damned_institute | Day 40: Lunch

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Day 40: Lunch

*hobble wobble*

"Damn that SCOURGE!" Starscream cried out, the slowly-filling cafeteria producing a jarring echo of his raspy voice. His limping, already bad enough from not knowing how to properly use his crutches, was now exacerbated from the injuries he'd received the shift prior. Despite the gauges in his non-casted leg so lovingly provided by the aforementioned 'patient', Starscream could still put some weight on it, but not so much that he could really stop and rest; relieving the soreness under his arms was out of the question. The nurse that walked behind him with his tray, already upset at having to deal with yet another troublesome inmate, was growing rather impatient as his charge slowly made his way down the food line.

"Just...give me a standard serving of the aquatic creature's flesh, some of those fried potato slices, two bananas, and three bottles of juice," Starscream sighed, his anger from just a moment ago assuaged by the physical exertion needed to move the way he did. "I'm going to sit down here...bring it to me when you're done."

He was hardly surprised to find that one of the bananas was completely bruised along its inner curve, or that the handful of 'chips' on his plate were all on the small side. Tired and frustrated as he was, however, he could barely muster a 'damned flesh-creature' before moving his fingers to the plate, picking one of the longer 'chips' and shoving it into his mouth listlessly.

There was an unusually high concentration of sodium chloride crystals on it. Of COURSE.

[For Tony Stark]

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Sam sat down, sliding his tray onto the table. The boy was quiet, but not openly hostile or anything which was a plus. It'd be awkward otherwise.

"I'm Sam," he offered.

Considering the existence of a possible...hunter? Out there making a mark out of those with abilities, it might've been a better idea to be even more cautious about his identity than he usually was, but he didn't think it mattered with this boy. And frankly, running and hiding did nothing. Gordon had demonstrated that much.

He eyed his food for a second, but set his fork aside for the time being. He wasn't sure if eating was going to make him hack up another handful of hair and that? Would definitely be awkward. On the other hand, it was one way to test a theory, to see if eating would be the thing that set off the spirit's...infection. Or whatever it was. The sad fact was, he was their best walking clue in regards to this case at the moment.

What he needed was the history of the building itself, to see if anything could be tied into the ghost, but where he was gonna get that information, it was hard to say. He could ask around with the nurses, but he'd discovered they were pretty tight-lipped when it came to...well, everything. Not unexpected, but the continual dead ends were frustrating.

Though actually, truth was, what he really needed was his laptop, his weapons, and possibly a time machine.

"Wolfram von Bielefeld."

He decided to use his full name today, because it made Wolfram feel a little bit more important, which he really hadn't been feeling at all as of late. He eyed Sam cautiously, but he didn't think he wanted anything harmful. It didn't look like his lunch-mate was ready to eat, but he decided to try and do more than just pick at the small bites.

Eventually he got up the courage to talk a bit... It was strange how much his confidence had sank since Yuuri was gone.

"You're not new here, are you?"

German? That was interesting. It seemed a stretch to think that the more unique array of names here meant something, but Sam couldn't help making the observation, anyway. If he thought about it, Peter was technically the only person he'd met here with a common name.

He let the silence lapse for a bit, not wanting to push a topic of conversation right away. Wolfram spoke up again before it got too quiet.

"Well, that depends on your definition of new, but I've been here a couple of days," he replied. How new was new, anyway? Given the turnover rate, that was. It wasn't exactly low; he didn't need to collect any official statistics to figure that out. Of course, considering the amount of spirits that were apparently floating around, not to mention everything else, it was surprisingly high in that context. "You've been here awhile?"

It was a start to a conversation, at least. A fairly common and boring one, to be sure, but Wolfram had to stay cautious. His heart was still hurting, and he was very reluctant of the thought of letting anyone else in, even a little. But so far nothing bad had come of being around the twins, and maybe...

...Maybe he needed some new contacts. Maybe it'd help motivate him to work on getting out, and wanting to sleep less.

"About eight days so far," he admitted thoughtfully. "But it feels like a lifetime. Or at least a human lifetime."

...Oh. That part slipped out of habit. He inwardly cursed at himself, hoping he wouldn't be scaring any new potential allies away. It was bad enough he already had to deal with "old man" jokes almost constantly from his roommate.

Wait, what?

Okay, that wasn't in the script. Sam's eyebrows rose a bit, hoping his visible surprise would be enough to cover up whatever tension resulted on instinct from the realization that he was with something not exactly human.

There was a second or so of silence. "Human lifetime?" he asked finally, words careful, but still casual enough and pushing the curious edge through to avoid simply sounding as if he were suspicious. He didn't know what the hell could be going on here, but there was no point in shutting communication down.

Though he was just a little more baffled than he might've been under other circumstances. Because...what the hell was Wolfram first of all. He didn't seem like a demon. Demons didn't just slip up like that and Sam got the sense that the slip hadn't been on purpose. Unless he was seriously being played here, but he suspected probably not. Demons could be subtle if they put their minds to it, but they weren't this subtle, either. Which really left very little in terms of other options. There wasn't a lot out there that resembled a living human. Shapeshifter? Not likely. They were made to blend in; it wouldn't out itself in such a clumsy manner.

Then again, there was a goddess here in the guise of a teenage girl. The notion of second demigod wasn't...impossible, but it was still somewhat farfetched. Having even one of them here was odd enough. How did a demigod even get caught? There was a reason why they were gods, after all. His only explanation was that the goddess had chosen to be here on her own; that, though, only served to open up a whole new can of questions as to why.

Honestly, Sam wasn't sure what to make of anything anymore. It bothered him, on a certain level, how even the rules of the supernatural were starting to spiral out of his control in this place. He just—he needed patterns. Patterns, he could work with. It was the one thing he'd always fallen back on even under the most screwed up situations.

"Er, sorry..." Wolfram glanced back down at the table. His cheeks were obviously tinted pink, but he did the best to hide the blush from Sam. How embarrassing. "I don't mean it in a bad way... I like humans a lot now. You are one, right?"

Well, this late start off to the day wasn't turning out so great. Maybe he should just shut his mouth while he was ahead and just work on his fish. Which actually tasted rather good. Something about fried food was kind of nice in small portions, considering they never had such things in the castle.

"I'm just getting over being sick, so forgive me. It's... been a while since I've talked to anyone else here."

...All right, this was just weird. Sam took a moment to see if he could process some kind of sense out of this, but he came up empty. It wasn't Wolfram being inhuman that he couldn't believe; it was the way Wolfram was acting. It just—didn't fit. At all.

Still, exceptions weren't out of the question. Lenore and her nest, for instance. But that had really been an extremely rare case and they weren't...Wolfram seemed earnest to an almost naive degree, was the best way he could describe it. And that? That was bizarre. If there was one thing that all supernatural entities weren't, naive would be it.

Maybe it was better to stop thinking about it. See where this led him instead.

He shook his head. "No, it's okay. I just hadn't been—expecting that." He paused. "I don't mean to pry, but...can I maybe ask what you are?"

He opted out of confirming his humanity, deciding Wolfram could take his silence as an affirmative. Jesus, it wasn't really something he even knew how to answer for himself. Except in a way, he did know. He just. He didn't think about it anymore, that was all. There was no point. It wasn't as if he could somehow change it. And this was largely why he hadn't told Dean, why he probably never would if he could help it. It only solidified that he was different, more so than the psychic crap in and of itself ever did. It was one thing to have these powers seemingly happening to him, and another for all of it to have been an intrinsic part of him.

In short, it would freak Dean out. He would freak Dean out. Maybe he could take the former, but the latter was another story.

Well, Wolfram supposed he could have gotten a much worse outcome out of the mess he'd made of his introduction than surprise. He nodded quickly, finally having the courage to look directly at Sam again. After all, he couldn't let Sam think he was ashamed of what he was, right?

"Fair enough... I'm a Mazoku. Although humans where I'm from like to use the word demon, ugly as it is. Not that anyone here seems to know about us, anyways."

He bit at his lip in an almost unconscious nervousness. "But we're not all that different, honestly. Just... slightly better in some ways."

It was so nice to talk after remaining so quiet for so long. And he was still a bit tired and his head still hurt somewhat, but at the moment he could deal with it, and that in itself was something.

For a good second or two, Sam didn't know what to think. He was just plain lost.

God, and he'd thought things weren't making sense before. What the hell was this? There was yanking his chain, which he could've dealt with, but this wasn't yanking his chain. This was coming out of left field with a bunch of random information that evidently meant something to Wolfram, but only threw Sam off completely.

Because yeah, he could buy that Wolfram was a demon under any other circumstances, but this? The kid couldn't be possessed. Or if he was, he'd been possessed by a very strange demon. Frankly, demons hated him and he hated them. They didn't...sit and explain themselves to him. And they knew perfectly well who he was. His so-called role had never been a secret, not from them, and certainly not what had happened to Dean. Half the time, Sam considered a good day when he managed to send one of them back downstairs before it got the chance to bring his brother up.

Plus, the term mazoku really came out of nowhere. Mazoku were pretty prominent in Japanese folklore, but it was just the all-encompassing word for demons. It wasn't something specific. So why was it even being used here?

Christ. His head hurt.

Sam slid his cup of milk an inch to the right to center it with his plate, the movement almost unconscious as he tried to reconcile what he was being told here with what he knew to be the facts, and failed miserably.

Facts. Yes. Acquiring facts was always a good fallback plan. He could do that.

He cleared his throat, trying to keep too much of a reaction from showing. "Really?" He leaned forward a little. "Could you…maybe tell me more? I mean, if you don't mind."

Wolfram could tell that he'd probably confused Sam, but he wasn't sure how. Most likely he was one of those people from Earth that didn't know Mazoku was among them, if he had to guess. But then again, he wasn't freaking out about it the way Yuuri did when he found out the first time; not that Wolfram had been there the first time, but he'd heard about it easily enough, and he'd seen how Yuuri tended to overreact to such things...

...and he was going to stop thinking about Yuuri right now before he upset himself again in front of someone else.

He brushed his rebellious bangs out of his face, trying to figure out what to tell. "Well, I guess it's not like you can hunt me down for it or anything, or how much you'd believe me. But I'm from a different world altogether, connected to Earth through water. Things are very different from here. Humans have been afraid of us for thousands of years because we can use majutsu and live longer than them, so we have our very own country now."

"Is... that what you meant by more? Or did you want to know about me specifically?"

Because that would be a lot more dangerous territory on his emotions.

Huh.

Okay. Maybe he should simply...file this away for now. And not think about it just yet. Sam could talk to Dean about it later. Not that he figured Dean would be any less baffled, but it was still nice to have someone to be baffled with. Made him feel less like he was going insane all on his own.

Really, though, what Wolfram was describing sounded like something straight out of a stereotypical fantasy fiction scenario. Sam could believe a lot, but he still drew a line somewhere and this did sound a little. Well, ridiculous was maybe the word. Earth through water? Seriously? Was he gonna bring up unicorns next?

Still, something said Wolfram wasn't lying, either. Or if he was, he was doing an excellent job playing it straight which Sam kinda doubted given the way he'd flushed and gotten somewhat nervous earlier seemed genuine enough. This wasn't a bad thing necessarily, but it didn't help much in sorting crap out.

Sam shrugged a shoulder and shook his head a little, smiling just a bit. "Nah, it's—I was just curious in general. All that sounds pretty...out there."

He studied Wolfram for a moment or two. He had a hard time thinking of him as a demon even though he knew he should, considering Wolfram had basically told him as much. Logic and instincts weren't meshing properly at the moment.

"Did you want to tell me about yourself?" he asked simply.

"I might," Wolfram answered, nibbling at his fries. "But I don't know anything at all about you yet, either."

Lots of people seemed willing to listen to him, but it wasn't all that often he got information back in return that wasn't just small talk. Well... he supposed that's what this was. But still, it hadn't done him any good, nor had it gotten him any closer of getting out of here.

"Do you... know anyone else that's here? There was someone... very close to me, but he disappeared a couple days ago."

Right. Something about him. It didn't used to be too hard to tell people about himself even with all the omissions. I'm a student at Stanford. I'm studying pre-law. I'm taking a road trip.

I'm hunting the bitch that killed my brother.

Yeah, no.

Sam flicked his gaze up at Wolfram. He knew he would've...connected better if there wasn't the whole demon thing getting in the way, largely because he didn't know what that meant in this context. He wasn't so quick to label Wolfram evil since nothing at all suggested the boy was even close to being so, but then, he'd thought that about Jake and Ava, too.

It might cause him less of a migraine if he just dealt with this at face value. Scrap any preconceptions until something slotted into place.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "It must be pretty overwhelming, all of this."

Wolfram was the second person to date who'd personally told him that someone they were close to had disappeared. Disappeared, not killed, which begged the question as to why that was. For a place filled with spirits and all manner of the supernatural, the mortality rate was surprisingly low—he saw a lot of injured folks, but few deaths went reported. He was sure he would've heard about anyone dying from the other patients given they talked about every other little thing on that damn bulletin board. He knew Peter's brother was apparently brainwashed. Wolfram hadn't divulged enough for him to confirm for sure if the same thing had happened here. It could've, though, but the significance of the brainwashing escaped him. What was the point of it?

He shook off his thoughts, returning to Wolfram's question. "I do. I have a friend here. He was here before I was." That was their cover for now, anyway, though a couple of patients already knew otherwise. Sam didn't want it spreading any further than that; it was too easy to use Dean against him or vice versa. God knew the demons had exploited the fact that they were brothers every which way to hell and back.

He frowned a little in thought. "It's—I don't know how much this helps, but your friend, it's possible he might still be out there."

It wasn't much information at all, really. But it was something, and he hadn't been completely ignored. Wolfram could work with that as a start. He rubbed at the back of his neck, where his head was hurting a bit.

"It's not the funnest of times, no," he agreed. "Although sadly I'm starting to get used to it... I feel like I should be fighting harder sometimes, but it's just so... tiring."

He couldn't quite hide the pain on his face, but he attempted for Sam's sake. No wonder no one wanted to talk to him with the way he'd been constantly moping lately. He glanced around the room briefly before returning his gaze to Sam.

"I do think he's safe at home now." Or so he hoped. "I'm more worried about ever going back to him at this point. It doesn't help that this place makes your powers weaker."

That was something Sam could understand. You got to a certain point and it kind of just stopped mattering. And sometimes Sam wasn't sure if anything still mattered to him in actuality or if he'd just made it matter because it was either that or simply exist in a state of aimless apathy. Lesser of two evils, maybe.

"You're still here," he replied. "I think that's worth something."

Safe at home, though? Sam doubted that, but he wasn't going to burst Wolfram's bubble. Sometimes that bubble was what kept a person going at all and the truth was, eventually, it popped on its own, anyway.

What stood out more, though, was the mention of powers being weaker. Peter had told him about that, too, but Sam had no idea exactly how its limiting effects worked. If he left here, would the strain from using his powers lessen again? Was that why the headaches were returning? Or had the place somehow physically reverted the progress he'd made?

Still, it...did make him feel slightly better. If his abilities had been slipping on their own...it wasn't that he couldn't build up that strength again; it was just, he wasn't sure how he felt about the idea of his powers somehow falling out of his control once more.

Sam broke a fry in half and finally took a hesitant bite, waiting a second or two to see if anything was getting caught in his throat again. So far, so good. Maybe the coughing up of the hair had been an isolated incident? Or an indication of something worse to come later.

"Well, if there's a way in, there should be a way out." It was more complicated than that, obviously, but the theory was there. The possible existence of a way out wasn't the issue here, but whether or not they could even find it. "But...I hope you'll find your friend."

Well, his plate was mostly empty for once, and Wolfram still felt okay, so he'd consider that an improvement. And it didn't seem like Sam hated him or anything, even if he hadn't learned all that much.

"Do you think... that maybe we could talk again sometime?" It looked like a lot of the patients were starting to get ready to move onto the next activity, and he wasn't sure he had much time left.

Any further conversation was stopped short when a paper airplane landed in front of him, barely missing his head. He stared at it, looking in the direction it had came from, but couldn't pin it down to a particular person. And then the words "Open Me" on the outside caught his attention. He gave Sam a puzzled glance before unfolding the paper, glancing at the familiar writing inside... Aidou's. That was surprising.

"Apparently someone wants to talk to me after lunch," he explained. "Hmph... He could have just left a note like a normal person."

The question was a little unexpected. Most of the patients he spoke too seemed willing enough to converse for the time being, but stopped things there and frankly, that was fine with Sam. He wasn't looking to get close to anyone; that inevitably led to questions and there was too much he wasn't keen on answering.

But this worked out, too. He had more he wanted to know. A lot more. Wolfram threw a definite kink in things and he needed to figure out what it could mean, that there was apparently a demon who...wasn't really a demon at all and dammit, his list of crap to investigate was just growing longer and longer, wasn't it?

Either way, he was gonna want to talk to Wolfram again, so it was just as well that Wolfram was willing.

"Sure," he said. "Of course."

He was about to get up when a paper airplane landed in front of him. He quirked an eyebrow, but didn't comment, only nodded as he stood.

"Find me any time."

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Day 40: Lunch

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