Dayshift 62: Sun Room [Third Shift]

[avengingfists]

Last night had been a nightmare. That had to be what it was, but Ilia couldn't deny reality. In her anguish, Ilia had slept through the first half of the day plagued by nightmares. In her dreams she saw Rose's broken body all over again with Gamzee standing over her, his club raised to strike again. Somewhere, she could hear Martin Landel laughing.

Much like the battle last night, Ilia was overcome by her powerlessness. Was she really so useless? Why did it have to be the children who suffered pain and death? Why was she left alive here? She didn't wish for her own death, but if she could have given up her life to save Rose... But nothing could be done now

Ilia had failed to save an ally in need. If only her Captain could have been here, then just maybe his uncanny luck and drive might have saved them. He had a miraculous touch that could solve anything. Ilia now understood why she would never be on equal footing with him.

Miserably, Ilia roused herself at her nurse's insistence that she come eat. She didn't take a moment to brush her hair or wash her face. She just followed along as directed, trying to ignore the hallow feeling in her chest. Ilia wasn't hungry, but she took one of the bags offered to her and trudged to the bulletin. She addressed a few notes then added one herself. It wasn't the prettiest note, but Ilia couldn't produce the level of prose that Rose deserved. Instead, she wrote it quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. Short. To the point.

Her task done, Ilia found seat in the corner and sunk down into the cushion. Burying her face in her hands, she concentrated on breathing. She couldn't face the sun today.

[For her children Claude and Anise]

Comments

[rainboompow]

Rainbow had to admit, as grouchy as she had been after waking up and going to shower, she felt a little bit better after she was clean. A little. That's all she was willing to grant Landel's Institute right now. No, she wasn't even going to admit that the prospect of delicious food was kind of enticing. Nope. It was not enticing at all.

(Peanut butter did sound good right now, though.)

Anyway, Rainbow Dash had more important things to worry about than food. She still had to make up for lost time, and since it seemed the only way to get things done during the day was posting on the bulletin board, that was what she intended to do first. Rainbow tromped over to the board and grabbed herself some paper and pen.

She had a clear message in mind: What did I miss last night? Anything awesome?? Are we any closer to beating Landel??? As she pressed the paper up against the wall and put ballpoint to paper, however, that simple message had some trouble flowing out of her pen. While she had been managing all right with grabbing things when she had to, Rainbow was still far from used to human hands and fingers. She could see how humans were supposed to write as she watched others post their notes, but dang it if the writing itself wasn't hard as haybales to pull off. Writing didn't come naturally to pegasi in the first place, for one thing; when Rainbow did have to write things back in Ponyville, she had either gotten someone else do it (a unicorn or Spike, usually) or she had written by mouth. So the whole "by hand" thing was even more foreign to her for that reason, never mind that it was like suddenly having to write with the pen behind a window in another room.

Rainbow took at least a full minute to get out the first sentence written out in any legible way. And it was around the sixth or seventh slip of the pen (and second rip in the page) that Rainbow finally lost her cool. "Ugh! Whatever, forget that," she said to herself. The pen was in her mouth and both hands were planted on the page to hold it steady in one second flat. "'s be'r," she said before resuming writing.

[Snow]

[heroesdontshave]

The talk had been a nice little distraction, but after he and Anise had parted ways, Snow didn't feel much better than before. Not like he felt worse, but not better either. Maybe he really was coming down with something? Man, when was the last time he'd even gotten sick? It didn't happen to him very often. Talk about cruddy timing, catching something right when he needed to be on his toes most.

Welp. A headache was just a headache in the end, right? Not like he was going to let something dumb like being a little sick slow him down. Not a chance! So he continued to ignore his head and his queasy stomach, took his bag thing of local food without even looking in it, and headed over to the note exchange board. Or the 'bulletin board' as they called it here.

He... kind of ignored the thing a lot, he had to admit. But he really shouldn't. What if Light or someone ends up trying to contact him? Or someone puts up something important? He should probably check the thing at least once a day, right? Yeah! So he headed over to the thing, determined to do something productive while he was over there.

...And became completely distracted about two seconds later. It wasn't his fault though, okay?! He couldn't help it! It was... this girl next to him. As soon as he saw her, he couldn't help but gawk a little. He didn't want to stare. Really he didn't. But he couldn't help it! That hair... was pretty incredible. How long did it take her to get it like that? ...Or had it been an accident? Maybe she'd screwed something up in a big hair dye experiment gone wrong. Like hell if he knew. He didn't mess with that stuff.

So yeah, he ended up staring at her for a bit without really meaning to. He watched her trying to right out a note for the 'bulletin board'. She looked like she was having a lot of trouble with it, which he could fully sympathize with. Writing things out by hand with pen and paper was hard. Though it shouldn't have been that hard.

Eventually, she loudly gave up and... shoved the pen in her mouth? Yes, she shoved the pen in her mouth. And she was starting to write with it. From her mouth.

"What're you doing?" he blurted out in confused astonishment before he could think. He looked between her face and the paper, thoroughly baffled. Look... he knew people here did things differently sometimes, but... How exactly was that supposed to make writing any easier?

[ sorry for the massively late tag! ]

[rainboompow]

[Likewise!]

Before she had even gotten a few words onto the paper, a question suddenly blurted out next to her. Rainbow jumped with an inadvertent "Ya!" and nearly dropped the pen, only barely catching the end of it between her teeth. "Hhew..."

Rainbow looked to the side the voice had come from. There she came face to face with... a torso. And so she looked up — waaaay up — before her eyes finally reached the human's face. The guy had just about a foot and a half on her, and a good deal more muscle too. Definitely the biggest human she had seen so far. Was she going to let that bother her, though? Heck no! (Not much anyway) She'd dealt with dragons, hydras, and all other kinds of ruthless, dangerous monsters! No way was some kinda tall blond guy gonna intimidate her.

"Wri'ing. 'as it loo' li'e?" she asked indignantly. After a moment, she grudgingly pulled the pen out of her mouth. "You got a problem with that, buddy?"

[heroesdontshave]

Whoops. He hadn't meant to startle her. And he definitely hadn't meant to make her yell and drop her pen. Though he had to admit... her managing to catch it again with her teeth? Pretty damn impressive.

So when she looked up at him, he probably looked mildly surprised himself. But then he just grinned at her in a "whoops" kind of way to show he hadn't meant any harm or anything. Her question though made him laugh.

"More surprised you're not havin' problems." Again, he looked at the paper then back to her. "I know it's annoying and it kinda hurts after a while if you gotta write out a buncha long notes. But kiiinda don't think writin' that way's gonna help much."

Hell, he couldn't even imagine being able to get something readable onto a sheet of paper that way. Though on the plus side, you'd get a whole lot less grief from your wrist. But then maybe your jaw would hurt. Then it'd suck to eat. That wouldn't be any good, right?