Night 68: M11-M20 Hallway

[forsworn]

Kratos grimaced as Landel gave his usual little speech to begin the night. Having kept a close eye on the board, he hadn't failed to notice the influx of notes subtly telling of another death, another person that had succumbed despite all the advances they'd made in finding a cure. It was frustrating, and it hurt: he had contributed to that influx himself, killing Sora in self-defense the other night. Truth be told, he had been utterly useless the past two days, and unfortunately, he couldn't say that tonight would be the night where he'd turn things around--well, perhaps it would be, if he could actually accomplish what he wanted to do. That would be something to be satisfied about.

Neither of his old uniforms tonight; Kratos chose instead the old military gear left over from Aguilar's tenure, careful as he tugged one of the gloves on over his still-healing hand. Without the bulk of the Key Crest, it fit far more easily, but the victory meant nothing. At the very least, though, the long sleeves of the shirt and the glove served to hide the bandage from prying eyes.

He gave a slight nod to his roommate before turning to leave. Time to find Tsurugi.

[to here]

Comments

M12

[oyaji]

"Hey, Lil' Bunny!" he shouted, frustrated and desperate. Tiger was scraping the bottom of his Hero barrel for any other ideas on how to wake up his partner. Grabbing his shoulders, he shook him hard, trying to jolt the blond's system and wake him up. But no matter how hard he shook or shouted his name, the young man was dead to the world.

Eventually Wild Tiger had to stop because his arms were tremoring too violently to carry his partner's weight any longer. Barnaby slumped back into the bed with the older man shaking above him in anger, frustrating, fear. "Damnit," he cursed at Barnaby. "Damnit, Bunny! Wake the hell up!"

Why was this happening so suddenly? After all that work to find Barnaby a cure and he succumbs to--

Wait, Wild Tiger realized. The cure--That, that flower! Had that been the cause of his sudden unconsciousness? Had it poisoned him? Was he in a coma? The older man had to let go of Barnaby before he grew any dizzier and smothered him, dropping down instead on his roommate's bed like a sack of potatoes.

Had he single-handedly killed Barnaby? Even the young man had been suspicious of the thing from the very beginning, but, of course, he hadn't really listened and forced him to eat it. It was all his fault. Covering his flushed face with his hands, he tried to get control of his chaotic mind that only seemed capable of spitting out worst-case scenarios. He was forever alone in this place, to be forgotten as he faded into obscurity. They would never be avenged with how useless he was with his sputtering NEXT power. Eventually the weight of them all smothered him. Visions of his last memories of his wife, weak, pale, and dead in her hospital bed invaded his mind, and Wild Tiger sobbed pathetically into his hands.

No, it wasn't productive, but the older man was too swept up in his despair to do much else but wallow in self-pity.

M12

[oyaji]

It was a comfortable state of being he found himself in, having gravitated to it more times than he'd like to admit. Unfortunately without alcohol to accompany those pity parties, it didn't last long. There was only so many tears he could cry into his hands until he was tired of even trying. The silence was about as deafening as his own anguished sobbing. Eventually he pulled his hands from his face, rubbed what tears were left in his red eyes with the back of wrists, and stared back at Barnaby.

The voice in his head was soft, but it grew in volume until it moved him from the bed and onto his feet. It told him that his partner wasn't dead. Wallowing was doing nothing to help Barnaby, only mending old, festering wounds. There was always hope, Tiger had just lost sight of it. He saw his wife and it threatened to crumble him to whimpering pieces. But his partner did not share the same cruel fate as Tomoe; he was alive and he needed help.

What kind of help, the former Hero had no idea. Kneeling in front of Barnaby's bed, he patted a pale hand in a feeble attempt to wake the young man up, as if for some reason this one final contact would magically do it. "Bunny, please," he begged on his knees. "Wake up. You gotta wake up. I can't--I dunno how to fix you." And the worst part of it was that he was too afraid to leave him. He may not have succumbed to illness like his wife (not yet at least), but after missing her last moments, Wild Tiger couldn't stand missing Barnaby's. If he suddenly grew worse while the older man was out looking for a way to cure him, there was no way Tiger would be able to cope. He just couldn't.

He wouldn't leave his partner's side, not without some foolproof affirmation. So, if he wasn't going to leave him, all he could do was make sure the blond was comfortable. Checking his vitals signs again, he eventually pulled his domino mask off and let it drop to the floor. He couldn't exactly be Wild Tiger without Barnaby Brooks Jr anyway. "Bunny, if you can hear me... You gotta come back to me. I... I can't do this without you." It wasn't the self-pity talking, it was the reality of the situation. Without his partner, Kotetsu had little chance of leaving this place alive.

Checking his pulse once more, the former Hero stood up and checked the pulse at his neck. He felt no difference as he studied the seconds tick by on his watch and counted the even beat of his blood. Even his breathing seemed normal, but he checked every possible problem he could think of, just in case. Leaning over the blond, Kotetsu places his hand right above his mouth to feel the tickle of his exhaling breath. It seemed strong enough. What the hell else was there to check? If there was nothing abnormal about his breathing, then the older man was out of ideas.

Desperate for any sign, he pulled closer to listen. Just because he was breathing didn't mean it wasn't labored. His breath could be labored or ragged. It could have been shallow, which could indicate maybe he wasn't getting enough oxygen flow up t his brain, Kotetsu desperately rationalized. As he listened a hair's breadth away from his mouth and nose, he could see his vision becoming watery from a new onset of tears.

Re: M12

[baniichan]

Deep sleep blanketed his senses, but eventually the movement around him began to pierce through it. The first thing Barnaby became aware of was soft shuffling in the room, a sharp contrast to the obtrusive intercom announcements that normally woke him. As his eyes cracked open, he caught sight of a dark, blurred shape hovering over him. Disoriented, Barnaby's mind groped for memories of what had happened prior to this moment, but he came up with nothing.

His vision struggled to come into focus, but without his glasses and proper lighting that proved to be a challenge. Even so, he could sense the presence near him, and immediately realized its shape was familiar.

"Kotetsu?" he mumbled, uncertainty coloring his tone as he shifted beneath the blankets. Barnaby couldn't detect any immediate danger, especially with his partner close at hand, but he still felt oddly unsettled.

Re: M12

[oyaji]

"Wh--Ah--?" Suddenly he was looking at a pair of bleary green eyes. Dumbfounded, Kotetsu gaped silently until he realized his tears were still running down his face. The last thing he needed was for Barnaby to wonder why, so he pulled away from his partner with an agonized laugh, thrilled, exhausted, and so damned confused.

"Ah, jeez," he finally said, not sure what else to say without giving too much away. Quickly, the older man wiped his eyes of any trace of evidence when a thought struck him that made him laugh all the harder. Only Barnaby would wake up like that, right underneath him when he was less than an inch away from his face. It was like out of some girl's fairy tale--Well, except he hadn't kissed him. "You make a horrible princess, you know that?"

Re: M12

[baniichan]

The way Kotetsu suddenly pulled back and tossed those cryptic words at him only served to further confuse Barnaby. A princess? They both knew who the princess normally was, but Barnaby didn't bother correcting him. "What on earth is that supposed to mean?" he huffed.

Eyebrows furrowing, he sat up and reached over for his glasses. Once he fixed them onto his face, the world came into better focus, and he turned to look at his partner. Bits and pieces of his most recent recollections came to mind -- ice cold water, traipsing around near the woods in search of shelter, getting transported to different places with no rhyme or reason behind it...

"What happened?" he asked, his expression growing more somber as he struggled to remember what occurred after all of that.

[oyaji]

"The way you woke up!" he explained, waving his hand a little frantically. He was so full of adrenaline that he couldn't calm down so quickly, and it gave his words a bit of a bite to them. "You... I mean you woke up like a princess under a witch's spell, and I hadn't even kissed you ye--ehhh! Not that I was going to kiss you!" He corrected with utmost haste as he jumped off the bed in spasmodic horror. Why in the hell had he even said that?! Kotetsu had been so nervous and so crammed full of worries, ideas, imagery, he just started talking out of hand! He hoped Barnaby understood that!

"I just meant you--Oh man, this is just too bizarre!" Cupping a hand over his face, the former Hero tried to figure out how to even start describing what the hell happened to him. "You wouldn't wake up! I've been--I've been here for like ten minutes shaking you and you just... wouldn't wake up..." Sadness overwhelmed his emotions again as he relived the fear and guilt he felt. "I thought that flower I gave you had poisoned you..."

[baniichan]

Up until now, he'd been completely unaware of Kotetsu trying to rouse him. That thought unnerved Barnaby, especially when he considered how little control he had over what happened to him in this place as it was. What did he sleep so deeply? And how long had he been out? Since the night before?

As usual, Kotetsu wasn't making a whole lot of sense, going on about fairy tales and kissing him -- or, rather, not kissing him, as he so adamantly insisted. Barnaby watched him with a flat expression as he flailed away from him like he'd just been burned by his own senseless rambling.

"Well, I doubt your breath is all that fresh, so maybe it's for the best that you didn't kiss me," Barnaby countered, folding his arms over his chest as he spoke. Not that any of that mattered when compared to the rest of his story, he just wanted to give the man a hard time.

Kotetsu was right to suspect the flower, seeing how the odds of it magically solving their problems from before seemed to have been built more around wishful thinking than anything else. Barnaby wondered if he should have been more forceful about not eating the damn thing, but a quick glance at his arm showed that the rash hadn't returned. If he was awake now and the symptoms weren't back, then it was possible this bout of unconsciousness was completely unrelated to that so-called "cure".

A small frown pulled at Barnaby's mouth. "You were worried I wasn't going to wake up." It was an observation, not a question. "Was that why you were hovering over me like that?"

[oyaji]

Wow, what? His breath was totally fine! Kotetsu huffed at that, but soon enough paranoia set in. Putting his hand up against his mouth, he breathed out to check it. It smelled fine to him! "Whatever, I'm always kissably fresh!" Thankfully he didn't have to prove it to Barnaby, so his partner would never know if he was just being a bullshitter or not. They had more important things to worry about than his breath anyhow!

Sitting back down beside the young man, Kotetsu worried his hands together trying to come up with any logical reason he wouldn't wake up. The problem was there just wasn't one! "Y-Yeah. I didn't know what else to do--I mean, your pulse was fine, your heart beat was fine, you were breathing! It wasn't like you were dying, but you wouldn't respond and..." Kotetsu wasn't sure how to put his fears into words properly, so he just moved on without them. "I couldn't just let you lay there all by yourself!"

[baniichan]

"You didn't exactly need to go out by yourself, either," Barnaby flatly pointed out. But then his eyes softened, and he averted his gaze a little. "I'm sorry for troubling you, though."

They had enough to deal with without having to worry about Barnaby spontaneously falling asleep. He hoped this didn't become a pattern, especially if they intended on getting out of here as soon as possible.

"For what it's worth, I feel fine physically," he added. "So, there's no need to worry." As for how he was doing emotionally, well...that was another matter, but now didn't seem to be the time to dig into that mess, as much as he wanted to get everything sorted out. They were both clearly exhausted in some fashion or another. Still, he didn't immediately meet Kotetsu's eyes.