damned_institute | DAY 26: Men's Showers (Second Shift)

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DAY 26: Men's Showers (Second Shift)

Gluttony didn't want to leave his Lust, not after he'd just found her! But the mean tasty nurses said he had to. "You can't join her in the women's showers" was a bad excuse. He didn't like the mean tasty nurses. Maybe Lust would let him eat them later. Still, he knew he would see his Lust again, and that was good. He liked Lust. She was good and beautiful and smart and kind. Why did they have to take him away from his Lust?

Still, he would see her again. And she would tell him it was okay to eat the tasty nurses, and that would be good. His new friend liked eating people, too. That made him happy to find a friend who shared a love for eating people. Today was a very good day.

As he entered the showers, he stood under a shower head and opened his mouth wide to drink up the water. It wasn't as good as eating people, or eating waffles that didn't scream when he bit into them so weren't nearly as good as eating people, but it was still swallowing something, and that made him feel better.

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For the first time in his long life, Renji realized that he felt uncomfortable being naked around other men. It made him feel strangely sick; he was happy to channel that in to more anger. The angrier he was, the less he cared about things. And whether or not it had been true, when he'd told Sora that he was scaring himself, it was better than feeling that sickness and thinking about why.

And more than anything, he just wanted to be clean.

His face was very still, almost expressionless as he picked out his space. He turned the shower up as hot as it would go, which turned out to be not very hot at all, and stepped in to the spray with his back toward the wall. He didn't look at anyone else; he kept his eyes fixed on the wall, above the heads of the other men. If he didn't look at them, he could pretend they weren't there, and he could hopefully keep from losing his temper again. He'd already learned just how tenuous the feeling of cold detachment was.

Outwardly calm or not, something in his eyes, and perhaps even the spiritual feel of him still communicated his mental state.

Separated from Ren as the nurses escorted them back down the hall and into the showers, Daemon flashed a wary glance around him at the others in the room. He felt edgy and certainly not overly thrilled at the idea of enforced group showers, but on the other hand, he would be exceedingly glad to get the lingering grime from the night before off his skin. Exploding leeches weren't exactly the most hygienic things in the the world.

Stripping off his clothes - and grimacing again at the ridiculous excuse of clothing they'd supplied them with here - Daemon left them in a careless heap on the floor behind him as he stepped into the showers.

There were a few people here already - none that he recognized from the night before - and for a moment he considered finding an empty corner to shower alone in. But he couldn't hide away in this place forever, he needed to get more information, and that meant more people. The others in the room seemed agitated, however, but that was nothing new to Daemon, having balanced on the Killing Edge most of his life.

Moving towards one of them - a redhead whose body was decorated in tattoos, Daemon selected a shower head close by. He didn't say anything, not just yet, feeling the waves of anger ripple off the other man even at this short distance. He didn't want to interrupt if the redhead really wanted no company, but he hoped he'd be able to open a conversation with him, as awkward as their surroundings were.

Renji had known he wouldn't be standing alone all that long. There were a lot of men in the institute, after all. He hadn't quite expected someone to stand nearby so soon. He didn't step out from under the shower; water streaming from his hair and down his face, he slowly turned his head to look at the man. It wasn't someone he recognized.

Oddly, he'd become the more outgoing face of the Shinigami here. He knew he should get to work, speak to the man, be something approaching friendly to someone that was no doubt new.

Words didn't come to him.

Eying the other man curiously - he could still feel the conflicting emotions emanating from the other man - Daemon inclined his head slightly in greeting as the stranger's gaze turned his way.

"I am sorry if I am bothering you," he spoke in apology, his voice low and cultured and polite, despite the fact that they were both standing naked in an open shower. His golden eyes glinted as his gaze searched the other man's face. "Are you alright?"

Again, Renji stared at the man. He was starting to hate that question, hate the fact that people were finding it necessary to ask it. And now complete strangers were apparently concerned about his... whatever.

"I'm fucking wonderful," he snarled. Then added, as a habitual afterthough, "Thanks."

If Daemon was taken aback by the agitated reply, he didn't show it. If anything, amusement lit faintly within deep golden eyes as he watched the other young man. "So I see," he replied mildly, not pressing the issue. "I did not mean to offend. I'm afraid I know little about what is considered polite and not, here. It seems to be far different than where I am from."

Renji grunted. "It probably is polite," he said. "But sometimes it's a really stupid thing to ask."

The man sounded like a noble to him, which was not something that necessarily endeered him to Renji. Again, Renji reminded himself of duty, of what needed to be done. He wrestled down the unreasonable flare of temper as best he could. His expression relaxed even if the rest of his body still sung with tension.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Daemon," he answered simply, not adding a surname. Ren's reactions to the realms Daemon came from made him a bit more wary about revealing too much to strangers here.

"I suppose it was rather stupid, considering where we are," he admitted, turning his face into the heated spray of water. "May I ask your name?"

"Abarai Renji," he said. After a long pause, he added, "Abarai is my family name." If this guy came from somewhere that people just gave out single names, he probably wouldn't be able to tell.

In a way, it was oddly soothing to talk to someone that had nothing to do with the current situation, someone that didn't know him and probably wouldn't get on his case. But even if that was nice, it didn't make much of a dent on the anxiety that was feeding all of that anger he was holding in. And on top of it all, he was worried about Rukia, which made things a thousand times worse.

"If you hear people talking about arts and crafts shit, I'm part of that," he said.

"Arts and... crafts?" Daemon echoed, a look of bewilderment crossing his face at the unfamiliar term. Not that he didn't know what art and craft were, but it had been such a random topic change that he didn't follow the other man's logic.

Renji shrugged. "People trying to get organized. The name got given to it as a joke. There's normally shit about it on the board in the sun room."

His shoulder itched. He looked over at it, curious, then snorted. Artemis' clumsy stitches were still sticking out of his flesh; the golden blood had healed him, but it made sense that it wouldn't make things like stitches disappear.

He started picking them out.

"I see," Daemon answered, although he really didn't. He wasn't sure he'd been to a sun room yet, let alone come across a board there. The first part, however, made a little sense. "People trying to get out of here, you mean?"

He watched as Renji picked at the stitching in his shoulder, evidence of a wound probably recently healed. He opened his mouth to ask if that was wise, but closed it again. If the other man felt he was healed enough, he could do as he wished. No one knew the wellness of a body than the person themselves, after all. In most cases, at least.

"Are they having much success?" he asked instead, referring to the group Renji had mentioned.

"Eventually," Renji said. "Gotta destroy some people first." The head doctor, of course. But Renji wasn't going anywhere until he'd killed M--

The previous stitches, he'd been careful to pick out, and they'd left no damage behind but a small, puckered hole. This one, he ripped out; thankfully the shower carried away the blood that resulted in thin red threads, before it really became visible. It hurt, and that was good. Better to inflict harm on himself than attack an innocent man that hadn't anything to do with the situation. And better this than to be sedated again, and...

He ripped out the last stitch as well, his expression remaining closed, neutral. His voice was quiet, barely audible above the shower when he spoke again. "Slow but sure," he said. "We plan and build."

Daemon winced in sympathy, knowing those last few stitches had to hurt. He hadn't missed the copper tint of blood that mixed with the water, either. Nothing in Renji's voice or expression gave away anything about feeling any pain, however, and Daemon felt a flicker of grudging respect for the man, instinctively guessing why he'd done what he had.

"That is a wise way to work towards a goal," he answered mildly, brushing fingers through dark, dropping locks. "You intend to destroy this place before departing?"

Renji smiled slightly. "Oh yeah," he said. "No stone left on stone. No living thing left." It was a pleasant, happy thought. At this point, he even wanted all of the nurses dead. There was no way that anyone could ignore the strange injuries forever, stand outside a doctor's office while-- "All I need is to find how they're keeping my sword from me." He gritted his teeth. "Or how they're binding us all."

He normally wouldn't have been quite so open with so little offered up on the other man's side. But he was a reckless sort in many ways to begin with, and it only became worst the more stress he was under. "Where are you from?" he asked.

"A place not from here," Daemon answered. "The realm I came from was called Kaeleer. It was very different. In some ways. Not so much, in others. I am curious as to how they bind us as well. I've been cut off from abilities in ways that should not be possible. They've stolen things from me, as well."

His jewels, for one. Which was odd, because it was almost as if he could still feel them. They hadn't been shattered, they weren't gone, but there was no response when he tried to call them in. And he'd tried. Repeatedly. The speed at which his magic had drained his strength last night was disturbing in itself as well. He'd have to be especially careful.

Renji had never heard of Kaelee; it was probably another of those not-Earth places that he now knew existed. "What kind of place is Kaeleer?" he asked. It was something to talk about that didn't just make him angrier. That seemed like a good idea.

"It feels just a binding spell," Renji said. "But one only on the spirit." He was familiar with how those felt. Rukia used to do bindings on him all the time until he got good at breaking out of them, because she thought it was hilarious that he was pathetic at kidou. And, he grudgingly admitted, it really was. "But there's got to be more to it or one of us would've broke free long ago."

Everyone had lost something important to them, just being brought here. But he was still curious. Allen had his Innocence, the Shinigami had their zanpakuto. "What'd the take from you?" It could be anything from the mundane to the powerful, and one more thing to look for.

"It's... very different than here," Daemon admitted, unsure how to explain a world that was all you'd ever known to a person who'd never heard of it. He'd already tried explaining the Darkness to Ren and failed miserably. Sometimes there just weren't words to explain something that just was. "It's not perfect, but it's home."

"There must be more to it than that. I don't know anything about binding a soul, but I don't think it's my soul they've bound," Daemon answered skeptically. Although he supposed there was always a chance it was all somehow connected, but that was more than Daemon could guess at. "And they took something that should be impossible to separate from me. They're jewels. A Red and a Black. I haven't been severed from them, and they haven't been shattered, but I cannot reach them, either."

"Soul. Spirit. It's all the same," Renji said. He made a low, disgusted sound. "They took my zanpakuto from me. My... soul cutter. He's part of me like my fucking arm is. I can't hear him, can't feel him, can't even see his thread." And he hated it. Another thing that he would have vengeance for. Jewels, black and red... he made a mental note to keep an eye out, just in case some night he actually found where they were keeping everyone's stuff. Unlikely as that was.

He realized he was clenching his hands. He made himself relax them, one finger at a time.

"Perhaps. I admit I don't know very much about that subject. I've never given it much thought," Daemon admitted with a slight inclination of his head.

Pausing a moment to tilt his head under the spray once more, he reached for the soap to begin lathering his body, washing away any remaining remnants of the previous night's battles.

"I am sorry for what they have taken from you. It cannot be easy. Have they... 'cut' everyone off? Like us?"

Renji shrugged. "Not like I have either. It's more Ru--." He stopped, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's not really my thing." Back to the subject at hand. "Anyone that had something. There's lots of regular kids here... normal mortals," he said. "But everyone that had something to lose is missing their weapons, unable to use their spirit fully. We can use a little, but... well, I bet you already know what happens."

And because it felt better to talk and share - as long as it wasn't what was really bothering, he said. "I've been here almost a week. We've learned some, at least..." He continued on to tell Daemon concisely everything that they did know, all the locations, the monsters, every useful tidbit that he and any in his group had gleaned.

Except, of course, what he knew personally of the Head Doctor's spirit thread. That needed to be played close.

The amount of information revealed was staggering, and Daemon listened with rapt interest as Renji revealed piece after piece of information. He stored all of it away, knowing the information would come in useful at some point, he was certain.

One thing bothered him, though, as Renji seemed to be winding down in his exposition. "Has anyone successfully gotten away?" Daemon asked. "There are so many here, and you mentioned some vanish. Where do they go? Do they get out? Does anyone know?"

"None that we know of," Renji said. "The ones I knew who disappeared... wouldn't have left us behind." Not Nowe. And not Kurosaki... though Kurosaki was back. And if Hughes was to be believed, Kurosaki wouldn't remember anything.

...not that Renji was about to ask. Not when he'd just broken the kid's nose for no reason.

"I don't know where they go. I know that they're far enough gone that I can't find their thread any more. Which normally means... dead or not in this world. They just... vanish. And if they return, they remember nothing that happened here."

"There's been ones that return?" Daemon echoed, looking startled at this piece of information.

"According to one of my people," Renji said. "And... I've seen it myself. One of the ones that disappeared a couple nights ago, Kurosaki, was back today." He frowned, briefly. "I haven't spoken to him yet. But I trust what my people tell me."

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