damned_institute | Nightshift 22: M21

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Nightshift 22: M21 - M30 Hallway

Xemnas' plan to get information from his roommate turned out to be a failure, as his roommate didn't even show up. Instead, he decided to gather information by investigating the room he was in. He had stumbled on various items which were quite out of place for an institute such as this. Journals and pens, he could understand. But a flashlight? Or a radio?

Xemnas suspected this institute wasn't as it seemed to be. It was rather unfortunate that none of his subordinates could explain the details before they were escorted back to their respective rooms. Xemnas had hoped he could receive information from his roommate, but that too had failed.

The Superior's suspicions were confirmed as soon as he heard the announcement over the intercom. The way this man spoke was quite enough to confirm anything. A complete contrast from the announcements during the day. Such a happy facade they held up, but for who?

He noted the hallway was completely shrouded in darkness. Surely, other doors must've been unlocked as well, but he didn't hear a sound. Not even footsteps. Just his own breathing.

Confirming there weren't any direct threats, Xemnas carefully stepped out in the hallway, closing the door quietly behind him.

[ Wondering off to here ]

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((From here. (http://community.livejournal.com/landels_damned/78135.html) ))

Every step was agony. Adelheid knew that his feet were severely burned from where the lightning had shot out of them and into the ground, and further that every burn on his body throbbed in agony. He wished he could remember where Edgeworth's new room was, but even then he wasn't sure if Nick would have retreated there instead of... somewhere else.

Therefore, he went with a certain thing; he knew that Nick hadn't taken his medkit with him, and that was what he truly needed. Besides... he didn't want the older man to see him like this. He didn't want anyone to see him like this, so wounded and pathetic, but that was the risk he would have to take. Hopefully the stench of ozone and burnt flesh clinging to him wouldn't attract more monsters...

...and then he saw Suou Tamaki coming towards him, almost robotic and without a flashlight, and for a moment he had to wonder if he wasn't hallucinating. Surely no one would be that idiotic, would they? No, wait; he was talking about Suou Tamaki. Such things might be possible.

"Tamaki-san," he whispered, forcing the pain out of his mind and voice, "what do you think you're doing? Where is your flashlight? For that matter, where is everyone else?" He stepped forward, right in Tamaki's way; he wasn't going to let his friend suffer as Adelheid himself had.

Upon being addressed, Tamaki faltered to a halt. He looked at Adelheid with empty, blank eyes. This was not the Suou Tamaki that anyone would recognize.

"Why do you even care?" he asked, his voice as listless as his eyes and his movements. He recognized Adel, but not as his friend. Those sorts of things just didn't matter o him then and there. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Stop pretending you care, it isn't worth it."

There wasn't any anger or accusation in his voice when he spoke. There was nothing - no emotion, no inflection. He as broken and defeated, for the time being.

No... something was definitely wrong with Tamaki. Adelheid didn't need to know how the Institute worked to know that this was the case, and even further he knew that such a dramatic change had to have been supernatural in origin. Nothing else could explain the vacant expression in those blue eyes.

It still stung to hear Tamaki so doubtful of his intentions, when it had been the boy himself who had claimed Adelheid as a friend, but... Adel would still do the right thing. "Perhaps not; I am not worthy of being called anyone's friend, not as a 'merchant of death' as I am now... but neither can I simply allow you to walk through the halls alone. If something could defeat me, you would be no match for them."

After a moment's consideration, he wrapped his left arm around the boy's shoulders and started shepherding him back the way he came, searching for the flashlight that had to have been left behind. "Besides," he softly added, "as I told you before, you honestly would not be able to understand. Please accept this."

Tamaki made no protests when Adel began ushering him back the way he'd came. The flashlight was abandoned on the floor, laying where the boy had been attacked by he phantasm.

"It doesn't matter if I die or not," Tamaki said, blankly, at the mention of him being possibly harmed or worse. "It would probably be better. I'm not worth anything, I don't matter any. It wouldn't make any difference to anyone."

Those were the only thoughts that Tamaki's mind could offer. That he was nothing, everything was nothing. He couldn't escape from this place, he couldn't help anyone, he was useless and hopeless. Why should he bother with anything?

He didn't even take note of Adel's wounds or exhaustion - something he normally would have been fussing and fretting over something feirce. Those didn't matter, either.

Adel left Tamaki alone only long enough to scoop up the flashlight, pressing the thing into the other blond's hands. "Hold onto this," he muttered, figuring that if the boy had no reason to hold on, he also wouldn't have a reason to not hold on to it. It was worth a shot, anyway, as Adel himself was running out of hands.

But then Tamaki said that it didn't matter whether he died or not, and Adelheid started moving him again, looking for some room they could duck into. Which one was his again? The numbers were blurring from fatigue, and he couldn't think as clearly as he should have been able to... nor did he notice that his blood, from his torn palms, was staining Tamaki's own arm.

"You're worth more than you know, Suou Tamaki-san." Adelheid had offered his own blood in place of the boy's own, after all. Even if they were from worlds that were utterly dissimilar, Adel still would protect this boy from the harsher facts of life, for as long as he could. It was nice, thinking that someone else could believe in the beautiful dream instead of the terrible reality. "And it would make a great deal of difference whether you lived or died. Perhaps you yourself do not yet realize this, but that is the simple truth."

"It wouldn't make any difference at all," Tamaki said, limply holding onto the flashlight without paying much attention. "Nothing really makes any difference, when you think about it. What we do or don't do, what we say, if we live or die... it's nothing in the great scheme of things. We're all worthless and meaningless. It isn't even worth it to try and escape - we won't be able to do it."

He shook his head, shoulders slumped forward and steps slow. "We should just all give up. It would be much easier. And no one cares about me. I cause trouble and make people upset, and I can't help or protect anyone. Everyone turns away when I do something they don't like, and everyone else just teases me. So really, people wouldn't care if I lived or died or just disappeared. And if I did, I wouldn't be around to cause problems anymore."

"I hate to say this when you are in such a condition, but you are wrong, Tamaki-san. One person can change the entire flow of history, whether for good or ill; one person can even frustrate the plans of gods and demons... and for those of us who are directly effected, it can last for a lifetime, or even beyond that."

Adelheid sighed, his arm straining to keep his friend upright and moving, not sure how much to say or how to say it. He wasn't good at this, this wasn't what he was trained to do... how pathetic, that he couldn't even keep his friend from plummeting into such despair. "Perhaps you can't protect people, but you can create. Tamaki-san, you can bring smiles to others and you have already lightened the atmosphere of this place. You... don't realize how important that is, do you? How rare a gift it is that you possess? I, with all of my money and power, can't do the same."

A short, harsh laugh. "And neither can I protect myself, let alone anyone else. In that case, you with your talents are far better off than me with mine. In time, perhaps, you'll understand this."

"I'm not in a condition," Tamaki said, shrugging. "I just realized how useless everything is. How useless everything is. All I've ever done is cause problems, ever since I was born. I wasn't even supposed to be born, I was just an accident." He shook his head, even that dismissing movement lacking any force behind it.

He couldn't muster up anything. A small part of him tried, but nothing made it through the blanket of apathy left by the phantasm.

"I don't really make people happy. Sooner or later I do something wrong. I upset you today, and I upset Ed, and I think I got him in trouble with his friends. I upset my friends from back home, I upset Elena, I upset Azel... no one really wants me around. And even if I do make people happy, it doesn't last so it doesn't matter. You wouldn't really care if something happened to me tonight. Or any other night. Neither would anybody else. You don't have to try and make me feel any better."

He looked up at Adel, his normally blue sparkling eyes so empty and dead.

Adelheid was silent for a long time, not saying anything nor moving, just... quiet. Thinking. Listening. This person needed him, Tamaki was unable to protect himself from himself or from the wider world. Once more, then, Adelheid was able to shake off his own pain and suffering on behalf of someone else, someone weaker who needed him.

"Tamaki-san," he finally said after that moment passed, "what do you mean when you say that you were an 'accident'?"

His crimson eyes were distant, looking into the blackness ahead of them as though remembering something again, something that he often didn't bring to mind nor try to recall. "Perhaps you do some things wrong, but when you do you do your best to make things better, and neither do your efforts mean nothing. You may say that it doesn't last, but even the slightest warm memory can make the night seem less dark."

Another pause, and then he quietly whispered, "And at least no one has perished for your mistakes."

Tamaki only shrugged again, for now not caring what he said about himself. He couldn't bring himself to. He didn't talk much about his life or how he came to be the heir of the Suou family, because it was personal and it didn't mean much of anything anyway. And he didn't want people feeling badly for him. but right now, he didn't care about any of that.

"My father had an arranged marriage to a woman he didn't like much. He met my mother in France and fell in love with her. He saw her behind my grandmother's and his wife's back, in France. And she got pregnant and my grandmother found out and it caused problems for everyone. My father wasn't allowed to divorce his wife for my mother, or to see us. So I ruined both my parent's lives. If it wasn't for me, none of that would have happened. And maybe my mother wouldn't have gotten sick..."

It was his fault for everything, really. He could see it so clearly now! He truly was worthless.

"That isn't how it works. It's nice to think, but it isn't true." He shook his head once more. And his blank eyes found Adel's once more and he lifted one shoulder. "People have gotten hurt. Haruhi got hurt badly, and she almost... and it was my fault. Because I was stupid and useless and made a mistake. Like I always do. But it doesn't matter.

"I'm just a half-blooded bastard brat, and I'd be better off just giving up."

"Do you... truly believe this, Tamaki-san?" Another derisive shake of the head at that; if that was true for Tamaki, then it was true for Adelheid, as well. And as it wasn't true for Adel... then he wouldn't let the boy think that such an event was true. "Or would it not rather be more correct to say that your father is to blame for creating such a troublesome arrangement?"

At the same time, he let the spear fall to the ground as he grabbed Tamaki by the shoulders, fighting down the wince as he gazed into those vacant blue eyes. "Until you are personally responsible for the deaths of those who are only doing the right thing, until the time when your friends are betrayed by you personally and there is nothing you can do about it, then you may believe that you are worthless or that it would be better to give up."

A shiver passed through Adelheid's frame as he heard that last sentence, it hitting the boy close to a pain that he always felt, and yet he spoke on. "Unless you asked for such a bloodline, then you are not constrained by it. Rather, I find it admirable that you have become as you are, even despite such circumstances."

"It's the truth."

Tamaki was like a rag doll when Adel grabbed him, completely unresisting. His head fell forward and he stood there, hands at his side, utterly defeated.

"I did betray my friends. And I shouldn't have tried to fix things. I was selfish." The vehemence that should accompany those words was missing, they were blankly stated.

"I didn't ask for anything, but it doesn't change what I am. Or what I did. I never wanted to be my father's heir, but I had to. If I didn't, my mother would have died. She probably died anyway, I'm not allowed to see her, I wouldn't know. You don't understand, Adelheid. You couldn't understand what my life has been like. And so you can't tell me if it's worthless or not. But I can, and I know it is. You're better off without me. You're just wasting your time here. Just leave me."

"...no, I can't understand what your life has been like." Adelheid gazed into those defeated eyes, then slowly, so very slowly, went to tilt Tamaki's face up so that he could at least pretend that there was some vibrancy in his friend, some trace of the one who had waltzed in and suddenly claimed they were friends.

"We live in two different worlds, you and I; perhaps it is impossible to bridge that gap. However... I, too, was forced to step into the position of my father's heir, despite my own wishes to the contrary. However, if you do not know whether your mother is alive or not, it is still possible to discover the truth for yourself, some day. For a lord such as you, the future is far brighter than it is for me."

Perhaps it was useless to say all of this, as he wasn't even sure if the boy would remember what was being said or not. But at the same time... it pained Adelheid, to know that the dream-like world that Tamaki seemed to have inhabited was, in fact, almost as marred as Adelheid's own. "However, putting all of that aside... you have given me something that no one else has, and for that reason alone, I will not abandon you. Not until I can at least entrust you to the care of someone else that I trust."

As, above all else, he was not going to let Tamaki see him in an injured state. Or at least, not in a state worse than his already was.

"You are going to abandon me." It was simple truth. Tamaki knew it. He was something that Adel couldn't stand. And it didn't matter if he was abandoned or not. He didn't care. What would it matter?

"My grandmother can rip away everything whenever she wants. She can leave me poor and on the streets, if she wants to. She threatens to. Someone else can inherit my father's lands and properties. It doesn't have to be me. But she uses me. I never used to care about it before now. It's funny how things become so clear so suddenly. So it looks like both our lives are nothing, really."

He didn't even realize how strange what he was saying really was. But little by little, feeling was creeping back. A tinge of sadness, a touch of depression. They began to slip into the empty spaces the phantasm left.

"I abandoned my mother, Adelheid. And I don't know where she is or what happened to her. I'm not allowed to try and contact her, or ask any questions about her. I have to act like she really is dead, or I'll lose everything." He did look at Adel now, his eyes showing some small glimmer of focusing.

"What could I have possibly given you?"

A very faint grin appeared at that, and Adelheid slowly shook his head. "You say that... as though losing everything would be the end of your world. Perhaps it is different for me, but such a reversal can be surmounted. Nor do I believe that either of our lives are 'nothing'; so long as one still draws breath, then there is always the chance to struggle and succeed. Reversals, even being nearly destroyed... or even possibly losing your mother... are not an end."

The stronger teenager let go of Tamaki, slowly scooping up his spear, even though that taxed his reserves once more. "Nor will your grandmother live forever. If you look at it from that point of view, time is a strong ally on your own side." He hated how cold he sounded, but he had to get into the mold of a 'merchant of death', he had to start removing his kinder nature in this setting. Kindness couldn't even save a kitten, how could it possibly save a human being? "And when the inevitable happens, you will be able to search for her as you please. That is a hope that not everyone possesses."

"As for what you have given me... surely, the same person who saw through me earlier today could figure that out without a difficulty. In time, you'll understand." A gentle smile was on Adelheid's face as he finally straightened back up again. Or perhaps the boy truly didn't know the kind of gift that he had bestowed without even thinking about it?

"We can't succeed at all. This place is too strong. Even you're defeated by it. If you can't overcome this place, how can any of us?" Tamaki's emotions were returning, in a manner of speaking. Depression and loss were seeping into him, filling him with things he hadn't felt since he was very young.

"She's smart, my grandmother. The conditions of our bargain will be in her will. She'll hold on to me from beyond the grave. She isn't a bad person, she was raised this way, but I'll never be able to see my mother again. I could have, if I married Eclair. But I was foolish and I broke the engagement. I made a mistake..." he sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping once more.

Adel could say all these things, but it wouldn't mean anything. Because Adel would find out about what had happened, and he would hate him. He'd been willing to abandon their friendship over a single kiss before - he'd do it again.

"You really should just leave me, Adel. It would be better - for both of us."

"...do you truly think that I am the strongest here, or indeed that I'm the standard by which to be compared?" Adelheid shook his head, rejecting that out of hand. "Rather, shouldn't you say that, because they 'defeated' someone that even I fear, that we have no hope? And yet I do; my own strength is not enough, nor, does it seem, that it will even be enough in my world. I have been defeated before, and likely I will be defeated again. And yet... I am still here. And so long as I still draw breath, I know that I can learn and become even stronger. That is true for everyone here, even for one such as you."

In fact, Adelheid knew that it had been foolish to explore on his own, and that he would have to cease doing so if he wished to avoid such pain. He needed to join his power with others, to be on a team; it was still a bitter pill to swallow, but he would do so in time.

"As for your grandmother... even the most cunningly-laid strategies can fail. What seems invincible or even god-like can be surmounted, or so I have found. That is all I can truly say on the matter for now; perhaps, once we are free from this world, you will find a way to meet with your mother again on your own terms."

Adelheid didn't say anything about that last part, primarily because he didn't want to acknowledge it. Even though he was saying all of those things, the simple truth was that it would be safer if Tamaki were to be separated from the stronger blond. Someday, perhaps someday soon, he would again be subjected to his curse... and what if he hurt this person, this one who had both claimed friendship and now seemed determined to have that friendship end? It worried Adelheid, and so he locked it away. There was too much to worry about as it was, why add his own concerns on top of that?

"Not for me." Tamaki shook his head. "I'm not strong or smart or fast. I'm not a warrior or a scholar. I'm... I'm just me." And there was a sudden, sinking sensation that he was nothing and never would be anything.

"You're the strongest person I know, Adel. And the bravest, I think. And if you can't get out of here, then no one can." He shook his head, emphatically. He just felt miserable, in ways he couldn't describe. He'd never felt like this before, and he felt like he'd never feel anything but this ever again.

"Please, I just want to rest, Adel. I'm tired and I don't feel well, inside. It's like... it's like my soul is sick. And I want... I want to remember this, I think. You being so nice to me. I'm just going to sit down, and you can go on and do whatever you're heading off to do. Don't worry about me."

A shake of his head at that, and yet Adelheid said nothing in response to all of that. He wasn't the strongest, he wasn't the smartest, nor was he brave more than the simple foolhardiness of youth.

More than that, though; it pained him to think that his kindness was so rare that someone wanted to remember it. But, with his profession, that was what he would have to expect; kindness could do nothing, it was only strength that mattered. This was only reinforcing his view; he would have to get stronger, to become a conduit for ever greater levels of power, for the sake of all of the people he wished to protect.

All Adelheid said, in the end, was, "This way." And then he shepherded Tamaki into the nearest room, not really caring who it belonged to, so long as it was relatively empty and he could protect Tamaki from monsters.

((Limping off to here. (http://community.livejournal.com/landels_damned/76781.html) ))

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Nightshift 22: M21 - M30 Hallway

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