damned_institute | Day 44: Arts and Crafts Room, 4th Shift

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Day 44: Arts and Crafts Room, 4th Shift

The day had been slow for L so far, slower than he required: the events of the previous night were traumatic, but they did not outweigh his need for information and a useful way in which to apply whatever he might learn.

When the nurse shepherded him from the cafeteria, through the Sun Room, and over towards the door of the Arts and Crafts Room, he experienced a small internal wince: this was the room where it had happened the night before. Unpleasant, yes, but likely to be irrelevant in terms of my own welfare, except in terms of what I can learn from it, he reminded himself.

He had the impression that he could avoid the room if he wanted to, but there were several convincing reasons to push past his reluctance: his meeting with Lunge was necessary, the opportunity to see the room in more usual circumstances might be valuable, and he did not want the staff to see that he had been affected. He wasn't sure how they were tied to the events of the previous night, but the buzz of information around the Institute suggested some kind of strong connection.

As he stepped into the room, feet feeling imprisoned in the slippers that the staff kept insisting that he wear, he avoided the area where he had collapsed. Instead, he turned to the right and proceeded as far into the room as he could, then left, then took a seat in the back corner.

If the nurses pressed him to be more creative, he would take up painting. However, he expected to express his creativity in other ways.

[For Lunge.]

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Dates, Wally decided, were an awesome way to kick back and relax. One that he should definitely do more often. Just spending a bit of time with Dahlia had really helped him relax a bit after everything else so far; so much so that he'd suddenly realised that he'd been a lot tenser than he'd thought.

It made sense though. What with what had happened to Bart and Bats, the zombies, people dying... just thinking about it a little was enough to start getting depressed again. It was no wonder just a little time to take his mind off things helped.

He wasn't sure at first if Arts and Crafts was really going to help with that one either, but when he spotted a familiar face he hadn't seen in a while, Wally figured maybe things wouldn't be so bad after all. A moment later and he had a sheet of paper, some paints, and one of the only tubs of glitter that hadn't been commandeered for weird bulletin posts and was at Peter's table.

"Hey, long time no see," he said cheerfully. "You mind if I join you?"

The voice was only vaguely familiar, but it took just one more pencil stroke to finish his current stick figure, and then Peter glanced up and immediately recognized the red hair. The guy with the crutches.

"Wally," he greeted, the name coming back to him easily. They had first talked in this very room, hadn't they? Man, had that really been a week ago? That was pretty depressing, even though Peter was glad to see that Wally had lasted so long. Funny, how a week counted for so much in this place.

Either way, the two of them had had a pretty good conversation the last time, and so Peter was glad to get another chance. "Go right ahead," he assured the other man, motioning for him to sit down. His eyes then settled on what he'd been drawing and he felt an irrational moment of self-consciousness. He tried to cover up the stick figures by leaning on the paper with his arm as casually as he could.

"So, how've you been? I know that's kind of a weird question to ask, but I haven't heard too much out of you..." That was probably because he'd been so busy with his own issues, but he didn't see any harm in catching up. Wally might not have any good news for him, but it was still the courteous thing to do.

Wally shrugged and let out a huge sigh as he dragged a chair out and flopped bodily into it.

"It's been kinda... You know," he said with a wry laugh. "Zombies, people dying. It's not like you can just say you're fine in a place like this."

He made a face as he spread out the piece of paper and started setting out the paints and glitter. "At least, not without lying through your teeth anyway."

Which he was sort of doing, he realised guiltily, by not mentioning some of the things that were really bugging him. But there was no way he was going to dump something like that on his friends when what they'd been through was worse. His own problems could wait a little while.

Realising he was staring pensively at the blank page, Wally plastered a huge smile on and said, "at least I can walk okay now though, right? So anyway, you been hanging in there okay?"

It wasn't like Peter had expected a very different answer. Even though he'd been trying to get away from that subject for the moment, it looked like everyone kept going back to it, himself included. It was pretty difficult to just ignore what had happened.

"Tell me about it," he said with a mirthless laugh. "I don't think most people bounce back from drying too easily." It actually wouldn't have been so bad if it had just been a conventional death, since Peter had experience with that, but the whole sympathy pain thing was way too much. He realized that one of his stick figures was meant to be Simone and subtly flipped the piece of paper over.

He realized that he should have never, ever gotten as close to her as he had.

Peter glanced up to see Wally's smile and it was actually enough to help his mood, if only slightly. "Yeah, I guess I've been managing... somehow. My brother showed up here again, which is actually a good thing." It would be easier to get home with Nathan if he didn't have to figure out how to un-brainwash him first, after all.

"Oh, and Claire is here again!" Peter remembered Wally mentioning that he'd been keeping an eye out for the girl on behalf of a friend, so he'd probably be glad to hear that news. However, depending on who the friend was, Claire might not even remember them...

"You got that too?" Wally asked, his smile giving way to a sympathetic look. "I was fine, but my date... I had no clue what was going on or what to do about it. It was pretty scary." Worse was how Chihaya hadn't seemed to realise she'd actually died then at all, she'd just assumed that she'd panicked him for nothing. How was he supposed to tell a sweet girl like that that he'd seen her die?

Last night's trauma aside (and when had he started dividing them up like that anyway?), at least Peter had had a better time of the last week.

"Your brother? Really? That's great, right?" At least Peter seemed happy about it, which was a good start. While Wally didn't really think anyone showing up here was great in theory, it helped a lot to have people you could count on around you. At least that's what he thought anyway.

The little smile Peter's news had brought widened at the next part too. "She is? Man, I should make a note for Zack or something, since he was pretty worried about her before. Kinda wish I'd known sooner, I coulda told him over breakfast. Still, better late than never, right?"

While Peter obviously felt bad for Wally and whatever he'd had to deal with last night, he did end up pausing when he realized that the redhead had said date. Did he mean that literally? Peter thought it was kind of strange that anyone would be getting involved in that way while stuck in a place like this, but he realized he probably couldn't judge too much. He knew that sometimes feelings for another person just crept up on you. That was what had happened with him and Simone, after all.

He clenched his jaw as he tried not to think too hard on that, but it was already a lost cause. He just needed to keep going with the conversation, that was all.

"Yeah, it is great. I had to see him as a visitor, so it's nice to have him back to normal again," Peter explained. He was pretty sure he hadn't mentioned that visit to Wally when they had first met, probably because he'd still been so shocked by the whole thing. He'd mainly spoken with Roland about it.

When Wally mentioned informing Claire's friend, Peter felt some wariness about it. Then again, Sylar already knew Claire was back, so even if he saw that kind of note on the board, it wasn't going to do him much good unless her room number was included or something like that. Wally didn't have kind of information, so it would probably be fine. "Yeah, you've got a point there. Oh, and did you have any luck with your problem from before? There was someone here who was from your future, right?"

"Your brother was one of the visitors here? Or at least someone who looked like him was?" Wally asked, eyebrows lifting. "Geez, that's harsh."

He'd thought things were weird when he'd gotten Not-GL turning up, but at least he'd seen through that pretty quick (he hadn't figured out who or what he really was, but he knew it wasn't GL), he couldn't imagine how much worse it would be if he hadn't.

"But still, at least he's here now, so that's something." Not much, considering this place, but something.

When Peter asked about 'someone from his future', it took Wally a minute to think what he was talking about. He didn't think there was anyone from his dimension, other than maybe...

Oh.

"Uh, more like sort of the other way around," he said awkwardly, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

That was the million-dollar question, wasn't it? Had it been Nathan, or someone who looked like him? Peter would have been less puzzled over it if it weren't for the different hair lengths. In the end, it was probably something that the institute could fudge, but that didn't make it any less weird.

Still, a bit of sympathy went a long way, and Peter ended up sending Wally a small, rueful smile in response. The visitor thing had been weighing on his shoulders for a long time, but most of that had disappeared when he'd met Nathan in Doyleton. Now it was just a matter of making sure that it didn't happen all over again.

Peter hadn't meant to confuse Wally or make him feel uncomfortable in any way, but it was easy to tell that he'd managed that somehow. He raised an eyebrow and then gave a shake of his head. "If it's not something you want to talk about, that's fine." There were probably plenty of other topics they could cover while they whiled the time away, right?

"Nah, it's fine," Wally answered with a quick smile. "It's just that, uh, I was the one from his future, which was why I was asking you what you thought. I think we figured things out okay in the end though."

Actually, Bats had been remarkably okay with that part. And in hindsight, it kind of felt unimportant after everything else that had happened. Still, he was glad that it hadn't made things difficult between them, they both had to work together if they wanted to get out of here after all.

Sighing to himself, Wally started tipping some of his paint onto the paper in front of him in random splotches. "I haven't done this since the last time I stopped by the orphanage back home," he remarked to Peter. "I kinda missed it."

He glanced over at the other man's page. He hadn't missed how he'd been trying to hide some of it earlier. "What're you working on anyway? Therapeutic sketches?"

"That's good to hear," Peter said with a ghost of a smile. It was hard to muster up a full one with how worn-down he was still feeling, but hopefully Wally wouldn't take it personally. "There's actually another person from my future here, so I know how you feel." Peter still wasn't quite sure what to make of Daphne, but she seemed decent from what he could tell. He just needed to keep feeling her out in order to decide whether or not she should be a part of their plans.

Peter raised an eyebrow when Wally mentioned that he'd gone visiting orphanages before ending up here. That was almost more saintly than the hospice work Peter had tossed himself into, except that you got to watch kids go off and become part of a family rather than picking up the pieces when people had to watch their loved ones die.

Considering he'd willingly put himself into that kind of profession, he would have thought he'd be more ready for the death he'd been exposed to here. But torture and senseless killing was just on a whole other level.

Wally's question jarred Peter from his thoughts, and his eyes trailed down to the piece of paper, which was still flipped over to show the blank side. "Just stick figures," he admitted. "I'm not much of an artist." It looked like Wally was definitely getting into the whole arts and crafts thing, though.

Wally shrugged. "I guess it's just another one of those fun activities at Landel's Institute," he joked. "Right up there with zombie field day."

Turning more serious now, he directed a searching look across at Peter. "But seriously, I know how weird that can be, at least from the other side of it. So if you ever wanna talk it out..." He trailed off, figuring Peter would get what he meant well enough.

He went quiet as the other man did, concentrating on splotching on a few more dabs of paint and only looking up when Peter spoke again. "Nothing wrong with that," he laughed. "I mean, I can't really do much either, but what I can do?"

With that, he folded the paper over, smushing the paint around and letting it mix before opening it up again and staring at it proudly. "Is butterflies!"

It would be nice to have someone to turn to if things ever got too confusing with Daphne. Peter really hadn't meant to unload on Wally now, but without his permission the words just started to spill out. "It's just that... I kind of have this tendency of finding out what's going to happen in the future and then doing my best to try and stop it." So it had only happened once so far, but with Daphne here he had already gotten more hints of what was to come. "I'm stuck between feeling like I need to find out what happens, to fix the things that went wrong, and wondering if it'll only make things worse..."

That was definitely what had happened with Isaac's painting of the explosion. He had stared at that image and the one of him flying and wondered what role he could play in preventing New York's destruction. Little had he known.

Peter glanced up and blinked at Wally's art, the smudged paint making a crude yet colorful butterfly. The corner of his mouth tugged upwards for a moment and he nodded. It was nice to see a painting that didn't predict any horrible future occurrences. "That's pretty good," he said, surprisingly honest.

[adfjl I fell asleep answering this, sorry Court! Dx]

Wow, ask a simple question, and it was like opening a flood gate. Not that Wally minded at all, but it meant Peter must have been sitting on this for a while.

"Man, do I ever know what that feels like," Wally remarked ruefully when Peter was done. "Just, like I said, from the other direction. I didn't know if I should tell the guy what was going to happen or not, even though I knew everything would turn out okay in the end. Same thing. What if me telling him made him do something that made everything worse? Things might have been able to turn out better, but then there's the flip side..."

He lifted his shoulders helplessly and carefully laid the painting flat. "But you know what he said?"

And here Wally looked up, making sure to meet Peter's eyes and smile reassuringly. "He said that considering how much had changed already just by us all being here, there was no guarantee what was going to happen. So basically, if you want to talk about it, it's probably not going to do any more damage than being kidnapped here already has."

He laughed. "I know it's probably not the best way to look at it, but it helped. You don't know what's going to happen or if finding out now or being here or whatever is going to change things for better or worse. And if you second guess it all the time, you'll end up doing nothing but feeling miserable. And we do enough of that already.

"Besides," he added with a lopsided grin, leaning back in his chair cockily. "The other part people don't think of is what if you're supposed to find out, and you make things worse by not?"

It looked like he was going to get a full-blown pep talk due to slipping like that. Peter didn't mind, of course, and made sure to listen closely as Wally explained his opinion in regards to this whole can of worms. If anything, it was nice to come across someone who seemed to have an idea of what he was going through, and hearing about it from the other end of things was also helpful.

When it came down to it, Peter knew that Wally had a good point. Landel's had more or less thrown a wrench into whatever plans they'd had, and part of him had to wonder if there was even much point in thinking about how to deal with things back home when he already had a full helping of problems in the here and now. But with someone like Daphne around, it was almost impossible to ignore.

Wally's final comments on the subject made Peter smile just slightly. It was a nice way to think about it, but he did have to wonder if that was sugarcoating it a bit. He would have been completely open to running with that train of thought if it weren't for the fact that playing with future possibilities had caused him to get burned once before.

Knowing that he needed to justify the fact that he didn't seem cheered up by all that, Peter sighed and brushed back his hair as he prepared to spill his guts. Maybe, just maybe, it would be helpful to get this off his chest.

"The thing is... I've had to deal with knowing the future once before. Back then I didn't really question it. I figured that we had clues for what was going to happen, so the logical conclusion was to try and stop it." It was at that point that he glanced away, his brow furrowing slightly as he remembered the way all of his powers had heated up inside of him. "It didn't turn out so well, though."

Wally sighed. "Yeah, I've been there before too," he said, leaning forward again to dip his fingers in some of the paint and start smearing it around on the page in a way that was probably going to end up with him having paint all over his hands by the end of the shift.

"Except when we tried it, it didn't turn out to happen the same way we thought and everything got messed up and then you're scrambling just to stop it from getting worse..."

He might have seemed like he was just rambling about his own, very vague, experience while smearing paint around the place, but Wally was also keeping an eye on Peter at the same time. Something told him that chances were good this would hit close to home for the guy, and sometimes that was all people needed to keep talking.

If Peter wanted to get technical about it, then things had still happened the way they'd been predicted to. There had still been an explosion, and while it hadn't leveled New York, it had happened. The really devastating part had been, obviously, that he'd been the whole problem. The ticking time bomb.

That was one thing he didn't have to worry about anymore, at least. Still, he wished he could at least be given the chance to really learn how to control all of those abilities. Maybe he didn't deserve it, but the thought of how much good he could do with all those powers...

"Yeah, I almost ended up screwing things up for everyone," he admitted, continuing to stay vague about it. He just couldn't get the words out, even to people who hadn't been involved. "I was lucky enough to get some help at the last minute, though." And he would never stop being grateful for that. He hoped that Nathan knew that.

"Hey," Wally said, looking up from project 'Get Paint Everywhere', "there's nothing wrong with getting some help if you need it, right? I mean, I've had my ass pulled out of the fire lots of times!"

Probably a few too many times, if he asked the League about it. Especially for things that they probably thought he shouldn't have needed the save for in the first place, but at least they were there to help, right?

He wondered how everyone was doing while he and Bats were gone. He'd have to have a serious chat with everyone if they all decided to go evil or something.

"But the important thing," he continued, picking up the container of glitter and scattering enough around to guarantee an even covering on the painting, himself, and Peter, "is that you didn't actually screw things up, right? I mean, you still found a way to stop it, didn't you?"

It wasn't so much that Peter minded getting help. The main problem was that he hadn't needed help for little things, but instead had gone to Nathan when his girlfriend had ended up dead, or when he was about to explode. His brother had told him before how he needed to grow up, and Peter knew that he couldn't keep relying on Nathan for things, especially such important things. The amount of stress that had to put on the man...

For that reason, he was kind of glad that he was the one in the know here. He had been leading Nathan around and explaining things to him, and while he imagined his brother thought it was weird, Peter found some comfort in it. He didn't have to be the one begging for help this time -- not that Nathan did that, but.

On the other hand, once Nathan got his footing here, Peter would defer to him if he decided to take charge with things. He was good at organizing people, and Peter wasn't going to deny that. That wouldn't be happening for a while, though. They were still working on the bare essentials with him.

He looked over at Wally and the abomination of glitter and paint he was creating, cracking a smile before he nodded. "That's true," he agreed. If he had killed all of those people... He couldn't even imagine it.

That was when the intercom came on, promptly cutting them off. Peter let out a sigh, though he wouldn't mind getting to check on Sam before the night came. "It was nice talking to you, Wally," he said as he stood from his seat.

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Day 44: Arts and Crafts Room, 4th Shift

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