2010-04-29 - The Fourth Seal

Leo Stenbuck doesn't own a lot of photographs. Most of them he - or, more accurately, his father - had were destroyed when his home was destroyed in the Antilia Raid. Baby pictures, old family photos, that sort of thing. All of the ones he has now are from, at the earliest, about February NCA 118.

This being the future, he doesn't exactly have a scrapbook, either; he keeps all of the pictures he /does/ have on his phone, seeing as how this is, again, the future, and his phone is infinitely more powerful than the computer you're reading this text on right now.

These statements are relevant because, currently, Leo is up far later than he should be. He's depressed, and lonely, and can't sleep... so he's sitting on his bed, in his filthy room, shirtless, flipping through old photographs, displaying them via holographic window projector on his phone.

The last few have been pictures from his trip from Jupiter to the Earth Sphere aboard the EFS Atlantis; pictures of him and several members of the crew. One of just him and his friend Celvice. One of just him and Rock Thunderheart. The last is one of him, grinning like an idiot, and... the control panel inside Jehuty, the word 'ADA' displayed on it, central among everything else.

He stayed on that one for a good fifteen minutes, just staring at it and thinking.

But now he's on to newer pictures... and they're all of him and Rei. They've hit him a lot harder than he thought they would; the whole Ralla... /thing/ has done an excellent job of distracting him from Rei, but as he slowly comes to terms with the Cyber-Newtype's fate, he once again has to face the reality of Rei's.

Leo lowers his phone and slumps forwards, lifting his left hand to rub vigorously at his eyes... even though they are, as always, perfectly dry.

Leo is so lost in his memories that the door is able to open and shut before he can protest. Rei Ayanami stands in the doorway after it shuts. Ghosts don't usually use doors. Or maybe Leo just convinced himself he heard it. Rei has a gym bag slung over one arm, which is again odd for a ghost. In another bizarre touch, Rei is wearing the uniform of a member of the Top Squadron. It looks fantastically inappropriate on her, even though Leo has seen her more than frequently wearing a skintight plugsuit. It bares more flesh than it seems Rei should ever be comfortable with, but more than that, it shows off a body that seems... well, different. Leo is beyond familiar with the finer details of Rei's form, and she's clearly been working out, vaguely starting to show signs of tone and discipline that were never there when they were dating and her sole physical exercise seemed to consist of 'piloting an eva, lifting pills to her mouth, and fading to black as the camera pans up to the moon outside the window.'

Most striking, though, is Rei's face. Though it's healed to some degree -- most of the truly horrifying lumps have receded into mere sore spots, and the deep purple welts are ringed with a sickly yellow -- she still shows all the physical evidence of having received a beating. Leo would know -- not because of the Louise thing, mind, but because of the damage he's taken in fights himself over the past two years. Rei's expression is the same, though -- neutral, flat, empty. Her red eyes peek out through bangs that are longer than Leo's Rei ever had. She's gotten sloppy with her hair. It's shaggier than ever.

"You're awake," Rei says, quietly, to announce her presence. "You should be asleep right now." It's tinged with concern -- Leo Stenbuck is probably the only person in the world who could hear that, existing as it does on some kind of hidden frequency beyond the actual sound of her words.

Leo doesn't immediately react to Rei's bruises... but only because he doesn't immediately look up. He keeps his hand over his eyes for several seconds, unmoving... but he does, at least, speak. "You again..." He sounds miserable, and - understandably, thanks to the late hour - exhausted.

On some levels, Leo had forgotten about this, too. It had been awhile, and he had certainly been trying to avoid thinking about these visits. They're torturous in more ways than one.

Not to mention his growing uncertainty as to whether they're real.

Reflecting on it, after that first time, she never appeared to him when he was with Louise. Is she just the nightmares he has, given another form? A grimace flashes across Leo's face, and he lowers his hand from his eyes and raises his phone to look at the picture it's displaying.

Currently, that picture is a photograph of him and Rei from last August, just under a month before Ramiel crippled her. They're at... some park in Japan, or shrine, or something. Leo can't remember. He doesn't really care; he was there for her, not for whatever they were theoretically there to see or do.

In the picture, Leo is grinning like a retard, his arms around Rei. She isn't, but, well... ... Rei. Leo can tell she's happy, as much from his actual memories of the event, for the same reasons he can tell this girl, here, is worried about him.

The knowledge doesn't help, in either case. The former just fills him with an aching sense of loss, instead of happiness at the fond memory. The latter... well, he can't even bring himself to appreciate the concern, let alone to let it soften his next words.

"What do you want?" Leo asks bluntly, without looking up from the picture.

Rei's reply is swift. "To talk," she says, immediately, but without judgment or defense. Rei doesn't demand that Leo look at her. Nor does she seem to take offense at his tone. Instead, she just walks further into the room, surveying the debris. She makes no attempt to clean it.

Rei stops at the Haro and regards it carefully for a long, silent moment. She reaches out, running her hand along the upper curve of its spherical body. It feels more familiar than it ever did, now. Somehow she understands this machine better than she ever realized she could. Perhaps, Rei thinks, this is because she has come to understand her own role. Perhaps she's more akin to a Haro than she ever really noticed. Before, maybe, she was just a broken one. Like this one was. "You did a good job fixing her Haro," Rei notes, facing away from Leo; the broken face is obscured, but he can see how unforgivably the Top swimsuit likes to ride up, should he look. "You used... the v8 self-upgrade kit for the shell." Rei doesn't know how she knows that. But then, Rei knowing that -- is that a point toward her being Leo's own memories haunting him?

Rei turns and begins walking toward the bed, sitting down next to Leo, whether he likes it or not. She sets her gym bag down at her feet and opens it. From inside, she removes a few things. One is a blue penguin with 'HUG ME' written on its belly; it squeaks adorably / annoyingly when Rei puts it into her lap. She also removes a few containers of fruit. "You haven't been eating well," Rei notes, with a stray crimson glance toward the countless cans of Red Comet and mess hall vending machine wrappers.

Rei removes an apple from one of the containers. It's a real apple -- red and organic and lacking in the weird chemical smell of colony-grown Apples With Electrolytes. Must've been expensive. "Eat," she says, offering it toward Leo.

As Rei observes the Haro, currently in Sleep mode, Leo finally lifts his eyes away from the picture, just in time to get an eyeful of - to speak eloquently for a moment - bare, lily white ass.

The eloquent speaking was a lie.

The fact that there's an ass to speak of gets Leo's attention instantly, and he scans his eyes up and down Rei's back. Has she been... and what is she...?

... ah, shit.

Leo drops his eyes again when Rei turns back towards him... but he does, at least, turn off his phone's projector and screen and slip it into his pocket. The usefulness of the action is mitigated by the fact that he keeps his gaze fixed firmly on the floor.

The penguin's squeak does get a look, though, and Leo's eyes stay on the penguin (or, more realistically, on Rei's thighs) until the apple appears in his field of view. He just stares at it in silence for several beats before he lifts his hand and plucks the fruit out of Rei's. He doesn't move to consume it immediately, though, and drops his gaze back to the floor.

"You have," he says, after another few seconds of silence. "Been eating well, I mean. You look good." He pauses, turning the apple over in his hands a few times, as he reflects on something Noriko Takaya said to him a few weeks ago. Then he asks, "You've been working with Takaya, haven't you?"

There is an extremely uncomfortable silence that lasts well over half a minute after Leo speaks.

'You look good.'

Rei reaches up and touches her still-tender face, forcing herself to turn her face away from Leo. "Yes," she replies, her tone -- or, rather, the microtone embedded in the superficial lack of one -- indicating that perhaps Leo said something wrong. With her face turned away, though, she refuses to let him see why. She doesn't know why she won't just let him see, but...

...but when it comes to Leo Stenbuck, the third iteration of Rei Ayanami doesn't know why she does a lot of things.

Rei sets the penguin down between the pair. Without meaning to, she faces it toward Leo -- there's the ghost of his girlfriend, or the clone of his girlfriend, or the clone of the clone that was his girlfriend, or his own guilt and grief and regret coming back and haunting him, or his sexual fantasy of a Rei that can do a push-up and has an ass, or the onset of madness--

--and next to her hip is a blue penguin proclaiming 'HUG ME.'

"Leo," Rei says, settling into the comfort of their routine -- his name marking that the session has begun, that she wishes to command his attention. "It's getting closer. The end."

Rei turns to face Leo now. Her red eyes glare at his until he makes contact in return. She brushes her hair out of her face -- it doesn't really stay that way, but it's enough to show the beating she received. Somehow, she finds the courage to do this. Thinking about what needs to be done -- it fuels her in its own macabre way. "Leo," she says again, before flatly asking the worst question that a battered woman could ask Leo Stenbuck:

"How do you know you love someone?"

Leo's just fine with sitting in silence, staring down at the apple in his hands, fiddling absently with it. But, eventually, it stops... and then Rei says his name. It's like the starting gun for what's sure to be a long stretch of this girl, or God, or himself, twisting the knife still buried in his heart.

Leo thinks he'd much prefer it if this /didn't/ happen... but eventually, Rei's stare bores a hole in the side of his head, and he lifts his gaze to meet hers.

This event totally derails his entire train of thought. His eyes widen in shock, and the apple he was turning over and over in his hands tumbles out of it to the floor. As Rei asks the first question of the night, Leo just... stares, blinking rapidly. After a few seconds, he shifts to turn towards her, lifting one leg up onto the bed... and knocking over the penguin in the process, which squeaks pathetically as it topples over.

If Leo has an answer to Rei's question, he doesn't share it... at least not yet. Logically, he knows this isn't his Rei. Logically, interacting with her - let alone doing something like touching her - becomes more and more difficult, more reprehensible, even, the more time passes.

But his response to seeing Rei's face is not at all a logical one. He lifts his hand to brush her hair out of her face for a second time, after it falls back into place, and holds it there, his hand resting gently on the side of her face. "Jesus Christ," he breathes, obviously mortified. "What happened? Are you okay?"

Rei's only response to Leo's touch is to tense slightly and let out a long breath through her nose. She doesn't blink -- she never does -- nor does she deviate from eye contact. When last Leo saw her, she was arguably in even worse shape, but... there were bandages covering it all, and...

Still, the pattern continues. Hostility, attempts to rebuff or ignore her. Then closeness, after a fashion. Then the inevitable twisting of the knife, or further twisting of it. It's a terrible way to heal. It's a terrible way to live.

If Rei sat down and thought about it, she'd almost be glad that soon he won't have to endure it any longer.

"No," she finally replies, after a moment that, while brief, seems to inflate itself into an oppressive, smothering eternity. "I'm not." Rei forces herself to stay perfectly neutral. Last time she was here... she let herself slip off of her emotional leash, came unglued, looked weak. Mister Bushido's words still resonate within her, as does her promise to herself. To become a mask.

Rei reaches up and touches Leo's wrist, slipping her slim, pale fingers over the back of his hand. Slowly, she removes him, but with a tenderness that she can't quite attribute to anything but muscle memory -- someone else's muscle memory. Rei leans down and picks up the apple, checking to make sure it hasn't been dirtied by god knows what lives on Leo's floor. She offers the fruit to him again.

"How do you know you love someone?" she repeats, still holding the fruit out -- the irony being that Rei is the one seeking forbidden knowledge.

Well, that's helpful.

Leo's shock melts into a grimace again when Rei physically removes his hand from her face, and when she releases it he drops it heavily back into his lap. Obviously, she doesn't want to talk about it.

Which, Leo reminds himself as Rei bends down to pick up the apple again, could be because she's imaginary. If this is just a hallcunation, then this is... what, exactly? He certainly never hit Rei. The bandages, that was one thing; that was... well, as horrifying as the idea is, that was /normal./ He was /used/ to that, as upsetting as it is.

But her face, right now... that's not battle damage. Someone hit her. Unless, he reminds himself forcefully as the thought begins to slip away again, she's not real. Then this is... is... what, born of guilt from hitting Louise?

Leo sighs heavily, and accepts the re-offered apple from Rei again. He's no good at self-psychoanalyzing. At this point, the reason he's crazy could be because he /thinks/ he's going crazy.

Fuck.

"I don't know," Leo mutters, staring down at the apple again. He stays turned towards Rei, at least, his leg up on the bed. "You just... do, I guess. When I was with... with her... I don't know," he sputters helplessly. "It was like..."

"You know, all that shit about... butterflies in your stomach, and stuff. It sounds stupid, but it's true," the young man insists. "You just... ... you can just tell." He pauses for several seconds, and then asks, "Why?"

When Leo takes the apple, Rei turns away -- not pointedly, but so that she can lean down again, and go back into her bag. She removes a banana. This one doesn't get forced at him; instead, she keeps it for herself. While he gives his answer, she carefully begins to peel it. This, at least, is not uncharacteristic for her. Dating Rei Ayanami for as long as Leo did was a thorough and probably incredibly boring introduction to the world of vegetarianism. Although she never really did go for fruit that much. Probably too sweet. She liked things like garlic.

Kissing was sometimes an adventure.

Leo gives his explanation -- or, his lack of one. She glances over, holding the half-peeled banana. Her face refuses to emote. Even her usual tics -- she's trying to hide them. This has precedent. Rei -- /his/ Rei, /the/ Rei -- knew that Leo could read her in a way others couldn't. So when she was trying to block even that... something was wrong.

'Why?'

Rei exhales, and looks back at her banana. She doesn't seem to find it particularly appetizing. Did she ever look at anything with obvious hunger, though? "Leo," Rei says, deflecting the question nimbly and authoritatively.

"Is it more important to love someone, or to be loved?"

Incredibly boring is right; Leo fell in love with meat of all sorts after arriving on Earth, thanks to the rarity and cost of non-synthesized meat in the Jupiter Sphere. The idea of /willingly/ not eating meat was - and still is - a little bewildering to him... but his official stance remained 'well, whatever.' Maybe it's easier when you aren't allergic to soy.

Which, when you live at Jupiter and have to get your protein /somehow/, is a lot like having God personally punch you in the dick at the moment you're born.

Anyways.

Right now, even Leo doesn't have the presence of mind to think it actively... but somewhere, in the back of his mind, he quietly thanks God that Rei didn't start eating the banana. That's the last thing he needs to see right now. He's uncomfortable enough already.

"I don't know," Leo repeats. "It's... I mean, if you're going to be... /with/ someone..." He exhales in irritation, and shifts his weight awkwardly. "It's easy, to love someone," he attempts, eventually. "It's hard to find someone who loves you."

He pauses again, scowling, and admits, "I guess that doesn't make a lot of sense. It..." Another irate exhale. "... you know, it would be easier for me to help you if you just told me what was wrong."

Rei does, indeed, start eating the banana pretty much as soon as Leo thanks god that she didn't start eating it. It's one of those terrible things that strongly implies that this is him punishing himself -- why else would it happen as soon as he thought about it, unless it was God, or the Devil, or White Jesus trying to make him uncomfortable for thinking about -- well, anything?

Rei eats about a third of the banana -- slowly, methodically, chewing twenty-six times before swallowing. She's as machine-like as ever, in her own way, and only after that bit of consumption turns to gaze at Leo. Her gaze is too flat to be a glare; too hard to be sympathetic. As Leo tries to explain relationships to her, tries to explain the hardest thing in the world to put into words -- /love/ -- she seems to frown, deeply without really emoting anything. Leo, as ever, knows her tricks -- that hint of sadness that no one else would be able to spy.

Loneliness?

When Leo makes his final, annoyed comment, Rei looks away. The banana, half-eaten, no longer seems to interest her on any level, but it remains held, and she looks at it as forlornly as if it was an old photograph. Again, there's nothing immediately apparent to suggest this forlornness -- nothing to anyone but Leo.

"Leo," she says, still refusing to offer any easy answers. She can't -- open up to him. She's a mask, after all. Masks cover. Masks don't betray the truth. Masks keep theirs hidden. "How far are you willing to go... What are you willing to do... in order for someone to love you?"

Uhhh. Please. /Earthnoid/ Jesus.

But, whether Jesus is White or an Earthnoid or a White Earthnoid, Leo can't bring himself to watch Rei eat the banana, mechanical and totally non-erotic as it may be. He turns his head down to his lap again, scowling, and stays that way up until Rei speaks again.

It only takes him a few beats of thought before he answers, bluntly, "Anything I can."

Rather than fall silent again, though, he goes on the offensive. "Is this really all you came to talk to me about?" he demands, his growing irritation creeping into his tone despite a half-hearted attempt to keep his voice gentle. "I told you last time, I can't answer your questions. I don't- I'm not-"

He takes a sudden, deep breath, in an attempt to control himself, and then continues, "I thought you wanted me to help you, with NERV. How is this supposed to help me do that?"

Rei eats more while Leo speaks. She doesn't seem to care all that much as Leo stares at his lap; then again, Rei Ayanami has never been the type to really show if she cares or not. Instead, she simply eats carefully and thoughtfully. Her own gaze drifts across the room, toward the Haro. She doesn't know why she keeps fixing on it.

Rei has to think for a moment before she responds to Leo's question. It's a thoughtful pause; it has all the markings of Rei thinking it over, choosing her words carefully. Her banana is down to a third. She turns and faces Leo, watching his face as he glares downward. "To do what you must, Leo... the preparation is as much mental as physical. You need to know yourself, or you'll become your own enemy."

Funny thing for a hallucination to say.

"I'm trying to... make you..." Rei seems to lose her train of thought for a moment. "Make you think about the right things." Rei's accent is so much stronger than Leo remembers it being. It actually even seems stronger than when she -- when this Rei -- first visited Leo. She seems less comfortable speaking English. More stilted, more cautious, fewer big words. "I told you you'd see her again," Rei notes, letting just a bit of sadness creep into her actual tone of voice.

"But you need to think about... if you love someone..." Rei struggles. She doesn't seem to be on the verge of an emotional breakdown, but rather on the verge of being unable to explain herself. "If you hold onto her... you might lose yourself in the process. And if you lose yourself... everything is lost with you. Leo... do you think that if you felt... her again, if you... knew her again..."

Rei-3 blinks. Just once. "Would you be able to let her go?"

"You're not making any sense," Leo blurts in frustration, rising suddenly off of the bed. "I can't deal with all this- this cryptic shit. I told you /that/ last time, too." He stalks the few steps across his dimly-lit room to his desk and sets - almost, but not quite, slams- the apple down on it.

"Are you asking me if I still love her?" he asks, after a moment of uncomfortable silence. "Because I do. Even though she's gone. And that's not going to change. Not even if..." His voice falters, and he hangs his head for a few beats before whirling back to face Rei again.

Something, it seems, has opened the floodgates. "But what am I supposed to do?" he demands, leaning backwards against his desk. "Stay alone forever? I can't- if-" Once again, Leo stops himself short of devolving into babbling with a deep - and this time, shuddering - breath. "... I don't know what you want me to say."

Rei stares back at Leo. His floodgates are open; hers remain locked tightly. His anger, his passion, his confusion -- they slam into the brick wall that is Rei, rebuffed coldly through her sheer lack of response. "I didn't ask you if you still love her," Rei says, forcing herself to take on the tone of a schoolteacher who's dealing with the slow class.

'You need that barrier,' Mister Bushido told her.

"I know you do."

Rei lets that sit for a moment. She eyes the penguin on the ground, and picks it back up. She'd originally only taken it out to get at the fruit, but now... looking at it causes her to frown. She squeezes it without realizing. It squeaks. Rei sets it down on the bed, and gets up, walking over toward Leo. The Top Squadron uniform still looks... wrong on her.

"I asked if you'd be able to let her go. If you'd be able to say goodbye again... and know it'd last forever." Rei puts her hands on her hips. It's a very Noriko thing. She may not realize she's doing it. "Leo... I'm going to tell you now what you need to do, when the time comes. When the end comes. And if you'll do this for me... for her... I need you to promise. And you can't go back on it."

Rei gives just enough breathing room to make it clear those words are important. "The Second Angel, Leo. The one that I... come from. The one that /she/ came from."

Another pause. Rei's battered face tenses. It's clear she doesn't know how to say it -- so she just /says it/. "You must kill her."

Leo's response to Rei's approach is to cross his arms over his bare chest, close his eyes, and bow his head. Much like Rei's stance, it's a gesture borrowed from another: Graham Aker. Mister Bushido.

He maintains the stance as Rei gives her explanation; the only betrayal that he's even listening is the slowly increasing tension in his jaw and shoulders. Even when Rei finishes, Leo doesn't move. It takes him a good ten seconds to even /speak./

"I've already said goodbye forever once," he says, harshly. It is only technically true; he has yet to really 'let go' of Rei... pretty much at all. "I've killed every other Angel I've been presented with. Most of them for no reason, other than that I was told to. I don't even know what they want."

"I wouldn't be saying goodbye again," he insists. "She's already gone. Even if I do... 'see her again'... she's aleady gone. It's not like she can come back." That much is obvious. That's not how the world works.

... right?

Leo's eyes open suddenly, and his brow furrows thoughtfully. After a few beats, he lifts his gaze to Rei's. He doesn't say anything, but the look in his eyes, and on his face, communicates his thought without him having to say anything.

Can she?

When Leo adopts his Bushido stance, Rei brings her arms up and folds them under her chest. It's Bring Your Mentor to the Conversation Day -- if Noriko saw how imperiously Rei was standing despite her emotionless gaze, she'd no doubt feel some pang of pride. Or maybe be worried that Rei is copying her too much. Whichever. In any event, Rei seems to loom larger than her five feet would ever otherwise let her. Perhaps this is the true secret of Top Squadron training.

Leo's unspoken question is met by -- a couple of things, really. First, Rei tries to rebuff it with emotionlessness, with a vacant facade that renders her bruises stark and plain and awful. But after a second, it starts to crack -- her mouth loses its level, curving slightly into a frown. Her expression shifts to one of close to indignant anger -- or as close to 'close to anger' as Rei ever really achieves. It's all tiny tells, really. She's not Leo's Rei, but she's enough of an exact copy that she can still be read like a book. Anger gives way to despair. And despair gives way to sympathy. Her stare softens. She doesn't blink; she doesn't tear up. But there's something in the way she looks at Leo that is just so indescribably sad.

"I don't know," Rei says, quietly, answering a question that was never asked. She knows more than she should -- but she doesn't have all the answers.

"But the reason you need to kill her, Leo..." Rei unfolds her arms and steps forward. She grabs at Leo's arms, trying to force his hands out from under his armpits, to forcibly unfold the limbs. "Look at me, Leo. Touch me." Rei tries to guide Leo's hands to her body -- to press against her stomach, her hips. Nothing sexual, but certainly intimate, in a stunted, brutal kind of way.

"You're disgusted by me," Rei says, sounding immune to any depression that might normally come with such a self-pitying statement. She just presents it as fact. "You wish I would stop coming to you. You wish you didn't have to see me. You wish I didn't interact with your friends. You wish you didn't hear me on the radio. You wish I'd go away. Because I'm not yours. I'm not the one you want."

Rei lets go of Leo's wrists. Whether he continues to touch her is his own business. "So make me disappear, Leo. And make sure that there's not another."

Although he blanches when Rei pushes his hands against her body, Leo doesn't try to pull away. His lips tighten into a grim line as she speaks, but if he disagrees, he certainly isn't chomping at the bit to mention it.

When Rei releases her grip on Leo's wrists, his hands stay on her hips. He takes another deep, shaky breath, and slowly caresses his hands up her sides, leaning a little closer to her. Rei isn't the only one who's lonely, and being with her again would be... be...

... it doesn't matter what it would be, because it's impossible. This isn't Rei.

Leo's hands stop just underneath Rei's breasts and suddenly jerk away from her body like touching her burns him. He leans back away from her and looks away, his eyes squeezing shut again. "I'm sorry," he says quietly. "It's not your fault, what you are. But... I can't..."

"I can't... keep doing this..." Another breath. "... Don't worry. I won't let you down." He pauses, and then offers, uncertainly, "If... there's anything I can... that you want to do, before... it happens... I... I just don't want you to... be scared, or..."

When Leo jerks his hands away, Rei steps back, as smoothly as if the separation had been pre-planned. "I know it's not my fault," she says, coolly, as if it's something she'd rather not be reminded of. "It's NERV's fault. It's Gendo's fault. No. Fault is not the word."

Rei lets the silence linger before she concludes, "It is Gendo's sin."

Rei turns away from Leo. She walks back toward her penguin, her bag, what's left of the banana. She stuffs the toy back into the bag and zips it up. The penguin squeaks when it's imprisoned. She takes the banana, but doesn't continue eating it -- presumably she just doesn't want to add to the mess. "What I want you to do, Leo..."

Rei pulls the bag up to her shoulder and frowns. With concern. It's a different shade of frown than all the others she can do. Any color you like, as long as it's black, and all that. "You said you would do anything to be loved. Remember, Leo... that you can also do anything to be loved by your own self. Trust in yourself, Leo."

It's not quite the sort of rousing, inspirational speech her Coach would give, but it's the closest thing that she could probably give right now. She falters for a moment, trying to put her thoughts out: "Don't do this just for me. Do it because you've chosen to help me. And then... choose... choose your future, Leo. It's yours to decide, after all."

Then Rei begins walking toward the door and with a whish of the door sliding open, she's gone, off into the corridor.

She left the apple behind.

Wordlessly, a haunted expression on his face, Leo watches Rei pack her things up and go. It isn't for a good minute after the door shuts behind her that he rises to his feet and half-collapses to his knees, fumbling under his desk.

Trust in himself... choose his future... it's all too much for the already exhausted Leo. He doesn't want to think about it; he doesn't think he can do so coherently, anyways. He just wants to shut off, at least for now. Later. He'll deal with everything later.

His attempts to do this are cut short, however, when his searching under his desk reveals only an empty cardboard case that was, at one point, full of beer cans. "Fuck," the young man spits, throwing the case angrily to the other side of the room. Suddenly infuriated, Leo rises to his feet and storms across his room, pacing back and forth across the length of the room several seconds like a caged animal.

"Aha!" he blurts suddenly, wheeling for the bathroom and practically lunging for it. He fumbles against the wall of the little nook until he finds the light switch, and then snatches up the unmarked can left there from Excellen Browning's (disastrous) last visit, lying underneath his still-shattered mirror.

"Fuck!" This time, it's because he's finally noticed, over a week later, that the can has ruptured, and has spilled a puddle of... what looks like strangely grainy blue stuff all over his countertop. The fact that it is, in fact, grainy blue stuff, is incredibly curious to Leo, and he dips a finger into it and - in a gross violation of the five-second rule - pops the tip of his finger into his mouth.

Instantly, Leo's face contorts in disgust. That's as far as he gets before he collapses forwards across his countertop and then slumps to the floor, pulling the ruptured can of Kusuha Mizuha's Health Drink down with him.

Medically and legally, Leo Stenbuck is in a coma for the next hour and a half.