Day 48: Courtyard [Fourth Shift]

[gald_digger]

So much for a relaxing shower. Anise couldn't possibly relax around someone with a voice like that! This was beyond weird. How could a girl who didn't have any relation to Sync have the exact same voice as him?

And what made it even weirder was that this wasn't even the first time Anise had encountered something like that. There was a boy, who also had tattoos like hers, who sounded just like Luke. What was his name? It was so long ago, Anise couldn't remember. Maybe she'd know it if she heard it again, but...

That gave her an idea. She wasn't using her journal for much besides cooking notes, recipes, and a few room numbers, right? Maybe from now on, whenever she saw or heard something really strange or suspicious, she'd write it down. Then, if it happened again or she learned more about it, she could look back to the entry and add the details. She'd call it... 'Anise's Mystery Diary.' That sounded kind of cool!

During the lunch shift, Anise worked on putting as many memories as possible to paper. The radio man, the rumored third floor, the ruins she found last night, things like that. By the time fourth shift rolled around, she wasn't quite done yet. It was getting harder to think of more things to write about, even though she was sure there were hundreds of mysteries in the institute. Maybe she'd feel more inspired if she took her writing outside.

"Oh, Dolores!" A nurse came to stop her as she was walking out the door. "If you're going outside, you should put on a coat! We wouldn't want you catching a cold." Even though Anise disliked being assisted by the nurses, she cooperated as the woman helped her into the coat, quickly putting Tokunaga back in its place on her back when they were finished. It did look kind of cold out, so there was no point in arguing.

Outside, Anise found herself a bench to sit on while she wrote some more in her journal. Occasionally she'd pause and fidget with the pen for a bit, or doodle some stars and other shapes into the corner of the page she was on, unsure of what to write next.

[free!]

Comments

[gothamsfuture.livejournal.com]

Terry saw an unfamiliar kid heading toward him out of the corner of his eye, and when he turned his head to look, the nurse watching from a distance. Oh great. Bad enough how much Terry's regular nurse tried to dictate his every move, but now he got to deal with babysitters by proxy too.

"Hey." From the looks of things, the kid wasn't anymore thrilled about the idea than Terry himself. On top of that, he might have been shy; the way he was acting reminded Terry of the first days of oh so many transfers, just before some jock tried to shove their head into a toilet. Terry prided himself on not being that sort of person.

"You can relax. I'm not going to bite or anything." Walking away would just get the kid in trouble; hopefully Terry could spare him at least that part of the headache. "The name's Alex. Nice to meet you."

[alwayscomesback.livejournal.com]

Sokka wasn't shy! Especially not when it came to talking with guys. Maybe in front of a bunch of guys where all eyes were on him, but definitely not with just one! He was only being cautious. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing shy about that either.

"Oh, I'm Sokka," he said, lowering his hand, "And not biting is good. I think we might both get in trouble for that..." he added, glancing back at the nurse.

He didn't mind them since they hadn't giving him a real reason to dislike them, but somehow he could see him getting in trouble if this Alex guy ended up biting him. That's how it had always worked when Katara had attacked him when they were little. Somehow he always got punished to, which made no sense at all.

[gothamsfuture.livejournal.com]

...Okay then. Terry hadn't said biting as if people should have the literal intention, but then again? The patients at large didn't always fit into Terry's idea of normal. He had to feel sorry for Sokka if something made him think that biting was a legitimate concern, at least during the day. Night was it's own thing, but why were the staff even around if people could get away with things like that when they were supposedly doing their jobs?

"Not to mention it's unhygienic." Trying to make light of it, Terry nodded forward, toward the path he'd been walking, resuming his pace. Imposed company or not, he could still continue his survey. "Anyway, might as well walk some, right? It'll only get colder if we keep standing still."

Terry glanced back at Sokka's nurse, judging the distance between them, and the likelihood of her eavesdropping. They'd cracked down hard on what could be put on the bulletin, but from what Terry could tell, patients could at least still talk about almost anything in person. Still, a little caution couldn't hurt. "So have you been here long?" They were stuck together anyway, so might as well make some good come out of it. Terry wasn't at all adverse to getting more information.

[alwayscomesback.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. And I definitely don't taste good," Sokka said without much thought before he realized how weird that sounded, "I mean... not that I've tasted myself or anything!" He held up his hands and waved them before letting them fall. "But it's probably better to think that so nothing else does... right?"

Somehow this was reminding him of that dream where food ate people. What was it with him and these weird tangents today? Maybe breakfast had freaked him out more than he'd thought. Or made him homesick. He did kind of miss Katara's bossing and Aang's Aanginess. He had to admit he even missed how Toph bugged him. Just a little bit. But out of anyone he really would had loved to see Suki again. First he lost her, then got her back, and now he was the one who was lost! How messed up was that?!

While his mind had wandered off, the Alex guy had said something about walking. Oh, that was right. "Yeah, sure. Sorry..." Sokka looked to the nurse once again. There were more there now, so maybe she would stop watching him after a while. Until then a walk didn't sound so bad. "I think it's my fault. There weren't many here yet, so I guess I was looking at you and she thought I wanted to walk or something..." he shrugged in apology, then focused on the question, "Not really long. Maybe a week. What about you?"

[gothamsfuture.livejournal.com]

Was this kid really that obsessed with the idea of someone eating him? Granted, Terry had heard more than a few things might try to take a bite out of a patient at night, but there should be a limit to anyone's paranoia. Or, almost anyone's--someone like Bruce Wayne had pretty decent justification for being uptight, at least some of the time. But it was the day, Terry was just another patient, and they were surrounded by trigger-happy nurses with sedatives. Sokka probably didn't have to worry about being served to the patients for dinner.

"A little less." Five days now, and what did Terry have to show for it? Squat. He didn't exactly take pride in the feeling, especially when he looked over what he'd failed to do in that time. He still hadn't gotten in good with any of Bruce's allies, though he'd made a couple of friends of his own, and that definitely fell on the positive side of things. As good of a man as Wayne was, Terry had always made it a point to do things his own way. Still, he wanted to at least try to get in touch with some of the people from his world.

Then there was the fact that Bruce had gone missing without a trace. Nothing about that ranked positive. Come to think of it, Terry hadn't seen anything from Alfred lately either, or Tim Drake. That might not mean too much though, given how good anyone associated with Batman got at keeping secrets. But Terry still wanted to look into it.

There was more, but going down that road for too long would just be depressing. Terry had to focus on what he could actually do, especially since it really would be night soon. "So let me guess. Not a day has gone by without something trying to eat you?" It'd explain why Sokka was so jumpy, at least.

[alwayscomesback.livejournal.com]

Hey, when you had dreams about food eating you, as well as the actual potential for something to eat you when the lights went out and you left your room, you'd want to at least hope that you didn't taste, smell, or look like something a monster wanted to gobble down! Or that was certainly Sokka's take on the whole matter. Only an idiot would want to be eaten, after all.

"Not... really," Sokka admitted, but then amended, "I haven't really been out of my room a lot, but when I did go out this one time..." he shivered. No, the sand-bleeding, knife-wielding thing hadn't tried to necessarily eat any one of the group that night, but that didn't mean it couldn't have. And really, for something to bleed sand, it definitely couldn't have been a nice monster. If it wouldn't have eaten them, then it definitely would have done something that Sokka wouldn't have liked any better.