Day 55: Intercom, Evening

[damned-intercom.livejournal.com]

Snow doubled in number as the day transitioned into the evening hours. Unfortunately, none of the patients were allowed the time to enjoy the weather changes. They were instead greeted by the telltale jingle of the intercom, signaling their cue to return indoors.

Once again, they heard the voice of a familiar female. She sounded unchanged from her previous announcements, her intonation as clear and as flat as ever.

"Attention all subjects and personnel. All subjects are to return to their assigned rooms for their evening meal. Lights Out will commence shortly after."

The woman paused, seemingly for effect.

"All personnel: you are to report to your stations. Thank you."

The intercom clicked off.

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. ANY NEWLY ACCEPTED CHARACTERS MAY POST TO THIS SHIFT (but are not obligated to if you would like to wait for Nightshift or Dayshift); please refer to the new room assignments before posting. Thank you! ]

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[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was because he was still half-asleep, but Peter had barely even given a thought to how Sam was going to react to seeing him like this. Actually, as the door opened and his roommate stepped in with a shocked look on his face and a surprised lilt to his tone, Peter realized that his reaction had been stronger than Claire's had, even. Then again, she'd been a little caught up in other things, as teenagers tended to be.

That, and... well, Peter could understand why Sam was reacting this way. They'd spent a number of days stuck in this room with each other and while he'd definitely shown up in bandages before, the wheelchair was a first. He'd really made a mess of things this time.

"I'm all right," he said first and foremost as he set both knife and fork down, turning just slightly in his wheeled chair in order to face Sam. "Relatively speaking. I'm in a lot of pain, but I'll recover." Hopefully rather soon, if everything with Claire worked out. Though that did bring up a question: how was he going to explain his magically healed wounds to Sam the next day? Maybe he could just say he'd found one of those healers, even though he hated lying. It was for Claire's sake.

"But yeah, ran into a Special Counseling patient and it didn't go so well for me." He figured that more or less answered the question, though he wouldn't mind giving out more details if Sam needed them for some reason. He was still undecided on if he should bring up the lack of pain thing.

[boyking]

That was at least the guarantee, wasn't it. Full recovery, that was. As morbid as it sounded, that was a sort of upside. Sam hadn't missed that his injuries healed noticeably quicker and never with any problems, either. No occasional flareups or infections. He'd been tossed around a lot, so yeah, he had an extremely good sense of exactly how fast what wounds healed. His knee should've still been giving him slight trouble, but it wasn't.

Then again, with how fast they racked up the injuries here, it wasn't like any of them were spending any length of time fully recovered. He was used to always having a few minor bruises and cuts here and there, but even this was pushing it for him.

He couldn't see a cast or anything, so Peter obviously hadn't broken anything. His back then? From the way Peter was sitting, that sure seemed like it.

He winced a little in sympathy at the mention of the patient. "Sorry, man." It felt lacking, but there wasn't much he had to offer.

And yeah, that was really crap on both ends. Even if Dean hadn't had something similar happen to him—via another patient instead of the institute—he would've been just as bothered. Forcing people to attack each other—nobody walked away from that unscathed, one way or another. It reminded him too much of a possession.

Definitely hit a little close to home.

But it was good Peter seemed to be dealing with it all right. A part of him did want to know more about the incident, though. His instincts were too tuned towards investigating everything not to be naturally curious. But he wasn't gonna ask right away since, well. This wasn't even close to the best time. Maybe a bit later if Peter looked like he wanted to talk about it.

Instead, he reached for his food which, now that he'd absorbed his roommate's condition, was not the same as Peter's. Oh. Right, yeah, of course. He'd noticed it in the cafeteria and after his conversation with Sora, the math was easy to do. His roommate had been here longer than he had.

He was probably imagining it, but somehow, the bowl looked even more pink and the color only seemed to intensify the longer he watched it. Okay, that was seriously weirding him out.

Sam blinked and glanced back at Peter. "Um. You'll be okay tonight? I mean, you know if you need anything..."

He wasn't sure if Peter would take him up on the offer, especially since there wasn't much he could do. But just in case Peter had planned on picking something up or looking for an item or whatever, Sam could always do that for him.

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

An apology was more than Sam had to give, but Peter nodded in response. It definitely wasn't an enjoyable position that he was in, and judging from what he knew of Sam's life before all this, his roommate had probably endured serious injuries like this before. He didn't have any visible scars, but Sam also tended to cover up; the new uniform made that even easier. Granted, it wasn't really his business, but something odd that Peter had noticed was that it took a lot more for wounds to scar here. Maybe it had something to do with the fast healing rate.

Either way, while he was suffering now, Claire had agreed to come see him. He'd be doing better soon. Granted, that still wasn't something he could explain to Sam, even if it would have helped reassure his roommate. What he wanted to know was how Claire planned for her secret to remain safe when they were siphoning out her healing blood into syringes, but the stuff he'd taken from her might be spoiled by now. He didn't really know what the lifespan of her particular blood was, after all.

Maybe the girl just planned to never be there when the blood was used. Or he could say it came from someone who chose to be anonymous, in which case all she had to do was stay quiet.

Even with his thoughts drifting, however, Peter noticed the way that Sam was staring at his plate of dinner, if it could be called that. He'd only gotten a few bites of his food down during lunch due to his conversation with Claire, which meant he really needed to eat now.

But they were technically alone, provided that there weren't hidden cameras set up -- and if there were, this was a good way to find out. Peter couldn't let Sam eat that stuff in good conscience. "Hey, did you want some of mine?" he asked first and foremost. "I doubt I'm going to be able to eat all of it." The few bites of salmon that he had had been good, but he knew he wasn't going to have the energy to get through the whole meal.

As for Sam's offer, Peter sent his roommate a smile and shook his head. "Don't worry, though. I should be fine. I'm just going to take it easy tonight." Part of him wanted to just get healed and then rush back out into the fray, but he knew that it was a bad idea and that Claire wasn't going to allow it.

[boyking]

Sam had been half-expecting Peter to offer up his dinner, so he was already shaking his head before Peter finished the question. It wasn't that he wasn't tempted; for all that Dean teased him about his eating habits, he had as much of a taste for food as anyone else. Just, you know. Just not Dean's concept of food which ranged anywhere between average diner fare and the contents of the mini-fridge downstairs in the dorm of his first year at Stanford.

Right. Anyway.

"Nah, don't worry about it, I'm good. Thanks, though." He smiled. "I'll let you know when the pink starts getting to me."

He started in on his food, not wanting Peter to feel awkward or anything with his own meal, and because he really did need to eat. He didn't keep much of his habit of skipping meals anymore, leftover from college. For the first year or something back on the road with Dean, he had, but not after. It worked well when your biggest threat was the next looming deadline, but...yeah, it wasn't the best idea when you were actively hunting.

He frowned, a thought occurring to him. "Hey, are you're sure the guy was under Special Counseling? 'Cause there was some weird stuff happening yesterday with people's abilities. I came across a couple of people who got them back. I mean, it wasn't full-on back, but enough."

He knew not everyone was gonna run around attacking other people, but there were definitely a few here who would. Despite having managed to keep out of their way for the most part—he already had angels to contend with; he didn't need the extra trouble—he wasn't so naive to believe that everyone in this place had their moral compass in place.

Besides, he'd been personal witness to how easily someone could change under the right pressure.

Huh. He wondered if Peter had gotten any of his abilities back? Maybe Peter had and he just hadn't known. That was possible. Hell, Sam wasn't sure if he had. He couldn't exactly have asked Castiel to hold off on attacking Ruby while he stopped and checked to see if he could properly exorcise demons again.

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

Peter didn't really understand why Sam would turn down the much better food when he was clearly offering it, but the answer was fairly firm and he knew better than to start pushing it. Maybe his roommate wanted to make sure that he ate enough considering his injuries. It was the sort of decision he would have made in Sam's shoes, so he decided to just take the guy's word for it.

With the whole plate of salmon for himself, Peter did his best to get it down, ignoring the sharp pains in his back when he made a wrong move. Soon most of this pain was going to be gone, probably, and so he just kept telling himself that he only had to endure it for a little longer. Getting food in him was most important right now.

Though when Sam brought up another question, Peter was quick to dismiss it. "That wasn't it, no," he said with a shake of his head. He hadn't heard of people randomly getting back powers, but he was quite certain that that hadn't been the case with Neku. He'd talked to the kid after it all and his guilt had been genuine.

"The kid who was responsible found me today to apologize. He was definitely sincere about it." Even when he'd been brainwashed, Neku had behaved like a robot, like he hadn't quite realized what he was doing or why. Peter hadn't thought to ask about it before, but maybe if he ran into him again he would. Since that wasn't how Peter had felt when he'd been under the influence of it, but it probably varied from person to person.

"People really got some of their powers back, though?" he asked between a bite of fish, glancing over to where Sam was seated. "Do you think it's permanent, or was it just a one-time thing?" His lack of pain had only lasted one night, but were those two incidents related? He wanted to assume they were, but there was no way to be sure.