EVEN EDEN BURNS

        ❛   Great !    ❜  There’s a small pause as he moves across the room, only to return to the other’s side with a spare helmet in his hands. It’s grey, a lot less stylish than the one he currently wears, but it’ll do. He pushes it against the taller’s chest before climbing onto the vehicle – there’s plenty of room for two people, if a little cramped.

        HE HAS TO ADMIT HE’S surprised -- though not disappointed -- to find he’ll be experiencing such a feat first-hand, though he ‘sure Crow has a point; it likely would be the easiest way to go about showing him, rather than locating some spot from which he could look on while Crow demonstrates from afar. Helmet is slipped on without complaint as he takes up a spot behind driver, arms wrapping around his mid-section to prevent falling off. 

             ❛   Well…. yeah, but…    ❜  There’s a small pause, followed by a frustrated huff. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard a more paradoxical argument in his life and at this point he doesn’t even want to bother trying. Placing the oven gloves down on a counter, he leans back against it. He stretches his arms above his head with a groan, before he links his hands together behind his head, and glances at the other.

      Her eyes bore into Shun’s, willing him to look at her, to assure her that he doesn’t mean what she thinks he does, but he’s stubborn. He won’t meet her gaze. Her hands unclench in the fabric of his coat, falling to hang limply at her sides. Words form on her tongue and she closes her mouth to prevent them from escaping. She grits her teeth to keep from screaming. She reminds herself that they’re on a battlefield. She tells herself the same thing she has every day and every night since Academia came: she tells herself that there was nothing she could have done. She tells herself that she couldn’t have been faster or stronger or smarter. She tells herself that it wasn’t her fault.

        HE’S NOT SURE WHAT response he expected, his sister different from the one he knew prior to the invasion and even more so than the one he knew before her disappearance, experiences under her belt that he cannot currently imagine but he does know that wasn’t the one he wanted. It’s selfish, perhaps, but a breakdown he could have dealt with, tears and yelling and blame ----- he would have been able to take that with a simple stab to the heart; watching her swallow, blink back tears, straighten her shoulders... that knife twists, rips through the fragile organ beating so pitifully within his chest; what child must be so accustomed to death that she has learned to take news of it with angry acceptance?