Day 48: Men's Showers [Fourth Shift]

[not_rly_fai]

After a rough morning, Lunch was actually fairly easy to sit through.  Sechs and Kibitoshin hardly knew him, so light conversation was fine.  The things from Breakfast and this morning though, would be sticking with him for a while.  When the nurse arrived to take him to showers, he was relieved to find he was the first one there.  With that, there

Comments

[tartaros_avatar]

Well, this wasn't usually the most pleasant part of the day, but it had certainly had its moments before. Recluse ignored his nurse as usual, disrobing quickly and finding an unoccupied stretch of showers, choosing one and turning on the water. He closed his eyes, the room still far too bright for comfort, but the hot water helped soothe the relatively minor headache he was dealing with today. It probably helped that Landel was obviously sick, however minor a discomfort it might be for the verbose bastard.

Any little inconvenience would make things more difficult for Landel to keep this operation running.

[Free!]

[unheroed]

It was never going to be pleasant for Harvey to take a shower in this place. He'd learned by now that trying to argue with the nurses was a lost cause, though, and so he let himself be led into the steamy room with little more than a scowl on his face. (Which was more or less how he always looked, but it was emphasized.) He got the feeling that the steam would be good for his wound, too, and yet they refused to let him remove the bandages even now

[tartaros_avatar]

Recluse opened his eyes when he heard someone approach, looking down to see the man with the bandaged face he'd met some days previous. Dent. It was rather hard to forget the name after Scourge had made such a childish fuss about it. It was in all fairness a terrible name, really.

And regardless of the setting, if Recluse had something to ask, he was going to ask it. Subtlety was only situationally a strong point of his. "They won't let you remove the bandage?" Some sort of disfiguring injury incurred some time before arrival here? This place healed any fresh wounds, so why insist on keeping the bandages when anything that could be healed already would be by now? Patient insecurity likely had nothing to do with it, the nurses seemed almost drone-like in their insistence in following whatever rules they were bound to.

[unheroed]

So he'd been noticed. More than that, Recluse didn't seem to have any issues with talking while in the shower. It made sense that different sorts of people had different levels of comfort in a place like this, but in Harvey's case he couldn't say he was too thrilled with it. It had been a long time since he'd played soccer back at Gotham University, which was the last time he'd been forced to shower in the presence of other people.

It might not have been so bad if he didn't have his deformities to worry about. Even if he was covered up, there was still that feeling of exposure that was hard to kick. Harvey only half-glanced at the other man when he asked his question. "Nope. They think it'll scare the other patients if they have to see what's underneath." That cryptic statement would probably spark the other man's imagination pretty well. In the meantime, Harvey just focused on soaping himself up. Even though the circumstances were bothersome, it was nice to get clean.

[tartaros_avatar]

Recluse snorted, starting to turn most of his attention to washing off. "There are only supposed to be adults in this room, no matter how childish some might be. They should be able to handle it by now." He certainly might be jaded beyond most, thanks to war, what the Box had done to him decades ago and all the following horrors he'd personally been responsible for.

"Humans aren't terrifying." It was a blanket statement that could likely be disproved for most, but once again, special circumstances applied for him.

[unheroed]

The man had a good point. There weren't even children around in this place, and the hot steam would be good for healing. If these nurses were actually trying to help him, one would have thought they'd let him remove the bandages. Did they really think someone here was going to see him and have some sort of panic attack?

Well, they did think they were all mentally unstable, so it made sense on that level. That didn't mean Harvey was happy about it.

"That's exactly what I thought. I can understand them not wanting me to walk around with an exposed wound, but in the shower?" His rubbing with the soap became more vigorous as he felt his frustration build.

But there Recluse went, talking about "humans" as if he wasn't one. Luckily, Harvey had learned to ignore comments like that. "Looks like you've been holding up pretty well," he said instead. It was time to change the subject.

[tartaros_avatar]

"It does not make sense for me. As long as they didn't state it would cause harm, why bother? Wet bandages aren't sanitary." He'd had personal experience with that during World War I, and some as a soldier of fortune after that. Following that, no infection could harm him.

"I have been. A problem of mine seems to have left." Or was otherwise incapacitated. Either way, Marcus hadn't been seen for quite a while. It was refreshing to not have to deal with the man. He didn't have to be quite so careful about what he said.

[unheroed]

"You can say that again," Harvey grumbled. He'd been walking a careful line with the stream of water so far, only letting it go up as far as his neck, and then only part of it. The burns, though less severe, went down part of his neck and onto his shoulder. Even with the measures he was taking, though, he was sure that the bandages were going to end up damp. Luckily dinner came after this and he would be able to remove them then.

More or less done with the soap, Harvey found himself sighing as he tried to figure out how to deal with the issue of shampoo. Part of him wanted to forget it entirely, but his hair wasn't going to clean itself. Moving forward to squeeze the shampoo out of the dispenser against the wall, Harvey caught Recluse's answer to his question and then glanced over. "A problem? Like what?" He had a guess or two, but might as well hear it from the man himself.

[tartaros_avatar]

"What exactly happened to you?" Really, Recluse didn't care about this. It didn't affect him, not enough to pretend to have any sympathy. He was bored here, as demonstrated by the note he'd posted this morning, directed at Landel. He could potentially keep himself amused by antagonizing or breaking others while he attempted to find a way to destroy this place, but that would inevitably cause problems with those still possessing morals here.

He was done cleaning himself off by now, but had no desire to leave the water. It was helping his headache immensely. "A former friend of mine who utterly betrayed my trust a long time ago." There was less to do now that he was gone, but so much less immediate aggravation and outright rage at having Marcus so close but still so unlikely to stay dead if he just cut the bastard's throat.

[unheroed]

It wasn't a question that Harvey usually reacted to well, but in this case they had been hovering around the subject for a while now. It was understandable that Recluse had finally decided to ask. The real question was how he should answer. Even though he'd told Leonard about what had happened to him, that didn't mean Harvey was willing to spill to anyone and everyone. "There was an accident. An explosion. It was before I got here." That was good enough, wasn't it? Not that it had been an accident in the slightest, and it pained him to refer to it that way, but it was better than telling the truth

[tartaros_avatar]

"Aah." It certainly didn't sound like the whole truth, but it was enough to satisfy what little curiosity he had. Maybe he could do something with this, maybe not.

"Oh, I did. More than anything. But certain extenuating circumstances made it difficult to properly express how I felt. He's proved incredibly resistant to such attempts in the past, and I certainly don't have the resources here to make any improvement on previous attempts." Namely, the Destined One. The only one who could kill Marcus, if the prophecy was accurate. Nothing else had worked thus far.

[unheroed]

That wasn't much of a response, but Harvey also hadn't given many details. He was content to let the subject drop right there, since it wasn't like he enjoyed speaking about what had happened to him. Not unless he was trying to make a point, and he wasn't right now.

Listening to Recluse's excuses, Harvey used both hands to pool up more water and then drop it over his shampooed hair. It was a pretty crude method, but it was the only way he could control how much water got on him and where it went.

It sounded like the other man was having trouble acting out his revenge, though. That wasn't something Harvey thought he'd have to worry about. Gordon's supposed morals would get in the way of him fighting back, probably. It made him an easy target. "So you're just glad to have him out of the way? I guess I can relate." If Gordon had been here and Harvey had somehow been unable to do anything about it, that would have just been aggravating. No, more than that -- infuriating.

[tartaros_avatar]

"Yes. Both of us, regardless of situation, are functionally immortal. Even if I killed him here, he would come back." He always had before. it was one of the most monumentally infuriating things about life.

"Now I can be productive without him here." He wasn't going to specify how, he was still reticent to share any information that could put him at a disadvantage. Regardless of whether Dent seemed to share the same sort of problem that he had, he still had no reason to trust the man.

And really, he never trusted anyone.

[unheroed]

Immortal. Right. Ha. Oh, Harvey had been here too long if he could hear that and barely blink at it. He hated when those bits of insanity just suddenly dropped in on a conversation like the elephant in the room. Or the showers, in this case. It was hard to find a way to respond to that without it being a verbal eye-roll, but...

It looked like his shower was just about done, at least. Harvey sighed and let the warm water soak his body for a little longer.

"Me, I've just been hoping that the guy I'm targeting hasn't up and vanished." If Batman was gone, he'd either managed to sneak himself out (the bastard) or... Well, Harvey refused to believe that someone else had taken care of him. It just wasn't supposed to work that way.

[tartaros_avatar]

Recluse picked up on the disbelief, making an irritated snort. "Really, after the rotting, animate creatures, the lost time at the end of every night, and the minor zombie apocalypse last week, why insist on being stubbornly disbelieving?" In Recluse's world, the phenomenon of a zombie apocalypse wasn't even all that uncommon. All you needed was a Mad Scientist with too much time on their hands.

"If he is brought here, I could assist you." Not for free, of course, but that wasn't necessary to discuss at the moment.

[unheroed]

While the man had a good point, that didn't mean Harvey was going to just accept very little thing he heard, especially from another patient who very well could be at least slightly nuts. Luckily, he didn't have to argue much, since that was when the intercom broke through the sound of the running water.

"I don't need your help," he said with a shake of his head. "I'm sure you've got your own stuff to deal with, anyway." That, and Harvey already had Jason to deal with. He didn't need someone else that he had to argue with and keep track of.

He turned off the water, shook his hair out, and nodded to the man as a quiet goodbye. With that, he headed off, eager to get changed and take his bandages off.