towerofanimus | Aftermath

Characters: Tohko Amano and you.
Setting: Post-event. First the Dorm Floors and then floor seventy-eight.
Format: Prose to start with, but I'll match you.
Summary: Tohko, remembering all that she's done, tries to make amends with whomever she can.
Warnings: You might possibly have a blubbery Tohko, depending upon who you are.

Tohko remembered everything that she had done and tried to do as a drone very, very well. She had tried to kill people, had ordered others about, had been skinned and mutilated like that..and she had tried to kill children, she had tried to kill her best friends! While she loved the photo album, with pictures of her parents, family, and friends..it only made her want to cry even harder, so she left it in her room. Instead, she ran out of her dorm room, biting her lip and carrying her notebook and pen, rushing to the elevator with the intent of heading down.

She had to put things right, now that it was all over. She had to apologize, if she could! Even if it was because of Jason, it was still..terrible that she had done those things..especially to her friends.

When she finally got to the mailroom, Tohko started scribbling notes to the people she knew she had injured and friends that she had seen hurt and mutilated. There were probably network postings that she could look at or even use for this..but Tohko liked using letters, if she could. When she finished one note, she would rip it out and stuff it in a mailbox before starting again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"However..if Kevin can't convince the Shion there to activate it, then Zarathustra won't activate, right?"

Tohko noticed that anger and disgust, and, for better or worse, couldn't keep from asking about it.

"..From your reaction, I'm assuming that Kevin is not the best person that ever lived."

"He'll be able to convince her. She has absolute trust in him and he knows her well enough to manipulate her emotions with hardly any effort. Maybe if I betrayed Wilhelm and stopped T-elos from destroying KOS-MOS, it might make her think twice. But once she finds out what really happened on Miltia, I doubt he'll have to do much more than suggest that it might go differently next time."

He rubbed his face with a sigh and looked away.

"And if I know Kevin, that's exactly what he'll do, whether I'm on his side or against him. Even if something happened to permanently separate them, that would probably only make her more willing to go along with Wilhelm so she could get him back. I could tell her the truth about him, but that would just leave her feeling even more abandoned and alone than if he disappeared."

As she burned the information onto her brain and tried to think of a solution, Tohko sighed.

"..I've only met Shion once, so I might not be the best person to offer advice..but..if you tell her the truth and back it up with evidence, and she does end up feeling alone..mightn't you be able to tell her that she's not really alone at all? You love her, and even if you feel wrong about telling her that in your universe, you can tell her that you're at least her friend. And M.O.M.O.'s probably her friend too..along with quite a few others. She's not alone. Maybe it'll just take someone else pointing it out for her to really notice."

"You've met the Shion here. Things are different where I'm from. She has every reason to hate the Brown Testament. We were sort of friends when I was human, but we weren't really close. She's probably all but forgotten me by now. Kevin's been her lover for years and the truth that she's going to find on Miltia...it's enough to make anyone question their place in the world and whether or not anyone could want her around knowing it."

"I'm not sure if she's completely forgotten you..but..even if the truth does cause her pain and makes her feel like no one would want her around, someone will have to shove the idea that she is wanted and loved, despite everything. If that idea gets hammered into her hard enough..then maybe she'll be alright."

"And if at the same time someone is offering her a chance to do everything over again? A small hope that things could be different with a second try...if you felt that alone, that much like a burden to the entire universe, wouldn't it be tempting?"

"But..that's the thing. The Eternal Recurrence is set up so that everything repeats in almost the exactly same manner. The offer might be tempting..but if I felt like I was a burden, I would rather work with the current universe to try and help and make sure that I wasn't the burden I thought I was."

"But obviously not the exact same. I don't think I'm usually a Testament, and I met a version of Jin who was one when he isn't normally. Not to mention, U-DO isn't reset, so it acts a little bit differently each time. Miltia was heavily influenced by him, so those events have the highest chance of changing."

"Right..I met that Jin too, and I know that U-DO doesn't reset..but that also means that if someone does choose to reset the universe, things could end up being even worse than they were before."

Aftermath

Dormitory floors

Dormitory floors

Dormitory floors

Dormitory floors

Dormitory floors

Dormitory floors

Dormitory floors

Dormitory floors

Dormitory floors