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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[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/721658.html?thread=58957306#t58957306)]

Haine followed behind his nurse, not knowing what else to do. He stayed a good few feet away from her, of course, not wanting to be too close. He was still highly on edge, and he felt like his nerves were on fire. What the fuck was this? How had he gotten here? And more importantly, how was he going to get out? He could probably just attack the nurse and get out.

But then he'd have to touch her. So that wasn't something he was itching to do. There were people here, apparently crazy people, and he didn't really want to hurt them without reason. Starting with the nurse might trigger something he'd be unable to fully control. The risk wasn't worth it yet. For now, he'd just have to go along with it. There'd be a chance, and he'd take it.

The nurse piled French toast on his plate and handed it to him. He stared at her across the tray, but made no move to take it from her. Not only did he not want to touch her, he didn't want to eat. Who the hell knew what kind of shit they put in that food?

Her plastic smile faded a little and she gave him some crap about needing to eat. He finally reached out and took the very corner of the tray. She let go almost immediately, and the tray wobbled. He caught it before the food could be all over the floor, although it was tempting just to let it fall and see what happened. The nurse seemed not to notice, of course, and her smile returned. She pointed to a nearby table and Haine turned toward it. Maybe she'd leave him alone if he went and sat down.

"Oh, Alex, that's right!" she said, just as he turned away from her. He looked back over his shoulder and noticed she was holding something. His sunglasses! What, how had she...?

He turned far enough for her to set them on the tray, though he was only half listening to her explanation about how his eyes were sensitive. Yeah, whatever, sure, long as he had his sunglasses, he could deal with that.

He finally sat down, and put the sunglasses on his face. They dimmed the lights enough that he could make his eyes focus better, and hopefully he'd avoid the headache that could come from sitting around in bright lights. The nurse seemed to fade into the background somewhere. At least she was gone.

Haine relaxed very slightly and looked down at his food. He poked it with his fork, but he sure as hell didn't have any intention of actually eating. Not until he knew for sure that nothing funny was going on, anyway.

[free, limit one plz]

Kagura was feeling a lot better after last night, though from the dismal atmosphere at breakfast, she might've been one of the only ones. The messages on the intercom had been strange, but the doctor was back to his usual antics come morning. She sighed. At least Bridget had seemed to be in better spirits.

The nurse led her to breakfast and helped her along. She couldn't understand why they seemed to eat so much bacon and sausage here. It smelled pretty good, but it was hard to stomach. Couldn't they ever have a normal breakfast here?

After picking up her tray, the nurse led her to a table, intending to make her play nice with strangers again apparently. She gave her nurse a worried look, but sat shyly at the table. This one didn't seem friendly at all! He was even wearing sunglasses first thing in the morning indoors! It was like a huge blinking sign that said 'stay the hell away.' Kagura swallowed nervously.

"Ruth, this is Alex. He's new here, so please be nice to him and help him make some friends, alright?"

Kagura nodded and waited for the nurse to leave before even attempting eye contact. When she spoke, it was hardly more than a whisper. "I... a-ah... My name is Kagura actually. I um.... it's very nice to meet you."

Haine looked up abruptly from his food. His eyes were wide behind the sunglasses, and he felt that tension run through him again. This was the worst fucking luck, wasn't it? To have some girl come up to him and start talking. This was part of why he didn't like socializing in the first place.

Well, as long as she just sat there and didn't touch him, he could live with it.

It registered, a bit after the fact, that the nurse had called the girl "Ruth." So it wasn't just him, then? What was this, Landel's Institute for Bullshit Codenames? That didn't make any sense. What was wrong with their actual names?

Maybe that meant he wasn't the only sane person here.

...Okay, scratch that. He probably didn't qualify as sane, and even he knew that. But he didn't belong in some bogus mental ward, either. So maybe his situation wasn't as unique as he might have thought. That...wasn't really very comforting.

"Why'd they call you Ruth?" he asked, not actually introducing himself. His tone was mild, almost bored.

Kagura had trouble concentrating much on her meal. Meeting new people was scary enough, especially when the nurses just threw them into a conversation! She fidgeted nervously, worrying large wrinkles in her napkin. At least when this person spoke they didn't sound angry like some of the patients. And he wasn't trying really hard to be scary, like others. And he hadn't asked about her panties either. So maybe he wasn't all that bad. Still...

"They do that to everyone," Kagura said quietly, looking down at her tray. "They call us different names and... and tell us we're crazy, but.. but we're not. Not really." Some people certainly seemed like it though, but most were stuck in the same boat she was.

"I'm sorry."

Haine glanced down at her hands. What, he was making her nervous? Ha! The irony. Well, he wasn't going to hurt her, and yelling was too much like work. Besides, she hadn't really done anything to him, had she?

"So no one in here is a real patient, then?" he asked, carefully. He didn't know why she was apologizing. It wasn't like she was the guy behind the intercom message, or whatever. And hey, if she was, that was a neat fucking trick, wasn't it? Not to mention totally whacked.

He left that train of thought at the station and continued. "So how do we get out, then?"

She shook her head slowly, "I don't think so. No one that... that I've talked to at least." There were plenty of people who seemed pretty crazy, but Kagura wasn't about to mention that right away. Waking up in this place was bad enough already.

"Get out?" she repeated, chewing her lip for a moment. Last time they'd tried, Bridget had been hurt so badly and she'd wound up in that scary old broken-down town. Only to wind up right back where they started when she woke up.

"I don't know how. I tried... lots of times. But I don't know if we can. They always find us and bring us back."

Haine's expression hardened a little.

They always find us and bring us back.

He refused to look at the old memories. He refused to see what waited in the back of his mind. The images of that woman, the Underground, Lilly's lifeless body...

He shook his head, a little harder than he probably should have, and regarded the girl again. What was her name? Kagura. That was it. Not Lilly, not anyone he knew, just...some girl.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady, trying not to sound manic at all.

Had she upset him? Of course she probably had. Kagura couldn't help but wince a little. Anyone would be upset if they learned they were stuck here in this awful place and she hadn't exactly broken it to him gently. She really was no good at this sort of thing.

She almost apologized again, but stopped herself. She was going to turn into Ritsu at this rate. It might not be her fault that all this had happened, but she still felt sorry for the people who got dragged into it.

"Almost two weeks," she admitted, looking defeated as she said it. "I can... I can tell you what I know. It... isn't easy to hear, but... but it's probably better that you do." She looked down at the now-tattered napkin in her hands and set it to the side of her tray. "It can be really dangerous if you're not careful."

Two weeks wasn't that long. It was just possible no one had figured it out yet. Considering the amount of people in this room, that seemed pretty damn unlikely, but Haine was used to unlikely situations. He had no idea if the people here had any genetic modifications, but if he'd been brought here, maybe they all did? He couldn't really say for sure.

Oh, what, she wasn't done? So he was missing some information. He looked skeptical, but waved a hand.

"Yeah, lay it on me. I can handle dangerous," he said. Hell, he was probably just as dangerous as anything this little girl referred to, right? No use telling her that, but he knew it himself, so that was what mattered.

Maybe he just didn't believe her. It was possible. She didn't believe it herself sometimes. And if it was his first day, well...

"Well, I guess it's... that is..." she started, tripping over her own words for a second. "It seems like a... a normal enough place during the daytime. Except they call us the wrong names. That's not so bad, but at night..." she trailed off, looking worriedly down at her hands, now folded in her lap. Every now and again she chanced a glance up at the other man.

"At night they... well... the doors all unlock and we can leave our rooms, but... there's all these monsters and things that they let out too. People have been hurt... even killed. And no matter how far away we get, we wake up in our beds again the next morning. I don't... really understand it."

Haine felt something in the back of his brain, almost as if it was crawling there at the top of his spine.

Monsters.

Flashes of things he didn't want to see ran through his mind on fast-forward. It wasn't the first time, wouldn't be the last. He clenched his jaw and accepted it.

Was this the Underground? But then where was Giovanni gloating at him? Where was that fucking woman and her laughter? And how had he even gotten here? He'd been looking for a way back in on his terms, but the joke was apparently on him, wasn't it. Here he was, trapped, going to be pitted against monsters again.

He refused. He wouldn't let that happen. No more Lilly screaming, no more dead children.

"Fuck that," he said, though there was no sound of disbelief in his voice. The fact that they were still doing this was disgusting. And the girl in front of him didn't even look like she'd been genetically altered. What the hell was that about? Usually he could tell. So what were they playing at, here? And what was with the name change?

He looked straight at Kagura. "You got any idea how they got us down here?" he asked, choosing his words as carefully as he ever really bothered to.

It was really hard to tell what the man was thinking. The way he reacted made her wonder if he'd really heard her at all. Then he looked straight at her and Kagura found it difficult to maintain eye contact. At least he was wearing sunglasses.

"I wish I knew," she almost squeaked, deciding to busy herself with cutting the french toast into pieces. "You just sort of... black out at the end of the night. No one ever remembers how. Then when you wake up again it's the next day and you're back in your bed. I don't really remember how I got here. Just that... when I woke up, I was in a room and there was a nurse and... and those bigger male nurses."

She paused, looking guiltily at her toast, now in pieces on her plate, "I got mad and they stuck me with a needle. You have to ah... be really careful not to get too upset. They don't like that either."

Haine's mouth twitched. So it was just one thing after another, conspiracy on top of conspiracy. Sounded like the story of his life redone in technicolor and bad subtitles.

So the girl had no idea how to get out. Chances were she didn't know what caused the blackouts. Piss off the staff and you'd get drugged. Yeah, sounded about right.

Haine felt a little sick. You could say he just wasn't one for nostalgia.

"So they pit us against monsters, or what? Do they stand around and watch?" More likely, they hid behind their one-way glass and scribbled notes down. Bastards.

Something still didn't sit right, didn't feel right. He felt like he was missing some vital piece of the puzzle, here, but he had no idea what it was.

He figured he could go without knowing whatever it was, so long as he could find a way out of this. The sooner he found it, the better.

It was hard to know if the man was asking because he really wanted to know or because he just wanted to grumble about their situation. Either one sounded plausible. She hadn't really thought about whether or not the doctors or nurses were somehow watching them at night, but it made sense. How else would they know where everyone was at the end of the night?

"Well- I- I don't really know. I've only run into monsters a few times, but that was enough. They're... they're just awful. I don't think I've been watched, but..." she couldn't help but let her eyes drift up to the intercom speakers. "It... it's possible."

Haine sighed, a little irritated. She really didn't seem to know much about what was actually going on. Well that was fan-fucking-tastic, wasn't it? Trapped in the Underground, though they were calling it Landel's Institute. Well, a rotting corpse by any other name, or something like that.

They were probably being watched. Haine looked up, searching for cameras in the corners of the room. There wasn't anything glaringly obvious, but that probably just meant they were stealthier than that. He needed to get his guns back. They weren't necessary in a fight, but he liked them. Tearing shit up with his bare hands wasn't his favorite method, after all; he'd had enough of that to last a lifetime.

"So, what can you do that's so fucking special?" he asked, not seeming to care if it was rude or not. "Why'd they bring you here? Gotta be something."

With Kagura, it was always a fine line between various emotional explosions. Either she would take it like the weak little teenage girl she appeared to be and start sobbing into her napkin, or she would get angry instead, and break her plastic tray over someone's head. Luckily, she wasn't quite to that point just yet. She was still trying to get over the surprise of being asked what was special about her. She knew full well that there was one thing that was definitely unique, but it wasn't something she could tell just anyone! Imagine what Akito might do to her!

"I'm not special," Kagura insisted. It wasn't really lying. Being cursed didn't make you special. It just made you cursed. Besides, how did he know to jump to that specific question? Did he already know something she didn't?

"I- that's- I don't understand. Are... are you special?"

Haine laughed, a couple short, almost barking sounds. "Me? Nah," he said. It wasn't even a lie; he'd never been special. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was a monster.

Making monsters fight the monsters made sense, though. But this little girl? Sure, looks could be deceiving, but even if she'd been genetically altered in some way, not all alterations were like his. Surely not everyone could fight monsters, anyway. He hated to think of how Nill would fare against some big nasty monster, for instance. She just wasn't suited for that kind of thing. Chances were that Kagura wasn't, either, unless she was hiding something.

Then again, everyone was hiding something, weren't they?

He tilted his head and considered. He didn't talk about the thing in his spine, in his head. Never had. But he didn't want to let her think he'd just asked a question for no reason. Too bad he wasn't really one for considering.

In the end, he remained quiet.

Kagura didn't see why it was so funny, but maybe it was an okay question. Not one she would've jumped to, but if they were making people fight monsters all the time and doing experiments and things like that-

"Mm... w-well, I know there's some here who are. There's people here who can do all kinds of things." Hesitantly, she took a bite of her french toast. It was sweet, much too sweet for so early in the morning, but she swallowed it down anyway. Even if this place was gross sometimes, she was still pretty hungry.

"I... I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name," she added after a moment. She remembered giving hers, but if he'd answered, she couldn't remember it.

He watched her eat, but made no move to do the same. He didn't trust the food yet.

There's people here who can do all kinds of things. Probably other experiments, or people set to become experiments. The age of genetic alteration had passed, at least, outwardly. But there was still plenty of shit going on that people didn't see. This place was just one more like the one he'd been taken to as a child, wasn't it? Sure as hell seemed like it.

"Haine," he replied, as if it didn't matter at all what his name was.

Kagura had a difficult time enjoying the food in the first place, but when someone was watching her, well, it wasn't any easier, that was for sure. Maybe she'd think twice the next time the nurse asked her to befriend a new patient. She didn't seem to have much luck with it.

"Ah..." she replied quietly. She didn't try repeating the name. It was another foreign one and she wasn't sure she could say it quite right without messing it up. At least it wasn't as difficult as Trevelyan's had been to learn. That was a tongue twister.

"It... it's nice to meet you," she offered. "I'm sorry the circumstances are.... w-well... not the best."

Haine stared off at the wall. "Yeah, you too," he said, flatly. His mind was on other things.

He wondered where that asshole partner of his was. He still wondered why Giovanni wasn't laughing at him. Maybe he was, but it seemed more likely that Giovanni would come to gloat in person. That was more his style.

After a minute, he looked down at the food again. "You sure they're not drugging the food?"

When Haine turned away, she had to wonder if he thought she was just plain annoying. Everything about his body language said he didn't want to be there, but maybe she was reading too much into it. He could just as easily just be upset at the situation in general, she'd just lucked out and got to be the one to break it to him.

She let her own eyes wander a little. Where was Bridget? Had he come in yet? Their night had been quiet at least, so she didn't have to worry about him being in a bloody heap come morning. Hopefully.

"I- the food?" she turned back, looking at the soggy bit of toast, egg, and syrup on the end of her fork. Well, it was possible, she supposed. "Why would they do that?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Why not? If they want to keep everyone here, that might be an easy way." It might not be, of course. It was hard to say what kinds of drugs would actually affect people who had been genetically altered. Maybe nothing would. But these people had to have done their research, right? Otherwise, why have everyone here fighting monsters?

Treating it like a normal mental facility, though, that was the part that threw him. Why bother with the cover? No one really investigated the Underground; it was dangerous. People who got in over their heads ended up like Badou...or worse.

He thought about it, and decided that the chance of a drug working on him might not be high. He was just distrusting by nature. But really, what were they going to do to him that had never been done?

So he finally took a bite of the French toast. Enh. He'd had much worse to eat in his life than this, drugged or not.

Drugs could do a lot of things, but she had a hard time believing that they could track every last person down, let alone make them pass out at the exact same moment. That just didn't make sense.

All the same, it wasn't until Haine took a bite of his breakfast that she finally stuffed the soggy toast into her mouth. It didn't taste funny to her. No mediciney stuff. Just sweet syrup, and the eggy bread.

"I guess," she sighed. "It could be they put something in us before we ever woke up too. When I woke up, something was definitely- ah- well, most people say that there's a change in... in what they used to be able to do and... and how they are now."

Haine hadn't wanted to consider that possibility. Waking up different...

He put a hand on the back of his neck. It felt funny at first, though he couldn't quite say why. He dropped his hand almost immediately; drawing attention to that thing wasn't going to help anyone.

"What do you mean, a change? Like they can do new shit, or they can't do old shit?"

What would that mean for him? How could he possibly be altered more than he already had been? That wasn't something he ever wanted to think about.

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