Day 45: Breakfast

[mukuchi.livejournal.com]

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]

Comments

[ryuuzaki]

This should be a difficult subject; certainly, questions were raised by the fact that Howell seemed to know about something that Daniel had dreamed, and that he could not remember having told him about in the interim. He focused on the table between them, looking bemused, his lips pressed together.

As Daniel tried to concentrate on his memory of their previous conversation, a haze developed around it, obscuring the possibility of any obvious conclusion. Did Howell offer to show me how he could change his haircolor? If that was the case, it's possible that each of us happened to dream it, or that I never dreamed it at all, and have only misremembered his suggestion that he might make a demonstration of it. This seemed the most likely explanation, the most sensible one, even if the details continued to slip out of his grasp.

He realized that the "question" Howell had posed only had a single possible answer, and he raised his dark, troubled gaze to deliver it.

"I believe the part which I know to be sane," he began, then paused to take a deep breath.

"This Ryuuzaki business... it is a fantasy, one which has caused me a great deal of trouble over the years. Please understand... I agree that it is time to put it behind me. I do not want to fight it. I do not want to indulge my own self-deception anymore.

"Moving forward is the only possibility, Howell."

When Daniel spoke, it was in a gentler tone than might have been expected: he was irritated, but his resolve had been strengthened by the fact that it was challenged. Howell was not culpable for his own illness, or for Daniel's.

All in all, Daniel sounded satisfied with his own certainty.

[slipperymagic.livejournal.com]

Howl was not satisfied. He didn't want to give Ryuuzaki a single centimeter, because as soon as he did, it would be acknowledging that his version of things was truth. And yet, Howl realized that he had already given Ryuuzaki plenty of room to push his convictions. He wanted to excuse himself and walk away, but he didn't. It didn't feel right just abandoning him to whatever this fate entailed. Howl wondered if that was how Daniel was looking at him, with the same determined pity. Howl sighed.

"It isn't only a matter of moving up and down. Things would be a great deal easier if that was all there was to it," he disagreed in a clipped tone. Not angry, but scared. He desperately hoped it didn't show. Howl leaned in on his arm, and a curtain of hair obscured part of his face.

Life came at you from all angles, and the past never stayed behind you. It could just as easily be an argument for Howl's own insanity. It answered nobody's questions. Neither of them could come to an agreement, when their perspectives had become so skewed.

"If I am mad, where is my family?" he asked, suddenly oddly solemn. "They will not allow me to contact my sister, who's the only one who could have possibly sent me here. They will not acknowledge the dependents that were with me just before I arrived. I don't know what happened to any of them.

I don't deny that this place is... conceivable, but I'm not a stupid man, Ryuuzaki. Neither are you. The details are all wrong."

[ryuuzaki]

"I believe that all of your questions about the details can be explained by taking into account that this is a psychiatric facility. For example, your sister may have instructed the Institute to disallow any contact until there has been... palpable improvement in your condition."

He continued to speak in the same quiet, rational tone, sounding far more patient and self-assured than he felt. Doubting the existence of the "dependents," he didn't mention them at all.

"It isn't a matter of stupidity, Howell. I know that I am not stupid, and I can say that I do not have the impression that you are, either." He leaned forward over his abandoned tray to make his point, to underscore the vital nature of his words, but he never sounded fervent.

"It is a matter of recognizing and admitting that we need help, a matter of accepting what is true, rather than what we would like to be true. Apart from that, we have been given a chance to change -- to improve -- our lives, to live our own, rather than someone else's.

"You do not think that this is a chance worth taking?"

[slipperymagic.livejournal.com]

Howl sat back, both to pull away from Ryuuzaki's increased proximity, as well as to show his pride through his posture. His moment of honesty disappeared, covered quickly by a facade of self-assurance. He could not doubt. If he doubted, then this place would be victorious. (That was a moderately paranoid, insane thought, he involuntarily acknowledged.) It was not outside of the realm of magic to do this to a person. The human mind was complex, so specifically imprinting a new set of memories on Ryuuzaki would be difficult, but there was nothing out of the reach of a wizard or witch. Assuming, of course, that you had the power and the mind.

He placed his hands on the table and looked directly at Ryuuzaki, likewise faking his confidence, though possibly to a greater degree. If he showed doubt, Ryuuzaki would notice. He would latch onto it, and it would only exacerbate his... whatever this was. Oh, Howl was going to make sure Ryuuzaki knew precisely how little he appreciated this joke once he was back to himself. In order to facilitate this, Howl might have to actually do something about it. That thought made the whole situation even more inconvenient.

"It's nothing but an elaborate little lie," Howl scoffed. "Come now, you say that you've got the mind of a detective. Put it to use!" Howl's hands lifted off the table to make a sweeping gesture.

"Only two showers per week are allowed. Is that sanitary? No phone calls are allowed, when even prisoners are allowed a degree of outside communication." He leaned back in, and pointed towards the accumulated patient body in the cafeteria. "Patients are constantly waking up with bizarre injuries. Burns, bites, lacerations. Injuries that they could not have possibly inflicted upon themselves or one another, if this were indeed a mental health facility. It is a rather good reconstruction of a modern mental health facility," he admitted grudgingly, "but they don't care about the details. And why bother? It isn't as though we can escape. We're being toyed with, and you're part of it!"

[ryuuzaki]

For a long moment, Daniel continued to lean forward, staring intently at Howell. Everything about his searching gaze suggested that he was weighing the words that had been said to him.

We have not exerted ourselves enough to need more showers than we take; the place itself is quite clean, and showers present an obvious danger to the psychologically disturbed. The collective mental state of the patient body can also easily account for any injuries. Far from not caring about the details, a nurse has been present for every aspect of my experience here, apart from dinner and sleeping; I could call one now, to end this exchange.

It is a tiresome conversation, but I cannot force Howell to see reason.

The idea of casting a pleading glance at a nurse tempted him, but he made the decision not to. If his goal was to be a mature, functional adult, a member of society rather than an unwanted observer of certain elements of it, then it would be necessary for him to see this discussion through to its conclusion.

And he was determined to conclude it: to draw a line past which he was unwilling to indulge this kind of talk. He hoped he would be able to do it without losing his temper.

"Howell," he began, in his gentle, patient tone, "everything you have mentioned has the same obvious and intrinsic explanation: we are patients in a psychiatric hospital. We are not what I would describe as reliable witnesses. It seems that if we stay on this subject, we are only likely to continue to disagree, and to waste the remaining time in which we could be eating our breakfasts. I don't want to discuss it any more than we already have... not even this much.

"I only wanted you to understand the realization I have come to."

His voice dropped, and he began to look and sound drained, almost dejected. "Please... I can't continue to live under false pretenses. There are worse places than this, and I will stay as long as I have to, but... I would like to go home, and then I never want to find myself in this situation again." It was the truest thing he had said in weeks.

"In the meantime, neither of us has any choice in the matter. We will be here until we are well enough to leave." He made an uncomfortable little shrug, then lifted his cup of orange juice for a drink, which had the added benefit of hiding the lower half of his face.

[slipperymagic.livejournal.com]

Daniel seemed absolutely convinced of his story, and Howl's will to fight slipped away from him. It wasn't Daniel's stubbornness that was the worst, though; it was his patience. It was the way he spoke to Howl like he was a misguided child. It reminded him more of his parents than anything else.

He knew what he was and what he wanted, but it hardly mattered in the face of someone who had already decided for themselves. Howl was well-accustomed to that sort of attitude. Daniel saw a madman, and he refused to acknowledge any of the inconsistencies that surrounded them. Simply reminding Howl that he was insane collapsed his arguments like a house of cards. It was a pathetic sort of discussion where Howl could make no headway. And so, only several steps into it, he backed down with an annoyed scowl.

He hated arguing anyway. Howl sighed and rested his chin in his hand. His appetite was lost.

"You're right about having no choice," Howl muttered, but his sullen face and posture made it clear that he completely and utterly disagreed with the rest of Daniel's assessments.

"Where is your home anyway?" he asked, suddenly curious about how much Ryuuzaki had been inaccurate about.