Day 51: Breakfast

[thatdamnedninja.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

[lighthearted]

So Venom had been around for that time. It didn't sound like he had actually been a part of it, but from what Sora could tell, it had only affected a portion of the patients. It had been a pretty significant portion, but there had been a fair share of patients who had been forced to watch as their friends lost themselves. Thinking of it that way, he had to admit that it would have sucked to be on either side of it.

It was no surprise that the older man was curious about it, though. If there was one thing Venom seemed to be other than serious and reprimanding, it was curious. He'd definitely asked a lot of questions during their first talk, anyway, and that seemed to be continuing now. Even in Doyleton, he'd wanted to know more about the zombies.

"It's actually pretty fuzzy now," he admitted with a sigh as he rubbed awkwardly at the back of his head. "But... it was as if I was a different person. I don't think I even acted the same." He started to wring his hands together without even realizing, staring off across the cafeteria as he spoke. For once he was the one who couldn't look his conversation partner in the face.

"There were memories, lots of them, of some life that never even happened. But it felt so real at the time. I can only remember some of it now, but at the time I was completely convinced." To the point that he'd run around correcting his friends about who he was. He'd probably freaked out a lot of people that way, and he was just relieved that it hadn't lasted.

Not sure of what else to say, Sora finally glanced back over at Venom and shrugged his shoulders. "Does that help?" He wasn't even sure why the man was asking, but he got the feeling Venom had a reason for it. Any clue into how the brainwashing was done would probably be worth looking at, right?

[anemptydecapo]

Venom listened quietly as Sora recounted the incident, drawing one hand up and under the veil of hair to rest on his chin as the other stayed crossed against his chest. So it was the same as everyone else...

There had to be a goal here. This had to make sense and it had to connect, and the answer was right in front of him somewhere. Between the nurses and townspeople blindly believing in the institute and being unable to see what they were, the visitors claiming these false memories to be true, the patients falling victim to this brainwashing... There had to be a reason.

The word "war" came to his mind. Landel had mentioned it before, hadn't he? Once, before silencing himself again. And again, the word "sponsorship." That had been Iris speaking, something Landel hadn't planned on. The assassin had spoken of it to Alkaid before (before she eventually decided she was incapable of listening to him for more than five seconds and rebuffed everything out of his mouth just for the sake of it), that if this were being sponsored, then maybe it wasn't just Landel they needed to worry about. Sponsorships implied they needed money, which meant either a corporation or even a government decided this facility had been a bright idea and decided to fund it despite all controversy.

Why? For this war? War against what? Why them out of everyone in these (and it never got any easier for him to swallow this) many universes? Why brainwash them, weaponize them for this purpose, when they would strip away all of their abilities anyway? Why falsify these lives, taunt them with these visitors, or even blind those outside of the institute - wouldn't that be overkill? Why was this still continuing to happen?

...What went wrong here?

When Sora asked his question, Venom nodded in confirmation. But as much as it obviously troubled the boy, he had to know - so he continued to ask. "You snapped out of it. Do you remember how? If anything in particular may have triggered it?"

[lighthearted]

It looked like Sora had said something that had been useful, since Venom took some time to just sit there and think through things. While the boy was curious to know some of what was going through the man's head, he knew better than to interrupt when he was in the middle of things. Venom would share what he wanted when he wanted, and Sora wasn't going to force him or anything. Not that he could really force the man to do anything he didn't want to do in the first place.

While his appetite had been stifled earlier, he decided to force a few more pieces of fruit down while he waited for Venom to gather his thoughts. It was enough to make it feel like he'd had a substantial meal without being too much -- too much by Venom's standards, anyway.

At the next question, Sora could only sigh. "It was one of those things that happened overnight, kind of like a switch was just turned. I remember being in a friend's room" -- he didn't really know if Demyx counted as a friend, but he didn't want to complicate what he was saying by getting into that -- "thinking I was Matt, and then suddenly it was day and I knew who I was again. I mean, it was kind of confusing when I first woke up, but it didn't take me long to figure it out. I think that's how it worked for everyone, too." That was what he'd pieced together from random notes on the bulletin, anyway.

He wondered how many of the people who had gone through that had now been brainwashed for good and "released" from this place. It was the sort of thing that would be really tough to figure out, though. Frowning, Sora slowly started to edge his tray of half-finished food toward Venom, trying to spur him to eat once more.

[anemptydecapo]

...Hm. "Either whatever they had done wore out after a set amount of time, or--," he trailed off mid-sentence, taking the moment to push the offered tray to the side and away from himself, "I'm fine, Sora." His tone of voice was nothing but cold, but it lessened as he continued to speak. "Or Landel purposely corrected the behavior the next morning." He frowned to himself at that, thinking it over. That didn't make sense, from the stand-point of a captor with their main motivation being to erase the memories of others. "If he were capable of warping the populace at will, he would have done so to us all and refuse to revert things to normal." Venom tilted his head, the hand on his chin dropping into his lap. "Something is wrong."

These ideas would have to wait, however. The intercom took the moment to interrupt the discussion with its regular cheerful banter and the usual woman in white took it upon herself to march to the table and urge the older man to depart. Tiresome...

No matter how much it hurt to do so, the Guild Head stood from his seat and bowed at the waist before leaving. "Thank you for your time."

[lighthearted]

It was hard to know if Mr. Landel did things for a specific reason or if there were actually limits on what he did. Sora wanted to hope that it was the latter, and it almost seemed like Venom felt the same way. But it was true -- why hadn't he done it to all of them, if he was so powerful?

Unfortunately, his attempts to get Venom to eat more ended in failure, not to mention it seemed like the shift was ending. Sora was glad that he'd eaten a decent amount himself, but he wished that he would have gotten the older man to do the same. It looked like he was out of time, though.

Nonetheless, Venom actually bowed to him as if he was grateful for their conversation. Did that mean that he'd helped after all? "No problem!" he replied with a smile as he stood up from his seat. "I'll see you around, okay?" And with that, he headed off to meet a nurse.