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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[herr_inspektor]

Lunge had come to that morning in a sulphurous breath of nausea, head clouded with the pain he fuzzily located to his arm- the hand he'd been holding his knife in. For a moment the hazy smell of burning and smoke lingered in the back of his throat but the louder part of his mind insisted it was psychosomatic, who knew how much time had passed since that near miss, it was completely illogical to... it hadn't mattered, and he had tried to forget about it. Instead, he'd focused on taking stock: his chest ached and he'd been bandaged all along his right arm to his hand, partly for the ripped skin and partly for the the tender swelling around his wrist that he assumed signified a sprain. The knife was now in his desk draw, coated in thick, black blood. There had been a pole- no, a snooker cue, he had noticed that by the light of the day- at the end of his bed, which he'd placed in his cupboard for safekeeping until Venom came to retrieve it. And, most importantly, his memory was in perfect condition.

Lydia Thayer should be considered

[quarter_english]

Getting from the library to the cafeteria was much like getting from his room to the library had been: a slow journey assisted by the nurse. L thought that his motor control was improving. His feet still shuffled, but he could move faster. He had been able to attend to messages on the bulletin board to his satisfaction, although the messages themselves had been indiscreet enough to qualify as problematic. His back hurt, but the pain had receded. He had checked the book out of the library on the grounds that pretending to read it might help him look busy, and he was able to carry it with no trouble.

This is only one day, he thought. Only one setback. I'm still alive, still whole... or I will be again soon. Have to be. Still, they didn't have the right to- Today, it was more difficult to force his anger down. He could recognize the irony without appreciating it: the one time he was furious enough to consider acting on his emotions, it was a physical impossibility for him to do so

[herr_inspektor]

As predicted, L appeared quietly and without fanfare- only then Lunge was struck into silence for a second because somehow he hadn't expected the man to look quite so ill. He was used to L looking pale and tired, that seemed to be a given no matter what had happened the night before, but there was something almost corpse-like about the way he looked now, as though there wasn't quite enough blood left to pass under that papery skin. Even the way he moved was startling- slow and considered had become slow and painful. The bandage was a surprise, too. Perhaps it was a preconditioned response, with the illogical but all-too human expectation that the same thing that had happened to him would likely happen to someone else.

And now he needed to tread carefully, because he was already starting to appeal to emotion: bloodless, corpse-like, language far too emotive for his liking, and then there was the personalisation, too. It looked like he really had managed to shake himself up

[quarter_english]

L caught the peculiar look Lunge gave him. It rankled: he knew how he must appear, that his current weakness was written all over him. Lunge would be phrasing questions in his mind. They both knew that it was experimentation; they both knew how L had been taken from his room and sedated; it was the same story for everyone. The questions would be more intimate than that

[herr_inspektor]

At least L seemed to have his appetite back. That was a good sign, and it diverted most of that unsightly sympathy for the time being. Straight for the strawberries, too. Still have that sweet tooth I see. A nice human touch for Lunge to focus on instead of the shakes, which together with the bandages, he supposed, perhaps hinted at some sort of neurosurgery, or the fact that he hadn't been well enough to make breakfast at all. They were details that would be slotted into a more appropriate place when they reached it- he wouldn't have to make guesses about what had happened, or what it meant for the future. It looked like L was willing to share.

'Looked like' being key, of course. The man's mask of composure was almost flawless, the kind he himself would have have been proud to wear- and of course it had to be mask. There was no way that he'd walked away from his experience without any psychological repercussions. No. We did speak of what had happened to me, he remembered then, but not of my daughter. He hadn't wanted L to know, at

[quarter_english]

He concentrated on his memories of the night before. He had trained himself to observe repugnant circumstances without flinching, and if he was honest, he had to admit that it hadn't been hard; all he'd had to do was overcome the propensity of both a human and a child to avoid exposing themselves to the worst. In almost every other case, though, the circumstances had been someone else's--there was a difference when it was more personal. He could feel himself resisting the recollection, his natural inclination to shy away from an unpleasant memory