Day 50: Chapel

[full-score.livejournal.com]

The last thing Claude heard was the Head Doctor's voice faintly filtering into the corridors of the ship before he found himself tucked beneath the sheets of his bed. It took a moment to register he'd even changed locations, but then he he abruptly sat up, fought the wave of nausea that washed over him, and felt the blankets beneath his fingers. The room. He was back in his room now. Under different circumstances, he might have wondered if last night had been some horrid dream, but the sharp pain in his eyes gave him a rude awakening. Hissing through his teeth, Claude buried the heels of his palms against his lids, only to discover two cold compresses had been taped over them.

"Good morning, Thomas," he heard the nurse's cheerful voice from beside his bed. Her sudden presence nearly made him jump out of his skin, and he sharply turned toward the source of the greeting, heart beating rapidly in his chest. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well today, but hopefully you can still enjoy some of the activities we have planned."

'Not feeling well' was a bit of an understatement. His hand hurt, his stomach kept turning with every movement, and it felt like someone had dumped a bunch of sand into both eye sockets. Right now, Claude just wanted the nurse to leave him be, but it didn't look like that was an option. Taking his uninjured hand, she gently tugged him out of bed, despite his protests that, no, really, he just wanted to stay in and sleep, please.

"I think getting out of your room a little bit will do you good," she told him. "I'm sorry your eyes are probably hurting, though. If you're ever feeling uncomfortable, don't hesitate to ask one of us for some pills."

"What about eye drops?" Claude asked tightly.

"Oh, no, too much of that could damage your eyes," she cautioned, and the sheer irony of the situation hit Claude so hard that it would have been laughable if he didn't already feel like crying right then. The nurse was as oblivious to it as always, however. "I know you usually go into the chapel during this shift. Would you like to go there again?" Claude didn't answered immediately, but that didn't deter the nurse. "Yes, I think that sounds best..."

In truth, he probably should have requested the sun room -- it was closer, for one, which meant the nurse didn't have to lead him as far of a distance. For another, lying down on one of their sofas sounded like a good option. But by the time Claude came to that conclusion, he was too stubborn to say anything, and he made his way up to the second floor, his footing slow, but steady.

The nurse deposited him on one of the central pews, next to the aisle, before leaving him to himself. Thankfully, it was still early in the shift. As he paused to listen, the room was mostly silent, save for the footsteps and hushed voices of the occasional staff member or patient who trickled in. But it was probably only a matter of time before others came. For some reason, the thought of being stuck in a crowded room made him tense, not necessarily because he thought anyone would pay him any mind, but because he simply didn't want it right then.

Somehow, the full implications of what happened last night hadn't sunken in: experiments, healing himself, the issue of whether he could actually go home after this, not being able to see, the ship, father. Instead, he just felt saturated with all of it, paralyzed by the horror of what they'd done to him, and the uncertainty of what it all meant beyond this moment. Claude took a shuddering breath, uninjured hand balling into a fist in his lap.

[For Guy.]

Comments

[buteo-sapiens.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, this guy was new.

Tobias actually had to think about the question for a moment, expression going blank as he forgot to maintain his smile. "... More than a week," he concluded, eventually. "Maybe nine or ten days?" He wasn't actually sure, which was a bit unnerving; he was used to losing count of the days out in the forest, without clocks or schedules, and with Ax's internal chronometer ticking away reliably if he ever needed to know-- but that had been different, nothing like the crazy irregularities of this place. The days were a little strange, here, flying by despite the monotony, with the nights punctuating everything with pain or dreamless sleep.

He cocked his head to one side, an almost birdish mannerism. "And yeah, no one here is. Ask anyone, and they'll tell you how they don't even know how they got here."

[guns-and-coffee.livejournal.com]

The lack of expression on Tobias's face while he thought was a little disturbing. Or rather, Ianto would have found it disturbing if he hadn't lived the past few years of his life. As it was, it was barely a blip on the radar. "Seems to be a common story." Ianto hadn't realised exactly how common, but he found the news wasn't terribly surprising. His retcon theory was starting to seem less and less likely. Which ought to be good news, except it meant that something was wrong on a much longer scale. Had he fallen through the Rift? "It was only new patients around yesterday, and I fell asleep after dinner. You're the first I've talked to who has experience with this place. It... doesn't seem to be your average mental health facility." No leading questions, not to start off with. He'd rather see what Tobias thought was most important.

[buteo-sapiens.livejournal.com]

"It's the only one I've heard," Tobias agreed. "Though I'm sure there's lots of different theories-- I know I thought it was the fault of someone I know, for the first while." He sent a vague glare at the ceiling; even if the Ellemist wasn't to blame for the kidnapping, Tobias could sure as heck blame him for not even showing up to help Tobias (and everyone else) get out of here. Or, well, give them all stupid hints that were about as helpful as an umbrella in a hurricane, but even a little was better than nothing.

"Ah, right, that explains it," Tobias said, with a small smile at Trystan. "It's about as average as the ocean is dry, what with the... man, I don't even know where to start. The multi-dimentional kidnappings? The horrible monsters? There were zombies last week, in town, that was unpleasant. The restricted powers, the blatantly false identities the nurses give us, the non-humans getting stuck in human bodies..."

He shrugged. "Yeah, not really average for most people."

[guns-and-coffee.livejournal.com]

Multi-dimensional kidnappings. So that'd be the Rift, then. Ianto supposed he ought to be grateful he'd ended up somewhere this nice. Sure, he was being held against his will and no one could give him any real answers, but he had a bed and food and was not, say, floating in the dead of space or being tortured to death. The nurses were not his favourite people, but they weren't exactly Daleks or Cybermen either, and the patients here weren't people he loved or even knew. Finding himself at Landel's was awful, but it wasn't the worst thing Ianto had experienced in the last few months. It wasn't even the worst thing he'd experienced in the last week.

"These monsters," he said, because Tobias had mentioned them, and he'd seen no trace of any such thing. "Where are they? What do they look like?" Blatantly false identities was obvious. (Ianto supposed he could stop telling people his name was Trystan, if this truly was the work of the Rift and not Jack, but then again he couldn't be sure, and there was no harm in the lie.) Restricted powers and non-humans could use more clarification, but neither were as pressing as anything that wanted to kill him.

There was also still the possibility that everyone here was insane, himself included.

[buteo-sapiens.livejournal.com]

Trystan didn't seem too surprised-- in fact, he zeroed in on what was probably the most important bit. Tobias couldn't help but wonder what the guy did back in his home (probably something ridiculously dangerous and weird, like Tobias had).

"Good priorities," he complimented the guy. "You don't see them during the day-- this place is pretty good at that, at least, pretending everything is normal before lights out. But they can turn up anywhere, at night." He cocks his head, just slightly, to the side. "There's a bunch of different types, to. Uh... giant virgin-eating birds outside, I know there's big nasty spiders and rats, apparently there are things in the water you don't want to meet... and that's the mundane stuff. Sometimes Landel... brainwashes people, to attack other patients. Stuff like that."

[guns-and-coffee.livejournal.com]

No species he could easily identify, which was unsurprising considering the multitude of worlds out there and the fact that he was quite possibly in a different dimension. Just monsters. Things that wanted to hunt him down, hunt them all down, watch them suffer and die. Ianto took a shaky breath, blinked a couple of times, then gave Tobias a strained smile. "Suppose I made the right choice last night, then."

He couldn't think about Lisa. He couldn't think about Canary Wharf. This was familiar, any old day at Torchwood. Solve the mystery, clean up the shit, and then they all went home. He could handle this. He just needed to focus. "And the non-humans, the patients with weakened powers?" Assuming those were the same group, but perhaps not.

[buteo-sapiens.livejournal.com]

"Sleeping in? Yeah, it's definitely not a bad idea, sometimes," Tobias agreed. He'd morphed enough times that the nights where it just knocked him out were nearly a blessing... even if he didn't get anything done.

"Well... it seems to vary, a bit. I was working last night with a guy who was... psychometric, I think he called it? He could touch things to pick things up off of them, but it made him dizzy." He paused, examined Trystan, and decided to be honestly cagey. "Back home, I was a kind of shapeshifter, but here I'm... really limited, at night, and it's way more painful than it should be."

[guns-and-coffee.livejournal.com]

Ianto had come across psychometry a few times in his years as a researcher, and he nodded while Tobias spoke, trying to recall the specifics of what he'd read. And then Tobias mentioned being a shapeshifter, and everything else flew out of Ianto's head. He hadn't exactly had good personal experiences with aliens. "Are you human?" He managed to keep the nerves out of his voice, at least, but his eyes had gone wide, and he was staring fixedly at the boy. He wasn't a field agent. This kind of encounter was outside his normal field of experience, and after Canary Wharf he'd been glad about that. Torchwood protected the world from alien threat, and that was all well and good for the world, but who protected Torchwood?

[buteo-sapiens.livejournal.com]

That was definitely a look the guy was giving him, and that was definitely a question.

Tobias actually pulled a bit of a face as he thought it over. "That... pretty much depends on your definition of human?" he ventured, a hint of laughter to his tone. "And what time of the day you ask me. It's a bit complicated." Two years ago, the answer would have been yes, but a lot of things had changed since then.

"There's definitely people here who'd answer no, though. I know we have a bunch of robots, some aliens, some other stuff..." He half-shrugged. "The only common factor is that we're all stuck here."

[guns-and-coffee.livejournal.com]

"Right." Ianto didn't have a problem with aliens in the abstract sense. The idea that a few might be around him right now didn't bother him. But when you were talking to a guy dressed up as something harmless -- something harmless like the ghost shift had been harmless --

Well, life was just full of unexpected surprises.

Ianto took a breath, pulled himself together. "There's a rift through time and space." Dimensions was a new element, but how much did they really know about the Rift? "Located in Cardiff in my world. It's incredibly powerful. My guess would be that someone has managed to harness it."

(Do you want to backthread? :3 *is enjoying!* *not least because Ianto is perfect* )

[buteo-sapiens.livejournal.com]

Tobias, quite frankly, had no idea where Cardiff was, or what country it was in, or if it was even a city on his particular brand of Earth. Of course, he had missed two years of school due to a terminal case of being a bird, which might have been part of the problem...

Which was probably less relevant than the rift in time and space (a Sario rip?). Tobias nodded acknowledgment of the theory, and put out his own; "I've been working on the assumption that this is part of the great big game my universe's hyperdimensional jerks are playing, but I've gone through a rip in space-time before; I suppose it could be possible someone figured it out..." He hmmed, thoughtfully.

Sure! I'm so glad you like him. I <3 your Tobias too -- he was always my favorite Animorph.

[guns-and-coffee.livejournal.com]

"Hyperdimensional jerks," Ianto repeated. That was amusing, wasn't it? He was justified in feeling like he was about to start laughing uncontrollably. Nope, that wasn't hysteria at all. "They, ah, sound like prime suspects." As if he was in any way equipped to make judgements about what such beings would do. Beings that very definitely weren't supposed to exist. Ianto was used to the extraordinary, but everything was bound by rules and logic. And it had all worked so very well until the Cybermen had come crashing through from another Earth. Torchwood hadn't known shit about dimensions. Torchwood, apparently, hadn't known shit about anything. Where did that leave Ianto? Way behind this guy, this teenager who talked about going through rifts like that was something normal and acceptable, this teenager who seemed to be acquainted with beings more powerful than Torchwood had ever imagined -- because Torchwood had been too busy granting power to itself.