Nightshift 62: Morgue

[she_is_ruin]

If not for the cold seeping into her body, Yomi might not have bothered coming out of her slumber. The darkness in the depths of her mind was warm, safe; she was cradled in oblivion, comfortable, the same feeling she had had as a girl during dark winter nights when she had sat in front of the space heater and father had told her stories. Home. She didn’t want to let that sense of belonging go. She craved it in secret places she didn’t know she had.

But like the tide, the darkness was slowly receding to reveal what waited underneath--an onslaught of sensations that resembled a beach littered with thousands of shards of broken glass. There was no safe place to step on that dead soil. Every time Yomi’s mind brushed a sharp edge it released a starburst of pain, and she badly wanted to go back, to return to that sea of gentle nothingness where nothing could hurt her.

And she couldn’t hurt anyone.

Wait, why did that sound so familiar? Had she been the one to think that? Why… would that…

Her fingertips and toes were sore from the cold, and the discomfort strangling her nerves was what drew her back into her body more than anything else. Something wasn’t right. Many somethings. Her body hurt in unusual places, and there was something soft on her face that cast her shallow breaths back against her skin. Her heartbeat was audible in her ears. With the darkness all around her, it almost enough to convince her she was still in that comfortable place from before. But it wasn’t the same. Reality demanded attention and it nagged at her like the hum of a live wire.

You’re not--

What? Whose voice was that in her head? She wasn’t what?

It was with the fumbling of a disoriented child that Yomi ended up stretching her hand along the cool metal surface underneath her. It extended to the left and right of her, then up, up above her head and over her in a suffocatingly tight formation. She slapped at it softly. No give. There was still something covering her face and she worked it off until it pooled at her collar, letting in a caress of cold air. A sheet or a blanket, she thought.

The moment she opened her eyes properly, she opened them to an impenetrable blackness, and that confused her the most. Why? Why was she here and why did it hurt? It made sense if she couldn’t see anything, because you couldn’t see anything when you were--

Were…

Wait. Wait a minute!

When you’re dead. And you’re not dead. You’re still alive.

Yomi couldn’t breathe and although she opened her mouth to suck in air, nothing came. No, she couldn’t possibly be…? She dug her fingertips in with more purpose, but the metal of the chamber around her was solid and gave her no answers. A shrill sound left her and it was the sound of her own voice, high and rough with panic, that positively let her know that it was true, that this wasn’t death or even life after death. She was still alive. Oh god, alive… But no, no, no one could have survived what had happened. Her body had been broken and scattered, too much for the sesshouseki’s debilitated healing to repair. No human could have put her back together. Could be holding her together.

She wasn’t alone in the coffin-like unit, and that knowledge made tears spill from the corners of her eyes.

Bucking upward only served to bang her head against the shelf, but Yomi didn’t stop--couldn't, not with terror climbing her throat with burning hands. She thrashed, beating her fists against the sides and roof until she could feel her bones begin to bruise and heal and bruise all over again, the blows seeming to fall into a rhythm with her internal protests: no, no, no, no! That was when the screaming started. The screams were not sounds of a sane person claiming their second chance, but the wild shrieks of something that knew it shouldn’t exist. A part of Yomi felt that if she could scream hard enough, it would just go on and on and on and she would die from a lack of air before she had to face another moment as she was. Alive.

This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t, not again. She couldn’t still be… here!

Comments

[she_is_ruin]

Speaking hurt, as did thinking, breathing, moving. Creeping away was the best she could manage, mostly to protect herself and the thinning thread tying her to any semblance of sanity. Too many voices. Too many, in her head as well as outside it, some painfully familiar and some not. She just wanted to be someplace quiet, some place else…

But it wasn’t just the sesshouseki and the young girl who wanted to drag her back to reality. The sheet she had woken up fell over her--a bloodied shroud, or so it should have been--and then there was someone pulling at her. The touch made her shudder and she scratched at the floor like an animal struggling to stay on all fours, a cry caught in her throat. Although she knew she would heal in time (oh yes, she knew it as well as anything), at the moment there was only so much the stone could do to salve her injuries. She was too weak to resist being rolled over like a life-sized rag doll.

Somewhere inside, Yomi knew that once this person saw her for what she was, it would be the death of hope. Some reunions were not meant to be had. She blinked rapidly, lashes made heavy from the wetness leaking from her eyes, and lifted her arms up to block his line of sight.

She did not want to hear her name ever again, not ever!

[rocksthecourt]

It was difficult to believe. Had he not been here witnessing it himself, he probably wouldn't have. But this woman was most definitely Yomi. Yomi who had been very viciously impaled last night and had been, without a doubt, very much dead. And yet... here she was. She was panicked and distraught, but doubtlessly alive. And for the second time today, Klavier could feel relief twisting in his chest. This wasn't as strong a sensation as earlier and was wrought with both confusion and wariness, but it existed nevertheless.

Yomi's appearance here... seemed to explain all the greater details. She had been killed, underwent the process they used here to restore her life, and then had been left here. They had probably been planning to wake her by the time morning came, but she had woken up early, unfortunately, and had to pull herself out of the freezer. The other girl also seemed to be in a similar situation from what little he'd gathered from her. In addition, Yomi's bandages coincided with the injury that had taken her life. How much of it had healed by this point was impossible to determine, but the signs of blood beginning to seep through the bandages were evidence enough that she hadn't recovered enough to be completely in the clear yet. All this flailing around she was doing was only making her condition worse. Though he could also understand why she was doing it now. The way she had died... had to have been traumatic. She'd been killed rather violently, after all. That was probably the last memory she held. So of course she would be panicked.

She threw her hands up in front of her defensively, like she was trying to protect herself. It seemed she hadn't fully grasped her surroundings yet. It was understandable, but at this rate, she was just going to do more damage to herself. ...The slip of both his face and voice proved to be only momentary, and he returned to a sort of level, serious expression. It was soft, but the smile was gone.

"Fräulein, it's alright! It's me. It's just me." Not Albedo. Not one of the doctors or nurses. Not anyone who would do her any harm. Just him. "Listen. You're alright. You're okay. Please... calm down."

To those who knew him better, Klavier did not have a reputation for coddling. Not with strangers or friends, and most certainly not with his subordinates. Even in this sort of extreme situation, there was no intention on his end to baby her. That was an insult and a disservice to them both. No, his focus was on trying to reason with her calmly and getting her to focus on her surroundings. And he needed to keep her from continuing to reopen her wounds or doing anything worse to herself. He didn't know what he would be able to do if that were to happen. So the words were spoken with a level, negotiative calm rather than anything particularly sweet and sentimental. The command itself was a simple sort of sternness, like something a parent might use on a child. "Just relax. Try not to move so much, alright?"

Once she'd settled down and gotten a better sense of her surroundings, then he could think about moving her. For now, he left her where she was so as to not risk aggravating anything for now. However, he stayed holding her shoulders in case he needed to keep her still. It wouldn't be an issue if he could just reason with her, but she seemed unstable at the moment. In the face of unpredictability, it was best to be ready for anything.

Klavier turned his head just enough to look at the other girl through the corner of his eye. Enough so he could still keep Yomi's movements in his periphery. It looked like the hoodie had been enough to cover her adequately, though she had to still be freezing. It seemed like the girl had only found Yomi here after waking up herself. They didn't know each other at all. But her earlier claim of having died now seemed far more credible than it had been a minute ago.

"She... also died. She died last night. In the basement." The details weren't something she needed to relive at the moment. He wasn't going to traumatize her like that. "It was... pretty bad." That was vague but it should hopefully serve as some kind of explanation regarding Yomi's behavior. Not to say any death was particularly pleasant, but....

[lovecraftcomplex]

"That makes two of us." Rose blinked, and weariness hit her like a juggling club to the temples.

"I need to sit down." There wasn't anywhere good to sit except the drawer she'd come out of and the floor, and doing the latter gracefully while not wearing underwear sounded like a task for a greater Hero than she was, right now.

"I wonder if your party was there before us or after. Our gracious host failed to tell us anything other than the bare bones of what was going to happen. Perhaps there's some sort of transtemporal colocation going on." She was talking to herself more than to the other two, since she never expected people to listen to her ramble. "He turned Gamzee back into a troll. I wasn't really sure about the whole alien thing, but that was some fairly convincing evidence. Especially the part where he killed me without breaking into whatever colorful analogue alien trolls use for sweat."

If Yomi had been killed last night, someone who was with her had to have done it. The man, who still hadn't introduced himself, sounded like he might have seen it, which would put him on the list of prime suspects. "Did you kill her?"

[she_is_ruin]

She was all right? She was okay? She was anything but those things. Everything, everything in the entire world was wrong. The knowledge tore at her like a hungry beast.

Yomi let her head drop to the floor, but the dull ache of her temple hitting the tile was nothing compared to the pain in the rest of her body. In the face of Klavier’s insistence, she fell into stillness on her side. Not moving, yes, she could do that. There was no point in struggling to break free; it was not them she was fighting. But her grief didn’t stop--it continued to flow out of her in tears and choked noises, a grief that seemed to have no bottom to it. She wouldn’t have been surprised if all the blood in her body had been replaced with anguish, her heart pumping it in a never-ending circuit throughout her body, powering her limbs where the sesshouseki powered what remained of her soul.

Kindness would have been doing what the man asked and calming herself down. Climbing out of the ashes of her hope and donning a brave face would put them at ease, let them cling to a veneer of normalcy. But what was left of normalcy to cling to?

There was none. That, too, was something she had to accept.

She knew as well that the moment she was able to put on a smile was the moment the sesshouseki renewed its hold over her, and that terrified her beyond all reckoning. She gazed sightlessly along the floor, only vaguely aware of what the two above her were saying. Her. They were talking about her, what was wrong with her. But although Klavier had been there to see her fall, but he didn’t know… he didn’t know…

It was Rose’s accusation that pierced the dark cloud in her mind. Her eyes flew wide. Denial came instantaneously, but the words wouldn’t come.

No, no, that was a mistake… No one had killed her. She had done that herself.

[rocksthecourt]

Yomi's head hit the floor with a dull, distinct thud, and Klavier couldn't help but wince for just a second from both the sight and sound. Thankfully, it hadn't been that hard from what he could tell. It also seemed like his words had broken through and reached her. She wasn't scrambling to escape or trying to fight him off or anything of the sort. It seemed like she had relaxed to some degree, though she was still crying. He was trying very hard not to outwardly react, but honestly those noises she was making were cutting deep into him. It was an anguish, raw and perfect, coming out in a broken, staggered melody. ...He never wanted to hear sounds like this ever again.

It hurt, seeing her like this. Seeing anyone like this, honestly, but she was a face he knew. And worse yet when he knew exactly what had led to it... and that he had been unable to do anything to keep it from happening. But he could do something now, and it was more important to focus on acting now than mulling over those details.

However... Klavier was a prosecutor. He wasn't an officer or a member of EMS or anyone who would better know the fundamentals of dealing with this sort of situation. And that was something he became even more aware of when the other girl suddenly announced that she needed to sit. He turned his head back toward her, immediately concerned. ...If she suddenly fainted or collapsed, Klavier was too far away to be able to grab her before she hit the floor. Maybe he shouldn't have left the other girl standing there like she was perfectly fine when he knew full well that she had just experienced something similar to Yomi. He shouldn't have just assumed she was fine. He should probably help her. But he also didn't want to leave Yomi's side, as broken as she seemed to be at the moment. Damn it.

He was about to suggest walking her to one of the beds (and maybe it would be a good idea to place Yomi on one of them, too), when the girl started... rambling. That was the only way to really describe it. Klavier listened to everything, of course, but admittedly only portions of what she was saying even made comprehensible sense. She seemed to be implying that she had also died in the basement last night. ...And the way she explained it made it sound like she had even gone through the same "trial" they had all been put through, if that brief mention of a host was anything to go by. So then both she and Yomi had gone through the same mess on the same night? ...Had there been others as well who hadn't had the fortune of waking up yet?

That aside, however, nothing she was saying was connecting. Something about trolls and aliens? Or someone being turned into one? ...What is he even supposed to make out of that? Especially when it was said so flippantly. For a moment, he had to wonder if she was just blathering and wasn't aware of what was coming out of her mouth. Then... the sudden accusation. Which he honestly didn't care about, were he to be frank. It was neither offensive nor surprising. What was surprising was Yomi's reaction to it. Sudden, wide-eyed shock. Obviously, the conversation was having an effect on her. He had to wonder if maybe the question had driven the memory, fresh and new, right back into the forefront of her mind in a way it shouldn't have. It was too soon to speak of this in front of her....

"No," he said simply, turning his head to Rose again. Half to address her and half to look away from that face Yomi was making. "It wasn't me. Nor was it really as simple as that. ...Why don't we first focus on getting the two of you warm and out of this place. We can always speak of the particulars later, ja?" Somewhere where Yomi wasn't going to have to hear it and relive it again.

He turned back to Yomi, carefully gauging her as he spoke. "Yomi... I am going to sit you up, alright?" He only warned her ahead of time so she could be prepared for whatever pain may come of moving. And to give her a chance to properly protest if it was something she didn't think she could do yet. Getting up would probably be the worst part of it. Hopefully.

"And Fräulein." He glanced over at the girl again. "How are you feeling? Do you think you can walk? I can help you to one of the beds over here if you are unable to make it."

[avengingfists]

[from here]

Ilia stepped deliberately into the room. Her heart was pounding, but as she had stepped in she had been certain there were voices. Could it be that what Lana said was true...?

She glanced around, barely conscious of the fact that she was panting for breath. Frantically, she took in the scene. Rose, looking pale, but up and alive. Alive! And wearing nothing but a sweatshirt that was too big for her, making her look smaller than ever. Another listless girl and a young man were in the room, but Ilia's mind was a single-lane road.

Ilia released Seishin's hand and rushed over, stopping just short of her previously dead companion. "Rose! Rose you're..."

She didn't know what to say. She wanted to hug her, to touch her, but she didn't know if that was permissible or even safe. Maybe Rose would crumble under her touch. It made her feel even more hopeless than before.

[unpriest]

The faint sound of a scream up ahead hadn't escaped Seishin's ears. There was a subtle look of concern on his face before Silvestri-san grabbed his hand. He blinked in surprise for a moment, but allowed it and followed her through the hallway inside the morgue.

He couldn't have possibly predicted the scene he witnessed upon entering. A young man and a listless girl were in the room, both unfamiliar, but along with them--

"--Rose-chan?!" The utterance had left his throat before he had noticed. She was alive. Pale, but alive! This was...impossible? Yet, here she was, in the flesh. One might think he would've been accustomed to people rising from the dead, but the current situation was clearly different. There had been no Shiki, but her own weapon driven in her chest by her...he wasn't certain what Gamzee-kun was to her.

Was she...truly alright?

Silvestri-san had released his hand and rushed over to the girl, but in his uncertainty and hesitation the former priest remained near the doorway. He subconsciously reached out for the doorpost as though he needed to keep himself grounded. But even the mixture of shock, confusion and relief couldn't completely banish a nagging sense of suspicion.

He took a few hesitant steps towards the girl, before asking softly: "...Are you alright, Rose-chan?"

[lovecraftcomplex]

Their knight in a shining hoodie seemed confused by her description, but Yomi didn't. It was the first intelligent reaction Rose had seen from her, although it wasn't much of one. Perhaps she kept her brain in her chest and it was still regrowing.

No, that was too ridiculous, even under the present circumstances.

The man was still busy helping Yomi, which probably meant that clothing was the extent of the assistance she could expect from him. Not that she'd expected anyone at all to come help her. Or expected anything at all, being dead. Still, it stung a bit, and the final grudging offer more so. She drew the tattered shreds of her dignity (and his sweatshirt) around her and declined.

"I can--" walk, she was about to say, but then Ilia and Seishin burst through the door, and it was time for a:

> 2xAWKWARD REUNION COMBO

[rocksthecourt]

[skipping Yomi with permission]

Before the girl could really answer, Klavier's attention was immediately drawn away by the sound of people entering the room. His immediate reaction was that of dread. His weapon was well beyond arm's reach, and if it turned out they were a threat, he would have to hope he could get to it before their "guests" did.

Thankfully, that seemed entirely unnecessary. A woman's voice was the first to call out. Not in hostility, but in shock and amazement. A man did the same, and both rushed over to the girl. Rose, evidently. Apparently, they knew her. Had they... come for her? There was a sense of relief in that thought. It had nothing to do with him, yes, but it was a wonderful display. The girl had friends here. There were people who cared about one another enough to come searching. And in the light of tragedy, it was always a comfort to know there were those who cared for you. He was thankful Rose had such people here. Not all did.

With Rose's companions here for the girl, Klavier turned his attention back down to Yomi. Yomi who was still distressed and didn't look like she even had the willpower to move anymore even if she wanted to.

He paused for a moment as he looked at her. The floor was freezing and probably wasn't making anything better. But one step at a time. Her wound was in her chest... and back. Bending and standing wouldn't be fun, but once she was finally up, it would be easier to maintain that. ...True to his word, he slowly pulled her up into a sitting position. "Careful."

[she_is_ruin]

Flecks of dappled sunlight on the ground. The hospital in Tokyo. The glinting glass ceiling in the Coliseum. Memories cascaded through her, of places she had been… places she had been destroyed and remade and destroyed again.

She remembered how alone she had felt in the other hospital after Mitogawa had attacked her. The nurses had fed her, bathed her, and cleaned her wounds, but it had been with the mechanical professionalism reserved for a patient, not a person. She remembered wanting just a little bit of kindness, to have someone take care of her and soothe her fears. Her, the girl who had never once needed someone to take care of her in her life. And here, now, in Landel‘s Institute the same fear was pressing in. There was a part of her craving that human touch again in the manner of a terrified child.

But it was wrong to want it now, more wrong than it had been before. The loneliness, the alienation… these were things she had earned for herself. Klavier’s attempt to help her was a waste of his time. It was too late to put things right…

Compared to the commotion of more people bursting into the room, Klavier’s request that she sit up was an insignificant discomfort. In the dim light provided by his flashlight, she saw flashes of legs, heard their footfalls thudding on the floor. Who? Who was here now? To Yomi, the strangers might as well have been screaming at the top of their lungs; their presence made her nervously hug the folds of her sheet to her chest. Every sound seemed to go straight through her like a shard of glass.

She didn’t want to move, she wanted to curl up in a hiding place where not even the sesshouseki could find her. But Klavier was pulling her and before she knew it she was upright. It hurt, it was true, but she had done worse struggling inside the drawer. No matter what she did, though, the pain would eventually fade as the sessouseki healed her--that was a blessing, if nothing else.

No, it’s not. It’s not.

Yomi stared at Klavier. How long until she stopped caring who he was?

[rocksthecourt]

There hadn't been any outward indication of pain, so he decided there probably wasn't enough of it to worry about. A good sign. But he really wasn't liking the fact that she wasn't really talking. Even if she was complaining, it'd be better than nothing at all. At least then he could better gauge her state and might be able to help her feel better.

When he noticed her looking at him, he perked up with an encouraging smile. Maybe they didn't know each other well enough to really say they were friends, but he was still here for her. And it was good that she know that. It was also a good way to try getting her talking again.

"Good. How bad is your wound? Do you think you'll be able to stand up?" ...They shouldn't stay in here. It could still be dangerous and Yomi needed to get warm. Carrying her probably wouldn't be a good idea, though. He couldn't tell how much of it had healed and how much hadn't, but it was a big wound. They had to be careful.

...He really wished he knew more about this sort of thing. Both how to deal with medical emergencies and how to talk to someone going through extreme trauma. This was more something his subordinates would deal with than he himself. So all he could do was try, really. Hopefully it would be enough.

[she_is_ruin]

He smiled, and it made an icy fist close around her heart. Oh god, to think she had finally thought it was over. Now there was a man tainting himself even more by tending to her in her… fractured state, if it could be called such a thing.

Yomi shuddered, more out of horror than the cold. What about any of this was “good?”

Bringing the back of her hand to her face, she brushed at her wet eyes. Regardless of self-consciousness, on a practical level Yomi knew she couldn’t stay the way she was forever, not with people around her. Wounded or not, she was still a magnet for danger. But trying to collect herself brought on a whole new set of dangers: the more she cleared her head, the more space the sesshouseki had to stretch itself out. Was there no way to make it stop? Was there no way to get one of these people to finish what Albedo had started?

Though if it was the Institute itself that kept bringing her back, then there really was no hope left.

Forming words that made any sense seemed a task far out of her reach, but Yomi tried, which only made her cough up more sticky fluid. With it came the sudden, irrational fear that she was back to before, vocal chords broken, forced into unwilling silence; when she touched her throat, however, there was nothing there. No bandages. No mass of scars. (No Mitogawa whispering the words to her destruction.) She had to remember that physically, the only thing wrong with her was what Albedo had done. The rest was all in her head, and it would pass. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

So she tried again, emitting a rasping sound. After screaming, words felt inadequate.

“… Why… are you here…?”

The words were faint, barely more than a breath.

[rocksthecourt]

It seemed like she was starting to gather her bearings a little. Yomi lifted her hand to wipe the tears from her face and attempted to answer him. That only led to a brief coughing fit... with blood. She had coughed up blood. Damn it. Did that mean her wound was bleeding internally? ...What did one even do for something like that? Was there anything? Think. ...Well, she should probably stay upright so there wasn't any risk of her choking or--

Then she tried speaking again. A horrible rough sound came out before she finally managed to whisper out words. Why... are you here...?

...It was an odd thing to ask. Reasonable, but odd given the circumstance. One would think she'd be more worried about her state or what had happened than asking something like that from the outset. That was more something to ask once one stopped to consider the details. He blinked in consideration.

"I came to see whether you were here or not." Well, her and another, but he was very optimistic about the other not being here. "Fortunate that I did, too." He looked her face up and down, trying to read the expression there.

[she_is_ruin]

To see… ? Now that she’d recognized she was not dead after all, some parts of her situation had come to make sense in the back of her mind while she’d struggled with her resurrection. (Yes, resurrection, that was a good word for it.)

She was not dead. She was in a morgue. She was in Landel’s Institute. These things, they were a hard truth, but she couldn’t deny them.

But the rest… Klavier’s reason for being there… no, that didn’t make any sense at all. There was a part of Yomi that badly wanted to retreat into the fog shrouding her mind; she bowed her head, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip so no sound could escape. In a place of death, there was so much relief around her. Klavier, relieved to find live people. Relieved to find her. And the others, relieved to find the girl. So happy that what had been done had not been permanent, that the girl had survived. If only her circumstance could call for such happiness. But every time she came back, things only became worse.

Yomi shook her head. No.

But there was a still a question that needed asking. There was something important in the man’s words, something that didn’t add up. He had… come looking for her body? Had he known she would be here, alive or dead? More to the point, he was free. The barriers in the Coliseum had had to have come down for him to be with her now.

“It happened,” she gasped. “The fight, it ended? You got out.” With her eyes opened wide, there seemed almost no contrast between her pupils and the violet of her irises.

She had to have died in that case, hadn’t she?