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

[threepwood]

"Honey, you know I get lost in five minutes or less if I don't have a map to follow or a help line to call," Guybrush said with a shake of his head. An afterthought hit him only a second later: "Oh wait, maybe you don't." He had to consider he had seven years of knowledge on her- for the first time in his life, there was a chance he knew something she hadn't already figured out hours earlier- and that mentioning things she hadn't done yet could alter her future dramatically.

It was bad enough that she had been interacting with three people from farther down the natural time line just the night before. Then again, how much could they spoil her future for her in the course of a single night?

Well, they had mentioned that they had all died or possibly died at some point.
And then there was that part about LeChuck running amok for months while he and Morgan had been dead.
And there was Morgan. He wasn't sure how much she'd told Elaine about their fake honeymoon in the manatee, but the fact that they'd been together in the hallway was encouraging. Maybe they'd be on friendlier terms if Elaine didn't find out about the previous team up of Mighty Pirate™ and Mighty Pirate Hunter™.

Okay, so the time line was already in the toilet. He still needed to stay on her good side, but telling her about future events probably couldn't hurt things any worse than they were already. "It's just that when I last saw you, you were going head-to-head with LeChuck to avenge me, so I was a little worried about you... although now, I'm still worried about the you I left behind, since the you here is you from before we got married. But I'm still happy to see you."

Smooth.

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

So Guybrush definitely had been dead or dying before his arrival at the Institute, then, and at LeChuck's hands, no less. That certainly fit with Morgan's alarm about being dead for months. If she and Guybrush had been killed by LeChuck around the same time, that would mean LeChuck had been terrorizing the Caribbean unopposed for quite some time. It would have been like his rampage as the Ghost Pirate LeChuck a few years back (on her timeline) - probably worse if he had gotten access to more voodoo in the future. Elaine winced at the thought. She had lost a lot of friends during that time, several of whom had turned up again as members of LeChuck's ghost crew.

The biggest question that raised for her, of course: what had happened to her in that time? She likely hadn't been killed; otherwise, she probably would have been taken from that same time period. Even with confidence in her own abilities, though, she doubted she could go up against a fully voodoo-powered LeChuck alone. From what Guybrush was describing, it sounded like he had been killed right in front of her, and she had attacked LeChuck right then and there for revenge's sake. If her emotional judgment had been clouded, that lowered her chances of winning even further.

She could see three possibilities for herself. 1) Future Elaine had realized she was outmatched and found a way to escape and get back-up; 2) Future Elaine had been defeated, but spared out of LeChuck's eternal undead affection for her, most likely leading to her being taken with him on his flagship afterward; or 3) Tying in to what Morgan had told her about Human LeChuck and Future Elaine sailing around together with a barrel boat full of monkeys - Future Elaine had been pretending to work with LeChuck, letting Guybrush get killed (possibly having found a way to revive him later) and herself be taken as part of an elaborate gamble to lower LeChuck's guard and gain the upper hand on him later.

The third option was the absolute least likely of the bunch. The words "Xanatos Roulette" popped into her mind without her really knowing what they meant. Still, Elaine felt a light, uncomfortable shiver run down her spine at the thought of it.

She pushed those thoughts to the back burner for a few moments, putting her focus back on Guybrush and his (admittedly) ever-charming awkwardness. "You know I had been going head-to-head with LeChuck to avenge you in the time I come from too, right?" she pointed out. Though she wanted to stay mad at Guybrush for all the mistakes he had made both before and after his return on Plunder Island, she couldn't deny the truth of that statement, not to herself and not to him. Damn it. Why did she always seem to let her guard down around him despite years of experience telling her not to? He really was just too... sweet. "I have to say, despite you being from unnervingly far in the future, your gross ego problems, rampant kleptomania, proclivity for not thinking things through before doing them, that annoying knuckle-cracking thing you do, and the fact that you got me turned into a statue... I'm happy to see you too, sugar boots," she admitted, her smile growing a little.

[threepwood]

Despite that lengthy list of issues she had with him (and he wasn't even sure what 'proclivity' meant, but it sounded like some sort of disease) and the years that now separated them, this Elaine was still the same old Snugglecakes he'd left fighting LeChuck in the jungle of Flotsam Island, willing to forgive him because of what he hoped was unbridled love rather than some mixture of passion and pity. What a woman- he was lucky to have someone who'd understand him despite being from an entirely different time period.

As he looked at his Angel of the Sea, he was momentarily distracted by something over her shoulder, where he could see Morgan sitting on the other side of the room. He was going to have to speak with her at some point- hopefully, she'd pieced together what was not okay to say to Elaine, especially one from the past. What she had possibly said already was unsettling enough. At least Elaine-From-The-Past didn't come with Poxy tantrums that manifested if her husband spent more than thirty seconds with another woman.

Returning his attention to Elaine, he gave her a confident smile. "Well, in good news, I fix that statue curse and return you to normal like the responsible husband I am. Or fiancé I was. Whichever. And I have one less handful of knuckles to crack now."

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

Elaine glanced over when Guybrush did. There was Morgan, steadfastly ignoring them out of annoyance from the looks of things. She raised an eyebrow before looking away again. Hmm. Now I wonder what, besides an advantage in Trivial Pursuit: Monkey Island Edition™, might come out of knowing as much about Guybrush's background as she claims to? she thought suspiciously. She would have to corner the hunter again at some point.

That was for later, though. For now, she was just glad to hear that this whole curse business had ended up in her favour, and she smiled again to let Guybrush know that he had done decently. Not letting the curse be laid in the first place would have been ideal, of course, but taking the effort to remedy his mistake made him a better man than he had been before his disappearance, at least. "Now how did that happen, anyway?" she asked, gesturing to her significant-other-of-questionable-matrimonial-status's hook hand. "Is that something recent?"

[threepwood]

Guybrush managed to stop himself before immediately recounting the thrilling tale of how he'd lost his hand in a daring battle with Morgan LeFlay, Mighty Pirate Hunter™, biting his lip harshly in the process. While Elaine would have enjoyed that story as much as the next soggy pirate, he had to consider that telling her that Morgan had been the one who lopped off Lefty the Wedding Band Hand probably wouldn't score her any points and help their relationship in the future.

Now, here was a chance to use his status as "Guybrush of the Future" for some good. If Elaine was on better terms with Morgan by the time they met later down the line, then maybe Poxy Elaine wouldn't want to gut her at Club 41 and he wouldn't have made the pirate hunter feel as bad and then maybe she wouldn't want to go save his hand and get herself killed by De Singe.

Okay, so that idea was riddled with errors and holes and would probably result in some horrific consequences due to meddling with time and trying to change the future, but it couldn't hurt to keep Morgan's name as clean as possible when it came to his Laineykins, especially since Morgan was a friend- the kind of friend who probably would sell you out for a few bucks, but a friend nonetheless. Besides- sometimes, it was okay to stretch the truth a little when it came to Elaine, especially if it was for the greater good. After all, he'd managed to rescue the Vaycaylian MerLeader just fine, despite her orders. When it came to Morgan, what Elaine didn't know probably wouldn't come back to bite him in the keister. Probably.

"Yeah, it's pretty recent," he said, thinking as fast as he could. "I lost it in, uh, a fight. With a doctor. A very creepy doctor. Yep. He wanted it to make some immortality hat out of the Pox of LeChuck that had infested my hand."

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

Annnnnnd there went a few of Guybrush's freshly gained points of respect out the window already. The Mighty Pirate™ was clearly keeping something from her. The story as he told it was probably mostly true, but he wouldn't have bitten down on his lip like he were trying to keep the Ark of the Covenant closed if that had been everything. She folded her arms and gave him a look, the kind that said "I know there's something fishy about what you just said, and you'd better tell me what it is before I start withholding certain things from you next" without her having to say a word.

Following that, she did take the effort to spend some words on the part of Guybrush's explanation that actually had interested her further. "And what exactly is this 'Pox of LeChuck'? I know that LeChuck was back and up to something in your time," she said, not entirely sure if she had her tenses correct regarding future events that would have been past events for Guybrush. "I wasn't told what that was, though. How did something like that get started, and what does immortality and this doctor have to do with it?"

[threepwood]

Annnnnnd there was the look Guybrush had been expecting in response to his half-truth. Yes, it looked just as intimidating on pre-marriage Elaine as it did post-marriage. He responded with one of his trademark "Trust Meeee" smiles before changing the subject as per her followup comments.

"The Pox is... a long story." His smile faded as he tried to think of out to summarize his latest adventure while leaving out some of the best parts and still having it correlate with what he'd just told her. "See, LeChuck had kidnapped you again, and so I was going to set him straight with the Legendary Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu, but the Voodoo Lady's recipe was complicated, and I sortofdroppedthespecialrootbeerneededtofinishtherecipe, so I improvised with some root grog and breath mints. It didn't work as expected, though- instead of destroying LeChuck once and for all, it just pushed all the evil Voodooness out of him, which became this airborne pox that started affecting pirates all over the Caribbean: the Pox of LeChuck." He gestured with his hands as he got to the name for dramatic effect.

"Since it was our fault the Pox was unleashed, you wanted to work to get rid of it, but I was one step ahead of you, already looking for La Esponja Grande- a mythical sea sponge that could cure the Pox. Meanwhile, the Marquis De Singe- that creepy doctor I mentioned- wanted to cut off my hand and use it to make some sort of immortality juice, but then decided he'd rather use the strain of the Pox you had. And there was a Vaycaylian wind machine involved, and I was stuck inside a manatee for a while... you know how these things go."

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

She did indeed know how these things tended to go. That was why Elaine's expression remained mostly unchanged all through Guybrush's explanation. At least this hair-brained scheme and resulting horrible consequences had been the result of Guybrush trying to do something good, as opposed to something entirely selfish like his search for Big Whoop. Still, that didn't exactly excuse him from unleashing an evil voodoo pox upon the Caribbean. Things like that tended to put people out just a smidge.

She also tilted her head and added a "Seriously?" look in to her expression when Guybrush said it had been their fault - plural. From the sound of things, this situation had been 100% a Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™ production, written and directed by Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™ (based on characters created by Ron Gilbert, with very special thanks to George Lucas). Perhaps Future Elaine had become more forgiving of the man and willing to help him get out of his own mess, but she was not Future Elaine yet. She also doubted that Guybrush had been one step ahead of her. If she knew herself, Future Elaine had already run ten steps ahead of that, rounded the bend, then run up to one step behind the man, nearly ready to lap him completely. One of the most frustrating things about being seven years behind everyone else currently was the loss of that familiar feeling of knowing things the others didn't, in fact, and she was keen to get that feeling back as quickly as she could.

"I see I have a wild and fulfilling future ahead of me," she said in a measured tone, leaning back against the pew with her arms still folded. "Well, we'll see if I can avoid getting kidnapped in the first place so that I can help you finish that cutlass properly, then, maybe." That was, if being kidnapped in the first place hadn't been a part of an elaborate plan of hers to begin with. Again, it was stretching things, but it was possible. Best not to suggest that to Guybrush, though, lest he potentially mess up said plan before it even got off the ground.

"Until then, we should work on getting out of here and taking down this Landel to ensure that this never happens to us again. What kind of progress have you made since your arrival?" she asked, hoping the answer wasn't along the lines of "Well, I found this nifty rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle?"

[threepwood]

"Well, I've so far done a lot of walking, joined a club, found a shovel, made a sash to carry said shovel, accidentally stolen a man's sword that I will be returning, met someone claiming to be fictional archaeologist and protagonist of classic games Indiana Jones, been accused of kleptomania by every nurse I've met, and insulted no less than three people. Also, my room caught on fire, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't my fault." He could safely blame that one on De Singe/Landel/De Slandel, assuming Scott wasn't a closet pyromaniac who could create fire by rubbing his slippers together.

Guybrush crossed his arms and tapped his hook on the side of his chin, trying to remember all he'd learned during his three days at Landel's. The list was not nearly as impressive as his accomplishments. "I've really not had a chance to learn much about this place, unfortunately," he said. It'd help if he had better listening skills. He attempted to remember what Javert had told him, now a little keener on the information because it had turned out to be somewhat true. "I know there's a guy named Landel running it, he performs sicko experiments on people, turns the staff into monsters at night, probably has a lot of Voodoo backing him up- this all ties in with my 'The Marquis De Singe is Landel' theory, along with the fact that this place apparently brings people back from the dead for the amusement of the Head Doctor."

That didn't account for Elaine, but he figured she'd fill in the holes in his theory eventually, or rewrite it entirely to make it make sense- one of her many, many talents.