Day 46: Music Room

[moral_liberty]

Kaworu immediately gravitated towards the keyboard. It was not a piano, not truly, but it was attractive in all of the same ways. Music freed the mind from conscious thought, and Kaworu was feeling exceptionally weighed down by exactly that. There was a heaviness, as well as a lightness. He did not know where to begin approaching the situation with

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[tostepforward]

Either he didn't remember being here before or was pretending that was the case; no matter which it was, Ayumu would only react as though she believed it. She rather hoped it was the former, as if that was the case then she could tell him what she liked of their former relationship. Not that he was likely to believe anything that she said, if he was anything like the Mello who'd been here before. That was part of the reason she'd been assigned to watch him, after all.

The smile faded into surprise, flickered toward dismay, then settled on disappointment for an instant before reasserting itself. "Oh, you...you are Mello, aren't you?" Her attention paused for a second on the scar before moving away, a slight tinge of a blush on her cheeks saying that she'd realized staring was rude. But it was a rather distinctive mark, to be certain.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, momentarily awkward as one might be after greeting a friend who turned out to be someone else. "It's, ah, I'm Sen." A brief pause, as though gathering her courage, and she continued, "Your friend, Robin...he disappeared a couple days after you did. I'd hoped, ah, you knew where he was. But..." She trailed off, eyes lowering in mild chagrin.

[swornandbroken]

Mello watched the play of emotions over her face, holding his own expression to mildly interested. That all looked genuine, but he didn't even wholly trust L here; he sure as hell wasn't going to trust someone he'd never seen before today.

"That's me, but I just got here yesterday." So much for 'Morgan,' but if the behavior of the other prisoners was any indication, no one would comply with any name he wanted to be called anyway. It was actually satisfying, in a weird way, that so many people had recognized him. It meant his alternate had made an impression.

"And I haven't seen Robin in years." Nothing had the ring of truth like the actual truth, he figured. "You were close to him? And... well, me?" She had gained more of his attention by now, but he wasn't dropping the twin pretenses of being friendly and just a little lost yet. He privately wondered if she'd known the other one well enough that a 'cut the crap' would be forthcoming.

[tostepforward]

Only yesterday, then. That meant Ayumu hadn't missed him before that...whatever had happened, yesterday. If he'd been here when she was in her right mind and she hadn't seen him, then she would have been extremely concerned about her observational skills. The part about him not seeing Robin in years, though - did that mean they'd only reunited when they were both brought here? Or had they been brought from different periods in time? Curious.

"Oh, I..." She paused for just a breath, her eyes still fixed on the floor as that hint of a blush deepened. "I...yes, I was close to Robin." Another second later she glanced up again, though not quite meeting Mello's eyes. "And, well, you two were working together, so that's how I met you. Him." The difference between this Mello and the Mello that had been there before was quite confusing, judging from her voice and expression, and the way she stopped there and just shrugged.

This Mello also acted a little differently than the previous - the Mello she'd met with Robin had made a pretense of being courteous and friendly, but had dropped it by the time they'd reached the second floor in their little expedition. Again it made her wonder if it was a time difference, or if he was simply pretending a little more seriously this time.

[swornandbroken]

From what Sai had told him, Mello had concluded his alternate had come from later than he had. He still wasn't convinced that made them the same person. Already, he'd learned things that would change the course of the Kira case when he got home.

"You and Robin were an item?" Sen's blush prompted him to ask, the sardonic tone of his voice much closer to his natural personality than the front he'd been putting on. Hell, good for Matt, if so. Mello would continue to think such things weren't worth the time and effort they required.

"At any rate, you'd know when he came from, wouldn't you? And maybe even when the Mello you knew before came from?"

The apparent time distortion was one of the major things he wanted to figure out. As he'd drifted off in Hal's apartment, it had occurred to him that Matt's skills would come in useful, but he certainly hadn't tracked him down yet. If he and L could put their heads together about the case, he might not need to. Even better, if Mello could gain access to whatever mechanism or power allowed the people who ran Landel's to reach into different times, maybe even different worlds, and drag people here, he could reverse it, and there wouldn't be a Kira at all.

[tostepforward]

That was certainly more like what she'd expected from Mello; likely he was just trying to be nice, now that he'd found himself in a strange place. The previous Mello had been in the Institute for at least several days before he'd come to her attention (and assignment), and it only made sense that he'd be trying to feel his way through the situation. If Robin had still been here, his task would likely have been easier, but fortunately for her, he wasn't.

The question was enough to make her gaze drop to the floor again, and Ayumu gave a bashful-looking nod. "I...yes, I suppose we were...." So even Mello suspected he was from a different time. The fact that he already seemed to know and understand the oddities of how such things worked here was hardly a surprise. "But, he - well, neither one of you talked about your world very much. I do know he was taken only a few days before his twentieth birthday, if that helps at all?"

[swornandbroken]

Mello nodded briefly. Concrete information always helped. Matt had come from slightly more than two months in Mello's future, then, if Sen could be believed. What lousy fucking luck that he wasn't here anymore. Mello fully expected to have uncovered Kira's identity and taken him out by the new year. Confirmation would have been nice. And, hell, he might have learned something that would've helped him do it faster.

He watched Sen intently now, only a small fraction of his focus occupied by L and the tattooed man. "Were they working together here, back home, or both? Did either of them mention something important they were in the middle of at home?"

Mello believed that at least some of the people stuck here had come from times or places where Kira didn't exist, but that didn't mean he was just going to throw the name around. You never knew who might be listening.

[tostepforward]

Now here came the question: did she keep up the innocent-and-slightly-dim act and pretend to ignorance, or admit to what she'd pieced together from the board? The first would work to ensure he thought her as harmless as the previous Mello likely did. (He'd had suspicions, of course, she was certain of that; he'd struck her as the type who'd be suspicious of himself if the opportunity arose.) The second could potentially put her in his good graces, and make him a potential ally instead of a threat.

"He didn't really talk about home very much," she replied, finally lifting her eyes enough to give him a faintly puzzled look, as inwardly she considered her options and made a decision. "You -- or, ah, the other you, he was busy trying to find out how this place worked, to find a way home. At least, that seemed like what he was concentrating on."

[swornandbroken]

If Mello's double were as similar to him as he had reason to believe he'd been, it would certainly have occurred to him, too, that there could be power here for the taking, if he could find out who held it and how it worked. He trusted the other hadn't been foolish enough to broadcast that goal to just anyone. Sen's words confirmed what others had already said about his activities, and didn't imply he'd trusted her with anything more. Mello doubted Matt would have... fraternized with anyone who would actively hinder them, but making assumptions about the agendas of the other prisoners was a mistake he couldn't afford to make.

"Before they disappeared, had anything recently changed, about them or the Institute?"

Most people seemed to put the comings and goings down to random chance, but that didn't necessarily mean there wasn't a pattern. If someone had gotten too close to any sort of discovery, that could easily have been grounds for sending them away.

[tostepforward]

"Anything...changed?" Ayumu echoed, lifting a hand to her cheek as though that would serve to hide her sudden blush. She could think of several unusual things that had happened recently, but neither one of them had been around for the most recent, and she wasn't absolutely certain just when Mello had left. She could recall the last time she had seen him, though, and that was before even the Doyleton trip. Was there something in common with the two of them? It was entirely possible that they'd been working on something that Robin hadn't mentioned; she'd not spoken to him for a couple of days before their last conversation, after all, and anything could have happened during that time.

Instead of mentioning any of her thoughts to him, though, she immediately went for the least likely idea and reacted with embarrassment that she was apparently trying to hide. "Oh. Ah...nothing that I can...think of." She paused a moment, then continued, "There was the trip to Doyleton, but I think y--the old you was already gone by then."

[swornandbroken]

"Hm." That was almost entirely unhelpful, except for the mention of the town Mello had never heard of. He noted Sen's seeming embarrassment, and chalked it up to the romantic entanglement, which wasn't his problem. If people could manage to gain privacy here, and then chose to waste it like that, their loss. Any sneaking off Mello did sure as hell wouldn't be for the sake of anyone else.

"Tell me about Doyleton," he said. "How close is it, and how big?"

He realized to his annoyance that he didn't even know what state they were in, or if they were still in the States at all, though the time he couldn't account for seemed short enough to preclude having gone overseas. He wasn't about to display his ignorance by asking, and it didn't matter anyway. Mello was accustomed to getting anywhere he needed to be at practically a moment's notice.

[tostepforward]

Ayumu jumped on the new topic of conversation with apparent relief, inwardly mildly amused at his reaction. If Robin had been here, this Mello likely would have been just as pleased at his supposed relationship with her as the last Mello, which was to say, not at all. Not that he'd outright said anything, of course, but it hadn't been difficult to read between the lines.

"I'm not certain how far it is," she replied, with a thoughtful frown. "They took us there on...in carriages Robin said were called buses. They moved faster than anything I'm used to, so I couldn't judge the distance. I was told that we make the trip every week, though. So perhaps you'll see it soon enough yourself?"

[swornandbroken]

Carriages? Where the hell is she from?

It seemed like a good sign that there were field trips, but Mello saw it was only superficially good. He was sure there were safeguards in place to make sure no one used the chance to escape. His double had been here for more than a week, and would have visited the town and still come back. That meant walking out of Doyleton was no easier than escaping the hospital itself. Mello was starting to be glad the other one had been here. It was saving him some trial and error. I wonder if he left me any information somehow. There's no fucking way I'd end up here again if I could help it, but he would've thought the same thing at first...

He put those thoughts aside for the moment and focused on the girl again. She was friendlier towards him than even one of his supposed allies, and he wanted to get to why. "Perhaps. So, what about you, Sen? What's your story?"

[tostepforward]

Apparently now that his immediate curiosity had been satisfied, he was going to focus back on her again. He certainly had to be wondering about the source of the information, especially since her last comment had to have made him wonder. Had he really believed her story before, and only just called it into question? Or had he just dealt with his first priorities to begin with?

Ayumu blinked at him, as though surprised by the way the topic changed again, and tilted her head to one side slightly. "My story? What do you...I've been here for about a week and a half, if that's what you meant?"

[swornandbroken]

"I mean, what's your home like? What were you doing when they dragged you here?" Mello didn't care in the slightest, except insofar as it would help him take the measure of her more accurately, and he suspected Sen knew it. As long as she played along, he didn't care about that either.

If he was going to be stuck here for any length of time, as he was still fighting against believing he would be, he had to know which people were allies, which were enemies, and which were merely irrelevant. He knew where Sen wanted him to think she was, but he hadn't yet decided where she really was.

[tostepforward]

"Oh. I see." Ayumu's expression brightened a bit at that, and she smiled. "I'm sorry, I forgot you wouldn't know that. It's...a little strange, since I was just talking to you a few days ago but it wasn't actually you." She shrugged a little, looking apologetic.

"I'm from Kyoto. It was the first year of Genji, the last thing I remembered, but apparently that's, well, about 150 years before you?" Her voice slowed a little as she added the last part, a small frown creasing her brow, as though the whole idea still confused her. "I don't know what happened - I walked through a door and suddenly I was waking up here."

[swornandbroken]

That explained 'carriages,' but opened up a host of other questions. "Let me guess, they've tried to tell you that's all in your head." Sounding bitterly amused about this wasn't a stretch at all.

Mello was actually prepared to believe Sen about her world. In barely twenty-four hours here, he'd seen the impossible with his own eyes twice. They could pull L from 2004 and him from 2009; the principle was the same, the rest was just a matter of scale.

"And you don't remember anything about the trip? No idea how long it took?" It still bothered him that he couldn't answer those questions himself.