damned_institute | Day 36: Waiting Room, Lobby 2

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Day 36: Waiting Room, Lobby 2

Celes had actually relaxed enough, speaking to Naminé during lunch, to allow herself a small smile. It thinned into a line, of course when her nurse materialized from nowhere and swept her off, giggling over her 'surprise.'

"Oh won't it be nice?" she chirped as they walked into the waiting room. "You'll be so happy, I am absolutely sure of it." Celes's small smile thinned itself into a line and she was plunked into a chair to await her visitor. Perhaps I shall be lucky, she thought, looking at some ridiculous motivational poster. It won't be anyone I know, not really. Her nurse wandered away and Celes folded her hands on the table, the picture of impatient waiting.

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If Schuldig had been a cat, all of his fur would have stood up straight at the question. "How the hell do you think they've been?" he spat. "I don't know what they've brainwashed you into thinking out there, Brad, but while you were in here you were damned well sure you were precognitive and you damned well knew you were going to get dragged away - you left me a bloody note! Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

He remembered the note. He felt an odd twinge inside, seeing his friend like this - but it was nothing he didn't remember, nothing he couldn't handle. Nothing he hadn't handled before.

"I thought, at the time, that it wouldn't be the best idea to make my last night there that painful for you. You'd have spent the time trying to find a way to keep me here, and when I was gone in the morning, you'd blame yourself for failing."

It was what he'd thought. Even if he'd been delusional at that time, his thoughts had still been his.

"Oh, yes, and being taken by surprise waking up in the morning to find you gone wasn't painful at all by comparison," Schuldig muttered, sinking further into the chair. "Not getting to say goodbye wasn't painful. Having to see you here now, convinced everything was a lie, isn't painful." He glared at Crawford. "What are you here for, anyway? Is this their way of giving me incentive to let them whitewash my mind, or do they just savor the drama? Either way, it won't fucking work. You're not Crawford - hell, you don't even believe you're Crawford anymore. So why should you matter to me, if you're basically a stranger wearing a familiar face? I might allow my mind to be fucked with for Crawford - even that'd be iffy, mind you - but like hell I'll put up with it for anybody else."

To say it didn't sting would be a lie. While his expression never changed and his voice didn't waver, the man that used to be Crawford felt a twinge of pain in him as his friend - the one he'd known for years, the one he'd spent so much time with, gained so much respect and trust and more for - glared at him and essentially denied his existence.

But he didn't show it. He never had. He simply stayed where he was, gaze level, voice quiet.

"I'm sorry." A pause. "I'm here to see you. They didn't have anything to do with it, as far as I'm concerned." He tried to bypass the insults, the truths that his friend held as lies. "I'm here because I want you to get better. I want to get you out of this place."

He spoke, for once, earnestly. Still low and quiet, as he always did, but with a driving desperation for truth that he didn't normally have. He wanted his friend out, wanted them to go back to their lives. He had his reasons, and for however selfish they may have been, they were still reasons to end this suffering.

"I was better before I ever came here!" Schuldig snapped. "They're making me worse! Being without you is making me worse! Have you forgotten the brain surgery? You know, the one that I never wanted? Brainwashed or not, I've still got the scar for proof. You think that's how I should get better? Maybe they'll just give me a lobotomy next time and completely fry it." He scowled. "If you were actually the Brad I knew, you'd be getting me out now; hell, you'd probably have done it yesterday. They've really fucked with you if they were able to convince you that it's okay to leave me in here, much less that they're doing anything that could be considered to be helping me."

The resentment was flowing freely now; part of Schuldig couldn't believe that anyone or anything could have seen to it that Crawford would leave him in a situation like this - that Crawford wasn't coming for him, wasn't trying to break him out of this place by any means necessary. At least when he'd been sure Brad would stop his brain surgery and been wrong, it had only been because Brad hadn't been there to do so. To have him present and not helping him was a betrayal of everything he'd ever allowed himself to trust as an absolute - that he had one person who would always be there for him, and to hell with the rest of the world.

"Are you enjoying life out there?" he asked icily. "How is it on the sane side?" The words 'without me' hung in the air between them.

He hadn't forgotten, no. Even now he thought it was unnecessary - it still inspired a terrific hate in him, in fact, one that he couldn't fully suppress. That kind of invasive surgery was never necessary just for someone with that kind of delusions. His jaw tightened at the memory - at the things that came just after his first discovery of that surgery ...

Of course, he kept calm. Even as he fought with himself and his memories inside, there was nothing that betrayed so on his face.

"I'm going to help get you out," he said again, with quiet confidence. "And at home? Without you - " because he'd heard the silent venom " - it's a fairly meaningless existence. Dull, unexciting ... almost troublesome."

That calm front was infuriating Schuldig more and more. It was a further betrayal - for Crawford to be so collected while Schuldig and Farfarello were rotting in this prison, a prison where they were hunted and tortured that he wasn't helping them to escape from...

"I'd hate to think that my being locked away in an asylum is almost troubling to you," he hissed, eyes blazing. "Tell me, Crawford, how are you going to help me get out? Because if you say word one about my needing to get over these 'delusions' - if you even suggest that the entirety of my life, and my history with you, are the maniacal ravings of a lunatic...you know what? You shouldn't need to be an oracle to see what will happen if you do that. I am not going to listen to their lies from your mouth."

Schuldig's whole body was shaking with fury. He was right in that respect; anyone with eyes could see that an unwise word would send him straight for someone's throat.

He could tell what was wrong with his friend immediately - knew that no more words from him would be of any use. They hadn't been comforting in the first place - they hadn't done anything but make him angrier - so he decided that there was nothing more to be said. One wrong word, and there would be bloodshed.

Somehow, he thought, there would be bloodshed anyway. It was just a hunch.

He pushed back the chair he was sitting in and stood up slowly, giving Schuldig one last emotionless look (although possibly his eyes flickered for a moment, something hidden there that even when he had believed himself to be a sociopathic oracle he had been forced to hide most of the time). Words didn't seem needed.

The nurses had been watching them for a while now, wary of Keane's anger and the reactions he might have to his visitor. When, however, Arthur stood up, as if ready to leave, one of them made her way over to him, ready to escort him back out.

"Are you finished, then?" she asked, closer to him than to Keane.

That did not go over well.

Considering he'd already been seeing red in any case, thinking about what the staff had dared to do to Crawford and then bringing him back to the institute just to flaunt it, Schuldig's seeing one of the nurses approach Crawford - to take him away, again - hit at least five emotional triggers simultaneously. If he'd thought that Crawford's coming back to him like this was as much pain as the institute could inflict upon him, then the thought of losing him again disillusioned him entirely on that point. Pain, fear, grief, and blind rage all warred within him for dominance, but each emotion stemmed from the exact same thought.

No.

For once, he didn't waste a second on words. He rocketed out of his chair so quickly he sent the thing tipping over backwards with all the silent, murderous intent of a shark, fingers digging into the nurse's throat hard enough for his nails to draw blood.

Somehow, he knew something was going to happen.

The moment his friend was up, on his feet, reaching for the nurse and digging in his hands, his old memories took control. He reached out and snatched Schuldig's closest wrist, wrapped an arm around his waist and yanked, trying to pull him off the nurse. Pressed close to him, he whispered sharply in his ear.

"Don't get yourself hurt, Schuldig!"

Memories be damned, reality be damned - this was still the closest person he'd ever had in his life. He wasn't about to see him forced into isolation for something so stupid.

The shock and betrayal of Crawford himself yanking him away - stopping him from attacking the very people who'd separated them - was enough to loosen Schuldig's grip, however momentarily, and his chance slipped from his fingers, along with the nurse's throat. The name hissed in his ear - his name, not the institute's - only completed the effect, as did Crawford's arms around him.

He felt disoriented, as though he were suffering from vertigo. It was like a nightmare; everything familiar that he'd relied upon for so long gone twisted and wrong, but still hellishly recognizable. Crawford had been his stability for as long as he'd had any stability, had been the first person Schuldig could trust and rely upon without hesitation. Farfarello and Nagi had been nice additions, but they'd never really come close to fulfilling a similar role; Farfarello couldn't really look after Schuldig when he constantly needed looking after himself, and Nagi had never been interested for all his loyalty to Schwarz. Crawford had been the one solid thing -

And all of that, gone - literally overnight. This was someone Schuldig didn't know, couldn't trust. All the little similarities to the person he had been just drove that point home a little deeper, were just reminders that they'd made this stranger, this unwitting traitor, out of the ruins of something he'd loved.

He sagged against Crawford, his fury bleeding away with what felt like all the rest of him; certainly the wounds were deep enough. And he reached for the one other constant of his life, the one tool he might be able to use to salvage something with. "I'll fix you," he muttered. "I promise." If the institute had done something to Crawford's mind, then maybe he could undo it. Not now, not here - Crawford's mind was as blank as any of the staff's, which was yet another blow. But he'd find a way if it killed him.

Crawford had spent most of their lives fixing Schuldig. Apparently it was finally time to repay the favor.

At the first sign of aggression - and it had been quick - the orderlies had moved sharply toward the scene. The visitor's sudden involvement did stop the attack, fortunately for the nurse, but they still descended swiftly, pushing the visitor away and immediately restraining the limp, unresisting Keane with both strength and sedatives.

He had done damage, yes, but not significant enough damage to warrant isolation. Because he had let go, perhaps.

"Mr. Hurley," one of the orderlies began, as he helped the nurse to her feet, "while we appreciate your help, you should not involve yourself with any violent patients like that. You could get badly hurt."

He was silent, standing back as he was forced away from Schuldig. His face blank and his eyes cold, he watched the nurse be helped to her feet and listened to the orderly.

"I understand," he said, nodding. "It was a gut reaction."

Glancing once more at Schuldig, who was rapidly looking more and more drugged, he slowly turned and made his way to the door, again escorted by a nurse - who was likely in no danger of a violent attack by the only person he had ever felt anything for. Whether or not he would come back - if he would be allowed back - was a turbulent question.

Schuldig didn't resist the orderlies, didn't even when they pulled him away from Crawford...no, not Crawford. Crawford would never have allowed anyone to pull Schuldig away from him. For a moment, it had almost been like Rosenkreuz all over again - trapped in an institute while unimaginable pain was inflicted on him while Crawford held him together - but again, that had clearly never been the case. This man, Hurley, had let the institute have him.

He was going to pass out. Or be sick. Possibly both. And it had nothing to do with the sedatives at all.

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Day 36: Waiting Room, Lobby 2

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