damned_institute | Day 36: Intercom, Evening

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Day 36: Intercom, Evening

The intercom's jingle rang out and the somewhat uninhibited movement that was going on between the main activity rooms halted as the Head Doctor made one of his usual announcements.

"Good evening everyone, and I'm very pleased to see so many of you in such high spirits after meeting with your loved ones! However, like with all good things, it can't last forever, so I ask now for nurses to escort our patients in the waiting rooms and in the main areas back to their rooms, where they will be treated with a special Sunday... steak! That's right: today, we'll be serving juicy, delicious steak with fries and cooked vegetables on the side – simple enough for everyone to like and good enough for everyone to thoroughly enjoy! (Our patients with specialized diets will receive their alternate meals, of course.) Our usual beverages are available, and for dessert, we'll be serving warm slices of apple pie.

"After all, patients, t's always wonderful to see all of you cooperating with the staff even when given so much freedom, so I'd like to personally thank and congratulate all of you for helping us, your family, and more importantly, yourselves. Hopefully, we can help you to a speedy recovery so that you can see your loved ones more often, but first... dinner! I hope to speak with you all again soon."

The intercom clicked off.

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. Thank you!

On an added note, just wanted to clarify to players of characters who are canonly vegetarians and the like that you get to decide (within reasonable and realistic limits) what kind of diet your character gets from the staff. :3 ]

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"Would punishing you really stop you making them?" Demyx inquired. "Or would you make them either way? If you're not making the mistakes on purpose, it's not like punishing you would help either way. It'd just make things worse, right?"

He smiled a little at the mention of the music room. "Yeah, I've been there. It's nice, but...they don't have any stringed instruments. Not even a guitar. It's really disappointing...I mean, I can play the other instruments, yeah, but I always liked the strings."

Somebody better than Roxas or Axel? Technically, he'd already found people like that - Matsuda and Ginji, and that Hanatarou guy had been okay, and maybe even Soubi counted. But at the same time...part of him wished that he could have a friend half as good within the ranks of the other Nobodies. There were so many things normal people could never hope to understand that Nobodies just knew. But Roxas was pretty depressing, and Axel was too wrapped up in his own interests, and the others -

Well, there wasn't much point in thinking about it. Besides, the news that Ritsuka was coming for Soubi was considerably more interesting. Obviously Demyx couldn't really hope to talk to him with Soubi around, but maybe he could at least get a look at the guy so he could track him down later, in private. "Think I could meet him?" he asked.

"I can't have room to fail. And I need to suffer equal to my Sacrifice..." he stated. It made perfect sense to him.

"I suppose we could kill somebody with the strings..... Shatter the wood and stake all the vampires...." Really, where was the harm in having music? "Perhaps they have it in patient possessions? We should go!" Soubi heard the words leave him mouth but was unable to take them back. Instead, two sides of his head argued the point.

He looked at Demyx, have sleepily and half suspiciously. "You want to meet him?" Soubi supposed they'd have to meet if Demyx stayed here tonight. But why the sudden interest?

"Suffer equal to your what?" Demyx asked, perplexed. He was beginning to wonder if it was whatever drugs Soubi had taken that were making him speak in what was, to Demyx, incomprehensible nonsense. What sacrifice?

Nobodies were a pretty complex concept, but he'd come to the conclusion that Soubi already understood way more about him than the reverse. Maybe Ritsuka could clarify at some point; if nothing else, Ritsuka probably wasn't full of drugs.

At the suggestion of cannibalizing an instrument to make weapons, Demyx's eyes widened to such a degree that it was clear Soubi had just suggested something along the lines of vandalizing a church. Granted, the use of an instrument as a weapon wasn't foreign to the Nobody, but that was different from ruining an instrument for the purpose. His sitar had been a really sturdy thing; whacking people with it hadn't hurt it at all. "Why would anyone do that?" he asked, appalled. Even in the depths of desperation, the weapons one would gain from doing such a thing seemed hardly worth the effort, to say nothing of the fact that...well, it was destroying an instrument. Music was too important for that.

Granted, maybe Demyx was a little biased. Music had always been one of his few comforts as a Nobody; he could hardly overstate its importance to him. But he'd always thought it meant as much to other people, too.

All else was forgotten, however, at the mention of his sitar and the possibility of retrieving it. If anything, his eyes opened wider before. "There's a place they keep that stuff?" he breathed. "You know where it is?" Why the hell hadn't Xigbar or Luxord mentioned that to him? Man, he was going to give those guys such a piece of his mind if they'd known and just been jerking him around ~~again~~.

He cocked his head slightly. "Well, yeah. Why wouldn't I want to meet him? If you like him so much, then he's probably a cool guy, and I'll like him too." This was at least partially true; if Ritsuka was a nice guy who'd earned Soubi's almost fanatical loyalty, then he probably would be someone Demyx wanted to meet. Of course, there were other possibilities, too...but nothing he'd mention to Soubi. "Besides, if he's important to my roommate, he's important to me." And that was entirely true, if rather carefully ambiguous.

"My Sacrifice. The one who commands me." The one who took his pain... it was unfair. Seimei wouldn't let it happen and, if it did, there was always punishment. Why was it that Ritsuka got hurt when Soubi loved him so much... and Soubi got away with it? It wasn't right. It hurt much, much more this way.

"Because they assume we're all mad," Soubi smiled. "You're very cute." Demyx seemed to upset at the thought of an instrument being harmed. How strange and sentimental he was.

Soubi thought to himself for a minute and nodded. "I don't know all of what they keep and it's hard to find. But some things familiar to us are being stored." He was pretty sure he knew the way. Maybe he could go and get some more cigarettes.

"Do you smoke?" he asked, suddenly. Somebody was going to have to smoke for him and this guy had no heart.

Soubi still seemed suspicious but let it go. Nobody could hurt Ritsuka while he was around, even in this state. His training would override everything.

"People here are too friendly," he observed. Sheena and now Demyx. So eager to find friends. So lonely... Soubi had gone the opposite way all his life. He kept everybody at a distance and tried to fulfill his purpose. But that hadn't worked yet. Despite how 'perfect' they said he was, they never stayed.

"Wait - you mean your master?" Was sacrifice just another way of referring to Ritsuka? It didn't seem to make sense - it'd seem like the slave would make more sense to call a sacrifice than the master, given the balance of power - but as far as Demyx could tell, that was it.

He wasn't...quite sure what to do with being called cute. It wasn't necessarily the first time he'd heard it, but Soubi didn't seem the type to make such a remark. At least, not from what Demyx knew of depressed, introverted people, which was the category he'd decided to file his roommate under. The drugs again, maybe...which made him wonder how much of a change he'd be in for when the drugs wore off. Would Soubi even remember making friends with him tomorrow?

Shaking off those thoughts - after all, what was the point of thinking about those sorts of things before they happened, if they ever did? - he said instead, "You think you could show me sometime?" Tonight would obviously not be the best night for it, if Soubi was drugged and meeting Ritsuka besides, but Demyx could hardly pass up the opportunity to investigate at some point.

"Smoke?" he asked, blinking. That had seemed to...come out of nowhere. "Not...really, no. Back when I was alive, I was kind of a health nut." He grinned sheepishly. "Believe it or not, I wanted to stay healthy so I could live a long life...a lot of musicians tend to die from crappy lifestyles, y'know? Obviously it didn't work out, but - " He shook his head. "I dunno if it matters to my health one way or the other as a Nobody, I guess, but either way, I've never tried."

Demyx couldn't help thinking back to the people he'd met in the institute. Sora, who'd made awkward conversation with him that hadn't actually been too bad, even if he was technically Demyx's murderer...Roxas, whom Demyx had sort of made up with, even if his abandonment and then being forgotten by his friend had hurt, still hurt, or at least he knew it ought to...Matsuda, the first normal person to take him seriously, to approve of him, to be nice to him even after he knew what Demyx was...Ginji, who'd offered to help Demyx get his heart back almost as soon as he'd heard it had been lost...

"I don't think there is such a thing as too friendly," he murmured. "Back in my universe, everyone thought we didn't even deserve to exist. Everybody was out to destroy us. That's why we had to all band together."

Soubi nodded. He was beginning to feel a little unwell. He had to save some energy for Ritsuka, even if the boy just wanted him to rest tonight. Until that boy was safe in this room, Soubi was going to keep himself awake. He'd heard Ritsuka even when the Beloved name was taken and even as he lay bleeding on that slab with a new one. There was still a bond.... Soubi repeated that to himself in his head a few times. There was still a bond.

He snapped out of his thoughts and looked at Demyx again, forcing a smile. Show him...? Oh! Of course. Hmmm. "I'd have to ask Ritsuka's permission," he said.

Soubi leaned over to the side, beside Demyx. Reaching under his pillow, he pulled free a cigarette and the book of matches. He was running so low, but it'd be worth sharing this once. If he could get Demyx to smoke it for him....oh just to smell the nicotine right now. If all else failed, he was smoking it himself, even if his neck split open from coughing and his head hung off his shoulders. Of course...there was a risk Demyx would become addicted and steal Soubi's smokes, in which case they would enemies.

"Care to start?" he asked. No point worrying about a life you didn't have, right?

Soubi wasn't liked by a lot of people, but before he went to Ritsuka he had only been openly hated by a select few. He supposed it must be quite awful to have the world against you. And understandable that you might cling to the few people who'd put up with you. "Hm," was about all he could say. It still didn't excuse the friendliness. Usually people were easily put off Soubi. Perhaps it just took a lot of pain to make Soubi human.

"Oh." Demyx tried not to show his disappointment too obviously, but it was hard to simultaneously feign an emotion without making it obvious. (And he couldn't just not act disappointed, which would've been the obvious solution; he lived in a constant state of unease that if he stopped reminding himself what emotions felt like and in what situations they were appropriate, he'd forget entirely.) He wasn't sure how likely it was that Ritsuka would grant permission. All the more reason to meet this guy, if his sitar was riding on him.

He watched curiously as Soubi fetched what turned out to be a pack of cigarettes. "How'd you get those past the nurses?" he asked, genuinely intrigued. Hell, where had they come from to begin with? Hiding them would be the easy part.

At the offer to actually take one, he hesitated. A part of him that remembered his old life, his old self, was appalled by the idea - lung cancer came prominently to mind and refused to go away. But a larger part of him - namely, the part that always wanted to please people and make friends, which was naturally larger since that had been part of both his old personality and continued to be part of his personality as a Nobody - didn't want to turn down a gesture of friendship from Soubi, not so soon after they'd become friends in the first place. Especially not from Soubi, who didn't seem as though he made friends every day. "I guess...?" he said finally, pushing aside his unease. "Thanks."

Soubi really didn't know what Ritsuka would think of the request. He'd probably be angry that Soubi asked, but...perhaps glad that Soubi was helping other people?

"They don't know," he smiled. Sadly there was a little of his old troublesome self in that smile. It was lopsided and lazy. "I got them from Patient Possessions..."

Soubi continued to smile as Demyx accepted the offer. He pulled one out the pack and held it up to Demyx, striking a match once it was taken. Ooh he could already taste it. The smell of the match burning sent a shiver down his spine. He'd needed this all day.

Oh, good. Demyx relaxed. If Soubi had gotten them from Patient Possessions, that meant that he definitely knew the way to where his sitar was. He supposed even if Ritsuka forbid his roommate from taking him there, he could always just get directions to follow on his own...even if he was still rather wary of venturing out alone at night.

Recalling various after-school specials from his old life, Demyx's first inhalation on the cigarette was cautious rather than overenthusiastic, and as such he only coughed a bit at the unfamiliar sensation of smoke filling his lungs. He almost asked why Soubi wasn't having one before realizing it might not be a good idea, what with his injuries and drugs in his system besides.

Soubi leaned closer and breathed in deeply through his nose, a look of bliss trying to cross his tired face. So much better. He began to sway, barely able to hold himself up as he leaned closer still, eyes closed.

Demyx's eyes widened when Soubi swayed. "Hey, you alright?" he inquired worriedly. He didn't quite pick up on the man's proximity to him having anything to do with a cigarette yet; for all he knew, it was just another symptom of his roommate's balance being out of whack.

Soubi smiled, eyes still closed, and nodded. Leaning back, he rested his head on the bed and inhaled again. oh to relive that first ever smoke...

"How is it?" he asked.

Demyx looked down at the cigarette for a moment, then back up at Soubi. While he wasn't as brilliant as the other Nobodies - most of whom, after all, were scientists after some fashion, or who'd been incredibly dedicated men in life, which he'd always felt had sort of made him seem stupid by circumstance - he was still observant enough to put two and two together. (That, and he was quite familiar with the concept of being used by other people to get what they wanted; he was only a plaque and a corner office away from being the Organization's official patsy.)

Someday, maybe, he'd have a heart, and it might hurt to think that his newest friend hadn't actually offered him a cigarette out of any sort of charity. But for the moment...he was still eager to please, and Soubi looked happy. So he shifted slightly closer, aiming the smoke more in his roommate's direction.

"It's great," he replied, with fairly convincing enthusiasm. It might dampen Soubi's pleasure somewhat to hear a blunt observation of 'smoky'.

Soubi's smile grew and he nodded, looking at Demyx. He was already thinking of hiding places for the rest of them, but he was glad his new friend was enjoying it for now. Because Soubi certainly was.

He blinked hard and reminded himself to try and stay away.

"If I fall asleep...please wake me."

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Day 36: Intercom, Evening

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