Description: After his painful encounter with Krizalid, K' returns to Southtown to find himself facing an even more formidable opponent: the anger and fretting of a worried sister.
It's been three days too many.
Whip had been content to keep an eye on her erstwhile brother, more closely than she let on, more closely that she'd let him realize. Settling back into Southtown had been as quick and easy as pulling in an old shoe, and the Ikari Warrior was anything if not adaptable. Within days, she was acclimatized back from the humid tropic South American weather, settled into a more domestic, civilian routine, and keeping close tabs on her twin.
Southtown was engulfed into the madness that was the King of Fighters tournament, and she reasoned that it'd do him well to have an extra eye watching his back. Whip owed K' that much. She owed him a lot, really.
So it was only inevitable that familiar frown would start threatening her mouth when he announced designs to fly off to the States on behalf of the tournament. Whip wanted to invite herself along. K' didn't think it was necessary. In fact, he thought it was dangerous, even foolish, for them to be travelling together in public. For a young woman who's always fiercely prized her freedom, she didn't seem to happy to lend her twin brother his.
But Whip relented, broodily and morosely wondering if this is how K' felt all the times she packed up to race half-way across the globe to fight international terrorism.
The first couple days saw her alone in the apartment, bored and stir-crazy. After spending months surrounded in Ikari comrades and training in the swamped and cramped South American barracks, her alone time was an anathema. She almost too eagerly accepted a couple domestic training exercises with the local military just to keep her mind occupied and reflexes frosty, her comforting regiment of exercises and sparring matches with young soldiers broken up by K''s sporadic messages to her cell phone. They all made her smile.
Until they stopped.
Back at the apartment, Whip paced a hole through the hardwood floors. Checked her phone on the hour by the hour. Considered calling in an Ikari favour to get a piggyback on a sat upstream to try to remote with his phone's signal and piece the location. He'd probably kill her for the invasion of privacy. When she finally built the resolve to do so, the signal was too weak to be traced.
She went back to pacing. In the last twenty-four hours, she forgot about eating or sleeping, doing anything but just going over in her mind, again and again and again, what could have gone wrong, why he wouldn't be answering -- it wasn't like him. It was like HER, but not him, not her brother, who--
A horrible, heavy feeling settled in Whip's gut. Her breath caught.
And now she's packing, simply grabbing everything she can, money, passports, Voodoo, the extra clip for her desert eagle, each item thrown desperately into her opened shoulder bag. She's going after him.
Something wrong, and she's going after him, and she's bringing him back.
It wasn't that K' wasn't appreciative of Whip having his back. It was just that, after so long apart, it took a while to get back in the habit of not being on his own.
That, and his trip to the States wasn't /really/ on tournament business. Well-- it sort of was, as there were a couple of exhibition matches there that he wanted to attend in order to limber up for the next round. But at the same time, his primary intention in going was because he had heard NESTS was also going to have a presence at the matches.
He didn't want Whip anywhere near that. Besides, it was high time Whip was the one who got to have the experience of sitting and stewing and worrying. Maybe it would teach her some compassion for his situation, whenever she hared off and didn't text him for weeks!!
At first, the messages were daily, a sort of comforting pulse of 'hey I'm alive' coming from the other side of the world. Then, a couple days in, they stopped. It's hard to text when you're holding in your liver and checking yourself into a hospital in order to get it put back before you get on your plane.
Fortunately, K' was resilient, and very quick to recover from injury. Chalk it up to the experimentation. It also helped that there'd been an altruistic fellow fighter with the ability to heal around at the time, who'd been nice enough to give him a bit of a patch-up. About a day and a half after he stopped messaging her, give or take, K' finally gets off the plane in Southtown and starts making his tired way back to the apartment.
He's hoping she's not... too mad at him. He grimaces a little as he fumbles for his keys at the door. Maybe she won't have noticed at all, he thinks optimistically, unlocking the front door and opening it tentatively.
Be it destiny, fate, or just K' shit out of luck, he opens the door the instant Whip is reaching for it.
She's there, standing almost on cue, like some malevolent higher being had maneuvered them to the same place at the same time. The door opens, and both errant twins are standing there, staring at each other, looking so different but mirroring each other's familiar features.
Whip's standing on the spot, one hand outstretched where it was reaching for the handle, the other still clutched forgotten on the leather handles of her shoulder bag. Her dark eyes widen against the sudden, unexpected sight of her brother's face, and Whip's clutching hand subtly tightens until her knuckles dry white.
She doesn't say a word, apparently looking herself like he's caught her in mid-step, mid-breath, on her rushed and windy way out. And stopped, about as effectively as a solid hook to the gut, Whip doesn't move or speak or even breathe. She just stands there, stares widely, and realizes the brother she thought lost forever, she was prepared to cross the world and bring back. The one who decided instead to return on his own. The one who hadn't given her a single breath or message as to where he was--
Whip suddenly, fiercely looks him up and down, trying to appraise his state with her harsh brown eyes, and they ultimately return back on his, returned to stare him down. Her face has darkened immeasurably in those moments.
Her lips begin to purse. Her jaw tightens with the littlest twitch of muscle. Her eyes flicker, and then crease at the corners. There's a name to the look on Whip's face.
They call this the calm before the storm.
K' would like to slot a vote for 'shit out of luck.'
He knows that look. Knows it the moment she aims it up at him. The shock printed in her eyes is simply too great to be any mundane feeling of surprise at opening the door to find another person in your intended path. No, she was worried, and she was about to go after him, and now she's found that he's come back. Just as she was about to rush out to find him.
Many, many hours too late, K' remembers that he forgot to text her. Part of him feels bad. Part of him is rather smug that now she knows how it feels. The remainder wonders in a very small voice whether he's going to survive her 'figuring out how it feels.'
Even as Whip's expression begins to darken down in that very distinct alchemy of 'worry transmuting straight into rage,' K' is trying to ruminate over his options. He could simply just... slowly... close the door. But that would only be a very temporary fix, and in fact it would probably just hurt when she inevitably kicked it down on top of him. No, he thinks with an internal grimace, closing the door is out.
But what else can he do?
Ultimately, as always, K' just Makes It Worse. "So are you going somewhere?" he asks, perhaps in some vain hope that by saying this, he can make it so.
There is a grand hypocrisy in every one of Whip's features, her movements, her darkening thoughts, but even she's yet to realize it.
She's too busy feeling relieved to see him safe and alive. She's too busy feeling furious to see him safe and alive. Without sending her so much as a word. Letting her worry. Letting her think--
Whip almost twitches visibly against K''s voice, his question startlingly filling the silence between them. To a mind like hers that was entertaining so many types of thoughts, uncertain thoughts, dark thoughts, thoughts running so contrary to her gentle and hopeful nature, to hear sound at all shocks her hard enough to send her heart hammering. Then his words register for what they are.
Something that isn't helping.
"I... was going to find you," she answers, a little too steadily, a lot too calmly, but her voice catches in a way it shouldn't. Three, two--
Then Whip EXPLODES into movement, without warning HURLING her shoulder bag to SLAM shudderingly, noisily against the doorway next to her resurrected brother. "I WAS GOING TO FIND YOU, YOU ASSHOLE!" she SNARLS. "I was gonna LOOK FOR YOU! W- Where the HELL have you been?! You didn't message me! You didn't even CALL me! What the HELL HAPPENED?! I THOUGHT--"
Whip's voice catches at that, her teeth grinding down to smother the words. Her wild-eyed staring starts to look a little strained. But she's not backing down.
Whip may not realize the grand hypocrisy here, but unfortunately for her? K' sure does. It's all he can do to just purse his lips, ride out the shouting, and wait for the best time to diplomatically point this out.
Or maybe for the best time to point it out so that maybe, just maybe, she'll think about texting HIM next time she's wandering off out in the world getting HIM worried.
Still, for all his vague sense of smugness, he can't help but startle when Whip suddenly FLINGS her bag to hit the door five inches away from him. Wow, he wasn't expecting a reaction of THAT magnitude, he thinks in his own moment of hypocrisy. He's already conveniently forgotten all the fits HE would pitch at Whip when she swung back in (sometimes literally) from her forays.
A little bewildered, a little startled, a lot bemused, K' just stands there in the gale force of her shouting disapproval, rubbing the back of his neck and looking unhelpfully unrepentant. "What happened," he finally points out quietly, seemingly amused at the irony of his observation, "was I pulled a you."
"YOU--" Whip starts to carry on in her snarling, raving bluster, her shoulders squared, her hands wrung into fists, and her cheeks lit with a bright, angry flush, but K''s rebuttal catches her about as cleanly and sharply as a slap across the face. It also looks equally stinging. Her voice cuts off, choked with a too-fast breath, as all of that looming, bracing, festering fury is simply dispelled into the air like some exorcised ghost. Merely left as its empty shell, and looking more than a little gutted, Whip simply looks content to do little more than occupy time and space.
Her lips are still left parted, a little open, with the words she wanted to say but now cannot. Because he pulled a her. Was this the way she's always treated him? Did he do this on purpose?
She didn't want to believe it, her heart was refusing, but she was starting to think, starting to fear--
Struck silent, Whip's dark eyes suddenly avert. And the overhead foray light catches the way they've suddenly grown too bright, too shiny. Too familiar.
Yesss, K' scores a hit. She'll definitely learn her lesson now!! That'll learn her. She'll never leave him hanging again. She'll--
--start tearing up. Oh my God. Is she going to cry?
Struck dumb by this sudden turn of events, K' stares at Whip in dismay. God damn it, if he pets her and tells her he didn't mean it, she's not going to learn a damn thing, but on the other hand, if he -doesn't- say anything, she might /actually/ start crying. And K' doesn't know the first thing about how to feel or what to do about a crying young woman. Much less when it's his sister and he was the one /responsible/ for making her cry.
A long and awkward few moments pass, K' clutching a little nervously at his shoulder bag, before he hazards, "Well, it isn't anything to /cry/ about." This is... probably not /exactly/ the right thing to say.
It's strange how a young woman like Whip, who's stared down active combat scenarios, who's traded blows with the worst the world has to offer, can cry as easily as she does. Even this quirk aggravates her, who has tried endlessly to stifle her tears, but always finds them conquering her at the end. She's still having trouble accepting herself as a crier.
It shows with how uncomfortable she looks, torn between her unwillingness to see K' escape this confrontation and her discomfort at him seeing her cry yet again. She glances away, avoiding his eyes, and simply marinates in a strained sort of silence as she frowns to herself. If she notices K''s own dismay, Whip doesn't show it. She's doing a good job at ignoring him until--
"YES IT IS!" she barks back with closing fists, unable to stop herself from looking back at K' with her watery brown eyes. "You're such an asshole! I thought you were in trouble! Or even hurt, or-- you'd said Krizalid found you! What the hell am I supposed to think?!" Those crying eyes turn pleading. "Where were you?"
K' leans back almost visibly, alarmed, when Whip loudly blurts that response. An /asshole/? Okay that's not quite fair!! She might as well name herself an asshole too, then, with as many times as she's kept HIM waiting by the phone. Though as Whip rails on, K''s expression starts to lose its indignance. It gets more and more uncomfortable-- especially when Whip reminds him she knows about Krizalid.
Ah... shit. She did know, didn't she? Furiously, K' tries to decide whether or not he should blacken his soul even more with another lie, or just come clean. Ultimately deciding that it'll just go worse for him if she finds out he didn't tell the truth later, he opts to be honest.
"Well, I was out in Vegas for the exhibition matches," he says slowly, "but as it turns out Krizalid was there too." There. That's... /sort/ of the truth, right? "We fought and I had to stay over a couple days to get patched up, but I'm okay -now-."
A pause, before he adds a little aggravatedly, "And before you get on my case you should probably think about all the times you ran off and didn't tell me shit and got hurt yourself."
For a split second, an indescribable expression crosses Whip's expressive face. Her features transparently mirror every bit of K''s confession, her widening eyes and opening mouth reflecting every revealing word. Then he says the clincher: the name of their would-be "brother." The mercenary visibly flinches against it.
He can see all the warning signs on Whip, showing clear as cloudless skies. Her quickening pulse, the sharp way she inhales, the restless, spidery way her fingers are flexing in and out against her palms. The rising distress can be smelled off of her. K'. Krizalid. Fought. Patched up.
That familiar anger haunts her eyes, giving glimpse of the temper he wears in spades and that she's inherited by virtue of being his twin. Whip's face is darkening, and that once-pleading stare focused on him starts to go into a dangerous place--
But then it's gone, either forgotten or simply just temporarily set aside, as she urgently steps forward and reaches for K''s arm. "Did he hurt you?" is what's said first, and is Whip's greatest priority. "Where? Let me see--"
She pauses only minutely at her brother's last remark, Whip's face an uncomfortable mix of guilt and hurt. "That's different," she argues, a little feebly. "I was trying to protect you."
K' tries to avoid looking at Whip's expression as it responds transparently to his words. It always makes him feel guilty, watching how intimately his words translate into her emotions: makes him feel bad, to elicit such strong feelings just by talking to her. He should have expected, really, that she would react strongly to news he ran into Krizalid. To have her brother taken away by the one who she once called brother--
K' puts a warning hand on Whip's upper arm as she clenches her hands. Last time he mentioned Krizalid, she nearly jumped up and ran out the door in her zeal to protect him. He isn't keen on her trying to run off again. He'd just have to go save her then.
In the end his touch isn't strictly needed, though. Whip steps forward suddenly, causing him to startle, and reaches for -his- arm. He lets her take it. The question makes him grimace a little. Did Krizalid hurt him? Well, yes and no, he pictures himself responding. Krizalid didn't hurt me. He tore me open and showed me all my progress might well have been nothing more than a fluke.
That last thought shoots a visible pang through his own expression. His demeanor immediately becomes withdrawn, and he recoils. "It's nothing," he tries to say, but he isn't very convincing about it.
Whip's look of guilt and feeble attempts to protest are small consolation in the face of his mood with regard to being beaten by Krizalid. He shrugs, looking askance at her. "It's not different at all. You went -looking- for trouble."
That fleeting touch of hers moves down his forearm, stopping only to twine her fingers with her twin brother's. It's Whip's right hand that does it, her weapons' hand, the one that wears all those old burn scars. She hangs on, ignoring the burn of her own anger to do so, taking some selfish relief to just touch her brother whom only minutes ago she'd feared she'd lost for good.
"It's not nothing," she counters broodily, briefing resting her cheekbone against K''s shoulder, though gingerly, as if afraid to lean any weight onto him. Her young face looks drawn by her permanent frowning. He'd fought with Krizalid, she thinks. The fact he's back home means he won. Isn't it? Krizalid wouldn't have let him escape. The Cartel wants him back, and Krizalid is the Cartel...
Reaching around K', Whip shuts the front door behind them both, making a point to secure the deadbolt as though that makes all the difference, like it's able to stop the rest of the world and keep it away. "Come on," she just says, a tug of her scarred hand trying to lead her returned brother farther into the apartment. She knows she'll have to at least give him a cursory medical assessment. She won't be satisfied otherwise. With Krizalid--
Whip's heart lurches painfully. Her hand tightens a bit nervously.
And then she's just blurting out, suddenly, unexpectedly, quietly, "I'm sorry." But she doesn't say for what. "It's all my fault."
The feel of those old burns against his palm brings K''s jaw to tighten, the scars a sobering reminder of what Whip has put herself through on his behalf. If nothing else, it brings him to let up a little on the matter of her earlier hypocrisy. He even relaxes a little when Whip rests against him, even if only because of her proximity rather than out of any real lessening of the tension he feels.
He doesn't reply aloud when she insists it isn't 'nothing,' though he does hold still quietly as she reaches to shut the door. Her subsequent tug meets only a moment's resistance before K' assents to follow her back into the living area of the apartment. He's kind of tired of standing in the entryway too; though he's mostly healed up, he's still not exactly in top shape.
The sudden tightening of her hand, coupled with the twitch of her expression, seems to warn him she's going to say something, and most likely something dumb. He's proven right.
"It's not your fault. Dumbass," he complains, as he puts his stuff down and sits on the battered sofa. "How is it your fault what Krizalid does?"
Letting his hand go, Whip remains standing, looking a little transparently indecisive. It's in her nature to get busy when she feels upset, involve herself in some consuming task to free her mind, and she's struck with a few possibilities. It's tempting to go hide in the kitchen for a few minutes under the pretense of boiling some water; he's probably thirsty. Maybe even hungry.
Ultimately, Whip seems to give up on her own fussy thoughts and simply helps herself down to the couch beside her brother, finding it difficult to be out of his proximity just yet. She's still riding out the adrenaline of her earlier decision to cross the world and start looking for him, and she still hasn't forgotten her anger. Bottling it is just making her that much more antsy.
Guilt fills in for the rest. Whip lays her hands briefly on her knees, but finds she can't keep them still for long, especially at K''s last question. She almost doesn't want to answer... but she did bring this up. She doesn't look at him, instead hunching forward and letting herself pick absently at the calluses on her right knuckles, deep and mean ones from years of militant Cartel training, of Ikari exercises. Her averted brown eyes lower. "Back when Southtown was under siege, when Howard's empire was falling. I had a chance to... stop Krizalid. And I didn't. It's my fault."
K' says nothing for a long while after Whip's admission. He just sits there, looking out the window instead of at her, with a vague sort of frown on his face.
Part of him -is- a little angry to hear this. At least, at first. K''s thirst for vengeance against NESTS is for the most part personal, sure, but at the same time he's practical enough to know that sharing his revenge with others will be necessary. Perhaps even desirable. Killing Krizalid would have had a fairly detrimental effect on the organization as a whole. He shouldn't care about getting to do it personally if someone else has a great chance at it.
And from Whip's own admission, she didn't take her chance.
The anger almost comes to the forefront, need for vengeance almost prevailing over family ties. In the end, it stops short, and K' just sighs. He knows too much about Whip and Krizalid's relationship to really be angry the way he wants to be angry, and even -that- pisses him off a little. "He's the one choosing to keep deluding himself and staying part of NESTS," he says. "So what he chooses to do isn't your fault."
He frowns a little. "Not like I don't wish you HAD killed him. But I guess it'd be hard for you to do it." For once, he doesn't even mean it as a smear on her abilities.
Whip's head inclines a little uneasily in the wake of her brother's silence, perhaps able, in that strange, ineffable way twins can, sense his mounting anger. But she doesn't say anything, or even chance a look in his direction. She resigns herself to it, even a little masochistically hopeful for him to get angry and confirm her own guilt.
Instead, he sighs, and blaces the blame squarely on Krizalid himself.
Whip doesn't look too appeased, her dark eyes looking a little too hollow with apology. She hugs herself helplessly. "I don't know. He's insane. They get into your head. With the amnesia, and... if your mind just isn't strong enough? I know I'd be the same if I were still there. But..."
Something steels in her face, all of her soft features and their innate disposition for kindness hardening into something much more resolved. "But I won't make that mistake again," vows Whip, the pentient ex-assassin who tries so hard to absolve for her past life and its many murders. It seems even absolution has its exceptions.
Log created on 22:09:46 04/08/2011 by K', and last modified on 16:01:41 05/05/2011.