I want to break free, but will they break me?

[amajin]

Who: Jin + Yoko Aznable; Beet J. Stag.
When: April 12th, Evening
Where: The Aznable Home
What: Jin's finally echoed back his 14 years of imprisonment in hyperspace, and the reason why his body is still so young. It explains a lot, but it's not a pleasant explanation.



It took him the better part of a day to even comprehend what the echo really meant. Darkly, in the deep well of his heart, he understood immediately. But his brain was full of denial, as always. The denial heaped upon the denial that his past self had, and he managed to function for a few days after the echo without any real trouble. He just ignored it.

But for the first time since the alien trio's broadcast, he's not busy. His higher-ups had told him to stop staying late for work to deal with their charitable work in the aftermath of the Wise Snake battle. So he went home, and he'd just been... sitting there.

"Jin," murmurs his phone. He switched the J app to auto after he found out J had numbers all of a sudden, and was complaining to the network about how lonely he was. "Jin, you have not moved for several minutes. Are you ill, Jin?"

"Go away, J," he says. "I just... I'm fine."

"No you are not."

He groans. "I gotta tell Yoko."

"I can tell her, tell me what to say."

"NO. No. This is the kind of thing I've got to tell her, I mean. Look, I'm just going to... sit here and think until she gets home, all right? Don't... don't get too weirded out. I'm thinking." He sighs and leans wearily forward onto the kitchen table.

J chitters quietly in thought. "Very well," he says, and then lapses into silence.

Comments

[sucrosity]

She's clattering around the kitchen as he thinks out loud, setting plates on the counter and rummaging for silverware. She sighs. "If there's time," she agrees, tentative. "I haven't even started, dad, I don't know what it's going to be like."

She'd thought about taking a year off. Putting real-life things after saving the world. But if she can still go, she thinks she'd better.

[amajin]

"But I'll payyyyy!!!" he whines. "Don't pretend like you won't miss me even a little. We're a team!!!"

J pipes up from the kitchen table. "I will watch Yoko, take care of. Better teammate."

"Shut up, J!" he snaps back. "You don't even have a body yet."

"Where is my car body, I want. You bought bug net, yes?"

"Yes, I bought the bug net, sheesh." He groans, "I'm not excited about having to follow you around putting your bugs in cages for you, though."

"Get excited," J admonishes, in the voice of Han Solo from Star Trek.

Jin just rolls his eyes. "Whatever. But come on, if you can't make it some week or I can't make it some week, that's fine. It's not like we're gonna hold grudges. We're family."

[sucrosity]

"I didn't say that, oh my gooood," she whines back, pulling a face. "But I've lived with you for almost eighteen years! There are other people to meet, dad."

She laughs, light, and turns, hand leaning on the island, to peek at J. "Juicy's always got my back," she agrees, and lets them argue about bug cages.

"You know I can give him a hand, right," she says. Then, a beat. "You? Not holding grudges? I'd never hear the end of it!" (Hypocrisy in action, but hey.)

oh my god i said han solo from star trek. I MEANT WARS

[amajin]

"No, no, not almost 18 years. You stopped living with me full time when you were three. And your mom and I shared... well, let's call it half time for ease of calculation, for the next nine years. And then nine months out of the year for the next almost five... So..."

He taps his finger exactly three times, and then points it at her, "You've only lived with me for eleven-and-a-quarter years. So there." It's a Pyrrhic victory, really. He makes a face. "Ugh, that's not nearly enough time." He leans weakly on the counter. "I haven't... imparted enough wisdom..."

He unreels and steps closer to her. "Are you sure you don't want to live with me still? Can you at least bring anyone you're dating over so I can threaten them with physical pain or my intelligence...? It's my one true joy in life."

your shame is displayed. forever.

[sucrosity]

By the time he gets done calculating, she's in the midst of spooning food on her plate. "If eleven-and-a-quarter years isn't enough for you, how many more are you gonna need?!" She demands, gesturing at him with the spoon in her hand.

She looks up at him, unimpressed. "I'm not living here full-time in college," she says, with finality. "And on the off chance I date anyone, I'm definitely not telling you! You'd just be mean to them. Find something new to do!"

[amajin]

"All of them. All the years." He stares at her, dead serious. "But I guess you can have a break from me."

"Anyway, I guess if they're halfway decent, they'll have to meet me eventually." He shrugs. "Actually... Come to think-"

He has one more thing to tell her... And now's as good a time as any, he supposes. "Uh, do you remember a guy named Kurorin- Actually, his name was Kuroki. I just called him Kurorin. He was the head of the Go-Busters."

[sucrosity]

She rolls her eyes. If he had her way they'd get old (again, and for the first time) together in this house. Not happening.

"Kuro--" she pauses, information coming together as she speaks. "The Commander. Yeah, I remember." Remembers their easy arguments, remembers with familiarity that he was the man who'd guided the Go-Busters. "...why." She has a suspicion, from context, but oh god does she not want to think about that.

[amajin]

He makes a moue, pretty sure she's gonna be grossed out. Then again, he does so love grossing her out. He smirks. "Weeelll, it looks like me and him had a little thing going on before I left on my trip and after I came back, at least a little. So I guess that makes me bisexual! Or whatever it is you're calling it nowadays."

He raises his eyebrows, grinning aggressively. "And now you know all my secrets."

[sucrosity]

"Aughhhhhh," she groans, and collapses forward onto the counter. "Daaaaad, whyyyyyy! I don't want to know who you were - ughhhh!" It's not, honestly, that surprising. Not really. The Kuroki in her memories has been too fond and too close to the Jin in them.

Her dramatics ending, she straightens up enough to stare, baleful, at him. "Keep the gross secrets, please, I don't have to know everything," she says.

[amajin]

He chuckles at her overreaction. "Well, wouldn't want you to be too surprised if he shows up." The subtle tone in his voice indicates he considers that to be too good to be true. "I miss him, though. And I can't build him, can I J?"

J pipes up from the table. "I do not think he would be as successful as me at being the best robot."

He nods. "Sorry for tellin' you all my deepest darkest secrets. But you know. You said you wanted to hear the truth."

[sucrosity]

"The Commander'd keep you on a leash, that's for---awww, now you've ruined that," Yoko says, starting at a tease and resolving into a whine. "Thanks, Dad!"

She leans back against the counter behind her, crossing her arms over her chest. "J, you're biased," she says, throwing her voice toward the table, and then... "Some secrets are too deep for your daughter to know. But... thanks."

She looks down, thinking. "Is there anything you want from me?" she asks, wondering.

[amajin]

He laughs. "I think he's tired enough of that during the day, he wouldn't want to do it at night too." He waggles his eyebrows. His relationship with Kurorin, as far as he recalls, was more restful than anything... A quiet respite for him during days when nothing was certain. And yet Kurorin always had that question in his eyes. He never shared anything with him. Not even the things he ought to have known. He sighs, quietly. He hopes that the same problem doesn't ever come up again...

He bites his lip. "Well, yeah, but I didn't want you to be surprised if I found another dude to pal around with sometime." He shrugs. "It could happen!"

He looks at her for a moment, quiet. Then he bends down just slightly to meet her eyes. He holds her shoulders, eyes serious and maybe just a touch desperate. "I just want you to try to stay safe. I can't stop you from running out there when there's a fight, obviously. I just want you to take me along, if you can. And stay alive, if you can't. Both of us are gonna live through this, this time."

[sucrosity]

"Stop! Stop that eyebrow... thing! Stop!" She breaks into giggles, hands to her mouth.

"They'd have to pass Juicy's screening before you'd let them near me, anyway," she says, flapping her hands. "The only thing that surprises me about you is that I've never walked in on you kissing a computer." Somehow, she's not terribly worried about him suddenly bringing home any guys. He hasn't brought any girls over, after all, and it's been years.

She looks up when he settles his hands on her shoulders. Her hands drop, and she nods, once. "We're not dying," she answers, "you're not allowed to die on me again." Her hands find his ribs, and she steps in to hug him properly, her cheek against his shoulder and her arms tight around his upper body.

[amajin]

He grins, happy to see her laughing again, even after all this serious talk.

"Huhhh. No, it's strictly platonic between J and me," he says with a smirk.

"Humans have gross bodies. I am a child of light and too good for humankind." Jin throws a raspberry J's way, regretting letting him have free run of the internet. J responds gravely. "You can do that, proves my point."

But then things get serious and he puts his arms around her as she hugs him. "Of course not! I've got way too much to live for this time around." He kisses her on the top of her head. "Love you, bun."

"Want hug from Yoko!" J sings.

"Gonna have to wait for a body, champ." Jin calls behind his back. "It's great, thoughhh!"

J plays a sobbing noise.

[sucrosity]

"Not J, he's like, your kid, I mean like... a Jin robot," she protests, and snorts. "Come back with that after you grow up some more, Juicy."

"You had plenty to live for last time too," she says, her voice half-muffled. "You just didn't have the chance to get to it." Her hug tightens, and she's silent for a long moment. Eventually, she pulls back, and tugs her phone out of her back pocket. She settles it on her palm to navigate the menus, and then tucks it between her arm and her chest.

"There's your hug, J," she says, "Dad, you really should build him something I can hug! Phones are too tough."

[amajin]

"Wait, you think I'm so self-centered and narcissistic that I'd want to date a robot of myself?!" He looks genuinely surprised and kind of hurt, really. "I'd at least make a robot of someone hotter than me. Even I get tired of me sometimes."

He listens to her murmuring with a frustrated frown. He knows she's right. But he also knows that the past version of him wasn't just cut off from his family by the walls that separate universes. He was also separated by his feelings of inadequacy. That's not something that she really needs to know, though. He sighs into her hair as she pulls away.

J can, of course, not feel the hug. He breathes a sigh through his speakers. "Thank you, Yoko. I will give a better one back when I have a body."

Jin puts his fingers to his lips. "Ehhh, I don't really know what I could build that would be huggable. But I can brainstorm."

[sucrosity]

"No, no," she says, rolling her eyes. "But I totally think you'd make a robot you to make out with sometimes."

J's sighing gets him picked up and poked at. "I'm holding you to that!" What she remembers of J makes her think hugging him might not be totally comfortable, but they'd make do.

"Put him in a pillow," she says, "oh! Oh, like a pillow pet." She imagines a stag beetle pillow pet with a speaker, idly.

[amajin]

He considers. "Yeah, just the head, just for makeouts. Sounds good. Maybe if I have time someday."

J lets out a cicada's cry. "I promise!!"

Jin chuckles. "I don't know if I have the sewing skills for that, but we'll see what I can come up with given some time." Maybe he would commission the plush from someone else. He would like it if J was... able to get his body back soon. Other than building all these robots being kind of inconvenient, he kind of needs J to transform.

my face is in my hands

[sucrosity]

"Please just find a date instead!" she says, "I'll sign you up for OKCupid if you build a robot head, you watch."

"He's probably going to look up and be a robot one day just as soon as you come up with something," she muses. "From the frying pan into the fire."