damned_institute | Dayshift 42: Morning

Senna stepped off the bus to wind blowing through the clothes she was given. A sad face at one of the nurses allowed her a long red scarf as well, and once she had draped it around her neck and let it hang down her back, she had trotted off.

The park she had saw last time seemed a good place to be on the look-out for the chicks from last night. It was close to the buses, and a big enough place that if they remembered that they had a race date, it would suit its purpose. The girl ran to a place in the middle of the field and waited there, shifting her weight from side to side. After a while, this wasn't enough, and Senna traded back and forth between jogging in place and acrobatics--the easy flips and cartwheels keeping her warm.

Her mind had changed in the night before. She had gotten a taste of what leadership entailed, and she wasn't sure she had rose to the occasion or not. She knew she had tried her best, and had been willing to give as much as she had, but it hadn't been enough. She knew this. Hokuto, at least, had gotten hurt, and in the end, they still hadn't explored more than the schoolhouse. They really needed a different approach with that place.

She went back and forth internally, body going through the motions and reflexes of her movements.

[for... Falis, Hokuto, Meche, and Soma?--and down to here]

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"Yeah, I guess so," he agreed quietly. Peter knew that everyone was having a hard time here, but it wasn't like...fantastic, now it was back again. The littlest things were setting him off today, and now the half-eaten orange in his hand looked about as appetizing as roadkill. He forced another piece into his mouth regardless, wincing as he swallowed.

Watching the people in the park wasn't helping either. Just reminded him of when they were kids, playing tag or climbing trees. Harry always beat him at everything, but made sure to share when the ice cream truck rolled around to make up for it.

Peter ducked even further into the enormous hoodie. Conversation. Right. That had been working so far.

"Probably. I'd be...what, thirty?" he shook his head. "The time differences here are weird. A lot of my friends here either think I'm supposed to be older, or they don't remember me at all."

The mention of Napoleon snagged his attention. History wasn't his absolute favourite subject, but he wasn't getting honours for nothing. "Seriously? So then he didn't lose at Leipzig? Or did the army not mutiny on him or something? What about the World Wars? Hitler and all that - did they still happen?"

Suzaku frowned a bit at Peter. The boy seemed kind of -- sad? Suzaku wasn't sure, and he didn't want to jump to conclusions, especially because most people had a reason to be miserable here. Still, he didn't like seeing anyone else with that look in their eyes, the look he saw in the mirror so often. (When he could bear to look in the mirror.) So many times he had wished he could help everyone, but it was an impossibility, even he could recognize that. Just one more thing to regret.

"Ah. . . yeah. Someone I know from home came here from an earlier time than me. I suppose if it were early enough, someone might not recognize someone they knew at a later time. . ." He and Lelouch would have to be younger than ten for that to be the case, however. God, how could he know someone for so long and yet feel like he didn't know them at all?

Suzaku shook his head, bringing himself back to focus on the conversation. "Leipzig? I don't know, I don't remember hearing about that battle -- he won at Trafalgar, I think?" He really should know Britannian military history at the very least, being one of said military's top officers, but they probably just didn't like talking about their defeats very much. Speaking of which, World Wars? That sounded completely horrific. Weren't things bad enough already? "And no, I don't think so. There have been a lot of wars, some of them pretty big, but I don't know who you're talking about, so it might not be the same thing."

"Really? So they were just younger?" Peter asked. "Some of the people I know look different too. My friend -"

This was a bad topic to be on. A really, really bad one.

"- Kurt, he's younger but his face is kinda off too, you know? Like his nose is smaller. And Tony's shorter than he used to be. Neither of them remember meeting me at all. They have the same sort of memories, but not everything...not everything happened the same way, so it's kind of..." He trailed off. That was probably because there was more than one story about them. Like with books and the movies based on books - they were never identical. So was Harry the original Harry? Or did Peter come first? Harry seemed like he was from around the same time as he was, but he was older, so he had to have come before him. Unless they just made them all older the second time around for some reason.

He'd gone quiet again, hadn't he? Peter quirked a hasty smile at Suzaku in apology. "It's freaky to think that there might be another you walking around."

Technically there was, even before he got to Landel's. But Jessica and the others were clones and not from some alternate reality, so that was different. Somehow.

"Ha - geez. I want to say that you're lucky you missed them, but any war is a bad war. For all I know, you had it worse than we did." Peter shook his head. This wasn't exactly uplifting conversation either. What a little ray of sunshine he was.

"So what did you do back home? You're done with school and all that, right?" Suzaku seemed to switch between acting older and younger than he really was. He was polite, unusually so for a teenager (if he was a teenager), but then he went and started swinging his legs like he was ten years old again. His vocabulary flipped back and forth too. Made it hard to pin down an age on the guy.

[sorry I died; do you want to keep threading?]

"Really? You mean there are. . . different yous? Different versions of the people you know?" Suzaku stared at Peter, realization dawning. Was it really possible that there might be other realities where a different version of him existed? What if he could have lived his life with just a few things changed, what if some things could have been prevented? And what if -- what if Lelouch was actually from another dimension, too? Maybe there was enough similarity that they'd thought they were from the same universe, but things were slightly different. In which case everything Suzaku had told him might be wrong. He might not have to make the sacrifices he thought he did when they got back. This could lead to the most needless tragedy, and all because Suzaku hadn't thought far enough -- he had to tell Lelouch as soon as possible.

Suzaku welcomed the change of subject, however. He didn't want to talk about war, either. He might not want to imagine a war that was even worse, but the ones he'd lived through were terrible enough, especially when he thought that if he'd just lived in some alternate reality, things could have been different. Not that it would be possible to avoid the subject, probably. If they were talking about Suzaku's life, that is, because it mostly consisted of violence and little else.

"Well, actually, I only went to school for a little while, thanks to -- to a benefactor." Was it at all possible to avoid painful things? Suzaku suddenly remembered that he had never fulfilled Euphie's last wishes. What would she think, if she could see him now and know that he spent his time crushing armies instead of finishing his schooling? "I've been in the military for years, so that doesn't leave much room for things like that."

Dayshift 42: Morning - Magus Park

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