Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

[selfrescuer]

Somehow, after their talk in the chapel, Elaine felt simultaneously more accepting of and more irritated by her future husband. On the one hand, seven years had clearly been good to him. He seemed more sincere and thoughtful than he had been before his disappearance, and he had a more mature (dare she say, handsome?) look to him. On the other hand

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[unheroed]

All in all, the chapel had been even less interesting than he'd expected. He had heard whispers of the time when the Head Doctor himself had showed up there, but it had been foolish of him to hope for a repeat performance, especially after what the man had pulled last night. Chances were that the patients were frothing at the mouth even more than usual when it came to sinking their teeth into Landel considering what he'd just put them through.

He would have been first in line with that effort if he wasn't still reeling from the place he'd ended up with Jones and that kid last night. He wasn't sure if the archaeologist had a better explanation for it than he did, but the time issue was a serious one. He'd practically felt like he'd been walking onto some kind of movie set when he'd gotten a better look at that college, but that still didn't explain the way they'd been ignored, unless everyone there was just another part of Landel's scheme. Still, they'd been people Jones had known, so did that mean more brainwashing?

In the end, he was just running himself in circles, and so Harvey tried to drop it as he walked into the cafeteria with a scowl on the exposed half of his face. He grabbed his protein shake from the food counter as always and then looked for a place to sit.

While the man he'd met in the chapel had been on the more tolerable end of things despite the way he'd put him in on the defensive, Harvey wasn't looking to spend his day meeting and greeting. He searched out a familiar face and ended up spotting Leonard, the short-term memory loss guy from the other day. Honestly, Harvey was curious to see just how bad the man's condition was, and... maybe he felt a certain affinity with him, even if he didn't want to focus on that more than he had to.

"Hey," he said as he took a seat across from the other man. Now wasn't the time for joking, and yet he couldn't help himself. "Remember me?" It was clear from his tone that he didn't expect Leonard to say yes.

[otnemememento]

Leonard smiled wryly, sure he'd heard that line from dozens of people, even if he couldn't remember a single time. The bandaged man looked like he recognized him and sounded as though he'd heard about his condition. It wasn't terribly surprising- within the walls of an institution, he was bound to see the same people again and again. It was one of the few advantages of being in a controlled environment, even if its validity as a place of recovery was questionable.

He closed his journal for now, favoring conversation when it came to him. "Not at all," he said with a shake of his head, reflexively reaching into his pocket. His hand returned to the table with a collection of polaroids: among them was a picture of the man across the table. Harvey Dent. He turned to the back. He understands you- he has also lost someone. "That's why I have a system. Pictures, notes, things to help me know who I know, who I can trust."

Leonard's eyes trailed upward as he took a look at Dent. The curious part of him wanted to ask what had happened to his face; the tactful part of him knew he had probably done so already, possibly more than once, even if it wasn't written on Dent's picture. "I've told you this before," he assumed.

[unheroed]

Just like clockwork, the guy started to fish for his pictures, and Harvey couldn't help spotting the one the man had taken of him during their first meeting, where he was leaning against the wall out on the field while squinting against the light; it'd actually been sunny that day. He still couldn't decide what kind of weather was preferable. Overcast was best, but it usually had to be one extreme or the other in this place.

So, did Leonard think that he was trustworthy? Considering the risks he'd taken during their first chat, it was fairly likely that he did, and Harvey couldn't help but see it as a small victory. It occurred to him that he had the tools to manipulate Leonard, but he saw very little reason to do so. He had no personal grudge against the man; if anything, they shared far too much in common. Maybe if he needed an extra set of hands on one night he'd try to get the guy to come along, but for now he was content with leaving it be.

"You have," he responded with a nod. "It's all right. Anyway, I... don't know where you were either last night, but I can tell you about what went on, if you're curious. Wouldn't blame you if you weren't, though." After all, in the end the guy didn't even remember what had happened to him, and the information wasn't immediately relevant. He could see how Leonard might want to keep the information he wrote down concise, holding onto only the most important scraps -- otherwise he'd just get overwhelmed.

[otnemememento]

From the way Dent was talking, it sounded like something major happened during the night. Leonard skimmed the last pages of notes while listening- he'd not written anything down, nothing that would have concerned more than just him. Grabbing his pen, he turned to a fresh sheet. Better take this down, just in case.

"I don't think I wrote anything about last night," he said, "so I'd like to hear what happened. From the look of what I've got written here... this place isn't what it's supposed to be, and there really isn't any other way to explain it. Either that, or I've really lost my mind." That last part came with a tentative grin- he was still trying to convince himself he hadn't.

[unheroed]

It seemed like Leonard did want whatever information he could get, regardless of how unimportant it might seem. Granted, ending up somewhere outside of the institute was pretty remarkable, even if it had been both temporary and disorienting.

The man's last comment was clearly in jest, but Harvey decided to address it anyway. "You're not," he said with a shake of his head. "There are just a ton of things in this place that are impossible to explain." Honestly, he couldn't be certain that Leonard was the bill of mental health, especially considering his condition and a desire for revenge that they seemed to share in common -- which wasn't really a point in either of their directions. Nonetheless, he was pretty sure Landel's had nothing to do with the man's mental state, good or bad.

"For example," he continued, "last night none of the doors were going where they were supposed to go. We even ended up walking through one and coming out in the town down the hill." Hopefully Leonard had notes about Doyleton on hand. "That isn't even the best part, though." Harvey waited before he moved on, wanting to give the other man a chance to jot everything down.

[otnemememento]

The scratching from Leonard's pen moving quickly across the paper was met with a pause as he stopped mid-sentence, taking in all that Dent was saying. The man sounded serious as he spoke, no lightness in his comments, no joking in any way; however, what he was suggesting- the doors led to some town, the impossible things Leonard had already noted but wasn't sure he believed being true- all sounded like someone who belonged in a genuine asylum, unable to handle the world outside its monitored walls.

Then again, some people ended up in hospitals when they didn't need them. Leonard could easily see how someone would think he belonged in one himself. They didn't know about his system. He could handle the world. It worked.

He continued writing, scribbling notes that seemed necessary. He could only be so specific with his pace. "And what was the best part?"

[unheroed]

Maybe the man believed him, and maybe he didn't, but either way he was writing something down, which showed some amount of faith in what was being said. Harvey didn't really care either way, but he would like to think that someone would at least try to act interested when he was taking the time to give an explanation. And why was he, anyway? Because he felt pity for the guy? That could be it. He didn't want to study his own motivations more than he had to, though.

"Well, getting tossed around the building and town is one thing, but at the end of it all we got dumped into the middle of a college campus and it was broad daylight," he explained. This was his second time now, but hopefully it would be the last. He had to imagine that most people would have heard something about it by then. Leonard was just a special case because of his memory problem.

"But the place looked like it was out of the 1930's or something. It sounds crazy, and I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself." Which meant that Leonard might not, either. Harvey watched his hand as it took down the notes, trying to determine just how much he wrote.

[otnemememento]

Leonard's pen stopped a second time. He wasn't sure exactly how much of his own notes he believed- the movie-looking zombies or the murder or whether or not the institution was legitimate or not- but what Dent was saying was far beyond the line of insanity. He couldn't help but feel conflicted, though. It had been his job to read people, to find if they were telling the truth or not. He'd been good at it. Logic was telling him Dent was clearly crazy- no one in his right mind would think he'd somehow ended up in some 1930's college while wandering around. It had to have been some sort of delusion or hallucination. Or something the drugs did to him.

However, Leonard's gut instinct told him that Dent was telling the truth. Something about the way he talked about it, the tone of his voice. He was either speaking of the event as he believed it happened, or he was an amazing liar. Either way, he scribbled a quick note about it.

DENT SAYS DOORS WEREN'T WORKING THE OTHER NIGHT- TOOK YOU PLACES OTHER THAN WHERE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO GO. TOOK THEM TO TOWN, A COLLEGE- OUT OF THE INSTITUTE.

HOW CAN I TELL TRUTH FROM A SICK MIND?

It looked even less sane when written in his own writing. "How do you know what you saw was real?" he asked curiously.

[unheroed]

As tempting as it was to just lean forward across the table and see what Leonard was writing down, Harvey didn't think that would make the best impression -- chances were the guy would take that down, too. He wasn't sure why he was so curious about what the man thought of him in the first place, but it probably had something to do with a general concern about image. That had always been on his mind while running for DA, and while the very idea was ludicrous now, considering his face, he clearly hadn't kicked the habit entirely.

The question Leonard had was a valid one, and Harvey even had some manner of answer. "Well, the place we ended up, it was... the office of one of the people I was with. He's a professor. He knew all the people there, even if they couldn't see us. That's the thing, they acted like we weren't even there. Even if it was just some sort of delusion, how could we end up somewhere that matched everything Jones knew to a T if it wasn't real?"

He didn't bother censoring Jones' name, since he doubted that Leonard would actually write it down. As through as he tried to be, there was no way he could get it all written out before he forgot it all over again.

The whole situation just had him baffled, though. He wanted say that it was fake, or some elaborate act, but none of those rationales checked out one-hundred percent. That seemed to be theme in this place -- nothing ever made perfect sense.

[otnemememento]

A long moment of silence passed as Leonard considered Dent's words, the wheels in his head turning over and over as he tried to find something he could latch onto, something he'd said that could be understood. Maybe he had lost his mind, or he and this Jones were having some sort of shared hallucination induced by the layout of a room; maybe Dent was telling the absolute truth, and he really had been transported somehow to another area just by walking through a door. But how could he ever know what was real?

Leonard looked at his notes, his pen still resting on the paper, a blot of ink forming under the nib. He knew he could fully trust what he'd written and the photographs he carried: they were the only concrete evidence he had of his time in the institute and what he'd experienced. Just because I don't remember doesn't mean it never happened, even if it sounds incredible. He took a deep breath- the world didn't just disappear. He had to believe he could trust himself, even if he'd lost his own mind. There was no one else on his side.

He still faced a dilemma: take what Dent was saying with a grain of salt, or believe him for now. He wouldn't have time to think about it later and make sense of it- there was no later for someone with his condition. His eyes landed on his hand- Remember Sammy Jankis. He couldn't adjust. He didn't have a system.

After scribbling one more note to himself, he set his pen down, taking a bite of dry toast. He ran a hand through his hair, unsure of how to handle such doubt. "I probably have this much doubt every time someone explains this place to me," he said with a shake of his head. "I know I can trust my notes- you learn your handwriting when you're like this, learn to look for clues and facts you've left yourself. It's just a hard pill to swallow, this being... really unbelievable."

[unheroed]

At least the guy was self-aware enough to know that he'd probably been through this before. Maybe not this exact conversation, seeing how Harvey was pretty sure this was the first time the whole moving rooms and being transported to New York colleges thing had happened. On the other hand, unexplainable events were pretty much the institute's MO, so Leonard likely had a whole journal full of notes about things that made no sense. Trying to read all of that over ever few hours had to be enough to make his head spin. With that in mind, it was pretty surprising that he was staying so calm.

Though maybe he was just trying to put on that front. Harvey didn't know the guy well enough to know for sure, and his lack of memory made it even harder to judge. "Well, the only person you can trust is yourself," he remarked with a nod and a shrug of his shoulders. Which had almost always been his philosophy, anyway. Maybe he'd been starting to judge Rachel, but... that was different, and it didn't matter anymore.

"Don't you worry that someone's going to steal one of your notes and copy your handwriting?" Maybe it would seem odd that he was thinking up ways that people could take advantage of the man, but he still had no reason to act on any of this. It was just that the man seemed so confident in himself, so certain that he could get by despite what had happened to him. That was better than laying down and dying, but Harvey was curious as to how he stayed so certain that he was going about things right and that he didn't have to always be vigilant and make sure that someone wasn't screwing him over.

[otnemememento]

Leonard shook his head. "I'd know it if it wasn't my writing," he said with utmost confidence, as if the very idea that someone could imitate his script was something as unbelievable as the things written in his journal. "You just know your handwriting from all others. You have to be able to trust it. Anyone could write you notes, try to lead you on the wrong path, but you know you can trust yourself. It's not memory- it's written proof."

No matter what he said, there was a small seed of doubt planted in him. He wouldn't let those notes out of his sight. He wouldn't lose them. He couldn't allow himself to lose them. "You can't doubt what you know is true when you're like me. I know what my writing looked like before this happened to me. You see that writing over and over and force yourself to learn every nuance of it. Conditioning. Discipline and routine make my life possible."

[unheroed]

Harvey was starting to get the feeling that talking to Leonard was going to feel like listening to a broken record after a while. It made sense, seeing how he couldn't know what he had or hadn't said to any given person, but it still had the potential to get old after the third or fourth conversation.

"I guess you'd drive yourself crazy if you were always wondering if your notes were legitimate or not," he conceded. The question was whether or not Leonard had already passed that step. He seemed so fixated and so sure of himself that it was almost like he was reading lines off of an index card, but that wasn't something he was going to mention out loud, even if the man would most likely just forget.

"So, what are you going to do now?" he asked, wondering how much of a goal the man could have in mind when he could barely keep track of what was going on.