damned_institute | Day 58: Lunch

Although it had been good to see his mom again, Claude entered the cafeteria with a dark expression on his face. He was glad she felt comfortable enough with him to share her experiences from last night, but that didn't make him any less angry at the military for using her to do their dirty work. Why couldn't those bastards clean up their own messes? Surely they had the resources for it.

Were they really going to have to fight someone else's war now?

His head buzzed with those sorts of questions as he moved through the room. Even so, with the help of his escort, Claude assembled a tray with a rather large hamburger, the appropriate condiments, and a cup of water. The cafeteria was still relatively empty, save for the soldiers on duty, so he took very little time in the line. It was probably just as well. He'd been so engrossed in his conversation with Rita during breakfast that he hadn't eaten much.

After finding an empty seat, Claude gingerly placed his tray and journal onto the table and sat down. As he lifted up his burger with his good hand, Claude couldn't help but think of Ashton for a moment. Where was he? He'd disappeared so long ago, and yet part of him worried the military had used him for something too.

Eyebrows furrowed, he took a bite and tried to focus on getting a decent meal in his stomach.

[For Guy!]

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It was always interesting - to put it in a nice, detached way - to be listening to someone's mind who was vividly hallucinating. It hadn't happened very often to Edward. Daydreaming and hallucinating were two very different style of visions, and most high schoolers and college students had stopped doing LSD in the seventies.

Most.

Hallucinations meant when he looked up to see the woman Venom thought he was seeing, she almost seemed to be there, his visual perception melting together with what he saw in Venom's mind. The woman was familiar. A coldness settled into his stomach when he put two and two together. Claire, the older one, the one whose head was full of conspiracies and suspicion. The one who had liked Bella so much. The one Bella was friends with.

"You don't deserve it," he said quietly, mulling over the situation in his mind. Something was missing: it couldn't be an accident if she had tried to murder Venom, and Edward was entirely sure the man would not have harmed her unless it was necessary. It was also equally difficult to imagine Claire trying to murder someone, especially a trained assassin. Not that she had known that, but... while her mind was corrupted, it had not seemed malicious. "You wouldn't have done it on purpose."

It was a gamble to say, but he would wager he knew Venom relatively well.

What does it matter if it wasn't on purpose? It was an innocent person and she's dead. His fingers wound themselves tighter into his thick hair, practically pulling out the stands with the amount of force behind the mindless gesture. She was dead. She was fucking dead and Edward was using the same tone of voice a schoolteacher would to a boy who'd spilled paint on the floor. What did it matter if it was an accident? This wasn't a ruined carpet they were discussing. Her blood was on his hands.

It would be too easy to call the vampire a monster for the way he was speaking. A human being wasn't supposed to hear that a colleague of theirs had murdered the mother of a child and then calmly assure them that it wasn't intentional. Venom wasn't sure if it was worse that he wished he was just as monstrous. He wasn't supposed to care. He'd been told again and again to never care his entire life. The correct response to this situation was to put it aside and never question if it were right or wrong. That was what an assassin was supposed to do.

Some sort of frustrated sound managed to leave the shorter man's throat, something that wasn't quite a sob. He wasn't going to break down more than this. Not in public. Not in front of Edward. He shouldn't be feeling this at all. It was just an accident. It hadn't been on purpose. He didn't mean it.

That doesn't bring her back.

"The ring..." Muffled and barely audible as the words had been, they were still there. They had to discuss something else. Anything else. "Do you still have it?"

An assassin with a conscience. Certainly he had shown signs of it before, but never so blatantly pushed into Edward's face. It was a novelty, he was sure, and yet it seemed so strange from the pieces he had gathered about what sort of man Zato was. He didn't know very much of course, besides what he remembered from his first night with Jun and the creature of mimicry, but at least the mimic had been relatively convincing in the very beginning of their encounter.

Or he was still irritated that the thing had almost turned Venom against him. Either way.

In any case, Edward had never denied being a monster. Perhaps he was so good at being human sometimes that Venom forgot. (Doubtful.)

"I have it, yes. I haven't repaired it since I haven't traveled anywhere particularly helpful, either. I'm assuming you need it?"

Day 58: Lunch

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