epidemiology | when you strike with soul and quick precision

Entry tags:

when you strike with soul and quick precision

CHARACTERS: Giovanni Rammsteiner and Haise Sasaki
DATE: 01/12
WARNINGS: Blood, violence, manga battles, FEELINGS
SUMMARY: Giovanni wants to kill the Deemers for personal reasons, Haise wants to save them for personal reasons, manga battle ensues

[This isn't how the game usually goes. There's no electric crackle of laughter or a smile that's knife-bright and empty, no, instead his face is set and cold and splattered with red. it's a serious business, suddenly, something that cuts so close to the bone that it penetrates, sinks in deep, and all through his head there are thoughts and feelings that spin and whirl and burn. The sound is thunderous, ringing in his ears and through his skull and reverberating right down to the core of him like it'll shake loose the snatched parts of himself that make him who he is, separate him from muscle and bone and metal once and for all.

He'd said this wasn't about him, but that of course is a lie and this, if anything, is the closest thing he's done since he arrived here that has only himself at its centre. To be left without memories, to be nothing more than an empty shell of the self you once were-- well. It's something he knows, a fear that plagues him always even here and he doesn't want it for himself and perhaps he can't stop it ultimately, but he can stop this. Can do what needs to be done.

It's with a methodical kind of brutality, then, that he hunts out Deemers now, kills them swiftly and coolly without a second thought, his face a blank mask but his insides whirring. He'll kill them all if he can, every last one, consequences be damned.

If a fellow recruit wanted to find him, all they'd have to do is follow the trail of blood.]

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[During their conversation over their ALASTAIR-issued devices, Haise had the sinking suspicion that Giovanni had come to a grim determination. The lack of answer only twists that concern further in, settling in his gut with the same uneasy weight he'd felt far too many times in the past. It's enough to compel him to scout around, hoping to prove his unease wrong rather than right, but a part of him acknowledges that he has a better chance of being unfortunately correct.

They both identified with the circumstances of the Deemers in radically different ways, and because of that, they had disparate stances on what should be done about them. Talk of choices and a lack thereof had ultimately resolved to the scent of blood on the air, fresh and ostensibly alien.

By now, Haise isn't unfamiliar with that smell; not human, but Qorral.

The blood and corpses strewn about as he follows that scent lead him to just the person he'd expected, soon enough. Haise closes distance in time to shove a Qorral woman aside before Giovanni can kill her, the blow glancing off of him harmlessly. Grey eyes narrow, the hilt of his sword-like quinque grasped tightly in one hand. The slim, tapered crimson blade looks right at home amid so much blood and death]

I told you before. You don't get to make this choice for them — or the rest of us.

[It surprises him, almost. The sudden insinuation of another body where the Deemer ought to be, the woman stumbling and almost falling as she's shoved from Giovanni's line of fire, catching herself at the last moment before attempting to rush away. Behind orange lenses Giovanni's own eyes narrow, diamond-bright slithers that - unseen by Haise - radiate a cold determination that punches through all the usual indifference in him. His head is a cave full of thoughts that twist and slither and burn.

He barely spares the other recruit a glance before he's turning, however, locks on to the escaping woman's position and takes aim. Pulls both triggers even as the words leave his mouth.]

And yet you're in a position to do so, are you? All of you-- you have no idea what it means.

[His voice is full of steel.]

[Giovanni's movements declare his actions before he makes them, and it gives Haise just enough time to react. Unable to place himself between his associate and his intended target again, he's left with just one option. Before the bullets can hit their mark, red spikes lance their way out of the ground, creating a barrier to shield the Qorral woman's retreating form and obscuring Giovanni's line of sight.

Whether Giovanni notices that those red spikes seem to originate from Haise's back or the way one of his eyes has turned red-on-black first isn't something that he can anticipate. The reaction is something he can guess at, and maybe he'll be right this time. Haise knows that he's faster than a human is, but nothing quite matches up to his kagune, and so there's nothing for it]

Is that right? [A pause as he casually cracks one of his knuckles. Today sure is something] Perhaps if you explained it instead of engaging in slaughter.

[He turns then, and his face - usually so blank and careful, corners pulled tight like a clean white sheet - is contorted into a snarl, something fierce and bloodied and filled with too much feeling. The mask he wears, it's slipping, cracked and fissured, coming undone.

His movements are unnaturally fast as he whips up both pistols smoothslick, aims for Haise and fires. He goes for the head-- no messing around.]

This is all there is.

[Shots to the face could be a problem for Haise, if he's hit in the right places. It's something he's very aware of, expressed by a twitch of his fingers, but he doesn't do more than tip his head to avoid the problem. One bullet hits his cheek, another his throat, and both drop to the sand, flattened as though they'd struck armor instead of skin.

Haise rolls his shoulders, but he doesn't budge, concerned with ensuring that Giovanni's potential targets escape safely first]

Can't say I agree.

[He picks at the frayed edge of his collar, the one thing his associate's bullet did cut into]

If you're so set on this...you'll have to get through me first.

[Unexpected, and Giovanni's head tilts slightly to one side in a manner that may have been reminiscent of a curious dog if it weren't for the ironhard set of his jaw, the Qorral blood painting his face in a grisly mask. But he'd seen it, that turning away, the moment of subtle avoidance and at least he has a better idea, now, of where to aim.

Look sharp, now. He's a very good shot.]

That can certainly be arranged.

[[And he's lunging forward then, pulls the triggers, bullets on a trajectory level with Haise's eyes.]

[It comes as no surprise that Giovanni is perceptive. Having seen him in action, Haise wouldn't be much of an investigator if he'd failed to notice the way his associate evaluates opponents, much less how swiftly he does so. That's troublesome for him, but he's accustomed to foes who know his weak points because they have the same ones.

His hearing tells him that the Qorral woman has fled safely out of range, so his kagune retreats back into the ground, only to snap back up between him and Giovanni. Red, serpentine appendages swat those bullets like offending mosquitoes as he pivots off to one side, far from willing to provide the other man a stationary target]

You'll have to be quicker than that.

[And already, his kagune whips around to strike at Giovanni's hands — or rather, the pistols he's holding, movement swift enough that the average onlooker would catch a blur of crimson at best]

[A pity, but he isn't dissuaded. Far from it. Instead, his lips spreads wide in a rictus grin, a strange empty shape that his mouth makes almost as though pulled by strings, like whatever emotion lies behind it is something quite divorced from the act itself. He's diving to the side even as that haunted house expression ghosts across his face, his own movements flowing like water in an attempt to evade those alien-looking tendrils.]

Lucky for you, I'm more than happy to oblige.

[He'll attempt to dash around and then in, firing off another round of bullets as he goes.]

[It's an expression Haise has seen before, though only in his nightmares, waking and not. Kaneki had worn such smiles, and he'd been menaced with that presence, and the lingering, heavy memory of it. But the face of his past was far more unsettling than seeing that look on Giovanni, his own expression set in grim determination in response to that hollowed smile.

He snaps into motion when more bullets come his way, jerking aside to avoid them as he brings his quinque up, leveling the slim blade between them]

Good to hear it.

[Since Giovanni strafes around him rather than building distance, his kagune follows suit, darting after him in flickering lashes of red. It may be apparent as he circles around to match his associate's movement that he's not attempting anything lethal. His kagune swipes at his guns, his arms, his shoulders — either disarming, or a distraction]

[Lashes that he will, for the most part, evade-- his movements are swift and precise and terrifyingly focused, all his resolve honed down into each act as though something great depends on it. And in a way, it does. All of this, what it means, the thorny tangle in his head where everything clashes together and begins to merge until there's no way out of it, it all boils down to this. The terror or slow unstoppable erasure, it presses on him even now.

He can't prevent his own fate, perhaps, but he can erase it here. Do what no-one has managed to do for him, yet. What he hopes they will do, when the time comes.

As it stands, he'll keep circling in closer, closest, until finally the guns are discarded and he hurls himself across the distance between them. Means to fling the other man to the ground, to get him down beneath him, to gouge his fingers into his eyes.]

[As Giovanni draws closer, Haise can only question the thought process behind it. The fate of these people strikes a chord with both of them, and he's aware of that, but for a gunman to choose close range there's recklessness or confidence involved. It might be an amalgamation of both, he suspects, but he doesn't try to move away when Giovanni lunges at him.

In fact, it's something he uses. His kagune abruptly drops its assault, limbs switching task from lashing to instead seize at Giovanni's arms and waist. Haise still holds his sword-like quinque between them, some thin red barrier that does nothing at this range, but he's relying on his kagune to catch Giovanni — to stop him.

And appropriate to something that looks serpentine but for its livid shade of red, that part of him is strong. It can punch through steel and concrete and it could toss the average man like a rag-doll. As for whether he can restrain Giovanni, he won't know till he finds out.

But there's a strange lack of nervousness in him, even when his associate's hands reach for his face. Like any other threat, it simply pales to the knowledge that Arima could do worse if he had a mind to]

Edited (redundancy begone) 2016-12-27 08:55 (UTC)

[Recklessness and confidence both, perhaps, considering that he's far more than just a gunman, that his aptitude at close range fighting is - usually - just as high and fierce and precise. His own strength is a terrible thing, enough to punch through flesh and muscle and bone, and when those livid red tendrils reach for him he'll do his best to rip away from them, to tear and rend in any way he can.

Because it seems imperative that he do this, that he pin Haise down and tear him apart, that he prevent anything from standing in his way of this, as though somehow it would change things for him, make them better. His head is a black hole, it's edges gaping and raw, and the only thing that fills him now is the need for this to end, for everything to end in exactly the way he wants it.

Whether he's capable of tearing loose of the other man's hold on him remains to be seen, but he'll keep trying and struggling and thrashing until he's bodily prevented from moving.]

[It quickly becomes obvious that Giovanni is willing to fight tooth and nail against him, but Haise isn't about to relent. When there are lives on the line like this and the air's already thick with Qorral blood, there's no way that he'd just give up now. He wonders, briefly, if Giovanni is something not quite human, something more or other than that, but the thought is a fleeting one.

He bends his focus on stopping him, and when Giovanni continues struggling, he changes tactics. His kagune whips around to seize the other man by his ankles, hauling him up into the air to hang upside-down. If the same rules apply for Giovanni as most others, it ought to be harder for him to fight, that way.

It's a weight he isn't accustomed to supporting on any long-term basis, but nothing he can't handle]

I'm lucky you gave up the guns.

[Haise remarks with a casual crack of a knuckle and tip of his head]

[Something not quite human. It's a description that fits, made as he was in the black underbelly of a city so corrupt there is no saving it, something both less and more than his human counterparts. And it shows, perhaps, in the way he responds to the sudden lurch and lift, to the unexpected sensation of finding himself caught up by the ankles and raised off the ground, to hanging unnaturally upside down.

That strength, you see, has it's uses. The way violence consumes him now, his inimical desires pushing him forward until there is nothing else left but the blackredblack of bloodlust staining his vision, the desire to end something abominable in his own eyes at the cost of all else-- it won't let him stop. He should have kept hold of the guns perhaps, but his thoughts are a quagmire of fear and anger in equal parts, and he'll use the unnatural strength he possesses to pull himself up from his own core, try latching onto the thing that restrains him with nails and teeth. Bare down on it like the dog he is.

He fully intends to rip Haise apart.]

[It's the first time anyone has actually tried to bite his kagune, to Haise's recollection, and it's a bizarre experience. There comes a dull sting, because that is a part of him, and he bites down a hiss that sounds almost a little too feral in its nature. He doesn't take long to decide he'd rather Giovanni not bite and claw at his predatory organ. It may be akin to biting into a snake.

Rather than let go, Haise's kagune jerks from side to side to shake Giovanni's grip on him loose. Letting him drop right about now would just lead to protracted fighting, and assuredly more Qorral deaths. He's endured far worse than this, and it's better than the alternative. Allowing that slaughter to continue would hurt far more]

You've got this backwards.

[Someone close enough to human biting a ghoul... Well, a half-ghoul. Nevertheless the irony remains]

[He tries to keep his purchase, digs in with nails and teeth as fiercely and as savagely as he's able, but it's a hard thing to do in the wake of being shaken about, his position already precarious. Haise keeps shaking and eventually his grip fails, leaves him hanging by the ankles and shaken until he can feel it echoing down through his bones and along his Spine and up into his racing head, like the thoughts and the feelings and even the fight in him is being thrashed away, bit by bit.

Eventually his body goes limp and boneless in the grasp of that 'predatory organ', breath snatched away and sunglasses falling to the ground.]

[Haise's kagune stops flicking about once Giovanni seems to settle down. He could just be playing dead, a common tactic to get one's guard down, but there's nothing for that but to wait and watch. Whether he was done trying to grapple with him would remain to be seen, but he does turn his attention away to bend and pick up his associate's sunglasses and dust them off.

Without asking or looking he knows Giovanni isn't dead, or in any mortal peril. He can will imagine that hanging upside-down is uncomfortable, but it's the best means available to neutralize him for the moment, short of employing restraints. And as they're equals, he'd rather not utilize something that in some respects suggests otherwise.

His mismatched eyes linger on those sunglasses briefly before he offers them up. With any luck, Giovanni's done biting and clawing at him]

Here.

[He's not dead, no, nor playing it. Though when the shaking stops he continues to hang there limply like something lifeless and empty, or perhaps like something that never contained life at all. A puppet with it's strings cut, slack and devoid of all motion.

Internally, though, there's a feeling like something's splitting open in him, a wound so wide it can never be healed and his thoughts, they spin and rattle and burn. It hurts. There's a pain behind his eyes and right down at the core of him that has nothing to do with the way he'd been bodily shaken, nor with the discomfort that comes with being held up by his ankles now. It's something different, something bigger than that, and if he keeps so still it's only to prevent himself from flying apart.

There's a pause when Haise holds out the glasses, a stillness so complete one would be forgiven for thinking that Giovanni may never move again, but eventually he does reach out to take them. Slides them back onto his face, concealing the gaping abyss behind his eyes.]

Thank you.

[His voice, when it finally comes, is very quiet. Very still.]

[Slowly, Haise sinks to sit where he is, so as not to jostle Giovanni any further. It's one thing to get the man to stop attacking his kagune, and it's another to become excessive, and he'll avoid the latter as best he can. The look in those eyes is something that he takes note of, but feels he knows better than to comment upon. He's struck with the impression that he's looking at someone who feels lost, and not in the simplest sense of the word.

There's something distinctly sad about finding that, underneath the sharp-edged smiles and violence. It only makes Giovanni a more human figure to him, though he knows that this too is something he ought not say]

It's my fault they fell off.

[He admits simply after a short bout of silence. His left eye has reverted to something passably human again, no longer angry red on black, with the uneasy calm that's settled between them now. At this point, he can no longer hear the footfalls of retreating Qorral]

These people...they're not me. And they're not you.

[Whatever they think or feel, that fact remains]

[Even after Haise speaks, there are long drawn-out moments where Giovanni makes no response at all, continuing to hang there like something devoid of all life, a clockwork toy who's mechanism has ground to a halt. One would be forgiven for thinking him irreparably broken, incapable of further comment or action-- it's a difficult thing, to drag himself free of the mire inside his own head, the crippling terror and acute pain that fills him now that the violence has stopped. What is there without it, after all? Too much, and it all comes flooding in like a deluge upon him, a terrible crushing weight.

He takes one breath, two, in-out, as though this simple act can hold together all the fractured parts of himself that are threatening to unravel now like so much frayed rope and gunsmoke and peeling tape. That's what he feels like sometimes, such intangible things, coming undone at the seams.

When he does speak, finally, his voice is a dry rasping creak.]

It's not right...what's happening to them, it's a thing that shouldn't be. It's the worst thing...to lose everything like that...it's the worst thing...

[The next breath he takes, it's unsteady]

[In his life, Haise has learned to be patient. And he thinks, if he's not being too presumptuous, he can tell the difference between an empty silence and a full one. He suspects that it's the latter when Giovanni remains quiet and still, though he knows only so little of him. It's what he interprets of that stillness, a theory that is proven correct when the other man does speak again, after such time has crawled slowly on past them.

He doesn't look down or away, though it's clear that a part of him wants to, choreographed in the uneasy shift of his weight. Still, he continues to look up at him, the end product of the very thing that Giovanni describes]

I think...it's a thing that's already happened to them.

[The words come softly, without so long a pause in-between. Because he thinks it bears answering in its moment]

So what you're deciding...what I think we can't dictate...is whether whoever remains deserves to exist.

[Even though they're not the same person anymore. Someone like him, in some respects, though not in every sense — whether that deserves a shot at living, or making some kind of self-determination]

[And yes he remembers what Haise had said, that he's something like them, stripped of all memory and meaning until he'd made a new reality for himself, but it's something that's hard for him to grasp, or perhaps even care to. He can't imagine it, doesn't want it, all those small broken things that make him what he is, the only things that have ever belonged to him, a clutch of pathetic little memories of a time when things were just as bad but also somehow less so for the company he'd kept, for that small extension of friendship.

Lily's smile. Heine's protective strength back then. They're things he doesn't want to live without.

And it's different for him, might be different for these people too-- there'll be no opporunity to create afresh, only the slipping on of that dark dogshaped hood as he's carelessly thrown away against some unforgiving enemy, something - in all likeliness - much as he is now.

It's too much. Too much to bear or consider.]

Why would anyone want to exist like that...all the parts of them stripped away until there's nothing left, it's a cruelty beyond anything else. It isn't right. I don't want it. I don't want that. If someone would just end it before it comes...

[His breath catches, a shattered sound.]

[Why would they? It's not a question that Haise can answer, from the end of amnesia that he rests on. He doesn't think it's something Kaneki wanted exactly, and his own internal struggles tell him that continues to be a fact, but in that he may differ from the Deemers. And he may differ from Giovanni too. The person he was didn't vanish, not entirely, which is a truth he's shared with no one among their ranks.

On occasion, he's wondered if perhaps Olivia knows. Her intuition is something he's simultaneously grateful for and afraid of, and as such he's never ventured to ask. It was enough to know that she acknowledged both him and Kaneki without devaluing either. A standing first and only.

He folds his hands across his lap, looking down at them]

You don't remember what's lost, I suppose. I don't remember what it was like to be him.

[He refers to Kaneki as a separate entity, because so far as he's concerned (and so far as the Kaneki in his mind is), they are separate in everything but body. Though he inevitably takes responsibility for the moments in which he loses himself and becomes someone not-quite-him, it remains the case that he's in conflict with that other identity, a voice which continues to insist that only one of them might continue existing. A voice that at once calls him parasitic and implores his protection]

Is it happening to you now?

[Forgetting, losing himself? Haise is sure that the process was swift for Kaneki, the abrupt nature of it leading to his unique set of circumstances. What he was isn't lost entirely, but it's only a shadowy threat to his own tenuous existence now]

[You don't remember what's lost. Don't remember what it's like to be him. But there's terror in that, even if it's not something he thinks could ever happen to him, doesn't think he'd live that long. The thought that someone else would grow in his place, take over after he'd fallen away into nothing-- it sickens him. Makes his head spin and his stomach lurch with a visceral kind of rejection.

But the question comes, and again there's a long drawn-out moment of heavy silence. It's not something he's spoken of, not to anyone, and although there are those who know (or at least, one who knows, the one who did this to him to begin with and yet whom commands his loyalty and bonedeep devotion even now), it's still an intensely private thing. A solitary misery.

It's a weight like no other, carrying it around inside of him, knowing that he's going to fall apart, feeling it each time some small part of him falls away into nothing, leaving him reduced and diminished one tiny increment at a time. How much of himself has he already lost? He doesn't know, but there are black holes in his memory now, conspicuous spaces where once there was something solid and real. It frightens him beyond anything else.

In this moment, at least, the weight of it on him, the burden that crushes like a hand clasped right around his lungs, slowly squeezing the life out of him-- it's too much to bear.]

...Yes. Little by little, it's all just slipping away.

[And it's a strange thing, to say it out loud. To hear it in his own rasping voice. Startling and sickening and grounding, all at once. It may have stopped since ALASTAIR's intervention, but he knows it's waiting to slip back in again, to finish breaking him apart, the moment he leaves here.]

[Haise had a small taste of what it was to forget, the last time they were in Oska. It's not the same, but he remembers looking back on a void where he'd been someone else, someone he hadn't been in years. Olivia had told him Kaneki was there in his place, confused and afraid. It's not the same, he knows it, but it lets him imagine.

There's a difference between looking at one's past and finding a looming void and looking at the future and seeing the same thing. He knows what it is to have an uncertain future, fighting desperately for the right to exist, to prove himself worthwhile enough to keep. The core of that, the desperation — maybe that's the part they really share, more than anything else.

It's strange to think on, and he turns the notion about in silence for a time. Another long pause amid so many others. When he does look up at last, he's clearly assessing, looking past his reflection in Giovanni's sunglasses]

...If it becomes necessary...if that's really what you want...I'll take care of you.

[He phrases it that way, if only because he knows what it is to be associated with a figure he sees as certain death. Being told he'd be killed plainly, bluntly, coldly... There was no comfort in it. Only terror. If their skirmish here says anything, Haise may be capable of doling out the kind of mercy Giovanni thinks he wants, even if he doesn't agree with it.

Disagreement doesn't mean he'd deny him the right to decide, and yet—]

But ALASTAIR is capable of many things. If you want the insurance, I can... [Put an end to him, if ever he slips that far] but in the meantime, you're a fighter. So fight it.

[Tooth and nail, he's seen him do as much today]

We've got more means on our side than either of us has surely ever imagined back home. That means the possibility exists.

[Silence punctuates their discussion almost as poignantly as the words themselves, and once again Giovanni lapses into one of those silences as Haise makes his offer. It's not what he wants, to be put down and out of an ever increasing misery whilst worlds away from home, when there are still things left to be said between he and Heine. It's Heine's hands he wants to feel crushing down on his skull at the end, tearing him apart. Letting him rest, finally.

Something that should have been done all that time ago, back then, before he became the thing he is now.

But there's still something in it. Still something worth holding on to should ALASTAIR's grip on him slide, should whatever they've done to prevent him from falling into further ruin somehow come undone. A dissatisfactory end, to leave home and history behind and die on some alien world alone, but better than the alternative. Better than becoming an empty shell of himself. Anything is preferable to that.

And so in some small way he knows he needs to acknowledge what's being offered to him. The only form of salvation he has left-- it's no small thing.]

It's not something one can fight, this...

[A vague gesture as he hangs there limply, made towards his head.]

And they've stopped it for now, put it on hold but...I can't stay here forever. I need to get back. To face the final act.

[His voice is still a quiet, crumbling thing.]

But if it fails, what they've done to me. If I start loosing parts of myself again. Then, yes. That's what I want. Before there's nothing left.

I have someone around to stop me if I lose myself.

[One length of his kagune twitches, a tendril that isn't holding Giovanni, in some semblance of a wave. It seems unfair that only one of them should say anything about himself, and he doesn't want Giovanni to be concerned that he'll repeat any part of this conversation. As he has no doubt the other man has noticed his avoidance of showing this part of his anatomy, it can surely go without saying that it's not something he tends to make others aware of. And so, it's one secret for another. Fair trade.

He doesn't elaborate on what losing himself means, exactly, instead carefully lowering his associate so the man can get to his feet if he likes. It's been long enough with him hanging upside down, and the Qorral were long gone from this area by now]

It's not the same...but I understand the benefit of having that insurance.

[Just in case. For Haise it's less of an inevitability and more of a worst-case scenario. He'd forget just long enough to cause damage he couldn't undo, and that's a frightening notion for him: being a ravening monster just long enough to kill someone, and regaining his mental faculties to deal with the aftermath. It's not something he wants to explore.

Despite knowing what he is, and what he can become, he wants to live. He wants to continue existing, however long he can, and so...]

I don't know what you have to go back to [and he has his own unfinished business, so he thinks] but maybe you should stay for a while, if the option presents itself. If it's as though we never left when we return, you could have a long time here, before facing that. It's worth considering.

[The way Arima looks at him, Haise wonders what happens to him, down the line. It's enough to make him wonder if he isn't better off staying where he is]

Edited 2017-01-12 04:44 (UTC)

[He takes it in, on some level. What Haise is trying to do, give him something back for the words that creak and crackle from him now when he isn't quite able to stop them and yet it's hard to focus on that, to fully appreciate the weight of it. Not whilst he feels as though he's steadily fracturing as surely as if his memories were still splintering away. It's a different kind of broken, but it's broken nonetheless.

And then Haise lowers him finally, back finding the dusty solidity of this alien soil, and when the other Audente releases him completely Giovanni moves to sit with his legs drawn up, but makes no move to stand. Not yet. And there's nothing of violence in his bearing now, no sign that he'll pick up his guns and continue the hunt, kill the rest of those pitiable souls who've already found the fate that awaits him, or something like it. It's all gone out of him, and for the moment there's only an aching expanse of emptiness. His own bleak twisting thoughts.

He doesn't look at Haise, keeps his eyes on the dirt as he slowly shakes his head.]

I can't stay here. I can't stay with ALASTAIR. It's not my place and even if my world waits for me, I still have to bear it. The absence of everything. The kind of living you're talking about...it's not for me.

[Not for him... Haise wonders about that. He thinks maybe the notion is too new right now, especially when Giovanni's emotions seem raw. Maybe with time he might reconsider that, and so he doesn't regret having made the suggestion. It's the sort of notion that would take time to digest, far from an easy matter to make a decision on, but it might be better than going back home too soon.

From the sounds of it, he'd benefit from having the time to live without that fear looming overhead. In a different way, Haise has appreciated being free of the terror that comes with his own reality, though he acknowledges the eventuality of returning to it]

It might be worth considering, all the same.

[At this time, he doesn't think that they're going to have much more to say on the subject, but it was worth saying. Having a future like that to return to isn't something that Giovanni should feel he has no options but to face immediately. For all they know, they might find an answer to his condition that extends beyond his status as a recruit to ALASTAIR. The universe is far more vast than many of them had imagined it to be.

As silence settles in, Haise's kagune retreats behind him, breaking down and dissipating until nothing remains]

None of us may belong here, but that doesn't mean something positive couldn't come of it.

[And it's true, in that respect there isn't much more to be said, at least not in this moment. His head is a brambly mire, too tangled and thorny for such sentiments to sink into, though the seed of suggestion has been tossed down; whether it'll find a space amidst the dark thicket of his thoughts to take root and grow remains to be seen.

For now there's only the yawning ache of that perceived future, something he struggles to imagine existing outside of even whilst so far removed from it-- it had been too long in the making, something branded down into his bones, the reckoning with Heine and his ultimate demise as a result of it the only thing that's been driving him for years and years and years. To create something else for himself now seems an impossibility.

He doesn't know how to explain it, not really. His self-awareness is too shaky a thing for concrete explanations, for a clear outline of his feelings to take shape. But there's something cracked-open and vulnerable about him in this moment that leads him to try.]

I just have to get back. For the final act...there's something I need to do. All this waiting around...it's painful.

[Under normal circumstances, Haise knows what he'd do in a situation like this. Here and now he isn't so sure, lips pressed into a thin, pensive line. Giovanni reminds him of someone in a number of ways, but that doesn't mean that he's quite sure how to approach him. In some respects the two of them have circumstances in common, and yet the differences are enough to make him hesitant. He's the end product of all that Giovanni ultimately dreads, or one prospective end product.

Who could say whether some other identity would surface in this man, were he to disappear?

But his wishes are clear, and Haise won't forget it. He hopes he never has need to deliver on his word, to destroy someone who in this moment seems so broken and frail, cracked glass that just might crumble if he were to touch it. Might cut, for that matter — he holds no illusions that vulnerability is the same as weakness]

Maybe...you shouldn't let it be a matter of waiting.

[He suggests, and despite his concerns, he slowly reaches out to place a hand on the other man's shoulder. Maybe right now he could use a little human touch, even if it's from a half-ghoul like him]

While you're here, nothing back home is going to pass you by. If you only ever live in a moment that hasn't come yet, you're missing all the ones that come before.

[The contact, it's unexpected. Briefly, Giovanni stiffens beneath the light press of Haise's hand, muscles jumping beneath the rumpled material of his suit and for a moment all the usual violence exists there in him, threatens to spill out on the tail end of those vulnerable words. Because yes< there's fragility here, but also there's the hard cold edges of what passes for his upbringing. The monster life has made of him.

The moment passes though, and instead of reaching up to try and snap the wrist that rests against him, instead of clacking teeth or an ironhard grip and an attempt to throw him off, Giovanni's shoulders slump beneath the pass of the other man's hand, turn passive and loose. The energy needed to put up a fight, it's gone out of him along with the burning need to hunt down the unfortunate individuals who share a fate similar to the one he sees stretching bleakly before him, some way off in a future that is - for now - out of his reach.

It's a strange thing, having someone else touch him in a way that's intended to be comforting after all these years without it-- it seems like the longest, longest time since he experienced that borrowed stability. So long ago that it feels like it happened to someone else. Almost, it burns him. Breaks him apart with longing.

And so again, there's only silence and the quiet sound of his breathing for several long aching moments, before he answers again in a voice that's almost small.]

I don't know how to do that. What you're suggesting.

[He lives in the past and the future, both. The present has always seemed a flat and empty thing, cut off from him by ghosts of those now dead and the shadowy spectre of what awaits him.]

[The way Giovanni seizes up under his touch isn't surprising to Haise. He'd anticipated some kind of retaliation was likely, and if anything, what he doesn't expect is the way that he goes limp instead. As though the fight's been drained out of him for the time being, or he's simply at a loss in the face of what's been suggested to him. It might even be a combination of both.

Haise doesn't expend his time speculating. Instead, he simply leaves his hand there a short while longer, some small source of warmth where Giovanni seems so thoroughly lost. They may not be the same in this, but such things had often been grounding for him, and come as a comfort when he'd felt adrift]

Then...I'll give you a hand with that. [Another brief pat to his shoulder to punctuate the statement, before he draws his hand away. Chances are, Giovanni can tolerate only so much, or such is his impression] I've got a lot more time than I'd expected to have, I might as well be useful.

[Said with a wry quirk of his lips, because in his own way, his own existence has often felt finite. Whether it's true or not remains to be seen, but he expects that the way Arima's behavior toward him is curiously softer than it has always been is indicative that something goes wrong. It may be that he's mistaken in this, but something about it nags at him, a faint scratching at the walls of his awareness that never quite falls silent]

[He doesn't really understand it-- Haise's extension of support, of something uncomfortably like kindness. Not when, only moments before, Giovanni had been prepared to tear him apart. Would have killed him, if he could. But he couldn't, and - defeated - all he can do is wonder at the other man's insistence. Why he'd bother with something like him.

Whatever the case, Haise judges correctly in the removal of his hand-- even like this, wiped clean of murderous intent and left passive in the wake of it, there's only so much physical contact he can bear. Only so much sympathy. It's too unaccustomed a thing for him to take easily, without reacting in the only way he knows how.

For the moment though, the slumped submissive posture remains, that bodily brokenness, and when Haise pulls away Giovanni neither looks up no reacts. He does answer though, and perhaps there are more arguments against what Haise is offering just beneath his cracked and fractured surface, but right now he has no energy to even put up that much of a fight. Words fail him. And so--]

All right.

[It's the best he can do.]

[The agreement may only come because Giovanni's not in a state to protest, but Haise holds onto that acknowledgement all the same. He'll do his best to hep in this respect, because he knows something of what it's like to be dominated too much by the past and future. What differs between them is that much of his own fear and dread are reserved for the past, rather than what lies ahead.

It's his past overtaking him that tends to eat at him, but it's enough that he can relate on some level. Even a small amount if enough; that's something he's come to believe in his time in the CCG]

I'm sure it will take time, but we're both stubborn enough.

[The words come with some gentle humor. He knows it isn't a simple matter, what he's suggesting... But he fully believes that it will do Giovanni good if they find a way. As much as anyone else, perhaps moreso because of what looms ahead where he's from, the man deserves to live out the present.

And maybe that future can change, once Giovanni stops waiting for it to take him]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

when you strike with soul and quick precision

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