Work Text:
Nene’s just executed a perfect flurry rush against the Golden Lynel in the Coliseum Ruins when something crashes into her window, heavy enough to rattle the blinds and loud enough that it makes her drop her controller. The Lynel knocks her halfway across the map in her scramble to pick it back up.
Game Over.
There’s another crash against the glass windowpane. Nene sighs. She gets up and goes to the window, pushing the blinds up and peering out, though there’s not much it can be other than what it is: one of Rui’s drones, winding up to throw itself against the glass for a third time. Nene pushes the window open and dodges out of the way as the drone fails to correct its velocity in time and careens through the window, bouncing off the side of her bean-bag chair before hitting the floor.
She looks back at the window, expecting Rui to launch himself through it next the way he always used to, but he’s not actually there. She frowns and goes to inspect the drone. It picks itself back up as she approaches and spins twice in the air.
“Nene-ojousama!” it exclaims. Nene rolls her eyes. All Rui’s robots have called her that since she can remember. She thinks there was probably an inciting incident at some point, but she doesn’t remember it now– just that whenever she asks him to change it, he just picks something even more embarrassing.
“… Yes,” Nene says, once she realizes the drone is waiting for a response. “Um, this is Nene.”
“Rui requests your presence in his workshop ASAP,” the drone tells her. Then it spins twice in the air again and zips out through the still-open window.
Nene’s eyebrows draw together in confusion as she stares after it. It’s certainly not the first time Rui’s summoned her – it’s not even the first time he’s done it via a drone through her window. But it’s been a really, really long time. Nene will be the first to admit they haven’t kept in touch as well as she’d have liked. Not before she’d given up on theatre, and certainly not after.
When Nene thinks about it, the last time was probably just before it happened. Rui’s drone had summoned her, just like it did today, and he’d sat her down on the couch in his workshop-bedroom and shown her his new drone actors and their latest show. He’d been so excited, but… in a manic, desperate sort of way. Nene remembers wanting to help and having no idea how to. She remembers wanting to beg him to slow down, to – to join her troupe, please, it won’t be like last time, we can do shows together again, just stop making that horrible, lonely face – but she couldn’t promise that, could she? The others in her troupe had been nice, but they hadn’t liked her even before she ruined everything, and she was trying so hard to take up as little space as possible. What would they have said to Rui, who has never tried to be anything other than he is? Nene shudders to think about it, even now.
So she hadn’t said anything. And then a week later she got up on stage and she couldn’t say anything then, either.
She knows Rui does his guerilla shows around the amusement park these days. Maybe he has a new show, now.
Nene hopes it’s a little less lonely.
She closes the window and stretches. Her back pops in three places. Jesus, how long was she sitting there like that? She doesn’t know. It’s late now, probably too late to be leaving the house, but it’s Rui. She texts her mom that she’s going next door for a little while and receives a thumbs-up emoji and a “Say hi too Rui-kun for me” in response and then she’s out the door.
Even though it’s been a long time since they were really close, Nene still has a key to the Kamishiro house on her keyring, and she lets herself in as quietly as she can. She can hear Rui’s father snoring from clear across the house and she tiptoes her way to the door to the weird workshop/bedroom hybrid Rui inhabits. She doesn’t bother knocking – he’s got to know she’s coming, right? He’s the one who called for her.
Rui’s hunched over his desk, back to the door. Nene closes it quietly behind her. It’s super dark like it always is, except for the harsh light of Rui’s work lamp on his desk, illuminating the mess of circuitry and blueprints he perpetually has scattered across it. There’s something next to him, too, bigger than his usual drones, but Nene can’t make out any details with it so dark like this. She flicks on the light. Rui startles a little, and swivels in his chair to face her.
“Geez,” she grumbles, picking her way through the minefield of abandoned projects and dirty cups, “you’re really gonna go blind by the time you’re 20 if you keep–”
And then her eyes adjust, and she freezes in her tracks. Rui stares at her. Nene stares at… herself?
It’s not really her. It’s maybe three feet tall, stocky and cartoonish, and it’s wearing some kind of stage costume – a butterfly or a fairy, maybe? – that Nene’s never seen before. But. It has her hair, and her eyes. It’s smiling like she used to, in their stupid old home videos.
Nene opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. She has no idea what to say in this situation. Rui clearly doesn’t intend to explain – just stares at her, hopeful, expectant.
“W– why is it me?” she blurts out. Rui watches her for another moment, and then – bursts into laughter. It sounds like it’s being pulled from him by force.
Oh, Nene thinks. He hasn’t laughed like that in a really long time, has he?
“Sorry,” Rui says after he composes himself, “I think I forgot for a moment that you’d need an explanation.”
There’s a pang of something like guilt, nostalgia, loss all at once. Back then, I wouldn’t have, Nene thinks, and misses the children they used to be. When we were kids I always knew exactly what you were thinking.
“W– well?” she says, tugging at her sleeve nervously, instead of any of that.
Rui takes a breath, the way he does when he’s about to deliver a line during a show. He must have prepared what to say beforehand. “I want to do shows together again,” he says, determined, and Nene’s heart jumps into her throat at the thought of it. “But I know you’ve had a hard time being on stage, ever since that time in middle school.” Nene flinches a little at the reminder. “So I made this.”
He gestures to the little robot Nene. Nene stares at her, then at Rui.
“I don’t understand,” she says, although she does. “You– you know I don’t do theatre anymore.” No matter how badly I miss it.
“But you want to,” Rui says, like there was never any other possibility. “Don’t you?”
Nene bites her tongue. “No,” she lies, and wonders if Rui will be able to tell, or if they’re so far from each other now that he’s forgotten even that.
Rui frowns at her. “That’s a lie,” he says. Nene feels an irrationally powerful sort of relief. “You miss it. I know you miss it. Your window is right out there, Nene, I always hear you practicing that song from The Little Mermaid.”
“Of course I miss it,” Nene snaps, and then immediately feels bad. “But I– I can’t. I can’t do it again.”
Rui gets up, then. He crosses the room and holds something out to her. She takes it without thinking, and only then really looks at it.
“… An XBox controller?” she asks.
Rui nods. “Modified. To work with her.”
Nene presses the joystick forward experimentally. The robot’s eyes light up purple. It starts to walk forward.
“… Rui, I can’t–”
“You don’t think you can face a crowd again, right? With her, you don’t have to. You can just act, and sing, through the mic. She can even dance. I know you’re good enough at games to control her properly.”
“That’s–”
Nene looks up at him. He looks… determined. Hopeful and excited, waiting for her response. His eyes are gleaming the way they used to. The way Nene hasn’t seen in a long time.
She clutches the controller to her chest. “…Why now?”
“Hm?”
“What’s changed? You were working on your own for so long. And I gave up such a long time ago. So why now?”
Rui smiles. “I met someone. Two someones. They invited me to join them.”
“… And you accepted?” That alone is enough to make Nene curious. Plenty of people ask Rui to work with them when they first see his shows. He’s always turned them down – so sure they’d leave him anyway after they see what working with him is like. That he would give it a shot with someone else, after so long…
He laughs. “I accepted. They’re interesting.”
Nene looks down at the controller in her hands. “Won’t it be weird for them? Having a robot as a troupe member.”
Rui shrugs. “If they want me to be their director they’ll have robots in their troupe anyway.”
Nene laughs a little. “I guess that’s true.” She pauses. Takes a breath. “I… I want to try. But, Rui, losing theatre was hard enough the first time. I don’t know if I can do it again.”
Rui smiles at her. It’s a warm, gentle smile. “It’s okay. I’ll be there, too. And – I know it was hard, to lose it. But isn’t that only because it was so precious to you? Isn’t that worth the risk?”
A drop of water hits the controller. Then another. Rui’s eyes widen. “Nene? You’re crying… I’m sorry, was I too–”
He reaches for the controller. Nene jerks it away, holding it as close to herself as she can. Rui goes quiet, watching her, still wide-eyed. “This is mine,” she says, fully aware of how petulant she sounds. “You made it for me, so it’s mine, right? It’s tacky to take back a gift, you know.”
Rui breaks into a wide grin. “So– so you’ll do it?”
Nene can feel herself trembling, just at the thought of everything agreeing will entail – meeting Rui’s new troupe members, navigating the robot thing, performing for an audience again. So many more tiny, terrifying things. But.
“I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” she says, so quietly that it’s almost a whisper.
Still. Rui hears her. That’s enough, for now.