unrepentant | ic contact.

Lucky we're all here to do it for you.

Well, it's our responsibility because we have to keep people from finding out that it was a supply hub for Despair. That's where they got all their robotics from, and who knows what else besides. No one knows that yet, and the global situation is too fragile to allow any more chance for conflict. That's why Komaru and I agreed to stay and fix it ourselves. We have to protect the remaining survivors from anyone looking to get revenge.

The city itself is a man-made island, so it's cut off from outside help right now. But we only need to worry about Towa Tower. The controller should be somewhere in the top floor. It's half wrecked, but not as bad as a lot of places.

[He can begin to picture it in his mind as she explains, and only belatedly does it occur to him that this must be the marriage of their memories. That she's supplying the borders, but that what he'd seen through her eyes is filling out the rest. Hallways and staircases, big cold rooms- the exits.

We have to protect the remaining survivors she says, and this makes sense to him. But she continues- from anyone looking to get revenge and Anakin is aware of the dangerous places that his own thoughts threaten to go. He turns his mind away from it and to their planning instead.]

Alright, so after we destroy them, then what?

As much as I hate to leave the city as is, we'd have to find the other killing game right away. It might already be over by the time we get there. I don't know all the specifics but it's more of a free for all this time. They're not bothering with trials or executions or covering their tracks, they're just attacking each other point blank.

Komaru's brother is trapped there. [Whether he had connected the young girl in the wreckage to the petrified boy on the chopping block, she can't say. It's not important right now.] So are Asahina and Kirigiri. They'll be the biggest targets in there.

Other people are trying to free them too. We could probably join Master Byakuya and have him catch us up.

[Only after she hits send does she realize her error.

Is it right to even call him Master anymore?

Would Anakin take offense? He hadn't seen much of him, right? She hopes not. Truly. Every day she feels more the fool.]

[This too is a different- because he reads these names and they aren't just ideas anymore. He can see their faces behind his eyelids, feels recognition within his chest because of Toko- because of what these people mean to her.

They'll be the biggest targets in there, she says. And Anakin finds his attention turning over and over on this point. Why them? That too is followed by a thought not his own. Master Byakuya could catch them up. His eyes land on the words and a tangle snags in his stomach. That's Toko too. Before he catches it, before he puts a stop to it, Anakin finds himself thinking of the end of their time in that traincar- when he could subsume the edges of himself in someone else. In her.]

If you decide you want to stay, after everything, that's okay you know.

Edited 2022-01-18 16:36 (UTC)

I don't have a future with him.

[An admission that guts her to ruins. She's not over it. She's scared to look him in the eye ever again, knowing what she does now. Knowing what she's done and how much he hates her for it.

How much he was right to do so.]

It was just another crappy story I made up. I was dumb enough to believe it.

When I'm with you, I don't have to imagine anything.

I'm not a writer like you. I didn't even learn to read until I was twelve or thirteen. On Tatooine we would remember our stories and have to tell them to each other, but that meant sometimes things would change too. Names and places, stuff like that.

You don't have to decide your future right now Toko. I just want to go the same direction as you and we can figure it out when we get there.

[It's lucky, she thinks, that they met while she was still under Byakuya's thrall. Otherwise all those pathetic habits — following him like a shadow, peeking from hiding spots, declaring outlandish things while he shoots each down and tries his damnedest to shake her — would have been fixed on Anakin. Even though she fell hard and fast, she held back long enough to see him. And more poignantly, herself.

Below her skirt, her number ticks down.]

I suppose I'll just have to make something new. Like you said. Stories can change any time.

I'd like that. But only if I can follow you, too.

What about your home? I don't know if I'll be much help, but I'd like to try.

[Now there's a question. What about your home. Anakin's gaze lifts to what he knows is the roof of a traincar, but has always looked like a strange, foreign stretch of sky. To end the war he thinks the quickest way through will be to confront Palpatine- a man he's considered a friend for almost his entire life. He believes Obi-Wan and Cal, the future they've seen brought to bear by a man Anakin didn't have the heart to kill.

Does he have the strength to do it now?
That's probably the wrong question. Whether he has the strength or not, he has to do it.]

Are you kidding? I can't wait to fly you around the stars. You'll be piloting ships of your own in no time.

[If they were speaking in person, she'd catch the misdirection. And while the state of his world and what it's about to become presses hard on her mind, she still has stars in her eyes.

One day she'll learn to read him like a paperback. Just not today.]

You want me to pilot?

I can't even ride a bike! I'll crash it into some asteroid for sure!

Edited 2022-01-24 17:36 (UTC)

Aw, everyone crashes into an asteroid once or twice.

But you're smart and you're always paying attention to things around us. Besides, you've done plenty of firsts since being on this train.

I can't wait to see you in a cockpit.

Plenty of firsts, huh?

Well I hope you've got a will, because putting me in a cockpit is going to be the death of you.

ic contact.

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me: text tags! also me: not gay enough needs more meta

If this ain't a whole mood

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