damned_institute | Day 26: Cafeteria, Lunch

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Day 26: Cafeteria, Lunch

Scar felt cold and sick, though more the latter than the former. As he rose from his bed, he didn't quite know which way was up, and the artificial light coming from overhead seemed as hot and as blinding as the Ishbal sun.

His head hurt, but that was nothing new. After all, the last thing he remembered from the night before was fighting a homunculus off of Lust and then having a conversation about events best left forgotten. The man hadn't been his brother. He just hadn't. And if what Lust had said they'd done to her was true...

Scar stood with shakiness that he wanted to attribute more to a bizarrely weakened physical state than a mental one. Had he been knocked out by some kind of lurking monster before the morning had come? He felt as if he had been out for days, being a veteran of such circumstances, though as he took the practiced role of being an obedient follower behind the nurse and orderlies that came for him, it didn't seem as if much had changed.

This place was probably just playing tricks on him again, and he was tired of being the man left out of the loop. He grabbed some food he didn't really care for and sat down, not seeing anyone he knew already seated. On one hand, he wished he had someone to talk to, and on the other, it scared him that he was no longer used to being alone.

He dug his fork into his food and tried to block out any related thought.

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"No. But they're quick on their feet. Trained." Even Elena, he thought with a grimace. "'Sall that matters."

Dean immediately shook his head at the next point, frowning so deeply that the façade could easily have been mistaken for a look of irritation. "Huh, I supposed the same - 'cept these mental patients aren't exactly... well, mental patients. There're some with a criminal background, but they're sane, far as I can tell." He crossed his arms, settling backward in the seat.

"Trustworthy?" Sam asked, naming another quality that, to him, was just as important. Especially in such an environment as this, where the resources they usually relied upon seemed to be, at least for the moment, out of reach. "Any of them know how they got here? Or are they blank, too?" He frowned, fingers twitching as though itching for a computer or a book or the journal, anything that might contain some scrap of a clue.

He noticed the twitching instantly, raising an eyebrow.

"Hey man, watch your blood pressure." Smiling halfheartedly, his demeanor returned to one of intensity, mirroring the man in front of him. "Yeah," he answered after a pause, "Think I'd put faith in them if my life were on the line. They're a bit shady... then again, so're we." The fact all three of them were openly associated with Shin-Ra - a rebel, terrorist organisation - was an aspect of the alliance Dean determined to withhold. It was his belief that if they were gonna escape this hellhole, applying the moral code to a patient's past mistakes (which Reno had delectably dubbed his own deeds) wasn't critical on the task list. Bitching about it wouldn't provide a getaway plan.

"No one's got a clue how they were brought here, or why."

Sam cocked an eyebrow, expression skewing slightly dubious, though absent a framework within which to place Dean's statement his assumptions of 'shady' ran more towards the sort of scams they had run, things which occasionally tugged at his conscience, but in the end did no real harm to actual people. Terrorism and other similar activities didn't even begin to cross his mind. "So we're looking at something, or someone, who's got the skill to abduct - what? Six or seven, counting us? More?"

He shook his head almost immediately, indicating the question as not directly important. "Enough people who've got enough experience that one of us should have noticed something. And they aren't just going after people who won't be missed. Guy I talked to this morning was a cop."

For a moment, Sam fell silent, considering. And then his lips thinned, the tension he had shed with the familiarity of the situation reasserting itself. "Shit."

His mouth curved to add to the bored air he jokingly mustered. This was something - although a commonly maddening part of the product that was Sam – that he habitually neglected: the way College Boy would echo his processes, create an invisible flow chart of piling ideas, higher and higher until it reached a conclusion or dead end. Frankly, Dean didn't possess material considered worthy enough to pop his brother's thought bubbles, so he kept cool and sighed, nodding as he heeded identical reflections of his first thoughts on the Institute. The guy needed to think aloud, for fear that his face exploded from suppression.

A hint that external contribution was required.

"What?"

"The real problem here's the scale, right?" Sam asked. It was a rhetorical question, followed almost immediately by a continuation along his train of thought. "A few people disappearing, we're used to that. More, if it's been going on for a while. But this many people being snatched up all at once?" He jerked his head slightly in indication of the cafeteria. There was little doubt in his mind that there were more people in their situation than they were aware of, even pooling resources, if not yet willing to entertain the notion that most or even all might be.

"The only thing we've ever seen with disappearances on this scale in such a short period of time was in Rivergrove. Yeah, we figured it had something to do with the demon virus, but what if it didn't? What if who or whatever started that could've snatched them all up anyway?" It was a long shot, he knew. Beyond a long shot. But it was at least something he could fit within his own framework for how the world worked, within the logic he was used to. That he hadn't been introduced to the truly bizarre aspects of the place contributed as well. Alternate realities, what?

Caught up as he was in attempting to puzzle out some possible explanation for what had happened, he had momentarily set aside in his mind the reason for the tension between himself and his brother the night before. And thus had, if rather obliquely, come around to the subject they had so far managed to avoid, almost as though by tacit agreement: the events Sam recalled, but Dean did not.

He was driven to clarify; those currently present weren't snatched up all at once. He'd spoken to plenty of people now to comprehend the concept of patients arriving in batches. Sam's total ignorance of the fact his brother had been missing for three days, maybe longer, created an eruption inside Dean that he cogently submerged, for the sake of pride, and replaced with a scowl.

"We weren't abducted at the same time," he heatedly blurted out, resentment revealed in the statement, seeming to be a method of reassuring himself of this. The implication he'd lost memory of things was a notion he wasn't prepared to fervently entertain.

It certainly came as no surprise that he sensed a nerve snap somewhere, the niceties of a time he definitely hadn't resided in succeeding to fracture the imaginary front he'd built.

"OK, that's it." He slumped forward, laying his palms flat on the table. "Demon virus?" He snorted scathingly, staring expressionlessly in another direction. "I swear, man..." He didn't even know what to say. This was proving to be an amazingly stupefying level of aggravation.

"The Croatoan case?" Sam prompted, his own tone not without its fair share of exasperation. "The whole town went nuts, then just disappeared? C'mon, Dean, it was only a few months after--" And then his mouth snapped shut with an audible click, recollection catching up and submerging his irritation beneath a sick wave of some sentiment he couldn't name. He looked away, expression walling off, eyes turned shuttered and subdued. After a moment, he exhaled sharply, with the air of an unvocalized curse. "You really don't remember. Great."

"Don't remember?" He uttered, tenor swelling as vehemence began to rise, face changing rapidly to reflect a stormy core. "Maybe 'cuz it never happened?! Come on, Sam! If I've really been here for months, wouldn't you've noticed I'd gone AWOL?" Any and all odds of this - the possibility these circumstances he was pressed under were of a sick, malevolent design, part of some twisted lie - were viciously shoved to the back of his mind.

"You never went missing!" Sam snapped back, his own volume rising to mirror his own inner turbulence. Worry warred with anger, the former for the moment winning out. "You were there the whole time, Dean." It was not precisely true, of course, but he had no desire to have to explain the vow his brother had revealed to him, let alone the possession that had tested it. As rough as the current circumstances were, that could do nothing save make it worse. "I don't know what they did to you in here to make you forget, but whatever it is, it's pretty damn' impressive."

The little voice in the back of his head, the one questioning his own memory, wondering if perhaps Dean was right and it hadn't happened, had only been a product of his own fevered mind, was swiftly hushed. He was certain. It had to be real, even his visions had never been so complete as these recollections.

Getting to his feet, as if to stress how goddamn infuriating the most recent edict was, he glowered at the younger man.

"Y'know, I am sick of this." He gnashed his teeth, growl unwavering but arms trembling just a little. The older brother jabbed a finger toward the younger. "Ever since you arrived, you've treated me like some nut job."

The tone of his voice was absolute, and if anyone arrived to call him 'sensitive'? He was going to kill them, which was why he retained low volume at the cost of blatant sweat.

Sam did not stand himself, though the palms of his hands pressed flat against the tabletop, tense enough that the first and second knuckles on both hands bleached white. It was a posture meant to give him leverage, to negate some of the disadvantage of remaining seated. His features fell into stark lines, closed off and belligerent, though the bleak, sick look still lurked behind his eyes.

"What the hell am I supposed to do? Pretend everything's normal? I can't just sit here and act like I don't remember any more than you do." As though picking up a cue, he was careful as well to keep his voice low enough to shield the discussion from too many prying ears. The last thing he desired was interference from another inmate, or worse yet one of the staff.

At Sam's retort, Dean glimpsed left and right, placing a hand over his eyes, which descended to his mouth and finally lowerered to his side following a pause. It appeared to be a strain for him to force his body into the chair again; bending and straightening awkwardly, and sitting down in the end. He kept a slouched posture and stared long and hard at his brother.

He opened his mouth to speak, realising belatedly there wasn't a single word on his tongue. Jaw twitching, the man set a tough gaze on the full tray of food in front of him.

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Day 26: Cafeteria, Lunch

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