Mar 10, 2007 05:16
As the intercom switched on, the shuffling of papers was the first thing that could be heard rather than the voice of the Head Doctor. It seemed he had been going through a lot of them today, a fact which could perhaps be attributed to the fact that so many new patients had flooded the halls of Landel's on this particular afternoon
(
Read more... )
raine,
qui-gon jinn,
axel,
edward elric,
intercom,
xigbar,
rock lee,
goku,
sephiroth,
waka,
soujirou,
azel,
larxene,
naminé,
demyx,
miku,
tsuzuki,
tamaki,
ginji,
hakkai,
claire bennet,
alphonse,
hikaru,
xemnas,
aya,
phoenix,
matsumoto,
caim,
lord recluse,
yohji,
ritsuka,
yuffie,
tifa,
kaylee,
honey,
cliff,
otacon,
takaya,
darman,
kadaj,
barret,
vergil,
seimei,
rubedo,
renji,
kiden,
kurama,
obi-wan kenobi,
haruhi suzumiya,
adelheid,
fayt,
larsa,
naoe,
momo (xenosaga),
cameron,
heiderich,
reinforce,
ashton,
ari,
reno,
albel,
kyouya,
rukia,
itachi,
ichigo,
edgeworth,
javert,
faust,
zabuza,
dean winchester,
raven,
bakura,
alucard,
darkwing,
kairi,
chase,
envy,
kazuo,
vincent,
roy,
mal,
snape,
schuldig,
sasuke,
iruka,
aidou,
omi,
hisoka,
gin,
brad,
penelo,
captain jack
Not that there was much sign of it. He kept his expression neutral as the nurse led him along. It was insulting that they would think he didn't know the way by now, but he also realized that it wouldn't be very smart for them to let him walk back on his own. Just because he understood it didn't mean he liked it, however. He understood what the Alliance was trying to do, after all.
Once they reached the door, Mal was expecting the nurse to let him enter in silence, but she stopped and turned to him instead. "Be sure to be good to your roommate, Nathan. He's new here."
Mal sighed inwardly. He really didn't want to have to play teacher or deal with whatever confusion his roommate was likely to have, but it wasn't like he had a choice. Nodding, he headed inside and closed the door behind him, pinning down the other man with his eyes in scrutiny.
He seemed older, which was rare here as far as Mal knew, and... Well, he looked more disoriented than anything.
"Welcome," he grumbled as he headed over to his bed. He didn't like this idea of having to share space in the slightest.
Reply
He looked down. The smiley face beamed back up at him.
What the hell - ?!
Before he could react to either his bizarre clothing or his apparent roommate's welcome, the door swung open again and two young women stepped inside, each carrying a tray of food. One of them placed her tray on the other man's desk. The other noticed Javert and smiled; he was strongly reminded of the face on his shirt - blank and emotionless.
"I see you've woken up and met your roommate, Mr. Hunt!" she said cheerfully.
“So it would seem. I - ” Had she just called him Mr. Hunt? “I am afraid you have the wrong man. My name is Javert.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” chirped the nurse. “Your name is Philip Hunt, and you’re a patient here at Landel’s. This is your roommate, Nathan Fillion, and - ”
“Landel’s,” said Javert, frowning.
“Landel’s Mental Institute!” said the nurse. “You’re here because - ”
Javert cut her off with a barking, humorless laugh. So that was it. He’d lost consciousness from the fall. Days could have passed before he’d woken up - or even been discovered - and in that time, his superiors had committed him to an asylum. Well, they had every reason to believe him insane.
“ - as I was saying, Mr. Hunt, you’re here because you think you’re someone else. We’re going to take care of you until you feel better.”
“Did M. Gisquet place me here?” Best to make sure, after all; you never knew.
The nurse shook her head at him disapprovingly. “We’re here to assist in your recovery, Mr. Hunt, not to interact with your imaginary friends - ”
Imaginary friends? “I beg your pardon, mademoiselle?” he said aloud, eyebrows furrowing together.
She tutted at him as she set the tray on his desk. “I don't have time for this, Mr. Hunt. Enjoy your dinner."
Javert stared after them in utter confusion as they exited. He glanced over at the other man as the door clicked shut. "So, ah. Monsieur - Fillion, was it?"
Reply
Well, Javert was probably his name.
Mal was very much tempted to cut in, but he knew better than that. He hated staying quiet in the face of authority, especially when the authority was wrong (which it usually was), but the fact that nightfall would soon give him the chance to rebel assuaged him.
He sneered after the nurses as they took their leave, shaking his head. But when his roommate called him the completely wrong name (for one thing, he was by no means a monsieur, and for another, it was Reynolds, not Malcolm), he had to let out a laugh similar to the one Javert had expelled earlier.
"Hardly. Name's Malcolm Reynolds. And don't listen to a word they say. It's all gos se--" He paused and reconsidered. "Bullshit." He headed over to the desk. Even if he didn't like them, he was still allowed to eat their food.
Reply
He was still very confused and beginning to feel rather helpless; both were feelings he thoroughly disliked. Why were the nurses calling them strange names? And what sort of name was Malcolm Reynolds, anyway?
"If this is indeed an asylum of sorts, I would imagine that actually cooperating with the nurses would see you released sooner." He raised an eyebrow at Reynolds, if that was indeed his name. "Although, to be honest, you don't seem delusional to me. In which part of France is this building located?"
Picking up a knife and fork, the former inspector began to work methodically through his dinner. It was good, he had to admit, but he didn't particularly enjoy it. There was something deeply suspicious about this whole situation, but he didn't know what.
Reply
"It's not really an asylum," Mal explained. He hadn't wanted to get involved in playing teacher, but he wasn't about to leave the guy clueless, either. "Well, it is, but it's all fake. They're trying to tell us we're crazy when we aren't - none of us are." Of course, he was sure some of the patients needed to be here more than others, but he wasn't going to get into that. "They call us by a fake name and apparently tell us our fake life." He hadn't heard too much about that yet, but he hadn't been here long compared to some of the others.
"Anyway, they make it seem all normal during the day, but things get dangerous at night. You'll get to see for yourself in a bit." He glanced over at Javert with a wry smile. "This place also isn't your home. All the patients have been taken from different worlds - dimensions - and dumped here." He probably wasn't going to be believed, but eventually the man was going to have to accept what he was saying as truth.
Reply
Still, he said nothing as he cleared his plate of fish and started in on the side dishes (were those orange noodles?). His mind whirled; he was disinclined to believe that nonsense about other worlds, but what Reynolds had said about fake names was certainly true, and the nurse's patronizing comment about imaginary friends still niggled at him from the back of his mind. Javert wasn't much of a dreamer by any stretch of the imagination, but even if he were, he was fairly certain that whatever vision he conjured up would be significantly more impressive than Henri-Joséphe Gisquet.
"So, M. Reynolds," he said at last, the faintest trace of sarcasm in his voice, "from what strange, unexplored dimension do you hail?"
Reply
The question itself (strange, unexplored) made his disbelief obvious enough, to the point that Mal couldn't take it seriously. He narrowed his eyes and focused on his food. "S'not like you'd believe me," he mumbled.
Reply
His gaze drifted upward as he ate. He had noticed before that the far wall had no windows, but hadn't yet begun to wonder what the source of light in the room was. Now he saw that there were glowing rectangles in the ceiling and frowned. What were they? They didn't look like gas-lamps, and they definitely weren't on fire, either.
Javert stared at them, trying in vain to fight off the uneasy feeling that had crept over him. Now that he thought about it, virtually nothing around him was in the least familiar. His clothes, the nurses' uniforms, the food, now even the lighting...if this was some newfangled method of caring for the mentally ill, he hadn't heard about it yet. Then again, he rarely read the newspaper, if at all. Just how long had he been unconscious, anyway?
"Assume for a moment I do believe you," he said abruptly. "What's the date?"
Reply
If Mal hadn't been busy with his food, he might have noticed the way that Javert was looking up at the lights like they were foreign objects. That would have at least given him an idea about how separate they were from each other as far as time period. Unfortunately, he was doing his best to be aloof at the moment.
The date was something more than a few people wondered at, so he didn't think it was so strange for him to be asking it. "I'm not sure what the date is here. I know what it would be if I was home." He shrugged, not thinking it was necessary to give the man information that he wasn't going to take seriously, anyway.
Reply
...he was, wasn't he. Wonderful. First different dimensions - now different times? He couldn't take much more of this. If the nurse came in again, he'd request a transfer to a different room - preferably a solitary one. Surely they didn't expect him to recover properly with a lunatic like this as his roommate.
Javert sighed. He was going to have a very long talk with Gisquet once he got out of here.
"I suppose June 1832 is far too much to hope for?"
Reply
Honestly. He got enough of that from the nurses. He didn't need it from his roommate, too.
"Oh yeah. If this really is Earth-That-Was like everyone seems to think, I'd guess we're in the twenty or twenty-first century."
He closed his eyes and sighed.
Damn, that was weird.
Reply
Reynolds was awfully persistent about this "different worlds" thing, wasn't he? Twenty-first century indeed! That was rich. Although -
He frowned. "Like everyone seems to think? There are more of you?"
Reply
"There are more patients, yes," he grated. Couldn't the guy tell that he was completely lucid? Or was he that much of an idiot?
"Look, maybe I sound like a nutjob now, but you're going to have to believe it eventually." He shook his head and turned away. "You won't have any other choice."
So much for the making friendships idea. This whole roommate thing was just pitting him against someone else.
Reply
Leave a comment