Nightshift 60: Main Hallway, 2-West

[ninelivesonce]

[from here]

Taura peeked out of the stairwell door with the first evidence of caution she'd shown all night. Everything looked quiet, but that didn't mean much of anything.

They'd met here the last time she'd come up to head into that room, and that thing had come out of the walls. She didn't want to wait around anywhere, but especially not

Comments

[lustful_thing]

"How can I care for people I don't know?" Lust shrugged, though she did try and give the scenario honest thought. It was difficult for her, having so little experience with the idea of anyone caring about her. The one man who had, she had killed in an emotional fit. Not out of anger, but out of fear and confusion.

"Though maybe I'm not the best person to pose that hypothetical to," she went on. "The people who loved the woman I used to be are dead."

And besides that, had insisted she wasn't that woman.

"But even so, what would happen to me," she continued, unable to let the subject rest, "if I remembered all of her memories and her life? What about my memories? My life? The things I think and feel and want and love? Who has more right to existence, the woman I was or the woman I am?"

Passion filled her words, passion she hadn't realized she even truly held. Oh, she'd had something of a similar conversation with Envy, but he had dismissed her wondering and philosophy as madness. But the questions plagued her still. Who was she? Where had she come from? Where was she going and what would become of her?

"I'm sorry. It's just that this is something I think about - from long before I ever came to this place."

[scarefaux]

The Scarecrow gave Lust a nod and an encouraging smile. "No, it's all right. We're all given a lot to think about when coming here, though some of us more than others on account of not being human to begin with." That, and he got the feeling they were talking about two very different topics.

Her situation sounded far different from his own, though. The woman she used to be? So had she been bewitched and lost her memories of who she was before arriving at the Institute, as well? He had to admit that did sound awful, to know she was supposed to be someone else entirely, but not know what could be done or what consequences would come of it. Lust implied her problem started long before her capture, which made her situation that much more complicated.

It was something he'd considered before, that perhaps Dorothy was right, that he was Hunk Howard and truly wasn't well; however, having seen the terrible things the doctors subjected the patients to, he wasn't willing to believe their lies anymore. There was the matter of what had happened to Hunk Howard, though- human bodies surely didn't just appear out of thin air, and he'd seen his old cloth body with his own- well, Hunk Howard's eyes. And Lust's fervent argument brought up a good point: what would happen to him if his body's former owner returned? Could he return to being made of straw? And would he want to? That last part was the most distressing.

He shook his head. "Now, I'm not the best at knowing things, but I do know that if you were to stop being who you are right now tomorrow, or if you were bewitched into believing you were someone else? I'm sure any friends you've made here would care, and would do anything to try and help you get back to yourself. You might not know them any longer, but they'd still know you, and know who you are and what you mean to them."