[teach me the way.] ATTN: Neuro (OPEN)

[stillredinside]

CHARACTERS: Sai, Neuro
SUMMARY: Sai gets off the lifts and promptly freaks. Neuro is there to mother-hen!
PLACE: By one of the lifts?
TIME: ...sometime in day one?
WARNINGS: Terrified kaitou is terrified? Beware screaming, flailing and a lot of freaking out?

Comments

[ara_dysphoria]

Neuro spent a few minutes blinking and staring around; tugging on the cuffs and collar of the new black clothes curiously, running tongue and one finger across his teeth and pricking his thumb, blinking up at the lights, and generally giving a good, proper period of time to be dazed. He was probably going to have to do something to justify the scars, just in case; he never had figured out how they were nabbed for medical exams, and it wouldn't do to get caught over something stupid and out of his control.
He raised an eyebrow at the newsletter disdainfully; as condescending as ever, and with a few rewords, as if changing two lines as early as possible would make it any more ludicrous.

And then there was a scream, in a familiar voice.
Neuro turned and bolted for it; if it were a cartoon, there would've been a little Neuro-shaped dust-cloud next to the forgotten Newsletter fluttering to the ground.

He scramble-skidded to a halt next to the incoherent child, then knelt down; he had last seen Sai getting kidnapped by Sicks, it had been some time since then...
A host of little possessive instincts took roost, well mutated by the frustration with Sicks's actions and how ENTERTAINING the child had been before Sicks broke him/her.
"Sai!" He nudged the doppelganger's shoulder with one hand, trying to get his attention; when that didn't work, he frowned further, and struggled to gather the squirming, panicking child into his arms haphazardly.
"Sai - it's over, Sicks is not here, you are not with them any-more..." he continued quietly trying to get the boy's attention or get some kind of response that was vaguely coherent.

[stillredinside]

The name meant as little to him as the touch, both of them mixing into something that was hardly comfort and still a blind panic. If his mind had still been at all electronic, it was almost certain that you would have been able to see all the little capacitors popping in one long row of electricty, overloading themselves with too much information and not enough memory to handle it.

But he was being held. He could feel it, and it felt different, no cells changing underneath his skin and his form staying... appallingly stagnant. He stilled slightly, the scream fading instead into harsh breathing, the words that Neuro was saying slipping over him and then falling through like water, the meaning lost, if not the tone.

That wasn't bad, that was good, right? That was soft, but that wasn't a secret. He was talking to him. He was-- Neuro was familiar.

Sai let out a quiet whine, mumbling something that wasn't really a word, focusing on looking up at Neuro. He couldn't stop moving, twitching his fingers and rolling his shoulders and squirming, refusing to stay still even if everything inside wasn't listening.

[ara_dysphoria]

It took a minute for the thrashing to still from panic-attack to ... a different kind of panic, Neuro would guess; at least it wasn't thrashing to escape. It was good that the child was not in the Bloodline's hands anymore, but it was slightly frustrating - he had wanted to exact retribution on them when he found the boy again. This was not an environment Neuro wanted to have anyone else dropped on him in, not when he was so very limited in what he could do to keep his people intact; he'd already lost Sasazuka, and while he had some faith in Yako's ability to survive on her own, he still did not like not knowing where the girl was or what was going on with her.
"Sai - " There was recognition, but not really anything coherent. "Do you hear me? You are away from them." The boy seemed to still be broken, even visibly out of the Bloodline's clutches, and Neuro honestly wasn't sure how to handle it besides trying to think in terms of "What would Yako do?".
"Safe", and "Free" were not words he could use in this situation.
"This is not that lab - you will be alright, and you are not in danger from them anymore. Do you understand me?"

[stillredinside]

This time, Sai managed to hold onto the words for a little while, long enough to at least glean a little meaning from them. He couldn't understand them, not really, and he wasn't aware enough to be able to say what each of them meant individually, but as a whole... He stilled slightly, trying to force words to match up with what he wanted to say, but it felt like everything was too still. He couldn't just make things connect and he wasn't used to doing things any other way-- but the meaning was there, he could tell, he hadn't forgotten it, this time, he just couldn't get to it.

Sai shook his head slightly, reaching up to tug lightly on Neuro's shirt. That didn't match up right, not at all. He gave it a confused look, the memory of what was going on still too far underneath for him to manage to hold onto for very long. Neuro-- Neuro was safe, right? He liked Neuro? Sai wasn't really sure of who he was himself right now, but Neuro at least felt familiar, and he knew that if everyone else was bad, and Neuro wasn't, then this was probably better.

"Who?" Sai queried, the word bubbling up before he even full registered it, tugging lightly on Neuro's shirt, voice cracking a little.

[ara_dysphoria]

Neuro...
Was not sure who the very confused and broken doppelganger was referring to with that question.

Neuro's creepily (for him) flat expression turned into a very displeased frown. He had been rather distracted from his utter loathing of the Bloodline by dealing with the scientists here, but Sai's condition reminded him how many things he had to exact retribution on them for. It was the principle of the thing; besides destroying his food source and the species he'd grown fond of, they were horribly damaging with people he liked and had, on some level, claimed.
"I am Neuro. You are Sai. Do you remember anything?"
That was probably a rhetorical question, but it was better to get it out of the way and confirm it; maybe Sai would surprise him.

[stillredinside]

There was a small spark in the back of his brain at that. Neuro. Neuro was Neuro, and Sai-- remembered Neuro? Maybe remember wasn't exactly the right word, but he knew that he should remember him, at least. The memory was there, even if all Sai could currently glean from it was the fact that Neuro was safe, Neuro wasn't going to give him back to those people, and Neuro was someone who Sai had always tried very hard to never forget.

"Neuro," he echoed, quietly, mouth not quite cooperating with the word. "Neuro." That time he managed it, the name sounding more right than most of the things right now.

It took a few moments for the rest of what Neuro had said to process properly, and then as soon as it managed to get its meaning across, Sai let out a quiet whimper, sinking back against Neuro.

"Hurt."

[ara_dysphoria]

Neuro tried to less-awkwardly carry the child, at least far enough to be sitting with his back against the wall near the elevator, out of traffic, holding the boy; the distasteful frown straightened out, although the ex-demon was still exceptionally subdued.
"I know. Hurt will pass. Everything passes, sooner or later."

[stillredinside]

Sai responded to the movement by latching on to Neuro, resting his head against the former-demon and clutching the fabric of Neuro's shirt. He made a quiet noise that showed he understood, at least, even if he couldn't currently expend the effort required to actually respond in any sort of verbal communication.

"Neuro," he mumbled, again, cementing the name back into his memory, easily within his reach. If he had that, he'd be okay, right? This was okay, so he'd be okay. So long as he wasn't back there.

He could fix himself, even if he couldn't change his body anymore. Maybe-- maybe he was finally allowed to be normal?

[ara_dysphoria]

Ah well. This was hardly the place to be nursemaiding a traumatized shapeshifter. Neuro gathered Sai up less awkwardly in his arms and managed to get to his feet.
"You are having issues changing?" It was an idle question; he already knew the answer, but it seemed safer to act like he didn't. The rooms were numbered differently, but he could navigate well enough and worry about fumbling with the key when he reached the door.

[stillredinside]

There was still a delay as Sai processed what Neuro was saying and turned it into a form he was capable of understanding, at the moment, but it wasn't a minutes-long pause anymore, at the least. He nodded slightly, something in his head chiming that this was the wrong fabric and it should feel different than it did-- that something about Neuro was just as off as Sai was, right now-- but he couldn't figure out exactly what that was, at the moment.

"Can'twon't," was what Sai managed to respond with, verbally, giving his hand a long look. He couldn't change it, it wouldn't move, and he still didn't know why. Everything felt too slow now.

[ara_dysphoria]

Neuro sighed slightly, shifting so that for a moment, he was carrying Sai a little less "rescued child" and a little more "sack of potatoes" to get the door to the apartment open. "There is something not right about this place.", he stated idly; admitting he was having trouble without saying so, and without saying he already knew nothing would work. "But it is not where you were, and there is no way for them to get to you here, so you are safe from them."
This was larger than the last apartment - he craned around getting bearings, wandering and peering in doors. More bedrooms...were they expecting people to share living quarters this time?
If Sai were less fragile, he wouldn't care if he took over more than one room and annoyed someone, but having another resident possibly attempting to start something over the boy might not help Sai recover. He picked one of the larger rooms and nudged the door shut behind him with one foot, then set Sai down on the bed.

[stillredinside]

Sai instinctively curled as soon as he was in the bed, wishing he could make his form smaller and finding it impossible to do so through his normal means. He didn't fully let go of Neuro's shirt, hand still fisted into the fabric without Sai fully realizing it. There'd be wrinkles, but that wouldn't have stopped him, anyway.

After a moment, Sai opened his mouth, closing it for a second before opening it, struggling to try to get the words to convey what he was thinking.

"Dead?" he managed, finally, giving Neuro a slightly confused look. Nothing was moving but he was safe-- so--?

[ara_dysphoria]

Neuro blinked -
Aaah, the days of the "Is this Hell?" discussions.
He sat down on the side of the bed, putting a hand on Sai's shoulder and making no moves to dislodge the boy. "No. Neither of us are dead. Things are not right, and I do not know yet how or why, but we are not dead."

[stillredinside]

Sai hummed quietly in the affirmative, slipping over as best he could until he was resting his head on Neuro, eyes falling half-closed. He wasn't dead, but he was safe, so it would be okay, eventually. He could survive through this.

"Sleep?" he queried, flickering his eyes up to look at Neuro. "Stay?"

[ara_dysphoria]

Somewhere, Neuro did recognize that he was being used as a security blanket - something which was a very strange idea. Still, it was definite progress in putting the boy back together from whatever had been done to him.
"Yes. I will stay here. Rest." Neuro shifted to be more comfortably on the bed; odds were he wouldn't be going anywhere for a while, or at least until Sai got hungry.