Day 51: Arts & Crafts (4th shift)

[notthistrain.livejournal.com]

There were very few activity shifts, Cloud was sure, that could possibly make him feel more like he was being treated like a child. He took a seat at one of the tables and blankly examined the materials set out before him. A pair of the dullest scissors he'd ever seen were labeled 'ages 3 and up'. It was good to know where the patients stood in this.

He wasn't much of an artist, and he ignored most of the paints and other drawing utensils in favor of a few sheets of colored paper and instructions on how to make origami. That sounded vaguely familiar. Didn't Yuffie have throwing weapons made out of paper at some point? It was something to do anyway, and thus Cloud began the process of crafting what ended up being very elaborate paper wads.

Sadly, his attempts to keep from dwelling on the subject of his missing friend failed when he realized this was something Aerith probably would have enjoyed greatly. Tonight, he and Yuffie would go out and try to accomplish... something. It was depressing to think there really might not be anything they could do, that they might all end up the same as the flower girl eventually.

[for a hopefully more optimistic materia thief]

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[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

On the upside, lunch with LeChuck had seemed to feel blessedly short. On the downside, that was only because she felt like she had spent half the shift falling in and out of awareness. Food hadn't really helped much until the end of the shift, when it seemed the activity of people moving onto the next shift brought back some of her attention.

"Not good, not good at all..." Elaine murmured as she rubbed fervently at her eyes in an attempt to force herself back to awareness. There was no question that this kind of drowsiness was not natural. Not only did the bulletin confirm it (http://community.livejournal.com/damned_bulletin/737754.html), but Elaine knew her own body well; it did not get this exhausted with this little reason behind it. The only good news there was that in knowing that, at least, she could make an attempt to resist the feeling. She was not going to let Landel beat her that easily, not when she had gotten herself out of far worse in the past.

For the time being, she sought out something to keep her mind alert. At least in a room like Arts & Crafts, there was no shortage of material to aid such a task. After grabbing some yellow clay, Elaine sat herself down and started sculpting an object she was very familiar with - the Idol of Many Hands. She concentrated on the details of the Idol and the size of it, forcing her mind to shape things as closely as possible to the real thing. Doing this wasn't exactly going to produce anything useful, like her abstract map had, but at least this would be enough to keep her awake, she figured.

[For her Snugglecakes~]

[threepwood]

His conversation with Mr. von Karma having gone as well as could be expected, Guybrush scuttled into his next shift, thankful for the nurse's interruption for a change. "Ah, arts and crafts. Another activity I was probably better at when I had two hands, but I'll bet I've got an advantage in crocheting now."

His usual narration was brief- every pun he'd been considering involving hooks and yarn was tossed aside as his eyes landed on the figure of his (soon-to-be/already) wife. "Elaine! Of all the times for DeLandel to have grabbed her, it was from that one period where she was slightly less capable than normal. Hopefully, she didn't have it too rough last night without me by her side, defending her honor and body with nothing more than a shovel and my undaunted charisma. Okay, time to make sure Morgan and LeChuck haven't made me look like an idiot at any point in the last twenty-four hours."

Guybrush smoothed his hair with his hand, feeling like a lovesick teenager as he took the seat next to his darling Plunderbunny. This was still the same Elaine who would ultimately end up marrying him- she had turned out loving him even when he was younger and far more foolhardy than he was now with his years of piracy experience and fine beard. Why did the thought of conversing with her make his insides melt again?

Oh yeah, it was probably the thought that she might not marry him after all, not like the older, more mature Guybrush Threepwood for some reason and end up with LeChuck or some other man who could swash her buckles. It wasn't going to happen. Everything would be a thousand times easier if she was the Elaine who'd been stuck with him for years and was committed to him rather than the Elaine who still had a chance to change her mind and hadn't yet had him rescue her from her golden transformation.

Guybrush realized he was sitting and staring at her awkwardly- smooth. "Elaine, my beautiful butterfly, I'm glad to see you in one piece. I couldn't find you last night- got interrupted by these monster frogs in the hallway, then the guy I was with started speaking in French and everything got a little weird. I'm thinking you should give me your room number so I can come straight to you next time. And you should probably just stay in your room at night. Not wander around without me."

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was her tired state, but Elaine honestly found the awkward staring a little cute, if only because she knew Guybrush wasn't the sort of person where staring would be creepy. She knew perfectly well that he had probably gotten stuck on some strange internal tangent or something and simply forgot to stop looking at whoever or whatever had caused it. It was the same kind of adorable ineptitude combined with good intentions that had attracted her to him in the first place all those years ago. She couldn't help but smile.

That was, until he spoke. The pet name was sweet, but was he seriously trying to insinuate that she wasn't capable of going out by herself? After all the time he had claimed to know her? Sure, she was feeling drowsy, and that feeling might even have been apparent to someone like Guybrush. From the sound of things, though, it seemed like he was speaking broadly by saying "stay in your room at night." He wasn't simply talking about how she seemed right now.

Elaine raised a slightly critical brow. "The concern is sweet, Threepy, but I got on perfectly well the last two nights." Sudden onset of sleepiness aside. "I've gotten through much worse on my own before, too. Why would you suddenly think I'm incapable of taking care of myself?" Her hands continued to move over the yellow clay as she spoke, forming the beginnings of the Idol's face. After a few moments of silence, she sighed and relented a bit. "If you do need to come to my room at some point, it's F26, but I'll have a good weapon after tonight, Guybrush." She looked back up at him at that. "I'll be fine whether we're together or apart."

[threepwood]

As usual, Elaine went into some explanations of why she was perfectly fine without him. "But I'd rather us be together," Guybrush whined, grabbing some construction paper as his nurse shot him a 'This shift is for arts and/or crafts, not for begging some woman to stay in her room' look from the doorway. He tore the various sheets into several pieces, using his hook to pull a glue bottle toward him.

How could he make her understand without telling her all they'd been through, or that she wasn't completely and utterly infallible? Okay, she was mostly infallible, but there were times where he was right and she was wrong and LeChuck was a jerk and Mo was pushy and that was that.

Guybrush started putting some glue to a large piece of construction paper, arranging the colored pieces on in with care. "Laineykins, this place isn't the Tri-Island Area," he said, his concern evident. "It's not run by someone like LeChuck, who would at least leave you in one piece, probably. This De Singe or Landel or DeLandel or whoever is behind all this has no problem throwing dangerous monsters at his prisoners. Really dangerous ones! The kind that tear up your legs and surround you in the dark and take a bite out of unsuspecting chefs. I don't want that to happen to you. I don't want to lose you again."

[selfrescuer.livejournal.com]

Elaine had felt about ready to argue back that she had grown up on an island full of plenty of cutthroat pirates other than LeChuck. She knew how to handle danger, even the kind that tried to tear people apart. The more Guybrush went on, however, the less that kind of response felt appropriate. Especially by the end - I don't want to lose you again. Elaine felt something tighten in her throat at that.

She was silent for a few long moments. Guybrush was being completely sincere, she knew. She couldn't fault him at all for being so worried. Truth be told, the sheer strangeness of the time gap between them made it a little hard to feel quite the same desperate worry, but there was still something there. For all the awkward, self-centered, or thoughtless things he had done or might have done in the future, she didn't want him hurt either. He was too...

Finally, she smiled again, just a little. "You won't," she assured him. "Because we'll work together to bring this place to the ground." The smile turned into a bit more of a grin. "It'll be deader than Loom in the end. Promise."

[threepwood]

Guybrush couldn't help but smile when his Cuddlekins said anything, but especially when she was assuaging his concerns over losing her. He wouldn't admit to having many fears, but given her entire thing with LeChuck and the monkeys, his near-death/actual-death experience, and the fact that she'd appeared in what he had thought might be Pirate Hell as a past version of herself who hadn't yet married him, adding 'Losing my Wife in New and Imaginative Ways' to the list didn't seem like a far stretch.

"Everything sounds better when you say it. When I suggest a plan, it just sounds ridiculous and slapped-together at the last minute with whatever I've got in my pockets." Usually because all of his plans fit that description.

"It's just that I'm worried this place will change things somehow, since you're from the past," Guybrush continued, throwing his usual caution when it came to discussing the future with Elaine-of-the-Past out the window. "What if we never make it home? We'll never get married, never get our first ship together, never have the kind of intimacy you only read about in the trashiest of romance novels!"

He sighed, slumping in his chair. "I know that as long as we're together, everything will be fine, but... what if you get mauled when I'm not around? We can't be together in the future if you're dead. I mean, we could be, but then it'd be like me and LeChuck or something."

An icy chill ran down his spine as he twitched in his seat. "Ugh, great," he mumbled to himself. "The mental image of LeChuck's favorite mast is in my head again."