2026-02-05: Ichika's Nightmare
- Log: Ichika's Nightmare
- Cast: Tsubasa Seki, Ichika Kawase
- Where: Hirasaka - Third-Floor Apartment
- OOC Date: 2026-02-05
- IC Date: Thu, Sep 20 2012 (nudged back half a day)
- Summary: Ichika has a nightmare while she's sleeping over at Tsubasa's, and talks to them about Toshiaki's death. Tsubasa puts together some things they've heard from Eiji's Shadow and Akechi to come to a terrible conclusion.
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
The Dark Hour's come and gone; it's later than that, now. Tsubasa's tucked Ichika up against their chest, one arm slung around her to hug her to them; the other's threaded under her head, under the pillow they're holding vertically to give her something to sleep on, too. See? They've already solved the arm-falling-asleep problem. They are SO good at this game. (No, their arm's still going to be fucking numb when they wake up.)
Their king single is real packed tonight, though: on top of the covers they've pulled over Ichika, curled up in the crook of their legs, is a DOG. It is a small modern miracle how none of them have fallen out of bed; and here of course we mean that it is a miracle Tsubasa and Lance haven't fallen out of bed, because Ichika is safely tucked between the wall and Tsubasa's chest.
It's a long way down! That's a Western-style bed! They're living on the edge!!!
They have no idea about that right now, though.
They're super goddamn asleep, man.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Ichika is nestled into Tsubasa as much as she can be, sleeping away. She may pretend to have an issue with numb arms later, but rest assured: she's winning on this deal.
And that's been fine... so far. Ichika enjoys being safely by the wall, with Tsubasa guarding her from... everything. But there is one source Tsubasa can't guard her from: herself.
"Nnn..."
Ichika starts to stir, her fingers curling agaisnt Tsubasa where she has her arm around them. "Nn--"
Then there's a wordless cry and Ichika grips Tsubasa hard--
If they hadn't woken up yet, they might when they feel dampness from her face.
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
"Uh?" Tsubasa mumbles, hearing someone screaming in the distance of the concert even though they hadn't even gotten on stage yet seriously first the drummer spills his beer and -- oh no wait the killer is RIGHT HERE --
Wait, hang on --
"'Chika?" Tsubasa mumbles, nuzzling their face into her hair. "Wassup?"
They're... waking up.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
The killer... is here!!
Ichika cries quietly on Tsubasa, until they actually ask her what's up. "I, uh..."
They're waking up. It'll probably take a minute. "I saw it again..."
She's usually done so much better at keeping up on this, but...
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
"Mm..." Tsubasa's brow knits, as they try to orient back into this reality. Right, they're not in a band, haven't been for years. No beer, just tears. The weird nightmare logic where something was cool and suddenly isn't doesn't really apply here. And Ichika...
Tsubasa's grip on her shifts, so that they can run a hand down her back, rhythmically. (They once had a nightmare where they had to spell 'rhythm' in English properly or die. They resolved to stop watching those Western horror movies with Shuyo after that.) "You saw it...?" They prompt her, their voice gentling. "Wanna talk 'bout it...?"
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
This reality. The one where Ichika is there with Tsubasa, and she accepts the hand downn her back, lettinng it soothe her a little. It helps. ...The nightmare would probably not help.
"...Yeah," she allows. "I remember..."
"He just locked up. He started moving weirdly..." Erratically, if she knew the word. "Like he was in pain. Then he just... fell."
"...And knowing what I know now, someone did that. To him. So it wasn't 'like' he was in pain, I guess..."
"He must've been."
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
There's a difference, between nightmares, and nightmares.
It goes like this --
Ichika remembers, and Tsubasa keeps rubbing her back, resting their cheek atop her head. Like he was in pain... because he was in pain.
"Someone... did that to him...?" They ask, as their brow creases.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Yeah. It was the Shadow who said it. ...Eiji's Shadow."
Ichika hugs Tsubasa, hanging on, and opens her eyes, so she doesn't have to keep seeing it in her head. "...He said..."
"It wasn't an accident, like I thought it was."
"...That it was a Mental Shutdown. Supposedly if Daddy were better-connected it wouldn't have happened..."
"So I look back, and I--"
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
"Mm," Tsubasa hums, to indicate they're listening, as their hand keeps smoothing down her back.
But when she mentions just whose Shadow it was, their hand stills, and slips down, and grasps her tightly to them. It wasn't an accident, it was a 'Mental Shutdown'...
Tsubasa closes their own eyes, for a moment, wincing at the unfairness of Ichika loving people who've gone through both Psychotic Breakdowns and Mental Shutdowns. "Ch."
They give her a supportive squeeze. "And, you...?" They prompt, still gentle.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Ichika listens to Tsubasa, or more appropriately, feels them here; they're solid, against her, sturdy... strong. And that helps. She stays grasped, not wanting to move, and then slowly inclines her head.
"I..."
"I'm..."
"I hate knowing how much it must've hurt. And not knowing why."
"...And why it happened like that. It's so cruel."
"I thought, you know? I thought... it was my fault. That I'd distracted him, or that I hadn't been looking out for him enough..."
"But it wasn't, and somehow that's worse."
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
Tsubasa can be sturdy. They grasp Ichika, firmly, and don't let go.
Their lips pull back, in a grimace, as they go over those feelings in their own head; but on the outside, they just hum affirmatively, prompt her to keep going.
"You carried that for a long time," Tsubasa settles on, after a moment. "Feelin' like ya didn't do enough." ... and then, they think, it was exploited. Did he know, when he was listening to her like this?
They keep that out of their tone. It doesn't matter, right now. "Would make it worse, realisin' weren't nothin' ya coulda done. Yeah."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
She did carry it. Did he know? Ichika has no way of knowing, now. "Mm. I know it wasn't like that. Nobody blamed me except me. ...But I did."
"I was the last one who saw him, so..." She lets that hang, hoping it makes sense.
But then, "Yeah. Mmm..."
She sighs. "I thought I had a handle on it, but..."
"I guess I can't just say that, huh."
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
"So you'd know," Tsubasa supposes. "That was the logic, right? They could say it weren't your fault 'cuz you weren't explaining how it was good enough, or 'cuz they weren't considerin' all the facts... you're the only one who had the whole picture."
Tsubasa hums, deep in their chest. "But then you learned you didn't have th' whole picture at all... an' all th' shit you'd worked out about it got unseated. That right, or...?"
Tsubasa is, at the very least, someone who is constantly making sense of things.
"... ain't no one would have a handle on somethin' like that," they say, "even leavin' conspiracies aside. Add 'em in... it's a lot."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Yeah," Ichika agrees. "...Didn't last that long, I guess. I eventually managed to settle on the idea... that it was an accident. That it was nobody's fault. The docs said it might've been a seizure or something..."
"Mm. Yeah. It was somebody's fault. So like... it's all opened up again."
Tsubasa does that well. Ichika nods. "Guess not. And Ririka-chan took it so hard that I just figured..."
"I had to keep it together. and so I did."
"I'm sad, and I'm... angry, and I... remember."
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
"Mm," Tsubasa hums, when Ichika talks about them blaming a seizure.
Doctors have a real habit of blaming these things on ill health, huh.
"Yeah," they nod, against her. "Open wound." Less a box, and more a structural fault in her body.
But Ichika has been bearing it, and Tsubasa squeezes her, again, firmly. "Yeah," they rumble, again. "You're the only one who remembers. So... it keeps playin', right? Tryin' to find somethin' you dismissed, somethin' that solves it... is it like that? Since it has to be you... since no one else can do it. You wanna do somethin' 'bout it, right? Jus' ya stuck. That's what I'm thinkin'..."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
They do. It all wraps up nicely, 'makes sense'. Nevermind that the details were probably covered up in the first place. Ichika hasn't thought of that one yet.
"...yeah," Ichika answers. "Like a wound."
But...
"Kinda," she says. "It keeps playing, but not like..."
"I know there's nothing I could've done," she says. "Apparently even if I'd been close enough to catch him, he'd have still died. That's how that works, right?"
"...But that pisses me off, too."
"I want to do something about it. But I don't know where to start. I don't have a 'face.' And now..."
"And now the things that made me feel better before, I can't go back to... because it was... from Eiji."
"He didn't just distract me. He told me it wasn't my fault. ...Lots of things."
"Did he know?" She wonders. "He can't have, back then. But maybe..."
Ichika sighs.
"Anyway I just keep seeing it. Feels like for no reason. That I'm just... stuck."
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
Tsubasa's always thinking of things like that.
"Yeah," they say, when she asks how it works, though they've never seen it personally. Why would they doubt what they've heard? It all tracks. (It's only the things which don't make sense they interrogate. More the fool, they.)
"Mm..." They rumble, when she wonders whether he knew.
"... reckon ya feel stuck 'cuz ya are stuck. Shit like that happens, piece a ya gets left back there while the rest walks away. Way ya talk 'bout this, bits an' pieces, confused, emotions on th' side... yeah, recognise that shit." And for a moment, they think of those white halls, the groups, the dreamy way reality faded back in. "Ain't never got better. Jus' put a bandaid on top. ... but maybe that kinda explanation's jus' another trap, too. Fuck if I know. Jus' resembles what happens."
They give Ichika another squeeze. "... me, I ain't so sure he didn't know. Ain't sure those doctors really reckoned it were seizures, neither. Wouldn't be th' first time this shit got a nice, neat bow put on it by a fuckin' M.D. But that's me... I'm a suspicious bastard. Mightn't be nothin'." Might be somethin', they insist, but just to themself.
"... but I'm gettin' in the reeds," they shake their head, slightly, against her. "... you weren't bad needin' support from him. Gettin' help weren't th' issue. Makes sense you'd be moorless... not havin' that. Was still patchin' ya."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Stuck. "Oh..."
It resembles it. "You really think hard about this stuff," Ichika says. "You're really smart..."
But Tsubasa isn't so sure. "...Mm. You think? That's... that's worse. I let him touch me. I let him--" She bites her lip. "And if he knew..."
She sighs. "...Thanks," Ichika says. "I guess... yeah."
"But maybe it'll be better, this time. Since... we're gonna find out who did this stuff. To him... to you."
"We're gonna find out."
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
"Learned a lot 'bout it a while back," Tsubasa murmurs, looking over at the wall behind Ichika. "Can't trust it all... but some of it's real." They couldn't have been paying off every nurse, doctor and orderly at the hospital... could they?
(Tsubasa's got this horrible feeling like maybe they could.)
"Shit," they swear, when Ichika runs through how that's worse. "Sorry." They squeeze her, again.
"... yeah. We'll find out," they promise. "I jus'... don't reckon his Shadow could know that without the real guy knowin', too. How would he learn somethin' like that in his Palace? Tatsuzou's goons mighta enforced his loyalty in that thing, but... why would they tell him shit what he couldn't use in reality anyway?"
Tsubasa stops, dead.
"Unless."
And they're quiet, a few more moments, as their brain catches up on the processing.
"Unless... they never meant for him to know it to start with. Black Mask left me alive... runnin' experiments on how his powers worked. What if he never told Shadow Eiji for his sake... but so he'd tell you? Akechi-san reckoned that Mental Shutdowns were a message he was sendin' for Tatsuzou an' those other fucks 'bout the price people pay defyin' them, but..."
They trail off, to more silence.
"... you said ya dad coulda stopped it if he were better-connected," they bring up, quietly.
"Ichika... I reckon your father told them 'no'."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Ichika knows at least one doctor they're not paying off. She's sure of that.
She shudders a little with the body memory of how close she was to him, back then. What she'd assumed. But Tsubasa squeezes her, and Ichika nestles back against them. "Thanks," she says.
But the Shadow... "Mm,'" she says. "I guess..."
Ah?
Ichika blinks at Tsubasa as they process, and then... "...?" she starts.
"So Black Mask..."
She pushes her lips together into a thin line. "So he'd tell me. So sure, Eiji didn't know... but Black Mask did, and remembered, and knew I was..."
She bites her lip, then. "Daddy..."
Her heart hurts. "They killed my brother... because my dad had integrity."
"They..."
She closes her eyes, hangs onto Tsubasa, and starts crying again.
She just... needs a little time.
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
Did Eiji not know? Tsubasa's still not sure about that, as their mind keeps grinding onwards. Maybe he did know. Or maybe the threats work just fine given to the Shadows. What is the connection between the Shadow and the self, Tsubasa demands, of themself? At what point is what the Shadow knows able to influence a person in reality?
And does a kind of unconscious knowing absolve him?
No, they swear, darkly, as they hold Ichika tight.
"I think so," is what they say, instead. "Don't know nothin' for sure..."
But she trails off into tears, and Tsubasa wraps her up, tightly; Lance has to reshuffle herself, a little, with how their legs curl around hers too, keeping her safe in that dark cocoon.
"Shh," they rumble, instead, and have to deliberately shut off the open wellspring of their thoughts to do it. The arm trapped beneath her shifts, so they can hug her to them more completely. There's the small movements of their fingers, lifting and falling, as they stroke a section of her shoulderblades.
They focus on controlling their breathing; regulating for her. In, and pause, and out, and pause...
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Ichika can't be sure, but the idea that someone who knew such a thing would have that kind of relationship with her... it makes her feel unclean. Dirty, again. But it's not just outside.
Still...
"It's OK, not to know. You don't have to. ...But it makes sense..."
Ichika stays with Tsubasa, who keeps her safe. ...Safe enough that, soon enough, she falls asleep again.
She won't wake all in a start this time, at least.
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
Tsubasa, on the other hand, won't fall back to sleep for a long time... and it's only partly because they need to keep Ichika nice and safe and compressed.
If he were better-connected, he'd have avoided it -- that means Ichika's father had only recently entered the Order, Tsubasa thinks. He didn't have the social grace earned to say 'no'. And does that mean he is persona non grata, now? No. If he were of no more use, they'd have killed him, not his son. Ichika's father is still serving a use for them. But how, then, would the Black Mask know that Ichika would come and fight Eiji's Shadow? Was it a message for her, or a message for him? Did the Black Mask know when Ichika first Awakened, and tell him then? Or did he know so many months before then, when Eiji was holding her like this...?
They're not safe.
She's not safe.
They need to investigate much, much deeper...