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[Instead of taking the time to struggle free before explaining himself—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
fuckjingg
[Okay no that isn't working, hang on. After a slight pause to get Mochi out of his face and settled onto the bed—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
cat
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
fuckjingg
[Okay no that isn't working, hang on. After a slight pause to get Mochi out of his face and settled onto the bed—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
cat
[ ... Oh. OH. ]
FROM: misaka.mikoto@cdc.org
you have a cat?
[ You know what's a better topic? THIS. ]
FROM: misaka.mikoto@cdc.org
you have a cat?
[ You know what's a better topic? THIS. ]
[From moral outrage and impending doom to cats. Amazing.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
it belongs to one of my rovermates
[A fat and friendly housecat, and thus basically the opposite of a bahari. After somehow escaping the CDC's tendency to turn rovers into zoos for months, it's very weird.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
it belongs to one of my rovermates
[A fat and friendly housecat, and thus basically the opposite of a bahari. After somehow escaping the CDC's tendency to turn rovers into zoos for months, it's very weird.]
["Eating you alive" is incredibly unfortunate phrasing from his perspective. Please be more culturally sensitive, tbh.
It's really getting to him. A year of biting his tongue and bowing his head is getting to him. Eren feels very strongly, he wears his biases and his opinions on his sleeves, he has almost no emotional filter or armor when it really comes down to it. And even if it can drag him down some days, he's come to use that, weaponize it. What's wearing him down is not his hate. In the end, it boils down to being powerless. He can't stand it, can't abide it. There is nothing that he hates (or fears) more than being unable to change a damn thing while people are imprisoned, dying, while world crashes down around them.
He lets the messages ping one by one into his inbox until she's done—she's quick at it, and she likes to hear herself talk, he remembers from the few conversations they'd had before they'd put bad blood between them. She'd kept her distance, since then, and he hadn't gone out of his way to seek her out. It's gone on for months, because Vriska is proud and Eren is spiteful, and the friction that had sparked it was not petty to start.
He's not really mad at her anymore. He was not expecting an apology. It's unexpectedly candid and weirdly sort of sweet in a blunt way, and he doesn't quite have the social wherewithal to accept it gracefully. But he knocks his head back against the hull of his rover, huffs a breath out through his teeth. Takes a moment to expel his aggravation before he answers.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
I'm not on the list, Vriska
[What he means is I'll be fine. With a third of the crew getting tortured half to death, she probably has better places to expend her worry.]
It's really getting to him. A year of biting his tongue and bowing his head is getting to him. Eren feels very strongly, he wears his biases and his opinions on his sleeves, he has almost no emotional filter or armor when it really comes down to it. And even if it can drag him down some days, he's come to use that, weaponize it. What's wearing him down is not his hate. In the end, it boils down to being powerless. He can't stand it, can't abide it. There is nothing that he hates (or fears) more than being unable to change a damn thing while people are imprisoned, dying, while world crashes down around them.
He lets the messages ping one by one into his inbox until she's done—she's quick at it, and she likes to hear herself talk, he remembers from the few conversations they'd had before they'd put bad blood between them. She'd kept her distance, since then, and he hadn't gone out of his way to seek her out. It's gone on for months, because Vriska is proud and Eren is spiteful, and the friction that had sparked it was not petty to start.
He's not really mad at her anymore. He was not expecting an apology. It's unexpectedly candid and weirdly sort of sweet in a blunt way, and he doesn't quite have the social wherewithal to accept it gracefully. But he knocks his head back against the hull of his rover, huffs a breath out through his teeth. Takes a moment to expel his aggravation before he answers.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
I'm not on the list, Vriska
[What he means is I'll be fine. With a third of the crew getting tortured half to death, she probably has better places to expend her worry.]
FROM: hange.zoe@cdc.org
I checked the Medical stasis list earlier to make sure and you're right. I suppose we'll just come up and see her ourselves once we make it back.
FROM: hange.zoe@cdc.org
Also, understood. There's something... off about this. Be extra cautious, Eren.
I checked the Medical stasis list earlier to make sure and you're right. I suppose we'll just come up and see her ourselves once we make it back.
FROM: hange.zoe@cdc.org
Also, understood. There's something... off about this. Be extra cautious, Eren.
Edited 2015-05-15 03:07 (UTC)
[Cautious. Well, he'll...try. Whatever's going on, it's giving the CDC brass trouble too, and that's worth figuring out. They need to survive it, first.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
You too, Commander.
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
You too, Commander.
[Not a bad assumption, on the Honey front.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
about time they show their faces to answer for it
[The punishment list. Everything else. In some ways, it can't bode well that the brass is getting involved. For all their cagey ways, the instructors are more a known quantity to them than the CDC proper. But hell, maybe things will finally change, after a year of little to no ground gained, or mysterious solved. They don't know much about HQ. They can't find answers in isolation, either.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
about time they show their faces to answer for it
[The punishment list. Everything else. In some ways, it can't bode well that the brass is getting involved. For all their cagey ways, the instructors are more a known quantity to them than the CDC proper. But hell, maybe things will finally change, after a year of little to no ground gained, or mysterious solved. They don't know much about HQ. They can't find answers in isolation, either.]
[Yeah, yeah, indeed. It's the sort of crap he's gotten used to hearing from Warriorhead, about what Orange is meant to do in the grand scheme of the crew. (Watch and listen and put it together. Find your own answers instead of expecting simple responses to your questions.) In some ways, Eren's gotten better at biting back his kneejerk reactions, trying to see between the lines instead of brute force through them. But progress is...slow. Some things are constant.
So it takes some burning out of his frustrations for him to feel his way around that question. Do they have choices, quotas, appearances or orders? What about this isn't normal.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
they didn't apologize before
[Not usually, not that he can remember. Not the last time this happened. Not when Gliese threw Vriska into a mountain, or when Optimus was killed.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
what do you think he meant by hero types
[Maybe Hinata doesn't know Dagger any better than he does. But Eren's brief personal contact with him doesn't leave him with a lot to work with.]
So it takes some burning out of his frustrations for him to feel his way around that question. Do they have choices, quotas, appearances or orders? What about this isn't normal.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
they didn't apologize before
[Not usually, not that he can remember. Not the last time this happened. Not when Gliese threw Vriska into a mountain, or when Optimus was killed.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
what do you think he meant by hero types
[Maybe Hinata doesn't know Dagger any better than he does. But Eren's brief personal contact with him doesn't leave him with a lot to work with.]
[this is really cute, Hinata, what the heck]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
a few days
[He's actually pretty aggravated about it. Armin had been in stasis when they left Ajna, and then he'd disappeared off the crew.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
before the evac call went out
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
a few days
[He's actually pretty aggravated about it. Armin had been in stasis when they left Ajna, and then he'd disappeared off the crew.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
before the evac call went out
[he feels awful he hadn't noticed sooner; only on doing a cuff-check and keeping eyes peeled for specific peoples did he find her laying prone in medical, silent and still and looking not near as strong as he knew she was.]
[a point of anxiety amid the rest.]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
Like the others? No obvious reason?
[a point of anxiety amid the rest.]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
Like the others? No obvious reason?
Edited 2015-05-18 05:21 (UTC)
[The answer comes blunt and brief.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
no
[No clear reason. There hardly ever is, when people vanish to stasis, but he knows Mikasa's no pushover.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
no
[No clear reason. There hardly ever is, when people vanish to stasis, but he knows Mikasa's no pushover.]
[silence.]
[there hardly ever is. a reason for this, a reason for that, a reason for who or why or where. no point in asking, possibly no point in knowing, and it was scary and it was nerve-wrecking but it is tiring, and exhausting, and the ones left behind become more and more the focus. he isn't sure he likes that. comas, many returned from: Green, Tony Stark, Parker. the feeling of detachment arising on spotting them, on oh, it's too late, I'm sorry for your loss--- that wasn't comfortable. lack of sympathy became a growing concern.]
[as of yet, however, she wasn't lost to them. but if she was...]
[he wanted to know. her love - was it matched?]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
You 2 have been together for years, right?
[there hardly ever is. a reason for this, a reason for that, a reason for who or why or where. no point in asking, possibly no point in knowing, and it was scary and it was nerve-wrecking but it is tiring, and exhausting, and the ones left behind become more and more the focus. he isn't sure he likes that. comas, many returned from: Green, Tony Stark, Parker. the feeling of detachment arising on spotting them, on oh, it's too late, I'm sorry for your loss--- that wasn't comfortable. lack of sympathy became a growing concern.]
[as of yet, however, she wasn't lost to them. but if she was...]
[he wanted to know. her love - was it matched?]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
You 2 have been together for years, right?
[It's scary. Frustrating. Because sickness is not an enemy he can defend her from. Transfer is not a monster he can bare his teeth against in any real meaningful way.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
since we were kids
[Since her family was killed and she'd come to live with the Jaegers, a year before the wall fell. And they'd been parted very infrequently, since, for better or for worse. Eren and Mikasa are...complicated. Maybe the way he loves her is not quite the same, and the way he shows it is not nearly as clear, but there are things that you cannot live through and come out of without strong bonds. They'd hit that point long before Shiganshina fell. It is fierce, and it is important, even if it is not always pretty.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
since we were kids
[Since her family was killed and she'd come to live with the Jaegers, a year before the wall fell. And they'd been parted very infrequently, since, for better or for worse. Eren and Mikasa are...complicated. Maybe the way he loves her is not quite the same, and the way he shows it is not nearly as clear, but there are things that you cannot live through and come out of without strong bonds. They'd hit that point long before Shiganshina fell. It is fierce, and it is important, even if it is not always pretty.]
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
I know!
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
Don't make this weird.
[ She's the one who made it weird... ]
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
I guess I just wanted to say that stuff.
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
8efore I fucked it all up, I thought of you as a friend. And I guess that hasn't really changed, at least for me.
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
That was all I really had to say.
I know!
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
Don't make this weird.
[ She's the one who made it weird... ]
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
I guess I just wanted to say that stuff.
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
8efore I fucked it all up, I thought of you as a friend. And I guess that hasn't really changed, at least for me.
FROM: serket.vriska@cdc.org
That was all I really had to say.
[they were both incredibly blunt-minded people. rather, the three of them were blunt-minded people, for all they may or may not have worked at changing. it worsened in collaboration; at its absolute worst, when the need to know was all there was, it became:]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
It sounds like she'd fight for you to her last breath. She loves you, I think.
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
It sounds like she'd fight for you to her last breath. She loves you, I think.
[She would. Because she's a comrade, because she's family. Because she's Mikasa. and she's a pest and she's good at what she does, even when he doesn't ask it of her, or want it from her.
After something of a pause.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
we'd be dead without each other
[It's not a romantic notion, or a dramatic one. It's just true, a thousand times over. But she's not a topic most people dare to broach to him, it's not something he's very good at handling gracefully, most of the time. They don't understand each other, they'd barely even be friends, in another life, but she's unconscious in medical right now and the loud absence is grating on his nerves. And it's entirely possible this conversation would have tipped more causally if she wasn't. He raps his knuckles restlessly against the keyboard before following that up with—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
do you need something
After something of a pause.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
we'd be dead without each other
[It's not a romantic notion, or a dramatic one. It's just true, a thousand times over. But she's not a topic most people dare to broach to him, it's not something he's very good at handling gracefully, most of the time. They don't understand each other, they'd barely even be friends, in another life, but she's unconscious in medical right now and the loud absence is grating on his nerves. And it's entirely possible this conversation would have tipped more causally if she wasn't. He raps his knuckles restlessly against the keyboard before following that up with—]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
do you need something
Edited 2015-05-18 10:15 (UTC)
[never had they apologized. Gliese had for a few of the softer spoken people after the mission-related deaths, he thinks--- but maybe he'd imagined it. he'd have to look back. later, later.]
[right now:]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
People who still care
[had to be. still, because who knew what changed a few people's minds. Kotetsu, Peter Parker, those who had once told him they were heroes: he didn't know if they were planning, but the lack of even a whisper made him think not. it could be another case of him not being bright enough to pick up on it, but-- as always, he hoped not.]
[except he should've hoped so. should've. smart people silenced whispers. selfishness: human, irrational, petty. not the point.]
[frustration bit too deep to drop it. think. hero types. those angered, those frustrated, those who say senseless pain and felt they couldn't do a thing about it...]
[breathe. think.]
Those with morals and those who see this as senseless and think they can change it and maybe get themselves killed by trying to change it. Isn't that what heroes do?
[right now:]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
People who still care
[had to be. still, because who knew what changed a few people's minds. Kotetsu, Peter Parker, those who had once told him they were heroes: he didn't know if they were planning, but the lack of even a whisper made him think not. it could be another case of him not being bright enough to pick up on it, but-- as always, he hoped not.]
[except he should've hoped so. should've. smart people silenced whispers. selfishness: human, irrational, petty. not the point.]
[frustration bit too deep to drop it. think. hero types. those angered, those frustrated, those who say senseless pain and felt they couldn't do a thing about it...]
[breathe. think.]
Those with morals and those who see this as senseless and think they can change it and maybe get themselves killed by trying to change it. Isn't that what heroes do?
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
No... Sorry, it's just about that.
[was it cruel timing? possibly. Eren's text answers so may questions he hadn't known he'd wanted to ask; as such, it followed one of the few things he had left to say (a few more to ask, but wasn't it cruel timing):]
She's really incredable. It's always a sad situation when a person doesn't return the same level of feelings, you know? I had to see if it was a situation like that.
No... Sorry, it's just about that.
[was it cruel timing? possibly. Eren's text answers so may questions he hadn't known he'd wanted to ask; as such, it followed one of the few things he had left to say (a few more to ask, but wasn't it cruel timing):]
She's really incredable. It's always a sad situation when a person doesn't return the same level of feelings, you know? I had to see if it was a situation like that.
[Mikasa's a prodigy, she's a skilled soldier. She's strong. He isn't entirely self aware of his relationships, but he knows that. He relies on it, resents it sometimes. He isn't surprised to hear that kind of observation from Hinata. The rest—
The world is cruel. If this were a face to face conversation, his body language would have closed up a while ago.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
like what
The world is cruel. If this were a face to face conversation, his body language would have closed up a while ago.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
like what
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
She describes you like family, but I mean
[since we were kids and taken in weren't necessarily exclusive to varying relationship interpretations. besides, it was obvious the two weren't biologically related.]
[and.]
[again, timing was awful. but it just followed to ask, guy to guy,]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
Have you two ever wanted to date?
She describes you like family, but I mean
[since we were kids and taken in weren't necessarily exclusive to varying relationship interpretations. besides, it was obvious the two weren't biologically related.]
[and.]
[again, timing was awful. but it just followed to ask, guy to guy,]
FROM: hinata.shouyou@cdc.org
Have you two ever wanted to date?
FROM: misaka.mikoto@cdc.org
ooooh, I see. that makes sense, you don't seem like much of a cat person.
FROM: misaka.mikoto@cdc.org
I bet it got all lonely. you should play with it a little!
ooooh, I see. that makes sense, you don't seem like much of a cat person.
FROM: misaka.mikoto@cdc.org
I bet it got all lonely. you should play with it a little!
[He isn't, really.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
play with it?
[He can barely socialize with people mikoto how do you expect him to be fun with a cat.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
play with it?
[He can barely socialize with people mikoto how do you expect him to be fun with a cat.]
FROM: misaka.mikoto@cdc.org
yes, play with it. you don't have to have ever owned one to know that cats like to play!
yes, play with it. you don't have to have ever owned one to know that cats like to play!
[It was always weird, Vriska.
It's a funny sentiment to get, not least because Eren's actually really shit at making friends. (And thus greatly values the ones he has, does not let them go easy.) His general method is to go through enough terrible shit with someone until they end up with...something.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
I'm not mad at you
[Not at her, not anymore. He's got a lot of other things to be mad about, and the situation that had put them at arms had been a real shit one. It was only later that he was given enough context to understand that, to decide she'd been wronged by the CDC the same as the victims of the exercise had been. Though by then the damage had been done.
A few months of bigger problems helps to cool off.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
I was being an asshole. Forget it.
[She wasn't the only one being stubborn. He knows when to admit that, sometimes. (So yeah. Maybe they can try to be friends again. Or whatever they were before. Friends, or comrades, or...something.)]
It's a funny sentiment to get, not least because Eren's actually really shit at making friends. (And thus greatly values the ones he has, does not let them go easy.) His general method is to go through enough terrible shit with someone until they end up with...something.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
I'm not mad at you
[Not at her, not anymore. He's got a lot of other things to be mad about, and the situation that had put them at arms had been a real shit one. It was only later that he was given enough context to understand that, to decide she'd been wronged by the CDC the same as the victims of the exercise had been. Though by then the damage had been done.
A few months of bigger problems helps to cool off.]
FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org
I was being an asshole. Forget it.
[She wasn't the only one being stubborn. He knows when to admit that, sometimes. (So yeah. Maybe they can try to be friends again. Or whatever they were before. Friends, or comrades, or...something.)]
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