damned_institute | Day 67: Breakfast

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Day 67: Breakfast

For the first time since Kyousuke arrived, waking up didn't feel the slightest bit strange or out of place. It was still like night had suddenly stopped, with nothing in-between then and now, but instead of being disorienting, or like there was something missing, it was like waking up from a nightmare. His breaths came heavy and anxious, everything flooding back to him, but unlike last night, he had more mental clarity, and he actually understood what it meant.

Sora... was dead.

After a moment, his breathing seemed to ease up, and he sat up slowly, and simply stared down at his blanket. The motion hurt quite a bit, a lot worse than it had yesterday morning, but he seemed to be in decent shape, all considered. Sore, battered, a little faint, but compared to worst of it...

He wondered if he should feel upset right now, or want to yell, or cry, but the truth was, he didn't. If anything, he was just numb. Tired and listless. He wasn't sure what to think or feel about anything, but somehow it seemed distant and disconnected, like something that hadn't actually happened. Yet, if he lingered on it too long, the lifelessness grew into something nauseating, heavy and constricting in his chest, and he didn't even notice until he realized he was gripping his bedding unnecessarily hard. So he forced himself to relax, and not focus on it too much. ... He preferred the cold sort of nothingness.

When the nurse arrived, she wasn't empty-handed, unfolding a wheelchair by his bedside and looking at him expectantly, as if she wanted him to settle himself into it. Looking at it was strange and uncomfortable, and he found himself refusing automatically.

"... I can walk fine. I don't need—"

"What you don't need," the nurse said sternly, "is to be overexerting yourself. You got to walk around yesterday, and what do you do? You go and reopen your injuries! Honestly, Mr. Taylor, you might be young, but you need to take better care of yourself! Today, you're resting, and if you're good about it, we'll see about maybe taking the chair away tomorrow."

That was bad enough, but then she wouldn't even let him wheel himself, and pushed him along from behind. This was totally unnecessary... But though it made him feel helpless, Kyousuke didn't have the energy to argue, so he let her do what she wanted. She asked if he wanted to make a quick trip the bulletin, first, but... Would the news be there? There were people who deserved to know, but there would be reactions to it, questions he didn't want to answer, and feeling his stomach give a lurch, he decided he didn't want to deal with it. Any of it.

Once in the cafeteria, the nurse asked him about breakfast, but Kyousuke insisted he wasn't hungry. ... He wasn't. Sensing he wanted to be left alone, she wheeled him off to an easily overlooked portion of the cafeteria, but quickly returned, setting food and some juice in front of him, "just in case." She set a small paper cup with a couple of painkillers on the tray, and after that, she left, leaving the boy to stare down the meal he didn't really want.

[ Kratos! ]

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Words about allergies and luck came at him in slow waves as he was led down the hallway, the ninja picking up on only parts of his nurse's ramblings. Whatever she was saying, drugged and dazed as he was, he knew did not matter. Another lie, another of Landel's games, and nothing that he cared for.

His shoulder still stung with a dull pain as he went, while his head throbbed steadily beneath a mess of fresh bandages. Strips of gauze wrapped around in a slant that blocked his left eye from view. He had tried to pull them off, but with the first screech of his nurse and the absence of a means to check, he'd consented that seeing what they'd done would change nothing. He'd been there, twice now, and if his arm was any measure, he knew exactly what the bandages would uncover.

It's not his, he repeated slowly through his mind, blocking out the nurse. He kept the same words as the nurse left him at a table, It's not.

[Tsubaki]

No… no, no, no. Two more had… bitten the dust?

Tsubaki had been afraid of what the Head Doctor would report about the night’s events, but learning that two more people had been, at the very worst, killed…? It wasn’t worse than what she’d been expecting, but it was by far worse than what she’d been hoping.

Landel hadn’t specified, but under the circumstances it seemed likely he’d meant two sick people had become victims. Considering how many infected prisoners she knew, Tsubaki was fearful she was going to wake up to names she knew posted on the bulletin board. Leanne, she knew was safe, since Leanne had been with her the whole time… But what about Sora? And Kurogane? And Scar and Soma? They had to be safe, right? All of them?

Breakfast wasn’t a high priority by any means, but she was quick to head down to the cafeteria, anyway. She had to--she needed to--see for herself. See who was present. Who wasn’t.

Who was hurt, like Kurogane was.

The moment her eyes fell on him, she felt a mixture of bittersweet relief. He was alive, alive despite what Landel had said, but…

"What… happened?" The soft question left her lips as soon as she was close enough to be heard over the noise of the cafeteria. He looked awful, far worse than he had a mere two days ago. She almost didn’t want to know what could’ve happened to put him in such a state.

His head had sunk low enough that he may as well have been using the table as a pillow by the time Tsubaki's question reached him. His right arm had prevented as much, becoming a prop instead as well as a cover for his undamaged eye. He'd been blocking out everything before hearing her, and even with her question, he was reluctant to move his fingers enough to look. One red eye glanced up, then off a bit to finally spot the young woman.

Slowly he looked her over, seeing no signs that she'd been injured. Or none that he could tell. A good thing. If Landel wasn't against using him as a test subject despite making them his pawns, Kurogane could not rule out that the same wouldn't happen to her.

There was the one good thing that had come from last night: it hadn't been her.

"What didn't?" he ended up muttering before closing his eye back.

Had she ever seen Kurogane looking so... run-down? Whatever the injury was, it had to be serious what with all the bandages. What had been going on!?

When he noticed her and lifted his eyes (or eye, in this case), she moved a little closer. The more she looked him over in turn, the more concerned she got. "What did this?"

Had the girl been taken before? She'd been there long enough to know that people got taken, but Kurogane had no knowledge of if she'd been one of their experiments. And with how faded some of his memories were now, he wasn't sure if she knew that he'd been taken once before. What he did know was that he didn't want her worrying over the thought of getting taken again. Or what his eye might make her think.

So it would be an injury. For now. She'd find out eventually, but later. When he could think clearer and speak to her more properly.

"Are you hurt?" he said in response. His injuries were obvious whether he admitted to where they'd come from or not. And she was like him; she probably would say, but he knew he'd be able to tell by her answer.

_{[Sorry for the slow! Internet was out for the part of the day. DX]}

Was it reassuring that Kurogane was still stubborn enough to dodge a direct question? Her eyebrows came together in a concerned frown. If Kurogane wounds were something he didn't want to talk about, he wouldn't, not unless she pushed harder. In this case, though, Tsubaki wasn't sure if he'd been injured in an attack he simply didn't want to recount, or if he was trying to protect her from the answer for whatever reason.

What were the chances it could be a coincidence? That Kurogane could be infected with the monster illness and appear one morning looking like this?

Pulling out a chair beside him, she sat. There was no way she was walking away now. "I'm fine," she answered. Quick and firm. If her chest hurt, it was only because of the worry locked inside, not because of the scratches Sora had put there. "I'm more worried about you. This wasn't..." It was crazy to have to ask, to suspect her fellow prisoners of such a thing. "This wasn't because of your symptoms, was it? Did somebody pick a fight?"

She thought back to the creature she and Leanne had seen in the hall, the blood and the signs of violence. Kurogane... no, he couldn't have become one of those monsters. No way.

If he said he could take care of himself, all he'd earn was more scolding, so he kept that belief a silent one. He could take care of himself. He wasn't dead, was he? And even if he had been with someone else last night, there wouldn't have been a damn thing anyone could have done.

When she started talking about symptoms and picking fights he looked over her again. She sounded like she knew something he didn't. "A fight...? Like the ones that get controlled?"

Was that her reasoning? That someone had been controlled and fought against him. Or maybe she thought that he'd been the one controlled. He couldn't say either way if that much had happened. After that doctor had started zapping him and had gone for his eye, his memories had gone hazy. He didn't know if he'd been forced to do anything more than get experimented on.

And if he had, even without knowing, not explaining anything would make him easily suspect.

Damn.

"What did you see?" he asked back, head lifting. Her tone told him that she wasn't just asking questions at random.

"Mm? Not exactly..."

Special Counselling? If only. Brainwashing wasn't an excuse for hurting people, not exactly, but it made more sense than what Landel had been suggesting for the last few nights. That people would voluntarily attack the sick prisoners out of a sense of self-defence or, worse yet, a sense of justice.

Even if the infected were brainwashed in their own right--made to lash out on instinct like Sora had--that didn't mean counterattacking was the right thing to do.

"The way the Head Doctor's been talking... and some of the others, too... it sounds like there's a chance people have been attacking the infected. You know, because of the illness." Tsubaki was reluctant to say as much, and her words came slowly. She didn't like implying the were other prisoners out there resorting to violence, but neither could she pretend she didn't suspect it. Kurogane had plenty of experience himself, more than her; he had probably considered the same thing.

As for what she'd seen herself...? Nothing that counted as evidence. What she and Leanne had gone through had been entirely different. So she she shook her head. "I was just... afraid that might have happened. Did it?"

The nurse passed by the table then, dropping off Kurogane's meal and commenting that he should try to eat. As he awaited Tsubaki's response, he gave the food a side-glance before brushing it off. Atop everything else, his teeth hurt even when not biting into food. That doctor had said something about cracking, but he didn't want to think about it.

When Tsubaki continued, her words were basing on what she had heard over what she'd seen. That didn't mean she hadn't seen something last night, but whatever it was hadn't been either what she was speaking on, or him.

"It didn't happen," he told her, and that much was true - no patient had attacked him. He hoped that would be enough for her to take a better guess or else let him be.

Tsubaki shut her mouth at the sight of one of the staff, vaguely nervous in their presence. At the same time, she was curious to know how they were treating Kurogane. In the day time, the staff would be helping him with his wounds, right? They'd be making him more comfortable? Not that Tsubaki expected Kurogane to jump at painkillers, but what had happened to him looked painful...

Hearing that he hadn't been targeted by someone else should have been a relief, since it implied he hadn't transformed or gotten sicker, but it did little to illuminate what had actually taken place. With the nurse gone, she tilted her head. Would he tell her if she asked? Maybe it was better not to force the subject when he was in the middle of recovering.

Her pause ran a little long before she decided what to say next. "How are the symptoms now? Better?"

She didn't press about what had happened, and because she didn't, Kurogane had no problem with answering other questions. If she got too intent on knowing the reasons for why he looked like this, he wouldn't be able to avoid answering after too long. He wasn't about to lie to her.

As for his symptoms, he hadn't even thought about them since coming around. The pain of his injuries and the mess of his thoughts had kept him from focusing on that lesser annoyance. If he was still ill, he honestly could not tell right then.

Again, he gave the only answer he had that would be true, "Maybe."

That's probably a good sign... He couldn't have transformed and not know about it, could he?

The illness was putting such a burden on everyone... but if Kurogane's hadn't progressed as far as Sora's, then maybe it turn it wasn't draining his strength as much as it was Sora's. "We're figuring out a cure! So you won't need to worry about that part soon," she said.

Kurogane's other injuries looked bad, but if they weren't connected to the infection, then they could be healed. Or so Tsubaki thought.

"In the mean time, we can get you healed up. My roommate has healing powers--I can ask her to take a look at you. Whatever happened, she can heal almost anything," Tsubaki added. Kurogane had proven himself to be a proud person, but that hardly mattered when he was obviously hurting.

A cure. Even if it wouldn't help what had happened for him, that was good for the ones that needed it. He wasn't sure that he did.

"No," he told her straight at the mention of healing.

He'd let Orihime heal him once, the last Orihime, and knew how much energy that took. Tsubaki shouldn't be offering something like that unless she was the one who could do it. Besides that, this wasn't anything some kid could wave her hands over and get rid of. There was no reason to waste that kind of ability on him.

"We won't know until we try," she pointed out. "There are plenty of options."

Those who were ill needed their energy to fight Landel's infection. Kurogane... definitely wasn't at this best, with or without his impaired eyesight. If push came to shove, there was the vial of liquid, which hadn't displayed any bad side effects yet.

"I'll ask, anyway."

"I said no!" he snapped, albeit weakly as he glared at her, also weakly, "It's not something you can just heal."

And then he stopped. He was mad but not at her, and taking it out on her wouldn't help. He'd said enough though, more than enough that she should at least understand that he wasn't just being stubborn. He looked away from her again, snorting, yet saying nothing more.

... That couldn't be a "normal" injury, then.

Tsubaki angled her head in silence. Kurogane had a right to be upset, regardless of who (or what) was the target. She didn't think he was frustrated so much at her suggestion as...

"The hospital did something that won't mend?" Her voice was small, but not out of hesitancy. That was the guess that made the most sense, given the circumstances.

She was free to take her guesses from then on; he refused to confirm anything now, even if part of it was from his own tenacity this time. Mad as he was at Landel, he was just as much so with himself for being unable to do anything about it. He'd let it happen. Even on that table he'd done nothing towards freeing himself. He had know how futile trying would have been.

He'd given in.

His hand reached out slowly then, as if to take his tray back, but instead of grabbing the edge and pulling, he pushed. Hard. The tray went sailing off the edge of the table, crashing to the tile as he swore loudly.

The silence was ripe with tension, but she couldn't make Kurogane break it until he wanted to. Still, she wasn't quite expecting his feelings to pour out quite like that.

The sudden noise made her jump more than anything. And then there was food spilling everywhere, and the sound of the tray clattering ineffectually against the hard floor. In an instant, she was on her feet, rushing around to the other side of the table to start cleaning up the mess. She didn't have to look to know the staff would be watching, would be getting ready to swoop in and intervene. Kurogane didn't need that right at that moment.

"I-I'll clean it up, it's okay..."

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Day 67: Breakfast

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/sorry for this...

haha, typical Kuro...