Day 53: Lunch

[buryyourdemons]

There was little to be said of the daily business that went on. He allowed himself to be shuffled, mind embedded too deeply in things he shouldn't be dwelling on. The night was over, the shadows had vanished, and there was little more than bad memories to be left in their stead. This was logic, pure and simple, and should have been reassuring but

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[thatdemonbitch]

Her first instinct upon walking into the cafeteria was to beeline for Sam and make sure she could finish up her explanation from that morning, knowing she wouldn't be able to if she planned on prowling around with the Hardy Boys that night. Unfortunately, there wasn't much she could do but stand awkwardly near the food line after grabbing her tray (holding a slice of pizza on a plate, because there wasn't a demon in Hell who gave a fuck about dietary options) as she saw Dean also beelining for the table. Unfortunately, he appeared to have the motivation to make it there faster.

Jacked.

Inwardly, she cursed, lips tightening to convey her frustration as she tried not to let the disappointment set in and instead skimmed the rest of the room for an alternative seating choice. She couldn't complain too much -- she knew the kid was gonna need his space and his time with Dean. Lord knew he wasn't gonna get it once they got out of there -- not nearly in the same way, at least. Not without Dean had changed -- so, she could at least ease up and let him have it while they were sight-seeing in Alcatraz.

Most of the tables were empty, and as appealing as getting some time to herself was, she knew from her exciting experience in the sun room that her chances of actually being left alone were slim to none. Still, it had proven informative at least, which meant she couldn't put too much of her heart into her bitching. It meant getting her hands on a weapon, which was more than enough reason for her to give somebody else around here a try and see what kind of information she could pump out of them. Her own devices could deal with getting benched for now, she decided, and so she took one last tally of the people in the room.

Aside from a guy that looked like he hopped straight out of Fall Out Boy and lost his girlpants to Landel, some other guys she didn't recognize and a kid, all of whom she was gonna take a wild leap and consider a bust, there was one man wearing some heavy bandages on half his face. He'd found a seat at a table off the side, looking generally antisocial, and only proving more interesting for Ruby.

Sure, the bandages meant he was incompetent as hell, as far as anyone could tell, but it would prove for a good story and probably meant he'd gotten a good up-close look at some of those monsters. That alone made him worth her while. Instead of running the risk of having Dean magically find a way to ruin her life again like he'd managed to when she was scoping out the seat across from Sam, she headed for the pseudo-mummy in the corner and took the seat across from him.

"You look like you've seen better days," she appraised unapologetically. Somehow, she had a feeling it wasn't the most tactless thing a severe burn victim had ever heard. Now that she was up close, it wasn't hard to deduce that's what the bandages were for. Ruby had seen her share of wounds -- inflicted them, too -- and bandages only clung like that to the more festering burns. Enough to turn away the teenage girls of the institute, probably, but not Ruby. For her, it was just interesting.

[unheroed]

When a woman he didn't know sauntered up to him, Harvey watched her over the lid of his protein shake, already guessing that she wasn't the sort of person he was going to enjoy talking to. She was walking over to him with purpose, like she knew exactly what she wanted from him. Harvey had a guess for what that was, and he already wasn't in the mood for it.

The comment she gave in greeting was one he'd heard before, and if she thought that she was edgy for saying it then she had another thing coming. He would have rolled his eyes if he were able, but instead he finished his sip of his drink and then set the cup down.

"How observant of you," he said, tone somewhat biting. Then again, this wound wasn't the sort that was going to heal, so those "better days" were more or less a thing of the past. Besides, with the people he cared about dead, Harvey had to admit that there wasn't much he had left to live for. Just revenge, and right now Landel was at the top of that list. He couldn't get to everyone else until he got out of here. He hadn't wanted to bother with the head doctor, but at this point he had no choice.

"Did you want anything else, or were you just coming to admire the freak show?" He would have demanded pay, just to drill his point in even more, but he knew there was nothing this stranger could give him. There wasn't much of a currency here, just information -- and he didn't think she'd been here long enough to have any that would interest him.

[thatdemonbitch]

The bitterness seeping out of him probably would have discouraged most people, but not Ruby. Instead, it just piqued more intense interest -- sure, she supposed, if half her face was blown to hell she wouldn't be too thrilled to have people commenting on it, but that didn't mean it was going to stop her from doing it. Not that she precisely made a hobby of that kind of hypocrisy, but she was willing to subscribe to it when it best suited her interests.

"Mostly admire the freak show," she admitted with a shrug, figuring from the bite of his own comments that a little frankness would go a long way. The wry tone of voice she used made it clear that she was only half-joking, anyway. "But hey, if you're willing to give me more than that, might as well take what I can get."

The abrasiveness on the part of this injured stranger was obviously doing very little to inhibit her own comfort in the situation and she seemed as at ease on that bench across from him as one might imagine she would in her own home. Her elbows were propped up on the table and she began to pick at the crust of her pizza, tearing off a bite-sized chunk and taking a bite. She was silent for a moment, taking the time to chew it over before fixing him with an expectant kind of prying look.

"So," she began, folding her arms in front of her on the table, pushing her tray slightly away. Her tone, like the rest of her disposition, was casual -- if one couldn't actually make out what she was saying, they might have thought she was discussing the weather or something equally scintillating. "What was it, one of those monsters? Or is Landel goin' all Doc Moreau on the patients that don't cut it for the nice portion of his Christmas list?"

Truthfully, she was a lot more invested in the answer than she appeared -- seeing the damage that they could do would help her feel a little better about facing something even she'd never heard of in the six hundred years she had under her belt. By Sam's secondhand descriptions, she wasn't too worried, since most of them sounded like they would be manageable, but it was the kind of shit that could apparently hijack an already borrowed body that really worried her.

Unfortunately, chances were, it wasn't what had taken half of this guy's face with it.

[unheroed]

It was already clear that the girl wasn't about to let up. Harvey didn't know why people got so fixated on him when there were plenty of other people using crutches or confined to wheelchairs, but apparently he was just that lucky. However, seeing how he had just gone through this exact conversation with Ema just a few moments ago, he was hardly in the mood to give the woman what she wanted.

Still, there was something about her that stood out, and that was how she seemed to be at such ease. There was no real concern in her eyes, and if anything she just had a detached curiosity about it. He didn't know if that was better or worse, but it all seemed to imply that she was used to seeing terrible injuries. He would have guessed that she was a doctor or a nurse, except that her terrible bedside manner would have probably made that impossible.

Then again, there was always the possibility that she was trying too hard, putting on a mask so that she didn't seem as freaked out as she was. Harvey wasn't really in the mood to start psychoanalyzing anyone, though, and so he stopped that train of thought right there.

The smell of her fresh slice of pizza reached his nose, somehow getting past the constant smell of burnt flesh that he had to endure. It caused his stomach to churn, and he reached for his drink, taking a sip as he tried to find a way to respond. As much as he wanted to just brush the woman off, it was clear that she wasn't the sort of person who gave up easily.

"It didn't happen here," he said with a shake of his head, "so relax, you don't have to worry about meeting the same fate." That pretty face of hers would probably be just fine. Any scarred people that Harvey had come across here had received those scars before coming to this place, which made him wonder if Landel really was just playing around instead of aiming to do any real damage. Physical damage, anyway. Mental was a whole other story, and wasn't that the irony of this situation? If anything, they were becoming less sane the longer they were here.

[thatdemonbitch]

Oh, how cute. He thought she was just afraid for her own safety. If only he could see what was under all that pretty meat she wore. Vanity had gone out the window a long time ago -- at this point, it was more or less the equivalent to a human's taste in clothes. She didn't want her brand new jacket ruined, especially when ones that would suit Sam's psychotic requirements for a vessel were hard to come by.

She did, however, manage to resist the urge to laugh, and instead kept it to a judgey look of amusement. He'd at least get some degree of honesty in her reaction, even if it was muted. That was more than Roxas could really say thus far.

"That's funny, you know, I don't remember sayin' anything about being worried," she countered in a matter-of-fact kind of way, one brow raising as she quirked her head a little at the end of the sentence. After a beat, she continued on. "Not exactly what I was thinking. Interested, maybe. But, I don't do worried." It was a blanket statement; one of those 'you should trust me because I'm giving you facts about myself' types of throw-away lines. Like somehow he'd have more trust to place in her if she were open and capable.

"I wanna know what's out there. So sue me," she gave a slight shrug and sat back some, at ease as she tore off another piece of pizza crust and ate it. "But if it wasn't monsters that got ya, what was it? Wind up one the wrong end of a blowtorch?" Fat chance. She wasn't exactly new to this judge of character thing, and it took one look at the guy to tell her that he wasn't the manual labor type that'd be caught squatting in front of a blow torch.

The fact that it wasn't a blow from a monster just made it that much more interesting -- the guy's hands were relatively lacking in callouses compared to someone who worked with them, and the way he held himself gave her a hint to the fact that he wasn't the type to be flinging himself into danger in some military, crime or law enforcement dig. Not that he seeped capitalist or upstanding citizen, but his collar wasn't exactly looking blue from where she was sitting.

[unheroed]

Maybe it was just him, but the stranger was starting to give off this condescending vibe that rubbed him the wrong way. As if he was getting things about her wrong at every turn when he didn't have much to judge by in the first place. Harvey considered himself pretty good at reading people, but she was just trying to stomp on that from the get-go, wasn't she?

Granted, he wasn't so sure he was willing to believe her fearless shtick. There wasn't anyone in the world who didn't worry about something. If not the danger of a monster attack, then something else. It just depended on the person, and suffice to say that he wasn't impressed by her bravado. "Fine. Are uou used to fighting, then?" If she was going to try and feed him information about how tough she was, then she might as well go the whole nine yards. Who knew, maybe she'd be worth keeping around if she was that comfortable with the idea of monsters. Or maybe she was just a military type, though she didn't really fit the part.

Or she was insane, but... beggars couldn't be choosers in this place.

Either way, she wasn't letting her line of questioning end there. Harvey let out a sigh. Apparently it was too much to expect her to put two and two together. Then again, there were a lot of ways to get burn wounds, from a motorcycle accident to arson, so perhaps he was asking too much of Little Miss Fearless.

"Not exactly. But let's just say that it was people, not monsters, who were responsible." If that wasn't an obvious enough hint that she should stop asking questions, then he didn't know what was. He took another sip of his drink and then crossed his arms over his chest, making sure that his body language was as closed off as his tone. Honestly, the Joker was more of a monster than some of the things he'd seen in this place, but he wasn't going to delve into a conversation about semantics now.

[thatdemonbitch]

Well, his answer may not have given much away, but it did narrow the pool. By no means did she intend to give up that easily and take the vague answer, but it would do for now. After all, she had more important things to figure out before night fell. Like the frequent haunts of certain monsters and how many she stood a chance of running into before she got her hands on a real weapon.

She really should have taken the time out to bully Sam into giving up her knife between coaching him into being less afraid of his abilities.

"Not exactly a UFC champ, but I know enough to know what I'm doing." Understatement of the year. Back before she'd figured out damsel was the way to get Sam feelin' important, she'd proven herself plenty good at holding her own. Three of the seven sins would have attested to that if they were still alive. But, it was better to keep her talents to herself, particularly in the beginning and particularly until she decided who'd be useful. Not who she could trust, just who would be useful.

"Guess it'd be a waste of time asking the same of you if you let some jackass light you up." The frankness and the digs weren't going to stop anytime soon. It felt like a good springboard, and besides, her assessment of him now that he was up close and personal and giving her some half-cocked answers hadn't exactly pushed him into the 'useful' category. Not like Roxas, where she had to play nice to get somewhere.

She could be as bristly as she wanted, and it'd either push him into proving his usefulness for the sake of his pride (men were so predictable that way) or she wouldn't lose all that much in pissing him off.

"Just how long have you been playin' their little game of Survivor, anyway? Top contender so far's two weeks into his sentence." There was a slim chance of getting a legitimate answer with how she'd judged his fighting skill without bothering to ask, but whether or not she got a response would be a.) a good measure for how well he took to that kind of retort and b.) worth trying regardless. All a part of seeing what she was in for.

[unheroed]

The fact that she had mentioned a fighting league instead of something more military-based probably meant that he could count out the latter. People who were bred into that sort of thing usually weren't able to discount it or forget it so easily, in his experience. So if she wasn't a military girl, then was she self-trained? Probably, in which case he had to assume that she thought she was better than she really was.

An unfair assessment, maybe, but thus far all she'd been doing was blowing smoke.

While he'd been handling her devil-may-care attitude pretty well up until that point, her next jab was enough that he ended up tightening his grip around his cup with enough strength to bend the plastic slightly. (Which wasn't a huge feat, but it was still noticeable.) He set it down and then fixed a one-eyed glare on her.

"I didn't let anyone do anything," he snarled, feeling his bandages pull around his mouth somewhat painfully. If she thought that anyone would allow something like this to happen to them, then she really didn't know much at all. Either way, he wasn't going to tell her anything about his combat ability or lack thereof (he'd be able to shoot her head off easily enough if he was given half the chance and the right inclination), and so he said no more on that subject.

He didn't see why he needed to answer any more of her questions after that, and so he didn't bother. He hadn't agreed to an interrogation, and she wasn't earning herself any favors. If she wanted to get his cooperation, she'd have to do better than that. "Let's just say this," he grumbled. "You aren't getting out of here any time soon, no matter how tough you think you are." Maybe that would take her down a few notches, or at least it would retroactively when two weeks passed her by and she was still stuck here.

Then he'd find her and watch her eat her words.

[thatdemonbitch]

How tough she thought she was, huh? Words like that made a girl almost start thinking he'd decided to assume not only how tough she actually was -- probably a horrible, insulting kind of misconception that didn't even begin to cover the tricks she had up her sleeve -- and the size of her ego. All right, admittedly, she hadn't exactly been covering up the ego thing too well, but she had plenty of reason to build up a sizable one and he'd just have to figure it out himself.

If he was lucky, anyway. Otherwise, he'd have to settle for an air of mystery and apparent, unbridled doubt.

"Gee, real accurate time measure you got there. What, the sun decide to stop rising for a couple days or something? Throw you off?" She rolled her eyes. Useless. His level of cynicism alone helped answer the question, though. A while. Until she'd met some more varied groups who'd spent different amounts of time holed up there, she couldn't really compare and rationalize, but it was definitely getting up there.

Hell. This guy might've been locked up longer than Sam. Difference being, of course, guy with a face like that had to have some legitimate issues to work through. Sam, on the other hand, only had issues that lay outside these goddamn walls, and the longer they were kept from that job, the pissier Lilith was going to get. She fought down the instinctive shrug at the thought. Pissy and creative. Two things that didn't look good on the queen bitch of Hell.

"So, what, I'm too new to warrant a real answer, or is this your own personal orientation program? 'Cause I gotta tell ya, Scarface, I'm not exactly feelin' the love."

[unheroed]

Was this girl a legitimate moron or something? Even though he'd made it clear as day that her attitude wasn't earning her any points with him, she just reacted with more sarcasm and continued to act like she deserved an answer from him. After she'd implied that he had somehow been responsible for his own injury.

The irony there was that he knew that he had played his part in what had happened to him. He'd taken risks that he shouldn't have, bolstered by his own confidence, and had been forced to pay the price for it. Worse than that, he'd dragged someone else into it, and her fate had been far more severe than his own.

Maybe that was what smarted so much about this conversation. This girl was acting like she was on top of the world, but if she wasn't careful she'd end up the same as him; she'd fall on her face because she got in over her head, and yet she wouldn't even acknowledge the possibility that that could happen.

It wasn't his problem, and he wasn't going to warn her. But it still bothered him.

"Neither am I," he pointed out as he looked her in the eye, not seeing any need to hide behind his bandages. If it had been up to him he would have walked around all day without them (what did he care if people lost their appetites at the sight of him?), but that obviously wasn't going to happen. "Love has nothing to do with this. Insulting someone to their face isn't going to make them inclined to help you, sorry to say." He would have thought someone her age would have figured that out by now.

[thatdemonbitch]

"Insulting? You call this insulting?" Boy, he musta skipped the important parts of high school if that was the case. She hadn't even gotten close to starting with the insults, this was just casual conversation for Ruby. That's how it went for her -- subtle digs, nothing but biting comments. Hell, even with Sam, everything had an edge to it. That was part of the territory.

But maybe expecting this guy to be hardened to the ways of the world and understand how life worked was too much. After all, he was disfigured, not 80, apparently he hadn't had time outside to learn his hard life lessons before he got comped a trip to Shutter Island.

"Look, princess, if I hurt your delicate feelings, I'm sorry. Really, I am. But, I'm not here to mess around and play nice, I'm here to get the facts and go. It's called being honest. So, big friggen' deal if I hurt your self image, I'm sure it's not the worst you've gotten." That much she was sure of. Whether it was to his face or not, someone was bound to have made a nastier comment. Probably someone responsible for taking care of that gaping face wound, in fact.

Empathy was a joke. No two ways about it. There was no way she was gonna suddenly start skipping through fields of flowers and offering to hold hands just because Two-Face here decided she should feel sorry for him and play nice. She gave a shrug that indicated that was all there was to it and went back to her pizza. He could cope and decide if he wanted to tell her more or not. If he didn't, though, well … she wasn't moving, and she had food to finish that was a lot more interesting than his piss poor attitude.

[unheroed]

Maybe it was true that he was taking her comments a little too personally (they barely knew each other, after all), but she still should have kept in mind that there were some people who would take it to heart even more than he had. If she hadn't taken a pot shot at the circumstances behind his injury, he probably wouldn't have cared. He'd exchanged jabs with Jason constantly, after all. But for someone to start judging him right off the bat...

This was stupid. He shoved any thoughts or hold-ups he had about what she'd said to the side for now.

"Maybe not," he said with a wry smile, "but I'm kind of shocked you haven't learned that that kind of behavior isn't going to earn you any favors." Maybe some people thought that her attitude was endearing or attractive for whatever reason, but that definitely wasn't the case for Harvey. She was just working on his last nerve at this point.

"Even if you get all the facts that you want, it doesn't mean you'll be going anywhere," he pointed out, still refusing to give the answer to her question. There were countless other people she could ask. There were tons of people here who had taken notes about anything they could find, and as far as he knew? It hadn't gotten them a thing.

[thatdemonbitch]

It was hard not to smile around a bite of pizza. Of course he'd take the bait, jump to continue the conversation when she'd made it clear that he could use that get out of jail free card and let sleeping dogs lie. It was like he was begging to drop hints for her. Slowly, she set the greasy monstrosity back on her plate and dusted her hands off a little bit, crossing them on the table in front of her and leaning in again.

"Maybe it's gotten me favors in the past. Hell, maybe you're just not hangin with the right crowds." A quirk of an expectant eyebrow as she gave a kind of challenging smirk at that. It was a good feeling, the superiority of being able to make that snide remark, even if it was probably misplaced. He'd been there for a while, and he was right: she should be doing everything she could to get in his good graces.

But, he was still talking, wasn't he? Vinegar would at least get his attention. The honey would be added as necessary at a later date. That was how she operated, and it had done her pretty well so far.

"You sound like a guy who's got a lot of facts, though. So, color me interested. You decide to cut the uptight hermit crap, I'm Ruby. Figure the bulletin's speedy enough to get ahold of me if you decide you want to. But, trust me, sweetheart, you got no idea where I'm capable of getting. Place like this, I figured you'd have learned to not let a pretty face fool ya." It was like her own private way of sharing that she wasn't useless. She wasn't going to open her heart and have some hippie, hand-holding kumbaya, but she had her own experiences to bring to the table that, she felt, definitely kept her from being just another brick in the wall.

[unheroed]

While Harvey didn't think he wanted to be anywhere near a crowd where acting like a jerk got you places, he also realized that that was probably exactly where he'd be headed if he ever ended up back in Gotham. He couldn't really show his face (go ahead, laugh) in decent society anymore, so getting elbow-deep in the underground was going to be the way to go. Which meant that he was going to have to get used to the sort of shit that Jason and this girl pulled.

It was just that part of him still had that noble, do-the-right-thing in mind. But it was over and dead, and he knew that he was going to have to accept that eventually. He knew it made no sense to get all uppity when someone made a jab at him while also being willing to shoot someone in the face if they didn't fit his moral compass, but... that was what being two-faced was about, wasn't it?

Though as she continued to talk, he started to feel like she was getting onto the right track. He didn't care about her name so much, but now she was at least trying to prove her worth, along with acknowledging that yeah, he knew more than she did. He eyed her for a moment before slowing nodding his head as he took another sip of his shake.

"I'm Harvey," he started. "And it's not your pretty face that's got me questioning your ability. I just think you're overestimating how much you can do here, but you'll get it eventually." He'd had to fall on his face a few times before he'd gotten the picture, but it had happened eventually. "So, tell me, why would I want to get a hold of you? Aren't you more interested in what I have to offer?" He could play this game. He knew how to use words to his advantage, after all.

[thatdemonbitch]

Oooh, bargaining. Something she was familiar with -- place like this, it was downright reassuring to have him trying to level with her. Unfortunately, she had a lot less to offer here than other places. No information on seals, on Lilith, on Hell -- it didn't matter in a parallel dimension anyway, did it? There was on telling that this place even had an access pass to the Pit, especially if Dean had rolled up.

But no demon was left with zero chips on the board. And even if she wasn't sure how limited she'd be -- the fact that Harvey had pinpointed that one unsettled her a little, but she didn't let it show -- she knew it wouldn't be beyond the point of usefulness. Nothing was gonna put her beyond the point of usefulness as long as she still had the six hundred years' worth of work with a knife and a kid eager to provide one.

"Because, Harvey," she emphasized his name as she spoke in an almost catty way, as if she were holding it over him somehow that she'd gotten that much out of him. It was a success -- a small one, but it proved that he wasn't some kind of vault. "I take the honor code very seriously. You scratch my back and not only will I scratch yours, but I'll do what I can to make sure nothing else on you gets a scratch."

Demon informants, Ruby didn't hesitate to kill. Hell, most humans didn't matter either, but she was in short supply here and the fact that Harvey was obviously toting some serious experience wasn't going missed. She'd pay her dues in bodyguard duty if she had to. The guy obviously wasn't built for fighting, but she was. She'd been strung up and carved into an animal made to do just that.

"Believe it or not, I'm good at what I do. I've been doin it a long time. Place like this? You could use a girl like me on your team. But, I'm not expecting you to take my word for it, and I'm sure as hell not gonna sit here trying to convince you. Which is why all I'm saying is that when you come around, you can come around."

[unheroed]

While the way she'd used his name was enough to pluck at his nerves, he didn't so mind so long as she didn't start calling him Harv. That was somehow the thing that got to him the most, if only by association. Jason had done it, and that strange man in the library had done it. Basically, anyone who was from Gotham and he was uncertain about had done it. He didn't need some girl who had no idea of who he truly was using it too.

Even if she started to explain that she had a certain code that she followed when it came to working with people, Harvey still had to acknowledge that she could be lying through her teeth. The fact that she kept that cover of sarcasm and confidence up no matter what she was talking about meant that it was hard to tell if she was speaking lies or truths.

Granted, if she was lying, it would become clear rather quickly, and then he could just make sure to never associate with her again. The real question here was if it was worth the risk. Harvey knew that he had a shortage of allies, and Ruby seemed like the sort of person who would turn a blind eye to some of his less admirable qualities. That was what he'd liked about Jason, for instance. It was tiring having to watch himself when he was around someone like Jones, he had to admit.

He didn't need to come across as desperate, though, mainly because he wasn't. He'd made progress here; it just hadn't really gotten him anywhere. He'd seen and experienced plenty of things, but none of that had led him any closer to escape. That was the real problem, and that was what Ruby would eventually realize for herself.

"Fair enough," he said after a pause. "If you're so resourceful then I'm going to assume you've already got plans for tonight." So did he, but he could have invited her along to come with him and Jones -- though he wasn't sure what the other man would have thought of her. "Still, maybe another time." He wasn't going to say no to some extra help. For now, he'd wait and see just how long she lasted here.