damned_institute | Day 31: Intercom, Evening

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Day 31: Intercom, Evening

The intercom's jingle came on with its usual overly-cheery quality, echoing through the halls and doctors' offices.

"I trust, as always, that you all enjoyed the last shift and that all the staff-patient interaction went smoothly. Of course, we're nearing the end of another day and so we must begin to bring things to a close. Nurses and orderlies, please escort all the patients to their respective rooms and make sure everyone gets their dinner--which is, by the way, chicken teriyaki and assorted tempura, along with rice and miso soup--before they retire for the night. A vegetarian substitute is of course available, and we have our usual assortment of drinks; we also have a special of hot green tea to go along with the meal.

"Thank you, everyone, for an exceedingly pleasant day, and our therapy sessions will continue tomorrow as scheduled. Enjoy your dinner, and I will be on again before bedtime to say goodnight."

The announcement ended.

[ As always, individual dinner threads go in response to this post, and it helps to put your character's room number in the subject line. Thanks! ]

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Haku smiled warmly. "I was thinking that I wanted to make you smile. I like when you're happy and not tearing into yourself." He tilted his head.

"But today was very uneventful for me. I spent most of it," plotting a murder, "planning for tonight. Nothing to get emotionally worked up over."

This was going to get difficult, maybe. The likelihood of him hearing something he didn't want to hear was rather great, but Artemis was going to ask the question anyway.

"Why do you like me when I'm happy? What motivates you to do that?"

Haku blinked. "Because I like you, and you're my friend." He frowned slightly, looking confused. "Aren't you?"

"Yes, of course I am," Artemis felt great relief to hear that. "But, since we're friends, that means you like being around me, correct? That you feel something different when you're around me.

"Like, for example, if I were to come face-to-face with Mr. Garwin, I would want to cause him as much pain as possible. He makes me angry in every sense of the word. But when I'm with you, I'm always happy on some level or area because I'm with someone who cares about what happens to me.

"And because I care about you as well, I don't want you to worry that I'm hiding something important. Because if I caused one wrinkle on your face, not only would Momochi-san ritualistically slaughter me, I would feel responsible and guilty that I had intruded on your emotions."

He paused, not really sure where he was going anymore. The subject of feelings was one that he had read about and could apply in theory, but he was far from an expert. "Does any of that make any sense?"

Haku smiled and nodded. "Yes, I understand. I understand emotions on an intellectual level, it's simply the expressing of them I'm a bit behind on. But," he added after a moment of thought, "I'm learning, thanks to my friend."

"Oh!" Artemis felt a bit embarrassed about going on like that when there wasn't a need, but what was said was said.

But now he was faced with an even larger problem. How on earth would he train or coax Haku into expressing his emotions? He'd already tried, and he'd only gotten a tangible feeling.

"Yes... expressing how one is feeling is rather difficult sometimes. Especially if you aren't sure how you feel to begin with." Examples. Maybe examples would work.

"Let's try something easy. I'll ask you how you feel about a person, and just say the first thing you think of. It doesn't matter what it is, you can say whatever you want to me. So," Artemis thought for a moment. "How do you feel about Jack Horner?" That would be easy, he hoped.

"A worthless human." This could be interesting, Haku thought. Like a word-association game. And he could gauge both his own reactions to people as well as Artemis' reaction to what he said. Jack, however, meant nothing to him any longer, so it perhaps wasn't the best place to start....

Artemis nodded, "Okay, that's a start. So you feel aggravated by him? Or just simply annoyed that he is taking up space and air?"

Artemis didn't care much for Jack either, so he wasn't bothered by Haku's rather harsh opinion.

"He means nothing to me," Haku said, utterly serious. "Until you mentioned his name, I had dismissed him from my mind almost entirly." There was no reason to think about him anymore, so why do it?

Crash and burn.

"Okay..." His mind scrambled to find another subject. Something simple. Something that didn't require any conflicting feelings or thought. "What about the Head Doctor?"

"I don't know enough about him to form any kind of emotional opinion." Artemis didn't seem to know how to take his dismissal of Jack. Clearly, his idea of 'emotionless' was slightly different than Haku's.

"I don't think particularly highly of him though."

He could work with this--maybe.

"Is that because he's caused a lot of us pain and suffering? Or that he's arrogant?"

"Because he is hurting people." Haku frowned slightly. Was Artemis tyring to get at something here?

"And that upsets you," Artemis said, feeling like he was coming onto a monumental breakthrough. Like the cure for the common brain tumor.

"People hurting other people is a fact of life," Haku pointed out. "He's going about it in a rather crude way though."

Artemis sighed. This was harder than most psychologists made it look, apparently. Maybe picking people who were supposed to have negative feelings attached to them was a bad idea. Something more positive might be a better and less difficult route.

"Yes, I suppose so..." Artemis said, licking his lips nervously. He felt like his throat was going dry and closing up. The next subject had to be someone with whom Haku had a positive relationship with and had been around long enough to form an emotional opinion on. Someone with no complex or contrasting feelings.

"Let's... change direction a bit," he said, clearing his throat. "How do you feel about... me?"

Haku smiled, pleased to be able to answer one instantly and without a lot of thought. "I like you." Artemis was his friend, and he liked his friend. That much was easy. "But you already know that."

"Yes, just for the sake of, uh, building on previous statements though, I asked," he said with a nervous laugh. Artemis was getting more and more nervous as he considered which question he should ask next. The hand holding Haku's twitched nervously.

"Do I make you happy?"

Haku ocnsidered that carefully, then lightly squeezed Artemis' warm hand with his own cool one. "Yes, you do."

Artemis nearly dropped the whole discussion right there in favor of holding Haku until night came, but somehow he managed to restrain himself by squeezing Haku's hand back. He had to continue onto a darker subject, as much as he didn't want to.

"And when you came into the room tonight and saw me on the bed, what did you think?"

"I was worried that you were hurt." Haku tilted his head, thinking about it. "That someone had hurt you." But this was all obvious stuff and Haku hadn't shown any of it then.

"No, no one hurt me," That he knew of, really. But he didn't want to think about that right now. "But if someone had hurt me, what would you do?"

"Kill them." That was simple too. Haku would do the same for Artemis as he would if anyone had hurt Zabuza-san.

He remembered, rather belatedly, that Artemis wasn't keen on death, but he didn't bother trying to cover his words now. HE wanted to see what his reaction would be.

Well, that was rather chivalrous, wasn't it? Artemis looked slightly shocked for a moment, as though he'd just received a rather flattering compliment that he didn't think he deserved. In a roundabout way, he supposed that's what it was, really.

"Why would you kill them? Being hurt by people is a natural part of life, isn't it?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them.

"Yes," Haku said. "That doesn't make it right. It happens, there's nothing that can be done to stop it after the fact, but it can be prvented from happening the same way again." He frowned slightly again. "I would kill them because ... I wouldn't want you to be hurt again."

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