Day 44: Arts and Crafts Room, 4th Shift

[ryuuzaki]

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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[slipperymagic.livejournal.com]

Howl swept into the room as if there was nothing wrong. As if he had not found a dead body in this room, then proceeded to nearly killed himself, and finally watched someone spontaneously bleed out on the floor. His gait was slightly more stiff, and he was fussing with his clothing and hair with greater frequency, but his face was passive and calm. He spared a glance at the door, which was clean and unmarked, despite the fact that he had drawn all over it the night before.

He sighed, long and suffering, and chose a table just as a nurse attempted to pick a spot and a conversation partner for him. It wouldn't have mattered if she had directed him or not; Howl simply didn't like the decision being made for him. But now he found himself at a table alongside a younger man with light hair, which made him faintly jealous. However, this man's hair was extremely pale. Far beyond blond.

"Not the creative sort, I take it?" Howl asked him, feeling obligated to say something. The silence surrounding this man was a bit oppressive. Howl himself had accepted several sheets of paper and a crayon, which he began to use to outline the workings of a spell. The more complex the magic, the better. Simply for practice, of course. Howl would throw himself to the monsters if he ever forgot his education, which he might very well with disuse. Howl did his best to hide the beginnings of his work, as he suspected magical gibberish was not an acceptable art form to the staff.

[winged_moon]

And now he had company. The only good thing about that fact was that the man had chosen to sit there himself, rather than be forced by the staff members to join him because he "needed a friend" or some such. He didn't. Not at all. And he'd much prefer to be sitting in the Sun Room and keeping an eye out for Sakura, since he hadn't seen her all day.

Yue's gaze slid slowly from the far wall over toward the stranger sitting with him, annoyed expression deepening into a frown. He seemed content enough to play with the art supplies, but when the guardian started to look away again - something gave him pause. It wasn't magic as he knew it, but there was still a sense of power about the man, though uncomfortably foreign as most magic seemed to be here.

It was only after he'd been essentially staring at Howl for several minutes with eyes slightly narrowed that Yue finally deigned to answer the question with a curt, "No." Although now that the stranger had his interest, he was starting to feel curious about just what he was scribbling there. Likely not an effort at art.

[slipperymagic.livejournal.com]

During those silent minutes, Howl had assumed that the other intended to ignore him. Howl, in turn, had intended to sulk about being ignored. But when the white-haired man spoke, Howl looked back up from his work with mild surprise. The fact that Yue had said anything at all at least indicated some desire to hold a conversation.

"Strange," Howl mused, glancing over at the very unusual man. There was something about his stare that made Howl feel cold and uncomfortable. "You look as though you might have been." He then shook his head faintly, as if to say never mind, and smoothly tucked some loose strands of dark hair back behind his ear.

"Forced art hardly seems like true art anyway," he complained mildly, pausing to tap the writing instrument on the brightly colored paper. What undignified tools! "I'm not a creative soul myself, but if I were, I certainly wouldn't be able to work under these circumstances."

[winged_moon]

He looked like he might be the "creative type"? Yue's frown only grew slightly more pronounced at that, as he tried to decide just what that remark was supposed to mean, but he finally breathed a faint sigh and mentally shrugged it off. It wasn't worth being annoyed over, if it had been some kind of insult, and if not...well, then it simply didn't make sense. He looked like himself.

"I would think the materials given would make it just as difficult as the circumstances," he observed, with a small nod toward the man's hand. His mouth twisted in a slight grimace for a moment as he took in the materials provided for their use, then added, "Unless you've a mind to create great works of art using children's toys."

[slipperymagic.livejournal.com]

"It's really quite appalling," Howl agreed sullenly. He flicked the crayon out of his fingers and watched it roll across the tabletop in lazy spirals. "But not surprising, considering that I haven't been treated as an adult since I woke up in this atrocious place. Of course we would be given supplies fit only for a six year old. They make every dismal attempt at therapy into an insult. It's a very unconvincing masquerade when you look at the details."

Howl surveyed his work as he complained. It was far messier than even he had come to expect from himself. Borderline incomprehensibility in his handwriting typically gave him a degree of privacy, but this was ridiculous. The symbols and numbers were clear in some places, but Howl wasn't convinced he'd actually be able to read his own writing in the morning. The crayon made his already hieroglyphic-like script clumsy, blocky and sky blue. It appeared as though a child had done the work, and as soon as Howl realized that, he reached out to crumple the paper and discard it.

[winged_moon]

Yue made a not-terribly-subtle attempt to read the page when he had the chance, but decided that either the man was writing in a language with which he wasn't familiar, or it really was an attempt at art. Either way, not terribly interesting, though even a lackluster attempt at conversation would be better than staring at the wall for--

No, wait. That wasn't right, not at all. He didn't mind staring at the wall in silence rather than deal with.... Yue sighed inwardly, eyes closing for a moment in reflection of his annoyance when he realized just where the thought had come from. Yukito. He glanced at the man again, with a slight, not entirely intentional, edge to his voice as he spoke.

"And how long has it been since you woke up here?" It couldn't have been too long, else Yue was certain he would've noticed him before. Crippled his abilities might be here, he still remembered an aura once he'd sensed it. Or so he was quite certain; it was true at home, and he hadn't had much opportunity to test that particular limitation here.

[slipperymagic.livejournal.com]

Howl noticed Yue's eyes trying to search the page for answers, and he threw it away quickly. Howl was of two minds about the matter, and those sides immediately went to war with one another. Until finally, a compromise was made. It was a dance he always had to go through with himself if he wanted to accomplish anything. Howl sighed at himself and pulled a second sheet in front of him. Reluctantly he began to draw out a miniaturized version of a very simple magic circle, which he didn't try nearly as hard to protect from prying eyes.

"Not long," he responded vaguely over his new drawing. Howl knew he had arrived yesterday morning, and that he had blacked out the evening before that, but he didn't share details. There wasn't even a particular reason for keeping the secret.

"My name is Howl Pendragon, by the way." Howl looked up with a sunny smile. He was still glad to have his favorite name back. Now that he wasn't feeling nearly so sedated, he wanted to see whether or not this man could independently peg him as a wizard. "And you?"

[winged_moon]

"Yue." He returned Howl's smile with a rather dubious look, one brow slightly upraised. "A relative of King Arthur's, are you?" Although with the range of people he'd met in this place, it was entirely possible that it was true, so perhaps he shouldn't be so disbelieving. He still would be, of course, but he had to keep in mind that the possibility was there.

What the man was drawing, however, was far more interesting than any potential claims to a mythological royal lineage. Though it was far, far simpler than the circles Clow favored, much less Sakura's, it still did seem to be one. A confirmation of what he had sensed, then, he supposed - but it seemed deliberate enough that he was meant to see it.

The guardian breathed out in what wasn't quite a sigh and unfolded his arms, reaching out for a paper and a crayon of his own. After giving the crayon a look of mild disgust (it had sparkles in it) he began carefully sketching out an approximation of Clow's circle, as though just idly doodling.

[slipperymagic.livejournal.com]

"Just a name, I'm afraid," he murmured distractedly. Howl's eyes were focused on Yue's circle. Curiosity was as plain as day on his face, and he didn't even make the barest of attempts to hide it. He was too busy analyzing the measurements and the mathematics of the growing sketch, but it was strangely unfamiliar. If nothing else, it was not a circle he had ever seen, even though he was able to make out individual elements. Frustratingly enough, Howl couldn't guess at its purpose with any certainty, at least not while it was unfinished.

"You had to outdo me, didn't you?" he mused, eyes still alight with interest. "What do you use this one for?"

[winged_moon]

Yue carefully added the last character on the outer edge (air - one of his elements, and a constant reminder of his inability to control it as he should), completing the circle that was as familiar to him as his own name. "I don't," he replied, with a decided stress on the pronoun, answering the literal interpretation of the question rather than what Howl was actually asking.

He flicked the crayon away from himself, letting it roll across the table without a care for where it ended up, and turned the paper so that the man could see what he had drawn. It would've looked far better even with one of the pens they'd allowed him to have, but of course he'd left those back in his room.

The question Howl had asked, though, implied a need to use a particular circle according to the application, which - well, that wasn't the way the magicians he knew worked, which could perhaps explain why what he sensed from Howl felt so strange. Except that didn't quite seem to fit, even still. "This was the signature of the magician who..." A brief pause, then, "The magician, Clow Reed."