[Listen, if there's an opportunity to walk around in a loincloth picking berries as an option to this other extreme end of civilization (emphasis on the "end" here), then Ryuji's pretty chill with taking that. Oooga booga.
But he figures that whatever is down there planet side, that there's a lot more to see and do than squandering away days to figure out how to trick the replicators into making takoyaki taste like actual octopus balls and not just... halfway there, stuck at the balls part.
The sound of laughter filling the hangar, though, is definitely a welcome reprieve from its otherwise cold interior.]
Yeah, yeah. I'll keep my please's and thank you's toned down too.
Erika swings her feet and swings her feet and puts her elbows on her legs and thinks, quietly, strange pause stretching out after she'd been the one to bring up the topic.
...Maybe she should just jump right to the end?]
Before we came here - things aren't like this anymore. But before, back home, I was - I'd been dying for a while.
[Putting it in those terms is something she's thought to herself on and off but never said, and it feels...wrong. Like someone should scold her.]
[Leaning up against the metal behind him, he crosses his arms. No conversation that's ever light begins with a warning to not apologize, and Ryuji's been told a lot of personal stuff in his life before to know that whatever is going to come next is probably teetering heavily in that direction.
And it hits, and his heart sinks down into his stomach. It might be a little obvious that he's looking at her, more intently now, almost like he's reaffirming to himself that she's not dead. Just needed some WD-40 for the joints, and hopefully she'd be back on her feet and hopping along like everyone else.
But he would never scold her for that. He just couldn't. And honestly? No one else should ever, either.]
Oh... Well, uh. For someone who was dying, you look pretty alive to me right now.
[It would be obvious, except that Erika's forcing herself not to watch him. She wants to. She wants to be sure of whatever she can be, have something to wave off the clench of worry when she hears him start to talk, before it even happens. But would that be what happened? Or would she just take it as an excuse to stop the story short of what she wants him to understand?
Sometimes you sacrifice the little wants for the big wants.]
It was that car accident. A brain injury. I don't know if you... [...know, how things like that work; even she doesn't, completely. The brain is a complicated organ.] ...Imagine a machine. If you bump some gears loose, that tiny misalignment gets worse and worse over time until the whole thing breaks down. Except it's brain cells instead of gears...sort of.
[She rubs her sleeve between her fingers; back and forth, back and forth.]
I got these - they were sort of like seizures. They'd put me in the hospital, and every time it got a little worse.
[A brain injury, huh? Her guess is right on the money, it's a realm of things he knows nothing about. Even how he fractured his own leg wasn't something he became intimately familiar with. When life throws bad shit at you, he's not the type to go through and dissect. He wants to move on. But how do you move on from head trauma like that?
The analogy to the gear parts is definitely something easy to grasp, though, and he approaches a little bit more. The urge to sit with her and bump shoulders is pretty goddamn high right now.]
You haven't... since coming here, right? I mean, the seizures.
Mm-mm. I could tell right away. I think...it has to be like what keeps happening when people die here. The station rebuilt my body, somehow. Otherwise - I'd feel like I used to, but I also never would have been able to keep it a secret. It was right up at the end of things.
[...yeah. Yeah. Still lying by omission. That'll need undoing at some point.
And that's kind of - wow, how long has it been, months? Four months? Almost half a year. Wow. And here's Ryuji, first person to know, and only because she chose to tell him. It's kind of scary. It kind of underlines what she was thinking about when it occurred to her, the whole process of moving on, becoming someone new. The things that don't survive the passage of time.]
[The station rebuilt her body. It's not impossible, this place has a ton of power residing in it do great and horrible things. Like throwing sord.... into a toilet.
Well, maybe not that, but on a more serious note, he finally comes back up to the catwalk and sits down next to her. It takes a moment, so it's probably filled with a little bit of an awkward silence as he does so. He doesn't really have anything to say other than just sitting with her, listening.
The end of things... there's really only so much that could mean.
But, it's a new opportunity. She has so much light in her, he can't imagine a world where she doesn't have the ability to be her own solar system, a sun that other things orbit around. It doesn't make sense, and yet, it makes him angry. Shit's not fair.
Is it... okay to sit there at all? He doesn't really know.]
Huh. Man... life's just full of a bunch of shit, huh.
[...Is he sitting down next to her? She finally chances a glance.Her heart skips unpleasantly - he's going to be sorry, he's going to be hurt, and, then, he is. But less than he could be. But still, still.
There's a lump in her chest.]
There's more to the story. Hold on. [That's supposed to be a joke and it comes out hideously flat. She has embraced the wretchedness of looking to Ryuji Sakamoto for something resembling absolution for what she and fate did to Ryuji Mishima. It feels bad as hell, man. A good, addictive, awful kind of bad, like popping a pimple, without even the inexplicable thrill that comes from telling Venus these kinds of things. With Ryuji it's like wiping your muddy hands on a dog. Maybe he doesn't care - but you used him, you monster.]
My parents were in that car, too. My brother was - he's the one who taught me how to code and hack. I passed him when it comes to some things, but, he's good. He could've - he would've gotten a job anywhere he wanted. With the company that runs the VR world. Anything.
And, then, it was just us.
[And she doesn't quite know how to put words around what happened. How to explain this thing she fears, and this thing she wants out of her third whack at life, without incriminating her brother, laying his flaws out in the open like fish for stray cats. That's not an option.]
[The thing about pain is that you think it has a multiplicative power when it's being shared, but in actuality, it divides the more you go through the motions of getting it off your chest. Ryuji doesn't feel like he's being used or that Erika is a monster. These sorts of conversations were ones that he's had before. He couldn't be who he is today without knowing.
Without knowing how Akira's parents abandoned him for doing the right thing. How Ann's entire life was rife with people treating her differently and assuming horrible things about the way she really was. Yusuke's mother being brutally used and neglected when she needed medical help so that a corrupt artist could capitalize on his talent. The way that everyone put such ridiculously high expectations on Makoto so that she could never cope with her own losses. Futaba's cognition of her own mother hating her enough to commit a suicide that never happened. Or Haru's father selling her off life property to the highest bidder. Or his own problems that he shared with all of them- how he had to go to school and hide bruises that his father had left with him to take like a lunch pail or his dreams being crushed when his teacher broke his leg.
She must miss her brother a lot. Ryuji watches his own legs dangling from the ledge.]
I can't imagine how much that must've hurt you. The only thing I know is that.... yeah, it does kinda feel like you against the world when you got only one or two things to hold onto and everything else is just gone to shit.
[Third whack, or whatever she's going through though.]
It ain't anywhere near the same, and I'd be a total dick to say that it were. But if you're thinking that "just us" is now "just me," I wanna tell you that you're not alone. 'Cause you're not. I'd fight on your team in a heartbeat.
[Which comes with the whole... use me if you need to thing. He's a tank. He's good at taking blows.]
Now there's the other kind of good bad hurt, the achy sad joy that's physically exhausting. Erika sighs, and nods, and shakes her head.]
That's what I was afraid of. [Shakes her head again, fondly, to head off any kind of, like - panic. It's okay. She hears you, she's taking it in, taking it at face value. It's just...heavy.] It's not like it's a bad thing. It's the best thing in the world.
[She sits up a little straighter and crosses her arms, thinking.] My...treatment wasn't routine. My brother gave up everything to make sure it went through. His time. His future. All but one of his friends. [...] His morals. And he kept it all secret. I never - when I found out, I wanted payback, and I wanted to save him. And neither one...got all the way to the end.
It was all just luck. I didn't choose to hurt him by dying. But I still didn't want to, and it's still...
[The spaceship. The probes. Erika swallows.]
It's still...even the best thing in the world hurts people. And happy endings don't last. And I want to - save someone. I want to save someone without hurting them first. I want to be able to beat this stupid station, and protect all of you. And win for once.
[Tears are rapping at the gate, but they're...a lot politer than they usually are. Or so they seem. They're still unwelcome. Erika denies them exit anyways.]
[He could focus on the part where she just told him that she died, but... what's the point? It was enough to go through it, he didn't want to harp on that, any of that. The details that surround it feel painful, just listening to the way that she talks about it.
He wants to tell her that you can't choose who you hurt in this world, because everybody hurts everyone at some point. Ryuji knows that all too goddamn well. The best you can do is mitigate it and be a good person, strive to be free and true to yourself. There's a sideways glance in her direction, and he takes all of that in. Keeps it close to his heart.
And then, in the end, he leans back to what he's good at. Using sheer will to make things happen.]
Then... do it.
[It's probably a gross oversimplification, but the core of its message is optimistic and somewhat deeper than he implies. There's words there, too, about impossibilities and struggle, of commitment and all the things it takes to beat a station that wants to beat them.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
But he figures that whatever is down there planet side, that there's a lot more to see and do than squandering away days to figure out how to trick the replicators into making takoyaki taste like actual octopus balls and not just... halfway there, stuck at the balls part.
The sound of laughter filling the hangar, though, is definitely a welcome reprieve from its otherwise cold interior.]
Yeah, yeah. I'll keep my please's and thank you's toned down too.
[He's a polite boy.]
no subject
Erika swings her feet and swings her feet and puts her elbows on her legs and thinks, quietly, strange pause stretching out after she'd been the one to bring up the topic.
...Maybe she should just jump right to the end?]
Before we came here - things aren't like this anymore. But before, back home, I was - I'd been dying for a while.
[Putting it in those terms is something she's thought to herself on and off but never said, and it feels...wrong. Like someone should scold her.]
no subject
And it hits, and his heart sinks down into his stomach. It might be a little obvious that he's looking at her, more intently now, almost like he's reaffirming to himself that she's not dead. Just needed some WD-40 for the joints, and hopefully she'd be back on her feet and hopping along like everyone else.
But he would never scold her for that. He just couldn't. And honestly? No one else should ever, either.]
Oh... Well, uh. For someone who was dying, you look pretty alive to me right now.
[He'd probably fight to keep it that way, too.]
But how?
no subject
Sometimes you sacrifice the little wants for the big wants.]
It was that car accident. A brain injury. I don't know if you... [...know, how things like that work; even she doesn't, completely. The brain is a complicated organ.] ...Imagine a machine. If you bump some gears loose, that tiny misalignment gets worse and worse over time until the whole thing breaks down. Except it's brain cells instead of gears...sort of.
[She rubs her sleeve between her fingers; back and forth, back and forth.]
I got these - they were sort of like seizures. They'd put me in the hospital, and every time it got a little worse.
no subject
The analogy to the gear parts is definitely something easy to grasp, though, and he approaches a little bit more. The urge to sit with her and bump shoulders is pretty goddamn high right now.]
You haven't... since coming here, right? I mean, the seizures.
[Man, this is so fucked up.
He'd never get in a car again either.]
no subject
Mm-mm. I could tell right away. I think...it has to be like what keeps happening when people die here. The station rebuilt my body, somehow. Otherwise - I'd feel like I used to, but I also never would have been able to keep it a secret. It was right up at the end of things.
[...yeah. Yeah. Still lying by omission. That'll need undoing at some point.
And that's kind of - wow, how long has it been, months? Four months? Almost half a year. Wow. And here's Ryuji, first person to know, and only because she chose to tell him. It's kind of scary. It kind of underlines what she was thinking about when it occurred to her, the whole process of moving on, becoming someone new. The things that don't survive the passage of time.]
no subject
Well, maybe not that, but on a more serious note, he finally comes back up to the catwalk and sits down next to her. It takes a moment, so it's probably filled with a little bit of an awkward silence as he does so. He doesn't really have anything to say other than just sitting with her, listening.
The end of things... there's really only so much that could mean.
But, it's a new opportunity. She has so much light in her, he can't imagine a world where she doesn't have the ability to be her own solar system, a sun that other things orbit around. It doesn't make sense, and yet, it makes him angry. Shit's not fair.
Is it... okay to sit there at all? He doesn't really know.]
Huh. Man... life's just full of a bunch of shit, huh.
no subject
There's a lump in her chest.]
There's more to the story. Hold on. [That's supposed to be a joke and it comes out hideously flat. She has embraced the wretchedness of looking to Ryuji Sakamoto for something resembling absolution for what she and fate did to Ryuji Mishima. It feels bad as hell, man. A good, addictive, awful kind of bad, like popping a pimple, without even the inexplicable thrill that comes from telling Venus these kinds of things. With Ryuji it's like wiping your muddy hands on a dog. Maybe he doesn't care - but you used him, you monster.]
My parents were in that car, too. My brother was - he's the one who taught me how to code and hack. I passed him when it comes to some things, but, he's good. He could've - he would've gotten a job anywhere he wanted. With the company that runs the VR world. Anything.
And, then, it was just us.
[And she doesn't quite know how to put words around what happened. How to explain this thing she fears, and this thing she wants out of her third whack at life, without incriminating her brother, laying his flaws out in the open like fish for stray cats. That's not an option.]
no subject
Without knowing how Akira's parents abandoned him for doing the right thing. How Ann's entire life was rife with people treating her differently and assuming horrible things about the way she really was. Yusuke's mother being brutally used and neglected when she needed medical help so that a corrupt artist could capitalize on his talent. The way that everyone put such ridiculously high expectations on Makoto so that she could never cope with her own losses. Futaba's cognition of her own mother hating her enough to commit a suicide that never happened. Or Haru's father selling her off life property to the highest bidder. Or his own problems that he shared with all of them- how he had to go to school and hide bruises that his father had left with him to take like a lunch pail or his dreams being crushed when his teacher broke his leg.
She must miss her brother a lot. Ryuji watches his own legs dangling from the ledge.]
I can't imagine how much that must've hurt you. The only thing I know is that.... yeah, it does kinda feel like you against the world when you got only one or two things to hold onto and everything else is just gone to shit.
[Third whack, or whatever she's going through though.]
It ain't anywhere near the same, and I'd be a total dick to say that it were. But if you're thinking that "just us" is now "just me," I wanna tell you that you're not alone. 'Cause you're not. I'd fight on your team in a heartbeat.
[Which comes with the whole... use me if you need to thing. He's a tank. He's good at taking blows.]
no subject
Now there's the other kind of good bad hurt, the achy sad joy that's physically exhausting. Erika sighs, and nods, and shakes her head.]
That's what I was afraid of. [Shakes her head again, fondly, to head off any kind of, like - panic. It's okay. She hears you, she's taking it in, taking it at face value. It's just...heavy.] It's not like it's a bad thing. It's the best thing in the world.
[She sits up a little straighter and crosses her arms, thinking.] My...treatment wasn't routine. My brother gave up everything to make sure it went through. His time. His future. All but one of his friends. [...] His morals. And he kept it all secret. I never - when I found out, I wanted payback, and I wanted to save him. And neither one...got all the way to the end.
It was all just luck. I didn't choose to hurt him by dying. But I still didn't want to, and it's still...
[The spaceship. The probes. Erika swallows.]
It's still...even the best thing in the world hurts people. And happy endings don't last. And I want to - save someone. I want to save someone without hurting them first. I want to be able to beat this stupid station, and protect all of you. And win for once.
[Tears are rapping at the gate, but they're...a lot politer than they usually are. Or so they seem. They're still unwelcome. Erika denies them exit anyways.]
no subject
He wants to tell her that you can't choose who you hurt in this world, because everybody hurts everyone at some point. Ryuji knows that all too goddamn well. The best you can do is mitigate it and be a good person, strive to be free and true to yourself. There's a sideways glance in her direction, and he takes all of that in. Keeps it close to his heart.
And then, in the end, he leans back to what he's good at. Using sheer will to make things happen.]
Then... do it.
[It's probably a gross oversimplification, but the core of its message is optimistic and somewhat deeper than he implies. There's words there, too, about impossibilities and struggle, of commitment and all the things it takes to beat a station that wants to beat them.
But.
Just do it.
He knows that you have it in you.]