Day 52: Lunch

[purpletaint]

[from here]It was a race. A fight against patience and a Song's call. Still, the sedation's dredges churned through him. Two close at hand had a potent effect--much like the night that they were left in that town, and the morning after. Rubedo had came then. Came for them like something out of place, and wasn't that so ironic afterwards--when

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[theroadsofar]

That was the part he'd heard, yeah, and it still wasn't anymore cool the second time around. "Yeah, so I keep hearing."

Actually, they had talked about this very subject a few days ago in Doyleton. Seemed like a long time since then. At least that time hadn't ended up with him drooling on Sam's shoulder, so that was something easy to shoot for. Dean leaned forward.

"Sure I'm the only one? What about you? Or Sam here?" he jerked a thumb at his brother. "Be nice to know how long we've been here instead of living the same couple of weeks over and over again."

And call him selfish, but Dean wanted to know exactly how long he had left. Losing a week or something would suck balls but it wasn't the worst that could happen in the long run. But if it'd been months of this run around, then that was a problem and even if he didn't want to make the most of his time topside, he still wanted to know. Sam needed back-up and Dean needed to know how long he could keep helping the kid before it came time for the hellhounds to collect. It sounded like it was totally possible to keep waking up a newbie in Landels not just once, but over and over again, however long they felt like it.

Dean found himself running a hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. No ridges, no weird bumps. Nothing. It felt normal, nothing like how Donna had looked after the sleep studies. Whatever they did, it was a lot less obvious than that and that was the scary part, the whole not being able to tell thing. Christ, if you didn't have people who knew you beforehand, there was no telling exactly how many times you'd woke up like that.

[allroadslead]

Him?

Sam slid another look at his brother. That was true. He hadn't thought about himself as a candidate in any serious terms. He supposed it just didn't matter with him. Or no, it did. Of course it did, and the idea made him feel quietly freaked out as much as anything. But compared to Dean, it wasn't that important. Sam wasn't on a ticking clock. No more of a ticking clock than any other hunter out there, that was. He could afford to lose a week, month. Hell, even a year.

Dean, on the other hand.

Yuffie seemed to have run into a lot of ex-patients, though. And someone returning after a second release? There had only been one patient on his list who'd been listed as having been readmitted twice. He couldn't remember the handwriting, though. He hadn't had the time to study any of the notes closely.

"Skye Smith," he hazarded anyway, eyes narrowed in thought.

Worth a shot. It didn't matter if she knew he was the one who'd been asking around that time or not. They'd sort of busted down walls with this conversation; hard to keep up pretenses about how much you knew if you were gonna be delving deep into the stuff that kept cropping up here.

[thatdamnedninja]

"Well, like I said, I've been readmitted," Yuffie told Dean. "I dunno how long I was here for, before, or how long I spent outside. On my first shift back here, a friend of mine commented that I look older, but…"

But she didn't know the details.

What she did know was that she was the furthest along in the timeline. Even Cloud was from way behind. Three years, wasn't it? Or something like that; he'd come fresh from Meteorfall, whereas she'd been up to her neck in Deepground. Had the Yuffie before-had she-come from Meteorfall, too? But… That didn't make any sense.

Sam's next comment was a welcome distraction, albeit an unexpected one. "That was you?" she asked, surprised. Recovering, she added, "Yeah, Skye Smith. A.K.A Conner, A.K.A Alfred Stratus, A.K.A Cloud Strife. Last one's the real deal."

[theroadsofar]

Skye Smith sounded like a hooker's name (well, a hooker with class) and Dean was surprised to find out that "Skye" was apparently a guy.

Yeah, he had nothing. Dude hooker with class?

"So it's possible you could've been here years then," Dean said, "and you wouldn't even know it."

It wasn't particularly comforting and it just confirmed what they'd been suspecting, only it was much worse. Not just months, but years. It wasn't looking good, not only on the deal front but the fact that this place might've been running a lot longer than it felt like and still no other hunters had come to torch the place. That or...they had and they'd got themselves ganked or lobotimized, which wasn't any better. So he figured they were on their own and it was just a matter of how they were gonna deal with how screwed they were. Yuffie seemed to be pretty casual about possibly losing all that time. Then again, if you couldn't remember it, you couldn't exactly miss it, could you?

Dean reached up to scratch the side of his nose, thinking, "I'm thinking there's got to be paperwork or something around here that's got dates, records on current and released patients."

If it was purely supernatural, he'd say nah, but this place seemed like a freak mix between the supernatural and this mental hospital crap. For all he knew, those records really did exist.

[thatdamnedninja]

"I… huh. I'd never thought about it like that," Yuffie admitted, slowly. "Weird. I mean, I don't feel like I've lost any time. … Then again, this is Landel's." She shrugged, disconcerted now but still able to roll with it. Brainwashing was an everyday occurrence here; no way would just tampering with memories be out of their league.

… But what did it mean? Was everything that had happened with Geostigma and the Remnants a lie? What about the W.R.O, or Deepground? Thousands of people had died, and-if that wasn't true… but, no. It was true. Yuffie remembered it, and that was good enough for her. Getting bogged by weird thoughts about existentialism-that was a word, right?-or things like that wasn't gonna do her any good, and it wouldn't help anybody else, either.

'Think without thinking', Chekhov would've told her. As advice went, it wasn't so bad.

Dean's suggestion about paperwork earned him a nod. "There's gotta be. Data on the current patients is easy enough; I know where the file room is. But for the released… it might be a little trickier. And the dates, too-haven't you noticed? When we're in Doyleton? None of the newspapers have dates on 'em, and the locals always dodge questions about where and when." Yuffie leaned forward, arms folded against the tabletop. "I'm all for lookin' into this, but it's not gonna be easy."

[allroadslead]

Till now, Sam had been quiet, thinking. He had to admit, this was what he missed about having Dean around to interview witnesses with him-he could take a moment out to puzzle things over and Dean would always keep the conversation rolling.

Years. Possible? Maybe. Well, anything was possible, that much was obvious.

"I dunno," he mused. "We've all accumulated a hell of a lot of injuries within the past couple of weeks alone. There'd be scars." Unless they found a way to fix that, too went unspoken, but there was no use in letting their imagination run away like that. There was a difference between anticipating the unexpected and driving yourself insane coming up with a million terrible possibilities.

Besides, he'd been snapped back and forth through time before. Or at least experienced a close enough illusion of it; with the Trickster, it was hard to figure which. Either way, he'd been able to tell. Erasing just six months-it wasn't something that went unnoticed.

Or maybe...

"I know someone who's got a file already," he said. He hadn't taken a look; Peter would've agreed, of course, but it'd been personal and he hadn't wanted to ask without a good reason. Plus, that'd been awhile ago. Nathan's disappearance had still been fresh back then. It'd probably be okay to ask now. "I could check out what's in it. Maybe see if it's worth the trip or not?" His eyes slid to Dean at that last bit, less an actual question and more of a we might as well, right?

Then again, where else were they gonna look if not the files? Their options were kinda crap. There was only one place few people seemed to talk about. Outside. Past the institute, past the town. There had to be an edge to this world, if it was as self-contained as Sam was starting to suspect. Though that whole thing with the portals was proving that it was pretty freaking big either way. Enough to contain a number of...pockets all at once.

Jesus, this was too weird, even for him.

[theroadsofar]

Dean had to give it to Yuffie - chick had an eye for detail.

He wasn't sure how much he could agree with Sam. Yeah, there could be scars if these were normal injuries and things were working like they were supposed to, only they weren't and he knew the kid must've noticed too that they were healing faster than normal. Hell, he barely even felt that ugly bite on his leg. Wasn't even limping. It would've been a sweet deal if it wasn't kinda creepy at the same time. There was getting hooked up and there was this.

Super fast healing didn't exactly cancel out the whole Landels package.

"I think it's worth looking into," Dean shrugged, looking from Sam to Yuffie. More eyes on this was only gonna help, especially since they could be living on some seriously borrowed time here. "If it was easy, we would've busted outta here a long time ago."

Dean's smile was a little humorless. He'd seen a lot of evil, insane shit in the past, but never on this scale and he knew Sam hadn't either. He'd never seen anyone - or anything, monster or something in a category all its own - capable of roping together all these creatures into one place and controlling 'em like that. It kept coming off that more and more new people were showing up every day...but even that wasn't some surefire thing, not if it was possible some of the "newbies" were vets cycled through this messed up system, over and over.

Sipping his water, Dean wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "I don't think the locals are exactly in on it either. Or the nurses. I think they honestly believe whatever they've been told."

He knew liars and while Hello Nurse was kinda stuck up, he didn't think she was lying. That, or she was insanely good and so was everyone in Doyleton. Kind of a stretch to assume one of 'em wouldn't have slipped at all.

[thatdamnedninja]

"We've all accumulated a hell of a lot of injuries within the past couple of weeks alone. There'd be scars," Sam said.

Almost immediately, Yuffie thought, maybe not.

She reached up, running her fingers lightly down the claw-mark scars on her cheek. They were fading day by day; soon they'd be gone entirely, leaving no evidence that 'Hanna' had nearly had her face ripped off by a shape-shifting monster.

"I dunno about that. Landel's got that quick-heal of his goin' on, and then there's the… other stuff." Ha. 'Other stuff'. Yuffie drew one leg up to her chest, draped her arms on it, and stuck her chin on top; her expression turned briefly pensive. 'Other stuff' like bringing people back from the dead; other stuff like mass hallucinations that weren't hallucinations; other stuff like turning Nanaki, the firelioncatdog whatever, into a human-a 'two-legger'. Compared to that, what were a few scars?

"Anyway, Sam-yeah, that'd be helpful," Yuffie agreed, a brighter smile bouncing back into place. "Might as well cover all the bases." Everything was worth trying once, even if it was a road that lead to nowhere.

Speaking of covering all the bases. "Good point," she said to Dean. "I noticed that, too. Even after that whole mess with the zombie-whatevers and half the town being set on fire, they…" Yuffie lifted her left hand just long enough to wave it. "You know what I mean." She paused, briefly. "How 'bout your doctors? I got the same one twice in a row, and he's the same as the nurses and everyone from Doyleton."