Day 54: Recreational Field

[martyrs]

Well, that was the most exhausting lunch Elena had ever experienced. And she didn't get around to eating very much either. Her headache was a least somewhat bearable now, but as the shift ended, she realized how stupid it had been to not get something in her system before the shift ended. But that apparently wasn't in the cards. In fact, just as she stopped panicking long enough to try and get some food down, her nurse was sweeping to her side.

"Shift change, m'dear." Like she hadn't noticed everyone getting up out of their seats and leaving the cafeteria. "I'll take your tray for you, and you make sure to get out to the field on time."

"On time?" Her blank expression must have given away more than she realized, because the nurse was giving her yet another sympathetic look.

"You slept thought a lot this morning, I'm afraid. I'll explain along the way."

By the time they had reached the Rec Field, the nurse had explained most of what had happened with the food fight, and the tear gas, and it only served to damage her calm yet again that day. Of course she slept through something like this, and of course the boys and girls were split up this shift, and of course Elena would have to wait around for some uniformed man to call out her fake name before she could get to Stefan.

At least her last name was near the stop of the list.

"Bailey, Samantha-"

"Here! I'm here. Can I go back inside now? Please?"

Though she didn't even wait for an answer before turning back and heading for the building. As far as she was concerned, she did what she was told, and there was no good reason why she couldn't make her way to the Sun Room right this very second.

[to here]

Comments

[hairraising]

Now that really caught Rapunzel's attention. Why would there be so few people who had been around for a long time? Wasn't this supposed to be some kind of ultimate prison for people with special gifts? That was the sense she had gotten from the notes on the board, anyway. She would have thought that it would have been around for longer if that was true. Maybe it was new, then? Then again, with monsters on the loose at night... Rapunzel gulped down another swiftly forming lump in her throat, her breathing and heartbeat speeding up some as she wrestled a few terrifying mental images back down into her subconscious.

No offence, Kairi, but the whole 'don't worry' thing? Not sounding so good again.

She looked back over her shoulder at the gaggle of guards, staring back at them warily as she answered. "Someone did, yes... A girl named Kairi, if you know her." Rapunzel pressed her lips together tightly. Were the guards staring at them? What did they think the two of them were up to? She was half-expecting them to march right over and order them to start having fun or else.

Shakily, she turned her gaze back to Soma, breathing out and forcing herself to calm down at least a little bit. "I heard something happened this morning that I missed. What was it, exactly? Was it not normal either?"

[madeinthehrl]

Soma nodded, recognition appearing on her face. That was Sora's friend, wasn't it? "I've never spoken to her personally, but I know several of her friends--we all work together at night. She's been here for a while. If you spoke to her, I'm sure she's filled you in properly."

She couldn't help but wish she had been at breakfast so she could answer Rapunzel's question properly. It would probably have ended quickly, as all fights here did, but there was something to be said for being able to strike back at their captors, however briefly.

"I wasn't at breakfast, but judging from the comments on the bulletin board, someone started a food fight and the other patients joined in soon after. Normally I guess the nurses and orderlies would just sedate everyone who was misbehaving, but with these guards here..." She shook her head. "It wasn't the best of decisions. From what I heard, they hit the cafeteria with tear gas."

[hairraising]

So the two were acquainted, if only indirectly. Did that mean Soma was part of that "Arts and Crafts" group as well? It sounded like that was the case. The group was probably pretty stable, then, if Kairi and Soma had both been around a while. Though, Rapunzel wondered how long "a while" had been in Kairi's case, if two weeks apparently counted as "a while" for Soma. 

She didn't get to wonder long, however, before Soma began explaining the breakfast incident. For the most part, the explanation confirmed what Rapunzel had figured out for herself, but there was one thing she still didn't understand. "Wait, so does tear gas just make people uncontrollably sad or something? Is that how they got everyone to stop? By just making people feel awful about themselves?" she asked, tilting her head in concerned curiosity. She could understand methods like that if that were the case. One of Gothel's favourite methods for keeping Rapunzel in check had been rooted in making her "daughter" feel terrible about herself. 

[madeinthehrl]

It was a mark of just how much she'd gotten used to in a fortnight that Soma didn't even blink at Rapunzel's question. Most of the patients she'd spoken to were at least from the twentieth century, but it stood to reason that not everyone was.

"It's not as harmless as that. Tear gas is an irritant--it stings your eyes, nose, and lungs. It causes pain and temporary blindness, so you're too busy worrying about not suffocating to attack anyone else. In my world, the police use it to dispel riots on the street, but they wouldn't dream of doing it to patients in a hospital." The expression on her face grew stony for a moment. "That's inexcusable, no matter what they were doing to the guards."

[hairraising]

Rapunzel winced back at the description of what tear gas actually did. It sounded like it ought to be called not "tear gas" but something more like "tears-pain-suffocation-and-temporary-blindness gas." Okay, maybe that didn't roll off the tongue as nicely (and maybe that was why Rapunzel was not in charge of naming things), but it was at least more accurate.

"That's horrible!" she exclaimed, balling her small hands in front of her stomach. "Well I'm glad that these guys aren't normally around, then! Did they say that they were going to be staying long?" Oh gosh she hoped not.

[madeinthehrl]

"I'm not sure." Soma frowned a little at that. "They don't say much, and they don't like the sort of people who'd answer any questions we asked them. It seems like they're here under the command of Landel's employer, and this is just a routine inspection, but it's difficult to say for sure. I certainly hope they're not here for good, anyway." If anything, she didn't want to think about what they would turn into once night fell.

But Rapunzel was looking more and more worried, and it probably wasn't a good idea to distress her so much if she'd only gotten here a matter of hours ago. "Where are you from, if you don't mind my asking? I only ask because you haven't heard of tear gas before, and that's pretty common in my world."

[hairraising]

"I'm with you there," Rapunzel nodded in agreement, trying not to look at the soldiers too directly for fear of being called out for staring or something. She was already eagerly awaiting the departure of these men, even not having been around for more than a couple hours at most. She wouldn't mind so much if it were just nurses around. The nurses weren't so bad, at least. Her own nurse seemed nice enough, even if she kept insisting on using the wrong name with her. The other staff, men and women both, didn't seem so bad either, though it was hard to tell with them all so on edge - no thanks to the soldiers' presence, of course.

But Soma was asking a question now, and Rapunzel knew she should probably answer it before she could be accused of getting lost in thought. "I, uh, haven't really heard of a lot of things before. It's not the place I'm from, it's just me," she answered with a weak, awkward laugh. Said laugh was followed by a sigh. "Let's just say that up until now, I never really got out much," she explained, her shoulders and gaze dropping some as she slipped a hand around her lower arm.

[madeinthehrl]

The uniforms were probably what bothered Soma about the new guards. It wasn't that she couldn't recognize them--their captors wouldn't be so sloppy as to make their uniforms recognizable--it was that they were even there in the first place. She'd heard the occasional rumor before, the suggestion that perhaps this place was a pet project of the military, and she'd never been entirely convinced by them. Not Landel's.

She knew how a military test facility was run, and this wasn't it. Supersoldiers weren't made via random monster encounter and psychological abuse, they were bred and trained. You couldn't take a civilian from three centuries into the past and make him a weapon. And even if you could, it wasn't nearly as cost-effective as creating your own from scratch. This place--with its inefficiency, its lack of order, its experiments with no definable pattern--was no way to discover the perfect soldier.

Rapunzel's answer pulled her out of her thoughts. What was more, it piqued her curiosity. For all intents and purposes, she looked and acted like a civilian, but something about the other girl's words reverberated with her. Was it the phrasing? She wasn't really sure. Soma tilted her head, eyebrows drawing together slightly.

"What do you mean by that? What is it like where you live?"

[hairraising]

Soma's question trigged Rapunzel to wonder: where did she really "live" now? It was easy enough to describe where she had been living, but the tower wasn't exactly home anymore, to put things lightly. She knew that it was the place Soma probably wanted her to describe, but the phrasing of the question did still make her pause a moment before speaking. Much as she didn't like it, she had to admit the possibility that this place, this "Institute" might have to be the place she called "home" now.

Rapunzel licked her lips. When had they gotten so dry?

"Well, this is gonna sound kinda crazy, but... I kinda sorta livedinahiddentowerinthemiddleofthewoods," Rapunzel started to explain, only to steamroll through the actual explanation. She could already hear "Mother" complaining about the mumbling already, and despite the frustration that came with that, she knew she had to correct it if she wanted Soma to understand her. "Uh, sorry. A tower. I've spent my entire life inside a tower. Eighteen years, never once set foot outside. It was... baaaasically the worst thing ever. At least, when I look back on it, anyway." True, she hadn't objected much to her position while she had been in it, but that had been before certain revelations about blood relations and lack thereof (glare, grit teeth, spark of fury, force it down).

Not sure she wanted to go into too much detail about that place with a total stranger unless she was willing to share back, Rapunzel then turned the question back to Soma. "What about you? You sound like you come from a bigger world than I do, at least," she asked, just barely holding back from asking about the girl's fascinatingly white hair for the moment. That could come later, when she was sure she wouldn't sound creepy for asking.

[madeinthehrl]

Just like the fairy tale, Soma was about to say, before she realized it sounded stupid. She'd probably gotten that a hundred times before. Besides, her hair wasn't that long. In any case, it was an unusual upbringing. Not that Soma had much room to talk.

"I might, but I didn't see any of my world than you did of yours until about a year ago. I was raised alone in a laboratory in space. Besides the scientists and a--another test subject, I didn't really meet anyone else until I turned eighteen, either. What were you kept in a tower for? Was it for an experiment?"

And after that, she'd seen plenty of the world--bases all over the HRL, and plenty of time out in space. And the colonel had been kind to her. She knew what had been done to create her, and she knew the price that had been paid, but what came after...she couldn't complain, and Marie understood. That was something she couldn't really define--not to someone she'd just met.

[hairraising]

Now that got Rapunzel's attention. Someone else had been kept away from the rest of the world for as long as she had been? Really? Rapunzel could have cried, both from the elation of finding a kindred spirit and sympathy for the other girl's lot in life. As it was, the two divergent emotions canceled each other out, catching in her throat as just a big lump of surprise.

So it wasn't just me...!

She almost missed the next question, she was so bowled over with this new knowledge. "What? No, no, it wasn't. At least, I'm pretty sure it wasn't?" Rapunzel really didn't know what had been going on, what with so much of her life in question now, but she suspected that Gothel had been much more interested in keeping her precious healing Flower healthy and safe than in testing things with her. "All I can say right now is that... I was told I had to stay there for my own safety. And I believed that." Rapunzel sighed again, rubbing her forehead as she reined in darker thoughts again. "I really did."

She shook her head, continuing with one of the quickly multiplying questions forming in her head: "Anyway, what do you mean by 'in space'? What kind of space? Or do you mean, like..." She pointed skyward, "...up there? Like the infinite space of the stars?"

[madeinthehrl]

For her own safety. That was something that Soma could understand, at least in part. It wasn't the reason she'd been kept isolated in a glass box in a space colony, but she knew the feeling. She hadn't really expected Rapunzel to be a genetically designed soldier, anyway. She didn't look the type.

"So why were you kept there?" Her tone was curious now. Soldier or not, Rapunzel's answer had intrigued her. "I'm guessing you escaped, if your captors lied to you."

She nodded at Rapunzel's next question, a faint smile flickering at the edges of her mouth at last. She had never thought much about it back home, but now, earthbound and with no sign of a mobile suit...she supposed she'd taken it for granted. There had been something liberating about space, about flight, something she hadn't been able to find anywhere else. "Up there. Not as far as the stars, though--still within Earth's orbit. But there's a colony there in my world, like a small city, and there was a laboratory there where I was raised."

[hairraising]

"Captor," Rapunzel corrected right on the heels of Soma's assumption. Maybe she wasn't going to go into detail about the whole "Mother" thing right now, but she at least wanted to make it clear that her fate had been the fault of one person and one person alone. No one else in the world deserved to be accused of imprisoning her, not when Gothel had slung enough mud at everyone in the world to last a few lifetimes. "And yeah, lies? You don't even know. Basically everything I believed up until a few days ago was completely untrue! I still can't believe it! Can you? Eighteen years - eighteen years, and I just believed her without even questioning, an-and—"

Rapunzel drew in a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down again before she really went off on a rant. Soma didn't need to hear this. This was her problem, and she wasn't about to just dump it on an unsuspecting stranger, similar though they might have been to one another. "I was there to be kept safe all right, but only thanks to a giant helping of greed over something I've had since I was born," she explained, making a conscious effort to not to touch her hair then. "All she wanted was that. If I hadn't had it, she never would've looked twice at me, probably." Hard to say out loud, but it was the truth, she thought.

The conversation moving to a new topic made things a little easier, at least, especially when Soma found the beginnings of a smile. So she had meant up among the stars. Well, not really, as the other girl clarified, but close enough, it seemed. And the stars weren't that close to them, the way the lanterns had been, then. She supposed that was why they remained so much more constant. Objects further away from her tower window had always seemed more stationary than ones close by, Rapunzel reasoned. Still, she had to wonder: had Soma ever gotten out far enough to see a star up close? Were they anything at all like the floating lanterns had been? What were they made of that they never burned out? Who had arranged those patterns in the sky she had been so fond of tracing on her ceiling?

The questions about stars became irrelevant, however, at the mention of something else in the sky. "Are you serious? There are whole cities up there?" she asked, visible excitement blossoming on her face out of the bleaker expressions of earlier. "How do they get up there? Did people get help from birds? What's it like to see the ground from so high up? Oh my gosh, it just seems too amazing to be real." She even wondered in the back of her mind whether what Soma described really was real, but quickly dismissed it; there wasn't a reason Rapuzel could imagine that would make Soma lie about something like this.

[madeinthehrl]

Rapunzel's insistence on the singular only served to pique Soma's curiosity further, and details were soon forthcoming, however vague they might have been. Still, there was another spark of recognition at her words, and that was enough to prompt a hesitant step forward, finally breaking the professional distance she had maintained up until now.

"She used you, then. She kept you sealed away so you could serve whatever purpose it was, and you didn't know any better at the time." There was an undefinable emotion to her voice now. Understanding? Regret? Anger? Something like all three. If only Allelujah could hear her now. "I think I know what you mean."

And in a sense, it was almost comforting to know there was someone else who understood. The other people she'd spoken to here...she'd told them who and what she was, but she didn't think they'd really understood. She hadn't either, until the doctors here had given her her memories back. And even now she couldn't really tell if that had been a good thing or a bad thing.

In any case, that wasn't relevant at the moment. Rapunzel was asking about space now, and that was something Soma was more than happy to discuss. "That's right. They're not very big, though, and they have to be enclosed because there's no air up there. We send up the parts to build the colonies with the aid of orbital elevators--those are thin towers that reach up into space. We can transport people and cargo up there using solar power, and then we can assemble the parts once everything's been sent into space. That far up..." She paused, thinking. "The Earth is just a blue ball, with green and brown where there's land, and the clouds are white streaks across it. That's from what I remember, anyway. I never really took much notice of it when I was back there--there wasn't time to, during the battles."

[hairraising]

If Rapunzel could have cried before, she was really about to now. Tear drops were forming in the corners of her eyes as Soma repeated the situation back to her with that undeniable sense of understanding in her voice. The "I think I know what you mean" just clinched it, and the drops rolled down raised cheeks toward the upturned corners of her mouth. The only reason she didn't cry out loud for the sheer joy of finding someone who really got it was her beaming desire to keep talking about where Soma had come from.

Maybe the prisoners here shared more in common than just powers, thought Rapunzel. She half-hoped that they did. The idea of having that kind of support, the kind that came from people who really, truly understood one another, was exhilarating to say the least. Maybe that was what kept people like Kairi smiling so brightly despite everything horrible around them.

She listened, completely taken in as Soma described the space colonies. Even with unfamiliar terms like "orbital elevators," the other girl explained things well enough that Rapunzel fancied she could see it all in the skies above them - infinitely tall towers stretching toward an enclosed ball city in the sky, like gigantic spider's legs reaching down from heaven. She could picture that blue ball, too, with the land masses spread across it under the clouds, just like she had seen in the books in town with Eugene. Her face was so bright and full of wonder through all of this that it was amazing she wasn't bouncing up and down. Only the weight of their situation still in the back of her mind kept her feet on the ground for the time being.

That, and before she could get too excited, Soma brought up something a little more troubling. "Battles?" she asked, her expression falling again some. "What do you mean? Were you caught in the middle of some? Or did you...?" She didn't want to think that Soma might be a warrior, but now that she thought about it, she could see it in the girl's face and the way she carried herself. Rapunzel didn't know much about fighting, but she had found out enough watching the soldiers of both Corona and this Institute to get an idea of how they looked and acted.

[madeinthehrl]

Of all the reactions Soma had been expecting, tears hadn't been one of them. She almost stepped forward again to ask what was the matter, if she'd said something wrong (which usually happened when she spoke to civilians), but a mental nudge from Marie stopped her. She didn't quite understand, but Rapunzel was still smiling, and that seemed to be good enough. Besides, she was still listening closely to Soma's admittedly inadequate description of space, and Soma had to stifle a widening smile at the expression on Rapunzel's face. She really did seem as if she hadn't been out of her tower much.

It was easier to stifle the smile when Rapunzel asked about the battles. That was right; she hadn't clarified her own situation much, had she? "Something like that," she said, her voice more serious now. "I'm a soldier back home. I was created for it--that was why I grew up in a laboratory. My country's army made me to serve in battle, so civilians wouldn't have to."

But that was something she didn't want to dwell on too much, for fear of the memories it would dredge up yet again. Anyway, she was certain Rapunzel wouldn't find it nearly as cheerful a subject as the one of space.

"But my world's at peace now, and I was discharged from the army a few months ago. I'll take you sometime," she offered, on a sudden impulse. It was ridiculously improbable, but what was the harm in keeping her newfound friend's spirits up? "If our captors have the ability to take us out of worlds, we should be able to use the same ability to hop between them. I don't see why I wouldn't be able to take you up the orbital elevator, at the very least. Even civilians are allowed to do that, if they have permission."

[hairraising]

So, she was a soldier. Rapunzel couldn't even begin to imagine what that kind of life must have been like. She could admire the ideal of keeping ordinary people out of the line of fire, but still, to be raised into that kind of dangerous, harsh lifestyle? It just seemed cruel. Thus, when Soma went on to say that there was now peace where she was from, Rapunzel breathed a sigh of relief. Admittedly, being discharged from the army only to wind up imprisoned again only a few months later was still completely unfair (and still dangerous, if the stories about monsters were true, gulp), but she was glad to know that if Soma escaped, it would be to somewhere safe.

And if Soma escaped, then Rapunzel could possibly go with her, it seemed? She was torn between excitement and hesitation at the offer. As much as she wanted to be closer to the stars and look down on that big blue ball, she also wanted to get back to Eugene as soon as she could. Also, there was still the uncertainty in her mind about whether she even should escape. If Eugene had been healed and she had indeed been brought here by Mother Gothel, then trying to escape would break the deal and allow Gothel to go after Eugene again, wouldn't it?

Adding to the confusion was Soma's use of the word "worlds." A few people had said that so far. She had assumed up until now that they meant different lands or countries, but the more the term was used, the less it seemed to fit. They didn't really mean...?

She didn't get to spend much more time wondering before they were interrupted by an outpouring of more soldiers onto the field. An announcement was barked out to them that a general called Aguilar wanted all the nurses and orderlies were to leave at once. "What? Wait, what's going on? Soma, has anything like this happened bef—"

Before she could finish, soldiers arrived and began herding the both of them back toward the building - separately, of course. Rapunzel shot Soma a worried look as they were marched away from one another. Something told her it was going to be a long time before she got to see those orbital elevators.