Day 44: Sun Room, Second Shift

[superdynamic]

[from here]He really had beat the rush. Suzaku found a chair as close to the corner and as far from the bulletin as he could, and turned it to face the wall before curling up in it. His nurse frowned at him again, but she was still being cooperative, and frankly he didn't care what she had to say in the slightest. He didn't care even if he got

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[oftemptation]

[from here]

The Sun Room was quiet, and that suited Endrance just fine. What he wanted was some time to think in silence. He had gotten most of the tears out that morning, something he still felt a bit...not ashamed, exactly, but he knew he couldn't keep reacting like that to everything that happened here. He needed to pull himself together and calm down.

Fortunately, this morning, none of the cats that tended to like to keep him company were staying away this morning. That was a very good thing in his mind - he wasn't sure he would have been able to keep himself from yelling at any of them. A sedation was the last thing he needed right now. Time to think things over was much more important.

He stretched out on one of the couches near the windows, staring up at the skylight overhead. What did it all mean? He'd really died last night, he knew that much...but why, and how had it been possible?

[one emo pretty boy free to a good home]

[sanguinario]

[A sparklepire is okay?]

Edward didn't want to say he was desperate to leave that conversation, but... well, he was. Defusing the most awkward of conversations was usually part of his forte (being telepathic didn't exactly hurt that skill), but there were some instances in which cutting the conversation short was the best course of action.

He seemed safe... for the moment. Venom was strangely reserved about the attack last night, but it was quite obvious he had been conscious enough to know what was happening. That only viable explanation was that perhaps this was not something strange to him. Could he have... met other vampires?

Insanity, of course. The Volturi would never let someone like him know and survive.No. Even his mind wasn't exactly screaming about the whole experience, which left him suspicious. Speaking to him privately would probably be for the best; not that Venom's suspicions were exactly the best blackmail material (and it was unlikely he could do much about it outside of outright killing him... and look how well

[oftemptation]

[absolutely. Sparkles draw sparkles. XD]

"It's a bit unusual..." Endrance couldn't help but to laugh at that comment, sitting up and turning around to look at the young man who had said it. Was that...no. He was just seeing things; if anything, the slight shine in the air was simply light reflecting off the window, or something catching the light for a moment outside.

"Normally, there's a cat here that won't leave me alone for a moment. Even having someone scare it off wouldn't keep it away from me. I think she's purposely leaving me alone this morning, though. After last night's events..." The scoffing noise that accompanied that wasn't something he'd ever expect to pass his own lips. He supposed that would be Haseo's influence, then.

"Well, I think she's leaving me be because of what happened last night. I take it the same has happened?"

[sanguinario]

Every time the light shifted, the vampire shifted with it, shrinking further back into the chair. Luckily the placement of the chair past the window frame cut off the light for the most part. The structure of his skin may have changed to a softer, more human strength, but he was far from ready to test the other effects that may have been affected.

Ah, so he was mistaken. Not something he normally was. (Was his telepathy even more hindered during the day? It had seemed quite loud last night, but the circumstances had been wildly different...) At least he wasn't the one keeping the animals away.

It was too bad. Edward thought he might have liked animals if they weren't so abhorrent of his presence. It did make sense, though - animals instinctively knew their prey, and everything was his prey. Or should be, if he was akin to the others

[oftemptation]

"I am," Endrance said. "Though...it's not supposedly, in my case." It was painful to talk about it, but there was some solace to be found in the fact that he wasn't the only one to have experienced it. Though he had the sense that most of the deaths last night weren't being perceived as some kind of atonement, not in the way he was seeing it.

"No. There's no doubt in my mind that I died last night. There was no way anyone could have survived the kind of injuries that I sustained last night...the same ones that my best friend sustained when she died. It would have been impossible, even with the highest level of medical care."

Endrance let out a soft sigh. "I'm talking about my death without introducing myself..." He laughed, a mix of bitterness and sadness. "Endrance."

[sanguinario]

Edward laughed too, trying to lift the mood to match their bright surroundings. Death was not a foreign topic to him, and had since lost its dark tones. "It could be worse; I practically died on top of a man without even knowing his name." After becoming well-acquainted with his throat, at least.

That thought sobered him.

"It wasn't supposedly in my case, either. If it hadn't happened to me - or I had not seen it happen in others - I would have thought myself insane. Not such a good thing in this sort of place." He chuckled despite himself. But Endrance's details about his own death repeated what Edward had initially thought: that the deaths had echoed someone else's. It had only been similar for himself since what had killed her had also been killing him. "I died by the disease my mother perished from. The people I were with..." Well, he certainly couldn't say, my roommate was killed by a giant spear and Venom was possessed and then stabbed several times by hair. "They died by stab wounds. But the burns I received before dying are

[oftemptation]

"That would have been awkward," Endrance agreed. "But yes - if this hadn't happened to me, and if I hadn't seen the same happen, at almost the exact same time, I would have thought myself insane, too." Not that telling people you were from a video game didn't make you seem a bit insane, but there were levels of this kind of thing.

He hummed thoughtfully. "It seems that all of the deaths echoed someone else's. A dear friend of mine died in the same way a friend of his did, and...there are so many other stories like that on the board." Though it was a bit of a surprise realizing that injuries taken before dying remained.

"You weren't caught in that explosion outside, were you?"

[sanguinario]

"I saw the board," he said, recalling his surprise in finding it, especially considering the sort of messages that were on it. Did the nurses so fully believe that the patients were deluded that they did not even take the messages on that board with a grain of truth? Maps, posts of apology, of searching... and one about vampires, that this one had quickly skipped over. He had tried to offer help to one anonymous poster, but a second was a larger risk. It was bad enough Venom was aware of what he was. "I thought it was interesting that someone was mapping out where the deaths had occurred... my glance at it was cursory, but I couldn't see any relationship among them."

He'd have to go back and look a second time - if the map hadn't been ripped down by now.

With Endrance's last question, Edward nodded. "Yes. The burns were the result of wayward... missiles." Even saying it himself didn't make is sound more believable. The girl (cyborg? weapon?) who had fired them had apologized for it. Apologized. The mere absurdity of that message

[oftemptation]

"I didn't see any relationship among them, either...though I don't know if it matters or not. I'm inclined to think it doesn't really matter...if people outside the walls could be affected, even though they weren't able to hear any of the strange intercom announcements, then it seems to me that if you were going to be affected, it didn't matter where you were. The patient rooms are supposedly 'safe', but that's where it started for me..."

Endrance sighed just a little, wishing once again that the others hadn't been able to see him. There was nothing to be done about it now, though.

His eyes widened at the words 'wayward missiles'. "What in the world...? I've seen 'brainwashed' patients before, but...nothing like that. I'd sooner believe some kind of spell or attack."

[sanguinario]

"No," he agreed, "I don't think it mattered where one was either. Though what you said is surprising to me - that patients have gotten outside the walls?" The wall separating that field from what must have been the courtyard wasn't exactly easy to maneuver over (especially when being shot at), but it hadn't been impossible to manage, either. Could the walls surrounding the institute be the same?

But why make escape so simple? Why had most - if not all - of the patients not escaped yet?

It seemed striking up simple conversations with other patients was more a wealth of knowledge than he had previously imagined. "Why are the patient rooms considered safe? I find that particular adjective hard to pin on any place here that I've seen so far."

So it also seemed "brain-washing" patients was a regular occurrence. Did wonders never cease? With every answer, more questions seemed to bubble up. It was completely infuriating.

"Spell?" Magic, he thought with distaste. Edward had not taken a liking to the connotations of the word once he had

[oftemptation]

"I'm a bit surprised by the fact as well. What surprises me more is that they were brought back here, though...it seems that just climbing over the wall isn't enough. I suppose they don't want to make it too easy," Endrance replied, sarcasm dripping from the last statement. It was a bit infuriating, once he thought about it.

"I think the reason they're considered safe is that no one's been attacked by any kind of creature while in a patient room...at least to my knowledge." It really was a hard adjective to pin on any room within this place. This room was dangerous at night, the entry room had been changed into the Hulle Granz Cathedral, the chapel upstairs... A shiver went down his spine when he thought about it.

...and there was the rub. The easy answer would be 'yes', but...it was only half-true. There was magic in The World, but...this was the real world. The real world didn't have spells or magic or anything resembling it. In the end, he shrugged his shoulders, unable to answer either way.

[sanguinario]

The vampire simply nodded, throwing off the other's lack of response. Even seeing what he had during his years, ignoring his apprehension about the subject didn't lead him to easily believing it. Except that this institution has already destroyed several grounds I found to be quite stable.

"The rooms being safe is certainly interesting... but I can see how it would entice patients to stay in their quarters. But it seems sort of counterproductive, seeing as the doors are unlocked during the night. I wonder if that's something Landel cannot control?" From the fragmented message he had heard that morning, it seemed the head doctor wasn't exactly in the best condition... had it always been this way?

It was quite infuriating to have no past experience to draw from. Instead, he could only muse out loud to a complete stranger - who he couldn't even read. Desperate times. "The transformation from night to day caught me by surprise, honestly. I hadn't expected to just... wake up where I began." He hadn't expected to wake up period. "Has