Day 37: Breakfast

[scarletspeedstr.livejournal.com]

[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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[screwthegods]

"The room was large. Not wide, but long, and relatively empty." Homura ran over the details in his mind, remembering the layout. "There were four creatures total. I think they're the nighttime forms of the nurses and orderlies." Things that Homura had fought on more than one occasion, and though Homura understood Kenren's concern for space, the need for numbers also couldn't be ignored.

"The two larger ones chased us into the adjoining room." Homura routinely carried a notebook with him, which he opened now. A basic sketch of the second floor was simple enough to reproduce at this point, and while it wasn't entirely to scale, Homura was able to give a rough idea of the proportions of the two rooms. "If the same thing were to happen tonight, we could separate the creatures and take them out more easily. We would just need the numbers. I'd say six total. One person in each room to provide light, one each to distract the orderlies, and then two to take out the weaker nurses before joining the others." And then they could not only get Kenren's gun, but have a free sword for someone else. Provided, of course, that they could find ammunition to go along with the weapon.

That done, Homura considered Kenren's words. "I doubt I would have believed it, even coming from you. Besides, I think I needed to remember it. Now everything is filling in more quickly. Details I couldn't remember before." He paused, then gave a faint smile to the man beside him. "Are you going to regret it when I do remember everything? We weren't so close before, after all."

Yet some part of him wasn't sure he wanted the answer to that; given the assorted losses he'd endured, it seemed natural for Homura to cling to what he had gained over the course of that time. Regardless, it was something he needed to know, and wanted to be able to prepare for. Conflicting desires, then, and putting Kenren on the spot on top of it.

"And I also need to ask how your night went, don't I?" Homura chuckled lightly, giving the elder god a chance to escape the question if he wished. Though Kenren likely wasn't the type to avoid giving an answer, or even delay it for time. Still, it wasn't necessarily a comfortable topic, and Homura wanted to keep the mood light. If these were his last moments of having Kenren's affection, he'd rather enjoy them.

[opposingheaven.livejournal.com]

Kenren listened intently to Homura as he explained the situation and drew the quick sketch of the area where the fighting would be taking place. A long room then, and making use of two rooms would help immensely. "Sounds like a plan," Kenren murmured. "Make one of the people with the lights a healer though," he added. "Or have a healer waiting outside. Things never go as smoothly as you'd like and I'd rather have someone able to take care of any injured there and then than have to send people down to the clinic. Besides, if we're going to have to fight nurses every time we go in there, we want to make it a single trip deal." There was no sense in going up there night after night, fighting the same fights when they could make a clean sweep of the area in one go.

Now that was a question. Kenren leaned back in his chair, looking at Homura with a small smirk on his lips. "You're crazy if you think that things are just going to go back to how they were if this had never happened," he said finally. "You've remembered, but you have more memories now. You're still different to how you were then." His smirk softened, became a smile and he shook his head. "It's been interesting. I don't regret any of it except that you got hurt, and I won't regret it when you remember everything." Regrets were a waste of time in his opinion. All that you could do was keep looking forward.

"You do," he continued, and this was going to be the more awkward part. "MOMO healed me, but I think she overtaxed herself," he said. "I left her to sleep and headed upstairs to take a look around. Didn't find the door that the key opened though." He thought for a moment before adding a little more, because it wouldn't have taken him all night to walk around the top floor. "Bumped into Sanzo," he said with a soft laugh. "He was having a bad night."

[screwthegods]

"Of course." Homura had planned on including MOMO as one of the members, as soon as he received confirmation of her involvement that night. The difficulty was that of their numbers, MOMO was the only one who could heal, and she had far too many bodies to deal with. There was little chance that Okita would be able enough to go into the fight without having to be helped first, draining MOMO of precious energy. And that didn't account for the injuries Homura had suffered, nor any the rest of the team he would put together might already have. "But making return trips might have its benefits. The room had been used, probably that same night. There were beds, and medicine bottles that were half-emptied when we got in there."

He almost felt like there was something he was missing then. Homura had seen the room, of course, but he didn't understand its purpose. There was one other area he hadn't yet mentioned, but that seemed important, and he mulled over it as he muttered. "And outfits other than the uniforms."

Whatever it was, Homura couldn't put the connections together yet. Regardless of that, he still smiled when Kenren answered him, honestly, about what he expected from the future. The reassurance that what had become wouldn't change was a welcome comfort, and he reached over to touch Kenren's hand as he nodded. "Thank you."

The report about the night past was brief, and while there hadn't been positive results, there was no damage done--at least, none that had been reported. At the mention of the ill-tempered priest having a bad night, the demi-god smirked. "Did he shoot you? I seem to remember him having a fondness for that, for some reason." Homura was certain he'd been shot at, and more than once, though at the moment he couldn't remember the details of those encounters.

[opposingheaven.livejournal.com]

"I'm not saying that we shouldn't go back, just that we want to get as good a look through there as we can in a single go. We can't be fighting nurses every night after all. Even for such fine warriors as we are, they're pretty tough opponents." They were fast and strong and damn persistent. He frowned slightly, considering what Homura had said about what they'd found. "A medical wing maybe?" They had to have one after all; someone had to bandage the wounds sustained during the night, and considering how serious some of them could be, then they'd need pretty good facilities. Although the half empty bottles suggested that they'd been used that night.

His eyes narrowed when he mentioned outfits. "What kind of outfits?" he asked curiously. There was something important there, he was beginning to think, he just couldn't quite fit the pieces together. "Like what a nurse would wear or...?"

He smiled when Homura thanked him, brushing his fingers over Homura's lightly instead of replying out loud. He'd be some kind of hypocrite if he spurned Homura because of changed memories after all.

A pained grimace crossed Kenren's face when Homura asked about Sanzo. "He did. It's just a graze though," he replied, reaching up to touch his shoulder lightly. "I should have been paying more attention."