Day 56: Bus 3

[rocksthecourt]

Waking carried a sense of disappointment along with it for the first time in a long time. Klavier actually sighed in irritation when he realized where he was. Damn it all. So they hadn't managed to move quickly enough to cover as much ground as they had hoped. It was a shame, really. Last night had actually proven to be relatively productive. If

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[autophoenix]

Waking up was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it meant getting out of the nightmare she'd been trapped in and feeling the sturdy, albeit lumpy springs of her mattress under her. Much more solid than the decaying landscape she'd been stumbling around in. She sat up quickly, confusion wrinkling her forehead as she looked around the room. Bella, it seemed, had already gone, but there was a man wearing an orderly uniform waiting for her, holding a brown sack lunch and a stack of heavy clothing.

Numbly, still not entirely processing her surroundings and the fact that the Institute was very much in tact, she got to her feet and crossed the room. The tile was cold through her socks, a stark reminder that this was very real. She took the clothes and the soldier -- the fact that he wasn't one of the old orderlies was made very clear by his curt, abrupt sentences and his general stiff demeanor -- agreed to wait outside for her to get dressed before he took her to the buses.

Buses?

She was still trying to work through the grogginess of sleep and the confusion of suddenly being in a very sturdy, very pristine room of the institute that had just last night laid to waste and --

Hallucination. She slammed her hand down on the desk as it processed, infuriated by her own distress, by the way she had fallen for that mess all over again; hook, line and sinker. Taking a moment to try and work through that self-loathing, she reached up to run her hands through her hair, tugging it back in a stressed gesture. Dropping her arms to her side in a final, huffy movement, she reached out to grab the clothes from the desk. No. She couldn't let this get to her. She couldn't, she had to be better than that.

She changed in jerky, hasty motions, trying to keep moving and not blame herself and not let the levee break and release a wave of relief (that no one was dead) and sadness (from what she had seen) and anger (at herself, for believing it was real) that she didn't have time to deal with. She had to swallow it back and put it behind her.

When she exited her room, dressed and ready. The clothes they'd given her were leagues above what the uniforms provided -- for starters, they were warm, even despite the way her black peacoat was fading a little and well-worn, but it was more than functional and she had black leather gloves to make extra sure that she wasn't going to freeze. The colors were all muted and looked a little faded from repeated rounds in the washing machine upstairs, but overall, she was pretty sure she could blend well on the trip to town -- which, she deliberately grilled the soldier on. She could recall back on her first day at the institute, the reason she hadn't run into Peter was because he was in town -- surely it couldn't be too treacherous, right?