Day 69: Breakfast

[envy_the_sinners]

Scar scowled, both relieved and angry that he had woken up once again in his own bed. That lanky man who had become his new roommate on the night of his death was sound asleep one bed over.

This was coming to be the new "normal." It was infuriating.

As always, he begrudgingly followed his nurse into the cafeteria and took a seat. He preferred to file in with the majority of the patients in order to avoid sticking out, but no such luck this morning.

Scar stared at his food rather than starting in on it, despite the newly found appetite that had been lost thanks to that blasted sickness. He had a lot to think about. He hadn't managed to find Frank last night. The damn intercom had beaten him to it. And judging by Tsubaki's reaction to him, he had been out for at least a day's time. How many had noticed? Cared? It couldn't have been many.

But it was the few who did whose detection Scar was desperate to avoid.

[Eddyyyy!]

Comments

[knightspirit]

Somehow, I think that they're beyond your reach now.

That was something Kyousuke didn't need to be told twice. The trip to the morgue had ended in failure, which was about what he'd been expecting, but the process itself had been both more draining and more gentle than he'd anticipated. It was a relief he hadn't had to contend with the scene of Sora's death again, but the process of opening those containers, not knowing what they might contain... Now that he was alone and Kratos wasn't here to see it, he allowed himself to cringe.

In hindsight, he almost wondered why he agreed to it; rooting through bodies was just going too far, no matter how he thought about it. Maybe he should have been more insistent the man stop instead of making sure he didn't have to deal with it alone. ... But only in hindsight. It was a pointless worry now, especially since in the end, there wasn't anything to disturb. Letting a completely hypothetical situation weigh on his conscience wasn't going to do him any good. All he could do was once again remind himself, never again, and leave it at that.

Once the nurse arrived, she removed the bandages one his arms and left them. There were still several gashes down both, but the stitches had already dissolved, and they'd reached a point where it was fine to let them air out and finishing healing on their own. His chest, however, was another story; it seemed he'd still have a tough time getting around for a while. As usual, he ignored it, and followed the nurse to the cafeteria to grab some fruit and pancakes, before hefting himself into a seat an empty table.

[ freeeeee as the wind ]

[fullmetalheart]

Ed woke up with the sound of the intercom, disoriented. One moment, he was with Al, Lloyd, and Murphy, the next not, and he had no idea how he ended up in bed.

The nurse entered the room to get him. "I see you're awake. Come on and get your breakfast."

"Lemme wake up properly, first," he said crankily as he dug the heel of his hand into his eyes in an effort to help wake up. He was soon up and moving.

After getting his food, he found an out of the way spot away from the main crowd that was blocking his view and sat down to dig into breakfast. He had more pancakes than the nurse was happy with, but he had pointed out that he was still a teenager and needed a lot of food.

He tried to survey the crowd for his brother and soon gave it up as a bad job and concentrated on his food instead of anything else going on.

[dividedby]

With the way his night had ended, Zero probably should have considered himself lucky to hear Landel's grating voice tell him to 'get his lazy bones out of bed'. Yet the only thing he could think with clarity in those first few moments awake was how much he wanted to shut that voice up for good.

Everything else was quite like the end of that night. A confusing, painful fog.

His arm reacted less to having pressure applied to it, which was good, but his injured right leg was a different story entirely - one he didn't learn until he tried to stand on it much too quickly. Big mistake. That action only rewarded him with sharp, burning pain that spread like a wildfire up his leg and into his lower body. Immediately he fell back down to the edge of his bed, wincing and gritting his teeth as he waited for the pain to die back down to a dull throbbing where the cut was. Now it was his frail human body who was taking the brunt of his internal anger.

The nurse was going to be next, for no other reason other than showing up and smiling in that condescending way. Pretending to be concerned like usual, huh? Or if not that, then still happily brainwashed? Whatever. Just let the day be over with already...

Unfortunately, thanks to his leg, walking wasn't going to be so simple. The nurse figured this was going to be the case and came prepared with a pair of crutches. Zero had seen humans and even a few Resistance soldiers use these before, but he'd never had a reason to use them himself before now...guess it was his turn at last. Lucky him. The crutches were awkward and uncomfortable, but he tolerated them only for the fact that it was far more uncomfortable trying to walk on his injured leg. What he could not tolerate was how his nurse now had more of a reason to hound him everywhere he went, even to the breakfast tables. Not that it didn't make sense - he wouldn't have been able to carry his tray himself with these crutches - but he hated having to be around her more than necessary.

For once, he was actually hoping that some other prisoner would pester him with mundane conversation. Anything was better than listening to her talk on and on and on about his health and the weather and everything he couldn't care less about...

[X!]

[his_legacy]

Link awoke with an ache in his back and a tired feeling in his head. Thanks to that beast in the kitchen, they had failed to get particularly far. At least everyone was alive and relatively healthy. No severe injuries.

He followed his nurse into the cafeteria, staring intently at the entrance to the kitchen as he settled with his food. He had to force away the thought of making a break for it. But there would be too many people- nurses and orderlies and staff cooking.

Link would simply have to wait until tonight. For now, he kept an eye out for his allies.

[Free]

[freewill]

The last image Castiel had burned into his mind was Lust choking on water, drowning while on solid ground, and while it wasn't out of the ordinary for a ghost to do such a thing, watching it when he had no way of stopping it was something else entirely. He sat up in bed suddenly, on the move, and it was only the yank of pain from his abdomen that stopped him.

Not that there was anything that could be done about it now. Whatever had been done to Lust, that had probably been hours ago now, even though it only felt like a few seconds. Castiel let out a breath and dragged a hand through his hair (had it been growing? how strange), looking around the quiet room.

The intercom came on with Landel's usual pointless words, although Castiel was surprised when he felt the pull of hunger as the breakfast meal was described. Was he finally well enough to eat something without feeling like he was going to throw it back up the next minute?

Castiel remembered the flower that Lust had given him and moved out of his bed as quickly as he could. He found that overall, the pain he was in was much more manageable, and so he was able to kneel down and pull the metal box out from under his bed, digging inside until he found the unassuming yellow flower. Now if he could only find Aigis today...

His nurse came in, smiling as usual, and Castiel stood up and moved over to her, completely obedient. The last thing he needed was to be found out now. He stopped by the bulletin to leave a brief message for Lust and then entered the cafeteria. After standing in line, he headed to a table with a plate of food loaded up with fruit and buttermilk pancakes. Castiel took a seat and kept an eye on the cafeteria doors, looking out for Aigis.

[Aigis.]

[nobleman]

Normally, if Guy had woken up and the last thing he remembered was being made to play a life-sized board game run by a flamboyant man with long blond hair, he would have assumed that it was some kind of bizarre dream. Unfortunately, at Landel's it didn't work that way. Whatever he and Anise had gone through, it had been genuine.

So it was a good thing that it hadn't led to either one of them being hurt. Guy was frustrated that they hadn't accomplished much, but in the end it had been preferable to getting into some kind of battle and waking up with a bunch of wounds.

The night had more or less been a bust from the start since Claude and Luke hadn't been around anyway. Though with that thought in mind, Guy quickly got ready for the day and followed his nurse into the Sun Room, where he left a note for his two friends. Once that was done he stepped into the cafeteria and immediately looked for Leanne.

Still no sign of her. Guy really hoped that she was all right. He'd gotten that flower for her, but was it possible that it'd been too late?

Well, there wasn't much he could do about that now, so Guy got himself a plate of food and went to sit down.

[Free!]

[armoredsoul]

Al 'awoke' with a start, gripping the sheets under his hands as the intercomm rattled on. For a moment he hoped the memories of last night were little more than a dream, but the twinge of tended cuts quickly cut that short.

It was humiliating, that he'd been caught so off-guard by that damned cat last night. In retrospect was obvious the thing was drawing the monster to them, and his naivete had put him, his brother, and Lloyd into a deadly tangle. Something about how they had finally gotten away didn't feel right, but Al couldn't pinpoint anything in his memory as to why. Shrugging the nagging thought off as nervous paranoia, he hauled himself out of bed to get dressed and head to breakfast.

Once he'd filed in and gotten his meal, he looked around for any familiar faces.

[Lust!]

[complicatedliar]

Well, it was better than nothing. He'd seen the beginning of the mysterious basement now, and as long as he stuck with Soma - which Loki intended to do - he'd be able to get down to it much more easily this time.

And, really, Link and the Once-ler had made decent meat shields, though not up to Thor's standards. Then again, he also didn't want to stab them nearly as much as he wanted to stab Thor, so it was a decent trade-off.

Loki's skin still felt rather tender, though it wasn't bandaged. The nurse that picked him up smeared some white cream on it before escorting him away, which he had to admit made things feel a little better.

He made a plate of fruit and toast, as was beginning to be his habit, then cast around for somewhere to sit. There were a few people he wished to speak with today, at least.

[Soushi!]

[fourstonewalls]

Lana's eyes had no sooner fluttered open than they narrowed into a glare. The ceiling tiles themselves were innocent, but what they represented...damnit. She'd slept through another night, this one in its entirety.

One of the nurses bustled in -- an unfamiliar one, with bouncing blonde curls and a matching demeanor. Lana raised her eyebrows at the woman, without even standing up. This was apparently enough to open the conversational floodgates, as she was immediately regaled with a reiteration of the breakfast menu, two separate opinions on the effect of the rain on the emotional state of the patients (it would, apparently, both depress them and give them hope, a contradiction that could only get worse if examined in detail). She outwaited the torrent of words, stood up, and sneezed.

"And a good night's sleep, doesn't you feel better, Shirley?" she added, eyes wide and guileless. Lana stared back, and then, intentionally, blinked first.

"I can think of worse things I could have done," she admitted. And don't call me Shirley. She could, too -- while she had intended to solve the issue of her illness, there was no guarantee that it wouldn't have overtaken her, and sleep was a safer option.

That did seem to be enough of an answer for the nurse, who herded her out into the hallway and down into the cafeteria without a chance to stop at the bulletin board. She took a short stack of pancakes, and looked around. Everyone who'd arrived had sorted themselves out into groups already, so she claimed the end of a table and started idly picking chocolate chips out of her pancakes and eating them.

[Free!]

[redcladidealist]

The pancakes had bits of chocolate mixed into them. That was such a novel thing for Lloyd that it almost distracted him from his memories of the night before. All it took was one swallow, though, to remind him, painfully, of the near-disaster he'd woken abruptly from. His hand went to his bandaged throat with a wince.

"Oh Nigel. You really should be more careful with scissors. I hope in the future you'll remember not to run with them in your hands."

Scissors? Really? But he'd been completely unsuccessful in trying to convince his nurse that it had been anything more than that. He'd doggedly tried to explain the monster, but had been told bluntly that he'd just had a nightmare. When his stomach growled, he'd given up, letting the nurse bring him out to breakfast. Breakfast with chocolate in his pancakes.

Okay, he wasn't shallow enough to forgive the Institute just because he was given good food, but there wasn't any point in not appreciating it, was there? He might as well make the most of what good things he did manage to get. He gingerly took a smaller bite than the first, but savored it no less as he chewed. As he ate, he scanned the room.

There. He was pretty sure he saw Ed over there, and he thought he saw a flash of Al's blond hair. Something anxious eased up inside Lloyd's chest, and he swallowed. Good. They were okay. They also seemed to be talking to other people, so Lloyd decided not to approach them just yet. Instead, he continued to eat, scanning the room for any of his other friends.

[Free.]

[avengingfists]

Ilia woke groggily, then sat up with a jolt. Morning again. How could she have slept in two nights in a row? She was losing her touch. Or possibly... possibly falling into Landel's hands.

She shivered at the thought as she moved to her feet. Anise or someone else had mentioned that before. People usually started sleeping more often before they were deemed "healthy" and "sent home." But that wouldn't happen to her, she decided and pulled on some new clothing from her drawers. She was seeing this through until the end; whatever that may be.

Her nurse arrived shortly after she had brushed down her hair and they were off to the cafeteria. Ilia knew she was going to have to start doing all she could to keep healthy so she could complete any more tasks the underground cavern held. While she hadn't heard from Seishin lately, she figured it was for the best that they had relaxed a few days. Maybe even tonight she would relax again. Starting up the bar wouldn't be a bad idea...

She piled her plate high with pancakes, eggs and a banana, then sat as she contemplated what to do when night fell. Perhaps she would leave a message on the bulletin and see what others thought of the idea...

[Kratos~]