damned_institute | Day 29: Cafeteria, Brunch

Hitsugaya left the chapel no less frustrated than before. The head doctor once again had chosen not to hide his face, yet promised he would be making an appearance at some time in the near future. He didn't like being patient, but there wasn't much choice. Either the head doctor would show his face, or he wouldn't. Renji had already seen him, and knew how to find him. That was enough.

The thought of eating made him slightly nauseous as usual, but he knew he needed to get his strength up. He could either be weak and try to force his way through brunch without eating anything, or he could be smart and actually give himself something to eat. And there was rice. Rice and fruit. He took a heaping pile of rice, and grabbed as much watermelon as he could fit on his plate, then proceeded to an empty table. He scanned the room, watching for Momo. He wasn't exactly looking forward to their conversation, knowing how she'd acted yesterday; however, he knew he had to speak to her, and there was a good chance that she would show more restraint now that the drugs were out of her system.

Thoughtfully he consumed his rice and waited.

[free at the moment, pester if you wish]

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Brock sputtered, almost choking on his juice.

1794. Seventeen-fucking-ninety four. Not only was that ridiculous, but it was ridiculously specific. He tried to recover by finishing up his drink. If this guy was crazy, he was seriously going native and running with the whole thing. "The Americas" (not America singular, but America plural). He couldn't even think of the last time the US got lumped in with South America like they were some kind of inconvenience to England - Canada didn't even count, they were just there.

Setting down the glass, Brock searched for a moment what to say. He guessed he should just say what was reality for him, although he had a feeling that Armand probably wasn't going to believe him at the rate he was going.

"Where I'm from, it was 2007," he said. That seemed safe enough.

"My roommate says he's from the 1990's," Armand said absently. He didn't know how much else he wanted to expose himself in the face of Brock's obvious scorn. After the morning he'd had already, it was almost too much.

Not almost. It was too much.

"I don't care what you think! This evil place has stolen too much from me. My family. My wife. My home. So I don't care. It can't take my identity." He pushed his plate aside and looked away, fighting with his temper. If he fell apart right now, he was certain he'd end up drugged. So he resolutely looked at anything but Brock.

He reached for his juice with one shaking hand and gulped it down.

Showing some tact for once, Brock didn't say anything at first. While he still didn't buy that Armand was from 1794, he could at least understand that he was upset about stuff that would matter to anyone. His family and his home. Brock might not be comfortable with being around people that were less than sane - to put it nicely - but even crazy people deserved to care about stuff like family and friends.

"Sorry," Brock said. It felt awkward, like he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to. The worst thing to do was ask if Armand was okay (who honestly wanted to hear that?), so he didn't. "So you had a family?" he asked instead.

He hadn't been too close with his family, personally, which probably was one of the factors that explained why he was so dependent on his symbiote. You didn't a shrink to tell you that, but he thought he was doing fine with just the two of them.

Armand could not bring himself to answer for a long while. He tried to remember what Bridget had told him just an hour ago. Behind his closed eyelids, Jeanne smiled at him, her dark eyes full of faith and love.

"I was married less than a month ago. There is also my sister and her husband." He didn't dare say more than that. He could barely think of it without breaking down again. "I will not betray them by forgetting."

Ouch, that sucked. Getting married only to be thrown into the mutant slammer next thing you knew. He thought he'd had it hard, but it was one thing when the only family you cared about was actually sharing your body, it was another in Armand's case. Brock knew he could be a jerk - Parker's thoughts, intruding from their genetic memory - but he figured now was probably a good time as ever to play it nice.

"No one says you have to," said Brock. Steering the subject to something else, he couldn't resist asking: "So how long you been here?"

It was a question that everyone probably asked each other. Being here over a few days wasn't exactly a badge of honor or something, but you could tell who might be able to cut it if they were here after the first couple of days in one piece.

"No one says it," Armand returned quietly, "but I do feel a great pressure to do so. It would be easier simply to pretend, and ignore the greater evil of being trapped here." His anger burned away as quickly as it had burst.

"Four nights. I think this is my fifth day." He'd avoided the question himself, thinking it would make him as a neophyte.

"How long have you been here yourself?"

Brock paused to think back to his first memory here, trying to count back mentally how long it'd really been. When he came up with an estimation, he couldn't help being surprised. Almost half a month he'd been stuck in this mutant prison. Incredible now that he thought about it; if it wasn't for his symbiote, he probably would've been dead meat awhile ago.

Then again, he would've been a normal human, so he probably wouldn't be stuck in Landels to begin with.

"I'm guessing maybe something like fourteen, fifteen days," he said after a moment. Could be missing a day for all he knew, but this place could really fuck with a guy's head after a while. "Too damn long if you ask me."

"That is a long time," Armand agreed. "You're fortunate to be alive still." And seemingly sane, Armand added in the privacy of his mind. He didn't know if he'd last as long. Except he must if he had any hope of getting home again.

He didn't dare think of that long, not if he wanted to retain his composure. So instead he looked around again, finally settling his eyes back on Brock's face.

"In all that time have you learned anything that would be the most useful for survival?"

Learned in Landels? Well, he'd learned that a half-blinded, mute cripple could still pack a wallop if he happened to be armed with a shovel. And he'd learned that trying to pick a fight with someone else higher up the food chain was apparently a bad idea. Oh, and that he wasn't as freaked out by the idea of mutants running around with their mutant powers as he would've thought he'd be. But that probably wasn't what Armand here was expecting to hear. He probably wanted something a bit less personal and more useful, like Brock had some secret to scrapping by this long.

Brock thought about it. Weeding out the stuff like he happened to have someone to do the fighting for him and all those details, he supposed a lot of it was dumb luck sometimes. Lucky that he hadn't run into that many creatures, and those freaks that he had run into, he'd been able to take care of it, the coming dayshift saved their collective butts or he'd had some fellow patients as distractions.

"I can't really say there's one surefire way to survive here," Brock said, trying to keep it somewhat vague. "But I guess just have a lot of friends. Or just travel in groups. Safer in numbers."

Armand bit back his first impulse, which was to snap that that sounded like a good way to get one's friends killed instead. Obviously, his bad mood from the morning still lingered. It had only changed form. So he sat quietly until a more appropriate response entered his stubborn mind. "I've never been in a group larger than three people at night here. More seems like an invitation for arguments. Too many cooks and all that."

His disapproval still colored his statement, but it was more based on what he'd observed in small groups that had no clear leader. "I still keep hoping to find someone willing to take a lead. Someone other than that white-haired captain."

Day 29: Cafeteria, Brunch

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