Welcome to Gaia! ::

In some ways, Sue was lucky. Exhaustion was something that passed quickly enough, once you got a little sleep.

In other ways, he wasn't. Because there were a lot more pieces missing for him than the other Zodiacs. He had not seen his Princess; he had not seen the Zodiacs awaken. He didn't know what survivors lived, if any. Hell, if it weren't for that little sense in his mind, those tiny blips of certainty, he wouldn't even know that the other Zodiacs lived - or that the whole thing wasn't just a twisted creation of his own mind....

But that wasn't it. He was certain enough of that, and even if he didn't have any proof now - well damn it, he knew where he could get some. He just had to find one of the others - talk to them, confirm what was in his mind, and then Sue would know it wasn't something he'd made up.

And that was what had roused him from his rest, taken him out of the comfortable hospital bed and led him out into the hall. Everything here was white and sterile, and Sue didn't have anything else to wear but his drafty hospital gown (he'd looked, but couldn't find his clothes anywhere - just his jewelery and the piece of amber he always wore stashed in a drawer, apparently the only personal possessions that had survived to the hospital with him.) After Barren Pines, though, a place that was clean and warm didn't seem so imposing.

He hadn't gotten very far before a nurse had caught up with him, of course. The sounds of his arguing with her could be heard practically through the ward, as he insisted that he go to see the other students, and she insisted that they needed rest - she claimed nobody was up to talk to yet anyway - and he needed rest too, so he should just take his grouchy self back to bed.

Which just got him riled up, of course. And if anyone had been resting before, the sound of his stubborn arguing with the nurse was sure to wake them up.

Unfortunately, the nurse that had cornered Sue wasn't one of the young, fresh, and insecure girls that could be pushed around into fulfilling a patient's every wish. She was an older woman, with a rotund belly and sagging lines on her face; she'd seen a lot in her career, knew every trick a whiny patient could pull, and had enough experience under that wide belt of hers to shove back when pushy patients interfered with their own best interests.

"No," the nurse said firmly, "you are not going to run around and wake all those poor kids up, neither of you!"

"Not gonna wake anybody up," Sue growled rebelliously, ignoring the obvious fact that he'd already managed to pull Imogen out of bed. "I just gotta know that everyone's okay."

"They are. Now I want both of you back in your beds," she scolded them, her eyes rolling from one to the other. And when that didn't seem to persuade them, she suggested, more sweetly, "I mean, you poor dears must be hungry. We should order you up a meal, shouldn't we?"

The mention of a meal fixed Sue up right, that was for sure. The determination swept out of his expression, replaced with a sudden longing. She meant... food? Something that wasn't granola bars filched from the locker room?

Seeing that her ploy had made a mark, the nurse slyly sweetened the pot, "You two can both eat together, maybe, keep each other company a while. Will that keep you from waking all the others up?"

Sue glanced at Imogen. He didn't know the girl, other than a vague idea that he might've seen her in the halls once. But if she was from Barren Pines, maybe she'd have seen something of what happened after he went out. It was worth a shot, at least - he grudgingly nodded his acceptance of these terms.

With the contract terms accepted, the nurse made short work out of herding both the students out of the hallway and back into Imogen's room (it being the closer of the two.) Sue was sat firmly down in a chair - Imogen was suggested to return to her bed, though the nurse wasn't pushing her luck by trying to make her lie down. A paper menu was fetched from the bedside, listing the dishes of the day (most of which, the nurse told them firmly, were off-limits; they needed gentle foods after what they'd been through, which meant they were looking at soups, not steaks) and they were given a chance to order what they liked before the nurse nodded, promised it would come quickly, and finally let them alone.

So they could talk.

Alone.

"... So." Sue said that much, and then stopped. It had taken him this long to remember, he really wasn't the talking sort....

Too late to back out now, though. "I'm, uh. I'm Sue. From Ebola House...."

From half a year ago.

With five little words, Imogen had just slammed Sue over the head with that same clue-by-four. The girl didn't remember anything? Nothing at all from the entire fiasco at Barren Pines? It was-- how, how could she have forgotten EVERYTHING?

"You don't remember." This would have been hard to swallow for anyone, and Sue was damn near asphyxiating on it. "Anything that happened... or... anything past that point? Are you ******** kidding me?!"

There was anger there. There was a lot of anger there, unreasonable amounts - probably just a reaction to everything still hanging over him. A more reasonable voice prodded him gently, tried to suggest to him that maybe Imogen forgot because she didn't want to remember, because it had been too much for her - and maybe then, he shouldn't try to force her to remember....

But Sue needed it. Sue needed it badly. And she was right there, and she said she didn't remember anything!

He couldn't handle it. He couldn't leave it alone. So Sue probed at it, doing little to hide his aggravation, determined to do something to prove to himself that she did remember; that she had been there; that it was real.

"I mean. C'mon. The dorms, right? They burned down. You've gotta remember that!"

Sue could have felt pity for Imogen, if he wasn't so desperate for knowledge himself. "Fire, yes. And... ******** else."

Sue wanted to say zombies. He wanted to say barrier. He wanted to say Negaverse and youma and senshi and princess, all those things that he thought would lead Imogen along, get her to remember what he needed to know. But there was a wiser voice in him that gave him pause - that told him, if she didn't have to know about those things, it was for the best.

Even as Sue hated that voice, he agreed with it.

So he put on his best face. He was graceless and pouting in defeat, but accepted it all the same. "Lucky that you made it out, anyway," Sue muttered. "Glad you did. A lot of folk probably didn't...."

And God, what he would give to know which ones.

"Do you remember anybody? You know, I've got some folks I'm worrying after, and you must, too. If you tell me their names and I hear something, I can let you know?" And unspoken, he hoped Imogen would do the same.

Great. She looked like she was going to have a panic attack. Sue sighed deeply, and gave Imogen her minute - he should have listened to that voice before. She didn't want to remember this s**t. She wasn't going to be able to help him. So she was just... company for the sake of company, then.

In a strange way, Sue was almost... okay with that.

At the very least, though, the mention of a girl with long green hair seemed to lighten up the load on Sue's shoulders. That must be Serenade, right? If she made it... as long as she made it, everything was all right. Sue thought he'd know if she didn't, of course, but still....

"Thanks." He didn't sound very grateful, of course - more grudging than anything - but damn it, Sue had made the gesture, she could be damned happy for it. Sue wasn't looking at her anymore, a sure sign that he was really struggling to find the right-sounding words. Struggling to sound polite, he told her, "I, uhm. Look, I don't wanna... just I guess, if you remember something, will you tell me? I blacked out, and I missed some stuff."

"It might...." Oh damn it. Sue didn't want to be a part of this, he realized now. It would have been better if he hadn't said anything; it would be better if he didn't continue to say anything. And yet, there he was - proverbial shovel in his hand, scooping up another few cups of dirt out of his grave.

So he kept going. "It might be better to let it alone." Never mind that if Sue had been in her shoes, he would have never been satisfied without know. If he could only feel the terror, and not know what was behind it, he would have never found peace in the world again. Even knowing, he felt like he could drown in it, but for a stronger and more worldly part of him that lined his spine with steel. Imogen wasn't... wasn't like that. Somehow, he just felt like she wasn't someone that he should expect things like that out of. She deserved to have something happier in her life, somehow....

Even if it was already too late for that.

And it was in the midst of that thick awkwardness that the nurse re-entered the room, pushing a food cart ahead of her.

That was... that was a terrible question. That was terrible. And suddenly Sue was staring down at the soup in his own bowl, frozen by the sheer ******** thought.

And he couldn't for the life of him understand what it was that had hit him so hard about it. Sue didn't have an answer for her, that was for damn sure. It seemed so easy, but....

There was always a fall-back, though. "I dunno," Sue replied, his tone grown suddenly surly and unhappy. It was then that he opted to bypass the spoon altogether, and began slurping directly from the bowl. It was the best excuse he could find to avoid having to make a real answer - assuming she didn't call him on it, anyway.

He really hoped she didn't try calling him on it.