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[it takes a moment. it takes longer than it should before anna realizes what exactly is happening. it's the touch around her body, the weight of a corpse that she recognizes on her shoulder. she feels her breath still, and her eye goes wide, and past the two of them she can see the same illusion that's been here this whole time.]

[she embraces gideon nav almost out of instinct, before she even tells her what she wants. anna closes her eye and moves a hand up into gideon's hair and cradles the back of her head while her other arm remains tightly around her. like if she ever lets go too soon, she won't have a second chance.]

We'll figure it out. We will. [it's a trick that she knew well before she'd met gideon's father, lying like this with such confidence. it's a trick she'd used before, when she was saying underneath all her words that she would handle it. that she would be the strong one, and she would figure out an answer. it was what she was meant to do, right? it was her job. it's still her job today. she'll bear this burden.]

It's all going to be okay. We've figured out harder things before, and we'll figure this one out, too. [kaworu will find his way back down in one piece, and gideon will just be waiting here. right here.] I promise it will.

[ Nobody holds Kiriona like this. (Ortus did, and Ortus is gone.) Anna should be revolted by her body, and maybe Anna still is, but Kiriona doesn't realize. Kiriona has always been good at not thinking about things, so that's just one more thing she won't think about.

It's nice, to not have to stand on your own. That's something that Gideon could become addicted to, like warm beds and sunlight and kindness from strangers. Here, the Ninth feels so far away, and so does the Emperor's fleet. Crux can't touch her now, not that he would.

She's quiet for a long time, before murmuring: ]

Thank you. Yeah. We will. This can't be worse than signing those dumb-ass sea songs.

[ It's definitely worse. ]

[it's different. this body is the same, but different; the person inside is the same, but different. anna is the same way, isn't she? (one day she's certain she'll have an answer to that question not-rose had asked, about how much she can lose before it doesn't matter anymore.) she holds gideon close, and their chests may both be still, but neither one of them is without life.]

You'll miss the shanties when I stop singing them.

[she smiles; it feels familiar. she'd told beth something like that on the first day of her senior year of high school, back when beth herself had only been starting freshman year. beth had gotten made fun of mercilessly nearly the entire day for being a nerd, a dork, a loser, and she'd insisted the whole time that she would have to get stronger so she didn't have to rely on anna to make her feel better anymore. and anna had just held her tightly while beth's shoulders trembled with suppressed sobs, and she'd said "you'll miss it when i'm in college", and beth had only started crying harder.]

And this is where a meaner person would start singing just to embarrass you in public. I'll spare both of us. Doubt we're gonna find an answer from putting a drunken sailor in a longboat 'til he's sober anyway. [but. is that impossible? she straightens her back a little.] Unless that is what we do.

[ Gideon pulls away just enough to look up at Anna. There aren't tears in her eyes, because she can't cry anymore, but her expression is an echo of that idea. She's smiling, in that mournful way that only the living do, even if it's etched across her dead face. ]

I will not miss them because they're terrible. I think the leviathan would agree with me, and probably if you started singing, he'd drown both of us. Or something. I have no idea how that weird fish even works, Paul and Kaworu are so bad at explaining shit.

[ Behind Gideon, the waves crash. She doesn't turn to look at them. ]

Something called us out here. I don't know if being here is supposed to help. It makes me feel weird.

[why does this feel like a goodbye? it's nagging at the back of anna's mind. she'd hoped it was just because of the ache in her chest and the ghost that she's been chasing for weeks. but she sees the way that gideon looks at her and it drives a lance between her ribs. it has to just be a feeling, a strange curiosity of the leviathan. only this, and nothing more.]

I don't know either. When I fought it the first time, it was just trying to kill us, but this time... [she doesn't say the swear that comes to mind out loud, but she realizes all at once why this feels so familiar.] This time it feels lonely. It feels like it wants something it lost, and it's crying out to all of us. And for some reason, it latched on to Kaworu instead of anyone else here.

[she had had other things on her mind last year, during the attack. she'd had one of her quarterly breakdowns, of course, where she had cautioned everybody to make sure the people they care about know they care about them. because nobody ever knows when their time will come to return to the sea. she looks past gideon's shoulder and sees the same ghost, but ignores it as her focus shifts to the person she actually has.]

I wanted to say we could starve it out. Keep Kaworu separate from it until it loses interest or dies. But... when you're that lonely and you want someone else that badly, the longer you have to have to wait, the harder it gets, and the more it hurts everyone around you.

[she gnaws her lower lip, hoping that she can at least make herself bleed a little. just to distract herself.]

Edited 2023-04-01 02:41 (UTC)

I know.

[ Kiriona doesn't need loneliness explained. When she was at her worst, it was one of the few things she could still feel. She's ten years old, telling her mother's bones she loves her. She's six months dead, and begging Crux to apologize.

Gideon follows Anna's gaze to the shore. No one waits for her there. Instead, all she gets is the same dull, pulsing feeling from Kaworu, and realizes it's not a new feeling at all. ]

I wanted her to look at me. [ She doesn't say the name. Either Anna knows, or she doesn't. ] It never worked. I'm not going to kill someone over it, but I get it.

[ The tide recedes, just a little. ]

I'm not upset about that anymore, though. I think. [ she turns back to Anna. ] So thanks, I guess, for that.

[in time, anna might understand. she might come to learn, if anyone decides to explain. or to jog her memory. or whatever. but right now it feels only slightly miserable, this realization that... once again, she's not present in people's lives. once again, she makes a big show of wanting to be important and the world keeps moving around her as she gets caught up in her own shit.]

[she swallows that down. this isn't about her. it can't be about her and her constant absence that makes her as much of a ghost as everything else right now. this is about gideon and kaworu.]

Not quite sure what I did, but... yeah. Of course. [she pauses, and her hand is still hovering around gideon's side, and she still just doesn't want to let go. instead, she thinks of something else. there's an actual question she wants to ask underneath it. it's too much to say outright.] So... do you still think that none of this shit is forever?

[ Anna tries to brush it off like what she did was nothing, like she doesn't know. Gideon knows how that game works. She's played every day for years, like a professional.

She slides her hands up to grab Anna's shoulders, and there's a new ferocity in Gideon's cloudy-gold eyes. Her jaw is set, like she's ready for a fight, or maybe even something tougher. ]

Come on. You know what you did. You have to. You're --

[ Gideon can't choke; that's not something corpses can do. Her voice falters anyway, buckling under the weight of honesty. ]

-- you're my sister. I never had one of those. You showed me what it was like to be better, and safe, and fuck. I'm not saying this right.

You never left. Not even when I tried to make you.

[ah.]

[that answers exactly what anna had been too afraid to say, and the lack of fear has nothing to do with gideon being a corpse. it has everything to do, anna thinks, with gideon being braver and stronger than anna could ever have been. to be open about her emotions, to say what she feels without drowning it in metaphor or mangled attempts at enneameter. she puts her hands on gideon's arms, just shy of her shoulders, and holds fast. (her face wants to crumple.)]

You're my sister, Gideon. [she doesn't correct herself. she doesn't know if she has to.] You were never going to get rid of me that easily, not even with how hard you tried. [she's not crumpling, or at least not all at once. she can keep this whole machine together even as she rattles herself towards an emotional cliff. promise.]

Even on my good days, I never really know where I stand on your dad, but I think I have a pretty good idea about you. 'Cause you're an awful lot like me when I was your age, and I guess... I just know what asking for help looks like. And a lot of times, it's a My Chemical Romance album and a stupid dick joke. [she sputters out a laugh as she gets through the last few words.] You fucker, you're making me cry.

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