damned_institute | Night 50: M11-M20 Hallway

[M12]

Klavier felt a wave of sickness as soon as that man's voice came over the intercom again. It was less apprehension and more bubbling anger than anything else. It wasn't so much the mocking that was grating as it was the sound of him sounding so smug, so satisfied with everything that was happening. So safe. Klavier told himself it was fine. Let the man believe he was untouchable. It would make it all the more satisfying when he was ripped down from his pedestal and made to face the consequences.

So last night's events had been done intentionally, after all. Herr Doktor was setting up a new system. A system of what, no one could say at this point, but if it resulted in anything like the previous night, it would prove to make things even more complicated than they already were. If anyone was to do anything, it would have to be now before they finished setting up whatever it was they were doing.

Herr Doktor was already mocking them to investigate to their heart's content, probably confident there was nothing to be found out there. But there was bound to be something overlooked. There had to be cracks in the system. And Klavier would find them all and see this place ripped down.

But first he needed to validate this claim about jewels and rings and whatnot. A teleportation ring? It didn't seem possible... But a lot of what didn't seem possible was fact in this place. Klavier opened the drawer on his side of the room and searched the inside. His good hand shuffled the contents about a little in search for anything like what the man had described, but there was nothing. The only "ring" in there was the small keyring. ...What were these keys for anyway? He picked them up questioningly and looked over the drawer again.

"...Nothing."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The uneasy feeling that Touya had experienced at the beginning of dinner had only intensified as the night grew closer and closer. Remy's sleeping and being unable to talk to anyone to distract him from what was clearly a feeling that was so overwhelming it was bypassing the fact that he didn't have any ability yet had worn on his nerves until they were practically raw. And it hadn't helped that neither of them had responded to his note on the bulletin. That was the papercut that had started his painful process of 'what if's.

He rifled through his drawer while the doctor was talking, not paying very much attention to what he was saying, and found the item: a silver ring with a red stone in it.

The door opened, he closed his fist around the ring, and ran. Ran for Yue. Because if it wasn't him, he'd be able to tell Touya were Sakura was.

Touya stopped in front of the familiar door, looking it up and down, deciding if he should knock or just go in. The two options met in the middle--he pounded on the door, perhaps a little more enthusiastically than he'd intended.

"Yue!"

He paused. Nothing. Not even a sound. What if he was...?

Touya could almost feel his heart seizing as he pushed the door open. Sleeping roommate, two dinner trays... signs that Yue had been there and yet--

He spotted Yue's wing spilling out of the closet, and Touya thought that he would never in his life see something as heart-wrenching and pitiful as that single image. And what was worse: whatever waited for him behind the door wasn't likely to be much kinder to him.

He slowly moved around the closet, half afraid of what he would find. If anything, he knew he would find a Yue that he'd never seen before. A side of the guardian that was scared and vulnerable. Yue had never failed to answer a note, and Touya was sure he wasn't the type to hide in a closet on a regular basis. Something was gravely wrong, and Touya was afraid of what that would mean.

When he got around the door of the closet and pushed it open slightly, he stopped breathing. The wing poking out of the doors had given him some idea of what to expect, but in the end he didn't think anything would have prepared him. The images of Yue tangled among his feathers and Yue flying above Tomoeda knocked against one another, trying to make some sort of picture that made sense. Nothing.

Touya looked away from Yue, to the sleeping man, then back. They needed to be somewhere else. Somewhere that was private. He knelt down, close to Yue's wing.

"Yue...?" he said softly. "Can you stand?"

The voice, the presence, both were familiar and yet faint and distant, as though remnants of a dream now fading with the dawn. It was so easy to ignore them both and curl in on himself, drawing farther inward until there was nothing left to see or hear or feel, but of course that couldn't happen. Something like fondness, an affectionate familiarity, flickered through his mind: no, of course Touya couldn't allow that.

The presence grew stronger with the sound of a door opening, footsteps against the floor, and almost Yue found the will to move and rise and pretend that nothing was wrong. To not allow Touya, of anyone, to see him like this, but then he wondered why. What reason was there, for any of it? Sakura hadn't moved; she was safe. Safer by far than she would be in the care of a wing-clipped and crippled guardian. Would a time come when she, too, would abandon those who cared for her, leaving them in a forced existence they never wanted? Better to die with his master than live without him, except... Clow wasn't dead. He was here.

At the sound of his name, spoken in a tone of soft concern, the guardian's thoughts shattered and scattered, and almost reflexively he lifted his head, turning toward the source. Instead of his usual impassive mask there was simply... nothing. Emptiness that reflected his heart, his pupils narrowed to slits so thin they nearly drowned in the pale blue of his irises, and no sign of comprehension. Stand? He had no need to stand. He had no reason to exist, except that he did, except that he... didn't want to.

For a moment, Touya thought Yue was angry with him, his face was so... blank. But a few seconds passed in silence, Touya waiting for an answer and getting none. He realized with no small amount of concern that he wasn't getting through to Yue. The look he was getting was a reflex to being talked to, but the message wasn't getting through.

Touya looked back at the sleeping roommate again, then to Yue. "We're going to go back to my room. I'm going to carry you."

He probably still wasn't reaching Yue, but he couldn't just pick the guardian up without warning. Gently, he laced his hand under Yue's knees and an arm around his shoulders, and lifted. He wasn't any heavier than Yuki was.

Yue would hate him in the morning for making such a display in the hallways, but Touya didn't have a choice. He couldn't cover Yue's wings, and he didn't think that anything he could do with Yue's roommate present would get Yue talking and functioning. If only he knew what had happened...

"Okay, here we go," Touya said softly. He toed the door open and toed it shut once he'd maneuvered them through. "No one's here, you're alright."

God, what if something had happened to Sakura?

In any other circumstances Yue would certainly have protested being manhandled in such a fashion-- he wasn't injured, he was perfectly capable of moving, and it was entirely undignified to be carried around like that. His awareness of that was only a faint annoyance, though, easily ignored, but the same wasn't true of Touya's presence. That only grew stronger, constant and steady and anchoring Yue's thoughts in the here and now.

Vaguely he realized that his wings were in the way of movement, and more out of habit than anything else he drew them close against his back. It was so easy to catch them on the doorways here, but still he stubbornly refused to dismiss them as he normally would have done while inside a building. The wing closest to Touya ended up halfway curved around his back for lack of anywhere else to go, but at least it wasn't dragging untidily on the floor. That should be good enough.

Yue allowed his eyes to close again once settled, not even able to summon the energy to wonder overlong at how much he was relaxing his guard. It must be Yukito's influence; the two of them were close now, the boundaries difficult to determine, as had started to happen more often lately. As Clow had wanted. Hadn't he? Or had he? But what did Clow's wishes matter, if he'd rejected his once-guardian?

(To here. (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/937971.html?thread=70902515#t70902515))

Night 50: M11-M20 Hallway

Re: M11

Re: M11

Re: M11

Re: M11

Re: M11