May 11, 2009 09:30
Endrance turned his head to look at the intercom, giving it a look that would wither an entire rose garden in an instant. He would never get used to ending up in his room again from somewhere else in the Institute
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methos,
klavier,
tenzen,
tsubaki,
kaiji,
anise,
kamiya kaoru,
rude,
snake,
teisel,
the doctor,
blitzwing,
ken amada,
sam winchester,
utena,
asch,
miku,
zex,
franziska,
misa,
peter parker,
luxord,
raphael,
kanji,
brainiac 5,
the flash,
james bond,
phoenix,
megatron,
albedo,
blue beetle,
van,
eileen,
lord recluse,
peter petrelli,
yohji,
mele,
stahn,
two-face,
akihiko,
ritsuka,
the scarecrow,
sync,
ayumu,
okita,
daphne,
juri,
lockdown,
scourge,
tyki,
yukari yakumo,
haseo,
citan,
kiden,
tony stark,
endrance,
obi-wan kenobi,
kenshin,
senna,
fayt,
hanatarou,
chidori,
sora,
jason,
evangeline,
luffy,
renamon,
claude,
keman,
haruno sakura,
superboy,
edgeworth,
sousuke,
harley,
dean winchester,
hughes,
celes,
hk-47,
sho,
ren,
guy,
kvothe,
kio,
armand,
alessa,
nigredo,
naomi,
wesker,
frey,
valyn,
lelouch,
chise,
ryuk,
yomi,
fai,
leon magnus,
schuldig,
sasuke,
yue,
aidou,
ophelia,
gin,
scar (tlk),
brad,
subaru,
sanzo
At the very least, there’d been more progress than the night before.
Still, the prospect of another long day awaiting him after a night that felt like it’d flashed by in a second didn’t exactly please him. But there were supposed to be showers for once. He’d take a shower shift over diddling around with tomato plants or listening to other prisoners smash instruments around in the music room. No offence to them and their music skills--there was a lot of aggression to work out, he knew. Whatever coping techniques worked.
As for him, well, he had a stomach that needed a little filling, and after that he could always jump into a few more conversations. Plenty of those going around. What came later could use some forethought, though. This whole flashlight business was starting to be more of a pain than it should’ve been--should he really just trade for one, or try for the janitor’s closet a third night in a row? Or there was always giving up, because even though he had the kind of existence he did and had no vital need to mind time, routines were boring. He tried not to parallel his past as much as possible, and it was a flashlight. Talk about focussing on the big picture. Three nights of going after an item he’d already proven he didn’t always need was a bit much.
Well, speaking of time, he had a whole day’s worth of it to consider his options.
Taking a seat at an open table where there were plenty of opportunities to sit with him if they wanted, he began to eat his pancakes. Okay, so it was a routine, but he liked to watch the door and note faces.
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At least, to Naomi's relief, there were a handful of familiar faces that stood out to her. Matsuda, for one. Talking to the blond girl Naomi had once been shown, the girl who was involved in that mess from back home. Misa was her name, wasn't it?
Not that it looked like there was anyone left to ask....
Those were the only two faces from what she assumed was 'home' that she could see. And that wasn't a good sign. At a nudge from her nurse, Naomi forced herself to take some breakfast and find a seat. She spotted another familiar face, just not one from home. That didn't matter. Any port in a storm, as the old saying went. Much as she would have preferred to sit alone and try and work out a plan, old habits (and orders) died hard.
"Hi," she said, cordially enough as she sat across from Ren. Keep up normal appearances at all times. Don't let anyone know anything is wrong. Or at least, try not to. Naomi flashed a small smile. She could control her own mind and emotions, no matter what anyone said.
And if not, she could always lie.
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But she gave off that survivor vibe, which might’ve deserved some of the credit.
Taking the utensil into his hand, he swallowed, and gave his own greeting. “Hey,” he said, cheerily drawing the word out over two syllables, “Maki-san. It’s been a while. Good morning… or something like it.”
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"I've been a little...indisposed. So how have you been?" she asked, her mind forced to calm itself some to focus on normal conversation. And one thing Ren was always good for was a little bit of normal conversation.
Besides that, he could have important news or developments that she'd missed.
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As for being indisposed, he had to wonder what that meant. She definitely didn't look like she'd recently been torn to pieces by some creature to live to tell the tale, so that couldn't be it. And people were normally a bit more hysterical after near death experiences.
"Did something happen? Things have been pretty normal on my end, if you wanna call it that. No new battle wounds. Hope you've gotten off as lucky?"
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But she supposed she was being contrary. She hadn't been eating or sleeping well, she'd been at the end of her nerves and afraid of some sort of mental breakdown.... It was pretty reasonable to assume she actually had been sick. It happened. And she didn't think they'd done anything to her while she was out of it....
"I haven't had any bad run ins with monsters since some freak with tentacles tried to eat me and a friend of mine." Other than that, she supposed things had been normal on her end, too.
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"I'm sorry to hear about that," he said earnestly. It was pretty messed up when people could just shrug that sort of thing off, and he doubted the woman was going to be confessing the full extent of her miserable experiences with him. Cute strangers who pried could typically get that information, but the doll was kind of off duty on that note. Would it make a difference to talk about that sort of thing, anyway? "The monsters and the disappearing... it bites that it's constant, but I haven't heard as much about people getting singled out by the staff. They wouldn't let you out of your room or something?"
More than likely, she might've meant 'poof! Two days of my life gone without warning', if she wasn't convinced she'd really been sick for whatever reason.
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"I guess I slept through whatever it was," she said, raking her hair back. Ugh, it was starting to get greasy. She hoped they got showers today. God, she'd kill for a hot shower about now.
"They didn't do anything to me, no weird experiments or anything. At least as far as I could tell. Maybe I was just sick, I don't know. I swear, the more I do find out, the more it seems like I don't know anything."
And now what the hell was she supposed to do? She was used to following orders. She'd had a job, and she'd done it. And she'd had a contingency plan for if something happened, but it looked like her contingency plan was gone, too. And she couldn't see her third and final choice either. Well, she'd keep an eye out and not panic yet. Maybe she could grab Matsuda later and ask him....
"Do you ever wonder...what life is going to be like if we get out of this place?" she asked, suddenly.
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How long had Maki been out, and how long could she have been kept out? No answers there. He couldn’t disagree with her assessment on that one.
Maybe she had lived to tell the tale.
The doll had been watching her face scrumptiously while he cut up some of his pancake with the edge of the fork--appetites tended to get lost in translation a lot of the time and he was sure it wasn’t just him--when she asked her question. An honestly unexpected one, at that. Do I ever wonder…? His wondering, in whatever way, couldn’t be quite like hers…
“What do you mean?”
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"Well, whatever. I'm out and on my feet now, whatever happened. And I mean...do you ever wonder how we're going to be able to just go back to our old lives? Or...if we can? I've read that people who spend time in jail, when they get out, a lot of them can't readjust to society. They spend all this time with everything planned for them, everything controlled by other people, and then when they're out...they don't know how to look after themselves anymore."
It was a phenomena that had been witnessed for decades at the least. Prisoners learned to crave and need structure, and when it was taken away...
"And even besides that...how do you just go back to normal life after something like this?"
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"I think it'll happen. Eventually," the doll replied slowly, turning over her words. It wasn't quite an optimistic view, and not quite a defeatist one--just what he thought would happen. And he had about as much of a clue as she did, when one got down to it. Maybe, though, he was the one with plenty of insight concerning centuries of meeting sick personalities and seeing humans getting tortured over and over again with, if not similar circumstances, similar results.
But the woman was asking difficult questions. The doll was on the other side of this sideshow, and couldn't entirely predict how it'd end.
He considered a reply for a while, momentarily giving up on his meal. "I'm not sure... there's a guarantee we'll even know we were here, once we're gone. We might not remember, just like we don't remember arriving." Maybe that was optimistic. Nothing would change for him, he knew, but Maki's concerns were valid: if they were back in their regular lives, doing regular things and were aware of what had happened, what would stop them from living in constant fear that it wouldn't happen again? And knowing what sort of creatures were out there? The servant didn't have to read about it and wonder--he'd seen it. Again, he was silent before saying, "And if you do, play it by ear," and that was his best answer. "If you're strong enough to survive this, you can do the rest. 'Normal' just might not be part of it."
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"Yeah," was what she said, nodding some. "I guess you're right. And maybe we won't remember." That would be a blessing. People who came back, they didn't remember, did they? So maybe it would be the same. They'd just go back and everything would be...sort of normal.
She didn't believe that for a minute, though. They probably wouldn't get back to their old lives, even if they escaped. They'd just have to make lives for themselves here. But if they had their memories...would it be better or worse?
"Ugh, I'm sorry, I really shouldn't be having all these doom and gloom thoughts first thing in the morning." She shook her head. "I guess I just needed to clear out some cobwebs or something."
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Maki wasn’t a kid. The grave reality of their circumstances couldn’t be played off, and neither could the source of her thoughts. But the latter could maybe be comforted. Being uniquely doom and gloom himself and unloading all the unhappy experience of a centuries old being by openly agreeing with her would kind of be like a backhand to the face.
At least to the face of some of the hope she had. And he figured--though it was more of a hunch--that she still had that.
The doll waved his hand. “Hey, don’t worry about it. If you need to take a load off, take a load off. You’d have to be pretty used to this stuff not to have thoughts like that, and that rules out most people.”
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