It's only a few minutes before midnight, and Ami and Takashi technically have plans to be up with the dawn. Still, Ami is awake. She's changed for bed, at least--into another pair of silky pajamas, these ones blue and pink and green. But she isn't sleeping; she isn't even attempting it. Instead, she's sitting at the small table in their shared livingspace, a book on the table and her tablet beside her, glasses perched on her nose and seeemingly unaware of the time. Studying, of course.
Takashi comes in from the outside, and since Ami isn't hiding behind her curtain, he figures she's at least amenable to contact again - but still, as he's walking forward, he tilts his head slightly to the left and asks her directly. "You still mad at me?"
He ends up sitting next to her, but gives her about the space between them that they had at the end of the call to Tokyo.
"I wasn't mad," Ami says without looking up from her work, "I was embarassed." She's said it before, but it probably still came off as mad. With her, the two emotions are highly conflated.
"Anyways, I just don't think it's appropriate for people to be kissing where everyone can see," Ami tells him frustratedly as she turns the page and leans over to write some notes down on her tablet. "It was bad enough Usagi-chan and Mamoru-kun were kissing, and that Makoto-chan and Nephrite-kun were kissing, and everyone else that was kissing. Then you went and did that where everyone could see. It was awful."
Takashi sighs. "If Usagi-chan and her boyfriend were kissing, and Kino-san and her boyfriend were kissing, and everybody else was kissing, it was stranger for us NOT to be kissing." His voice is a bit firm on this aspect. "I usually understand why you're embarassed, but not always." he admits.
Then he leans over and suddenly wraps both arms around her from behind, draping over her shoulders. "So what, it would've been fine if it was just us?" There's a little bit of frustration in his voice that's also tempered with a little bit of hopefulness.
"It's not about us being strange!" Ami replies frustratedly at Takashi. "It's about propriety and what image we set for others. If they all failed their math tests, should we do so as w--eek!" Ami cuts off her rhetorical question with a sound of surprise, followed by holding very, very still. He just put his arms around her, didn't he? He just put his arms around her, and she has no idea what to do.
"T-hat isn't e-e-exactly what I said," she protests, squeaking on the 'act' of exact.
Takashi squeezes her just a bit, hugging her boldly from behind. After all, there -is- nobody else here, and probably nobody else for miles, so at least the concern for propriety in public isn't relevant.
"But I didn't ask you what you said, Ami. I asked if it was okay if it was just us. Like it is now. Just us, and it's almost midnight here, and I'm asking if it's alright."
There are so very many problems with Takashi's question and manner of asking, but right now Ami is struggling to find words for any of them. She's embarassed again, even though no one can see them; her face is flushed red, and she's hunched over just a little and she isn't moving, other than the rapid shallow rise and fall of her chest as she tries to keep herself from hyperventilating.
She could easily just tell him no to the question, but she isn't quite sure he'd accept the answer, and that might be worse. Besides, she isn't entirely sure she wants that to be the answer, and that is worse.
Instead, she mumbles in her squeaky tone, "I would prefer if you didn't." It's like a no, but far more polite. And with loopholes.
Takashi waits, patiently, for her response. Much as she might've expected, it's not the answer he wanted. But his reaction is maybe not what she expected, or maybe it is.
But it is sharp and quick, and he withdraws his arms and his entire presence from her in rapid fashion like she'd just become electrified. "Alright then." he says, unable to keep the petulant dissapointment out of his voice. "Then I won't, and that's that."
The moment he lets her go, Ami takes a slow and measured breath, trying to calm her pulse. She rubs at both of her bare arms, keeping one over her chest at all times. The blushing doesn't stop, and she doesn't respond to him straight away. In fact, it's several minutes before she responds at all, at which point all she says is, "I'm sorry," as she leans back to her study.
Takashi doesn't respond right off, either. If Ami watches him (or just feels his presence) she'd notice in the silence that he's shifting closer and farther away, her reaction and his wants kind of physically manifested in the actual distance for a bit, before he finally sits a good distance away from her, and sort of melt-slumps into the chair.
"I am too." he says, grumbly a bit. "I just thought that as a couple we'd do the things that couples do. That every other couple in Tokyo was doing. I must've misjudged somewhere."
It takes a very long time before Ami responds to that loaded statement. She's not studying, even if it looks like she is; she's busy trying to sort through all the many jumbles of emotions she's feeling, right now, instead.
"You've been watching too much American television," Ami informs Takashi quietly, as her opening rejoinder. "Despite Usagi-chan and Mamoru-kun, most couples in Tokyo do not kiss or hold hands or hug. That is not normal in Tokyo, even among our generation. My friends are just ... weird.
"But even if they were not," Ami continues, turning just her upper body towards him so she can face him. "... Our relationship isn't normal. I represent a part of the energy that is poisonous to you, and you are filled with that energy which is poisonous to me. And even if that weren't true: we both have magic in our life, Takashi-kun. Normal isn't a thing that happens to us. We talked about this, just a few days ago, remember? About giving all of this up to be normal?"
Still, she isn't done, as she explains, "And even if we had agreed to give up all of this to be normal--which we did not--even if that were true, though. I don't ... know how to be a normal girl in a normal relationship with a normal guy. I'm terrified of losing control of what's happening. Every time you put your arms around me like that, I freeze up like a deer on the road. I'm afraid of what you'll do, what you'll say, what others will think, but most of all: I'm afraid of how I feel and how I will react and whether I will do something stupid or hurtful or crazy or wrong or ..." she trails off, then motions towards him as if he should understand.
But he probably won't.
The silence lingers a moment, with her hand held out. Then, she turns away back to the book she isn't studying, to the computer she isn't taking notes in, and finishes, "So that's why I'm sorry. Because I do not know how to rationalize these fears. And more than anything in all of this, it is my own fear which cripples me."
Takashi starts doing something which he might consider to be abnormal or bad, but is something he allows himself to do much more easily in henshin than in day-to-day conversations - he starts speaking emotionally, and with less prepared thought put into it. "It cripples me too." he snaps.
"I'm not an idiot, and I do notice. I notice how you freeze up, how you shut down just because I wanted to be near my girlfriend for a little bit. Maybe you don't notice or you look down on them, but I see a lot of couples who aren't your friends being together and it's easy to tell the difference between people out together and people who are together as a couple - but I don't think that would be true if I never did anything because you wouldn't."
"It is very hard sometimes knowing that the best reaction I can get for my actions is either offense or you just trying to pretend I'm not there." And at this, Takashi stands up and starts walking towards the passage outside of the temporary residence. "And it makes me feel like I'm not wanted. It's not a good feeling, Ami. First it was because people could see or it's improper, but nobody can see and you're still ice cold."
"I have always understood this wasn't going to be easy and would take effort, but I feel like the only effort you're putting in is about not running away - but you're not trying to come closer at all."
Ami hunches her shoulders all over again as he expresses his frustrations at her. Knowing he's right, and being able to do anything about it, are two very divorced concepts, and right now Ami hasn't got a clue how to respond in a way that isn't just going to make matters worse.
So she doesn't respond at all, except that little bit of tension in her shoulders. She lets him walk out, lets him take his cloud of frustration with him, and leave her behind in the hot sticky cabin of the plane, alone with her own feelings of inadequacy and regret.
When he's been out of the room for a full minute, Ami reaches up to carefully close her book. She stacks her tablet atop it, then clutches both to her chest before rising to her knees, then standing--shakily--and staggering off towards the little private space that is her bedroom.
There, she huddles up very small in the corner, grabs her blanket from the hammock above her, and hides in its folds, still clutching the book and the laptop to her.
And it's not until she's fully hidden by the blanket, down where no one can possibly see her, that she lets herself cry.
And it's downstairs and in that world, connected and not to this one, that Takashi lets his own emotions finally exhaust themselves, though in a very different way than Ami.
For the first time since he'd been in South America, Takashi henshins - or allows himself to - and some of the effects are felt outside as some of the more troublesome or vexing locks, dimensional translations, or security systems find themselves brute forced open - and the delicately, precariously balanced dimensional anchoring they'd worked on lurches a bit for a moment.
It's only for a moment though and then all is back to stillness.
Ami senses the darkness instantly, and raises her chin. Even in the midst of her own personal crisis, she can tell that something is wrong even without the aid of her henshin wand or the glaive charm around her neck.
That doesn't stop Eiszapfen from informing her anyways: "Dunkelenergiemuster erkannt. Bereite."
With only a second's hesitation, Ami nods to the device and rips the chain from her neck, sending her hand wide. "Let's do it," she agrees as the device grows from a tiny charm to a long bladed blue trident.
"Aktivieren. Eiszapfen vollstaendig vorbereitet."
Ami Mizuno leaves her cares behind as the well armored Frost Knight Mercury calls to action, rushing from the back of the plane after Riventon and his terrible anger.
Out the plane, and through the veil that seperates the stable world of our reality from the dimensional strangeness and the after effects of whatever those Eclipse researchers did so long ago to collapse the tear in on itself, within the walls of the temple-turned research facility turned ruin, the walls are creeping and swirling with tendrils of shadow that are slowly writhing along, darker towards that central point - Riventon.
"You should go back to the plane and wait for me to finish here. This whole excursion was a waste of time." Riventon says, his tone harsh, angry, cruel, though at what is open to discussion. "There's no point in trying to seek information about my history when nobody wants to even be seen connected to me now."
"I'll take you home after. My apologies for misunderstsanding what we were... I thought your words carried meaning but it's your actions that tell the truth."
Frost Knight Mercury has no remorse for the tendrils of shadow and darkness that she cuts through as she rushes past them, a thin trail of starlit frost covering the ground in her wake. The blade of her trident flashes with frosty radiance with each stroke she makes, but she doesn't slow down.
When she reaches Riventon, Frost Knight Mercury shifts to one side, spraying shredded bits of ice ahead of her as she arrests her own all-too-fast approach.
But how, oh how, is she supposed to deal with this? It is not the darkness of the place that threatens her now, but the darkness of her partner. She knew it might come to this; it's one of the many eventualities which led her to coming in the first place. But she never thought she'd be the catalyst, nor is she prepared for the words that accompany it.
For a moment, she stands transfixed: a frosty sculpture frozen in time studying the chaotic darkness that surrounds her. But that sculpture shines despite the darkness, glimmering with the light of hope and determination and steadfastness. Mercury raises her chin defiantly and glares at him.
"You selfish, foolish ass," she accuses him directly. "You are not the only one in this world who has suffered; you are not the only one who is struggling to deal with their own personal demons. I did not put aside everything that mattered to me in Tokyo for someone I don't want to be connected to! How dare you belittle the sacrifices I have made to be here. The risks I have taken just to be here with you."
It's one of the notes that Kunzite had made about Takashi that rings true here - the fact that even as poluted as he is, he has a certain clarity and logic that holds the worst of the tainted energy at bay from eating him completly and it holds true here - it allows him to hear what she's saying and weigh it against the situation he finds himself in.
Some of that darkness shirks back even without the radiance of the blue-haired girl pushing it back - some of it is shirking back as her words reach him.
And in truth this is about fighting more than just Ami's tenseness at touch - it's fighting growing up alone, finding out he had a father who knew about him and chose to remain at distance, making allies who go thier own way - a history rife with people making distance and vanishing or refusing to truly connect to him.
It has as much to do with her actions or lack therof calling to those other people, than their own direct weight. "Then why is all of this so hard for you! You did come halfway across the planet to help me - why can't you come the remaining few inches - why do I have to have such distance from you when I am going so far to bury all the things I know you don't want?"
"Why did is this the first time since we've been here that you've ran towards me instead of away from me?!"
It's not a question Ami wants to face. It's certainly not one she wants to face here, in the depths of darkness. It's absolutely not a question she wants to face without the support group of fluffy, happy people who have devoted themselves to assisting her in maintaining her carefully constructed glass house of defenses.
But there it is, like the proverbial stone thrown into the mix, ready to destroy everything.
As Riventon's control grows, just a little, in the face of logic fueled by frustration, so too does the radiance in Mercury grow to fill those holes. She stands bolstered by her choices, and by the reminders of friendship even if they are not here. And secure in the knowledge that they're not going to love her any less for admitting this to him, rather than to them, she takes a slow and frigid breath, before answering.
"All my life, men have proven unreliable," replies Mercury coldly. "When I was a child, the male nurse in charge of my cradle wrote my name wrong. A few months later, my grandfather died. When I was older still, my father left without a word, and has never once actually kept his promise to see me again. Even now, as a Magical Girl, every man I know has failed me. Mamoru turned to darkness. Kunzite literally stabbed me in the back. And then there's you," she says, that coldness no less present in her tone. "You, who confound and defy me; who confuse and elate me. You, who makes me want more than anything to be with you. And you, who holds onto this sick and selfish notion that he, above all, knows what is best for the world. You terrify me, Takashi. And you excite me. You have so much potential for greatness--so much potential for good in you. And rather than embracing that potential, you squander it in pettiness and anger and rage. And worst of all, I cannot even blame you for those emotions, because the darkness that consumes you has been there since the start. It isn't your fault. It isn't your fault. But it's there nonetheless.
"Every man I have ever trusted, Takashi Agera, has hurt me, abandoned me, and left me alone."
Ami--Mercury--lets those words linger a few moments longer, before asserting, "And as long as the darkness is in you, I have no reason to trust that you won't do the same."
Takashi's shadows shirk back slowly as he - perhaps finally - gets an answer to the question that has vexed him for so long, that has all-but maddened him, opened a door he thought he'd sealed, let his emotions run to this. As he at least has something he can put his finger on, a problem that is at least not in its entirety his fault, something he can understand why he can't fix.
But it's the words about not trusting him - and tying it to the darkness - that pulls at him emotionally again - that causes him to pull from the Dusk Zone in a severe way and the shadows expand greatly, threatening to pull the entire place into that darkness. Except for one explicit part - Frost Knight Mercury and a good foot-wide circle around her.
"When that knife stabbed you in the back who made sure you lived? I didn't even know how I felt about you and I risked my position to save you then. When I was on that mountaintop and felt more of the darkness than I ever had what part was left safe? I will always hold you protected!" he screams, voice barely holding together, an oath.
"I have never left you alone or abandoned you and the only danger you face without me is the danger you don't tell me about!" The shadows and the accompanying miasma whip around violently. "And the only space between us is the space you put there!"
And then, like that, like he can't hold them together, they vanish as quickly as they came, and now the only point of darkness is a space around Riventon - roughly the area of the previous barrier around Ami, only around him for the moment.
Of its own volition, Eiszapfen raises a sphere of frost around Mercury--a defense against the encroaching darkness, now matter how unnecessary against Riventon it is. Perhaps that is a testament to the device's trust over Takashi's control. Or perhaps it is some harsh mathematical calculation of the probabilities involved. Whatever the case, the sphere forms, encasing Mercury in frigid protection as the darkness closes in.
As the chaos writhes around her--Takashi's power and control manifest--Mercury stands in a bubble of calm, frozen emptiness, unflinching.
When the darkness recedes, the bubble of frost remains for a moment, until Mercury's face screws up in irritation and she banishes it with a wave of her hand. The bubble of frost vanishes, and Mercury stands facing Riventon, surrounded in small motes of radiant frost as he is in a small mote of darkness.
"I didn't ask for your protection," Mercury reminds him quietly, "but I have been grateful for it on more than one occasion. But you're wrong about keeping me safe. You have hurt me more dearly than any man who came before you. And yet, here I am, still giving you not a second, but a third chance. And I will keep giving you chances, keep forgiving you, until we figure out how to get you to stop hurting me.
"But giving you chances doesn't mean unconditional trust," expresses Mercury quietly. "That you don't even see it--you don't even know how you have hurt me--is the core of the problem!"
Now she steps forward, closer towards him again. "The distance between us is a distance of both our making, not mine alone. Every time I try to build a bridge, you burn it down. Every time I try to open the door, you slam it closed."
She takes more steps towards him, and reaches out her hand as if she means to touch his face ... but she doesn't. She stands, instead, a foot or two away, her hand several inches from him, a poignant visual representation of the emotional divide between them. "Here I am, once again, bearing the battle scars of my love for you--yes love for you, Takashi. I'll use the word, here, and trust myself that it may yet be true. And you don't even see how they bleed."
Takashi frowns a bit. "But you needed it." Takashi says, looking into her eyes. "There are times where I think you can objectively say you needed me. I don't take shots for people usually but I would and have for you and for other people on your behalf."
"I don't go out of my way to hurt you and I hope you know that. If you would tell me instead of being cryptic I'd be more able to avoid it." Of course he's considering the Jupiter incident, and perhaps another thing in the future, but... there's a purpose, a reason to it all. In his mind.
"I'm not asking you to trust me unconditionally. Check my work, check my methods, be my peer review. I wouldn't have asked you here if I didn't think you were smart enough to check me when I have a bad idea, when my research is wrong! I count on that from you, I don't seek to avoid it."
"Why does this gulf..." and here he draws a line with one finger from his face to Ami's hand - just as his henshin breaks and he returns to Takashi, rather than Riventon "...protect you from me? Why does it need to be there, in order to make the rest of the things true? Becuase it harms me. It makes me feel unwanted." he says, sterness leaving from his voice as he too, bears a part of himself.
"It's painful. It's the difference between being an assistant and being a girlfriend. It's like my father having a family I can't be a part of, but he still wants to use the title and pretend to help me from afar, and it's just not the same."
The barrier armor doesn't retreat, and perhaps it is to Takashi's benefit that now--in this place of darkness and infernal heat, the beacon of radiance before him is chilled enough to put ice in the air. At least it's better than the Peruvian winter weather!
"I've told you how, in both cases," Mercury tells Takashi quietly, lowering her hand now to her side, "But I will make it plain once again, in the hopes that this time it will get through to you what you've done.
"The first time," Ami says, "was when you hurt my best friend. That was not merely a betrayal of her, but also of the trust I placed in you when you took me to your home. You learned not only my identity, but the identity of my closest friends and loved ones. When you kidnapped her and cloned her and tried to pass that clone off as her, you violated that trust, Takashi. It doesn't matter whether she was safe or in peril, what matters is that you used my trust in you--my defense of you--to hurt my friends. I have defended you to them, time and again--spent my love and reputation with them on your name. And you cost me that. Did you know that for a time, Makoto wouldn't even talk to me because of you?" Okay, it was before that incident, but it surely didn't help what came later! "For more than a month, Takashi--a month--my best friend would not talk to me because of you. And yet, here I am in South America, with her blessing, because even after you took her captive and tried to pawn off some cheap trash as her replacement, she still loves me enough to trust me when I say that I believe in you."
Well okay, Makoto wouldn't word it that way. But that's not the point.
"And after that," Ami says to him, spitting irritation and frustration, "You had the nerve--the temerity!--to agree to work on a project on a team--as partners and equals!--only to turn around and throw all of that away in the name of solving the Orange Crisis yourself. We agreed to wait. But you could not trust in my need for a measured approach. You had to rush straight to the finish line without bothering to look at a map of the course."
Her face is straight irritated, now, as she dares to glare into his eyes. "You hurt my reputation with my friends, and you have clearly demonstrated a complete lack of respect for my intellect in magic. And you question why the relationship feels more like one you should have with a lab assistant? Maybe when you stop treating me like one--when you stop treating my friends like tools--I will feel less like an assistant, and more like your partner."
Takashi is quiet, almost contemplative now. It's perhaps a rare moment - thinking and silence. "There have been... missteps." Takashi admits. It's a very limited form of responsibility for some very major mistakes - but it is there, however small. "And they're my fault. I am sorry for driving a wedge between you and Kino...san." he adds the honorific after a moment, as an afterthought. "I do understand now how much you care for her."
"The Orange Crisis wasn't about your intellect, it was about timing... and wanting to protect you. I didn't see any way for you to be involved without... extreme difficulty in one direction or another - I saw the way that would go, I knew it would end up in a fight - and that puts you in danger. There is nothing I respect more about you that your intellect, in magic and otherwise!"
"And I am trying - and it is difficult - to give all of your friends a wide lattitude and kindness purely because they are your friends, even if I wouldn't want to deal with them otherwise. I do that because I love you and because I do not want to hurt you by being rude to them, having seen how that went once. Do you understand, at least, that as much weight as you think I give to my 'ambitions' I am deliberately setting them back for you?"
He sighs. "The only thing I want here is for you to be with me, for you to be at my side, for you to be close to me, next to me."
"I did not ask you to protect me," Ami reiterates for Takashi quietly. "I am not a fragile flower, incapable of defending herself." At this, she holds out her trident ... and it vanishes, replaced once more by the charm. With it goes the powerful armor of frost knight, and the chilled air, leaving the girl once again in her fragile silk pajamas.
"I have told you before that I appreciated the times where you have defended me," Ami tells Takashi bluntly, standing barefoot in the dark and ancient lab, "but what I do not appreciate is being placed behind glass where I cannot experience the world. The Orange Crisis was of no threat to me--even when you innevitably screwed up the experiment with your impatience, I could have dealt with that fight. I am a soldier, Takashi! The Guardian of Intellect and Wisdom! I'm going to get hurt, from time to time, and I'm going to need help from time to time. But keeping me out of the fight is like telling a surgeon not to practice surgery because he might cut himself with the scalpel.
"Yes, there is risk to what we do!" Ami informs him. "But I don't want you between me and those risks. Catch me when I fall. Stand beside me as I face them. But partners--friends--do not come between the other and their duty."
Takashi shakes his head, again. "I know, but I feel like I need to protect you. Not from everything, not - putting you in a glass case, like you said - but like I need to lend my strength to yours, be there for you."
"You are a soldier but that doesn't mean I want you to fight alone. And it doesn't mean I want to expose you to undue or unecessary harm - you don't tell the surgeon that he should take up scalpel juggling, either!"
"I am doing everything I can to not come between you and your duty. Or your friends. Or even your school." Takashi says emphatically, taking that step towards her. "But I also think there should be a space for me past all of the things I am trying to make a path for!"
Ami actually rolls her eyes so hards it sends her head to moving with it, then fixes her stare right back onhim, a frown on her features. "You suck at not coming between me and my duty. You shield me from your attacks against my friends, but you still make the attacks. You protect me from your own impatience, but you're still impatient.
"You accused me of asking you to change for me," Ami informs Takashi bluntly. "Well it's true, I am asking you to change for me--to embrace your potential and become the brilliant genius you are meant to be, as a force for cooperation and peace. I am asking you to stand beside me--work with me--towards making this world better. And I am offering to stand beside you, in exchange--work with you--towards making this world safer. Because that's what you told me you want to do, Takashi. That's the you that I am here for: the man who says he just wants to protect the world with the powers he's been given. If that man cannot be my partner--if he cannot view me as an equal not in need of his protection but in support of his efforts--then maybe you're right, after all. Maybe there's no point to me being here, sifting through your past with you."
Takashi slaps one hand against each other - it's not a clapping motion, it's one born of a sort of extreme agitation and frustration. "You're misunderstanding me. I didn't say you needed my protection, I said I felt like I needed to protect you, and there's an important difference. Maybe it'd be better to say I feel a desire to protect you, to be there for you, to stand beside you."
"But I can't do that if you won't let me. There's no possible way I can stand beside you if you shift five feet to the left whenever I get close, which is what started all of this." he reminds her, since... well a lot has been gotten off their respective chests.
"I don't just view you as an equal, as a partner - I view you as more than that, a lot more. As the singularly most important person on this planet. I would and have travel the stars for you - I am trying everything I can and it may not work all the time but damnit I am trying!"
"And I'm still here," Ami says quietly, "practically in nothing but my underwear, in one of the most dangerous places I've ever been."
Takashi nods. "And I see that. But what I really want..." he admits, perhaps finally "... is to feel like my presence around you is wanted. Like it's better to be around me than not. Instead you tense up you when I lean on you and close down when I hug and you tell me not to kiss you on damned New Year's Eve and I don't know what to do with that anymore."
And somewhere along all of the yelling and all of the expenditure of energy and all of the sheer emotional shock Takashi just tips sideways and slumps against the wall and looks somewhat distinctly unwell.
Ami glances down at herself, at what she's wearing, thinking on her own words for a moment. She takes a breath, then looks back up at Takashi. "It's not," she tells him quietly. "Being with you isn't better than not, right now." It's blunt, it's honest, and it's right there.
"But it will be," she puts that hope out, "if you can learn to become someone I can trust. That trust has to be earned, and so far you've set yourself back--twice. You've also proven yourself--twice--by going with us to the Poles, and by saving me from Kunzite before that. I ..." she trails off, then blushes a little and looks away. "I kissed you," she reminds him quietly.
"Before we went north, I kissed you, and maybe some of it was because I was certain we were all going to die, but some of it was because you had earned my trust, that day." She looks back up to him, now, cheeks still red. "Earn it again," she begs him quietly. "I want to trust you."
It's not the answer Takashi wanted to this conversation, and it really does show, and there's no hiding that, not on his face, not in his body language, and not in his tone of voice. But he doesn't go around threatening their month+ of work, so perhaps some progress is there. Still, there's the fact that she just hit him with an emotional truck.
"Fine." is the first thing he says, in regards to becoming someone she can trust, but before she reminds him of her kiss. It's not harsh or aggressive - it's much closer to sad and resigned, matching his crestfallen expression.
"And I'll treasure that day forever, no matter what happens." he says as she finishes. "I want you to trust me, too." he finishes up with a heavy sigh. "...Come on, we should go back." he notes, pointing the way out and back to the edge between the dimensions, that shimmering scar. "I don't think we'll get anything done today in here and we should let it re-stablize." Going back to talking about work, going back to some form of normality.
Not putting his arm around her or trying to lead her out, and notably giving her a lot more distance than he had been.
Ami shifts from foot to foot, judging him quietly for a moment, before she observes, "I haven't got shoes on." She offers him a half-hearted, clearly nervous smile.
Takashi isn't sure what to do there, for a moment. He knows what he'd like to do, but there's also so much going on in the storm of his mind - until he just doesn't. And he walks over and - rather suddenly, like most of his actions, just picks her up and is suddenly princess carrying her.
"You can be embarassed or mad or whatever at me later, but necessity." It's hard to be grumpy when he's got her like this. So he doesn't try, and just startd to carry her out.
Ami blushes only a little when Takashi lifts her up, but she does put an arm around his neck and rest her head on his shoulder. "It's hard to be mad or embarassed when you're doing the only logical thing you could have done," she notes quietly. Though she is a little embarrased. "I knew that when I mentioned it. Thank you," she says, allowing herself to be carried out.
Takashi walks slowly out of the place with Ami in his arms, and he looks down and decides that, well, THIS is somehow a good time to tell her some things. "I'm sorry a lot of guys haven't treated you right, including me, sometimes. But the difference is that I'm really trying to. I do love you. I'm not afraid to say that. And I'm not going to abandon you as long as you don't run so far away I can't find you."
Ami sighs and closes her eyes as he carries her out. She should have gone to bed by now. It's late, and she's tired, and this argument has cost her on stress, energy, and time. But she doesn't tell him those things; the analysis happens and then gets pushed aside. "I know it's hard to feel like I'm here, when I am so uncomfortable with unrequested contact. But I am here, Takashi. I dropped everything for you, lied to my mother, and came to be here with and for you with only a little bit of concerns not about what might happen, but about how it would affect my life. I just need you to believe me when I tell you that this," she touches his face gently, briefly, then lets her hand slowly slide back down to his shoulder, "is hard for me, and that I am doing the best that I can. And that the more I can trust you, the easier it gets."
Takashi is tired, too - it means maybe his guard is down, maybe his honesty comes out a little more than it usually is. And both of those things are often true around Ami with no other factors. And unlike her, he doesn't analyze it and factor it in. His self-analysis goes other places.
"I'm sorry that you're having to deal with the fallout from my past, too." he says, as they breach through the barrier back out into the jungle and head towards the plane. "Just like your history makes it hard to trust, it's mine that makes me so... dependant on that contact, I guess."
"That makes me want it so bad, to replace... I don't know, what I didn't get." And then he quiets down, as though he's realized the totality of the information he just gave, to both of them, frankly.
Ami's lips curl up into a lopsided smirk, and she buries her face against her shoulder to avoid showing it. "Yeah," she agrees quietly. "Believe me, I do understand that. More than you realise, I understand that. Which makes this all the more painful to me, because I do want it. I'm just terrified of it."
Takashi has nowhere to bury his own face, unlike Ami. Someone has to keep their eyes on the now well-worn path back to the plane. The plane that had no business landing in the dense Peruvian jungle. "It's... I want to believe you're working at it. I want to trust you. I'm trying. But I'm an experimenter, not a theorist, and all this time has made it a lot harder than I was expecting."
Here, Ami sniffs in amusement and rolls her eyes just a little. "Takashi, this may come as a surprise for you to hear, so I will try to be delicate. Everyone is just experimenting in life, trying to find some magical pperfect way to deal with one another. And we are all bad at it. And it is always hard. Welcome to life with others."
Takashi takes a hop up over a step - a hop which is not strictly neccessary, and may be more due to having a pretty girl in his arms. And may end up with him literally floating over it for just a moment before coming down near the plane. "You know I thought I had it mostly figured out, though."
"I guess I'm worse at it than I believed. And it's taking longer than I expected. You mentioned it earlier - patience is not one of my virtues. Tenacity maybe, but not patience."
Ami hugs just a little tighter at that hop, seeking stability instincctively. She loosens up almost as quickly, blushing now. "Yes, well, you should work on that. I can probably walk from here," she notes quietly.
"I'll try." Takashi gently tilts Ami upright and sets her down on her feet in the front of the plane-residence. "I just wish I could see a little more progress?" It's not said as an attack - instead said quite delicately, noting a concern he has. Wether real or not.
"But I'll trust that you're trying. I mean. You're here. That does matter to me. So much."
Ami steadies herself on her feet, then reaches down to grab his hand gently. "Profress," she says quietly, "Like letting you put your head on my shoulder or in my lap while I call my friends. Small steps," she agrees as she walks with him towards the stairs, "but progress."
Takashi squeezes her hand for just a moment when she grabs it. "I'll admit, it's been nice. A nice small step." He continues to walk with her, but changes the subject. "I think we're almost done here. Once that cipher's broken and we can get into the archives and download them - and once we figure out how to properly copy things stored with double-decade old Eclipse tech - we'll be pretty much ready to seal the gap permanantly."
The bluenette lets his hand go so that she can mount the stairs ahead of him. "That's good," she notes. "The tests are only two weeks away aand I am starting to get nervous."
Stifling a yawn, Ami admits, "I should probably get some sleep insstead of pretending I run on batteries. Are we ... okay, now?"
Takashi snorts. "Ami, those tests are designed to be somewhat difficult for normal people. You're a certified genius and my girlfriend, I am pretty sure you have nothing at all to worry about." Not that it's clear what the latter part has to do with it.
After a big breath, he nods. "Yeah, I think we're okay now. Probably be even better once we both sleep. Goodnight, gorgeous genius."
"Good night, Takashi," Ami replies, before turning to head back into her little alcove by herself. It's not until she's curled back up under the blanket that she allows herself to close her eyes and really experience all the emotions she's been holding back for the last half an hour for his sake. The tears don't come a second time, but the pain is still there. It takes her a good two more hours to fall asleep, and when she does it's still huddled up against the bulkhead of the plane, rather than in the hammock she's set up for herself.