damned_institute | Dayshift 22; First Shift; Sun Room

Entry tags:

Dayshift 22; First Shift; Sun Room

As always, Tamaki woke up in his bed. He didn't know how he got there, but he woke up still in the clutches of fear he last remembered from the night. The fight in the hallway, Ed and Adel, the thing...

He was out of bed immediately, determined to make sure his friends were alright. He listened to the man on the intercom, not liking the idea of some big surprise. He didn't imagine any surprises could be good. And he hoped his friends felt the same way...

When his nurse came to get him, he chose the Sun Room instead of the chapel. He wanted no part of whatever was going to happen. He only hoped that Ed and Adel had the same idea....

They probably didn't. Agitated and worried, Tamaki paced along the window, hands behind his back, and waited.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Barret's temper was seething, and he was close to visibly shaking to keep it under control. Yuffie's intentions were to hurt and piss him off, and the strangers' was just to make him angry. What he hated more than anything was a nobody trying to start shit with him.

They were close enough to hear him, and he rose his voice loud enough to not quite be considered a yell but close, "You ain't got no mother fuckin' idea what happened to me last night, so don't be goin' around actin' like you know shit. You don't know nothin'. Jus' like I don't know what the fuck happened to you. But what I do know is if this little ruby punk bitch you got sittin' beside you says or does one more God damned thing to annoy me I'm gonna pound his face in so raw the doctors here will be feedin' him through a tube in his neck--do you understand that?" He was in a wheelchair, that much was true. But that wouldn't be enough to hold him back in a moment.

His glare remained, even as he worked his wheelchair away from the pair, looking to Kiden, "Best we go talk elsewhere. I ain't in the mood to deal with that no more."

Yuffie didn't want to sit down. She didn't want to talk. She just wanted to leave this horrible place. She couldn't take being here. Zelos's attempts to comfort her were appreciated, but they just weren't enough to quell the anger she felt towards Barret's outburst. She didn't even care if her throat hurt anymore. Or if barret was rolling himself away.

"Just shut up, you jerk! Don't you dare even think about touching him! He was actually helping us when we were attacked, unlike someone I could name. Your stupid wheelchair be damned, if you had the energy to roll your stupid self over to the female ward and spend the night with some stupid woman, you could have at least tried to help us! You lie and say you're gonna rest, when you're really sneaking off for some nighttime action. Well, we all had plenty of action too, watching Aerith's friend get stabbed to death in the throat, so I hope you're happy!"

Yuffie was close to visibly shaking as well by the time she finished, bitter tears running down her cheeks. She rubbed at them furiously. She didn't want to cry. She was a ninja for crying out loud! Ninjas didn't cry. But she couldn't help it. She wasn't really mad at Barret, but something about knowing he'd been off in the woman's ward when he should have been either resting his wounds or helping them fight made her want to lash out at him. Did they suddenly not matter now that Barret had other people to hang out with at night?...

That's how it was. Kiden was listening and she processed it and ignored her kneejerk to punch the other girl and Zelos. Instead she chewed her lip as they went back and forth. They were all so unfair. It wasn't as though they could know anything without talking about it. Miscommunication was the worst. Which didn't help her instinct to punch someone, even if someone else had died... which brought her back down again.

"...Shut the fuck up." Kiden said darkly she stood beside Barret and shot Zelos and Yuffie a look. "I don't know anything 'bout any of you. But you're all so ready to hate on each other. Jump to conclusions much? If you really wanted to work somethin' out an' not just make people feel for you, you'd've said something. ... this place is hard enough to.. whatever, without going off on each other. An' you don't have to worry about Barret hittin' anyone, because I'll do it instead. If someone died... if someone did die... being angry isn't going to help anyone."

Kiden knew what it was like to be angry about death. That had been her defining feature for so long... but then she'd taken time out of life and pulled everything apart and put it back together again. She was tired of rage.

Today sucked.

He held onto Yuffie, who was still shaking from her outburst. He envied her for being able to be so honest about her feelings.

He was at a loss for what to say to Kiden. She had a point, of course. And it wasn't like this was the first time he'd had to deal with death - he really should have been used to it now. However, he happened to suck when it cam to dealing with emotions, and it didn't help that he felt fully responsible for Zack's death.

Not that he was going to say any of this to them.

"It's getting too crowded, don't you think?" he asked Yuffie, leading her away from Barret and Kiden. They were there first - if anyone was going to move, it should be them.

Some of the fire was taken right out of Barret with Yuffie's speech, but not all. Even though someone had died in front of her last night, a friend to a mutual friend, she still found it ok to act as though it were some how his fault. She was an immature kid, but that didn't make it all right, it didn't make him any less angry.

Kiden's words almost made him smile. The girl had some fire too, and she was spitting it at two complete strangers on his behalf. He could have handled it, but out of sheer appreciation he owed her. He patted her shoulder when she was through just before maneuvering his chair to face them again.

"Death ain't easy on nobody. I know that, even better than you do, Yuffie." The death of his friends, his entire town still haunted him, especially since he felt partially to blame for it all, "But I'll be damned if you blame me for somethin' I had no control over. What I did last night was my God damned business, and I'll at least tell you it wasn't cake and sprinkles. Someone I like almost died last night. I ain't gonna yell at you no more right now, 'cuz you already gonna regret what you jus' said. Keep in mind that Kiden is right...and we're all we got to move forward."

"Shuddup..." Yuffie muttered. Her throat was burning from all the shouting she'd done. She coughed a bit and rubbed at her bandaged neck, but it didn't make it feel any better. "What would you even know. I don't need some stupid lectures from either of you... Especially not from a stranger and some lying jerk."

She left it at that, allowing Zelos to lead her away. She didn't care if they said anything else. She wasn't going to listen to them, anyway. She didn't even know that other girl ~~what right did she have to be inserting her opinion anyway?~~ and Barret had already lied to her once when she was trying to be serious... No one ever took her seriously, anyway. Just because she was the only kid. She rubbed at her eyes again to make sure all the tears were gone. Ninjas didn't cry.

Kiden had turned away from as soon as she was done. Their reactions didn't matter to her, or that's what she thought anyway. If she got too wrapped up in what strangers thought about her she'd lose sight of her friends. Kiden was tired of losing sight of what was important.

"...sorry, I didn't mean to butt in..." She said to Barret and waved a hand, but she was sticking close to him now. Too much stress to deal with, people were too caught up in themselves. She'd learned that lesson well, and it wasn't fun. "...just... you know..." She trailed off lamely.

"You ain't gotta apologize to me," Barret assured her as he watched the pair walk off. What Yuffie had said stung a little for the simple fact that he had lied, but what was liable to happen that night was none of her business and still wasn't despite the fact that her guess was pretty much right on target. She'd cool down.

"You got some guts, saying somethin' like that to strangers. Yuffie, the girl, she from my world but...not from my time. She two years younger than I remember her..."

Kiden watched them too, mainly because Barret was. So, Zelos wasn't from their world, but Yuffie was. That would be... disorienting and Kiden wondered how it was possible. Then again, she'd spent three months lost while the rest of the world had only passed for a few weeks. That was more plausible than them all being from different worlds, for her.

"...It's not guts, I think I'm just stupid," Kiden replied with a small smile, but it was a bit damp. Someone had died, apparently. She thought back to last night with the nurses and the men and wondered if any of them had died.

"Sometimes guts and stupid go hand in hand," Barret replied, a thoughtful expression taking to his face. So it was one of Aeriths' friends. He almost wished he'd made an effort to pay more attention to her, since she was alive once more. It was like getting a second chance, but in surroundings not so hospitable.

He released a sigh he'd been repressing, "Just bad timing, bad circumstances. Don't beat yourself up about it. I guess this let's us both know we ain't here just to be scared or mentally fucked with. I'm assumin' whoever died, didn't die of natural causes, either."

She'd heard that before, somewhere. Kiden thought about Mrs. Palmer for a second, and wondered if they were all doing well. They would be, what with Bobby Soul looking after them. They had to be, because she was rather stuck.

"...the nurses could have done it. Or... anything else," She remembered the bugs to. For some reason the nurses were easier to deal with, less of a chance of not seeing them. She'd rather tangle with the nurses than a hoard of flesh eating bugs any day.

"Could be anything...last night me and one of the other patients were attacked by an overgrown cat," Barret shook his head sadly at the recollection of that. He really needed to find out if she was ok or not. He hadn't seen her in the Sun Room, which left a few options. He wasn't prepared to face the worst of them, "Then some rats came to pick off the dyin' cat and the two of us. When I first got here there was a gigantic fucker with a triangle for a head. Heh, no tellin' what else roams those halls at night."

"...sounds bad," Kiden said, trying to visualize these things. She gave up at the cat. It ended up being a rather bloated monstrosity in her mind. Not very nice, appealing and full if claws. "... probably things we don't want to know about."

"Maybe if we know, we'd be better prepared. Hell, I don't know..." Barret apparently didn't know a lot of things, like whose home he 'wrecked' after his meeting with Lust.

"Did ya find anything out last night? Any ways outta this shithole? God damn, I can't wait to be back on my feet again." He could get on his feet, but putting tension on the straining stitches and weight on his still throbbing knee, he avoided it.

"...not a lot. I ran into a girl named Namine and we went looking for her friends... but ..." She trailed off. They had never found the friends, either, instead they'd been attacked. Kiden shot him a faintly amused look, "...and, uh, well... the doctor's visit didn't work so well with me either."

Barret filled in the blank when she didn't She mentioned volatile nurses and figured their appearance occurred within that space. When she spoke of her doctors' visit, it immediately caused him to remember his own, and the sheer awkwardness of it all, "What did the nut job say to you?" he questioned with a slight frown.

She laughed a little, truly amused, if not a bit bitter about it. "...I think I pissed him off, he kicked me out," Kiden shrugged a bit, "...I failed at my own plan to get information out of him." Of course she could be a bit mouthy, so it wasn't that much of a surprise (half of her high school career had been spent in detention, after all).

Barret actually laughed at her confession. It was a fairly soft sound that didn't require most of his energy, though the strain on his middle was still clear as he placed a hand to the pain. He shook his head, eyes still amused when he looked at her, "God damn, didn't sound much better from how mine ended up. The Professor I had actually seemed concerned, like he almost believed I didn't belong here. When he left to question someone about it, he never came back. Some other shithead doctor came in his place and said he'd been detained. Tells me not all of the staff know what the hell is really going on."

"My doctor was a cancer specialist," Kiden pulled a face, partially because of his pained movement and partially because this was a mental institution, right? Why the cancer doctor? Or why the doctor anyway? They seemed far more interested in keeping up appearances than actually doing anything. Which was a bit worrisome.

"Cancer specialist?" Barret frowned at this information. As far as he knew, they were suppose to be suited for counseling and therapy. "Why in the hell would they assign a damned cancer specialist to a patient who supposedly needs therapy? Why am I even questionin' this? It's obvious we here for other reasons. We here for experimentation, that's what. Some sick experiment."

Kiden nodded with her own little frown. "... who knows. He certainly wasn't a shrink though. Just another quack," a shrug. She had no idea why, but it was true then, it was an experiment. Especially taking into account the brainwashing and the violence and monsters. "...None of this makes sense."

"They tryin' to confuse us, to scare us," Barret half muttered as his eyes made a sweep of the room, "More and more people come into this place everyday. There's a theory that they might want to use us as weapons, and during the night is when the tests are done." He shrugged slightly, beginning to look physically and mentally exhausted, "But we can't give in, no matter what."

"...it's working," She said quietly, not meaning to be a downer, but she was going to be truthful with him. She was scared and she was confused. Which didn't mean she was about to curl up and die either, but whatever game Landels was playing, she was losing it. "...I don't think I make a very good weapon." Kiden added with a small sour smile.

Barret didn't like to hear her confession to the negative aspect of her current attitude. It's not like he didn't understand--he was scared too. There was something about admitting it openly in a place like this is what set him on edge. He gave her a grim smile of comprehension, "They sure know what they're doin'. I think everyones' scared. This ain't something anyone would expect when they wake up in the morning. But we've at least gotta stay strong and not give 'em the satisfaction of wearin' us down. You can always come to me if you need something. I ain't gonna let 'em make us a weapon if I can help it."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dayshift 22; First Shift; Sun Room

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject