Welcome to Gaia! ::

She'd been dreaming. About home, and the arguments her parents no longer bothered to wait until she left the room to get into. The framed photos with the glass broken out of them from so many times thrown against the walls and floors, now placed in every corner of the house like a constant vigil. The immaculate bedroom with two empty beds that she had to walk past every day for two years now, just to reach her own. She opened the door to her bedroom, and as she crossed the threshold the sounds and pain seemed to recede into a dull white noise behind her. And then -

Tempest awoke in what looked like a hospital.

She had never seen a place like this before - a mixture of modern sterile whites and strange, glowing glyphs that dotted the seams of everything. She blinked, but the symbols remained, fuzzing out at the edges where tears were starting to form. It had only been a matter of time, hadn't it? She'd been committed.

{ What did you do to my wings?? }

She covered her ears with her hands, but the voice continued to shrill. Maybe she had finally snapped. "N-no. You're not real. None of this is real. Get out of my head -"

{ You've disfigured me! My beautiful wings - what kind of fallen angel am I without my wings? }

Tempest didn't wait for the voice to stop mourning; if anything she dutifully tried to ignore it. She scrambled out of the bed and gathered the belongings on the chair beside her. None of it looked familiar - someone else's phone, someone else's clothes, someone else's jacket - and quickly changed out of her hospital gown into the uniform and pocketed the phone.

The place was dead silent. Here and there, the beds were occupied by teenagers about her age, sleeping or sickly. The rest were empty - with no doctors, nurses, or anyone else attending to them. It was strange, so strange, and wrong. She'd already seen the inside of real hospitals so many times, when Gale and Leslie -

No. Best not to think about that.

She stole into one of the curtained rooms just long enough to pilfer a scalpel. It made her feel safer to have something in her hand that felt real and dangerous. It felt like any moment, whatever had made the adults disappear would come back for her.

"Hello?" She clutched the grip of the scalpel in one hand until her knuckles went white. From her frantic fourteen-year-old point of view, the place seemed to go on forever, like one long nightmare hallway. "Is anyone here? I need help. Please..."

"That's my name - how do you know my name -" Tempest stumbled back, and then took a few more steps of her own volition, forming a safe bubble of space between them. Here was the only adult she'd seen so far. She seemed to consider his words, lowering the scalpel a little at a time, until it was settled in front of her in more of a defensive point outward than genuinely wielded.

"Are you a - a doctor?" Her eyes searched for some sort of confirmation, but she saw no white coat, or stethoscope, or nametag. They looked out of place here, like a visitor. She continued to hold the scalpel in front of her with both hands, though they were obviously shaking, pointing it like a knife. "Do you work here?"