damned_institute | Day 45: Breakfast

Entry tags:

Day 45: Breakfast

Mori woke with a start. He lay on the bed for a moment, staring up at the ceiling and sighed quietly. Another day, another round of shifts and people and-- Wait a minute. Breathing in carefully, Mori's brow knit together as he realized that his ribs were no longer broken. After testing his collarbone, he found that it, too, was healing faster than it should have. Not that he was complaining, but there was something odd about broken bones setting so quickly. Pushing himself up out of bed, the teen shook his head, knowing that he'd have another day or two of the sling and then he'd be free from it.

But more important than that was finding out how Mitsukuni was doing. The last thing he remembered was the bathroom and gathering metal. Since they were together at the end of the night, Mori was certain that Mitsukuni would be fine, but...well, he still liked to confirm such things with his own eyes. With the twins gone and Tamaki still missing, Mori didn't want to take any chances anymore. Especially not with the strange announcements this morning.

As usual, his nurse came to collect him and helped him into his sling. Then he followed her quietly into the cafeteria, taking notice of the unusually empty bulletin board. They really were cracking down on it already. Weird. Even weirder? For once, he was the first into the room. Picking up a tray, he pointed out what he wanted, making sure to take double of the pancakes (asking to keep them away from the sausages for now), double of the strawberry jam and biscuits, and an extra helping of fruit. To top it off? Milk. It'd help his bones mend. Hopefully.

Going to a nearby seat, Mori took a look around the empty room and shivered. Kind of eerie in here without anyone else but the nurses. Someone was certain to come sooner or later though, right? He hoped so at least.

[for Chihaya]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Mm," Sean made a non-committal noise. He wanted to see his mother too. Not Angeline--the mother Artemis... his delusion had told him about, but his actual mother. But he'd never see her again. He'd wasted so much time trying to fix things on his own, if he'd just asked for help, maybe she and his father would still be alive.

He couldn't blame himself, though. According to his nurse, blaming himself probably only made him worse. Life happened, death happened. That was all there was to it. It's not like he could have done anything to save them, anyway.

"Oh, I don't know," Sean said, continuing to eat with much enthusiasm. Dang these pancakes were delicious. "I think it was a few days ago. Something Doctor Disraeli said just kind of... clicked, I guess. I'm still on my pills and stuff, but I'm definitely... I mean..."

He trailed off and frowned. "I know he isn't real. I know that the things I hear aren't real. I know I'm sick, and it's not my fault that I am, but it's my responsibility to get better. I have to not listen when he talks and not look at him when he's there--because it's just in my head."

Sean looked back up at Matthew and offered him a hopeful smile. "I'm sorry that it got between us. But... I hope that even though I'm me again, we can still be friends?"

One of the doctors, huh? Matt remembered when he'd gone in to see Dr. House. It hadn't lasted for very long and he hadn't felt like it had accomplished much. Apparently the rest of the staff had agreed, so he hadn't seen the inside of a doctor's office in weeks. He had to wonder if his recovery would have been faster if he'd kept up with therapy, but apparently he was finally heading in the proper direction.

It was pretty embarrassing, knowing that he was one of the patients who'd stayed here the longest. When was it going to be time to go home again? It was kind of ironic, actually -- he'd spent so much of his life wanting to be anywhere but home, and now he just wanted to find some semblance of normality.

He blinked over at Sean when he started talking about voices in his head and hearing things. Multiple personalities, then? Either way, it seemed like their disorders were somewhat different from each other's, but the important thing was that both of them were getting better.

"Yeah, I still have these thoughts that I know aren't healthy, but I've been doing my best to just ignore them," he agreed. "And of course we're still friends." The smile that went along with that was much milder than the grins he'd always produced as Sora. But still, that level of sunny behavior was just fake, wasn't it? It was in his case, anyway. Maybe other people could be like that and really mean it, but not him.

Sean seemed genuinely relieved by that. People liked Artemis--probably one of the reasons it was so hard to admit that his existence was a bad thing and that Sean shouldn't acknowledge him anymore--so coming back to himself was a little awkward. There was always the question of whether or not one of the friends he'd made while sick would still like him for who he actually was. And for the most part (Schuldig excluded) he liked the people he'd gotten to know here. Losing one of them would be terrible.

"I'm glad. I think the weirdest part of this whole thing is that... I mean, we all got to know each other while being different people. But maybe, deep down, our made-up selves and our real ones aren't so different?"

He hoped so, at least. Matt seemed really down--a complete 180 from Sora, it seemed. The nagging question of whether or not this was right started scratching at the back of his head again, but he dismissed it firmly again.

It was an interesting point that Sean brought up, and Matt dipped his head down to rest onto his open palm as he thought it over. Still, it was the fact that he felt so out of depth now that made it obvious how unlike Sora he really was. He wouldn't have had to make up all of that stuff about the Heartless and the different worlds if he didn't have issues with who he was in the first place.

"Maybe it's different from person to person," he said at length, since he didn't want to directly contradict what Sean was suggesting. That was one thing he held in common with Sora: he didn't exactly like conflict.

"I mean, I want to try and keep up with all of my friends here, so I guess that's one thing..." Maybe he wasn't as outgoing or amiable as Sora was, but Matt still cherished the bonds he'd made here, regardless of the context under which they'd been forged. It was good to see that Sean, at least, agreed with that.

"Of course," Sean said with a nod. "It's normal for things to be different for everyone else. I was just thinking that maybe everyone's other self came from a problem they have or had. I mean, some of us have become different people to hide."

Which was essentially what Sean had done. Artemis was a comfort when he felt like he was drowning. But once he'd gotten here, once he'd realized what was happening to him, Artemis was the one trying to hold him underwater. Figuratively speaking, since Artemis was an illness, not a person.

"And maybe, if we figured out what we were hiding from, we could be happier," he suggested with a small smile. "But that's just what I thought--not anything official or wise or anything," he said with a laugh.

"Anyway, I want to keep up with people here too. Were you thinking of writing letters once you get back? Maybe I could come visit!"

To hide? Maybe that was right. Matt felt more like he was running away from a life that didn't match up to what he'd always hoped for. He could see what the problems were, but that didn't mean that he could actually fix them himself. If he could, he wouldn't have ended up here in the first place, right? He wouldn't have decided that building a raft and setting out to sail on the wide open sea was a good idea.

It all seemed so childish and silly now, but he knew how easily he could lose his grasp on sanity and fall right back down under the surface, back into dreams and friends that felt so real, so close to his heart, and yet...

The only reality was in people like Sean, people who were right here with him. He had to stop longing for some 'Riku' and 'Kairi' who had never been there to start with.

Unwilling to talk about his issues as freely as Sean, Matt latched onto the mention of letters. That was a good idea, and something he could actually afford to do, unlike making trips. Although when Sean made that very offer, Matt couldn't help smiling more sincerely. "I'd really like that. Though I live all the way in Hawaii, so I dunno if you'd be able to go so far." It was tough, being so isolated... And yet he was going to have to accept that that was his life for now.

"No problem," Sean reassured Matt with a smile. "My family... we used to go on vacations all the time, so if we wanted to go to Hawaii the next time we got a chance, it wouldn't be that big of a deal."

Especially since the inheritance was rather large. The stock portfolio had been transferred over to Sean's grandparents, and it was still healthy and growing. They had assured Sean and his brothers that they had nothing to worry about and their lives would continue on in much the same way they had before--except without their parents, of course. Sean loved his grandparents, but they weren't the same--they never would be.

"I guess it would kind of be a long plane flight," Sean mused. "Since I'm from New York. But visiting you and seeing how great you're doing would be worth it, definitely!"

It sounded like Sean's life was totally different from Matt's, then. While he felt a stab of jealousy run through him, he still did try to find the silver lining. Even though Matt wished that he could have those kinds of luxuries himself, he realized that he had to play the hand he'd been dealt. At least Sean's good fortune meant that there might actually be a chance of them seeing each other once they'd left Landel's.

As sick as he was of Hawaii, people generally liked to visit it. That ensured that he might get more visits than if he lived somewhere in middle America, at least.

He smiled softly at the other boy; he was tempted to ask what plane flights were like, since he'd never been on one, but he was kind of embarrassed to even admit to that. Those weird gummi ships he'd made up obviously didn't count, either.

"I really hope you can, then," he said instead. "And what's New York like, anyway?" It quickly occurred to him that he'd always asked about other people's "worlds" when he was Sora, but this was different, right? The healthy, sane version of that was asking about the places people were really from.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Day 45: Breakfast

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject