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[Here goes nothing...]

Angela?

do you have a minute to talk?

The minutes I have are plentiful. What do you need, Minako?

I'm still stuck in the mountains right now but if I get back soon, sometime this month, could we meet for coffee or something?

I wanted to talk to you face to face about something

Edited 2018-03-11 06:28 (UTC)

Certainly.

Do you plan on telling me what it is or leaving it a secret?

oh

well

it's kind of one of those things that need to be said in person for full effect

so for now it's a secret, I guess? Even though it's not really a secret in and of itself

Is that so.

Well then, I'll be awaiting your return, bated be my breath for as long as I may continue to hold it.

I hope that you are well.

[Did she piss her off again? Sigh...]

thank you, you stay safe in the city too

[And then on the 4th of March.]

Angela? Are you free today?

Free from what?

Haha, only kidding.

You wish to speak with me in person, yes?

yes, please

there's a new cake shop in Tisse on 4th street, if that's okay with you?

So long as you're comfortable covering my appetite.

I'll be there around 3:00PM and do my best not to be tardy.

[She's tardy. Pacing up to Minako at the table that she's probably sitting at in the shop.]

Apologies, I missed my bus, as per usual...

[Minako is sitting pensively at the corner table like the video game protag she is, looking out the huge glass wall out onto the street, ignoring the busy cafe behind her. When Angela arrives, she startles, then shakes her head. The hundreds of thoughts she was turning over in her head disappear in an instant.]

No, it's fine. The waiter is bringing samples of their cake, I think. New cafe promotion. [She gestures to the seat opposite her.] Please sit down.

[Angela sits a bit cautiously. Minako is so...somehow so much harder to read than Minato, even though it should certainly be the opposite.]

Very quaint.

What's on your mind, Minako? Is this about your brother?

[She smiles wryly, making sure to breathe evenly so her body knows to stay calm. She really doesn't want to mess this up. Angela is...even without her brother in the equation, even without the memories, Minako could see herself being friends with Angela. She sees a lot of the blond woman's smiles and happiness in herself. She doesn't want to lose the chance to get to know her better over something stupid she said, or over bad impressions.]

He's sort of tangentially related? [He always seems to be.] But I'll get into that later. First and foremost, I wanted to apologize to you.

[She folds her hands on the table in front of her, very still as she searches for the words that even an hour's worth of staring out over the street couldn't finish putting together in a satisfying way, and then looks resolutely, unblinkingly ahead at Angela.]

The post you made a while back on the network. The one with the poetry. I wanted to apologize in person for what I texted you. I've been an event coordinator for a while, and a volunteer for longer. It's my natural inclination to try and find a way to help if someone is in distress, even if I don't know them very well or at all. You didn't need any of that, that day. I spoke out of turn and was unthinkingly rude to you while you were upset. For all of that, I'm sorry.

[Angela rather loudly taps her fingers down against the table, making rhythmic metal clanks.]

You don't need to apologize for that. I was having a bad day––honestly, I haven't even thought of it since then.

[Tilts her head to the side. A bleeding heart. If their places were reversed, Angela finds that she'd probably be feeling more or less the same.]

This has been...bothering you?

[Minako relaxes incrementally, a little breath leaving her. Well, that's a better reaction than she'd prepared for. And now she's the one who feels vulnerable, her eyes glancing to the street a moment before refocusing again. A fair turnaround, honestly.]

A bit. I had to leave the city before I could decide how to talk to you, and a lot of things happened in the mountains in the meantime...but a talk with Minato reminded me about it again. I didn't want to leave it alone for any longer.

Decide how to talk to me?

I'm not...some fragile flower, teetering on the edge of complete despair. I'm fine. I was dramatic that night, but I'm fine, I don't need anything special. The apology is more than enough.

[She does sound...a touch annoyed. But these days, she's always a touch annoyed, and there's a look in her eyes that's trying hard to communicate that to Minako.]

We're fine. We're friends.

[A wave of annoyance hot enough to match Angela's rockets through Minako. She purses her lips tightly together to stem it, but months of jealousy rise to the fore, and it becomes unstoppable.]

I never said you were a fragile flower. When I said I was deciding how to talk to you, I was referring to how I wanted to present myself to you, not to how you appear to me.

[Her grip on her hands goes white knuckled, but her voice continues on, steady and steadfast, and despite the burn in them, her eyes don't betray her yet.]

Because I'll be completely honest with you, okay? You intimidate me. Have from the very beginning. You're my brother's best friend. Of course I want to put my best foot forward and not make a complete ass of myself in front of you. Whenever I talk with you, I always have to contend with my own self-consciousness and doubt about myself and my relationship with him. So-- I get it. You're fine. We can be friends and I won't push about what you're going through. I've had memories of you, too, and I was hoping I could talk to you about them. But if you need space, if you don't want to talk about it, then I can give you that. I'm not here to argue with you about what kind of person you are, Angela. I want to learn.

If you want to be my friend, try being my friend. Everything always needs to be so dramatic and heavy-handed. Some people don't need or want a big apology. I wish you had expressed interest in me as a person rather than my fractured emotional state or your jealousy of the relationship that I have with Minato. I wish you opened your mouth and asked me what my favorite song is or how I've been keeping busy instead of immediately throwing my broken, tin heart into the equation. Or did you just feel too guilty that you simply had to address it?

[TAP. TAP. TAP. It's louder and louder until Angela lifts her arm to roll up her sleeve, exposing the silver, white, bronze metal in place of her arm.]

I have a lot to deal with lately, Minako Arisato. I would give anything to feel normal right now, so I'm sorry if I'm not responding well to your attempt to sit and look inside my soul. Are you here to talk to me for me, or because your bleeding heart gave you that obligation? I'm sorry that I'm so intimidating, but is that my fault? Is it my fault that Minato likes me more than he likes you? No, it's not so maybe get over it and treat me like a normal human being and not...whatever you've made me to be in your head.

[Minako stares at the other woman with a scalded look on her face, humiliation and frustration rising to her cheeks. She had thought she'd been honest and sincere. She'd set her most vulnerable self on the table as a gesture of empathy, as a quiet "I'm having trouble with my life too", in the simple hopes that Angela might understand a little bit of where she's coming from, and the importance of why she wants to this friendship to work out. She didn't expect it to be so ill-received. Given the grim evidence of what Retrospec has done to her, though, the reaction is completely justified. Minako's personal problems pale in comparison.

And now Angela is shooting Minako down at every turn, attacking that vulnerability, and the terrible part is, it's completely understandable from her point of view now that she's said her piece. Angela has every right to be furious with Minako. Knowing that stings. And combined with Minato's comments to her a few days ago, she feels like she's hit rock bottom now, the very foundations of her way of caring and reaching out to others now labeled nothing more than...empty platitudes.

Minako presses her lips together again, but this time to stop them from trembling. Her long inhale is shaky in their place.]

The Angela in my head is a woman who likes music, has a nice smile, and can make my brother smile, too. Aside from that, I admit, she barely exists at all.

[The waiter takes her pause to quickly drop off their cake samplers before hightailing it away from them, and since he didn't bother, Minako quietly, properly arranges the samplers between her and Angela on the table. Then she folds her hands in her lap again. Breathes in and out ten times before she slowly speaks. Wondering if Angela is even willing to accept simple apologies at this point.]

Maybe you're right, and I let my bleeding heart get away from me. You could be right about me feeling guilty, too. Even so, it felt important to me to tell you everything I did. That's why I said anything at all. That said. I'm sorry that it was incredibly thoughtless. And that everything I said ignored your feelings. [An exhale.] You've given me a pretty loud wake up call, so...thank you for that, too. I know I have a lot to think about after this.

[And she ducks her head, feeling like she's stuck her neck through the guillotine. She'd like to go to the bathroom to cry, but Angela is the one who gets the last say in all this, as judge and jury.]

I wish you hadn't asked me here to apologize. I wish you had asked me here because you just wanted to get to know me.

[A deep sigh. The cakes look...rather unappealing, given the strife. Given the sad look in Minako's eyes. A look that leaves Angela with a pit in her stomach, feeling something like a cruel monster. She looks like Minato.]

But I get it. People are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Deciding what to do...

[She takes a small spoon, digging into one of the samplers delicately.]

I am becoming more rigid day by day, Minako. It is very sad to experience. You had every right to speak your mind. I merely...cannot help hurting. [She takes the bit of cake into her mouth, swallowing it before her lips tremble slightly.]

I said cruel things to you a moment ago. You did no such thing to me. All you did was express kindness and concern. I selfishly allowed myself to...

[This whole thing becoming the disaster it has so quickly really hammers home for her the state that she's in, that she's allowed herself to deteriorate so greatly and perhaps, irreparably. This person isn't someone that she likes. None of this, she likes. She's gone bad. Rotten. No good as a friend, no good as a sister, no good for Minato.]

I'm sorry.

[She pushes the sample she tasted towards Minako, looking away with shimmering, wet eyes.]

This one is good...

I do want to get to know you, though...

[She'd just botched up the attempt with some badly conveyed thoughts, and now here they are, two women weeping over cake samplers and feeling terrible over the terrible things they've said to each other. But maybe that needed to happen so they could get somewhere. They've seen the other's side of the problem, bared their souls and set their hearts on the table. Now they can try to reach that point that they're both hoping for-- friendship without so much complication.

It takes her a moment to look up and realize that Angela has offered her half of the cake, but only an instant to accept the small peace offering, shaky though her hands are as she reaches out with her fork.]

When I was talking to Minato about wanting to meet you, he told me...well, I think it's appropriate to mention, given the situation. [She dashes away her tears, finally falling from the corners of her eyes, with her free hand.] He said that both of us have a right to be upset. That it's okay for us to be angry, at each other, at someone else, just. Anyone or anything in general. We're allowed that, despite the kind of people we're known to be.

And he's right. He's absolutely right. So...don't be sorry. It's okay. I needed to hear that anger, just as much as I think you needed to let it out.

[She sticks the tiny fork into her mouth to stop herself from rambling. The tiny bite eases the lump in her throat a little.]

You're right, it's good. My mom used to say that sweets help with bad moods...so we should eat a lot.

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