damned_institute | Day 37: Sun Room

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Day 37: Sun Room

Joe had read some of the larger notes stuck up on the bulletin board when the announcement came on the intercom. All things considered, this Landel guy didn't even seem so bad. Even if these people were held here against their will, he was certainly nice about it.

Apparently, the new patients - including Joe - were to hang around in the Sun Room or go to Arts and Crafts with the kids. Well, there was plenty of information on the board, including maps and descriptions of monsters, for Joe to prepare for the nighttime, when he could seriously get going on fighting his way out. He could look for where the boss would probably be waiting, or where his V-watch might be, and figure out how to fight the monsters. In fact, he had plenty of time to work all that out... but this the first time he'd had to really relax since he got his powers. So it couldn't possibly hurt to enjoy the calm period, could it?

The red-head stepped back from the board, and hopped back onto a comfy-looking couch to digest in the sunlight. He reached up to pull his cap down, and sighed when he realized it wasn't there. "Oh well, nothing's perfect. I still wouldn't call this hell."

[free!]

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Strangely enough, Artemis seemed to find comfort in the weirdest people. Perhaps because he was so strange himself. He was uncomfortable in normal modes of comfort. As long as he could keep bantering with his comforter, it felt less like he was a crying child begging for someone to hold him.

"Like what?" Artemis asked, wrinkling his nose slightly. "Because after standing this close to you, I don't think I'm ever going to take up smoking."

"Hey, shut up. I showered like five minutes ago." And as long as he could keep bantering with the kid he had his arm around, he felt less like a stray dog trying to comfort...well, a kid. Which was all Artemis really was, even with the boy genius accomplishments, even if he would probably make more sour faces at Badou for saying so.

"You'd look ridiculous smoking anyway. How old are you again? Ten? Eleven?"

"Fourteen," Artemis said flatly. He obviously wasn't pleased at being taken for younger than he actually was. It was an obstacle that he was constantly trying to get over. And usually, he could. Now, however, he was trying to deny the fact that he was a child, while crying his eyes out. What a wonderful situation.

"And I agree with you on that point--I would look ridiculous. Not to mention I would give my nurse a heart-attack."

"Close enough." Badou replied, waving it off with his free hand.

"It's a shitty addiction to get into if you like breathing anything but poison." Which Badou didn't, but he figured Artemis ranked oxygen a little above cancerous clouds of pollution. "Swearing doesn't suit you any more than smoking by the way."

Perhaps a normal boy would have argued that there was a large difference between eleven and fourteen. But that would only further the time-honored tradition of using age as a marker for maturity. Something that Arty had been fighting since he started using three-syllable words at age five and trying to convince airlines that he could, in fact, buy an airplane ticket to Cairo at age ten. After that incident, he never booked a flight over the phone again.

More importantly, though, was the difference between Artemis Fowl, Age Ten, and Artemis Fowl, Age Fourteen. In the span of four years, he'd moved from causing the extinction of a species, to trying to save an entire one. Perhaps he wasn't too far from trying to save the whales...

"I suppose not," he commented with a light smile. "I haven't had the exorbitant amounts of practice you seem to have--swearing fluently. Why do you smoke, Badou?"

Well he seemed to be cheering up. Badou had already seen how quickly that changed, but for now it was alright even if he had to think of more inventive ways to tease Artemis. He wasn't too good at that either, having been on the receiving end far more often, but he could pick it up.

"Because nocturne is addictive." Badou replied, matter-of-a-factly. "And I get kinda violent without cigarettes." He pulled his hair aside a little to reveal the patch on his neck. "Kinda very violent. But, you know, not until my body sucks all the nicotine out of these things lately and it's a lot less impressive without guns. Last time it happened here it was like a squirrel monkey trying to punch down a brick wall."

Artemis stared at Badou for a moment, not exactly sure what to make of that last metaphor. But he assumed that it made sense in Badou's head. Which, from the looks of things, seemed to be a very, very scary place to be.

"So the nurses are trying to ween you off cigarettes?" Artemis asked, eying the patch. "I'm envious. They've cut me off completely from my own addictions."

In his defense, he was at least more sane than his partner.

"Apparently. They haven't tried to cut back yet, so I dunno." He let his hair drop, hoping that wasn't the case. The last time he'd tried to quit smoking - which was incidentally the one and only time - he'd managed to mow through the entire fourth street gang before he found a stray pack and a lighter again. That took him weeks to get out of when they found out. He didn't think Artemis' addictions would be quite so serious. "Like what? Sugar?"

Artemis laughed, "No, not that serious. Just Earl Grey tea and classical music. It's 'not appropriate' for a 'boy my age'. But I have my sources."

Namely, the CD Schuldig had obtained in town and the people he was extorting for tea. However making it was one of the problems. But at least he had the music. That would calm him tonight.

"Well, considering how you describe your addiction, I'm surprised you don't have one of those on each one of your limbs."

Badou snorted. "...You're such a nerd, Arty."

He'd been wondering about the nicotine patches himself It wasn't so much the nicotine as the smoke for him anyway but... "This stuff never worked before, so I'm guessing it's strong enough to knock out a draft horse."

He paused for a second, considering the implications of what they'd banned Artemis from. "What do they think you're going to do with tea and music anyway? Get slightly buzzed and preform a strip tease to Mozart?"

Artemis was at a loss for words for about a minute. Finally, he managed to speak.

"No. God no. I have enough trouble showering considering the possibility that someone might be looking at me." Thank goodness Schuldig wasn't around, because now all he could think of was tossing his tie into a crowd full of Badou to Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

"No, they are probably trying to separate me from my delusions. But honestly, how can being a genius be a delusion when it's provable fact?" Artemis gave a world-weary sigh. "Honestly, if I could just tie my nurse down and recite the periodic table of elements, possibly multiply a few six-digit numbers, she may begin to wonder why I'm here at all."

Edited 2008-11-27 07:11 (UTC)

Badou looked over at that interesting spot on the ceiling and tried valiantly not to laugh. Much. Mostly. His mental image had less stripping and more Artemis tripping over the edge of the table.

"You don't have anything they haven't seen. Well, unless you do but then I don't really want to know. At least you didn't get molested?" Badou offered, which was apparently supposed to be comforting.

"I think if you tied her up your nurse might start wondering a whole lot of other things too."

Well, at the time Artemis had had something that he didn't want others to see. Namely, the insults Skuld had branded across his ass. Remembering that made him irate.

"Define 'molested'," Artemis muttered. Because Sai had seen... it. And commented on... it. That was verbal molestation as far as Artemis was concerned!

"...this conversation is going in a strange, and not altogether comfortable direction," Artemis said, voice slightly strained. "Besides I couldn't tie up a nurse without help. I'm 150 centimeters tall and barely forty-five kilograms."

"That thing that happened to me in the showers today. Also anything that ends with 'show me on the doll where he touched you.'" Badou replied, though the matter-of-a-fact tone didn't do much to hide the automatic glance around the room for Precilla and Ye of Wondering Hands. "Not that I'm suggesting you try this, but you could probably manage the nurse bondage if you used your head. I thought that was the whole point of being a genius."

He sighed, knowing full well that this conversation had turned pretty damn random. "Should we go back to that important and highly logical conversation we were having about how you're going to train dogs to save whales? We could talk about the other thing, but I've got no advice and if you started crying into my shirt you'd probably develop a low-grade addiction. Or, you know, lung cancer."

"Well of course I could, but not without outside help," Artemis crossed his arms, scowling at the floor. The doll... he'd just remembered it. Did Haku still have it, or had he returned it? And what was the thing that had been delivered? Haku hadn't let him see that either.

He was silent for a moment. "I never said that anything we were talking about was normal. I would think that you would have gotten used to the fact that around me, nothing is normal."

Haku was always protecting him. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Badou actually laughed at that, inappropriate or not. They were trapped in a mental institution full of monsters and people from other fucking worlds. His regenerating freakshow partner out drag racing somewhere to help afford their shared apartment. At home Haine would be having fits near anything with a vagina and putting bullet holes up one end of the city and down the other while his family - notably, two girls in psuedo-bunny costumes younger than Artemis - tried to chop them up possibly use their blood for that shade of red crayon they were out of. And that wasn't even half of it. Not even a quarter of it.

"Around you, nothing is average. Everything else is so normal it kinda freaks me out." He nudged Artemis' shoulder. "What're you brooding about now?"

Artemis didn't quite get what Badou was getting at, but he let it slide. Average, normal, what was the difference? He didn't much approve of being laughed at either.

"The various and sundry enemies I've managed to make," Artemis answered truthfully. Frankly, Artemis had never put much effort into becoming a fighter like... well, the rest of his allies. So, he continually hid behind everyone else. But Haku, in this case, was making an effort to keep him from knowing what Muraki sent him. Which bothered him. And scared him, but just a little.

"Tomorrow we start seeing our 'psychiatrists' again."

"You made an enemy out of your doctor?" He wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. Artemis already had enough hostility towards his nurse to entertain thoughts of tying her up and subjecting her to math. That was pretty sadistic all by itself.

"Two of them," Artemis corrected. "In this building, that is." There were plenty of psychiatrists who wanted him dead back home, too. But none of them had eye or doll fetishes.

"I never found out what he did to Renji..." A wrinkle formed between Artemis' eyebrows.

Badou made a low whistle at the first comment. He hadn't gotten a doctor himself, but he sort of assumed that you only got one at a time. How had Artemis managed to meet two of them long enough to piss them off?

"I thought this was strictly a talking thing? You know, don't listen to what they say... At least during the day, anyway. What happened?"

Artemis smirked. "I stole something out of one's office. And the other has a fascination with my 'perfect heterochromia'. An unhealthy one. And apparently, he drugged me at our last session. I couldn't remember any of it until I asked someone who knew. ...long story."

The boy sighed wearily, "And the one I stole something from did something to Renji. I never found out what it was, but it really destroyed him."

"...heterowhat?" He would have asked about what questionable things happened during the time Artemis was drugged but it didn't seem to be the thing that was bothering him most.

"You stole something from a doctor who destroyed your friend. A doctor who has free reign to drug you too, if you end up with him. I'm the last person to talk but... that's kind of insanely stupid," He paused. "I know you want to find out about what happened but don't dig into it. There's nothing you can do now anyway."

Edited 2008-11-29 02:02 (UTC)

"...my eyes are different colors," Artemis indicated his hazel eye. "He's fascinated by eyes. And the drugs... they were vapor. He opened a drawer and told me to leave. And after that I forgot what had happened."

Artemis frowned deeper in thought. "I know I shouldn't, but he sent me something. So I feel as though he's targeting me. There was a tracking device in the doll I stole from his office, and my roommate is one of his patients..."

The boy pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't spend this much mental power on punishing myself, I have far too much to be panicking over."

Badou just shook his head. No use asking if he didn't remember, but he would have to find some time to ask Artemis about his eyes later on. Even if he was used to them, he was still mildly curious in a not-eye-obsessed-psychopathic-doctor kind of way.

"No kidding. If he's really targeting you... You think your roommate's going to be ok?" The last thing he wanted to do was get Artemis worked up again, but he couldn't exactly avoid the issue now.

Artemis gave a small laugh, "Haku can take care of himself. And he was fine after his next appointment."

If Haku had convinced him of anything, it was that he could take care of himself. That Haku wouldn't let anyone hurt him. He'd promised. And all Artemis could do was hold on to the promises that Haku had made him. He could.

"The first night Haku and I were roommates, he lodged a scalpel in the wall. An inch to the right of my ear. And he promised me that he would be fine..."

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