Day 58: Cafeteria

[gald_digger]

Anise woke up feeling lucky to be alive. She still felt a bit waterlogged, even though her skin, hair, and clothes were completely dry. During last night's adventures, she'd swallowed a lot of water, and it still felt heavy and disgusting in her stomach. Her arms and legs were tired from treading water. Lying still in her bed, she still kind of felt like she was floating and bobbing in the water.

But she was alive.

Knowing how close she came to death last night, and remembering the lengths her friends had gone to in order to save her, there was no way Anise could let a little discomfort get her down. She had to be at her best today so she wouldn't seem ungrateful to Guy and Claude. On that note, she had to remember to thank them properly, now that she was better able to express herself.

While getting ready, Anise was surprised to actually run into Claude that morning. He came to her room asking for the notebook he stored there (or maybe it was an excuse to see her cute face again), so Anise happily located it and handed it over. She was pretty tired, but the big smile she gave him was genuine. Who wouldn't be happy to see her savior so soon after a dramatic rescue?

After he left, Anise finished re-tying her pigtails into a low position so the military beret would fit on her head, and then she was ready! Even though her stomach wasn't feeling that great, she figured sitting down to a decent meal would help normalize it. And luckily for her, she was among the few who had the privilege of eating such a meal. Anise filled a plate with french toast topped with syrup and fruit, accompanied by small portions of each of the available side dishes.

It looked like she was early, which meant there weren't a lot of people around. That was okay, though. Anise could get a good head start on her meal before any company came around. She sat down at a table by herself and started on her sausage first.

[for Tolten!]

Comments

[tightsofmight]

They were a mess and half, weren't they?

Peter ought to have considered rephrasing that because 'half' might have some ugly implications with Jessica (being a clone had to come with some sticky issues), but try telling him anything different. They were both wrecks, tear-stained and deathly pale, stammering lumps in their seats. Anyone passing by might start to weep on impact.

He would much rather be doing this elsewhere. Not where everyone could see. Guilt put every pair of eyes on him when he turned his back, transformed every whisper into poisonous words. Jessica would feel the same way. She was him. If he could drag her off to the bathroom - frick, if they weren't different genders he could have done just that. They could have said all this in peace. Relative peace. Panic was thrumming in his chest all over again.

The ghosts and death combination wasn't completely ruled out with what she said next. Only shuffled alongside a whole new slew of dreadful possibilities. "...You took the drugs?" Blankly, his head shook back and forth. "Jess, why?! Dude, why would you take their drugs? After all that's happened to you?! I thought you said that was the part that scared you!!"

Oh crap, oh god this was bad. Literally anything was possible now. Sure, she was seeing ghosts. But was that the end of the effect, or just the beginning? Peter did not trust Landel - or Aguilar - to keep it simple when it came to patient torture time. Just look at the elaborate set up in the basement. He winced ferociously and cleared his head with another shake, squeezing her wrists anew to let her know he was still holding on. Maybe to prompt her to squeeze back. "Listen - has there been anything else? These things...It's usually not just one thing, Jess. They've done so many crazy things here. You cannot trust anything they give you. Anything they tell you. Nothing."

[arakhnes.livejournal.com]

"I-I know!"

She shook her head furiously, having to bite down on her lip to keep the whimpers from rising in her throat. She felt horrible. And not because of the fact that she was seeing ghosts, but because of the guilt that racked her entire being, the one that Peter was no doubt feeling in turn. (She had to wonder if anyone was even watching them, judging them. She wouldn't be surprised and she wouldn't blame them. They needed to be judged.)

"I-I know, I know, I know." Jessica found was the only thing she managed to get out, continuing to shake her head. She was feeling worse and worse, wanting nothing more than to just burying into herself and ignore everyone and everything around her, just so she could wallow in her own self-pity. She wanted to explain herself, wanting to tell him that Brainy had been there and he had really just egged her on in his subtle, snottish way, but she didn't.

Peter couldn't know.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Peter." She sounded like she was going to burst into tears again. She was horrible. He had his own crap to deal with, and here he was forced to handle hers because she was too curious, she was too determined to get herself into trouble as a Parker should. There was a squeeze at her wrists and tentatively, she moved her hands to squeeze his back, turning her gaze downwards. "That's - that's it. That's all. I-I've just been seeing h-him."

She was afraid to look up again in case he was standing there.

[tightsofmight]

Okay. So she had gotten the point and was paying dearly for it. Normally Peter would have felt bad for pushing her like this, but he was at the end of his tether in more ways than one. The last thing he needed was to worry about Jessica dying from phantom gunshots to mimic Uncle Ben's fate, or break out into full on schizophrenia or leprosy or what-the-fuck-ever the so-called side effects of the drugs were, because he was damn sure it was nothing good. And he just couldn't deal with that again, not so soon. Not Jessica, not the only person here who knew him so intimately, and knew his world and knew all of his bullshit and accepted it and...

Peter gulped, pushing back new tears. He was a lot more attached to the girl than he'd thought. Not simply because of what she knew about him. Just her. Just knowing who and what she was, and having been actively talking to her made it so much harder. After the clone debacle he'd tried his best not to think about Jessica at all. The implications were too tricky, the idea of seeing her again jarring, the thought of what he'd be doing if he were the copy and he were in an altered body - it scared him. A lot. Yet finding her here and now was showing him tiny differences. They were still so much alike, but there were things she said or ways that she moved that weren't Peter's at all. She was becoming someone else.

It could be that part of the concern was just Peter's own selfishness and unwillingness to let go of anything he was connected with. He wasn't totally altruistic. But he'd...he'd be horrified for Jessica's sake if something happened to her. Not as his clone's sake, or the only-person-he-knows' sake. Jessica's.

When did that happen?

The intercom blared above him. Peter ignored it, wetting his lips with anxiety. Hastily and with zero concern for the stitches on his side, he leaped forward and trapped her in a hug before the soldiers could tug her away. His face was pressed desperately into her hair (he couldn't find her ear under all of that mess), and he whispered to her. "I'm sorry. Just be careful. Please."

A large shadow moved into the edge of his vision. When his eyes rolled up to search it out they found a soldier, tall and grim-faced as he waited for the twins to pull apart. They locked eyes for a moment.

Peter winced and whispered to her one last time. "Keep me posted. Okay? D-don't...don't lock me out of this."

Then he was drawing away, nodding shyly to the soldier and leaving his seat. He'd rather get up on his own than be dragged.

[arakhnes.livejournal.com]

She couldn't think. Everything was a fog, a blur, something that she could barely trudge through, like molasses. She didn't want to think. She couldn't think. And yet, the more she decided that she wouldn't, the more she did. The more memories came flooding back, the more emotions welled up inside of her, and all at once, she was grateful for Peter being here. There were the fights, the awkwardness, but in the end, the reassurance made up for everything.

Just knowing that she had someone here that she had a bond with. She had no one else but him, both here and back home as well.

She jerked her head up at the intercom, but was caught in the middle of the movement by Peter diving for her, wrapping his arms around her. She was surprised. He never hugged her. He was murmuring in her ear, she was frozen stiff, and her eyes were filled with tears. He couldn't go. She wouldn't let him go, but she knew that the guard was standing there, making him go. Even as he was pulling away from the hug, she was grabbing onto his hands, squeezing them tight.

"You need to do the same. I won't, I promise. But you can't lock me out either!"

Before he was shying away, and she was left with another burly guard approaching her. Glaring down at her. And unlike her genetic template, she wasn't going so willingly. When the man grabbed her arm to pull her up, she jerked away with a, "Don't touch me!"

She was trudging through another fog and it hurt. But at least she wasn't alone.