damned_institute | Day 57: Sun Room

It figured that night would end before Rita and Taura could progress any further. Rita wasn't particularly disappointed to wake up abruptly, as they had reached a dead end. Really, the institute was doing them a favor by bringing them back to the starting point, where they could regroup.

What she didn't appreciate was the loss of valuable time, and the fact that her equipment had been confiscated once again. Rita didn't have time to mess around... which was precisely why the cheery voice broadcast over the intercom only served to grate on her nerves more than usual. In fact... how was the Head Doctor even giving that announcement? She doubted he'd managed to take the institute back in such a short amount of time, though the broadcast itself was suspicious for a number of reasons. Even though she could clearly hear the man's voice, it didn't necessarily mean that he was there. She had to look at things critically.

Still, it seemed almost as if everything had returned to normal... with a few exceptions. The different staff was one, and her lack of possessions was another. It didn't seem like the staff was expecting to fool the patients into thinking this was the same old institute, so why...?

Even as she went about preparing for the day and walking to her first destination, Rita kept her most pressing questions in mind, coming up with multiple hypotheses to explain what was happening. Since she didn't expect that the Chapel would hold anything of interest to her, Rita opted for the Sun Room instead. She was interested in seeing the bulletin board, for one.

When she entered the Sun Room, Rita brought a pen and her journal with her. If no one approached her, she would at least have a chance to document her discoveries from the previous night. First, however, she checked the bulletin board, only to find it completely empty. That confirmed a few suspicions of hers. Content to see evidence supporting her ideas about the strange occurrences, Rita sat down on a couch, opened her journal, and began to write.

[Free!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It is." Rose didn't clarify what; a purring cat was an obvious answer. There were multiple depths of meaning to her answer, however. All of them were true to some extent. That Lily looked happy was another.

That they were standing in a room, albeit a room in a ersatz mental hospital, with a handful of cats and more human beings than Rose had ever expected to see again in her life, was yet a third. Many of them were approaching a small board.

This was the bulletin board, partaking of the old-fashioned meaning of the term. Aside from a certain refrigerator convention, she wasn't sure this kind had even existed any more, on the Earth that also did not exist. Primitive, but not without its uses.

"Bring him with you." She wasn't sure he was a he, even in the pluperfect sense (or was that plupurrfect?), but looking would be rude. "I want to take a look at the bulletin board."

Again, a brief flash of anxiety passed over her face, but Lily carefully slipped her hands under the animal's stomach. It squirmed slightly as she lifted it and she gasped, afraid she was hurting it, but after a quick readjustment, the cat recovered--or more accurately, relaxed and went comfortably limp until she held it to her body. Apparently, cats preferred to be lifted by the chest rather than the literal stomach.

The creature continued to purr softly, and the feeling of its soft vibration filled her with a combination of glee and vague longing. Having never been alone, her first instinct was to share the excitement of this new and soft and living breathing thing, but Rose had already seen one. In fact, no one in the room seemed to regard it (or the other cats) with sense of awe. Lily tried to memorize every detail, in case she had the chance to describe it to her friends in the future. It wasn't fair that they couldn't be here too.

She was careful not to hold it too tightly, but the cat made that easy enough, drowsily draping itself into a secure position. Rose was interested in the board with pieces of paper all over it, and there might be something to be learned. Rose seemed much better at knowing things than herself, which was also reassuring.

"Wow," she said when she saw the long chains of notes. Lily was literate, but not an especially fast reader. It was hardly a valuable trait for someone in her intended line of work. The cat was more interesting, much more interesting, and she ran her fingers gently over its fur as she tried to skim a few of the notes. She wanted to take some paper and a pen--maybe she'd remember the cat better if she drew it?--but at the moment, her hands were full.

If Lily had the vocal capacity, she would have been purring as loudly as the cat was. Rose most certainly did not smile at that, even when she was looking at the board and no one was obviously watching. That was no guarantee, and she had a reputation of severity to maintain.

There were a lot of notes, the only timestamps on them the order they'd been pinned to the board, making it even more of a mess than talking to the trolls. Some of them were even more illiterate. That quirk didn't even make sense.

It wasn't the only message fraught with the same dark tidings. There were at least two among them who had betrayed their companions the night before, and now claimed to have re-reformed. One was the illiterate boy, but the other one she recognized.

"Look at this." She stepped aside and let the cat-grafted Lily approach. The man they'd met last night, the one who had called himself Japan, was claiming to be another player. "Do you think we can trust him?"

Lily leaned closer to see what the man had written, and her grip on the cat tightened slightly. It only squirmed a few centimeters, more of an adjustment than an attempt to escape, but she immediately returned it to the floor.

So soft. So nice. So easily broken, just like everything else.

Who could a person like Rose ever trust? That man, now apologetic and claiming that he hadn't been in control? Lily remembered red, dark red, on both Giovanni and Heine. Her fault, even if they'd been okay, even if they'd forgiven her. She couldn't be trusted.

"I...I don't know," Lily said weakly. "I guess it depends on if...if it's someone's fault when..."

Her voice wavered. She'd always been too emotional, never calm and collected like the others. She swallowed and paused before continuing. "I don't think he meant for it to happen," she said, "but it still might happen again."

It wasn't an answer, but it was the best that she could offer under the circumstances.

Seers weren't meant to fight. That was the job of Knights, and even Witches and Heirs, but not Seers. Odd that she'd been the first of them to master the arts of battle, both by remote manipulation and matters a little more direct.

Fault implied causality, and that was a complicated notion. "He didn't hurt us. He could have." Admitting weakness wasn't one of Rose's strengths, but Lily had seen the entire thing too. "He could have killed us both."

The cat wound its way over to her legs. Rose reached down and scratched it on the head.

"What if it happened to one of us?" Two fighters last night, and no one was surprised. The nonchalance said more than the apologies. There should be a riot of responses, a proverbial cavalcade of post-it notes, an avalanche of annotations. Instead, there was meek acceptance. That lent the occurrences the sheen of familiarity.

The questions were getting dangerously close to Lily's personal existence, and from what she could tell, she didn't share that experience with Rose. Still, Rose was her only friend here, and she couldn't risk that. If Rose knew what a monster she was, Lily could be left all alone. The place seemed safer than the compound, but what did it matter if she was alone? Again, she felt a sharp pang of loneliness when she thought of Heine and Giovanni.

There was no intrinsic value to honesty. It could be superfluous, unnecessary, even damaging under certain circumstances. She wasn't lying, exactly...just choosing the parts of the truth that she could share without forcing Rose to leave her company. Without forcing Rose to leave her alone.

"I...if it ever happens to me, you need to get away," Lily said. Her voice wavered slightly, and it was clear that the words were hard for her to pronounce. "Even if it's not like what happened to him. If it seems like I'm...like I'm not in control, just go. Please."

Too much. But what could she say? Lily couldn't deal with the guilt of hurting Rose, let alone killing Rose, and for all she knew, the latter was a distinct possibility. She needed the girl. If she were alone she would barely know who she was, and it didn't matter whether she liked who she was or not. The truth was the core of her being, a metal line tracing from her neck down to her lower back.

"If it happens to you, I don't know. Do you want me to try to stop you? It...it might hurt, but you wouldn't hurt anyone else. Or I could stay by the door and stop people from going in. The map says that there are a bunch of routes to almost every destination, and I...I might be able to..."

Lily's arms were folded, and her eyes were on the cat. She couldn't look at Rose, not while she spoke these things.

"I might be able to make them try another path."

Lily thought she was dangerous. Classic obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Usually manifested just before puberty, which fit.

Or she could be the vessel of unimaginable powers, barely checked at the ravening mouth by the bit of a young girl's will. Lily sounded convinced. Rose wasn't, but challenging her delusions, if they were delusions at all, wasn't conducive to the thing that might be called friendship, forming between them.

"That sounds like a good idea. The second part." It was a good plan. At least as good as the things Rose had been about to suggest, which had leaned more towards mutual detente and the underlying assumption that their continued survival meant that homicide was not the intention. "I could do the same thing for you."

Day 57: Sun Room

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject