damned_institute | Night 19; Outside M20

Entry tags:

dias,
vincent

Night 19; Outside M20

Vincent didn't eat dinner. His stomach had been churning sickly all day, and the thought of food was sickening. For any killing he'd done all those decades ago, last night was one of the most grisly things he'd ever witnessed. Participated in.

Brooding was a good word for what he'd been doing all afternoon and evening, lying flat on the hard mattress and staring moodily at the white ceiling marred only by the intercom speaker. There were seventeen small drops of marred paint and five structural cracks.

As the "head doctor" spoke, Vincent just closed his eyes.

Three nights he and Cid had encountered monsters, fought tooth and nail to survive, and now he was just being stupid. Selfish.

Sitting up after the harsh voice on the other side of the glass silenced, Vincent waited for the now familiar click of a lock and stood, snagging the flashlight under his pillow as he moved deftly into the hallway. He was going for a walk.

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As far as Dias was concerned, it had been just as well that lunch had ended and he'd been able to both get away from that strange woman and change out of that...outfit. It figured, of course, that the staff would have chosen the day he was injured and sore all up his left side to make him change clothing several times for completely frivolous reasons. It had been as much pain as anything else (that, and a complete disinterest in games) that had prompted him to ask to be taken to the Sun Room instead, where he'd done some sketching. He'd made a rough sketch of River before, feeling suddenly and inexplicably fearful, he'd done a sketch of Cecille as well.

He'd been briefly alarmed he was forgetting what she looked like.

After being taken back to his room, Dias had settled for simply lying on his bed until he heard his door unlock, as much to conserve his strength as to ease the pain in his side. But he forced himself upright, and with some difficulty fetched the poker from beneath the bed. Even wounded, it gave him some comfort to know that he was better-armed now than he had been since he'd arrived in this place. With any luck, he could trade up to an actual sword soon.

He paused outside his room, glancing up and down the hallway. A pool of light showed him where another patient who actually used his flashlight was standing; Dias continued to conserve his for special situations only, preferring to preserve his night vision. "Hello?" he hazarded, unable to make out the face above the flashlight.

He hadn't even had a chance to take in his new surroundings, and they were new yet again, before someone mere feet away called out, genuinely surprised.

Feeling too sluggish from a day's worth of lethargy to properly react, Vincent turned, sweeping the flashlight over the other man. Tall, his own height probably, with long (blue? blue.) hair.

"...You are?"

Dias reflexively raised a hand, shielding his eyes from the glare as the beam shone on him until the other man thankfully lowered it away from his face. He waited for his night vision to readjust before studying the man holding the flashlight.

Dias relied on his eyes to immediately take in anything unusual and possibly threatening at the first glance, so that he'd have time to ready his weapon if the situation demanded, and old habits were hard to break. What his eyes picked out and kicked back to his brain for analysis first was that the man standing across from him was tall, dark, slightly built for his height(at least more so than Dias, and Dias was thin for his height), had a strange golden arm and the kind of haircut one tended to see when children got ahold of scissors, and looked dangerously pale even in what little light was falling on his face. Since he didn't seem to be a threat at the moment, Dias was able to study him beyond those scattered first impressions and take in the fact that the man seemed so somber as to radiate it, and to note the look in his eyes.

Haunted. It was the kind of look no man should have, and one that Dias readily recognized as having been on the opposite side of. It was the look of someone who'd been sideswiped by grief, hit so hard that they had simply gone numb from the magnitude of it.

There was a distinct element of discomfort in seeing anyone looking like that, but for Dias there was also a sense of...familiarity that was slightly reassuring. It was the feeling that, in one area at least, he could relate to this man.

And he had red eyes. Dias smelled either a conspiracy or a cliche.

"Dias," he replied, after having processed all this. It only took a few seconds. "You?"

"...Vincent," he said, noting with slight irritation that the man appeared to be studying him. "I think we've met." He was almost sure of it; the first night, before the closet and that thing.

Glancing around the hallway as the meager light followed his gaze, Vincent shrugged. "I'm not sure where I'm going. Everything is different tonight." It was as much of an invitation to join him as Dias was going to get.

That was true; he had met the man before, briefly, although Dias couldn't remember if they'd been introduced. And he'd seen him around since, although he hadn't approached him since that first night.

Possibly because the man's demeanor didn't exactly encourage others to approach him. That, too, Dias recognized. It was the attitude of someone who was used to working alone and who'd generally prefer to be left alone.

Under most circumstances, Dias would have respected the unspoken message and backed off(a skill more people needed to learn). But tonight...his side ached, he was limping, and Tria alone knew what kinds of trouble he'd encounter tonight. And even if he found Scar, his friend was injured as well...being around someone whole who could look after themselves might be the difference between surviving the night and dying prideful.

Dias had no interest in dying, prideful or otherwise. Cecille would never forgive him. River, too, come to that. And an unarmed man who didn't seem nervous in an asylum full of monsters during the night had to be competent. ~~Or stupid, or suicidal, but Dias chose not to contemplate those possibilities.~~

"Then it doesn't matter what direction you pick," he replied with a slight lift of his shoulder. His right shoulder. Moving the left side of his body any more than absolutely necessary didn't bear thinking about. He didn't say 'we'; just because he intended to follow Vincent until a better prospect turned up didn't mean the other man wanted a follower. If he chose to think of it as two men just happening to be heading in the same direction, then so be it.

Except it did.

"I'm looking for the F-hall. F2." Elena had asked for his help, and after what he'd heard about Kadaj (and what he knew of his "brother") he intended to give it. While he wasn't going to ask it outright, any help offered wouldn't go unappreciated.

A open double-doorway leading into a far larger corridor caught in the beam of the sweeping light, and Vincent hesitantly stepped outside. Though it was quiet, only the faint, muffled sounds of people in the distance interrupting the stillness, he wasn't stupid.

This place was capable of to far too much.

He flashed the light around the frame of the door, search for---there, engraved in a plaque on top of the door: M-Hall. M, F. Heh.

Nearby was a similar opening to the one they'd emerged from, and he didn't need his resident rocket scientist to guess where it led.

That worked out relatively well for Dias. Technically, River was better off than either he or Scar was at the moment - her leg was still injured from the spider, true, but it had been given several days to heal while his and Scar's wounds were still fresh and painful. But the last two nights he'd found her, she'd been in the midst of fending off something dangerous and he'd prefer to at least know she was safe before he went about doing anything else.

Also, he needed to find out where her room actually was at some point, just so he could know where to find her.

He followed Vincent in silence. The other man didn't seem to be much for conversation, and that suited him well enough. It let him keep an ear out for any sounds that he shouldn't be hearing.

In the large hallway, the sound of small feet scrabbling against the floor filtered out of the darkness. Intermingled with that scratching, scraping sound were small noises that seemed to be quiet screeches. They bounced back and forth down the hallway, acoustics distorting the noise to a point where no normal human could discern where it was coming from. The sound seemed to come from both directions, even to be in the very walls themselves. Creature calling to creature, screeching wails reverberating along the corridor and all the while the scritch-scratch of claws on tile continued.

There were rats in the corridor, and they were hungry for flesh.

His eyes narrowed immediately, gazing sharply as the scurrying of dozens of animals, rodents, reverberated through the corridor. With striking clarity Vincent remembered the first night and the giant rat that had nipped at their heels. That night there had only been one.

Vincent's fingers flexed, itching for the gun that should have rested at his thigh; at least Dias was armed.

"Keep moving unless you want to fight them alone," he murmured, stepping lightly but quickly toward the F-hall. With any luck, they wouldn't bother whatever lurked in the shadows of the dark hall... but he seriously doubted that.

Dias' grip around the poker tightened. He had, as a matter of fact, been with Vincent and his surly blond friend that night when the rat had run past. It had been the size of a small dog, and from the sound of it there was a number of them around tonight.

One or even two rats, Dias was entirely confident he could deal with single-handedly, even if they both attacked him simultaneously. But any more than that, and things could rapidly get difficult...particularly with Vincent around, unarmed. Dias could leave Vincent to his own devices, theoretically...but in practice, he knew that if Vincent were attacked, he'd feel obligated to help.

Eyeing the shadows warily for any traces of movement, Dias followed rapidly on Vincent's heels. Better not to tempt fate.

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Night 19; Outside M20

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