damned_institute | Dayshift 43: Waiting Room / Lobby 2 [4th Shift]

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Dayshift 43: Waiting Room / Lobby 2 [4th Shift]

"Now you just have a seat and wait for your visitor like everyone else."

As the nurse went away from him, Kurogane huffed out some agitation but refused to have a seat. Hearing that he had a visitor had been one of the last things he'd expected. It was always the magician who got one, not him. And who the hell would want to visit him anyway?

During his first protests, the nurse had been telling him to behave since it wasn't nice to be sour to girls, so he knew it had to be a girl that was visiting. There were a few of those Kurogane knew could show up as a "visitor" for him, all of which were annoying. Some were worse than others too. He could probably handle if Sohma showed up, and maybe Amaterasu, but when it came to Tomoyo-hime... she was already hard to handle normally, no matter what world she came from. The Piffle version had been pretty much the same, just raised differently. If he saw her, even a fake her, she would probably be just the same and he'd have to at put up with it no matter what.

Eventually he chose to take a seat, knowing that he would not be leaving any time soon. Of course, he picked the one that was furthest into the corner to avoid unwanted conversations. He would already have to deal with a visitor; he shouldn't have to deal with anything more.

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A pretense at immediate recovery would've seemed a little too suspicious for her to pull that off, so Ayumu hadn't bothered. The best way to mask a lie was within a veneer of truth, after all, and fortunately she had the contents of her "file" to work with.

Unfortunately, she was lacking certain vital pieces of information in that file, and would have to guess about certain things. One of the most significant of those was the relationship between "Yuuko" and "Makoto" - was it as distant and strained as the one with her real brother? Or was it the one she'd always secretly wished they had, as she'd long refused to admit even to herself?

She caught herself there with an inward shake of her head, then gave a quiet laugh and a fond look in his direction. "What do I remember of you? I can't imagine I'd forget anything of that, considering that we were almost inseparable since you were born - and even more so in more recent years."

When in doubt, she had to keep up the false persona she was maintaining while here. That was all, and there was no more reason to act that way.

"You are keeping up with your kendo practice, right?" she added, with a suddenly concerned frown. "I wouldn't want you to let that slide, not when it was so important to...to everyone."

Her answer was vague, and it didn't assuage Makoto's paranoid suspicions in the slightest. His eyes remained narrowed. Then she went on to mention kendo of all things and he downright scowled. Kendo was where they'd met that man and everything had started to fall apart before they even realized it. Was it Julian Ikeda's fault that his sister now lived in a fantasy world? No, probably not. That didn't change the fact that he'd given her that dream to escape to. That illusion.

"Important to who? To me? To Uncle? I excel at more sports than just that one, and Hiroshi was the one that asked me to quit. I just couldn't participate anymore." If she considered it important to her, he couldn't help but think it was for all the wrong reasons.

"What's my favorite hobby?" he asked quickly, before she even had a chance to react to his previous response. "You remember that, don't you?"

No matter how long she kept up the silent mantra that this wasn't Susumu, it was Makoto the false pretender, it was still difficult to deny the evidence of her senses. And the similarities between his false life and the reality of her brother were enough that they were easy to translate, which meant that him quitting kendo registered much the same as Susumu telling her that he was going to give up his duties.

His attempt to verify that she was telling the truth she viewed as only a distraction, and lifted a hand in a curt, dismissive gesture. "Never mind that," she replied, some of the falsely cheerful persona falling away as her eyes narrowed. "It was important to our father, Makoto." She'd almost slipped there, almost called him by her brother's name, and the realization of that slip forced her to resume her control. "I don't see why you should give that up just because he asked you to."

Susumu wouldn't have given up just because she wasn't there.

Would he?

She had deliberately avoided the question! His sister was genuinely concerned over his decision to quit the kendo team, that much he could tell wasn't a lie. Still, Makoto couldn't stand the way she focused on that, especially in going so far as to purposefully avoid better confirmation of her memories.

Kendo wasn't that important in the grand scheme of things.

It.... it wasn't!

"Our father is dead." His bag fell to the floor with a thud and his fists clenched in his lap. "And he would have told me to do whatever I thought I was best suited for!"

Ayumu sighed, lifting a hand to tuck a lock of hair behind one ear as she looked away again. "He might have," she replied, for the sake of avoiding further argument. He wouldn't have, though. Not if this was really Susumu, who wouldn't have simply dropped something that mattered to him.

But for now, she had to regain her composure, go back to where she was before that last slip. Resume the lie until this was over. "I'm just worried about you, Makoto," she replied, eyes lowering to the floor. "This can't be easy for you, either, and I'm sorry. I wanted things to be as normal for you as possible, and...apparently that didn't work."

"You wanted things to be normal? Normal?" How was he even supposed to respond to that? If she'd wanted things to be normal, then why had she even begun believing in the nonsense that had her sent here? Such delusions were far beyond the realm of normal and they had to have started somewhere.

His teeth were clenched as tight as his fists now, and he gave her a look of utter disbelief. "And how, exactly, would working with the Shinsengumi have gotten me a 'normal life?' Don't try to feed me such bullshit." That was what he wanted, to be able to have things back the way they were before any of this mess, and it was painful to hear her say that when it felt like everything out of her mouth was only said to mollify him.

The words Makoto spoke weren't said by her real brother. They weren't even directed at her, but at the false "Yuuko" who supposedly lived in this time. They shouldn't have affected her at all, not if she were true to her training and self and didn't allow herself to be betrayed by such weaknesses as emotional attachment.

Shouldn't.

It was too soon after she'd been forced to confront those flaws, since she'd accepted the mission and resigned herself to what she knew would happen. And now she was confronted by this look-alike, and the longer she spoke with him the more difficult it became to maintain the distance, no matter how much she mentally raged at herself for being so weak.

Everything she'd done, she did for his sake. Even if he doubted it, even if he was angry for it, it had all been done to drive him to become stronger and better. And even with her gaze ostensibly averted Ayumu was still watching him, and couldn't help but read what went unsaid along with what he did say, hear the accusations he was throwing at her.

"All I wanted was to protect you," she replied quietly, voice flattened by emotion indefinable even to herself. She wasn't even certain just who she was speaking to at the moment, the words coming out almost against her will as her hands folded tightly in her lap. "I didn't care about anything else."

"Yeah... well..." Makoto fumbled for words. "You should have!" It became difficult to say anything else after that. His throat closed up at the sight of his sister apologizing, at the tone of her voice. He was angry with her, definitely, but he hadn't come to visit her with the goal of leaving her downtrodden

But what had he come for, really? Did he have some wild hope that he'd arrive and she'd be well on her way to getting better? Was she well on her way to getting better? Was he ignoring evidence of this for the sake of taking out the frustrations he kept bottled up around his uncle? Was he being unfair?

"You can't protect me here," he muttered. "If you really care about me, you'll come to your senses."

This was something that Ayumu had already been over, after she'd found those pictures in the box upstairs. She'd already thought it out and made her decision: her place was back in Kyoto. There was work to be done, responsibilities she couldn't simply abandon, no matter how tempting it might be to get a second chance of sorts, to have the relationship with her brother that she'd wished had been possible.

But this wasn't her brother. He couldn't be.

Or could it be, whispered a traitor voice in the back of her mind. If they could bring me here why not him?

Graduates of the program, the announcement had said. People who had been pulled from their rightful places in space and time, brought here only to lose the battle against whatever it was the Institute was trying to do to them.

And the voice whispered again, People who would never see a Battle of Toba-Fushimi.

Ayumu felt her hands twitch against her legs, unsure whether she was trying to reach out toward him or hold herself back, all the while struggling to maintain a composure that was fraying rapidly. She'd never had this much difficulty before, never in all the time she'd been working. Still, her voice was almost completely calm when she spoke again.

"I will get out of this place. No matter what it takes, I will return to you."

Maybe that was what he wanted to hear. She sounded so sincere that Makoto could only sit silently, arms crossed over his chest and eyes turned away from her, until he'd at least partly come to a decision on how to handle this. A hand reached out finally, slowly, and rested on top of one of her own.

His face was nearly blank. He wasn't frowning anymore and he forced himself not to show outright concern no matter how much he felt it. Yuuko needed to know that he was still disappointed, that he wasn't going to give in and forgive her so easily.

But he was glad that she was going to try and get better, as she might have been already - as she should have been this whole time. "I'll hold you to that."

It wasn't as though she hadn't noticed him reaching out toward her, but somehow Ayumu doubted that - well, he actually would. She halfway thought maybe she was imagining it, or if not, that he would change his mind and stop before making contact. After all, it wasn't as though affectionate gestures were the norm between herself and Susumu; she couldn't remember the last time she'd touched him at all when she wasn't bandaging an injury he'd taken or something along those lines, something necessary.

It only served to further emphasize the difference between Susumu and this Makoto. The difference of what could have been, if he'd led the life she would've wanted him to. The life that - no. She couldn't even consider that.

She managed to not stiffen when he touched her hand, though there was a momentary flicker of surprise visible as she glanced down. It could've just been surprise that he'd decided not to be that angry at her anymore, so perhaps he wouldn't think anything of it.

After half a second she moved her other hand to rest on his - lightly, as though she were afraid he might take offense at the gesture. "I don't break my promises," she replied, trying to tell herself that she was addressing her absent brother, back in Kyoto, and still not quite believing it herself. "I'll be home soon."

Makoto nodded to her once. He wasn't going to open his mouth again just yet and possibly say something he'd regret. She was too serious for him to believe it was all a front. If it was, he didn't know what he'd do. He'd have lost his sister completely at that point. So he sat in silence, trying to think of anything he could say that would bring this visit to a better close, have him leaving on a cheerful note, but nothing came to mind.

Eventually, he pulled away and just stood. He stared down at his sister and tried to smile but failed. Instead he shook his head and turned abruptly away, picking his bag up from the floor. "I'll see you," he muttered as he walked back off through the diminishing crowd of visitors.

It couldn't have even been an hour since she sat down in this room, and yet that bare handful of minutes had done far more to shake Ayumu's confidence and composure than anything she could recall -- ever, even before she'd been brought to this place. Finding the pictures in the box several nights past had been but a mere breeze of warning compared to the storm of emotion that raged within her now, leaving her sitting stiff-backed in the chair with hands clenched into white-knucled fists on her lap as she silently watched him leave.

Him. Whoever he was; she couldn't decide. Wasn't sure that she wanted to decide.

She snapped back to herself when a nurse arrived at her side, all worried frowns and concerned inquiries, and managed to force the tiniest of smiles. "I'm not feeling very well," she said, allowing a note of plaintive distress to touch her voice. At least she had that much control left to her, even if she was acting like the barest novice enough to shame any and all of her teachers.

The nurse seemed to accept it, though, and just helped her to her feet, leading her out of the room again while fussing over her like a clucking hen. It was almost time for dinner anyway, it seemed; she'd just return to her room a little early and get some rest (refusing the nurse's offer of something to "help her sleep," of course). Rest was what she needed right now, to attempt to piece her scattered thoughts back together into some semblance of order.

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Dayshift 43: Waiting Room / Lobby 2 [4th Shift]

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