Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

Somehow, after their talk in the chapel, Elaine felt simultaneously more accepting of and more irritated by her future husband. On the one hand, seven years had clearly been good to him. He seemed more sincere and thoughtful than he had been before his disappearance, and he had a more mature (dare she say, handsome?) look to him. On the other hand, there were clearly some things that made even time throw up its hands in vain and say, "To hell with this!" Guybrush was still inexorably prone to disastrous accidents if the story about the Pox of LeChuck was anything to go by, and he was so obviously keeping something important from her that any passing dolt in the Institute would have been able to tell. In the end, that eternal underlying sweetness of his that won out, keeping her from punching him again, at least. That was only by a hairs width, though. Her snugglecakes was going to have to stay on his best behaviour if he knew what was good for him.

She left the Mighty Pirate™ alone for the time being when the announcement of the next shift went off. He would want some time to catch up with Morgan next, presumably. As much as the woman's attitude bothered her, she was a friend of Guybrush's, as she had claimed. Elaine could be strict, but she wasn't the kind of shrewish future wife/past fiancé who would keep her man from seeing his friends. Besides, she needed some more time to catch up on the goings-on of the Institute. Patients filled the building to the brim, now, it seemed; there would be a lot to investigate.

After a few quick trips back and forth to the bulletin and a few new leads to follow up on, the governor gave in to her nurse's persistent nagging and headed to the cafeteria for brunch. After the relatively light fare of the day before, Elaine took advantage of the Institute's admittedly scrumptious offerings and loaded up a full, balanced brunchfast of eggs, sausage links, waffles, and vegetable soup. As expected, the selection of drinks did not offer either root beer or grog. Grog she could live without, at least, she thought while making a face. Eugh. For now, she settled for a tall glass of water.

Elaine settled into a seat in the cafeteria and tucked into her meal. Her eyes didn't stay on her food, though, instead gazing around restlessly; she hadn't seen LeChuck so far this morning, and god forbid he wanted to invite himself to brunch with her if he chose now to show up. A certain horribly unpleasant dinner on Mêlée Island came to mind. She was prepared to either move at the first sign of the dread pirate or signal a random stranger to sit with her before he could.

[For Dean]

Comments

[dualistic]

At least the guy was self-aware enough to know that he'd probably been through this before. Maybe not this exact conversation, seeing how Harvey was pretty sure this was the first time the whole moving rooms and being transported to New York colleges thing had happened. On the other hand, unexplainable events were pretty much the institute's MO, so Leonard likely had a whole journal full of notes about things that made no sense. Trying to read all of that over ever few hours had to be enough to make his head spin. With that in mind, it was pretty surprising that he was staying so calm.

Though maybe he was just trying to put on that front. Harvey didn't know the guy well enough to know for sure, and his lack of memory made it even harder to judge. "Well, the only person you can trust is yourself," he remarked with a nod and a shrug of his shoulders. Which had almost always been his philosophy, anyway. Maybe he'd been starting to judge Rachel, but... that was different, and it didn't matter anymore.

"Don't you worry that someone's going to steal one of your notes and copy your handwriting?" Maybe it would seem odd that he was thinking up ways that people could take advantage of the man, but he still had no reason to act on any of this. It was just that the man seemed so confident in himself, so certain that he could get by despite what had happened to him. That was better than laying down and dying, but Harvey was curious as to how he stayed so certain that he was going about things right and that he didn't have to always be vigilant and make sure that someone wasn't screwing him over.

[otnemememento.livejournal.com]

Leonard shook his head. "I'd know it if it wasn't my writing," he said with utmost confidence, as if the very idea that someone could imitate his script was something as unbelievable as the things written in his journal. "You just know your handwriting from all others. You have to be able to trust it. Anyone could write you notes, try to lead you on the wrong path, but you know you can trust yourself. It's not memory- it's written proof."

No matter what he said, there was a small seed of doubt planted in him. He wouldn't let those notes out of his sight. He wouldn't lose them. He couldn't allow himself to lose them. "You can't doubt what you know is true when you're like me. I know what my writing looked like before this happened to me. You see that writing over and over and force yourself to learn every nuance of it. Conditioning. Discipline and routine make my life possible."

[dualistic]

Harvey was starting to get the feeling that talking to Leonard was going to feel like listening to a broken record after a while. It made sense, seeing how he couldn't know what he had or hadn't said to any given person, but it still had the potential to get old after the third or fourth conversation.

"I guess you'd drive yourself crazy if you were always wondering if your notes were legitimate or not," he conceded. The question was whether or not Leonard had already passed that step. He seemed so fixated and so sure of himself that it was almost like he was reading lines off of an index card, but that wasn't something he was going to mention out loud, even if the man would most likely just forget.

"So, what are you going to do now?" he asked, wondering how much of a goal the man could have in mind when he could barely keep track of what was going on.