Day 49: Late Afternoon - Crossroader's Bar and Casino

[unheroed]

From what Harvey could tell, he'd gotten through that little encounter with Lana without raising any suspicions. Or if he'd caused her to raise a mental eyebrow, it probably hadn't been in any serious way. She truthfully wasn't so bad to spend time with, but the fact that she was a female attorney who knew her way around and didn't scare easy meant

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[tsunagari]

A bar and casino was an interesting place to be led into by a nurse, but it had been the closest location, and the woman was apparently not satisfied with him standing outside in the rain and staring vacantly down the road. Sai was sopping wet, even in the coat he'd been given, and the owner was clearly displeased with him dripping his way across the establishment's floor. With the rain falling in heavy sheets outside, the nurses didn't seem to believe there was any other option. Otherwise he would have returned to the street without complaint.

The building smelled faintly of alcohol and damp wood, the latter likely because of the current weather. He found an empty seat against the back wall and made his way there, content to wait out the storm without bothering any of the customers. None of the glares effected him anyway. They held a general hostility that he wasn't responsible for, and how they felt about him hardly mattered in the long run. After all - they, like the staff were just another extension of the Institute.

[for

[osakapwnzu]

After assuring Shinichi and Kaito that he didn't need a babysitter (and that it'd be better if he took a walk by himself for an hour or so), he hunched his shoulders against the rain and moved away from the Tasty Burger.

The rain started to come down harder though, and Heiji could only motivate himself enough to stay mostly out of it, hopping from overhang to overhang. Until the nurses began to order patients inside, whereupon Heiji began looking for someplace he could take refuge in and not be bothered.

Peering down the street, he saw someone familiar (painfully familiar) enter one of the buildings. Ignoring the shouts of a nurse to get inside immediately, Heiji's shoes pounded the wet cement as he ran for the door Sai had gone into. Why he was running towards his attacker and the instrument of Sen's death, he didn't know. Maybe he just wanted to know it was gone. Maybe he wanted to know why. Maybe he needed to get Sai's perspective

[tsunagari]

Sai heard the boy approaching, but he didn't turn to face him until he realized he was being addressed. Lifting his head slowly, his expression changed from an absent blankness to a stunned stare with a bit of delay as the teen's features registered

[osakapwnzu]

"Thanks," Heiji said, sitting down across from Sai and folding his hands on the table. He really couldn't bring himself to look Sai in the eye yet, but he knew he'd have to at some point. If he didn't, he'd always be afraid to face Sai and remember what had happened. It was better if he did it now, when he was already so beaten and bruised.

"I just... wanted t'know what happen'd. On your end," he began, continuing to look at his hands. "I know... it wasn' y'r fault. Somethin' got t'ya, I jus' wanna know what y'remember."

He looked up at Sai, a mix of pain and embarrassment on his face. Maybe he shouldn't have come--he hadn't really thought of how Sai was taking this. For all Heiji knew, Sai was worse off than he was. Maybe that was why he looked so surprised to see Heiji asking to sit with him...?

"I know 's... prob'ly hard t'relive 'n all. It's hard f'r me t'process too. So if y'don' wanna talk about it righ' away... s'fine." Though Heiji desperately wanted some sort of answer, he wasn't going to push Sai for it.

[its_the_mileage]

Jesus, the rain was really coming down now. Another few hours of this and he was going to be searching for a very different kind of Ark

[unheroed]

It hadn't taken long for another patient to find their way here, although the young man had silently moved to the back of the bar, and Harvey saw no reason to follow after him for a chat. He was more interested in seeing what kind of sad excuses for slot machines they had in a small town like this, but he was distracted by a familiar voice before he could head in that direction

[its_the_mileage]

Indy chuckled. "Too bad they don't trust us with umbrellas." Which was admittedly a smart move on the staff's part; you could get a lot of mileage out of a good umbrella. Not least by using it to scare birds into airplanes.

It hadn't occurred to him to take a look at the pet store, especially since the rest of the town looked like it had recovered from worse damage, but it hadn't been a bad idea. "Good thinking," he told Dent. "They could've just cleaned up and restocked, but I don't know if I'm convinced that's what happened. The damage last week looked a lot worse than a few smashed windows and unhinged doors." The fire damage on Main Street in particular was still nagging at him; that should have been obvious even with a week's clean-up. It suggested that the town might be subject to the same phenomenon that took place every night at the Institute. He didn't know what to think of that

[unheroed]

Seeing how they were already at the end of the day, Harvey had more or less given up on cursing the nurses for not even giving them umbrellas. He realized that there was no real way to crazy-proof something like that, and the worst thing was that he was pretty sure some patients would have indulged in immaturity and started hitting each other with the damn things, if they'd been given them

[notachick]

[from here]

The door gave way under the push of his hand and Okita stepped in, releasing Homura's hand as he made his way into the darkened bar. He wasn't used to coming into these places and the scattered shells on the ground, the smell of alcohol and the musk of the wood overwhelmed him for a moment. His eyes took a second to adjust to the light and then Okita found himself staring at two very familiar forms. They were far enough away that Okita couldn't hear what they were saying yet over the sounds of the rest of the bar, but those silhouettes were unmistakable at the moment.

Heiji and Sai, both his friends, one of whom was now reeling with the death of Okita's friend, his ally, his sister in a way. Okita wanted to go to Heiji to ask him what had happened, but Homura had said they needed to talk and so he refrained, turning back to look at the demi-god with an effort not to look as tired as he felt. "We're inside," he said with a false pretense of cheer.

[screwthegods]

That Okita had taken his hand at all shocked Homura, though he couldn't say he wasn't entirely unhappy about it. True, it did speak of how deeply Okita had been wounded by the news. But that he was willing to accept even that much help left Homura hopeful that there might be something he could do for his friend, who had lost so much to this prison already. For Homura, at least, there was hope to be found in the simple fact that he was alive. Okita couldn't even say that much, as disease ate away at the days he had left

[notachick]

He had followed when Homura lead him toward a seat in the back. In a way, he'd wanted to go in that direction anyway, closer to Heiji and Sai, hoping that perhaps Sai and Heiji were comforting each other. Sai had been trying so hard to deal with his emotions and Heiji was so open with them. Together they could be very beneficial to each other, especially now when Heiji needed friends around to help him deal with--

"I was curious, and I shouldn't have been. I only wanted to follow the two of you."

Okita froze when he caught those words, his step faltering as his ears picked up their conversation. The two of you. Heiji and one other - the only one he'd been traveling with last night was Ayumu. Sai, Heiji and Ayumu in one room on the night that Ayumu had died, had been killed by a patient