damned_institute | Day 44: breakfast

Entry tags:

Day 44: breakfast

Yuffie had died.

No, really. Seriously. She had actually died. Bleeding all over the place, making a horrid, sticky mess and scaring the hell out of Suzaku; she remembered it clearly. Kind of. Sort of. Through the blood loss, the pain, and the visions. Through Aerith's voice whispering in her ear, Cloud's stricken eyes, and her own panic. As bad nights went, it had been Bad, capital B and all the trimmings, and oh, god. She sat, trembling on the edge of her bed, eyes closed and hands pressed hard over her racing heart. The by-play between Landel—Landel!—and Lydia barely even sunk in. There was nothing in the whole world, any world, that could prepare you for something like…

Had it all been some kind of hallucination?

Had she imagined the whole thing?

No… She didn't think so. Nightmarish or not, Yuffie knew reality. But if it had been real, how was she alive now? That kind of pain wasn't something you could just cook up, was it? She thought about it all the way to the cafeteria, drifting behind her nurse without focus or intent. Maybe if she tried to stay clinical, tried to step back… But she'd never been good at that when things got personal. And every time she closed her eyes or blinked, she swore that the scenes played back to her, like an overused commercial on a crappy channel on a crappy TV, in a run-down dump of an inn that smelled like mothballs and yesterday's breakfast.

The scent of blood and damp, rotted wood clogged her nose. Disgusted, Yuffie shoved her bowl of cereal—handed to her by a clucking Plucky—off to the side so that she could melt into her chair, palm heels scrubbing against her eyes. Too much. This was… Too much. She couldn't even paste a plastic smile on her face to make herself feel better. Her usual shield, the white noise of inane babble that could filter out almost any crisis, was in tatters all around her. Five minutes, she gave herself.

Five minutes (not) to think, five minutes to get her act together, because there was no way she could let herself shatter here. No way…

[Closed to Sheena]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Loz groaned as he awoke. What had happened last night? He had died, hadn't he? Was it all just a dream? He hoped it had all been just a dream. But, it had seemed so real.

The Remnant was almost zombie-like as he was taken to the cafeteria and given some breakfast. Loz didn't really feel like eating, but his nurse insisted he must be hungry, so he just took a bite out of some toast so she'd go away.

He tried thinking to himself, It was just a dream, just a dream... It had to have been a dream. But still...

[unwittingly waiting Digimon glompings]

Beelzemon had to work so hard not to punch the nurse that woke him up. She was just so happy and smiling and just didn't get it that he was pissed off because he'd just watched a fried die last night and he hadn't been able to do anything about it!

He followed her to the cafeteria, just trying to keep from yelling or crying or something. Then the nurse was saying something about a friend of his and pointing and--

"LOZ!" He completely forgot about the nurse, running at his friend and giving him something in between a tackle and a hug. "You're okay!" How was he okay? What the hell had happened to make him okay?! That didn't really matter because Loz was okay!!

"I-- Just don' do that again, okay?"

Loz barely had time to look up when his friend practically tackled him. The action made him yelp in surprise and drop his toast.

He recovered fairly quickly, though, and hugged back. After last night, he needed this.

But then a thought came to him. If Beelzemon was this happy to see him, did that mean...?

"Last night, I think I dreamt that... did it really happen?"

"Yeah! We fought that costume guy an' then we left an' then... You just disappeared. Like yer data came apart or something." He had no idea what had actually happened, but it had un-happened so it didn't matter.

So it hadn't just been a dream. But, just how had it happened? And did that mean it would happen again tonight? Loz didn't want to think about that.

"I was reliving Kadaj's death... like it had happened to me instead of him." He started to sniff, but did his best to hold back the tears. He was going to cry again.

"Oh." Man, that sounded terrible. And--yep, Loz was gonna cry again. "Hey, 's okay, right? I mean, someone said yer brother's here, an' last night was weird anyway, 'cause Renamon didn' tell me about anythin' like that goin' on." And Renamon wouldn't miss anything, especially not something big like that.

"'m just glad you're back."

Loz wiped his eyes. "Yeah. I hope what happened last night never happens again." He didn't think he'd be able to handle it again.

He shifted his upper body slightly so he could face Beelzemon more directly, but he winced when slight pain shot through his chest. Loz looked down into the collar of his shirt, seeing the bruises he'd gotten last night from that costumed man. Okay, that was proof that last night had definately happened.

"Yeah, me too." He finally let go of Loz when he saw the wince. He'd sort of forgot they'd both gotten hit, even though his head still hurt. "...Was pretty fun 'till things got bad, though. Even with gettin' beat up."

Loz managed to smile at his friend. "Yeah, that was pretty fun." He hadn't played that good since he played with Big Brother's friend. What was her name again? Loz couldn't quite remember.

Beelzemon grinned a little sheepishly. "I think they got a new message board 'cause of us." He felt the sore spot on the back of his head. That hadn't exactly been his best moment ever.

"Really?" Loz gave an amused little smile. "Guess they had an extra or something." It was the only logical reason he could think of for having a new board. "How long do you think it'll be until they fix the ceiling?" He still couldn't help but wonder exactly how that had happened.

"Guess so." Why would anyone keep a spare giant heavy bulletin board around? "I dunno. I didn't look. Usually it'd be easy ta see with this," he pointed to the tattoo of his third eye, "But I don' have that, so I keep fergetting to look up. An' I was worried 'bout you!"

"Oh, okay," Loz replied to the first part of the statement. To the second part, about being worried, he said, "Thanks pal."

For a second, Loz wondered what it was like to have three eyes, then his thoughts went to another question. "Did Alex ever show up?"

"If I hadn' been worried, it woulda been just wrong!" It would've meant he was going nuts again and he didn't ever want that to happen again.

"Nah, didn' see him. Maybe he got held up or somethin'." There might have been more people like costume guy around, or those monsters Renamon had talked about.

"Well, I know I'd feel the same way if it had been you," Loz replied. He didn't want to be stuck in this place with no friends. Especially since he hadn't found Kadaj yet.

"Probably," The Remnant agreed. "Maybe he got lost. This place is pretty huge, and everything's so dark at night."

"Thanks, buddy," he said, giving Loz a lopsided grin. "Yeah, he could've. Prolly wouldn' help that if he asked fer directions, no one'd be able ta figure out what he was sayin'." He'd seen some of the stuff Alex had written on the board, and he couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"Yeah, he talks real funny," Loz agreed. "I could hardly understand a word he said when I talked to him. Only word I was able to really figure out was 'droog', which I think means friend."

"I couldn' figure out any of it. ...'n that's a funny word. Wonder why he talks like that." He had his own weird way of talking sometimes, but at least people could figure out what he meant. He sort of thought that was the whole point of saying something in the first place.

Loz shrugged. "Dunno." Of course, most big words confused the Remnant, but it was pretty nice to know that Alex's words didn't confuse just him.

Loz looked back down at his food and decided that he did feel like eating now. Talking to Beelzemon had cheered him up a little. He cut a little square of the 'french toast' off and popped it into his mouth with his fork. It was sweet and delicious.

"Never ate anything like this in my world," Loz mumbled in between bites.

"Huh? Oh right. I didn' get any food yet. ...Be right back." He'd been too busy being overjoyed that his friend was still alive and all.

He went up to where they kept all the food and got... well, lots. Digimon weren't exactly known for being light eaters. He returned to the table and sat down, trying his food. He actually remembered about knives and forks this time. "Hey, this is good!" he managed to get out around a mouthful of french toast, then started working on making the rest of the food disappear as quickly as possible.

"Mm-hm," Loz agreed, his mouth too full to say anything properly. He wolfed down his french toast, though not as quickly as Beelzemon. The Digimon was eating as if he'd been starved for days, but Loz didn't really mind.

Once he was finished with that, the Remnant started on his eggs. "I hate this place, but at least the food's good."

"Yeah, it does." Not as good as that bread that he'd, uh, gotten Guilmon to give him when he was Impmon, but still really good anyway.

And it was gone now. Eating that fast sort of hurt. "I don' think humans can eat as much as Digimon." Weird. It wasn't really like Digimon needed food to begin with, at least not in the Digital World. He hadn't really noticed if it was different in the Real World.

Loz paused in the middle of eating his eggs to look at Beelzemon curiously, "Digimon have to eat more? Why?" Everytime he thought he had Digimon figured out, Beelzemon would say something else about them that Loz didn't know.

"We don' have to, we jus' like to. Stuff in the Digital World is all about what ya think you need, most of the time. Like, if ya don' think ya need air when you're swimming, you can talk an' won' drown." That could take some getting used to, especially when you got to the Real World.

Loz tilted his head to the side, a bit confused, but trying to understand. "So, you can just think of something there and it'll come true?" If that was true, then Loz really wanted to visit, and maybe even live in, the Digital World.

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

no subject