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The hallways were long and labyrinthine. Damon vaguely recognized them. The walls were papered the same and there were several twisted portraits all around him, but he couldn’t recognize the pictures. Were they moving?
Was he moving? He couldn’t remember why he was here. He couldn’t remember where he was going. His feet kept walking forward. He couldn’t stop walking.
“Don’t be too upset about it,” Eva told him. He couldn’t see her, but he could smell smoke. He was walking towards the smell of smoke. “You can’t freeze time, no matter how much you want to. The night will always end. The dawn will always come." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The consequences will always find you.”
Damon began running. The halls tilted around him. He was in a kaleidoscope of colors and textures. He could see the blackened doorframe of the dining hall. He lunged for it.
Eva peered at him from the hole where the oven used to be. Four bodies were strewn across the dining room floor between him and her—four bodies and one mangled hand peeking out from under a large rock.
The smell of smoke began to strangle his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t call out to Eva, and he watched in horror as flames began to sprout from the blackened patches in the dining hall.
“Don’t you want to see what Ulysses destroyed this place for, Damon?”
Her hair was on fire. Smoke curled around her beckoning hands, her eyes were hidden behind the glare of her glasses, everything was too hot, too hot, too—
The world rocked, and he fell out of the dining hall’s doorframe into an inky abyss.
---
"Damon, Damon, shh, shh, don't scream, please."
Damon snapped awake. The world was still shaking--no, he was being shaken. Diana was standing over him, expression grim, her nails digging into his shoulders. He froze. He had never seen her so hollow-looking. Something was wrong, he needed to--
"It's okay." Her expression softened, and he saw tears gathering in her eyes. Her voice wavered. "...You're awake. Thank goodness."
He opened his mouth and immediately winced when he took in a breath to speak. It felt like he'd just shoved sandpaper down his throat.
"Don't, don't talk." She took her hands away from his shoulders and backed away. "Your throat needs to recover. Don't strain it, please."
Damon blinked at her, then slowly looked around at his surroundings. The walls were a blinding white rather than soft pink, and the fluorescent lights were as bright as the first time he had explored this place... three weeks ago? Had it really been three weeks since he had first explored the Alpha Sanctuary with everyone? Since Wenona had made a snide comment about the attention he'd paid to the purposefully damaged floor? Since...
His eyes landed on Toshiko, who was seated on another cot, and he sat up as quickly as he was able. It wasn't very quickly. His throat was raw, but his legs, arms and chest all ached. So did his head.
Diana held out a teacup. "It's a little cold," she mumbled. "Don't worry, Desmond and Jean both watched me make it. Toshiko can confirm."
Toshiko gave several nods. She had to be on "no talking" orders too. That wasn't a surprise. She had been trapped in the smoke the longest out of all of them.
She was still wearing one of Mark's hoodies and her gym shorts instead of her regular clothing.
Diana looked like she had wilted.
Damon accepted the teacup and downed it in a couple of swallows. The tea was cold. It passed through his throat like a porcupine, but he could both taste and feel the traces of honey in it. He was so thirsty, but the room had blurred from the tears in his eyes, so he just set the cup down on his lap and took a couple deep breaths to stave off any coughing fits.
Diana took the teacup back and hurried over with some tissues and a dry erase board and marker. Damon had no idea where she had found the last two, but he wasn’t as surprised as he would have been outside of this stupid place. Tozu’s amenities were always weirdly old-fashioned.
…This would be less wasteful than paper, too.
Damon frowned at that thought, realized that a weight that should be with him was missing and checked his blazer even though he knew the item wouldn't be there. His blazer smelled like smoke. An uncomfortable, hot weight settled on his shoulders.
“His notebook is on the cot next to yours,” Diana told him.
Damon glanced to his left. The owl feather pen and the nondescript brown notebook that Ulysses never went anywhere without were both there. So were Wenona’s earrings.
Breathe, Damon reminded himself as the world started to tilt on its axis. He remembered Ulysses' hands against his as those items were pressed into his palms, the miserable trust in the historian's deep blue eyes. Breathe, breathe, breathe.
He wiped the tears from his eyes with one of the tissues and uncapped the dry erase marker. Kai? he asked.
“He’s in the showers over in the Beta Sanctuary,” Diana replied. “He, um, brought over a change of clothes for you and Toshiko. Your dorm room is the furthest from the dining hall, so none of your clothes smell like smoke.”
Wolfgang and Wenona’s rooms probably got the worst of the smoke, by that logic. Ingrid's and Mark's probably weren't spared either. Damon glanced over at Toshiko.
She hopped off her cot, trotted over, and began writing. It took a moment, but she eventually flipped her whiteboard over. Damon had to squint at the cursive for a moment, but her handwriting was neat enough that he quickly got the message. Mark has a few clothes in Jett’s room.
He'd have to take her word for it. He couldn't tell if her hoodie was clean or not because he knew his own clothes smelled like smoke. Her hair was wet, so she had probably gotten cleaned up too.
Toshiko looked exhausted, and she had clearly been crying recently, but she was standing straighter than she had been during the trial and the aftermath.
Damon didn’t remember much about the aftermath. The world started to tilt again when he tried to think about it, so he shook his head and decided to continue the conversation. It’s been a day? he asked.
Diana’s smile vanished. “The trial was yesterday. You’ve…” she took a deep breath. She had been crying too, her eyes were still red. “You were out for nearly eighteen hours. I…I was beginning to worry that you wouldn’t wake up.” Tears began to well up in her eyes. “I know we needed you during the trial but…but…!”
Damon’s throat felt tight, and it had nothing to do with the pain. Toshiko reached out and carefully hugged Diana’s arm. Diana covered her mouth with her hand and let Toshiko lead her to sit down on the cot to Damon’s right.
They sat in silence for a moment while Diana composed herself. Damon shifted so that his legs were off of the cot. He felt a bit better with his feet on the ground, though he winced at the feeling of tile under his socks. It was just…unfamiliar. Everything about waking up in the infirmary was unfamiliar.
Toshiko took her hands back to write on her whiteboard again. You frightened us, Mochi.
Exasperation and...an unfamiliar, but warm emotion washed through Damon when he saw both his nickname and that Toshiko had used several extra letters for "frightened" instead of "scared." He hadn't been expecting her to be acting so close to her usual self. The trial was yesterday. She was injured, too, far more severely than Damon and Kai were.
Toshiko flipped her whiteboard around and wrote a new message. We thought we may have lost you.
Diana hid her face behind her hand.
Damon sighed and winced at how scratchy it felt. He picked up his own whiteboard. Sorry. Limiting myself in a debate is difficult. Especially when all of their lives were on the line.
Toshiko nodded. Her expression was solemn, but understanding. He wasn't being scolded, then. Toshiko was just taking it upon herself to explain why Diana was acting the way she was.
Damon appreciated the consideration, but it didn't make him feel much better. His chest always ached when he saw Diana cry.
"I appreciate your efforts during the trial, I just...I wish you had said something when you started getting lightheaded, or whatever precursor there was to you collapsing," Diana mumbled. "We couldn't do much in the trial room, but you could have sat down, or something."
I was distracted. He was lightheaded and struggling to breathe during Ulysses' execution. His throat hurt badly enough that he caught himself praying that the execution would be quick--which it was not. He didn't remember most of it, (papers blooming red with blood, Ulysses hiding his face from the maelstrom) but it was not quick. He knew Tozu wasn't going to let them out until after the execution was over.
Damon didn't even remember when or how Ulysses had collapsed. He just remembered feeling horrified before everything faded out.
"...We all were." Diana buried her face in her hands again. The lights of the infirmary glinted across the metal of her chameleon bracelet. The scar that Wolfgang had given her wasn't covered by makeup.
She had looked so different after Eva's death. The image of her standing tall with her fist raised high, tears streaming down her face as she spoke of hope and adaptability, was still burned into his brain. He remembered the rush of anger, of utter confusion, of frustration, that came seeing her do that, after all she had been through.
Seeing her like this, all curled in on herself, hiding her face, drained all feeling and strength from his soul.
His voice was the most effective tool he had and he could say nothing.
He took a deep breath and began writing. He erased his first few attempts. Even if he had his voice, he didn't have words to help her. He wasn't accustomed to comforting. He wasn't accustomed to wanting to comfort.
This place, the people, the situation, had forced him to twist into knots he hadn't thought possible. This was another instance with that.
Diana looked up at the same time he found what he wanted to say.
Thank you for finishing my argument.
Her big magenta eyes widened, and she perked up like a flower that had just been given water.
Damon would never understand how she gathered so much strength from such little things. She was smiling again. The smile was a sad, exhausted one, but it didn't look like it would vanish at the slightest provocation.
...The smell of smoke was going to overwhelm him. He shouldn't be thinking about how the smallest negative things sent Eva into fire the same way that the smallest positive things helped Diana stand tall.
"It was the least I could do." He forced himself to focus on her voice. She still wasn't doing well. She would have noticed him wavering if she was as perceptive as usual. "I hope I did a good job."
Results speak for themselves, he replied. We're alive.
Toshiko gave a small, firm nod and patted Diana's shoulder.
Diana smiled at her, then looked up at Damon. Her smile faded, but it was replaced with determination rather than despair. She had managed to shore up her defenses again. Good. Seeing that helped lessen the sensation of sinking in Damon’s skull.
“This can’t happen again,” she told him. “If you’re struggling in any way, I want to know. If I can’t do anything to help you, I’d…I’d rather know that I tried my best rather than watch you struggle and not know if you want me to reach out or not.”
His first instinct was to shrug off her words, but he consciously grabbed the feeling and shoved it down. It had been three weeks since he first met her, but if there was anything that he had learned about her in that time, it was that she drew strength by giving it to others. He did not understand how that worked, but facts were facts. He couldn’t claim to know everything about his classmates but was very aware of when they were doing well and when they weren’t.
Diana was at her best when she knew she was making a positive difference.
Thank you for the tea. It helped a lot.
She smiled again. “I hoped that it would.”
Could I ask a favor?
She perked up again. “What is it?”
Damon pointed over his shoulder at the cot behind him before writing his request. Take Wenona’s earrings. I can’t carry both of them.
Diana’s expression fell when she read the words. In a normal way, as it usually did when they were talking about the dead, and there was confusion there as well. She looked up at him. “I’d be glad to. I just…I didn’t know Wenona as well as you did. You were one of the few people who talked to her after my birthday. I thought that you might want to carry both her and Ulysses.”
He was glad that she’d understood immediately what she meant by carrying the responsibility of bringing pieces of their classmates to the outside world if they got out of this hellhole. As for him knowing Wenona well… I respected her intelligence. That’s all.
Diana frowned. It was clear that she knew that there was more to his thought process here, but she got up rather than asking more questions. “Okay. I’ll take them. I’m not sure what I’ll say to her family, though.”
I can talk to her family when the time comes. She tilted her head, and Damon held in a sigh as he wrote another sentence. This was a very small space to write on, and it was very inconvenient. I just can’t carry them right now.
Realization dawned in her eyes. “Oh. Yeah, okay, I get it. I’ll hold them for now, then.”
She walked over to the cot. The door slid open as soon as the earrings were in her hands, and they all turned towards it.
“How’s it slippin and slidin—oh my God, Damon!” Jett exclaimed as he scurried into the infirmary. “Dude! How are you feeling?”
Kai scrambled in after him. The latter’s pink hair was still soaked. That tracked. Even when he didn’t reek of smoke, Kai took ridiculously long showers.
Jett seemed to be doing well at least. As well as anyone could be after a trial. Damon glanced between the two of them before he wrote out a response. Not great, but alive.
Kai began writing on his own whiteboard while Jett gave a nervous chuckle. Desmond had slipped in behind them like a shadow. The marksman looked almost as tired as Diana.
Toshiko showed Jett something on her whiteboard and the drag racer huffed. “Well, we got a little caught up. I’m gonna be in the infirmary for a bit, though. We can talk. You feelin’ okay?”
Kai moved across the room to Damon and Diana. Brought Des so Damon could shower if awake, he told them.
Diana glanced at Damon. “Are you feeling up to walking?” she asked quietly.
Damon wasn’t completely sure he felt up to walking, but doing the short trek to the Beta Sanctuary was better than smelling like smoke. He’d live. If he didn’t make it to the shower, Eva was going to start haunting more than his dreams. He had heard her voice during the trial earlier, she had showed up before Diana shook him awake, and if he spent any more time around the smell of smoke, Ingrid might add her voice too.
He nodded and got to his feet.
Diana took a sharp breath and moved forward to steady him when he wobbled. He was able to find his footing with her hands on his shoulders.
“And you call me reckless,” she muttered. He stiffened when she pulled him into a hug. “I’m staying here so Toshiko isn’t alone with the boys but be careful on your way over.”
She really shouldn’t insinuate that she wanted to follow him to the showers. He really shouldn’t be fixating on that implied detail of the fact that she sounded reluctant about staying here with Toshiko. Heat should not rush into his face at the thought of her following because he knew that she wasn’t thinking about it in the same way he was.
Still following the nagging of your heart, in the end, Eva whispered.
Shit.
Diana let him go when Kai tapped her shoulder. Her lips were pressed into a firm line, though it softened when she looked at his face. His most likely very red face. He felt lightheaded again.
Shit.
Diana’s face grew pink, and she stepped back so that Desmond could step into the space between them. “You ready to head out?” the marksman asked. Casually. As if there wasn’t palpable tension in the air.
Damon nodded and held his whiteboard close to his chest as he walked out of the room. He managed not to stumble until they were near the entrance to the Alpha Sanctuary.
I’m here, and I’m okay, Ingrid murmured when Desmond gently grabbed Damon’s upper arm and steered him over to the wall. Everythin’s gonna be alright, hon.
He was never going to hear her voice again, not physically.
“Stay with me, man,” Desmond muttered. “I think we might be taking this a bit too fast, but Kai mentioned that you would want to get the smell of smoke off as soon as possible.”
Damon was here, in the Alpha Sanctuary. The wall was real. Desmond’s quiet voice was real. His hand on Damon’s shoulder was real.
“Stop pressing your whiteboard into your burn, please.”
Oh.
Damon moved his whiteboard from his palm and squinted at the bandages. His hand ached again. He hadn’t noticed until Desmond pointed it out.
He shook Eva’s intelligible whispers out of his ears and shakily wrote a response. Sorry. More dazed than I realized.
“It’s alright. Well—no, it’s not, but I can’t blame you for it. You haven’t been awake that long. We’ve had almost a whole day to process what happened yesterday. You’re still pretty fresh off of the trial.”
Yeah, and he probably should not be processing any of this standing up. Damon eyed the bandages on his hand. Toshiko’s burning kimono flashed in his vision for a moment, there and gone.
A sentence tried to squeeze its way past his throat and Damon immediately regretted letting it through. It came out as a soft croaking sound, and the pain that raced up his throat was more dizzying than anything else that had happened in the last hour.
The pain was real. Desmond squeezing his shoulder was real.
I'm here, and I'm okay.
"Breathe, Damon," Desmond murmured. "Breathe."
He could still smell smoke. He could still hear screams, God, the screams. The screams weren't real, but the smoke was.
Damon blinked back tears and scrawled the sentence that had tried to kill him.
It's going to take me a long time to forgive Ulysses for using fire.
Desmond squeezed his shoulder a little tighter. They stood there until Damon caught his breath and managed to convince his mind and heart that no one was currently dying.
Damon pushed himself off of the wall and let Desmond support him. He was showing more weakness than he was comfortable with, but he couldn't look at the tree so soon after an execution. The marksman was a patient leader, and he supported Damon until he murmured that they were coming up on the camp that the people who weren't in the infirmary had set up. No one wanted to be in the dorm room building until the mess from Ingrid's murder was cleaned up. Mara was visibly stalking those halls and Tozu was still pissed about the damages, which meant he was more zap-happy than usual.
They were running out of places to go that weren't connected to a murder. Eva had used materials from the Alpha Sanctuary and the underground hallway to murder Wolfgang. The dining hall had already been tainted by the vent that led to the boiler room where Wolfgang had died, but that was ignorable most of the time. The fact that Ulysses had blown the oven to hell was not.
Damon walked on his own with Desmond close by. He didn't look at the camp, where he heard Grace and Jean talking quietly over the sound of splashing that he knew wasn't real. No one had touched the pool since Wenona drowned in it.
They finally reached the showers, and Desmond sat down after giving him a quick once over. "I'll come in if I hear any crashing," he warned. "If you feel like you're going to pass out, make a noise. Preferably not with your voice."
I will.
Damon was not going to pass out in the shower, but he appreciated the concern. He would properly thank Desmond, Kai and Diana later. This was just how his classmates were, until they were driven to murder. Kind when they sensed weakness. They had no motive to kill right now except the large, overarching one that had never been enough to cause murder. Not that he knew of, anyways.
Later, he could worry about possible motives later. Several people knew he was with Desmond right now. He needed to stay on his feet. He needed to get away from the smoke.
Everything else, every other plan, and unpacking what had happened in the infirmary and before that point, could happen after he was out of the shower and off of his feet. For now, he just let Desmond wrap a plastic bag around his burned hand and stepped into the showers before throwing off his stupid clothes that still reeked of smoke.
He was here. He wasn't okay, but he was here. So were nine other people.
He needed to regain his strength and get to a point where he wasn't jumping at shadows and hearing voices. Then he could start worrying about the future again.