damned_institute | Day 44: breakfast

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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]

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The sensation of going from half-dead to, well, not was unsettling, to say the least. Rey didn't know whether to be surprised or disappointed at the fact that he was still alive, and decided to settle for a combination of both. Either way, it looked like he had to deal with another day at the institute, whether he wanted to or not. Groggy, sore, and still fairly light-headed, he sat up, wincing in pain as he did. The wounds across his chest and mid-section weren't as severe as they could've been, but that didn't make it easy to move. Worse still was his left shoulder, as shifting his arm brought an overwhelming spike of pain, not that Rey had expected any different. He was only thankful that it wasn't his dominant arm.

It didn't take long for his nurse to come along, not even mentioning his injuries or his unexplained unconsciousness yesterday. Staying silent, he followed her to the cafeteria, even though it hurt to walk. He wasn't in the mood to hear excuses or how deluded he was, so he didn't bother questioning her.

After she gathered food onto a tray for him, he took it with his working hand, adjusting his grip to keep it balanced. There didn't seem to be too many people here yet, so he sat down at an empty table, staring at the food. Although he knew he should be eating, he just didn't have an appetite. Nearly being killed by a brainwashed patient and hearing a dead man's voice didn't exactly help in that regard. To be honest, the events of last night felt somewhat like a dream, but he knew very well that they were real.

[Free, no limit]

Morning usually brought relief for Junior, a reassurance that he'd made it through one more night and that there was still a chance of getting out with both brothers; this one brought none of it. The redhead just pulled the covers over his head and tried to block the images of last night from his mind. It proved almost impossible, since the more he tried not to think about it, the more vivid it became. The nurse had to practically lift him out of bed when she came to collect him, and he didn't have the energy to fight back. His shoulder still hurt like hell, and it was stiff and mostly immobile thanks to the bandages. If there was ever something to rely on...

A stop by the bulletin brought him part-way out of his sadness. It shouldn't have seemed so impossible, since this place could revive the dead, but he'd heard plenty in this place about people who died. They tended to stay that way, didn't they? But Nigredo was alive. Alive and, for whatever reason that didn't really matter, didn't seem to remember his own death, which Junior couldn't bring himself to explain. Not over the board, and not where that asshole was joking about it.

He followed obediently behind his nurse as she took him through the cafeteria line, chirping something about how french toast was part of what every growing boy needed. "I'm not hungry!" he protested, but she laughed it off, taking him over to a table and seating him across from another patient.

"Here, why don't you have breakfast with Richard? Maybe the company will help both of your appetites."

The nurse wandered off, and the redhead poked at his food with the fork before giving the man a half-hearted smile. "Hi."

Edited 2009-09-20 17:14 (UTC)

And of course, the nurses wouldn't ever let someone eat alone. While Rey wasn't completely opposed to the idea of talking to someone, his current mood wasn't exactly ideal for socializing. Still, he returned the boy's smile, even if he didn't entirely mean it.

"Morning," he replied. At least it wasn't all bad. He wanted to know what was going on with the intercom last night, having been too distracted to focus on it himself, so perhaps this person could help there. However, he figured it'd be a strange topic to suddenly bring up, so instead, he said:

"I take it the night wasn't kind to you either."

Junior glanced around the cafeteria and caught sight of his youngest brother, and sighed in relief. Even though he'd read that message when he'd woken up, the insinuations from someone else on the bulletin that he'd imagined it because he felt guilty had gotten to him. That reassurance taken care of, he turned his attention back to his table mate.

"Not one bit," came the response. The nights were never particularly kind, but this past one had definitely sucked pretty badly for the redhead. At least he knew he wasn't alone. "What happened to you?"

"I was attacked by a brainwashed patient," Rey answered. He made a mental note to avoid that room in the future, if he was planning to keep traveling alone at night. He had no desire to be stabbed again. "Would you mind if I asked the same of you?"

After all, he hadn't missed the sigh. While he wasn't genuinely curious, small talk was small talk, and who knew? It might lead somewhere useful.

"Ouch. I hope that went relatively okay. It's never fun," he commented, looking sympathetic. "Mostly a night full of family problems, for me, but that's par for the course." Getting shot wasn't, but that was less important to Junior. It'd heal with time, the wounds he'd inflicted on his twin and both brothers' suspicion would take longer to mend.

"I...thought one of them had died, but he seems fine now, so...man, I don't even know. There was some weird stuff going on last night anyway, so maybe it was just this place playing tricks."

"I'm alive, at least." Of course, whether that was a good thing for him or not was still debatable. What the redhead said next sparked his interest, though.

"What do you mean?" he asked, all the while being reminded of something strange that had happened near the end of the night--hearing Gil's voice. He'd blamed it on blood loss back then, but it seemed that might not have been the case, after all. Either way, Rey didn't want to jump to any conclusions just yet.

"That IRIS thing that was making the announcements yesterday. It's never shown up before now, and when it does, people start dying or seeing others die." That image of Nigredo's head blown open came to mind again as he spoke, and the redhead shuddered at the thought. He wasn't the only one it had happened to, if the bulletin was anything to go by.

"There's even talk of hearing things you shouldn't have. The last moments of people you knew." His voice caught for a moment, because that was something that he also knew first-hand, but there was still no telling what it was that had caused it. Thinking about the hows and the whys of the deaths was easier to handle than actually living through them, or reliving them, so Junior turned his attention back to that for the moment.

"Until now, no one's heard anything, much less said anything, about people being perfectly fine the morning after they die, far as I'm aware; so everyone having their memories in tact about the whole thing is kinda odd." Finally, he raised his hands in a sort of half-shrug. "They want to screw with us, and we know that already, but last night was different from the way they usually do it."

So it hadn't been blood loss, then. He supposed that, in a way, he'd been lucky, to have been able to blame it on that at that time. If he'd suddenly heard Gil's voice while walking down the hallway, he knew he'd likely have been far more shaken. And, to be honest, he'd rather be injured like how he was now rather than be traumatized, especially since the man's death had only been a few days ago.

"That's... interesting," he said, to put it nicely. He'd have to check out the bulletin board later for more details. "Was everyone affected?"

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Day 44: breakfast

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