damned_institute | Day 23: Lunch

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Day 23: Lunch

The second the intercom sounded, while the man on the intercom was still talking, Ashton pulled himself off the couch in the Music Room and slowly made his way to the door. He walked, glided even, as if he were a ghost in a dream. The nurses had already filed up to escort the patients to the lunchroom, and one bustled over to walk Ashton those few feet from one room to another.

"You're not looking very well, Mr. Pritchett," she said cheerfully. "Didn't you enjoy your shower?"

Ashton replied with a small, forced smile, then shook his head. He didn't feel like talking now. Though the nurses were pushy and downright annoying, he figured he owed this one at least a little explanation. They didn't know - or didn't believe - what went on after dark, but he owed them the benefit of the doubt. "Bad day," he decided on telling her.

Bad day indeed. The showers and the music had done nothing for his nerves. But then again, what could get that graphic image out of his head?

He glided ghostily through the taco line and settled on two chicken and bean tacos, with chips, a scoop of guacamole, two churros on the side, and a glass of apple juice. He wasn't used to this sort of food (save the juice) and he wasn't even sure he'd eat it, but the chances were high that he'd be able to pass it off on someone.

He was on the verge of tears again, too. What he would have given to just sit down next to a barrel and eat a hamburger.

Thank goodness the cafeteria was bare just now, too. It left all the corner tables open, the tables that shouted 'Don't talk to me, I'm brooding over here.' He sat at one, pushed his food a little away from him, and buried his head in his arms.

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There wasn't a lot to say, to that. Renji didn't really talk about his feelings, and it certainly wasn't a matter for discussion. He made himself pick up his fork and take another bite of the... burrito thing. "The war continues." A battle might be lost - and the cost of it was high, when it meant that something happened to one of the kids - but he was determined that in the end they would win. He would do his best.

He nodded. "I trust so. I was... very detailed when I talked to him. I wasn't sure how closely he could copy a thing." He smiled slightly. "There is no sword I couldn't improvise with, but Zabimaru has been with me for a very long time." He shrugged one shoulder. "A swordsman of sorts," he said. "It's kind of like... police work."

Speaking of children that had been forced to grow up too fast...

Sora had been pleased with his conversation with Larsa, even if he had succeeded in confusing the other boy and wasn't able to clear things up by the time the shift changed. He did think starting a band would be fun, and planned to write on the bulletin board about it.

When he was feeling more like his normal energetic self again, anyway.

As things stood, that distraction could only last so long, and Sora had to face reality again. Namely, that someone he cared about was still gone, and most likely wasn't coming back.

Still without an appetite (which was really a bad sign, considering he was a growing boy and ate like one), it didn't take him long to locate Renji. He knew they needed to talk, but part of him was dreading it. His friend was with Hughes, however, and he knew that Hughes was nice; he wouldn't mind if he joined them.

Unaware of their earlier topic of conversation, Sora approached the two. He forced a smile for Hughes and then glanced at Renji, not sure what to do next.

In the end, he let out a heavy sigh.

"Like police-work, huh?" Hughes grinned. "That's what people say about my line of work, actually. I'm a soldier, but I'm not the kind that goes off to war. I keep the peace back home, dealing with internal crimes and violent criminals." The worst of the worst. It was a hell of a job, but still he loved it. In some ways, he felt what he and his men did were worse than the front lines. The front lines were mindless, blind. What he did was far more personal.

He cut off when Sora joined them, not about to go into details when there was a kid around. Even one as capable and mature as Sora was.

"Hey, Sora." He smiled at the boy and then frowned. "You okay?"

"We hunt monsters," Renji said. "Things you normally can't see..."

At which point Sora arrived. The kid looked... rough. Which was about how Renji was feeling, himself, and for the same reason. "Hey, kiddo," he said. "How about you have a seat?"

He already knew the real answer to Hughes' question. Not a whole hell of a lot was okay today.

While Sora was glad to see that Hughes still remembered him, even though they had only had one conversation and it had been a while ago, that wasn't enough to improve his mood. He hated feeling this way, since he was the one that was supposed to always, always be optimistic, but...

Sometimes, it got hard.

Listening to Renji's suggestion, he sat down - closer to Renji than Hughes, but only because he knew the redhead better, not to mention the man knew what was going on.

Renji would know he was lying, but he couldn't burden Hughes by dragging him into this. "Hmm? Yeah, I'm fine." He nodded as he said it, as if that would make it more true.

The shower and then playing cards with Yohji had taken his mind off things for a while, so by the time lunch rolled over, Cliff was at least feeling more like himself. Just weary.

For once, he ignored the lunch menu. The man he was looking for wasn't hard to spot. He stopped by the table and gave Hughes a friendly nod before addressing all three of them. He wasn't sure he wanted to talk in front of a kid, but he did want to get a better idea of who the redhead was. "Room for one more?"

Hughes wasn't the sort to push. He just nodded, and hoped that whatever it was, the kid had someone to talk to.

He glanced up when Cliff joined them and offered the other man a smile. "I think we can fit you in," he said. "How've you been?"

Renji nodded politely to Cliff. He'd been expecting to be sought out. He wasn't certain he particularly wanted to talk about things in front of Sora, as upset as the kid was already - and, if Renji was being honest with himself, as upset as he was - but things fell as they would.

He ducked his head for a moment to speak just to Sora, wrapping his arm around the boy's shoulders. "It's okay," he said. In a strange way, it felt like whatever small conversation they'd started before the night had ended was still there.

The point was solidarity.

While the fourth addition to their group was a man he had seen around for a while now, Sora had never gotten the chance to speak with him before. It seemed like now was as good a time as ever, even if he wasn't his usual chipper self. "Hi. I'm Sora."

At least Hughes wasn't pressing for questions. It just... wasn't the best conversation to have over a meal, not that it looked like most of them were eating, anyway.

Renji grabbed for him then, for a quick, private conversation. That physical contact made him tremble for a moment, just because he knew that Renji understood just how much it hurt.

He was the only one who knew.

Sora swallowed and nodded, making sure he didn't shake too hard. "All right."

Cliff took a seat closer to Hughes. He wasn't sure what he'd walked in on and he didn't feel completely right disrupting it. "Better." He told Hughes in response, and just to keep from dampening the mood further he added. "It's the uniform. Not one woman's approached me since I got here. Just a couple of people from my world."

He nodded at Sora's introduction and smiled. If he'd noticed anything off, he wasn't about to call it. "Hey, I'm Cliff, hopeless ladies man. Don't grow up to be like me, alright?"

And then there was Renji. To be honest, he didn't really know what to say. At the very least, he was sure he didn't want to talk about it in front of Sora. That was what he got for following a hunch; he had to play the cards he was dealt. He rested his elbow on the table and propped his chin up. "You know, you two look like brothers." He mused. "Minus the family resemblance. 'From the same world?"

"Well you know, there are only so many ladies to go around," Hughes said, chuckling. Hopefully Cliff would break the tenseness that had fallen over the little group. "And lots and lots of men." He clapped the other man on the shoulder.

"You've just gotta go out and get'em. Come on, a handsome guy like you? You shouldn't have any problems." He shook his head some. There were some very lovely ladies around - not that he looked. Gracia was the only woman for him.

"Huh, you know, you're right."

Renji said only one more thing to Sora: "I am here." He gave the boy's shoulder a comforting squeeze, then moved his arm away, though he stayed leaned fairly close to him.

He turned his attention back to Cliff. "Abarai Renji," he said. "We're not." He wore pretty much the same expression as he had during his brief meeting with Cliff two nights ago. His shortness wasn't due to hostility; he simply didn't have much to say, at lest not yet.

For a moment, he considered saying something like 'stay away from Rukia' but... that wasn't his business any more. And Rukia could take care of herself from that angle, at least.

He looked levelly at Cliff, waiting for the question he figured was coming.

As a fifteen-year-old (and a rather sheltered one, at that), Sora couldn't make much of their talk about women. Cliff seemed like a pretty funny guy, though - anyone who could joke about stuff like that in this place was good in Sora's book. He wished he could be as lighthearted, but he wasn't going to force it too much; they would notice.

"Yeah, we aren't. We met here," he said, willing to give more details than Renji. "We've spent a few nights exploring together." With Nowe. Sora sighed.

It seemed like the three others were waiting to discuss something important, but they were holding back for some reason. He glanced from Renji to Hughes to Cliff, his brow creased.

Was it because of him? "Uhm," he started, fidgeting. "I can go if you guys want."

Cliff chuckled at Hughes' encouragement. "I guess I need to stop slacking off, huh? Maybe I'm getting rusty in my old age."

He nodded at the introductions and Sora's explanation. He couldn't really blame Renji for being short. He probably knew Ichigo a hell of a lot better than the two nights Cliff had talked with him. Maybe Sora did too.

He ran his fingers through his hair when the boy spoke again, sobering a little. They really needed to have this conversation despite his preferences.

"If it makes you uncomfortable, you can, but I'm not at liberty to kick anyone out." He remembered Maria at that age. She'd hacked into the cameras when she was asked to leave for 'adult chat'. After that, he just let her stay. Sometimes she could handle it and sometimes she couldn't. He still didn't know if it was the right thing to let her choose, but that was how he'd been raised to treat people. His protective urges were always at war with his heritage.

He gave Sora a moment to digest before his eyes shifted back to Renji, his expression calm but uncommonly serious. "So how do you know?"

Hughes sighed. It wasn't like the bad stuff would just go away if it wasn't talked about in front of kids. And really, it wasn't like Sora had no right to hear anything. He had every right. So unless Renji protested...

"I'm not gonna ask you to leave, either," he said, shaking his head. "It's not fair to, for a lot of reasons. So... I guess it's up to you." He offered a small smile, disinterested in his food now.

His interest was more on the slowly growing conversation.

"No, it's alright," Renji said to Sora. "It's..." Well, it wasn't exactly a secret, but he wasn't wanting it spread around all that much either. "You might as well stay." And Sora had a right to know how it was he'd known Nowe was gone as well.

He didn't want Sora to feel uncomfortable about it; he was part of the situation as well. He gave the kids shoulder another squeeze before turning his attention to Cliff.

"I don't want what I can do to get spread around," he said. "Maybe the bastard in charge already knows, but just in case..." He shrugged.

"Everything has spirit energy in it," he said. "I deal with people. A person's energy, their reiatsu, is a thing that I can normally sense and read and track. One way to do this is to look at their spirit thread. If I have been around a person, I recognize their thread. I recognize their spirit. If they are on the same world as me, I can follow it to them." He mimicked the motion of plucking a thread out of the air.

"Kurosaki's... Ichigo's thread is gone." He looked at Sora for a moment. "Nowe's thread is gone." He looked back up. "If their reiatsu is gone, they are dead, or they are no longer in this world."

There were problems with this, of course. There were ways to hide. But considering he'd been able to look at the Head Doctor's spirit thread... he didn't think they knew them.

Sora appreciated that they didn't force him to leave. Maybe it felt strange for them to have a teenager joining in on the conversation, but he didn't want to be treated like that. While he knew he could be naive when it came to certain things, he had already lost a lot of his innocence. People had died at his hand, after all. It didn't matter if they were "nobodies" - they were still people.

Spirit energy? That was -- well, he hadn't exactly heard about anything like that before. The only thing he could relate it to was how he could sense how much darkness or light was in another person's heart, but that was only if he was with the person. He couldn't reach out for another's heart if they weren't close-by, so there was no way for him to check if his friends were still present.

Though when Renji mentioned Kurosaki, Sora's eyes widened. He hadn't seen that on the bulletin board, he'd had no idea--

Him too? While he hadn't been as close to Kurosaki as he had been to Nowe, it felt like things were just being piled on top of each other now. Sora didn't want to make a scene, however - not when they had trusted him to partake in the conversation like an adult. He kept quiet, prepared to hear Hughes and Cliff's responses.

"Yeah, I get the idea." Cliff nodded. It went without saying that he needed to be discreet. He wasn't even sure he would be bringing this up with Fayt and Albel. They weren't really a part of this.

He listened to Renji's explanation. He'd been so many places it was damn near impossible to surprise him anymore. He'd never believed in any sort of spirit world, but whatever this thread was, Renji seemed to know it well. He'd just have to trust that.

"Do you know when Kurosaki disappeared? Or any idea how?" He didn't think it would do him any good but something compelled him to ask. He was just a kid.

Hughes sighed.

"That...happens a lot more than it should," he said, adjusting his glasses. "I'm not gonna lie. I've lost a lot of friends in this place. They just...disappear. I don't know what happens to them, and sometimes they come back, but...." He shook his head.

"The staff acts like they were never here. Now, I've been around when people die. When people die, you know. But when people just aren't here anymore..." He ran a hand over his face. "I don't know what it means or what happens. But I do know that there's a difference between people dying and people just not being here."

He looked at Cliff. "I don't know," he said. "If we weren't here, I would have felt it if he had gone in battle, or fought at all. Ichigo was... among those of us here, he had the strongest spirit. But I know nothing at all about what happened." Only that they were gone, and that somehow made it worse.

Renji listened to Hughes. If anything, it made his expression more somber. If it wasn't death, it was probably worse. And he was acquainted with the fact that there were, indeed, worse things than dying.

But in this case, he had no ideas.

When Hughes started to talk, Sora felt like he had to speak up. It was the way he'd described it that reminded the boy of what had happened to him the day before.

"Umm," he started, doing his best to interject without interrupting what anyone else was saying, "did any of you get visitors yesterday?" He shifted in his seat. He hadn't wanted to mention this to anyone (there was no way he was telling Kairi), but it wouldn't be fair for him to keep the information to himself when they were discussing it.

"Because I did. My best friend, Riku, was here before. Then he disappeared... Just like Kurosaki and Nowe. I tried not to think about it - I had no way of knowing he was gone for sure, but it was harder to ignore when it had been a few days since I'd seen him. Then yesterday, he... he was my visitor." He paused, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again. "He didn't call me 'Sora,' though, and he went by a different name. Still, he acted like Riku - and I... I think that maybe they took him and... did something to him, so that he really believed that he was someone else."

Cliff's mouth set into a thin line as he listened to Hughes, then Renji.

He shook his head at Sora's question. No visitors, and now he was almost thankful for it. He'd heard the stories on the bulletin but this was the first time anyone had spoken to him in person. This kid was brave. "You've got a point there." He looked back at Renji. "Would you be able to tell if it was something like that?"

"If it's not that it's..." He didn't want to suggest what he was about to, but he raked his fingers through his hair again and pressed on. Everyone else was offering up information and fair was fair. "I've heard people talking about the experiments they do in this place. And after seeing some of the monsters, I'm finding it less and less difficult to believe that maybe they're using the patients for building blocks."

Butchering, would be the word, but for what little difference it would make he couldn't say it in front of Sora. Cliff sighed and shook his head. "I just don't know."

"Huh." Hughes frowned, thoughtful for a moment, as he listened to Sora. "We know there's got to be a purpose to them trying so damn hard to make us think we're these other people. And that they've got to do something with the people they do convert." He drummed his fingers on the table, eyes narrowing.

"Maybe we ought to see about talking to people who had vistors, figure out if what the Head Doctor was ranting about may have any truth to it. If it does... well, then these people aren't dead. And there may be a chance to save them."

"I would know," Renji said. "As long as I can still sense reiatsu or try to look at the threads." So far, he was still going strong, but he was worried what would happen if he continued to push himself in these circumstances. He didn't have much of a choice, though. He had to keep going.

While everyone was sharing information, he thought maybe it was best to share another piece. He didn't know about Cliff, but Hughes seemed to be a capable man that a lot of people knew. He might know how to best begin organizing things.

"I know what the Head Doctor's spirit thread looks like," he said. "I was in the chapel, and I looked."

Sora's eyes widened when Cliff revealed his theory. "You mean they're using patients to make more monsters?" That was a chilling thought. In a way, it was similar to the Heartless. Once a person's heart was taken, there was nothing of them left, and...

Still, that wasn't quite so gruesome. Maybe it had been out of line for him to blurt that out so bluntly, but he'd been shocked at the very idea.

After that, he collected himself, knowing that he needed to act like a grown-up. "Still, if they could just brainwash people that easily, why haven't they done it to all of us?" He liked the idea that he could find Riku again and bring him back to normal, but he didn't know how probable that was.

Distracted by Renji's statement, he turned to face the redhead, mouth slightly open. "Really? What did it look like?" Not that he knew what 'spirit threads' looked like normally, but he was still curious.

Day 23: Lunch

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(skipping Hughes with Fey's permission)

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