damned_institute | Day 39: Intercom, Evening

After lunch, Hikaru had opted to go back to his room and nap. It was less noisy than the Sun Room (and a hell of a lot less noisy than the music room), and he hadn't wanted to be under his nurse's thumb longer than absolutely necessary. She was still a bit sore about the whole wheelchair incident. Hikaru couldn't imagine why, really--it had just been a good bit of fun, and nobody had gotten hurt!--but she kept shaking her head and muttering darkly about the egregious wrongs he'd committed, including 'misuse of hospital property.'

Killjoy.

It was the Head Doctor's dinner announcement that had woken him up. Had he really slept that late? Apparently so. He propped himself up on his elbows when his nurse came in bearing a tray and taking the opportunity to give him one of those Looks that adults seemed to be so fond of. "Now Andrew," she said, and Hikaru couldn't resist rolling his eyes at the way she was talking to him, "I want you to be a good example for your new roommate, all right? He's had a rough morning, and he needs a friend."

New roommate? So, that was it. Goku was gone. He just shrugged his assent, wondering what this kid would be like. Probably a total headcase; most of them were. Alfons had been an exception, not the rule.

Albedo didn't mind being dragged back to the room he had woke up in. He was quiet on the way back, holding the notebook Angel gave him tightly in case the nurse tried to take it from him. He wasn't about to relinquish something that someone had given him, freely and of their own will. There was no way. He rubbed the cover beneath his fingertips.

Following the nurse into the open door, he froze at the sight of the other boy in the room. His eyes narrowed automatically, and he drew the notebook to his chest. The nurse was leaving so there was no escape for him. He had noticed the two beds before, and had come to the obvious conclusion, but a roommate that wasn't family was not something Albedo was interested in at all.

He glared, watching for a moment, before curiosity outweighed paranoia. He moved to the desk and opened the drawer quickly. Angel hadn't lied. There was an identical notebook inside. He drew it out with something like reverence before clutching it with the other one. He picked up a pen, then retreated to the bed. Pulling his knees up, he opened up both, absentmindedly trying to mimic one of the drawings of the reoccurring girl. He most likely couldn't draw worth anything, and he knew that, but it was exoticness of paper that made him want to fill the empty spaces.

Angel was the first decent person he had met. Albedo liked him. He had never met an adult that didn't have ulterior motives. Absorbed in the foreign strangeness of the notebooks and the strange kindness of Angel as well, Albedo found himself in his first good mood in a very long time.

Edited 2009-03-02 17:16 (UTC)

...Well, that was...odd. Hikaru looked up to see a boy--a very young looking boy, though there was always the possibility that he had a weird Honey-senpai thing going on--being shepherded into the room and then going straight to the notebook in his desk to...copy drawings? The Host looked up from his dinner, eyebrow raised, but didn't comment.

After about five minutes, he looked up again to see the boy still drawing.

"Hey," he said as gently as he could. "Uh...your dinner's getting cold. Don't you want any?"

Albedo had succeeded in making the lines look something like a person, but nowhere near to what the original was. He was pleased either way, and flipped the page in his own to a clean sheet to start listing names--of people, of planets, of places, of people he had met here--anything to take up space. His handwriting was horrendous, but he kept at it with a strange dedication; a single-minded focus mostly reserved for his twin or his habits of destruction.

He was halfway through the page when he noticed the other person in the room speaking to him. He looked up sharply, watching warily as he weighed the reasons that the other was speaking to him. His brain backtracked as he went over what his roommate had said. Your dinner's getting cold.

Oh. Food. He hadn't ate since the few bites at breakfast, and then that was interupted by Albedo slamming into Nigredo, and then he missed lunch altogether when he was sleeping off his sedation. True, as a child soldier, he was used to going without food for awhile, but if there was an option....

Albedo carefully placed the notebooks to the side and walked back over to the desk to see the tray on it. Looked edible enough. He glanced over at the other again. "Yeah." There was a pause for a minute. Albedo narrowed his eyes again, before adding gruffly, "Thanks."

...Wait. Was that dessert? Pie? They never had dessert at the Yuriev Institute. Oh, he could get used to this!

Edited 2009-03-03 00:54 (UTC)

Oh, good. He did talk. Monosyllabic grunts, yeah, but it was better than nothing! As much as he enjoyed silence at times, people who never spoke at all (with the notable exception of Mori; Honey usually talked enough for the both of them put together) made Hikaru a little nervous.

He noticed the kid's rather enthusiastic response to the dessert and decided it was time for another grand gesture of goodwill. He grabbed his pie and deposited it on the boy's tray. "Here, want mine? I could do without." Hikaru grinned. "Gotta keep my girlish figure, and all that. What's your name, anyway?"

The pie was... great! The taste and texture was like something he had ever had before (for good reason), and the sweetness was enough to make this one of his better days, regardless of the morning.

So he had been sedated. So Rubedo had been spending time with Nigredo. The shift after, Rubedo spent time with him, and stayed with him, talking to him and even being affectionate. He learned more about his surroundings from Meche, Angel gave him a notebook, he had his own... And there was dessert here.

Yeah. This was pretty much one of the best days he had had.

Caught in thought, Albedo had paused, the fork in his mouth as he went over the day. When his new roommate plunked another pie on his plate, Albedo's eyes widened exponentially. A notebook was one thing, and now someone was freely giving his own dessert? How could....

He wasn't used to small kindness from strangers at all. Swallowing the last bite of his own, he removed the fork awkwardly, watching the other for any tells that this was a trap or a trick. Albedo found nothing to show that this was anything than what it seemed like. A wide smile slowly spread across his face. "Yeah!" he answered enthusiastically, before adding, "Thanks!" This time, it was said with feeling.

At first, Hikaru wondered if he'd done the wrong thing by handing the still-unnamed kid his dessert. He recognized the look on the boy's face...having worn it a few times himself. The kid was looking for an ulterior motive of some sort, but, not seeing any, was now looking much brighter than he had a few seconds before.

Oh, good.

"You're welcome," Hikaru replied with a laugh. "Never seen somebody so enthusiastic about pie before. Don't get much at home?" Probably, given the crazy places some of these people seemed to be from. For all Hikaru knew, the white-haired boy could've been from the fair land of Oogledy Poogldey, where the consumption of dessert-like foodstuffs was a crime punishable by the forcible removal of one's toenails.

Stranger things had happened.

"I'm Hikaru, by the way," he prompted, wondering if that would get the kid to offer up his name so that he could stop calling him 'the kid.' "I guess we're stuck together for the long-haul, huh?" That was open to interpretation. This little boy was Hikaru's third roommate. He didn't want to risk getting too close, not yet.

Edited 2009-03-04 01:32 (UTC)

Again, someone was refering to that place as home. Hikaru, as it were, couldn't be faulted. He was probably grown up a normal child, with a home and family. Albedo chewed a bite of the second pie. "No. We didn't get desserts."

Or sweets. Or anything like that for that matter. But it didn't matter now. That was behind him. Whether or not Albedo left this playground, he was not returning to the Yuriev Institute. That place was gone from his life. Like other things surely were.

A twinge of rememberance, some kind of drifting thought that asked how he was so thoroughly distracted. He had a brother here, and a twin as well. One to torment and one to torture (but was that really what he--), and he had planning to do. He glanced back at the notebooks with something like longing for a brief second. He wished he could spend the night going through Angel's notebook, and filling up space in his own.

But a call was too insistent in his mind, too sweet to resist. If nothing more, Albedo needed to gain use of his abilities tonight, and for that Nigredo must suffer until he relinguished the hold he held on the white-haired Variant. Albedo would settle for nothing less. The slower healing of the telomerase was unsettling.

The doors hadn't opened yet, so there was no reason to ignore the friendly person in front of him. Albedo was soaking up kindness like the sun's rays, trying to make up for the years of lack. There was a pause as he watched the door, thinking. Then he looked back at Hikaru with a small grin. "Albedo. It looks like we are. How long have you been here?"

Finally! A name. Albedo. The measure of an object's ability to reflect sunlight, if Hikaru was remembering correctly. Snow had a very high albedo, for instance. So the kid's name made a bizarre amount of sense, considering his rather unnerving white hair.

"Nice to meet you, Albedo. Or...well, not exactly nice, but you know what I mean." He gave the kid a self-deprecating grimace. "It's nice meeting you. Just not under these circumstances. I wouldn't wish this place on anybody, which is saying something. I've been here...almost a month, I think. Longer than a lot of people. I hate it here. My brother and I...we're trapped here, and we're useless. Nothing we ever did before we came here could've prepared us for this place."

He tilted his head like a bird, taking in everything Hikaru said. The other boy seemed to talk a lot, and that was fine. Being social always seemed to backfire on Albedo. He shook his head when Hikaru finished talking. "This place seems like the place where I came from. Nothing's really scary or surprising." He tilted his head again, considering. "There was a weird mirror monster that attacked me, but other than that.... Can you think of anything I should know?"

He would have continued asking more detailed questions here, but again something pulled him short, making him draw his brows together. "You have family here, too?"

Hikaru stared at Albedo, eyebrow raised. Landel's wasn't any worse than the place he came from? "What the hell kind of place is that?" the Host asked, before he he could stop himself. Albedo was just a kid. Why was he so jaded already? He'd been attacked, and he was just brushing it off like it was nothing! "Uh...the monsters are basically your average household creatures--dogs, cats, bats, rats, and bugs--only on steroids and looking like rejects from a B-rate horror film."

Hikaru rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Uh...yeah. My twin brother, Kaoru. You too, huh?"

What kind of place...? "A war," was the only answer he gave. The monsters Hikaru mentioned actually made him smile a little. He had seen the giant spider last night, but there were more organic animals? Real ones? Monsters or not, that was something Albedo had to see!

"Twin brother?!" Albedo blurted. "My... I have a twin, too. He's... here. And my..." The boy made a face. "Little brother, too." He hadn't ever met anyone that was a twin before. Albedo had thought that Rubedo and him were the only ones.... Like everything else today, it filled him with excitement. Someone else knew what it was like.

Maybe. Maybe the kind of bond that was between them was amphlified by being a URTV. He couldn't know. But just the same, maybe Hikaru understood.

"A war?" Hikaru swore. "Albedo, how old are you?" Surely, the kid just meant that the place he was from was just in a war and he wasn't fighting any battles himself.

Right?

...Oh, that was a coincidence. Hikaru blinked, wondering if they'd planned it like that. Two different twins, forced to room together. "I'm sorry," he said genuinely. "I'm sorry that your brothers have to be here too. I'd give anything to see Kaoru get back home, even if it means I stay here." Why was he opening up so much to this kid? It seemed so odd. And yet, he needed to talk. And Albedo was a twin too, so he'd know what Hikaru was talking about, right?

The Host smiled a little. "Are you two identical or fraternal? You and your twin, I mean."

"Twelve," he answered seriously. URTVs were trained to handle all of the aspects of a war, and he knew how to take care of himself... even if he'd rather Rubedo do-so.

And here the two differed. Albedo was estatic his brothers were here. It meant he would have oppertunities with them that he would have otherwise missed--for good or bad. He was always a selfish creature--especially when it came to his twin. "I'm not sorry. We were separated. Now I can see them again." See them, play with them, torment and torture. Maybe Rubedo would come around, admit his wrongs if Nigredo was out of the picture. But should Albedo forgive him even so? Probably not. He should try to stick with his original plan.

The words confused him for a moment, his mind opening his science class memories. Those classes had at least been a little more interesting. Fraternal or identical didn't exactly fit them though. He supposed that was because of him. "We're identical. But our hair and eyes are different colors." He focused more on this, and less on what had happened before. "And what about you? Are you identical twins?" he asked excitedly.

[Really sorry about the wait! Backthreading is go for a few rounds? :D]

Twelve. Hikaru sighed, staring down at his lap. Albedo was twelve, and he was acting like he was perfectly calm here and talking about war like it was nothing. What was wrong with the kid? What had happened to him to make him so blase about it all?

"Separated? I...I'm sorry." Hikaru knew what that was like. Sort of. It was his biggest fear, being separated from Kaoru. It was bad enough that they hardly ever saw each other in this place. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to be separated full time...

"Uh...we're identical too. How can you be identical, if your hair and eyes are different colors? I'm sorry, but the definition of identical twins is that they're...you know, identical."

[and sorry as well. backthreading is go. ^^]

Separated. Such a calm word to describe what happened. Back then everything was chaos--loud and harsh, quick and brutal, laced with fear, hatred, loss, and betrayal. It was all quick. Much too fast, much too soon. Looking back... Albedo could pleasantly detach himself from the memories as it were, pumped full of U-DO from that one taste that everything was separated as through a film. Nothing mattered. Everything mattered.

Albedo blinked once, then raised his arm up to scratch at his face. Rubedo and his bond wasn't something he spoke about to just anyone, and the reasoning behind their physical bond was something spoke of in hushed tones. But the attraction of another set of twins hadn't worn off yet, and even as he contemplated the torture of his younger sibling, Albedo was still entranced by the kindness shown to him by two strangers. So he spoke bluntly, albeit hesitantly.

"We were... conjoined. Attached at the back." Meant to be one person, meant to have a stronger bond. "And... I don't know." He didn't actually. All of the Variants had different colored hair and eyes, even though they all looked the same. Some scientists muttered about albinism, but half of what they said turned out to be false in Albedo's mind. "We're designer children," he ended up saying. "We're genetically altered, so that might be why. Or maybe... something like an albino? I don't like sunlight, but neither does my younger brother and he has black hair."

Black to red, Nigredo. Albedo would have to see if he could change the color that poured out of the younger's skull.

Now, conjoined twins Hikaru could deal with. It happened all the time. Well, no, not really, but there were always a new set of Siamese twins getting separated (and too often, with tragic results) on the news. He'd always watched those stories rather closely, even if he didn't openly admit it to anyone other than Kaoru.

Designer kids though? That was...horrible and impossible and yet the way Albedo was talking about it, it was hard not to believe it. Hikaru stared at the kid, visibly disturbed and distressed by this new revelation. "That's...why? Why would they do that? That's horrible!"

Why? Why? For war of course, but that wasn't what Hikaru was asking. He was really asking how. How could someone do that? What would be the justification? The answer was the same. For war. To win. To create weapons that could fight an undefeatable enemy. That they wouldn't win against anyway. That would kill them all because of Rubedo. Except for Nigredo.

An enemy that would taint Albedo with inspiration and illumination; truth and despair, enlightenment and sorrow.

They were never meant to win against it. They were to be sacrifical lambs, led to the slaughter, dragged there by the one that mattered most. Most precious.

By now Albedo's face had effectively closed down, leaving nothing on the surface as a tell. His gaze slid to the side, focusing on something and nothing. Anything but the past. Not right now, when he was trying to focus on a different brother, on hate instead of pain.

He stayed silent, looking off to the side, before asking quietly, "Your brother's name is Kaoru?" That was obvious, Hikaru had said as much before, but Albedo wasn't social enough with others to make a smoother transition.

From the way Albedo's expression seemed to close off, Hikaru could tell that the kid wasn't entirely comfortable with this line of questioning. So when Albedo tried to change the direction of the conversation, Hikaru let him.

"Yeah," he replied, smiling a little, "Hitachiin Kaoru. I'm fifteen minutes older than he is."

Something larger than relief swept over Albedo for a moment--if the boy knew a word to describe it, it would have been gratitude. But the Variant wasn't familiar with things such as that, and so Albedo simply relaxed somewhat.

And that in itself was new. He didn't delve too far into it.

Albedo would remember the name, give the boy courtesy if he met him because of his brother, instead of writing him off like all of the others. Albedo nodded carefully. "Rubedo's older, too. And he's bossy enough for it."

He concentrated on the before memories: before U-DO, before learning he couldn't die, before Sakura, before everything had shattered. Those times before weren't perfect, but looking back for moments at a time showed that they were something to remember (something to let fester with resentment)--something like a dream.

Though Albedo's answer was mild and seemed normal enough, his face was still a little off, an obvious sign that there was more involved than what he cared to share.

Day 39: Intercom, Evening

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