damned_institute | Day 40: Recreational Field

Entry tags:

Day 40: Recreational Field

Kio's breakfast ended on a much happier note than it had started. However, for once the announcement truly surprised him. He blinked as his nurse came to pick him up. Recreational Field? But.. but if they had a greenhouse, he wanted to go there. The prospect of gardening was a truly liberating one, an island of joy in this hellhole. He thought about going to the Sun Room and lying down, but it occurred to him that he hadn't had proper fresh air since being here. With a cheery goodbye wave to Honey, he followed his torturer outside.

It was much better than he had expected. The sun wasn't too hot (what time of the year were they in, anyway?), so he walked slowly along the walls, fascinated by the size of the field. He wondered if Sou-chan was alright. He hadn't even checked the board. Well, if Soubi wanted to apologize, Kio would be willing to listen. The place was so crisp and clean. He had to think if anyone had ever gone over the walls. What was out there? Freedom? Or a different sort of monster?

Leaning against one of the walls, Kio took as much advantage of the sun as he could. He desperately wanted a lollipop. One was quietly nestled in his pocket, but he would need to wait until the nurses were busy with other patients before he tried anything. Soubi had gone to some trouble to get them, the least he could do was make sure they didn't get confiscated. So with bated breath, Kio waited for a shift in the mood. He was, for once, content. Not happy, but not going crazy either.

[Sou-chan! Team Loveless deploy!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When another man came and sat, Yuuhi greeted him with a smile and a wave. He looked pretty bandaged up, but that was fairly typical for patients here it seemed. It wasn't all that long ago he'd been covered in casts and bandages and all kinds of things, so it didn't bother him at all.

"Mm, I sure don't think so," he replied. "My name's Fai D. Flourite, but you can just call me Fai. Pleased to meet you."

What kind of name was that? Harvey still wasn't all that comfortable with doing introductions here, but if people didn't recognize him by sight then chances were they wouldn't know his name either.

"Harvey Dent," was all he said, since he wasn't exactly pleased to be meeting anyone here. He scowled across the field, though the expression dropped away when he saw some kids playing around with a soccer ball. His leg twitched slightly, but he turned away.

In another life, he'd played on the soccer team for his college, but that had all been burned away. He couldn't think about it. It had nothing to do with him anymore.

Instead, it was better to focus on what he'd just found out. There was someone else here who was out for Batman's blood, and while Harvey wanted the man to himself, working together might be the better course of action. Granted, the stranger from the bulletin was probably the worst sort of criminal if he had a bone to pick with Batman, which meant that joining up with him wasn't just a simple choice to make.

Harvey started feeling in the pocket of his coat.

"Harvey," he repeated with a nod. The man sure didn't say much for one who was worried that his companion might be anti-social. Perhaps that meant that Yuuhi was the one who would have to keep up the conversation.

"Mm, well why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself Harvey?" he asked. That seemed to be the usual. What world a person was from, what time, what place, or what sort of things they'd seen. It varied from person to person and was usually enough to pass the time.

"Or I guess we could play, but I think it's much more relaxing to just sit out here."

It figured that he ended up sitting with someone chatty. Worse than that, the guy wasn't even saying anything useful. Instead, he was asking some pointless questions that Harvey really didn't have the patience to deal with right now.

"Sitting is fine," he replied, since the last thing he wanted was to somehow get roped into a game. It was hard enough trying to keep his eyes averted from the young people who were already busy playing. It wasn't that he felt old, but--

Well, maybe that was part of it. But it had to do more with the fact that he was already quite aware of the distance between him and pretty much everyone else here. It wasn't just about sanity, either.

"Hold on a second," he said with a frown, not even looking at Fai as he grabbed for his coin and set it on the top of his thumb nail. With a practiced movement, he flicked the coin up into the air and then caught it.

Or maybe the conversation wouldn't be all that simple. Yuuhi quieted when Harvey pulled the coin from his pocket, watching as the item glinted in the sun for a moment and was caught again.

"Is it a coin trick?" he asked, looking from the man's hand to his face. What exactly were they waiting for?

Harvey pulled his hand away to get the verdict. It was the unburned side, and with a small sigh he dropped the piece of silver back into his pocket. It looked like he was going to have to abstain from getting involved with the other Gothamite then. Luckily, he hadn't given the stranger too much information about himself.

Having almost forgotten about Fai, he glanced back toward the younger man. "No, I just needed to check something." He knew it wouldn't make any sense, but he didn't see why he should clarify. It wasn't like this stranger would understand, and if Harvey even tried to explain it would just turn into a rant.

Fai had asked him some questions, hadn't he? Harvey wasn't looking to talk about himself, though, so if the other man was really curious then he'd have to pry a little harder.

Harvey was really making this difficult and it was honestly a little confusing. Why make sure you had a talkative person to sit with, only to ignore all their questions and act so reclusive? It didn't make much sense.

Yuuhi rolled over onto his stomach, picking at the grass, "well now that you've checked, was there something you did want to talk about?"

Even if Harvey hadn't picked the best person to spend this block of time with, at least Fai hadn't started asking him about the coin. The fact that he hadn't was strange in and of itself, but Harvey didn't have any reason to psychoanalyze the man. This wasn't a courtroom where he needed to constantly be thinking about what was going through everyone's head.

He still needed to do it in regards to some people, but Fai didn't have anything to do with the grand scheme of things. Just another victim.

He shrugged. "Beats me. What do two people stuck in some weird loony bin talk about in their spare time?" He could have nailed Fai with some questions of his own, but it didn't seem like anyone had a good explanation for what had happened to him last night. Asking would be a waste of time.

"Well, anything we want," Yuuhi replied, gathering up the bits of grass he'd picked into his palm and then blowing them away with a sigh and a smile. If everyone was as crazy as they were supposed to be, any kind of conversation was really just fine, wasn't it?

"We could talk about where we came from or what kind of things we're doing here. Everyone has a different story. Did you come from a fantasy world or a big city or really far in the future?" he glanced up at the bandaged man, expression one of curiosity. "Or are you going to make me guess?"

Too bad there wasn't anything Harvey wanted to talk about except for ways to get out of this place (or at least figure out what the hell it was all about). Still, he could tell that Fai was content to play with the grass and discuss--

Well, discuss stuff that sounded downright crazy, that's what. Harvey was having a hard time telling if the other man was actually serious and thought that fantasy worlds existed, or if he was trying to make some kind of lighthearted joke. It was strange, since usually he could read people pretty well, but he was at a loss here.

He didn't want to touch any of that with a ten-foot pole, though, and so for once he gave a straightforward answer. "I'm from a city called Gotham." At this point, he doubted Fai would have heard of it.

"Hyuu..." he let out a sigh as tried to line the name of the city up with anything he knew. While he'd traveled plenty of worlds, that one wasn't any he'd heard of before.

"Nope, doesn't ring a bell. What's it like?" Maybe that would be at least enough to get the conversation going. Who knew? If they ever got out of this place, they might visit Gotham someday.

It was still hard for Harvey to wrap his mind around the fact that people here didn't seem to know anything about Gotham. It was supposed to be a well-known city no matter where in the country you were, and yet he kept getting blanks stares when it was mentioned. At least there were some people around who knew of it, though.

"It's a large city with a terrible crime rate," he said, and it was obvious there was no love lost between him and his hometown. Before, he had been as dedicated to Gotham as a person could get, but now that it had chewed him up and spat him back out, he wouldn't care if it drowned in its own filth.

"Not that best place for a vacation," he finished with a frown.

"Why would you want to stay there then?" Yuuhi asked curiously, pausing for a moment from playing with the grass to give Harvey his full attention. Most people didn't stay somewhere if they didn't like it. Unless they had to or something.

"If it gets bad, you could move to a new place, couldn't you?"

Trying to explain that his disdain for the city was a very recent thing would be hard to get into without having to give out more details than he was comfortable with, and so Harvey quickly searched for another response.

"It didn't used to be like that," he said, though that was mainly a lie. Gotham had been corrupt since he was a kid, and it had been growing up in that kind of environment that had led to him wanting to practice law. Not that it had done him much good in the end, but that was how it had gone.

He didn't want the subject to stay on him, but he didn't want Fai thinking that he had any interest in his insane ideas either. It left him without much to say, and so he knew it would be his own fault if he got asked more probing questions.

It was sad to say that he knew exactly what that was like, but as usual, he kept it to himself. Saying anything about his home world would only make a mess of things. He knew how it was though, to love one's home, then find that it'd become something terrible in what felt like the blink of an eye.

"Mm, that's really too bad. Things never seem to stay the way we want them to," he sent the man a sad sort of smile and shrugged his thin shoulders as he sat back up.

"Maybe it won't seem so bad to go back after you've been in a place like this. At least, it sure feels that way some days.."

Harvey knew for a fact that he would rather be in Gotham than here. At least then he would have freedom and access to the people he wanted to exact revenge on. Here, his anger was just going to build up until it became impossible to handle, and Batman's possible presence had been one of the things he'd been holding onto as an outlet for that anger. But he had been cut off from his clue in to where the vigilante was hiding, which meant he was back to square one.

Square one was apparently talking to the insane patient population and being terrorized by unexplainable visions. Harvey honestly didn't feel like he was coming off a bad high, but he hadn't been able to find any other explanations.

"It's definitely preferable to this place," he said with a nod. Anyone who would rather stay here than go home (wherever that might be) had to be insane. But it might be that very sentiment that had delayed any possibility of escape. If he was one of the only people actively trying to get out, then it was going to take a lot longer. On the other hand, people wouldn't go out at night for any other reason, would they?

It was around that point that the intercom went off -- it was slightly harder to hear when out on the field, but Harvey didn't have to listen to know the gist of what was being said. It was lunch time, which meant being around more food that he refused to eat. Harvey got up and nodded to Fai before heading back toward the building.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Day 40: Recreational Field

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject