her own sorry ass. Without his fire, she may be the one charged to protect him. And he can live normally and freely. She is really liking that idea.

Coming back from her thoughts, Whip gingerly takes ahold of her wounded hand at the wrist as K''s strained question earns her eyes. He's visibly holding his tongue, but she doesn't seem to notice. She says nothing back; instead, a tired smile comes close to haunting her mouth.

She'd gladly do it again. --Maybe. Christ, her hand hurts.

"Don't worry," Whip says breezily as she steps into the bathroom. For the shape of her hand, she's not making a point of looking or sounding too troubled. "Why don't you go try sleeping? I'll take care of this."



Whip's stubbornness isn't the only one that's not operating at full capacity. K' himself isn't arguing with Whip as much as he could, mostly out of exhaustion and partly out of relief. The flames are gone, for now... and he's too tired to worry about remanifesting them-- under his strict control-- until at least tomorrow morning. He needs sleep badly.

He's not too tired, however, to consider the question of whether he -wants- them back. It -would- be nice to be able to live normally... but it's certain some hard thought on the matter would, in the end, spur him to try to reattain them, if only to prevent the scenario Whip is even now imagining: one in which his sister believes she can safeguard -him-. That, and K' is also fairly certain that by now he will never be left to live freely by the Cartel.

That resolved, his eyes track after her as she casually steps off, shrugging off the grievous injury. They lid in an aggrieved sort of way, but K' remains too exhausted to possess much of his usual bite. "...I'm going to start trying to draw it out again in the morning," he warns, as he starts down the hall.

A pause. K' glances over his shoulder abruptly. "Great that it's been suppressed," he notes slowly, "but that's only half of the control I wanted. ...And I don't think," he addendums in a wary, wry sort of tone, "you should help with the other half."



While she looks only dismissive and nonchalant, there's a surge of gratefulness that goes through her when he decides to take her advice. Whip very happily beelines to the bathroom on her own to obviously intend treating her burnt hand.

Paused momentarily at the doorway, Whip looks back at K' when he makes his final remark. She looks amused around the edges, amused and tired. But she says nothing back, only giving her brother a gentled, affectionate look before she disappears and the door closes and locks behind her.

And once she's alone, the girl just immediately sags on the spot, all of that good-humoured brevity just falling off of her. She's glad he's gone to bed. She doesn't know how long she could have kept that face. Whip doesn't want her brother to even begin feeling poorly. This might be a new chapter of his life now, and she wants it to be her job to furnish it to the best of her ability.

For now, it's almost a relief that she can temporarily stop worrying about him, about that constant fire that was up and down his arm. Now she can place her full attention on her own self, which is both a good and a bad thing. Because her hand really, really hurts.

Grimacing, Whip uses her left hand to pull her old, constant friend of her battered medical field kit from under the sink, and grunting like an old man, lowers herself down to sit on the floor with her back slumped against the door. Her eyes watering with uncomfortable pain, she steals glimpses of her burnt hand, turning it back and forth from knuckle to palm to assess how aggressively she'll need to treat it.

The only thought that keeps her from feeling weary is that every single one of those words are totally worth it. K' is going to have a damn good sleep.

And she's going to have a long night. In the midst of her clumsy, one-handed fumbling through her kit for burn treatment supplies, she grabs a handful of two good friends of hers that may just help her along the way. It's just a matter of picking which she likes best. She looks between the vial of morphine and the fentanyl patch.

Whip's eyelids hood. Definitely fentanyl.

Log created on 19:47:30 09/07/2008 by K', and last modified on 05:39:58 09/21/2008.