trans_9 | Rubber ducky, you're the one [Closed]

Zouichi had the right idea. Or a decent one, considering with all the rest of the work going on (and the blessed fact that the bath house hadn't been one of the decimated targets, she's looking at you Great Wall) during SHODAN's manipulations.

Sakura would have loved to say she was making clear-headed decisions, but it was so far from the truth it was almost laughable. Moving, burying, erecting memorials, navigating personal relationships -- those had been the easy followups to the crippling dog-fight of the last however long.

Her mind was stuck in a whirlwind of considerations forcibly separated from the things which actually hurt: How do you keep friends? Really make them, in a way other than the one she grew up with? Is that what she wanted from Howard? Rory -- was back, for one -- but was almost more akin to a partner in a sense she recognized. Marco was... complicated. Jiraiya was such a staple to her teammate she didn't know how to fit the living deadman into her life. Hell, Setsuna made the most sense out of anyone, and she had a feeling that wasn't supposed to be the case. Go normal. Kang makes sense, if she's not telling that to Marco anytime soon.

This on top of the fatigue and wear from overusing her own stamina pulls and the creepy feeling her new space in the crew quarters gave her, and it might make some sense why she barely paid attention to how empty the baths weren't when she came in.

Yep, she walked right into the bath Zouichi was attempting to relax in, stepping down into the water with closed eyes as she haphazardly folded the towel she'd been walking around in and set it to the bath's side. With a sigh that turns into a hiss as water hits up to her waist, she keeps her recovering arm carefully parallel to the water's surface.

Healing bruises mark up most all her torso, painting it in mostly browns and yellows, reminders of the broken ribs she'd been mending slowly in the aftermath. Circles aren't usually apparent under her eyes, but they are now, possibly because she's reluctant to open them.

Zouichi almost didn't respond, caught up as he was in simply enjoying the heat of the water and the quiet solitude of the --

...wait, what was that splashing sound? Who was that hissing?

He opened his eyes, only to get an eyeful of Sakura, still only waist-deep in the water. Had only the briefest moment of pink hair and yellow-and-brown bruises on pale skin, really, before he turned away as quickly as he could manage.

Pink hair?

"Sakura... er, are you all right?" In this case, concern overrode embarrassment. For now.

Sakura twitched when Zouichi spoke, eyes flying wide open and focusing on him within nanoseconds. Or perhaps seconds. Everything's been a little delayed.

She blushes bright red, her neck and cheeks highlighting first before it starts creeping over her shoulders. "Zouichi?" Her voice hits a little too high for normal, accusatory in that brief statement of his name as she realizes (rationally) she walked in on him, and still feels (irrationally) like her privacy's been invaded.

Probably worse, because she's so damn tired of hearing that question in seventeen different ways.

Leaving right now would make the most sense. Halfway up a stair she'd just stepped off, her foot slips off and she dunks downward, barely flailing well enough to keep her arm elevated out of water. She can't avoid all splash-zone contact, and so she ended up hissing again while raising her hand for peace (or the next question from a non-existent teacher).

"I'm fine," she ground out, not able to manage a smile. Embarrassment and irritation won out, and she let herself look as out of sorts as she was. "I'm sorry! I didn't see you were in here, I'll be going -- just keep looking that way and give me a minute."

No, stop blaming him, Sakura! He can hear it in your voice! The guilt!

Zouichi tried to resist the urge to turn around, to see if she was alright after all that splashing around. Sounded like she'd slipped. "Look, um... I'm fine if you want to stay. I just wasn't expecting anyone to be here at this hour. Don't let me keep you from your bath."

In fact, if she were injured, a hot soak would no doubt help ameliorate muscle pain. "I was actually going to find you and talk to you later."

Guilt for everyone! Eat guilt sandwiches! They make you bitter and frail!

Sakura didn't want to stay, especially not hearing that he wanted to talk. People wanting to talk lately was a tossup between her awkwardly listening and them awkwardly speaking, her awkwardly trying to say much of anything at all, or one or the other putting their foot in their mouth without intending to.

Yet the whole point of coming here was to take advantage of hot water that wasn't raining down from a showerhead, and also that didn't have attached memories. She frowned, eyes flicking toward him as if she would be able to tell if this was a good idea or not with just a glance. Zouichi didn't have a running reputation for perversion. Otherwise she'd have decked him out through the door by now.

Therapeutic as that kind of aggression could be, it also had very specific avenues of expression. Namely at Naruto, or inanimate objects. Possibly Jiraiya. "Neither was I," she admitted eventually, largely because she both did and didn't want the solitary moment to breathe. Finding alone time in the populated sections of the ship was fairly easy, as long as "alone" meant "just you and dear old Stacy." "I can always use one of the other rooms."

She hesitated, shifting toward the side and resting her arm against it. "What about?"

Well, it seemed like she was more or less okay with staying. Which was good, because he didn't want to kick out someone who was injured, and yet he wasn't sure he felt entirely comfortable getting out of the bath himself. What if she slipped? What if he accidentally saw something else? Clearly the solution was to face the wall and resolutely stare at it while talking.

"The pod caverns." Zouichi was uncomfortable, sounded uncomfortable, but clearly he felt he needed to say something about it. "I lost my -- the woman who acted as our mother, under similar circumstances. It was a little less than a year ago... I think. But I remember the event quite clearly."

Edited 2011-12-31 06:50 (UTC)

Ah. Right.

Her chest compressed, and her eyes closed again. It's about what she expected. Sakura wants to laugh for a moment -- everyone here had been more supportive in their different ways, and more direct with their support -- than anyone had been when Tsunade was in a coma back home. Of course, everyone had been hoping she'd wake up, but it didn't change how she'd been comforting others and running on empty comfort herself.

Now she had too much for people she didn't know how to properly feel about, and it was hilarious.

Sad, and hilarious, because she wasn't sure how many of them would understand if it had been Tsunade. If maybe Zouichi would. Tsunade had never been a mother to Sakura, but she had been a mentor, and that was... maybe not all Sakura wanted when she was littler, but it was what had helped her grow past the weak person she'd been before.

Regardless of how weak she still could be.

"What happened?"

"It's a long story." Zouichi gave a slight shrug of the shoulder as he said so. Which may or may not have been lost on her, if she wasn't watching, but Sakura was smart; she could probably figure out why he wouldn't be too eager to run through a detailed play-by-play of his mother's violent death.

"She wasn't a combatant. She wasn't even a scientist. The only thing she ever did was agree to take care of us. But they came for her anyway, and when she needed me..."

There was a long, bitter pause. "I wasn't there," he finished. And that was really all that mattered. He could and had killed people by the hundreds, he could destroy an entire fortress-city to rescue one girl, but he couldn't be on time to save the one person who had really mattered to him.

She understood. More than anything, she understood that feeling of not being there, or perhaps worse. Being there and being unable to do a damned thing.

Even the caverns didn't quite have that feeling, not that total helplessness Sakura's faced down and succumbed to before. Other times she'd held it off, but in the face of such massive destruction fueled by one singular person, it was hard to feel she had any ability to mitigate the collateral damage.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she truly sounded sorry. Not apologetic, but sad, maybe even understanding. Her voice had dropped down low, if her blush was still making her feel warmer than the water rightly should. She shifted, watching her still healing arm as if it held answers hidden in its too-pink flesh. She wondered if all her next to invisible arm hair would grow back in or not.

Tiny, distracting details. "What was her name?"

He shrugged again, as if dismissing the sentiment. Not because it was unappreciated, exactly, but because he had never really done any grieving for her death. Had not allowed himself to do so, in fact, but merely buried it under layers of anger and violence. Recognizing it now, talking about it... well, it would bring those feelings back up to the surface. "It was a while ago."

A little more than half a year, even.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can't always be there," he said. "And blaming yourself for it doesn't really help much." Not that that stopped him trying, mind you. He was a proud member of the Blame Yourself club. But the point was that Sakura shouldn't blame herself.

"Do you, anyway?" Her parents would hardly be the start of that list. Sakura had a fairly extensive one, and two more names would be two more names to take into consideration.

Names engraved in stone, or ones only engraved on her heart. Both were as indelible as anything finite could be.

"I believe everyone does. At least if they care about the person who's gone." But you knew what that was like, didn't you, Sakura?

He sighed, resting against the marble wall of the bath. "Usually," he offered, "People think of the pods as a sort of limbo where the people that they care about are being held. Where they're safe."

Of course, that had been disproven as of late.

She does, if not as strongly as everyone seems to expect. She felt it so much more keenly at different times in the past.

"I guess they do," she said quietly, letting her eyes close again. Sakura was trusting some innate female instinct should Zouichi suddenly prove less than gentlemanly with his gaze. Also if he could see through water. Who knew.

"I've been worried it's a weak point for us for a long time. I was kind of hoping it'd just stay in my head."

"Yes. You'd think the Daligig would have planned for attacks on the pods, wouldn't you? But the ships systems never seem to come into play when the crew's actually in danger." Stupid ship.

Sakura might never find out if Zouichi could see through water or not, because he was still resolutely looking in the other direction. However, it would be kind of hilarious if Marco found out about this or something.

"I expect everyone will be worrying about it now."

"Maybe they will. Maybe they won't." She shifted, sighing inwardly as she felt the heat continue to seep into her ribs. It helped more than she wanted to acknowledge.

"We were instated as crew late, and we're not treated in any real way as equals. Did anyone ever learn when the right time for us to wake up would have been? Was there a right time? Were we ever meant to?"

She's spinning wheels, if they're going nowhere. "We've had our homes destroyed. The people we love and care about, if they were salvaged out of time, might be lying beneath us. In danger if anything should get into the system, in danger if anything gets down there, unable to defend themselves if we're boarded and not just attacked by things the Daligig took on board."

Her voice was progressively calmer. "This is the third time I've lost them," she admits finally. "Which makes it sound like I kept misplacing them. They're dead, for the third time, and there was nothing more I could do this time than the last two."

If she got to watch it this go around. That might add some nightmare fuel to her nights once she started having viable sleep cycles again.

Zouichi shook his head. "I don't believe we were ever actually meant to wake up. We were supposed to stay in the pods, like good little specimens."

He frowned. "What do you mean, the third time? How can they have died three times?" He'd heard of advanced resuscitation techniques, but that idea was stretching it a little past belief. And if Sakura had lost them so often, what did that say about her own world? About her emotional state?

"I agree." And she did. It made more sense that they were another aborted experiment than actual useful forces -- unless carefully manipulated.

Sakura opened her eyes, keeping herself turned away from Zouichi. Her head rested on her arm, and her voice stayed as calm as it had just been, going soft as well. "Does the how matter?"

"Not particularly." Which was true. If your parents were ~~DEAAAAAD~~ dead, it didn't really matter how they'd died. They were gone nonetheless. "I was just... surprised to hear it."

Also the question had helped break up the awkwardness a little. You know. The awkwardness of being naked and trying to converse about emotions and dead parents with a ninja.

Such minor awkwardness in the face of all the other awkwardnesses. Good thing they were both seeing someone else.

Or did that just make this even more awkward?

Sakura laughed, and for whatever reason, she sounded genuinely amused. "You know," she said, still laughing, "I'm so glad we're still able to be surprised." Even by the unpleasant things.

They weren't numb yet. For some reason, this really mattered to her.

The laughing hurt, so she tapered off not too long after starting.

Zouichi voted for 'more awkward'.

He smiled slightly at the sound of her laughter. "That's one way of looking at it."

For him, though, it was a temporary condition. If his world were ever restored, he wouldn't be able to afford surprise. Or remorse. Or doubt. He'd need to throw that all away, or at least bury it deep, where it wouldn't provide his enemies with a weakness to take advantage of.

He hoped he was still capable of that.

"Perhaps after this," he said, "We'll visit a day spa planet."

"I don't know," Sakura said, still holding on to that amusement. It might not all be honest at heart, but it beat the numbing, tired haze she'd been operating under lately. "Half the crew might never want to leave again. Imagine having to drag people away from their hot stone massages!"

She did, finding the image amusing. "Grabbing for those tiny towels and complaining the whole way. Might be kind of fun, with earplugs."

"Get one of those cucumber facial masks, lounge around in robes all day..." said Zouichi dryly. "Actually, I might use the opportunity to photograph a few people for blackmailing purposes."

"Speaking of massages, how is that... massage club? Did that ever get off the ground?"

Maybe bringing up massage as a sideline was a bad idea -- she felt even more self-conscious and awkward. (Or maybe she'd hung out around Marco for too long. Or the club really had been disjointed before they got the assistance focus in lace.)

"Mmm, blackmail. I'm getting fond of my growing memories other people don't want me remembering album." She sounded amused, might have been joking, even -- might have. "As far as the massage club goes... I should talk to Ronnae again. Yuna went back, and things started falling apart. I got too caught up in other things, projects piled up..."

She shrugged, but figured he didn't see it. Hopefully the way she'd trailed off would be implication enough of the action. "Not to mention we might actually need test subjects, and that's not always something people leap up and offer for."

You would literally have to club Zouichi over the head to get him to go to massage club, Sakura. So... don't sweat it?

"Seems like a lot of projects tend to go that way. Sooner or later, one or more of the people running it get repodded, and before you know it..."

Then again, he'd never been repodded. He wondered, not for the first time, what it was that sent some of them back to the pods while others remained in perfect health. "Really? I'd think there'd be a lot of people on the ship that could use some relaxation."

"Possibly, but look at numbers and intention. Training someone requires having people available for all the mistakes as well as the successes. There's a lot of both at first, and even after a while. Then in the end you have how many people trained to handle something, versus what demand?"

Actually, that might be a brilliant sort of realization.

"Like I said, I'll talk to Ronnae. I'd like to see it up and running." She hated how things fell to the wayside, even as she was guilty of being part of that problem.

Zouichi's had been a general observation rather than a dying need to see people giving other people massages. But if Sakura was enthusiastic about it, well... maybe she'd enjoy getting her mind off other things. He leaned forward against the lip of the bath, resting his arms on the tile with a sigh. Ahh. If he thought about it, it was a little odd that he liked hot water this much. Maybe it was where he'd come from.

...he should really figure out a way to get out, though. Without it being more awkward. Somehow.

"Well... I should probably get going." WAY TO GO, SELF.

"Yeah, probably." Sakura came off as mostly neutral, if the phrasing was poor on her part. "I won't turn around," she pointed out. It was an effort at preserving some sense of moving modesty, and also to partly forget about the fact Zouichi was here.

Pressing against the wall as she did, it wasn't like she was easy to see, even if he were the sort to try. "Good... night, I guess."

"Yeah. Take care of yourself." And then he was getting up out of the water and leaving and SUPER AWKWARD.

Rubber ducky, you're the one [Closed]

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