Inception

Chapter 13: Finding Immortality

 He would have been successful in forgetting about her if Cromwell's autistic assistant hadn't thrown up on his shoes.

Soshiro had gutted kaiju whose insides made human vomit smell like lavender fabric softener. Even so, it was never a pleasant experience to be thrown up on, especially down in the lab which already stank of formaldehyde and the je ne sais quoi of kaiju ick.

In the split second he'd frozen in disgust, a scolding for the other man about coming into work when you felt ill, Ichikawa had magically appeared from around a wall of science equipment and had both an arm to rub the man's back and a trash can to catch the next deluge ready.

"You're okay, Yoji, it's alright, I got you."

To Soshiro's surprise, the middle-aged man gave a whimper.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—heurk!"

"Here, sit down, the chair's right behind you. Good, here's your bin, you've done nothing wrong."

Her tone had been impossibly soft to Soshiro. It made him wonder when was the last time anyone had been so soft to him or anyone else in his sight. Perhaps when he had been a small child, for after a certain age children of a kaiju slaying family were raised to be strong and unyielding. The sight of Ichikawa more or less babying a puking, crying middle-aged man who should have known better than to come to work should have disgusted him.

And yet, something in him seemed to pull towards her, aching enough to make him clench his jaw.

As soon as Ichikawa had her co-worker settled she'd pulled a packet of babywipes out of her pocket as though ready for the occasion and set to work on his shoes. He tried to take them from her and do it himself, but she insisted she already had gloves on and would be safer from whatever bug could be in it. He tried to get away from her the moment his shoes seemed relatively free from ick—anything to get away from the sick scientist and this weird agonizing yanking—but she'd pushed him down in a seat as though he were a child himself and set about taking off his shoes and socks, spraying down his feet and pant legs in a sanitizing spray used to clean the lab tables, and wrapped his shoes up in a bag.

"I have slippers you can use. Give these to the cleaners. It should be safe now."

And then she handed him the typed out report her co-worker should have been giving Soshiro verbally.

"I'll take care of Yoji. I'm sorry for the endangerment to your health, sir. I know a lot of lives depend on you."

And then Soshiro was upstairs and out of the lab, feeling like he'd had a block of cement dropped on his head.

A vision, like a night dream, played without his will across his mind's eye. Ichikawa besides his bed as he recovered from a fight, touching his head, speaking in that ever soft voice, comforting his horror at his own weakness and even laughing at his feverish jokes. Ichikawa dancing in the dojo of his family home, all curves and jingling coins. Ichikawa welcoming him in. Ichikawa reaching for him, sky blue eyes veiled behind a fan of silver lashes.

The images took hold of him, possessed him. He had as much choice over their hold on him as he would the massive hand of a numbered kaiju without his combat suit.

He couldn't remember the rest of the day. He must have gotten through it well enough because no one brought it up.

But from that day on, the burning falling star of his future changed. It still shone like a polished blade in the sun. But the light went out softly, drifting down with the daylight into a soft bed where white arms held him as though they thought him much too precious to ever die. He saw immortality in those arms where before he had accepted his infinitely small mortality.

And as any man had in history when faced with eternal life, he sought after it with bone numbing madness.

He found excuses to go down to the lab. The cafeteria being unable to deliver the snacks proved to be his salvation. He played up his quick wit and charisma. He squeezed out ever last drip of his ability to read people. He walked the steps and did the jig with every last bit of focus that he'd used to learn the blade. The him from before Lena wouldn't have even recognized him.

And when the little voice in the back of his head reminded him of how bad an idea it was to have a relationship, of what a bad idea it would be to get her to care just to end up as dead as the rest of her family, he ignored it. Because this wasn't just playing love. This was divinity. This was the bed that the sun traveled across the sky for and the reason it rose. This was knee-bending yearning.

It became readily apparent that Lena Ichikawa really had given up any semblance of a normal social life to obtain her goal. She was shy of him at best, wary of him at worst. She'd stop mid-sentence to get distracted by something else. She'd jump, stare, and sometimes just straight up ignore him. Holding her attention was like keeping a cat on task. He'd never felt less interesting. He, after all, couldn't tell her how to wipe kaiju out of existence, because that's what she meant to do. It was laughable, a task tantamount to drying up an ocean, but the way she went about it made one think she intended to do it the very next day. And when he finally did get her to hold a conversation with him, the way she explained it made even him believe it too.

"There just has to be a reason kaiju haven't wiped out life on the planet. They have the strength, the reproductivity, the appetite, to destroy the entire ecosystem continents over in a matter of months. But they've been around for centuries and somehow haven't. It just doesn't make sense that we've been able to wipe them all out before they could. We've even found kaiju corpses without signs of being slain, and yet no one has been able to find out why."

"I'm just crazy, Vice Captain. I've been possessed by this vision of a world where the leading cause of death is something stupid like heart disease or being too fat. People would be more afraid of dying by sharks than kaiju attacks."

"You know every minute twenty people are killed by kaiju? In the time it would take me to eat that apple, a whole neighborhood would be dead. It's not supposed to be. It's just not."

"If I really can't do this, I'll go at them with my teeth. My freaking teeth."

It shouldn't have turned him on as much as it did to imagine her going feral. Not Lena Ichikawa, who was much more tender, timid, and gentle than the gruff image she tried to give off. Not Lena, who treated her aging and anxious fellow scientists with as much tenderness as a mother to her children.

He wanted to bury himself in her softness. He wanted to vanish in her embrace, turned into nothing but flesh to be integrated into hers.

But she didn't even know he saw her as more than an entertaining victim to tease let alone as a lover.

Not until tonight.

When Soshiro finally put away his swords and staggered through a quick, cold shower, his limbs were nubs of lead and his feet and hands had become fire. He was out before he'd even finished falling onto his bed.

Just to dream of her, dancing in silver hair and gold-draped hips.