damned_institute | Day 37: Breakfast

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Day 37: Breakfast

[for Sylar, I believe]

At the sound of the intercom, Wally jerked awake and blinked around at the room. He’d fallen asleep. He should have been up and keeping an eye open for ZEX, but he’d fallen asleep waiting on his bed.

“Idiot,” he groaned, ruffling his hair and sighing in annoyance. “Way to help a guy out, hotshot.” Hopefully ZEX hadn’t dropped by and thought he’d left or something, or wouldn’t be too mad at him for just forgetting about it like that. If he was lucky, he’d be able to catch up with the other patient at some point and explain what had happened.

Rolling himself a little awkwardly out of the bed, Wally took the opportunity to stretch his injured leg and test how well it was holding up. It was feeling a bit better, not so much that he could abandon his crutch or that it didn’t pull painfully if he wasn’t careful, but better. Tony had apparently made it through the night in one piece as well, which was a relief. He really didn’t feel comfortable about the thought of his roommate wandering about on his own with an injured arm. Not when Wally himself could relax and fall asleep in the apparent safety of their room.

Yeah, he wasn’t going to let himself forget that one in a hurry.

It was at that moment that the door swung open to admit one of the nurses. She seemed surprised to find him awake and ready to go already, but smiled warmly. “Hungry, are we Mr. West? Well in that case, let’s get you to the cafeteria. The staff have provided some delicious French Toast as well as a range of other foods I’m sure you’ll like. Now will you be needing a hand with your leg, dear?”

“No thanks, I can handle it,” Wally replied, smiling back. After all, it probably wasn’t the nurses’ fault that this place was so messed up, so it wasn’t like picking fights with them would do anything. With a cheery wave goodbye, Wally slowly made his way to the cafeteria, keeping a tight grip on his crutch all the while. Obtaining a plate of food was only slightly less difficult than it had been yesterday – he didn’t have the painkillers to work around this time – but he managed well enough, coming away from the buffet with a tray containing a plate piled high with slices of French Toast and slathered in maple syrup, butter, and sugar, as well as a glass of juice. Not quite as good as some coffee would be right now, but the sugar would hopefully make up for it. And, with how few people were here at the moment, he could afford to take more food than might have been considered ‘normal’ – he’d have most of it gone by the time anyone came to keep him company, then he could just worry about how many extra serves would be allowed before he aroused suspicion.

Feeling pretty happy with how things were looking so far, Wally hummed faintly to himself as he dug in to his breakfast.

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"Y'ain't thinkin' clearly Izuru," he told the other shinigami. While it might be true, it was also obvious that whatever Gin said now wasn't going to get through to him. Not until he got past this anger first. It'd been the same with Abarai and the same with Ran and would likely hold true for Izuru as well.

When the young lieutenant rose from his seat, even if it was just a little, Gin could feel the tension rise in the air. A smirk rose, ever so slightly on his lips.

Yes I am! were the words forming in the back of his mind as he rose slightly more from his seat. Gin's tiny growing smirk only meant bad things - probably that Kira was falling for whatever trap he had laid - but he couldn't help himself. He'd restrained himself for so long that he --

A figure suddenly caught on the edge of his vision. There, standing several tables away and staring at him with a determination he hadn't seen in ... in ages, was Hinamori, one arm in a cast and her face badly damaged. She wasn't in range to speak, or to even try anything, but she shook her head softly.

Don't.

Prickles of guilt sprung up inside him. Turning his quickly from her back to Gin, Kira sat back down. But his legs were still tense, and his position was awkward; he was ready to spring up again at a moment's notice, even if he was shaken by the lack of sleepless confusion in Hinamori's eyes. There had been no fear, so ...

"Then answer my question," he said, still slightly unsure and still ready to strike. Even if the attack had been delayed, it was still imminent. "Clear it up for me, if you think you can."

He finally slid into the seat, picking up a piece of fruit and considering it for a moment before he ate it. Izuru had been so close to getting up and acting on those wild emotions, but one look from Momo seemed to have tamed him, even if only a little. Gin wasn't foolish enough not to expect an attack, but his body language said otherwise, and was as casual and carefree as ever.

He let out a thoughtful sigh. "I thought Aizen could handle keepin' that one small promise, didn' think he'd go so far m'self. Even tried t'make sure there was back up just in case. Can't count how many times I warned Toushirou-kun to watch out f' her." The words were said slowly, deliberately, as though they were having any old conversation back in Soul Society. There was no desperation in his voice, no urgency as he spoke the words.

More attempts to show that it wasn't his fault. Kira knew about them, and could even understand them and see the logic in them, but that didn't give Gin any relief in his mind, any quarter to do as he liked. That casual, carefree attitude was unwanted and uncalled for. And so damnably constant. He wouldn't accept the guilt, no matter what happened.

As much as he would have liked to see him crumpled under the weight of it, Kira wasn't set on making Gin accept the guilt. He just wanted him dead.

"But you didn't do anything yourself."

If Izuru was looking for an apology, he would be hard-pressed to find one. He'd apologized to one person alone, and the rest could judge him as they would. Gin might do a lot of things that others thought were wrong or horrible, but he rarely regretted any of them.

"No," he said flatly, for once a completely, utterly honest answer. Aizen would have struck him down just as fast as he'd struck down his lieutenant, Gin had little doubt of that. "I didn't."

Honesty, for once. Kira could have appreciated it for strengthening his resolve, but that would come later, after he'd actually figured out where he was and where he stood in this unfamiliar place.

His right hand instinctively left the table and clutched at his left side, where Wabisuke should have been. He remembered that his sword was gone when his hand gripped empty air. His jaw ached as he clenched his teeth harder together, desperate for some kind of retribution, some kind of blood-soaked answer for all the crimes Gin had committed. But without his sword - without his power - what could he do? Gin was far enough away that jumping over the table to catch him would take too long and allow him to escape into the crowds, possibly find allies and defend himself.

Kira caught himself rising from the seat again and forced himself back down.

"Then your excuses mean nothing." They never had.

... there was a knife on his tray.

[Hope you don't mind Ran jumping in ^^ ]

Her eyes were red raw and bloodshot from crying, but her expression was steady and hard by the time she entered the cafeteria. The nurse had let her wash her face before coming, and the cool water had helped a little. She still felt tired though, and hollow, too hollow to be able to feel the grief properly although she was sure that it would hit her again later.

She grabbed breakfast after a little detour to the bulletin board. Something fun was what she needed, something to keep her mind occupied. The nurse filled her plate, Rangiku too distracted to want to bother even with food for once. She scanned the room, nearly collapsing in relief when she saw Hitsugaya sitting at one table and then feeling a surge of guilt because there was no familiar head of red hair anywhere.

She took the tray and headed over towards where she saw Gin, needing some kind of reassuring presence for now, but paused, her eyes widening in shock, when she recognised the person sitting with him. Kira? Kira was here?

This could not be good.

She moved towards them more quickly, coming up behind Kira and setting her tray down, pushing over towards Gin's. Leaning over, she grasped Kira's wrist lightly. "Don't touch it," she murmured softly, nudging the knife to one side with her other hand. "It'll get you sedated, and I can't take any more of my friends being hurt right now." She cleared her throat and headed around the table to sit next to Gin, leaning against him comfortably and wrapping his arm around her, not making any move to even touch her food.

He'd expected that would be enough to set Izuru off and send him across the table and right for his throat. Apparently the shinigami still had more patience than he'd given him credit for.

He'd been ready to reply, but somehow things were never as simple as he wished them to be. Rangiku chose that exact moment to show up, eyes all red and he knew exactly why. He also knew that the news would not sit well with Izuru, even moreso than with Ran. This situation could get messy real quick.

Gin let her pull his arm around her, but this kind of behavior... was definitely not something he'd done so blatantly in front of Izuru before. His hand stayed at her side, but it was hesitant, somewhat nervous. If he were in Izuru's shoes, he might not hesitate to hurt the one that he cared about. And while he knew Izuru wouldn't sink as low as he would, it certainly made his previously casual attitude begin to fade. It was a lot harder to find the words he was looking for.

"I've been workin' with th' other shinigami here," he explained when Rangiku sat beside him. "An' we lost one last night." He didn't say who, not just yet. "Don't fret," he said with almost a dull expression, "I wasn' anywhere near 'im so it wasn' me."

And then Matsumoto showed up.

As if divining his intent, she pushed aside his knife and whispered in his ear, then ... made her way over to Gin and leaned against him? He knew they'd been close - friends since before becoming Shinigami - but ... after the betrayal, hadn't she been badly hurt? Hadn't she been right there? And yet here she was, leaning against the man he was so desperate to exact vengeance on, acting as if nothing was wrong. Acting as if something was right.

She didn't look well, either. Her eyes were red. Kira's glance moved between her and Gin slowly, evaluating the situation. Gin seemed less casual now, almost getting onto the wary grounds. As well he should - two of them against him ...

"We lost one last night."

So there were other Shinigami. And someone was dead. Kira kept still, slightly less edgy with the presence of someone he thought he could trust around. But with the way she was acting, doubts - and guilt, yes, guilt because of the doubts - slithered unbidden into his mind.

"I find that hard to believe. After what you did, they should want you dead on sight."

The uncertainty in Gin was something knew, something strange and it set her on edge slightly, but she supposed that she should have expected it. They'd never particularly displayed their relationship before in front of the others, but she... she just needed something solid for a while an Gin was one of the most solid people here to her. Him and her captain, but she had to be strong for Hitsugaya and help him remain strong too. And she would be, later.

She rubbed her face tiredly before looking over at Kira. "He's telling the truth," she said. "Taicho agreed to it." She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before continuing. "This isn't Soul Society. It isn't even the human world. We're prisoners here, everyone is except the nurses and doctors and that includes Gin. We want to escape and destroy this place. We need everyone we can get."

No matter what he might say, Izuru couldn't very well deny the simple facts. If they wanted him dead, he was outnumbered, severely. They'd formed a truce, whether that was for better or for worse, and Rangiku being here only confirmed it. While his own goals might differ from the ones she'd mentioned, he wasn't about to say so aloud. Yet even with the news that they'd lost another shinigami, Izuru would not be distracted.

"Maybe they should, maybe not," Gin shrugged. "Maybe I'll be th' one with a knife in my back in this place, mm?" If he stepped a toe out of line he had no doubt they'd come down hard on him, though that little worry was fading as fast as the club was these days.

So it was only the situation that was keeping Gin alive. Kira glanced around the room once again, noting the differences in clothing and feeling the air of suppressed tension. Nobody here looked truly happy. A prison ... how he got here was still a question, but there would be time to figure that out later. What was important was the fact that apparently, the other Shinigami were willing to work with Gin in order to survive and escape despite knowing that he'd likely turn on them in the first instant to save his own skin. It was a wonder that any of them were still alive at all.

I don't like it, he almost said, but kept his mouth shut for the moment. He could likely trust Matsumoto - even if she was closer to Gin than most of them had been - as a fellow lieutenant. If she said Captain Hitsugaya supported it, he'd go along with it for now. If Gin hadn't backstabbed the lot of them already, they at least had that much more ground.

"Maybe." He shifted his gaze to Matsumoto. "Who did we lose last night?" And ... how?

Rangiku thought that she had an idea of what Kira must have been thinking at that moment. On top of waking up in this pit of hell, to then be told that his comrades had a truce with someone who had hurt him so cruelly... Well, she knew how she'd felt when she'd first arrived and seen Gin. She doubted that he'd forget the feeling anytime soon either.

And she wasn't going to allow fighting to break out between them now. Not today. She couldn't lose another person who she cared about.

She swallowed when Kira asked that question, her face paling a little. Kira and Renji had been good friends, along with Hinamori. He wasn't going to take this well. "Renji," she said quietly. "I don't know how. I wasn't there. Myself and Gin and a woman called Tsubaki, part of our group here, were exploring beyond the walls when we felt it happen. We couldn't have got back fast enough to do anything even if we'd been at full strength." And she hated that that was true. It made her feel sick and helpless.

Gin liked to think that it was more than just the dire straits they were in that kept him alive, but that might just be his own vanity. As far as he was concerned though, the subject was closed. He wasn't going to make any further attempts to reason with Izuru, not now anyway.

He left answering the question to Ran, pale blue eyes flicking over to his former lieutenant, gauging his reaction. Izuru had known Abarai for quite some time. He remembered fairly well one of the first times he'd met them all, Hinamori too. They'd gone after some of the hollows, destroying those with abilities before Soul Society grew too suspicious. Even then, those three shinigami had stood out from the crowd.

Gin was tempted with several vicious barbs, but held his tongue in check. While he might enjoy teasing Izuru, Ran would have no tolerance for it now. He mentally kicked himself for being so obvious, he'd have never done so back in soul society, but the rules were very different here.

If there had been anyone he'd known that he ever thought could die, Abarai was at the bottom of the list, along with most of the captains. For Matsumoto to say those words with that expression on her face, with her voice so quiet and ... almost resigned was a painful shock.

Abarai was ... dead?

He didn't want to believe it. He almost couldn't. There was no way that someone like him could have -- but she had to have meant it -- but he ... but ...

Kira's hands clenched hard into fists, his fingernails digging into his palms. The tiny stings of pain kept him from thinking this was just another horrific dream he would eventually startle out of, and as such, kept him grounded in sanity and stillness.

Renji's dead.

"How?" was his only question now. He glanced at Gin briefly. No ... no, if it had been him, the others wouldn't have let him live the rest of the night. And Matsumoto said he had been with her. One sin he wouldn't need to slip away from, then.

She relaxed a little when Gin said nothing, no insult or smart retort or needling comment towards Kira. She doubted that either of them would be willing to accept it right then. Which was good because she actually liked him in one piece and would hate to be forced to disassemble him forcefully because he couldn't keep his mouth shut at inopportune moments.

She sighed softly, understanding Kira's reaction all too much. Out of everyone, Renji had been able to come back from damn near everything that had been thrown at him. She supposed that Rukia's disappearance had injured him more than any of them had been able to account for.

"I don't know the details," she said. "I still need to talk to taicho but, from what I've seen on the bulletin, he died protecting a couple of the humans here." It was how he would have wanted to die, but it didn't make it hurt any less for those left behind.

It was a pain to keep from saying anything. So instead of feigning interested in the conversation, he casually picked at his food, as though this conversation had nothing really to do with him. Whatever reason Abarai had, it still seemed like a stupid thing to have done, throwing his life away like that. And for all they knew, death here might just release their soul and send them right back to Soul Society. Doubtful, truly, but it was still a possibility. They, of all people, understood death best.

The shock of hearing that Renji was dead was enough to overpower any possible realization that Gin was actually keeping quiet. Kira stared down at the food in front of him, mostly unseeing, and tried desperately not to imagine what that death must have looked like.

If this place could take away their powers up to the point where someone like Renji could be killed, then what chance did he have? Renji had been brought to the brink of death again and again and had always come back ready to fight one more time. For him to be dead ... Kira couldn't even imagine what kind of enemy it must have been to do that.

"I see." It was all he could really say as the waves of despair rung through his skull. Despair, of course, tinged red by hate - transferred from his prior hatred of Gin to a sudden new target. This ... whatever that thing had been that killed one of his closest friends was quickly ascending the ranks of loathing in Kira's mind. (It landed neatly in fourth place, just below the traitorous captains.) He glanced back at Gin again - it may not have been you, but I'm sure you would have been happy to be the cause.

The conversation lapsed into uncomfortable silence for a few moments now that that awkward conversation had come to an end. What more could she really say on the topic? At least, what more could she say without making herself want to scream or cry more than she already did? She leaned over instead, grabbing the plate of food and starting to pick at it unenthusiastically. The fruit she ate, but the toast stuff seemed utterly unappealing at the moment.

Finally she turned her attention back to Kira. That couldn't be anything good to hear when first waking up in this place; that one of your best friends had died. "How much do you know about this place, Kira-kun?" she asked more quietly. "I've been here for two weeks now, I think."

Whatever Izuru might be feeling, at least for a few seconds, it wasn't directed at him. Not that Abarai appreciated it in the slightest, but Gin had actually helped him in the past. When his own captain abandoned him after the fight with the Ryoka, who had called in the fourth squad to heal him? It certainly wasn't Kuchiki. Ah well. Hadn't done much good in the long run, only to die pitifully here.

He was actually greatly interested in just where Izuru had been back on their home world. Or more importantly, what might be going on there. Yamada had mentioned that there was something big, but he hadn't said much more than that. Curiosity could be such a terrible thing. He was tempted to leave these two to their own conversation, but he also wanted to hear, just in case Izuru divulged some important detail.

"Two weeks, thereabouts," he agreed. "Me n' Rangiku got here th' same day."

"Only what you've told me," he said, not looking up from the plate before him. "And that everything I've ever known is apparently a lie." That he was a human, with living parents and no knowledge of Soul Society. That he had never attended the Academy and never met his friends. That he had never suffered a betrayal so hard and crushing that it nearly destroyed him, left him in a thousand razor-edged pieces on that rooftop after his fight with Matsumoto.

That he was, in one sense of the word, normal.

Kira continued ignoring Gin for the moment (although could he ever really ignore him, being so close by?) as he struggled to imagine what kind of enemy could possibly kill Renji, of all people, and tried not to picture what his friend's corpse must have looked like after that kind of fight.

That's what she'd figured. It looked like the introductory speech was left to her this time. She hated doing it, having to tell people that they were trapped and they'd better find someone to stick with because otherwise they'd end up injured or worse. She nodded slowly. "They'll tell you that what you've lived is a delusion," she agreed. "That you're really a human with a different name. Sometimes they even have 'visitors' to back it up. I haven't had one but from what I've heard, they're people who you know, down to almost the very last detail. And they'll tell you the same thing as the nurses."

She tapped her fingers against the edge of the table idly. "At night though, all of the pretenses fall away. The door to your room will unlock, the Head Doctor mocks us and there are monsters. Not Hollows, although there are a couple of malevolent spirits here at least that I've encountered."

Nothing interesting. Just the usual welcome stuff and the advice that only fools wouldn't take. How could anyone truly believe that any of the lies here were real? It was pathetic.

He listened though, only half paying attention. Izuru stood a better chance of actually believing what was said if it came from Rangiku at any rate. Just as Yamada had hardly believed a word he'd said. Though that one had been much more fun to tease when he'd first arrived.

"I don't imagine Izuru'd be fallin' for somethin' like that anytime soon," he commented. While the temptation might be there, would Izuru really let himself fall into another web of lies. He made it sound innocent enough, but the other shinigami could take it as they liked.

Gin just had to get in another word, didn't he? Kira's ire seethed and swelled as he mulled over Matsumoto's words, thinking about a nighttime filled with danger and a daytime filled with lies. It had already started, and he'd almost been shaken by it - foolish of him. Weak. He chastised himself briefly for it, but didn't dwell for too long. Otherwise ... otherwise, the lie might start looking better than the truth.

He was sure it had happened before. He could name several people who, in his place, would have swallowed the lie gladly and gone on with it. But he would never do that. There had been enough lies already, spun into delicate, razorlike webs by the man sitting only a few seats down from him. The man who was bringing those lies back up in such an innocent manner, as if it was a compliment instead of a sharp jab.

"Then we're free to do as we like at night?" he asked, one prevailing thought darting forward with a tiny spike of hope. If the doors unlocked at night and they could wander freely, then what was to stop him from finding Gin and finishing what he'd started?

That was not helping.

Rangiku's expression darkened at Gin's words, the jab at Kira. And it felt like a jab at her too, for always trusting Gin, for not having seen beyond his kindness to her. Scowling, she drove her elbow back into his stomach, gritting her teeth to keep herself from saying anything that she'd regret later on.

"Sort of," she agreed, answering Kira's question. "No-one has managed to escape yet, even if you do leave the grounds. We traveled a decent way last night, outside of the wall, but still woke up here in the morning. And there are some areas that are locked or heavily guarded of course."

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Day 37: Breakfast

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