2010 -05-03 - Talking With Revive I

When troubles crop up, people usually have some way of coping with it. Some face things head-on, while others eat, and others smoke. Some preoccupy themselves with television shows or books.

Anew Returner keeps herself busy.

There's plenty to do onboard the Ptolemy without Sumeragi-san there--even more nowso that Feldt-san is gone, but the one task Anew chooses to take on today is the one task that any sane person onboard the Ptolemaios would refuse to do.

Not that anyone else had considered it.

One by one, Anew begins plucking beer cans from the floor of Sumeragi Lee Noriega's room on board the ship. It appears she had cleared a path--or a semblance of it--to her bed and her mini fridge, though it was so narrow, it could hardly be considered as such. So instead of working from the middle out, Anew works from the outside in.

She wipes her brow with the back of her hand as she drops another can into her bag, then surveys the room.

This was probably going to take longer than she estimated.

Beer cans aren't the only thing on the floor. Files are spilled everywhere, not 'organized' so much as 'dropped wherever,' and various documents, maps, and photographs are pinned up to the walls and written on in agitated, illegible scrawl, including one panoramic satellite map of China that, on close inspection, kind of looks like balls.

In any event, the place is hell, and maybe it's a good thing, then, that Anew Returner suddenly isn't there anymore.

It's warm and Anew Returner is naked but that's not necessarily a bad thing right now because everything is golden and sparkling around her, like floating inside a cloud, like drifting peacefully through another world, like a dream. It's overwhelming at first but then it settles and becomes pleasant and familiar. Like a family reunion.

And there, in the shimmer of this beautiful place, floats Revive Revival, reaching out to take Anew's hand. "Hello, sister."

In one moment, she's surveying the damage, in the next, she's overwhelmed by a glowing golden light.

She's almost certain that she's passed out, that she's dreaming all this, but suddenly all of this feels so familiar. It feels so right. And she realizes that she's been here before, many many times.

Then he floats towards her, a short-haired version of herself. She recognizes him immediately. "Brother..." She takes his hand. "What are you doing here?"

Revive's red eyes glow with eerie golden rings, shining like beacons toward his twin. The short-haired androgyne's body is lean and muscular but utterly featureless, devoid of not only sexual characteristics, but any strong implication of one sex or another. "I've always been here," comes 'his' smooth, effeminate voice, motherly in its own way, sisterly in another.

"It's what you're doing here that's important, sister." Revive keeps floating closer, his gaze fixed on his sister's eyes. There's nothing malicious or sinister about his advance -- it's as if his body was working on some automatic impulse, like he was a half trying to rejoin the other and become a whole.

"Are you enjoying your time amongst the savages, sister?"

Anew does not reject his advances, returning his gaze with one of her own. Being with Revive somehow feels natural, as if they are two pieces of the same puzzle. She can feel completely at ease at these times, because it's the only time she can truly be herself.

"Are you enjoying your time amongst the savages, sister?" he asks, and for a second, the images of the members of the Ptolemy flash through her head. Her lips tighten.

"It's for the sake of the mission," she says. There's a harsh edge to her voice, as if she has taken Revive's words as a slight. "Though I live among them, I am still an Innovator."

Revive's hands rest on his twin's shoulders. The sensation is that of warm flesh touching same, but at the same time, it's not like that at all -- because they aren't flesh, right now, they're something higher and more pure than that. There's no separation between body and soul in this quantum space.

Revive Revival's teeth flash in a carnivorous smile. "We miss you," he says, leaning in far closer than is really appropriate for siblings, pressing his forehead against Anew's. "Your real family misses the real you."

Revive's eyes close, but his position remains the same. His head tilts somewhat. Perhaps he's trying to burrow into his sister's skull. Perhaps he's trying to give her the famed Innovator Eskimo Kisses. Unclear. His breath is only hot against Anew should she wish it; there is, after all, no air here.

No air, but no suffocation, either.

"Tell me things, sister," Revive whispers. "Be my oracle. Celestial Being... speak to me of the things our master wishes to hear."

Most people would pull away at this massive violation of personal space, but not Anew. She presses her head back against his, and takes his other hand into her own.

"Celestial Being?" she asks, scoffing. They were the reason why she was here, the reason why she had been sent to live among them. At one time, they had been a force to be reckoned with, a substantial reason for her to be sent away from her family. Her family that missed her.

But now, they weren't a reason at all.

"There is nothing to tell. They are half a crew. Sumeragi is missing. As are the pilots Allelujah and Setsuna. Feldt has left the Ptolemaios recruiting. They have not done anything in a very long time... They probably will continue to do nothing until their leader returns."

But that's Revive, isn't it? So charming, so non-threatening, no matter what he does, no matter how close he creeps, no matter how soft and wrong his touch--

But nothing's wrong in this anti-place.

"Oh, sister," Revive chides, his eyes still closed. Revive hates touching humans. He hates closeness. Intimacy disgusts him. He hates the thought of what goes on inside a person's brain chemicals that makes them think they have free will and the capacity to make moral decisions and he hates the fraud that they call love. This is love. This is purity. Revive Revival is at peace right now. "We have the Haptism boy. The brat in the twin-drive suit... we'll find him soon enough. Two Meisters, against the greatest army ever assembled in this galaxy? I'd like to see them try."

Revive lifts his head, opening his eyes to stare at his sister's. He moves their hands, keeping them joined, fanning their arms out into a vaguely cruciform embrace, like a lazy, aimless game. "/Will/ their leader return, sister?"

"I don't know why Ribbons keeps me here," Anew says, her breath warm on his face. "Celestial Being is no more a threat to us than anyone." It may be a complaint, but she will still follow Ribbon's orders. She'll do what she must for the sake of the mission.

Especially for Revive's sake.

"If you miss me, shouldn't I be with you always?"

His eyes lock with hers, eyes as golden and sparkling as her own. And when he speaks, Anew's lips curl into a soft, cunning smile.

"No," she replies. "As long as she has no reason, Sumeragi Lee Noriega will never return."

When Anew smiles, Revive smiles too. It's not reflexive, because it happens at the same moment -- their lips curl in perfect sync, even while Revive is speaking. "Good," Revive hisses quietly at her report. "Good."

Revive brings their arms low, hands clasped near their hips, working through this idle lovers' kata with fuzzy imprecision. "We all have our place in our master's plan," Revive coos. "You know that as well as I do. I'm no happier being around idiots like Stenbuck and Halevy than you are around Lockon Stratos." Revive snorts, but his grin remains.

"I want you to do something for me, sister," Revive whispers, quietly, bringing his smile close to Anew's ear. "I'm going to tell you something that you're going to remember when you wake up. So that next time we talk... you can tell me more good things. Okay?"

She breaks free of her sibling's grasp, wrapping her arms around his naked body. She rests her face against his bare chest. It is a perfect picture of a lover's embrace, two beings holding one another with such loving care.

They're not lovers; Innovaters had transcended that. They knew, they understood more about each other than any human could another.

There is a momentary shift in Anew's expression at the mention of Lockon Stratos. Her brow furrows, and her lips tug into a frown. But it lasts only a moment. In the next, she is back to smiling lightly, face still pressed against her brother's naked chest. It is as if the name Lockon had never been mentioned at all.

"Anything, Revive," she breathes.

"Katharon took one of ours," Revive whispers down into his sister's ear. His arms wrap around her bare back. He doesn't squeeze. Delicate, girlish fingers run through her lavender hair. His embrace is like a lover's, but not; he might as well be hugging his own mother or a cherished pet or something. There's intimacy without romance. But when Anew frowns, Revive feels it. His eyes go half-lidded for just that one second, looking up and away from his twin. The moment passes. Revive smiles again.

"Not one of /ours/," he clarifies, squeezing his sister in a way few would deem appropriate. "But one of A-LAWS'. Soma Peries. Possible alias Marie Parfacy. Possible connection to Allelujah Haptism. I want you to... find out what you can about her, Anew, my beautiful sister. Find out what they know about her."

Revive chuckles darkly. "It could be useful to me later. And you want me to have useful information, don't you?"

So far, everything her twin has asked of her has been to their benefit; never once has he asked her to do something on behalf of anyone outside of their Innovator family. She's curious, but she doesn't ask. She simply does.

"I will," Anew says softly, almost mechanically. "I will find what I can about Soma Peries, so I will have useful information for you next time."

The golden light is beginning to fade around them, as it does every time before the end. "Revive..." She shuts her eyes, gripping him tightly; she doesn't want him to go.

When she opens her eyes, he's gone.

Anew blinks, her eyes fading from a brilliant amber to its usual dull red. She gazes lazily at the endless sea of debris, then slowly looks down at the bag in her hand, as if trying to process something difficult. How long had she been standing there, spaced out?

She shakes her head, as if trying to push the worry from her mind, then leans down to pluck up another can and drop it into her bag.