Day 48: Courtyard
"I could tell you some stories," Yuffie suggested brightly, "of unquestionable legality." Illegality, that was. Petty little things like the law didn't usually mean very much to her, except for the times when she had to uphold it. Always fun for the breaking, though, the law, and messy for the clean-up. Just the way she liked it
( Read more... )
They dragged him outside, but didn't encourage him to interact with anyone immediately, which he supposed he should be grateful for except that he couldn't get himself to be grateful for anything this place 'provided' at the moment. He crossed his arms over his chest as the cold air hit him, stumbling to a place against the wall and refusing to go any further than that.
Admittedly, the cold air was helping to bring him back to his senses already, but that didn't mean he was going to enjoy it any. The demon leaned his head back against the wall and pulled his legs up close. As much as he'd hate it, he was going to have to calm down - at least until night came and he could make better use of his anger. While the sun was out, these people had the upper hand. He was just being toyed with.
[one little Petrelli, please]
Reply
Peter was impatient with the nurses when they forced him into a coat before they would let him outside. They insisted that they didn't want him to catch a cold, but that was the last thought on Peter's mind at the moment. Having grown up in New York, he had a pretty good amount of tolerance for cold weather, so he didn't see why they were bothering. In the end, he pulled the coat on as quickly as he could and then headed out into the courtyard.
It took some walking around, but he eventually found Heat sitting up against the wall and looking like he was about to freeze to death. It was chilly, but Peter honestly didn't think it was that bad. Maybe the man was used to a warmer climate -- and his name was a clue all on its own, wasn't it? He wondered if it was a nickname, then.
Walking over to the man, Peter stood nearby and glanced down at him, arms over his chest. His left arm was still stinging and sore from the bite, but he wasn't going to think about that right now. "We need to talk," he said, and his tone managed to be surprisingly firm.
Reply
Unfortunately, he wasn't in the best of positions to be ignoring him. The demon shifted, trying to make himself more comfortable since it looked like he was going to have to stay awake rather than be allowed to take the nap he'd been considering. No way was he getting up, though. If this guy wanted to talk to him so badly, then he could join him on the ground. He gave a single grunt of acknowledgment and nodded toward the space next to him.
"So sit down. I'm not goin' anywhere." This man already knew what he was. There wasn't anything for him to hide. He could only expect the worst for this conversation, really, and he didn't care. Normal humans couldn't sympathize. Not unless they were someone like Fred.
Reply
Nodding, Peter moved over, brushed some fallen leaves from the spot where he was going to sit, and then settled down. He had to wonder if one of the benches might be a better place to do this, but he wasn't going to argue the point now. At least being off to the side meant they weren't likely to be eavesdropped on.
So, where to start? Peter let out a sigh, staring straight forward and watching his breath become visible in the air before he spoke up again. "So... what happened to him last night," he began. "Landel didn't have anything to do with it, did he?" The more he'd heard, the more Peter had suspected that was the case, and yet he still needed to hear it from someone who knew the truth. Accepting what that would mean might be hard, but at least he was braced for it. Somewhat.
Reply
"Nah. We're demons. That's what we are. We devour our own kind to survive and if we don't -- you saw." Heat had never been one to beat around the bush and he saw no reason to start now. He'd never feared retaliation, either. In fact, he was smirking a little as he turned his head to gauge the man's reaction. "Why's it matter? You make friends with him or somethin'?"
He'd called his name out then, hadn't he? It figured that the Lokapala leader would have made other acquaintances before he'd arrived. That was probably why he and Argilla got along so well. They were companionable. Heat just ran people off.
Reply
There was that word again. Demon. So Alita had guessed right. This meant he really was going to have to ask Sam about all of this. Not that he imagined his roommate knew anything about Roland or Heat, but he'd probably be pretty interested to know that there were apparently demons in this place. Peter would have to be careful with how he told him, though.
While Peter had been planning to ask Heat what he meant by "our own kind," he was derailed from that when the redhead asked what he took to be a pretty flippant question. How could he be so calm about this when Roland had just died because of this place?
"Yes," he said, harsher than he'd planned, and yet he didn't regret it. "We talked sometimes, but I never knew that... that he could turn into something like that. Aren't you his friend?" Heat wasn't acting like it now, but Peter also knew it could just be a kind of defense mechanism. Because some people couldn't show how upset they were in front of strangers.
Reply
He shook his head. "Roland was more sociable than me. Most of them were. I'm not surprised he made friends with you." That certainly put him in an unfortunate position when the tuner had lost it then, didn't it? He'd probably been coming by to see him or something. Wasn't that how it always went? "Not surprised he didn't tell you, either. Why would he want to?"
Hadn't Peter seen?
"Issat all you needed?" He hoped so. It was far too easy to talk in his current state, especially since he didn't really have any reason not to.
Reply
Even though he didn't like the way that Heat phrased it, Peter realized that he had a point. Why would Roland have told him that he sometimes turned into a monstrous thing that had to eat other people in order to survive? Especially with the way Peter had confronted him about the very person he was now talking to, he could see why Roland had kept his own secret from him.
That didn't make it hurt any less.
Heat seemed to want to get rid of him already, but Peter wasn't going to let him off the hook that easily. There was one thing that still didn't add up. "You said that you have to eat your own kind... but Roland tried to bite me." He glanced down at his arm, looking at the strip of bandages that peeked out from under his sleeve. "I'm not a demon," he finished as he looked back to the other man. He was a mutated human, maybe, but that wasn't the same thing as a demon the last time he'd checked.
Reply
There were plenty of times in the past, once he'd reached the real world, that it hadn't mattered whether or not the soldier he was devouring was actually a tuner. It was all just another meal. It wasn't as if anyone in the Karma Society had been born a demon anyway. None of them had been.
He peered at Peter through a curtain of red, smirk gone but still somewhat apparent in his tone. "So yeah. Roland was a cannibalistic, man-eating demon. Just like me."
Reply
Not that he was going to tell Heat that he was like a zombie, but it was similar.
The way the redhead tried to be so blunt and in-your-face about it was getting on Peter's nerves, but he tried not to let it show. With this new knowledge to work with, along with what Roland had told him about Heat, he couldn't judge him as harshly as he had before. He sighed and glanced at the man. "So that night when you tried to attack that girl... that was because of that hunger," he recalled.
Maybe it wasn't the best idea to bring it up again, but Peter wanted Heat to know that he hadn't forgotten. While he realized he had now become a victim of the same thing, he wanted to give Roland the benefit of the doubt. He wanted to assume that he had held back as much as he could have before giving in. In a way, Peter was glad that he was the one who'd been attacked, rather than some unconnected innocent.
Reply
Was there another tuner here he was being mistaken for? It might be possible in the dark - he wasn't the only one out of all the tribes with red hair. He thought he recalled someone else mentioning that he might have been there before as well, but he'd dismissed the issue soon after it had been brought up.
Reply
Did he really not remember? It was possible that he'd been in such a hunger craze that his memories of the incident were cloudy, but that was just Peter making conjecture based off of what he knew, which wasn't much. "You did," he said, his tone leaving little space for arguing. "It was a while ago. I didn't see you actually do it, but I saw the aftermath. It happened somewhere near the stairwell." It all still stood out clearly in Peter's mind. He'd been with Brooklyn that night. Brooklyn, who had been gone for a while now. He couldn't help hoping that the kid was all right, wherever he was.
Reply
"I would have remembered." If he'd lost himself to the hunger completely, it was doubtful he'd still be around. Even in a berzerker state when his thoughts were more animalistic, he still had enough control over his actions to recall what had happened once he returned to normal. This guy had to be referring to someone else.
Not that it was any of his business who he attacked in the first place.
Reply
There was really only one explanation, then. Luckily, Peter was pretty familiar with the idea of people disappearing and then reappearing with no memories. Well, it wasn't lucky in that he'd had to go through it so many times already, but at least it meant that he wasn't too disoriented in this situation.
"I guess you were here before," he said as he glanced out across the courtyard. "Had anyone told you about that?" He looked back over to the sedated redhead and raised an eyebrow. It was odd to think that he could have spent a few days here and not have figured this out by now.
Reply
A sudden breeze made him shudder and his arms, already crossed against his chest, were pulled a little tighter to him. How long was he going to have to sit out there in the cold? A guy could get sick out here, and the nurses claimed to care about their patients' well-being. Thinking about the cold was a bad idea, as it only made him feel it more.
"I don't know who you saw before, but it wasn't me. It's impossible that it could have been." When would he have been brought there and why wouldn't he have any memory of it? Heat didn't pay much attention to the board except when it came to getting a hold of his comrades. There was a lot he'd yet to figure out.
Reply
"It happens more often than you'd think," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "People will be here, then disappear and come back with no memories of that first time. It... it's happened to friends of mine," he admitted. Peter wasn't sure if he felt comfortable enough with this guy to start telling him about the whole saga with his brother. "Anyway, that time I saw you with the girl was more than a week ago, so that must be what happened." If Heat didn't want to believe him, then that was his own problem.
Despite Peter's lukewarm feeling toward this guy, he couldn't help but notice that he wasn't dealing with the cold well. As a New Yorker, he knew that he could handle this without too much discomfort, and in the end, Peter found it hard to be deliberately malicious. He started to shrug out of his coat. "Did you want another layer?" he asked.
Reply
Leave a comment