Day 30: Cafeteria, Dinner

[captain-hunam.livejournal.com]

The cafeteria was all but empty when Zelnick got there. He was a little disappointed; he had gotten the impression that patients usually ate dinner in their rooms, so he hadn't arranged to meet anyone, and there really wasn't anyone to sit by and engage in conversation yet.

Quietly, he collected dinner and a big glass of orange juice, and chose a seat near the food-serving counters. Talking for so long had made him thirsty... and, well, fruit juice was a luxury he had missed.

[Stalk away, my dearest Admiral. <3 ]

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[braidless.livejournal.com]

Obi-Wan had known the girl wasn't fine -- it'd been the reason he'd approached her in the first place. Still, while her efforts to hold back and put on a brave face were admirable, he was less surprised and more concerned when a tear rolled down her face.

So she'd lost her brother. Given the amount of grief she was giving off, it made sense. Obi-Wan could recognize the deep well of emotions a person could plunge into after losing someone important. He'd both witnessed and experienced it during his life.

"That sounds like a heavy burden to bear," he responded, just as quiet as he'd been when he'd first come up to her.

Most people would have said they were sorry, but Obi-Wan always tried not to look at death as a tragedy. It was inevitable that all living beings would someday rejoin the Force, thus making death a very natural part of life. But sometimes it was senseless, sudden and terribly unfair, and it didn't make the pain any better, or the shock of it any less real, and he understood that.

"He was...a patient here?" He could probably piece together what had happened from the answer to that question, and then go from there. It was better than asking her to relive whatever had happened to her brother in the first place.

[boot-i-licious.livejournal.com]

Rinali nodded, still glancing downwards towards her plate and unwilling to look the stranger in the eye. "It is..." she said earnestly.

She poked at her salad absently with her fork and rolled the tomato around the rim of the plate slowly. The rational part of her mind told her she could eat, but she just didn't feel hungry. The very thought of eating made her sick to her stomach. "He wasn't a patient..."

She wanted to talk about her brother, but hesitated. Would he believe her? She glanced up at him, trying to judge some measure of kindness in his eyes as enough to truly believe that what she said was true. "He came to visit me yesterday...and then we found him last night."

[braidless.livejournal.com]

The girl's hestitance wasn't lost on Obi-Wan, as was her reluctance to eat, but he was careful not to push anything. It wouldn't do to try to get her to talk about anything she didn't want to -- it'd probably only serve to upset her more.

When she did decide to explain, Obi-Wan was a little surprised to learn this brother hadn't been a patient. Of course he was all too familiar with the fact many patients received visitors...but the fact her visitor came to the institute again that night was very strange indeed.

"He didn't leave the institute like the others," he said softly, a soft frown creasing his features. It didn't even occur to him not to believe her. Her grief was too fresh, too real for it to be a lie.

[boot-i-licious.livejournal.com]

The gentle tone in the man's words emboldened her and gave her the strength to keep talking. "No. They...did something to him. Experimented on him and made him a monster. He bit me. He didn't mean to, I know it. It was this place that did it to him. He was sick and dying, and they mutated his body...he didn't know how long he he had to live."

She swallowed hard. "I went to get help for him. When I came back, he was...he was..."

New tears came then as she told the story. It was still hard to believe that he was gone. "Allen killed him," she whispered.

[braidless.livejournal.com]

Gone from a visitor to an experiment, to a monster. It sounded like a horrible fate, and it made him wonder about what happened to young Anakin Skywalker, now called "Andy" by the people of this world. He could only hope the boy was all right.

It was also another reason why it was better to avoid conflict with the monsters unless absolutely necessary. Perhaps someone's loved ones were trapped behind those gruesome mutants, like this girl's brother.

Obi-Wan wasn't sure who this Allen person was. Another patient? A friend, perhaps? The fact he was the one who'd done the deed was apparently horrible enough to mention. "Allen was attacked?" he gently asked.