Night 58: Chapel

[sainted]

[from here]

The room he walked into was larger than he'd expected, but it wasn't hard to guess its purpose, not with the very deliberate arrangement of long red pews. A chapel. Stefan's grip on his knife still didn't relax as he wandered further inside. He'd been in a few churches in his time — what faith in God he'd possessed as a child had waned with too many decades of undead existence, but... call him cliché, he liked Gothic architecture. In his worst moments, he'd enjoyed hunting for victims in church, for the spice of ironic pleasure in knowing they believed themselves to be in a safe house, protected by all those popular fiction vampire deterrents. Save for wooden stakes, fire and the sun, they were all myths. Not that there were any crosses he could see from his cursory glance from the door, or even...

Holy water.

In the dark, the liquid burble of the fountain could've been confused for normal water — or, to the least, one of the less threatening noises in the hospital. You could even convince yourself that the sinister shape rising out of the water was something else from this distance, but Stefan, being able to see in the dark, had no such luxury. Still, the demonic face of the statue barely registered to his mind as he came closer to the fountain. He walked slowly, circling around it, unaware of what he was doing. All of his attention was fixed on the liquid churning in the fountain. Black, blacker than water should've been in the darkness. A deep red flooded the whites of Stefan's eyes. His gums itched. The scent of blood — human blood — hung so heavily in the air around him, he could hardly breathe.

Of course he could tell. Damon might joke that his taste buds had shriveled up after so many years of his diet, but it might as well have been the difference between white wine and vinegar. Human blood and animal blood. And it hadn't been so long either since the last time he'd had a taste of the former, fresh from the vein...

...but he couldn't do it again. Never, no matter how desperate he was. He was starving, yes, four nights and counting, but if he started it up now, under these conditions... There was no guarantee he could reclaim himself again. And he thought of his brother, trying to scheme his way out for all of them, and of Elena, putting on a brave face for their sakes, and of adding another burden on their shoulders. Stefan slapped a hand over his nose and mouth, which helped just enough to let him turn his face away.

Keep fighting.

Stefan spun around, almost faster than humanly possible, and ran.

[to here]

Comments

[affictitious]

If this was irony smacking him in the face with the subtlety of a Wile E. Coyote punishment, Gabriel was going to stab someone. He meant how the guy was going on the information-collecting, not that he was the rebel.

There was a little pause in Gabriel's confidence, his little movie-loving pseudo-not-really-a-soul soul contemplating the blasted freaking cosmic irony of that potential situation. Or, you know. Minor irony. Aguilar wasn't as big and powerful as he freaking thought he was, and Gabriel was pretty set on proving that soon enough.

His smile, while it had dropped a bit, returned in a sleazy-smooth motion. "Of course. Right. Anyway, since you're looking for this guy, you have any, you know, suspicions? It'd make the search a hell of a lot easier." He held up his index finger. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not offering to help, I'm just a curious kind of person.

That's code for I don't have any info, actually." If it wasn't already obvious. And if that closed the conversation? Well. Couldn't fault an angel for trying, right?

[freewill]

The man's demeanor was hardly what Michael would have expected from a soldier, but he recognized the tone and accent from the announcements during the day. So this was Harrington after all. If he was being trusted to take this kind of information and to deliver those words to them over the intercom, then he had to be extremely high in the ranks.

And yet Michael wouldn't have guessed that just from looking at him.

Noah went ahead and babbled at the man for a moment; he never did seem to know when to just stop talking. Michael watched his brother for a moment and then let out a sigh. As far as he was concerned, Noah was asking all the wrong questions.

"How did Aguilar even become aware of this problem? And why is he relying on us to try and figure this out for him?" He could have gone on to ask why they were being released from their rooms at night in the first place, but that would probably qualify as going overboard. He didn't want to overwhelm the man or question his superior's methods too much. That would only get them into trouble.

Still, it didn't make much sense to him. They could just as easily collect this information from them during the day.

[damned-soldiers.livejournal.com]

Playing pretend was fun. Playing stupid was an exhilarating thrill that only a man like Claude could know. He allowed himself several seconds of dumb silence before laughing casually. Whether with them or at them was left to the imagination. "Can't fault ya fer being curious," he conceded. "All the Eagle's got is that it's a soldier. 'Fraid he let the biggest lead slip out from under his nose." Thank god for that.

He tsked, before moving to continue. "That's what ya get fer making civilians do a soldier's job. I figured ya folks had nothing, though. Ah, well. C'est la vie." The French, despite being planted among words heavily drenched in accent, was surprisingly perfect.

Claude turned to the taller man. The less sleazy one. "Hard ta say," he replied. "Actually, ta tell ya the truth, the rest y'all ain't got nothin' ta do with it. This is a setup to get someone ta fess up. Two of yer fellow patients know the name of the mole. Aguilar's...making a bargain with them, so to speak."

[affictitious]

If only Gabriel was the praying type - hah - he would've looked up with conviction at the roof of the chapel, demanding some patience from Dad. He didn't do well with people talking over him and he was already about five seconds away from stabbing something, whether it happened to be someone under Aguilar or his brainwashed brother (who would probably get a punch instead. Hey, don't call Gabriel mean-spirited. The kid had gotten torn up enough last night, whether it was all healed or not. Unlike Castiel, Gabriel didn't have the good graces to forget the way the light streamed out of his brother like a threat, like a promise of death.)

Not that he was concerned. (Yeah, the more he said it, the more true it became. Shut up.)

He listened anyway. At least Michael wasn't a failure at investigations like Castiel. Lightbulb. "Why is he making a bargain? Why waste the time when blackmail works just as well?"

[freewill]

So this whole thing had specifically been set up to call out two people? That meant that this had been a fool's errand after all. Michael could have guessed at that, but at the moment he was still dealing with the shock of realizing that there was way more going on in this place than he'd been prepared for. Some of it felt familiar, but it was getting more and more difficult to separate reality from insanity. Was this really happening or was he losing it again?

Not that he could force himself out of a hallucination, so he was going to have to accept what was happening and make the most of it.

Right as he was about to suggest to Noah that they keep moving and see what else they could find up on this floor, his brother came out with a question that was -- while morbid -- worth asking. It was true that they could have singled out the ones with the needed information and torture the answers out of them if necessary. It wasn't as if the military was beyond that sort of behavior, he darkly realized.

It felt a bit sacrilegious to be having a conversation of this nature in a chapel of all places, but this one wasn't even dedicated to one particular denomination. Wanting to hear the answer, Michael chose to stand by and wait.

[damned-soldiers.livejournal.com]

Claude laughed uneasily. At least, he tried to laugh uneasily. Instead, it came out closer to manic laughter. Either way, the shorter guy's question struck a kind of amusement. "Well, err," he began, bringing one hand behind his head, "let me rephrase: Aguilar's blackmailin' them. If they dun give us a name soon, somethin' unfortunate's gonna happen." Something horrible. Something...not fatal, but enough to cause some people suffering. Or something.

This was one of those times he wished the superiors didn't keep him out of the loop.

[affictitious]

"Huh." So that was that. If he was very blasé about the whole thing, it was because Gabriel was fairly attuned to the fine art of blackmail. What, you think people stopped being dicks without an ultimatum?

At this point, he had to admit he probably wasn't going to get more than that out of this guy. Even if he could, he wasn't interested in spending a whole night in this atheistic chapel. More people were going to stream in - already were, really - and with Castiel the way he was and, you know, generally being Gabriel, he wasn't ready to get lost in a crowd.

"Well, good luck with that whole Judas thing." He stepped backwards, moving back to the doors. Funny how Castiel used to be leading him everywhere. Meatshield purposes only. How things changed. "We've got errands to run, you know. Monsters to kill. SSDD."

[freewill]

That ended that inquiry before it had fully developed. Michael was shocked to hear it admitted to so openly. Wasn't that illegal? The military's involvement already made him feel more like a prisoner of war than a mental patient who needed help; adding on all of this stuff about traitors and blackmail and he was starting to feel downright uncomfortable.

Noah seemed to feel the same way, seeing how he took that moment to back off. Or maybe he was just done with the questions, but Michael couldn't argue the fact that it was probably best to move on at this point. One wrong word and they might end up in trouble themselves, which was not something he was aiming for. It might have been a bad idea to come in here in the first place.

Still, being polite was always the best option, and so Michael forced himself to nod to the soldier. "Thanks for answering our questions." At that point, he followed after his brother and moved out into the hall again.

[To here.]