Day 44: Lunch

[mizuhomaiden.livejournal.com]

That had been a very frustrating shower. For many reasons. At least Raine was going to at least look at Forte. Hopefully, she'll actually heal him. The showers had also succeeded in making the ninja feel like a pervert. A mild one, but still... It was as if Yukari had picked that spot in the showers because she knew the ninja could easily see her.

Ugh! Damn youkai.

Squirreling herself away in a corner of the cafeteria, Sheena finger combed her wet hair before pulling it back with the bright red ribbon. She so needed her own hair ribbon back. She was attempting to formulate her plan of acquisition - she was ninja after all - as people started trickling into the room. The plan was put on pause, though, when her stomach rumbled.

Food now - plan later.

[Closed to Haseo and Endrance]

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[aleaderwillrise.livejournal.com]

Nathan saw the nurse moving towards him, too - but his reaction to her stalled when Peter came into view. He was kneeling on the floor, picking up Nathan's mess, looking fine, and wonderful, and very much alive. For a moment, Nathan was certain he was gawking at him.

What was this place doing to him? Killing Peter like that, taking him away from him and then just bringing him back in halfway through the day like nothing at all had happened? Would Peter remember? Or had it been something that was only meant for Nathan, some nightmare to break his spirit and keep him in line?

No, that was impossible. As impossible as raising the dead.

Slowly, Nathan stood, moving towards Peter. He grabbed the tray off the floor, kneeling beside his brother and offering the tray for Peter to put the collected food on.

"...Pete," he said, quietly, his eyes trained close on his younger brother. "Thought you were..." He trailed off, suddenly looking away.

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

It didn't take too long for his brother to make his way over, and Peter could already tell that the man had been totally broadsided by him showing up out of the blue like that. He focused on cleaning up the mess first, dumping all of the food back onto the tray that Nathan was now holding for him. Once that was all taken care of, he stood up with it and handed it off to the nurse.

She glanced warily at both of them, but he shot her a smile and then she decided to leave them be.

Finally, he turned back to Nathan and let out a sigh. "I'm sorry," he said, even though he knew himself that the whole spontaneous death thing had hardly been his fault.

"I tried to tell you over the bulletin," he reminded Nathan, "but you refused to listen." Then again, he couldn't judge his brother too much for that. When something that terrible happened, it would be hard to get your hopes up with the possibility that they could be crushed all over again.

But here he was with physical confirmation, and Peter sighed again as he wondered how many more times he was going to put Nathan through something like that. Twice was already more than enough. He started to lead the older man back to where he'd been sitting previously, figuring it would do both of them some good to sit down.

[aleaderwillrise.livejournal.com]

Nathan let Peter lead him back to his table, shakily taking his seat at the bench. He watched his younger brother carefully, not taking his eyes off of him, as if worried looking away would cause this hallucination to disappear. But it wasn't a hallucination - that much was obvious. For the second time since arriving here, Nathan felt a swell of relief crash over him and he exhaled, suddenly reaching for Peter's shoulder and squeezing it.

"It's not that," he said, sighing. "It's just... I didn't think..." He sighed. "Pete, I watched you die, and you weren't coming back. After what you said about Sylar being here, I thought..." He frowned. "I thought somebody was playing me."

He kept his eyes on Peter's, trying to keep himself in this moment and not think about the night before. He couldn't linger on those memories, not when he had Peter back, and Claire...

Nathan stopped suddenly. Claire.

"What about Claire?" he asked, suddenly. "Is she... have you seen her?"

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

Peter made sure not to pull away from Nathan's hand, though half of his mind was on the food that his brother had tossed to the floor. He hadn't eaten it, obviously, which also meant he might have skipped breakfast. Peter wanted to get Nathan a fresh plate of food, but he realized that would probably have to wait. He couldn't slip away from the older man so quickly.

Now that Nathan was explaining himself, it made a lot more sense. Leave it to Sylar to cause problems without actively doing anything. He found his earlier anger at the psycho resurfacing somewhat, and having Claire mentioned didn't really help him with controlling it.

"She's fine," he said, somewhat stiffly. "I mean, I didn't see her, but she responded to my post on the bulletin." He felt bad about not tracking her down all day, but they could probably make plans to meet up at night again. Hopefully they'd get a bit further this time, provided that they were allotted a normal night for once. Peter wasn't even asking for no monsters; he just didn't want zombie attacks and ghosts.

"We still need to get the two of you armed and also figure out where to go from there," he reminded Nathan. Peter realized that his brother probably wanted the whole story about what had gone on last night, but he figured it was worth attempting to distract him.

[aleaderwillrise.livejournal.com]

Eating was really the last thing on Nathan's mind. He hadn't eaten anything at all that day, but the thought itself had been unappetizing, and Nathan had been certain that anything he'd eaten would have come back up. Now, he was too focused on Peter and what Peter was saying to consider the food he'd just wasted or the fit he'd just thrown.

"Good," he answered. After seeing that Peter was alright, Nathan had logically assumed that Claire was, too, but he had to make sure. He wanted to ask what had happened, but Peter just barreled on ahead, taking control of the conversation. It almost surprised Nathan - he wasn't exactly used to Peter taking charge, and especially not of him. He'd been over this over and over in his head since he got here. It was natural - Peter had been here longer and knew more, and it would be silly for Nathan to try to lead their little group of three with the minimal knowledge he had. Why he kept bringing that up in his head was beyond him. Couldn't he be proud of Peter for finally taking control of something for once in his life?

Maybe that was being a little harsh. He'd just gotten Peter back (for the second time...). Couldn't he be a little more positive for a little while longer?

"Yeah... armed would be nice," Nathan murmured. "For the next time we're faced with something we can actually, you know, see." This seemed as good a time as any to bring it up to Peter, and he quickly segued into, "What the hell was that last night, anyway?"

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

For some reason, it was hard for Peter to even imagine Nathan carrying around a knife or a shovel or whatever else they ended up finding. He knew that his brother had been in the military, but that was so long ago, and he had been rather young at the time. None of his family had really wanted to explain it to him too much at the time, so he'd only grasped the possible danger his brother had been in once it was over with.

Now the danger they were all in was absolute, and while he knew that Nathan had to have some skill with defending himself, Peter was the one who was used to having powers and at least some amount of control over them. Nathan? Nathan could fly. And while Peter was glad to share his mutated genes with his brother, the fact of the matter was that flying wasn't very fearsome. Nathan was still the class valedictorian, the lawyer, the politician. Pairing him up with shoddy weapons seemed weird.

Of course, it wasn't any easier to imagine Claire running around attacking monsters, but he'd put a gun in the poor girl's hands once.

But somehow, Nathan had managed to drag the topic back into unwanted territory. Peter let out a sigh, but he knew that Nathan deserved to be told the whole story. "Well, the first thing -- what I saw. It was Simone, and she..." He glanced down toward his chest, his fingers pressing over the two spots where the bullets had been. "She had the gunshot wounds, from when she'd died." Been killed, rather.

Considering what had happened, he was pretty sure Nathan could fill in the blanks now that he'd been told that much.