damned_institute | Day 51: Breakfast

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Day 51: Breakfast

Yuffie Kisaragi, indomitable bouncing ball of sunshine and unfathomable ebullience, was tired. It'd been a long night full of gibberish and getting nowhere fast.

"Can't I—"

Plucky, who had been busily loading a plate full of French toast and bacon, tittered. "I'm afraid not, Hanna, darling. A chat over a nice, hearty breakfast would do you a world of good, don't you think?"

"Aaaaactually—"

"Come on, let's find you a seat. Plenty to choose from this morning!"

For a long moment, Yuffie seriously considered doing something—anything—to act out. Punch her nurse, rub jam in an orderly's face, climb a wall and hang off the ceiling, jump on a table and parody Loveless… A ruckus like that would definitely jolt her back into gear, right? Sedation aside. And it'd turn Plucky's good day right on its head, which was always a bonus worth shooting for.

But, by the time she'd reached a decision—and it was an epic decision, a really awesome one; everybody'd appreciate the genius, she was sure—she was already alone. Her breakfast tray had been set down neatly by the nurse, who had left with an infuriatingly winsome smile.

"Wow," Yuffie muttered. Shaking her head, she picked a chair at random and threw herself into it. She kicked back, one arm slung across her eyes, to wait. For what, she wasn't totally sure. Some moron to decide that she looked like good company? That was how it usually went.

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As Elle's eyes snapped open, she wanted to believe that all of yesterday was a dream, some weird nonsequitur her mind had created to escape the pain. But here she was. Again. Her gaze drifted over to the other side of the room. So was... she never learned her name, did she? Her roommate, the crazy bitch. The less conversation she shared with her, the better. She wanted to explore the room-- find her own damn flashlight and see if the baseball bat she acquired with Claire was somewhere in the room, but it wasn't worth the risk of waking her roommate up. Making her best effort to be noiseless, she tried to sneak out of her room and down the hallway. The door was locked. God damn it.

But in a matter of seconds she caught the attention of a nurse passing by and ushered to breakfast, but that was okay. She was getting kind of hungry. She could get used to this kind of life, maybe. It wasn't that bad, minus the thing with the monsters.

She pondered this while picking at her bacon and french toast, sitting at a table by herself. Absentmindedly, she raked her fingers across the tabletop, trying to cause sparks. There were none, just like before.

Hmmm. She started intently at the space, as if it wasn't too late for it to be marred.

[For Peter.]

Edited 2010-08-07 00:10 (UTC)

Peter woke up with a plethora of things that he had to stash away in a very limited time. He ignored the head doctor's words for the moment (the morning announcements were never very enlightening) as he sprang out of bed, tossing his shovel and pillowcase full of medicals supplies into his closet while he crammed Sam's gun and the ring into his desk drawer. He'd only just gotten it closed when the door opened and a nurse stepped inside.

"Oh, Mr. Campbell, you look energized this morning," the woman commented. Peter was glad that she had a way to explain away his hurried look to herself. The last thing he needed was the staff getting suspicious and deciding to search his room or something.

With everything safely tucked away, Peter was taken out of the room and down the hall. He took that time to think over what the head doctor had said right before night's end. He had personally been able to understand everything the man had had to say; it was times like this where being an English-speaker came in handy, apparently. Ethnocentrism aside.

Getting some information about the rings was helpful, but Peter didn't know how much he could trust what Landel had to say. Unfortunately, the man put them in a situation where there was really no other choice. Spilling a drop of blood wasn't the hugest deal, but he did have to wonder if there was some sort of consequence for it. If he tested it while with Claire, then they could at least avoid losing that much blood; absorbing her power would be pretty handy. He'd just have to impress on her that he was the one who'd be doing it. That would be harder if she had a ring of her own. He also didn't know if he might have to share his with Sam. He wouldn't mind, but it was something they'd have to coordinate.

Peter ended up making a stop by the bulletin to leave a note for his niece and also try to get the attention of the paramedic team. He wasn't sure if Hanatarou had it in him to play leader every day, so he figured that taking the initiative and jump-starting a discussion would be in their best interest.

Next was getting himself some breakfast. He took a couple slices of french toast and some fruit from the food line before glancing around the area for a place to sit. The place wasn't packed yet, which meant he had some options...

When he passed over a girl around his age with blond hair, he paused for a moment, figuring that he was just seeing things. But the more he stared at her, the more he realized that he wasn't making it up. It was Elle, or... someone who looked exactly like her, anyway. After meeting Spock, he knew that was possible, but he didn't see anything about this girl that distinguished her from the girl he knew. No pointy ears, no angled eyebrows, nothing like that. Did that mean...?

He had just spoken to Depth Charge the day before about patients who had died in the institute being brought back to life. He knew it was possible, even if he still didn't know the how of it. But Elle had been gone for what felt like two weeks now. How could she just show up here again as if that had never happened?

This wasn't going to take away the guilt that he'd experienced ever since he'd let her die. She was back, but the institute had brought her back; it didn't have anything to do with him. While he was glad that she'd been given a second chance, she had also been taken advantage of and she probably didn't remember anything from that night, not to mention her time at the institute before that.

Which meant he needed to warn her. In all honestly, Peter had never quite known what to think of Elle. There had been so much about their apparent future relationship that he hadn't ever found out about, and with the way she'd always been touching him (or shocking him, come to think of it), he couldn't help feeling wary. Adding to that the hints of her being connected to the Company and having made some sort of deal with Sylar, and he really wasn't sure what to make of her. But two weeks of mourning had also endeared her to him in a strange way. She had been pretty weird, maybe kind of off, but nothing compared to a monster like Sylar. And she'd died fighting.

And so he slowly approached her, holding the sides of his tray with a grip that was too tight. She was going to recognize him, probably, but not for the right reasons. "Elle?" he spoke up, refraining from sitting down until he gauged her reaction. This was going to be a very difficult conversation regardless of how she responded to him.

Elle's eyes slowly rose from the table to the voice who was speaking to her-- had to be her, how many people here actually knew her name? She recognized the voice, at least, she thought she did, but she couldn't actually believe it until she looked at him.

Peter Petrelli. With his sad puppy eyes and his crooked mouth. What was he doing here? On one hand, he wasn't nearly mentally unstable enough to belong here. Sure, there was Pom-Pom, but at least she fit the profile. And, all things considered, it could be nice to have someone on her side. She'd dragged him onto it once before, right? And how hard could it really be to do so again?

But she kind of liked him. Not that it really mattered. She kind of liked all of the boys she'd had to deal with in the Company. But the end result was always the same. Peter hadn't been any different in that respect. He left her, he ran away. Him and Adam. Ugh.

Her surprised expression was quick to melt away into a smile. She wasn't going to let him run away this time. She started drawing circles on the table absently with one finger.

"Peter. There's someone I wasn't expecting to see. You should sit with me. We could talk. ... You know, catch up."

She had no idea.

Peter could only stare at her for a moment, unsure of what to say or what to do. She was even giving him a hand ("sit with me, we could talk"; that made it sound so easy), and yet for a moment he was just rooted to the spot, clutching onto his tray of food for dear life. He had seen this girl's brain. He had watched her bleed out on the stairwell that was only about a one minute walk from where he was standing now. Yet here she was, speaking to him as if she had everything under control.

Stomach churning, he finally moved, rushing over to set the tray down even though he doubted he had it in him to eat any of it now. He fell into the seat, hunching forward as he tried to find the words to tell her what she had to know.

"You don't remember, do you?" he said, even though he already knew the answer. "Elle, you were here before. I met you here." It wasn't going to make any sense, and he was going to confuse her, but he needed to get this out somehow and he didn't know of any other way. "But Sylar, he..."

Did he really need to say anything more than that? Elle knew exactly who Sylar was, if the way she had spoken to him on the night of her death was any indication. Peter didn't know if she'd really been planning to strike a deal with him or what, but after this, hopefully she would know better. He couldn't let it happen again. Even if he barely knew Elle, and even if he didn't quite know what to make of her, she didn't deserve to lose her life to that monster.

Elle had taken a bite of her french toast when he finally sat down, but Peter's words made her stop mid-chew. She'd been here before? What did that even mean? Was that possible? Maybe Peter belonged here just as much as hardware store's worth of screws loose roommate.

She swallowed slowly, eyes wide. Sylar. He said Sylar.He couldn't mean ... no. "Sylar's here? What do you mean? What happened?" And more importantly, why couldn't she remember it? Her automatic assumption was that Rene intervened, but he wasn't here. Where did that leave her?

She knew she could take on Sylar. Kind of. She had, and she won, even if it meant that she unleashed all of the inmates on Level 5. But maybe... if she didn't have her powers, and Pom-Pom was having some sort of malfunction... maybe Gabriel Gray wasn't so special, either. Which wasn't to say that he wasn't a problem. Just somewhat less of one.

It looked like it wasn't that easy. Peter knew that it was a lot to ask, for him to expect that she would just accept that she had died. It was something he could have understood, but that was because he'd already been victim to it in the past. While the memory of that shard of glass ramming into his skull was faint, it was still there. More than that, he knew exactly what it felt like when the air suddenly returned to your lungs.

Pulling his hands up from his lap, he laid them on the table and started to wring them together. He really didn't know how to say any of this, but he had to tell her. Besides, now that he'd started she wasn't going to let him just try to backpedal on this. Not that he planned to, but the point was that there was no turning back.

"Yeah, he's here," he said with a nod. "He's been here for about as long as I have, probably over two weeks by now." Maybe even three at this point, but he wasn't entirely sure. He should have marked each passing day in his journal. "People here will come and go, but if you disappear and come back, it's usually without memories." Elle would know what he was talking about; she'd talked to him about the Haitian before.

"I actually didn't know you until I came here, even though you know me," he continued. Peter knew that he was stalling, but this was all stuff that he was eventually going to have to tell her, so there wasn't that much harm in it. None of it really matched in importance to her own death, but he was trying to take this one step at a time, seeing how the get-it-out-as-fast-as-you-can method had pretty much failed. This couldn't be handled like a band-aid or a strip of gauze, not really.

As she watched Peter's inner turmoil manifest itself externally, her brow furrowed. Was he really so upset about her? Her entire life, no one had really cared like that. Not even her own father. What made Peter so different? What made her so different? Maybe she was misinterpreting. That had to be it.

There were worse things to be concerned about, anyway. Like the whole Sylar situation. "When you say he's here, you mean... in solitary confinement or something, right? Not... here." She made a small gesture to the area around them. "Not like us." Even while she was asking, her eyes made a quick scan of the room. She knew it was just wishful thinking. And that somewhere in the room, maybe, one of the people innocently eating bacon and french toast was that sick bastard.

And just when she thought it couldn't get worse, it did. Peter didn't know her. Not outside of this weird, fucked up place. It didn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense because she didn't want to accept that everyone's memories could be tampered with so easily— Peter, Claire, herself? Probably everyone else at Landel's, from the sound of it.

Even more confusing, though, was why Peter cared about her at all then if he barely knew her, from the sound of it. "It wasn't much different, I guess." She tried to build herself up, tried not to make it sound like a major deal. Being a big girl was important now. "Except you were the prisoner, and I got to play nurse." With a sly smile, she propped her head against the palm of her hand. "We had some good times."

Maybe it was just him, but Elle seemed a bit different now. Not on a fundamental level, but she wasn't trying to sit in his lap and run her hands all over him, and her vulnerable side seemed to be showing a little more. He could tell that she was scared, more than she was letting on. He remembered how before she had been so intent on pleasing her father, and it was possible that that urge was what had led her to her death. She hadn't been willing to run.

The issue of Sylar was something that had to come in one big package, and so he set that aside at first, focusing instead on the fact that she was finally giving him some more information about how they had known each other. It reminded him of what little he had heard before. "That's right," he said, mainly to himself, as he glanced down at the table. "You said something about your father helping me to control my abilities." Then, just as quickly, he looked up. "But then why was I a prisoner?"

It had been right after he'd exploded, right? He couldn't see why he would have resisted getting help with keeping a lid on his abilities, so the need to lock him up shouldn't have been necessary. Maybe it had been a slip of the tongue on Elle's part (was there something she wasn't telling him?), or maybe she would explain. All he wanted was the truth, but so few people were willing to offer that these days.

"But no, Sylar, he's... he's here like us, with his powers limited. That doesn't stop him from trying to kill people, though." He couldn't just leave it at that. It would be cruel, and so he forced himself to make eye contact with the girl, shoulders tensed as he tried not to think about the image of her limp, bleeding body. "That's what happened to you, Elle."

She made a clicking noise with her tongue as she watched Peter, appraising. Still the same innocent little ... whatever he was supposed to be.

"How else are we supposed to control them?" She rolled her eyes, the sentiment of "duh" very alive an well in her words. "We couldn't just let you go wandering around after you almost blew up New York. What if you did it again? But you escaped and..." She rolled her eyes and dismissed the whole thing with a rushed wave of the hand. The less they focused on how she screwed up that assignment in Ireland, the better. "Whatever. Don't worry. Nothing can hold you down for long, tiger."

Elle's expression tensed as soon as the topic returned to Sylar, and slowly turned to shock and disbelief. She had to be misunderstanding something. Peter had made a mistake. "He didn't kill me. I mean, he just tried to a few weeks ago, and--" And she took him down with her electricity. Him, and all the power on Level 5. But... if what he was saying was true, then...

Her dying kind of made sense. If she didn't have her powers, then there was no way that could have happened. And if she couldn't wield that power over him, then she was pretty much done for, wasn't she? But she wasn't going to admit that. Not to him. It didn't count if she couldn't even remember it.

"and you're wrong. And besides, even if you weren't, it's not going to happen again. So ... so there."

Edited 2010-08-18 01:41 (UTC)

The whole thing just sounded kind of odd. While Peter could see how he might have come across as extremely dangerous, that didn't explain why he'd decided to run away in the end. He would have thought himself reasonable enough to know that he would need to be controlled, which meant that they had done something to scare him off. Elle clearly wasn't going to spill, though, and questioning her too much would just lead to an argument. He needed friends here, not enemies. Sylar was more than enough already.

When Elle brought up Sylar trying to kill her already, Peter frowned in confusion. She had never mentioned that before, but Sylar hadn't really come up as a topic of conversation between them until the night of her death. Honestly, it sounded like things were all over the place between them, and Peter was having a hard time filling in the gaps.

But she was in denial, and he needed to pull her out if he could. Peter realized how crazy he had to sound, but she had to know there was no reason for him to lie.

"It won't happen again if you make sure you're careful," he said, wanting to at least half-agree so that she didn't reject him immediately. "The last time, when he came after us, you refused to run away. You wanted to beat him because you thought it would prove something." And that was likely to get through to her, even if she didn't want it to. Peter still could only guess at what her motives had been that night, but he wanted to make sure she didn't fall for it again.

"It won't happen again period." She was quick to retort. Was she completely sure that it wouldn't happen again? No, not at all. But it was better to build herself up than it was to show any fear or weakness when it came to meeting Sylar again.

She had to make him pay, anyway. For what he did to her father, what he did to her life. It was his fault that she was a broken shell of a person and that everything kept going wrong. Hell, he was here, maybe ending up in Landel's was Sylar's fault, too.

"I can take care of myself, Peter." She reached across the table to poke him on the nose, trying to stay playful. "Don't waste your time worrying about little old me." A coy glance. "Unless you really think I need protecting..."

Why was she suddenly trying to push him away? Peter blinked and pulled back when she reached out for his face, desperately trying to figure out the meaning behind the girl's actions. He really didn't know her well enough to be able to read her very well, but the fact that she wasn't accepting his help seemed really backward.

Maybe she was just that intent on being independent. But what was so bad about accepting help? Peter knew he'd rejected Nathan's help in the past, but he'd gone running to his brother with problems just as many times, if not more. What was this stubborn pride going to do for Elle other than get her killed all over again?

"What I think is that Sylar is dangerous, even here where his powers are limited," he said firmly. "I saw him kill you once. I won't watch it happen again." She didn't seem to be taking a very real threat all that seriously, and it was starting to grate at him. What, did she think this was some sort of joke?

There Peter went, doing his... thing. His weird overprotective hero thing. People weren't supposed to care like that, and it made Elle frustrated, confused, and inclined to pick at her toast again instead of looking at him, despite having lost all of her appetite for it. "You're not going to, because it's not gonna happen, okay? I'll be fine. I have you, and me, and he's— it's just not going to happen. Got it?"

She never had to deal with someone who cared this much before. Even with her own father, it took getting shot for him to show the least amount of concern. It was kind of nice, she could admit, but more than anything it felt unsettling.

Was she just in denial or something? Peter was tempted to just reach across the table, grab her by the arm, and shake her until she got it through her head that Sylar was here, had killed her before, and might do so again if given the right reasons. But in the end he refrained. It wouldn't make her any more likely to listen to him, and he didn't need to encourage her to get grabby herself, either.

He made a face, giving a small shake of his head to show that he didn't really agree. He could understand her rejecting the idea that she'd been dead and had only now come back, but she was downright stupid if she refused to prepare for it anyway. "You can tell yourself that over and over, but it won't stop Sylar from being here and being dangerous," he said with a frown, tone set and almost sharp.

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Day 51: Breakfast

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