damned_institute | Day 46: Sun Room

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Day 46: Sun Room

Peter woke up suddenly, his body twisting in the bed and then forcing him to catch his breath in pain. Pain, which was coming from his middle because of the thing that had scratched him last night, and after that...

After that, Zach had jumped in front of him like some kind of martyr, like the exact opposite of everything Sylar stood for, to take the next hit for him. It got pretty fuzzy after that, so night must have ended right around then.

The man let out a pained grunt as he straightened himself up in bed. For some reason, he got the feeling that he'd slept in. There was no way for him to really tell without a window in the room, but he just knew. The fact that Sam's bed looked long since vacated was another clue.

Sam, but was he Sam again? Had the brainwashing worn off, as he and Roland had hoped, or was he going to have to go through this nightmare for even longer? He didn't know how long he could handle "Zach" and "Harrison" before he started going batty himself.

Pulling himself out of bed, Peter lifted his shirt and saw that he was tightly bandaged. The scratch most likely wasn't nearly as bad as the bite that "Zach" had received, but it still smarted. He let his shirt fall and then had to deal with a nurse chiding him for sleeping through the morning announcements. Not that Peter really cared at the moment. He was too busy thinking about last night and the fact that in a way, he now owed something to Sylar. Except it hadn't been Sylar. That was something he was sure of now.

Lost in his thoughts, Peter reached the Sun Room right as the rest of the patient populace was trickling in from breakfast. Sighing to himself, he headed over to the bulletin board and then saw a note written in familiar yet unpleasant handwriting. Holding his pen in a vice grip, Peter scribbled out a reply and then stalked over to an armchair and fell into it with a huff.

While Sylar was maddeningly frustrating, there was one good thing about the fact that he was himself again. It meant that Nathan was too.

[For Spock!]

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Somehow, he'd expected a little more from Alex than what was two steps away from a 'Yeah, sure, whatever.' Did he just flip on the jerk switch? Because that's what it sounded like. One minute waxing lyrical about how it was their noble duty to protect the innocent, the next he didn't give a crap. Peter was on the verge of giving him some seriously raised eyebrow when he was gripped by the arm and all but thrown towards the most deserted corner of the room.

And why was this?

Because Alex wanted to know about bats.

Peter blinked up at the taller boy. "...Did you pull me over here to make out with me?"

Edited 2009-12-17 06:18 (UTC)

"Come on now, Kurt. You can't spend all day in the Cafeteria!"

"But I'm not done!" the mutant protested, his nurse dragging him by his (perfectly round) ear out of the Cafeteria. He'd still managed to hold on to a paper plate with two waffles still on it, though. Apparently some nurse thought he was 'terribly thin' and wanted him to eat more. Not like Kurt was complaining.

"At least here you can talk to someone. I worry about you, Kurt, you're so shy!"

Yeah, he thought. Because I feel like I'm lying by just standing in a room and looking normal.

With a warning not to spill the rest of his breakfast onto the carpet, the nurse left him. Kurt idly tore off a bit of one of the waffles and walked over to the bulletin board, hoping that Peter and Kitty had responded. When he saw Peter talking to Terry, though, he had to blink in surprise. Well, this was even better than a note!

"Hey guys!" Kurt said, inserting himself into the conversation without even pausing to see if they were talking about something serious. He was far too excited to see Peter was alive, after all. "...wait, what's this about making out?"

...maybe he should have stopped to listen first.

Okay, so maybe Terry had been a little impatient. Chalk it up to his frustration over being here, over Wayne being here and then being gone, whatever. What it meant was, that when Peter gave his reply, Terry let out a sigh and put a hand to his head.

Really, couldn't anything ever be simple?

"You brought it up, remember?" No, he probably didn't. Peter had thrown out the term Bat Signal as if it was so common, anyone should know about it. "You joked about Kurt having his own Bat Signal. That hits close to home for me. Too close for me to just let it go, understand?"

He'd better. Even Peter couldn't be that thick, or so Terry hoped. What he hadn't been hoping for was their sudden visitor, and it was really hard not to let his frustration show when Kurt walked up. Trying to reassure himself that Kurt had very likely seen his emblem the night before wasn't really helping, but Terry had to resign himself either way. The bat was out of the bag, so to speak.

"Okay, no one is making out unless you two have a thing I don't know about." Terry, for one, had a girlfriend he cared for a great deal back home, thank you. And he certainly wasn't in the habit of kissing strange superheroes. "More importantly, I need to know what Peter knows about my world. And you too, Kurt." Because if Peter did somehow have knowledge about a completely different dimension (or whatever it was), then it was possible that Kurt or Kitty did as well. All in all, it was a slagging heap that Terry really wasn't too pleased to be dealing with. "What do you guys know about Batman?"

Edited 2009-12-17 06:46 (UTC)

Bat Signal.

Bat Signal.

Whether he wanted them to or not, Peter's eyes shot wide open with the epiphany of all epiphanies: Alex was from Batman.

Dammit, why did he keep doing this to himself? First Indy, now this? Why didn't he just follow his own rules and keep his stupid mouth shut about anything that was on TV ever so people could stop pulling conspiracies out of their butts and waggling them in his face?

Which one was he? Was he Robin? He wasn't Bruce Wayne, for sure. But Robin was named Burt or something. Or was that the actor? He hadn't been spewing out random catchphrases like "Holy Foot Fungus!" every other second, but that was just in the TV show from the sixt- fifties? Sixties? Whatever, that show had been lame and there was oodles of comic books and cartoons and movies about Batman, there was no freaking way Peter could have kept up with all that. He'd tried watching that first movie when he was like four years old and Jack Nicholson had scared him so bad he was ninety percent certain he'd wet himself, and he hadn't touched anything with Batman since.

It made sense now. The talk about defending the innocent, offhand spandex remarks, suspicious suspicions, and - oh thank god, Kurt had come to save him.

But just as he was about to announce that Kurt's roommate had grown weary of hiding their forbidden love from the world and throw their passions into the light, Alex cut him off and dragged them past the point of no return.

For crap's sake, Alex, you ruin everything!

Peter scrambled for a cover. For one, stop gaping. That would help. He clicked his jaw shut and moved on to step two. Lie like you're Richard Nixon.

"...Uh...He's that guy in Gotham...their superhero? And he wears a cape...I think...I've never met him if that's what you mean."

Yeah, he wasn't winning that Oscar this year.

Kurt blinked.

What did he know about Terry's world? Well... that people made themselves look like him, for one (which seemed like a stupid thing to do, really, though Kurt thought he might like to visit if that sort of thing was normal). They used words Kurt had never heard before, like 'slagging', and mutants weren't around. That... was pretty much it.

Kurt was going to ask if 'Batman' was some mutant he should have heard of, but then Peter filled in some blanks. It would have been a dumb question anyway, given that Terry didn't know what a mutant was.

"I've never met him either. And where's Gotham?" Kurt asked Peter with a raised eyebrow. "Should I know him too?"

Well, at least someone seemed to be taking this seriously. Kurt didn't exactly give off the impression that he'd be a convincing liar anyway, and Terry wasn't picking up anything that screamed 'hiding something' from him. Peter, on the other hand? Terry had seen terrified street punks put up a better front than that.

"No. Neither of you should." But Peter still seemed to, somehow, and that was the problem. "Gotham's my home city, and yes, Batman protects it. But knowing about the signal and not about the cape?" Terry's raised eyebrow should have been more than enough to tell Peter that no, he wasn't buying his story or the Eiffel Tower, thank you very much.

But when it really came down to it? What was more important was making sure no one else got a hint of what Peter might know. Landel's might have lacked crazy snake-men trying to turn everyone into reptiles--and even that wasn't a given--but it had it's share of bad guys already. If the wrong person got wind of what Peter could know, then superpowers or not, the kid would be in trouble.

"All right. Here's the deal." And though he was also speaking to Kurt, who had learned far more than Terry ever wanted him to thanks to circumstance, his focus was almost entirely on Peter. "I know you know more than you're telling me, and I can't help that. But don't breathe a word about anything related to Gotham or Batman to anyone else. There are people from my world here, good and bad, and maybe some I don't even know about yet. If you let the wrong thing slip, someone could get seriously hurt, including either of you. Just because we're locked up in an insane asylum doesn't mean they won't have their way with you. In fact, some of them couldn't ask for a better setting."

"It's a giant beacon projected onto the sky!" Peter cried. Quietly. He knew what tact was. It was more like a furious whisper than anything. "In the shape of a bat! How is that supposed to be a secret? Come on!"

As for the rest of what Alex had to say, Peter was getting t-ed off quicker than freshly shined golf ball. Like he was such an absolute moron that he couldn't even keep his mouth shut about things that could potentially get him or his friends killed. He'd been doing nothing but keeping his mouth shut - fake names, hiding Kurt's mutant identity, hiding his own not-quite-mutant identity, trying to dodge the fourth wall, not telling a soul about what Grell and Luxord did to Brainy because whoever found out would probably get shanked too. And on top of that, he'd just found out that Matt and Logan might have potentially died. Who up and gave this guy his Class 5 Ass liscense? He had enough going on without some jerk treating him like he was just five years old when he was barely older than him in the first place.

"Oh, really? I hadn't thought about that. It has never, ever, ever in all the time I've been here crossed my mind that not every single patient is all sunshine and daisies and sparkling rainbows. Thank you, oh wise Alex, for showing me the light." He rolled his eyes. "Didn't we have this conversation yesterday? Or do you honestly take me for that big of an idiot?"

"H-hey, come on, guys," Kurt said, moving himself surreptitiously between the two just a bit. If there was one thing he could smell, it was a fight--from miles away. Probably came from hanging around Rogue so much. "We're all a little tense because of this, secret-identity thing. I mean, it's tough enough being here, but with all the other stuff we have to deal with, it's even tougher.

"Alex--" Fortunately Peter had said Terry's fake name just then, so he caught himself before he totally blew it. "--Peter's dealing with the same sort of thing, so I'm sure he's not going to go posting it all over the bulletin board. He hasn't even mentioned that I'm a mutant on the board because he knows how nervous I am about it.

"And Peter, Alex is just worried that someone from his world is going to like, jump him or something. You know the feeling too, right? If you thought someone was going to blow your identity, you'd be worried too, I think..."

Kurt looked between them awkwardly. He didn't want to see them fight, but he didn't mean to get all preachy and ramble on like that. The mutant looked down at his plate.

"Erm... either of you want a waffle?" He didn't really feel like eating them anymore. Plus, he couldn't think of anything to say.

Edited 2009-12-17 08:40 (UTC)

Maybe if he wasn't so worked up himself, Terry would've handled the whole mess differently. Probably better. But as it was? Kurt was right to think that a fight just might have been in the near future. Terry at least had enough self-control to keep from throwing a punch at every little provocation, but that didn't mean he wouldn't jump into an argument if he saw the need.

Like now, pretty much.

"It's not a secret in my world, sure. But you aren't from my world, which means you shouldn't know about it. So what else do you know that you shouldn't?" Luckily for them both Kurt stepped in before Terry could get anything else out, and said what they were both trying to without the sacrasm or accusations. And then, as if that wasn't enough to make Terry feel like a bit of an ass? He offered them waffles.

"...Kurt, I am never going to be able to look at you without thinking of a puppy." Terry meant it in the nicest way, really. But keeping up the fight beyond that would've made him feel like he was kicking said puppy. Definitely time to let it go.

Terry sighed, then shook his head. "Look, I didn't mean to jump on your case. I don't think you're an idiot. I just made a stupid mistake once--took off my mask to save a kid. Then the kid nearly gets killed because the wrong people found out. It kind of drove the lesson home a bit hard." Especially since it had only been the kid's imagination that had saved Terry from being outed as Batman. He'd be hard pressed to name a time he'd been more relieved than when that action figure's face showed up on the screen instead of his.

"And it doesn't really help that no one has heard from the original Batman in days." Terry was almost reluctant to add that in, but at the point, he probably owed the other two the honesty. Plus, if he was really truthful, Terry kind of wanted to tell someone. He hadn't realized how much he needed a confidant until Max found out his identity. Maybe he'd missed it more than he'd realized. "He's here too." Or he was. It was a thought Terry wasn't about to say, but couldn't help adding in his head. "And he's not exactly the most talkative guy, sure. But this isn't like him."

There weren't many things that the silence could mean. None that Terry could think of, anyway, and certainly none that were good. For a long moment, Terry didn't say anything else, or even look at Peter or Kurt. It was easier to look out into the room then, at least until Terry was sure that Wayne still hadn't showed. He sighed again, then turned back to the others to get the rest out. "I know none of that doesn't give me the right to be a jerk, but maybe it'll make it a bit easier to make peace when I say I'm sorry."

Augh. Kurt. Suddenly his eyes were inexplicably drawn to the floor, and all he could think of was how Kurt should register that puppy face as a weapon of mass destruction. He was offering them his waffles, for cripe's sake.

Peter mumbled at the outstretched plate, thoroughly deflated. "No, it's fine. I'm just..." He didn't get much further than that. Just blew out a puff of air that ruffled his bangs and rubbed his forehead in shame.

From that point on, he listened to Alex with less resentment and more respect, because frankly? They were both way too high strung for the exact same reasons. Too many secrets. Kurt had to be too, but he wasn't half so aggressive about it. Peter knew why he he to keep secrets, why he had to sit back and let other people make the shots sometimes, but he didn't think it would ever stop rankling him. For now though, they had to put that to the side. Alex was being the bigger man here by apologizing. It was only fair Peter did the same.

"Dude, no, I was the one who blew up," he insisted. And it wasn't just Kurt and his puppy face. He meant it. He was being a dick because he'd had it up to there with the crapstorm called Landel's, but that wasn't Alex's fault. It wasn't anybody's fault, save for one Head Doctor and two creepo-supremos that he had to keep an eye peeled for. "We're all on thin ice here, but that was uncalled for. I'm sorry. Can we call it a truce and share our tales of trauma over milkshakes in Doyleton sometime? Because I've been through that too. With people finding out and paying the price. My girlfriend got thrown off a bridge because this creep found out who I was. She's fine now, but this other girl, Gwen? She was at the house when someone came looking for me, and..."

Ai yi yi. Bad topic. Peter pushed on a nervous smile and moved along. "Look, I get where you're coming from. A million times over. About the Batman maybe being gone thing too." He took a sidelong glance at the women and men in uniform bustling on the balcony above them, eyes narrowing for a moment. "I asked my nurse about Matt and Logan this morning, and she said they'd both been released a couple days ago. Whatever that means. I don't trust her even half as far as I could throw her, but I can't think of any other reason why they wouldn't have tried talking to us by now. I really hope, um. I hope Batman hasn't disappeared too."

The smile quirked into something genuine. Real, live Batman. Whatever - whoever Alex was in that whole mythos, he could be trusted. That was one chip gone from his shoulder.

Edited 2009-12-17 10:20 (UTC)

If Kurt had still had his tail at this point, he would have been flicking it happily. He thought there would be an argument (mostly because Terry didn't seem like the type to let things go and Peter was definitely on-edge today), but it seemed as though he'd helped avoid it. They were actually talking and considering each other's points of view.

His happy mood, though, crashed and burned when Peter told him the news about Matt and Logan. No wonder he hadn't seen Matt for a few days. He'd thought he might be sick or something--but Logan gone too? It was like he'd been punched in the stomach. The last thing he remembered was Logan telling him to stay awake after he'd been burned.

Kurt looked down at the waffles both Terry and Peter had refused, as though looking for Logan and Matt in the little indentations. He didn't say anything, though. Not when Terry might have lost someone too. Maybe that was what the red insignia on the front of that suit had been--a bat. He hadn't gotten a very good look at it before the night had ended. And Peter's girlfriend had been thrown off a bridge... the worst Amanda ever got was disapproving stares.

"I think the milkshakes are a good idea," Kurt muttered. He could use a cheeseburger right about now.

There was a small plus side in that it seemed like Terry and Peter were understanding each other a bit better now. They weren't ripping each other's heads off, anyway. But having to bring up some of the most depressing topics ever to get there managed to take a lot of satisfaction out of the relief, and Terry gave both Kurt and Peter a look of sympathy.

"Whatever it means, we know it's not good." Because even Terry knew by now that anything Landel counted as progress, day or night, was meant to push a finger deeper into their wounds. "But there was a lot of talk about patients looking to be 'released' yesterday when they were brainwashed, right? Maybe it's got something to do with that." And since there wasn't much sadistic glee to be gained from someone who really believed the lies, maybe it meant that those guys--Logan and Matt--were safe now.

Maybe Bruce was too. Terry certainly hoped so, since that'd be the only good to come out of the absolute worse case scenario, and that was seeming more and more likely.

"But even if they're gone, that doesn't mean we stop trying to put an end to this place, right?" Something Terry would look forward to all the more if they really had taken Wayne. "So we've still got to find out Kitty's room number, and figure out how to get to the guys in charge. And since you've both been here longer than I have, I'm hoping you might have a few more ideas as to how we can do that."

At that look, Peter wanted to backtrack. Say something about how they might show up again (like that was a good thing), how his nurse hadn't been sure about Logan, how Steve and Tony were still around, and how it could have just been that they were released like Terry said. But the truth was he feeling just as down as Kurt. Like the day had gone and squashed him flat. The only difference was that Peter was just making a bigger effort to hide it.

He glanced meaningfully at Alex and then to a couch, tugging twice on Kurt's sleeve so he'd follow him over. "It could have been that. If they were released, they're still around. Just not here."

Peter wasn't sure if being brainwashed was any better than disappearing in the first place, but he wasn't going to say that aloud. He liked Alex's idea much better: changing the topic entirely.

"I'm not sure two or three days gives either of us an edge, but we can give it a shot." He sunk in beside the arm of a sofa and crossed his legs. "There's a lot of theories floating around about Landel hiding in the basement - and no, I have no clue how or where you get down there. But the one place nobody has been is the third floor. Without being sedated out of their gourds and having their circuits rewired, that is.

"I was going to ask you guys about checking it out because a guy grabbed one of my webshooters that night I was brainwashed, and we could use it to rope climb up there. But it's only got three shots left, tops. It would be a pretty dismal night if we got stranded up there and it was more than we could handle. Unless the universe gets bored of kicking me in the pants and the lab here actually has everything I need to make more, then we're better off trying to find the entrance to it inside the building."

Too bad it was nothing more than a theory. Peter made a face as he pondered the options. Why was it so hard to find one little megalomaniac? Hundreds of possibilities, each more foggy than the last. "But at this point, that's pretty much just me making fancy guesses. Probably not worth risking a limb over. I haven't gotten much more than beans out of anybody. And with the smiley stickers invading the board, it's twice as hard to pick up info as it was before. Landel might not even be inside the building. There's supposed to be ruins somewhere around here, and with the mountains there could be a bunch of handy nooks and crannies to hide in. Or maybe he's pulling a Jetson and he's been in a cozy little space station a bajillion miles above us the whole time."

...Woops. Sure, nobody looked like Judy or George Jeston here, but still. Put a cap on it next time Parker.

Kurt looked up from his waffles and let Peter pull him towards the couches. He and Terry were right: if Logan and Matt had disappeared from here, they might be better off. Safer. Safer was good. Better than waking up here day after day at least.

But at the same time, Kurt couldn't help but feel as though he'd lost his footing. The two people he respected most in the world were Professor Logan and Professor Xavier. He looked to them both for guidance--in the real world and when they had to fight.

And worse, both Logan and Matt had known a different him: one that was stronger, faster, probably wiser. Knowing that he could be all those things one day (and why not make that sooner rather than later?) helped him keep going. Somewhere under his fur, he was a hero where they came from. He wondered vaguely if the Nightcrawler Peter knew was a hero too. So far all he knew was that that Nightcrawler was older. Big surprise there: he was going to age of all things.

He had to keep on moving, though. If Logan did show up again, and realized that Kurt had just been sitting around waiting for someone to give him direction, he wouldn't only be mad, he'd be disappointed. Matt might not be mad, but he'd be disappointed probably. Plus, he couldn't let Kitty down--or Terry or Peter. They may not have been X-Men, but they were on his proverbial team. He had to hang strong.

"I remember something about the basement being dangerous," Kurt said, resuming eating his waffles piece by piece. "The roof might be easier to get to, though. I could just teleport us up there. But isn't there something outside that... eats virgins?"

Man, if Peter and Terry looked at him and asked why that would be a problem, he was going to give up right then.

Terry followed Peter over to the couch, not making any jokes about getting Kurt a leash. It might snap the guy out of his mood, or it could make things worse, and Terry wasn't going to risk the latter when they'd just come to a truce.

Thankfully they both seemed to go with the topic change, and Terry listened to both Peter and Kurt carefully. They weren't the greatest ideas, or the safest, no. But better than nothing.

"Yeah. Birds, wasn't it?" It didn't take much to reason that Peter and Kurt were probably both a little too young to be safe in that regard. "But if worse came to worse, both of you could just be bait while I snuck up on them from behind." Terry's grin made it clear that he was joking, but if pushed, he'd argue that it was important to know who had virgin-eating bird immunity.

"At least looking for a way up gives us a more limited area to work with." As opposed to working outside. Who knew how much territory they would have to cover, especially just with the few hours that comprised night. After what happened last night, Terry wanted to start small. "There might be a secret passage somewhere that just hasn't been found. But looking inside would be easier for now. And if you give us a list of what you need, Peter, maybe we can find it along the way." Because not taking advantage of something like that would be way beyond "rookie" on the mistake scale.

"Oh, and one more thing. It's Terry McGinnis, not Alex." Terry kept going before Peter could give him the same look Kurt had in the shower. "The nurses call me by my real name, but I didn't want to stand out. So on the boards and stuff, I'm using Alex Matthews."

Kurt's question brought on a stretch of silence. Words stopped dead still in his throat as he recalled the so-called 'Immunization Clinic' of so long ago. Then Alex went and suggested that the two of them could act as bait, to which Peter could only respond with a withering glare.

"Okay, has anybody actually confirmed this 'virgin-eating bird' thing?" He wiggled his fingers at the phrase in his most exaggerated display of skepticism yet. "Maybe they just go for the skinny little sick ones because they're easier to carry, and it's got nothing to do with that at all. Or like, old people are chewier. I don't know. How can they even tell if you've danced the horizontal hustle anyway?" He gave a derisive snort and moved on.

"Yeah, sure. Um, gimme a sec," he muttered, fishing out a folded sheet of paper and a pen he used for the bulletin from his pocket, scrawling out a list on his knee. But Alex's next remark gave him pause, the pen stopping halfway through crossing a T.

"Terry?" The other boy had his full attention. It wasn't so much a surprise that he'd been using a fake name as it was for why he was doing it. "Why would they call you by your real name, but give everybody else a new one? That makes no sense." He blinked for a moment, running through the possibilities. "Have you checked your file? Because-"

The intercom sounded off. Nurses swooped in and began carting the patients away. Peter swore under his breath and looked at his list in despair. He'd barely even gotten started.

Nonetheless, he tore it off the page and passed it to Kurt. There were only six items on it, each longer and more impossible to pronounce than the last. Things that he'd usually have to pay a pretty penny for, or even order in the mail, so the likelihood of finding them in a mental institution? Somewhere next to zero, but he couldn't afford give up hope that easily.

"Crap. Okay, um, here's the first few ingredients. Don't worry if you can't find them all, some things I can fudge or extract from another couple of chemicals, depending on what equipment they have. And be really careful, these last two are caustic like crazy. I'd even use gloves to grab the containers in case some dripped down the side. There's a reason why you can't find this stuff in a classroom lab." He saw his nurse approaching, and stood to meet her before she could catch the end of their conversation.

"I'll see you guys later, all right?"

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Day 46: Sun Room

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