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damned_institute2011-12-18 02:51 pm
ninelivesonce) wrote in damned_institute2011-12-18 02:51 pm
Nightshift 60: Main Hallway, 2-West
[from here]
Taura peeked out of the stairwell door with the first evidence of caution she'd shown all night. Everything looked quiet, but that didn't mean much of anything.
They'd met here the last time she'd come up to head into that room, and that thing had come out of the walls. She didn't want to wait around anywhere, but especially not here. She was glad they were meeting a little further down the hallway. It didn't make it safer, but she'd fought enough battles to earn a little superstition.
Every soldier had a few. Didn't matter if they were religious or so fanatically committed to the opposite opinion that it almost qualified, they gathered superstitions like an air filter gathered dust. When you risked your life every day, anything that seemed to stand between you and the darkness shone like a beacon. She'd learned to forgive her fellow soldiers their foibles quickly; and then after her first real mission she'd understood. A fussy method of attaching a helmet was both a safety measure and a ritual -- doing something the same way every time kept people from forgetting it, and every time they came back alive cemented it.
Taura peeked out of the stairwell door with the first evidence of caution she'd shown all night. Everything looked quiet, but that didn't mean much of anything.
They'd met here the last time she'd come up to head into that room, and that thing had come out of the walls. She didn't want to wait around anywhere, but especially not here. She was glad they were meeting a little further down the hallway. It didn't make it safer, but she'd fought enough battles to earn a little superstition.
Every soldier had a few. Didn't matter if they were religious or so fanatically committed to the opposite opinion that it almost qualified, they gathered superstitions like an air filter gathered dust. When you risked your life every day, anything that seemed to stand between you and the darkness shone like a beacon. She'd learned to forgive her fellow soldiers their foibles quickly; and then after her first real mission she'd understood. A fussy method of attaching a helmet was both a safety measure and a ritual -- doing something the same way every time kept people from forgetting it, and every time they came back alive cemented it.
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He reached the top of the steps and hit the wall adjacent, clutching at it and sucking in air as if he'd just come out of water. The sound nearly echoed, the hallway was so devoid of life. Empty and cold. Peter licked his lips hastily and clutched at his stinging chest, and faced the corridor ahead. At the end would be a large door with a freezing handle, frigid from the inside to keep the bodies preserved. There was the morgue.
Still wheezing loudly and doubling over by half, Peter moved his hands to his knees as he struggled to contain himself. His eyes were on the end of the hall. He could make it. It was less than a thirty second walk. It wasn't so bad.
But now that he was up here, he couldn't bear the thought of going in.
He had seen Harry here. Matt had taken him up here, and they had pulled out the drawer so he could see his best friend covered in a sheet. Pale, blue around the bottom where the blood had pooled and covered in a sheet. Peter gulped. He had seen the body of his best friend. And now that whole thing...that was what he remembered. This stiff, sleeping statue in a drawer.
When he had started sinking was lost on Peter, but he was on the floor now, sobbing, clutching his knees close and still staring at that fucking hallway even if it had turned to a mess of greys with the water in his eyes. "Oh, fuck..."
That echoed too.
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"I'm really sorry." Nothing answered him. He was half expecting some ghoulish groan to emit from the dark, but nothing happened, so he carried on. "I'm so, so sorry Brainy. I shouldn't...I shouldn't have left you. I shouldn't have left you alone so much. I'm sorry. I'm really...I'm really sorry. I w-wasn't there for you.
"I don't know what happened to you. I don't know when you left, so...just. If it was Grell, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to. He doesn't deserve to live. But you - I don't know where you are. I just want you to know that you're like...l-like a part of, a part my family. You're one of my best friends. I love you, okay?"
Staring blankly into what was essentially a black hole made it easy to imagine whatever he wanted in the dim edges of his flashlight beam. The outline of a slender boy, too far away and too obscured to catch the details of his face. Peter traced the form with wide eyes. "I just want you to know that. That's...that's it. You're awesome and I miss you."
He stopped talking then, but remained seated until he couldn't feel the sting in his chest anymore. The tears stopped eventually too. and he wiped himself clean. By the time he drew away his hands, the figure had dissipated. He couldn't retrace it's form there again, no matter how hard he tried. And it was then, when the gasping stopped and his face had settled into resigned lines that things snapped into place. No. He didn't want to be alone tonight, he decided. He didn't want to spend the night in pieces. That was lame. Brainy would agree. Brainy would want him to keep going, to march on down there and not be a pansy and face the rest of his friends like everything would be okay.
Because it would. Fuck you, it fucking would. Peter was going to make it okay. There were still people here that he loved and that need out as badly as he did. Strangers and practical strangers, the people who had left to go lead pretend lives in the pretend world. Those guys all needed him. And Peter was no use to anyone sitting alone in the dark like he had just watched Old Yeller for the first time and his world was shattered.
Nope.
"Okay," Peter said. He steadied himself on his feet. "Okay. I'm done here. Whatever creepy thing is haunting here, you can get back to business."
He nodded once to the hall. It was still silent, but that didn't bother him so much anymore. He was cool. With one final shake of the head, he collected his flashlight and took to the stairs.
[To here.]
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The door slammed open with one cheerful kick. He stepped through the door, watching for the tall woman he knew. Goku hadn't talked to her since last night when she had her "problem". Hopefully, she would be okay now. Fighting wouldn't nearly be as fun without her.
"Taura!" he shouted down the corridor, cupping his small hands around his big mouth. "Taaaura!"
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"Over here," she shouted, waving. It wasn't as if being completely quiet about their destination was even necessary; that bulletin post had been easily decipherable for just about everyone but Goku.
Once he'd gotten closer, she dropped her voice to a low rasp. "Now, we should be quiet. The place we're going after we meet everyone else is a secret."
But first they had to get there, and Taura continued walking down the hallway to the open area with the railings.
[to here]
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The Horrible Hallway came into sight as the Scarecrow reached the top of the stairs. He let go of Lust's hand to use his flashlight, looking one way down the corridor, then the other. There didn't seem to be witches out and about, but that had always been the case, hadn't it? Just as they started down the hallway, there would be a chill in the air, their flashlights failing them at just the right time as a hand came out of the darkness, reaching for them.
Oh, he'd let his imagination run a bit there, leaving him spooked himself. The Scarecrow tried his best to push those feelings down, wanting to seem braver than he really felt. He'd been through the Horrible Hallway once or twice without an occurrence, but it was often not the norm. Whether the whole hall was enchanted in some indescribable way, or simply guarded by a witch with powers he couldn't fully comprehend, it was a terrible place to be at night.
Seeing nothing out of the ordinary yet, he shined his flashlight down the corridor to the hallway that branched from it. "All right. This hall in particular can be most dangerous at night, but if we head straight over there, I think we'll be okay."
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And then they had reached the hallway that seemed to frighten Frank the most. Lust shook herself, banishing thoughts of what this place could potentially do to her.
"What does it protect, that makes it so dangerous?" the homunculus asked, stepping beside her companion and stretching her fingers to prepare her claws if need be. She couldn't imagine any other reason for a hallway to be particularly bad. She peered after the light, trying to discern some difference or hint. "And don't worry. If anything comes, I'll take care of it."
That was what she could offer.
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"I don't rightly know, to be honest," he answered. "Down that way—" he pointed to the east, stepping aside so she could take a look "— are the storage rooms. When your light runs out of batteries, you'll have to get more from down there. They've also got a room where they keep boxes of things that belong to the people they say we are."
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Both of those things interested Lust, and she made a note of them for later. She peered down the hallway, cursing her weakened night vision. "They've made whole lives for us, then?"
She wondered what sort of woman she was supposed to be in this world. What sort of life they'd created, if they really did go that far. That would be for another night, however. Frank had a mission - of sorts - and she had plenty of time.
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He was about to continue his description of the hallway, but was given pause by his own thoughts as they wandered through his concerns. "Every one of the nurses goes along with it. And there are doctors we sometimes meet who believe it, too. They want to convince you you're someone else entirely, like everything you know never existed."
His face fell for a moment as he remembered Dorothy, her visit still haunting him. His eyes returned to her after a second, his look determined. "Don't you believe it, though. It must be awful to be out there not knowin' who you are and believing you're someone you're not. That's why we've got to find a way to stop Landel. He can't get away with this!"
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"If you never knew you were someone before, you don't find yourself missing anything. Or wondering what that person was like, and how much of her still exists in you, and what that means for everything you know and remember.... That's what's awful."
Sometimes she wished she had never met Scar, never learned the truth of her origins, or began to remember bits and pieces of that other woman's life. She had known who she was, and known what she would be upon attaining humanity. Now she could only wonder and worry.
"Really, who are we except for what we think in our mind? I sometimes believe we're all only who we think we are..."
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The topic was nearing one to his own heart- even as he spoke, he remembered that visitation day, Dorothy sitting across from him and insisting he was sick, that there was something wrong with his brain and that Oz never existed. And true, there was that movie of their adventures, and those people in it did look an awful lot like them, but Sangamon had said it was all pretend. Though he trusted Sangamon's opinion, there were times the former strawman questioned his friend, and wondered if he actually was Hunk Howard.
But then he thought of his sleep study, the mission he and Depth Charge had been put through, all that had transpired since his arrival. He didn't have a working brain, but he refused to believe a place that forced the patients into so much hardship was actually trying to help them in any way. Dorothy was out there, and he had to help her- her, and his friends who had been 'released.' If he didn't, who would?
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"I think it's...across the way, over there." Badd pointed past the massive hole in the floor that led to the Sun Room. He hadn't taken much note of the chapel when it as offered to him, he found it simpler to pray when he was under fire rather than building up a store of good-will in a dusty pew. In a place like this Landel and Aguilar were gods--and thus Badd found it hard to bring himself to pray to the deities who ruled this world.
He'd rather put a bullet in their heads.
[m-u effects]
.... But even after saying that to himself, Byrne didn't budge. He couldn't, not after something strange crossed his field of vision at that moment, something walking towards the chapel. The prosecutor stared dumbly at the sight. Was he seeing things?
No, he wasn't seeing things, was he? He couldn't be. There was a black-haired little girl in a long white robe across the way there, her figure glowing in an almost heavenly way, and he was damn sure she was real. Who was that girl? And what why was she here, of all places?
Oh, right, maybe he should be telling Badd about this, since he kind of agreed to tell him everything he saw and all. "Badd? Badd, what's that girl doing over there?" He pointed to her just as she vanished into the chapel. "Is she...wait..."
His voice trailed off as his mind came to a horrible realization. He knew it now. That girl. That girl was--!
"Kay!?" he suddenly shouted, eyes widening in a panic. At that moment, Badd stopped existing to him. Only Kay mattered, and she'd just gone into that chapel without him.
And so Byrne started sprinting for the chapel, leaving his partner behind.
[Running away without you to here (http://damned.livejournal.com/1219174.html?thread=81920614#t81920614)...]
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Daemon stepped out into the upper hall, pausing a moment, because he wasn't as familiar with the second floor as he was the first. Gaze sweeping right and left for a moment, he paused, then made a quiet sound of frustration.
"Give me a moment," he spoke to Renji, tugging his journal out of his pocket and flipping to the carefully scribbled map he kept within, flashlight beam illuminating pages of neatly written notes. "I forget where this closet is supposed to be."
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"We need to go this way."
[Going to here.]
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