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 Posted: Thu May 08, 2014 7:31 pm
At some point in the night Peyton had woken where she had fallen asleep curled in the chair. The monitor was still beeping softly, and the Sun sat there for a moment, watching Noah's chest rise and fall before getting to her feet and slipping silently out the door. It was late, or maybe early. She wasn't sure what time it was, and pulling her phone out of the pocket in her jumper seemed like too much effort. She wouldn't even have gotten up if her legs hadn't been cramping and her stomach growling. Dinner had been skipped, which had seemed like a good idea at the time. She'd still been shaky, anxiety bordering on nausea. Now she was ravished. With a sigh she started walking down the hall, pretty sure she'd seen some vending machines around somewhere. A granola bar wasn't going to be the meal of champions, but it would chase away the hunger pangs until morning.
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Posted: Thu May 08, 2014 8:06 pm
It was morning, and that meant breakfast. It meant long showers, another short night of no much sleep as the Sahara was still fresh in his mind, and then the excuse to do something. With all those suffering in the Infirmary, any Lifer with free time was encouraged to help with the load. Melvin was more than willing, and was rolling a food crate he loaded up from the cafeteria to the Infirmary. The foods were generic for those hospitalized. All trays had Toast, runny Oatmeal, and fruit in a bowl. OJ he had in 3 capped pitchers. Cups were stacked in a tower. Disposable silverware in a container. And all other small essentials necessary to enjoy a disappointing meal.
He was turning a corner, pushing one cart and dragging another, before he stopped as Peyton turned a corner. He paused and then looked at both carts, not really able to move around her and not be noticed. He just glanced at her and, considering it was early and also she was a Sun, wondered why she was here. He managed a small "...hey." as he pulled the trolleys past her, trying his best not to bump them against her.
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Posted: Thu May 08, 2014 8:20 pm
She startled as Melvin came around the corner. Anything would have startled her, exhausted as she was, half asleep, on edge. She blinked at him as he looked down at his carts before back up at her, trying to edge past her with obvious care. It was unsettling to see, and she frowned, turning to watch him, pale eyes lingering on the dark ring of bruises around his eye. She remembered seeing his tweet, that broad offer to help in any way possible. It had made her think better of him, and that, on top of the preexisting guilt for having busted his glasses, made her speak up. "How," she started, hesitantly, small fingers hovering near the edge of one cart. "How're you doing?" He'd been in the pit, she remembered his screams, the blasts of energy as he'd fired his weapon. Something had spooked him. Lips pressed, she tapped a finger on the cart, gaze flicking off to the side before landing back on his face.
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Posted: Thu May 08, 2014 8:44 pm
He paused in pulling the carts when she said something, and stopped to look at her. Her question was a generic one, and he wondered what exactly she meant by it. He guessed it was about the eye. “I’m fine. A bruised eye is better than burnt skin.” He said. In comparison, he was great. He had been clean when he left the Sahara. A punch he sort of deserved compared to a bug infestation no one deserved was doing amazingly well. As for recovering after Sahara, the clean Infirmary served as its own therapy, with its man-made walls, sterile floors, and florescent lights. No natural Sun, no sand, and no bugs. It was safe here. It was nice here. He just had to make sure to take extra-long showers and try to get what little sleep he could. Last night was just a long night of no sleep and a shower so hot and long that he had been as red as a lobster and still felt fragile. He just had to wait it out, let it sink into the back of his mind with all the other traumatic missions, and try not to think about it.
Working was one of the best distractions for his mind right now. It made him feel as if he had control over his life.
He watched her tap at the cart. “How are you?” He asked, and then glanced at the food. The oatmeal would get cold if he didn’t get it to the small kitchen where he kept the trays before they were distributed. “Want to help me push that cart?” Since she was here after all.
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Posted: Thu May 08, 2014 9:26 pm
She wasn't asking about the eye specifically, in light of current events, but his answer encompassed everything, so she merely nodded before blinking down at the cart as he asked if she'd give him a hand. "Sure." Why not? She wanted to be useful, this was as good a start as any. Moving around, she placed her hands on the bar and waited for him to start moving against so she could follow him. "I'm sorry about your glasses." It was offered into the early morning quiet rather abruptly, but her voice was soft, tone sincere. She'd meant to hit him, but she hadn't meant to cause lasting damage or break anything. She'd actually felt pretty bad about it after she'd cooled down a bit.
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Posted: Thu May 08, 2014 9:45 pm
He pulled the cart slowly, not only to be careful about what was on them, but also because he wasn’t wearing glasses and hadn’t for a while. “Serves me right for forgetting to take them off. Lost another pair in the Sahara.” He sighed. It was going to take a while to order another pair, and they weren’t happy when he had to request a new pair after he just got a basic replacement pair before. “I should buy them in stock at this point. Maybe two backup pairs for just this occasion.” But his eyewear had been customized. He didn’t wear normal glasses and liked his prescription safety glasses. They were comfortable, secure, and he admitted he liked having something different about him. Just one little thing.
He turned the corner till he got to a side room marked “Personnel Only” and pressed his back to the door before rolling in the cart. He held it open for her to come in. It was a small kitchen area for the Life department, but it was one where they usually kept the trays for distributing. There were two fridges against the wall along with a little kitchen area and sink. A coffee pot with 1/3 a cup of rank coffee was already on.
“How about you? Are you alright?”
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Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 9:04 am
It wasn't something Peyton thought about often, but she appreciated in that moment that she had never needed glasses. How awful, to be dependent on something so fragile, for sight? It looked like Melvin was getting around alright, but what if his eyesight had been worst? What if he had been nearly blind with out his prescription? How utterly helpless must that feel? "You're lucky," she told him, thoughtfully. "That sounds really scary." She pushed her cart though the door he held for her, and thought about his question. "I feel fine at the moment, because worry is over riding everything else, but I'm not sure how I'll feel later, when I don't have to worry anymore." It was a very honest answer. She'd broken down in the shower, while she'd been waiting for the quarantined hunters to be brought back. Now they were here, and her attention was on them, but eventually they would heal. "Hungry though," she added after a moment, eyeing the food on the carts.
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Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 10:06 am
"Lucky? I guess I could have glass shards in my face or bugs, if you mean that." He said, not really getting how seeing fuzz all day was exactly lucky, but better than being blind. "I've seen people loose a lot more on the training grounds before they set up stronger requirements."
He went to the fridge and set the OJ and other cold things inside. The oatmeal could be heated up. He'd have to check with the staff to see who was even in what room and was awake. It wasn't just the Sahara members who were in the infirmary after all.
"If you are willing to pass out trays, you can eat one." He said, a condition he was laying down. "If not..." He pointed to the coffee machine in the corner. "Don't know how long it's been there, but that's probably one of the few places you know coffee isn't going to be messed with. No one bothered the staff here with experiments." Those hijinks were kept in the labs, and most didn't bother the sanctuary of coffee if they could avoid it.
He hadn't had an appetite since leaving the Sahara and was living off of juice and coffee for the most part. "Work is a good escape. I think it's the only therapy most people have here." He was using it well. "At least you're being productive."
Then he remembered Otto and his reluctance to even talk to his cousin. "Have you talked with your family? I heard you have some here - I mean.. well, OTHER family." He wasn't meaning she talk to her frozen sister.
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Posted: Sat May 10, 2014 7:58 pm
"Lucky that you can see well enough without them to be rendered helpless if they are lost." Though, she supposed, his reasons also applied. She glanced at the carts as he proposed the deal, then up to the coffee maker and it's loan pot of mystery brew, and after a second or two she gave a tired shrug. "Sure, I'm not much help elsewhere while everyone's' still sleeping." It would probably do her good to keep busy for a little while. She was going to drive herself crazy just sitting in the dark with Noah, watching his monitors. As the topic of family came up once again she gave him a flat look. "No" Since hadn't seen nor heard anything about Jude since learning she was also related to him, she doubted Melvin meant him. "Not lately. He's had quite enough to deal with on his own without me pouring my own emotional baggage on him." Her tone was empty, which was better than bitter, but didn't speak to much a bond between the two. She could have left it there, but she still felt bad for having busted the Lifer's glasses. "We've only known we were related for a few months, He's family, but we're still relative strangers." That wasn't the way she wanted it, but she was starting to get discouraged over her attempts to bond with her cousin. They weren't working.
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Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 9:32 am
"You mean it's lucky I can make out shapes, voices, and I know the Infirmary like the back of my hand. If I get called into a mission, I'm ********." He informed her, taking the cold items into the fridge. "I have a gun as a weapon, remember." Guns mean he relied on his sight to aim, and with only making out blurs, he wouldn't be doing much hitting on his own.
"But I should get a basic replacement soon. Then I'll be waiting for the actual replacement of the ones I originally had in about a week or so."
When talking about Otto, Melvin recalled the boy entering the small kitchen lounge. "Hmm. He looked tired, but I can never tell if he's irritable. He's always pissed when I'm around him." Which he didn't always get why.
He was interested on what this 'baggage' was that Otto had though, and Peyton was talkative. If they couldn't talk about her, talking about Otto might be a good discussion point.
"He didn't seem much into the idea of family either. In fact, it was like he hated the very idea of it. No offense, I'm sure it's not you." Or maybe it was, who knew? "I think with so many of us without our families anymore, anyone would jump at the chance to have one relative on the island they can talk to. I'd certainly be happier if I had one of my cousins here. Even Gregory, and that guy was a huge p***k."
But he had gotten Otto's view on the matter. What about Peyton? "Do you want to know him better or just wish you never knew?"
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Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 6:25 pm
"Yeah, I guess." She frowned, realizing she'd assumed he'd been able to see without his glasses better than he really was, but he had been moving around just fine. She let their conversation move along to Otto, because she still felt bad about bruising his eye and busting his glasses, though she wasn't quite sure how much she should share with Melvin about her cousin. "He is tired." Considering what he'd been through, he was holding up better than she would have been. Still frowning, the teen mussed with the ends of her sleeves. It still bothered her how distant Otto was with her, but given the circumstances, she couldn't really blame him. "Well, he doesn't know me really. I'm just some person on the island that happens to have a blood relation with him. It's not like we grew up knowing about each other. We were strangers until the New Years, that doesn't just change because you share DNA with someone." She could defend him all she wanted, but she was still a touch sore at Otto for keeping her at arms length. She was trying. But, she understood, sort of. She'd done the same thing before Deus. Why get close to someone who you might lose? "I'd like to get to know him better. I never got to knew the my extended family, so I didn't have cousins or aunts or uncles really."
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Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 9:22 am
"Hmm. You guys seem to have different takes on it then. I know I have cousins I didn't know till later in life, and only ever saw them during reunions and holidays. We didn't grow up together, but they were still my family and a few were even good friends. I especially liked a good number of my aunts and uncles. Especially my uncles." He said with a smile, before it slowly went down as he reminded himself he would never go fishing with Uncle Hagen again.
He went over and picked up the coffee pop, swirling the dank sludge around before going to the sink to dump the coffee and wash the pot before setting off to make a fresh pot of coffee for himself. "Well, we aren't going much of anywhere on this island. It's a good way to make excuses to bump into him. I can tell from his room that he likes music and has odd friends who liked putting cat ears on his stuff. Maybe just start working on finding things in common and work from there. If anything, there is always twitter."
He looked over to her again, or at least the blurred shape of her. "Are you related to anyone else on the island? I heard Otto found out through some illusions and then records. I guess only full hunters can find that stuff out without paying over a year's paycheck." He sighed.
He still wondered if anyone here....
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Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 9:32 am
She stood quietly and watched him while he spoke, and realized that he just didn't under stand. The corners of her mouth ticked downward sadly, and she turned her attention down to the cart of food her hands were still resting on. She let him talk, because it would have been rude not to. "It's different, knowing that a person exists, but never seeing them, and not knowing they exist at all. We did not exist to each other until New Years." She tried explaining it, but if he didn't understand, then he didn't understand. Her life hadn't been like his. Her family had been her Mother, her Father, and Astrid. Their grandparents had died when they were very young, and after her mother passed they lost connection with the few aunts and uncles they had. "Jude," she answered him. "Jude is my cousin also, but I haven't seen him since my first mission." She had tried to recall if she'd ever heard of a cousin Jude before everything had gone wrong in her life, but she couldn't. "He doesn't know, if he's even still alive."
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Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 10:30 am
He heard she had another cousin, but the fact she hadn't seen him in what could only be assumed as a very long time did not spell good news to anyone. Usually that meant there was a closed file somewhere, tucked away in archives with a final date stamped and signed with the finality that only a closed report could give.
"M-Maybe he is on a mission off island. I hear people get transferred out for a while. Like Sasha. She was gone for a while." He offered, throwing her a hopeful bone. Not that it did much good, but hope was one of those rare commodities on Deus Island. Personally, he didn't like talking about death. It happened a lot around here, just visiting the Infirmary, but so far all his friends were safe and be breathed a sigh of relief each passing day when he came home to know he had all his limbs and read twitter to see that everything and everyone, for the most part, was alive and well.
He didn't want to think about this Jude person or give her the advice that she might want to check into where Jude was. That could create another death to the already disappointing news of her father and sister that wasn't needed, not to mention she was here visiting someone.
"Who are you here for again?" He asked, curious and needing a new topic.
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Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 6:09 pm
Thin shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. "I don't know." She didn't know him, his absence didn't weigh on her mind like it would have had it been one of her friends. Like Gnat, she worried about her fellow Sun, but Jude was just another person on the island that she knew only by name. There was no sadness to her, only a soft neutrality that served as a general calm. For the moment things were alright. The injured were asleep, everything was quiet, and she was awake and away from her own thoughts. Pale eyes blinked when he asked about who she was here for, and her head turned, gaze sliding towards the door that led to the hall before sliding back. "Noah mostly, but also Camille, Hanna, Evan, Jordan, and Jack." She also had plans to peek in on Stormy and Nora, both having seeming distressed before she had been forced back through the portal.
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