I came up with the tile last-minute, and this entire fanfic might be a little dicey, but I hope that it was enjoyed and that I might be able to get some kind of feeback on how I had done. Any reaction at all would mean the world to me.

Also, I'm going to try and keep chapter short and sweet for the sake to taking up less time. I don't want the story bogged down by purple prose.

Enjoy!

"Jesus…Settle down, you've always go to make a mountain out of a mole-hill now, don't you? You know, this kind of behavior is the kind that got you sent downstate, you know that? You want to get stuck with those women and those kids again?"

Ben didn't answer. He was told he wouldn't see them again. At least, that's what he got when the lady at the desk took his card and sent him back home, telling him some farewell that he didn't quite hear over the sound of his own confusion.

Eight years around the same people, aside from other patients, does that. It disorients, and makes the outside seem stranger than the in.

It was coming back to him, but slowly.

Eight years was still a long time.

Brendol didn't think so.

Brendol was never fed pill after pill, stuck in silent "therapy" rooms and forced to stare at a moving fan for three hours straight before the doctors came in and drilled him with a thousand useless questions.

Brendol was never admitted.

More than likely because he was a normal boy with a normal mind. He went to the public schools and played with the children that went to the public schools. He ate regular meals and slept in a bed with a thick blanket. He woke up to breakfast and his parents.

Brendol had an air of smartness that surprised and awed Ben. It was an intelligence that he'd only seen in adults and maybe a couple of the younger staff and hospital personnel.

Brendol was a God to him.

He lived down the street from Ben.

This made Brendol put a lock on his door.

But this time, he answered it.

Ben was grateful.

"Are you even listening? You came all this way just to wake me up, for this? What the Hell's the matter with you?"

The boy looked angry, standing in front of the chair in which Ben currently sat, and steaming over a cup of milk. He looked ridiculous clad in the blue rocketships that he slept in, and his messy hair didn't help. It was almost unreal, and for a moment, Ben didn't believe that it was his friend that opened the door. For a moment, he was reminded of Morris down the block, who was normally disheveled due to reasons that Ben was never told. He didn't hang around Morris much, but an older lady named Louise told him that it was because he was a schizoid.

"You're smart." Ben said, absent. "You'd know. I know it. You're smart with these things. I'm dying, aren't I? I know I am. But you tell me. Am I dying? You have to let me know, am I dying?!" He grew more hysterical each word he said, and for a moment, Brendol took wary glances at the doorframe, down the dark hall, before he shoved the glass of milk to his friend.

"No, you're not dying. Not even close. But the way you're screaming, the neighbors will think otherwise. So will my parents, who don't know you're here. In simple, shut your trap and let me explain."

And explain he did. So much that Ben turned at least eleven different colours with expressions to match, and about two hours later, was shown the door. "And that's why you woke up like that. It's normal, you're not dying. It's Saturday, I am. Next time something like that happens, come on a school day. Go to your dad." He ended this with a rather disgusted expression before pushing the boy out the door and closing it behind him.

Ben turned to open the door back up again. It was locked.

He stared at the handle, and tried again. Still locked.

For a moment, this was all he did, stare at the door, look around, and feel as though it was taboo to leave the front porch of his neighbor's house. As if there was something wrong with it.

But eventually, tiredness wore him out and made him go back to his own house, despite how his knees were shaking and he felt as though he had been struck by lightning. Electrocuted, petrified. And entirely unsure if he was going to be able to get back to sleep or not.

Eventually, he got to the bedroom – his room, he had to keep reminding himself. This room belonged to him, but he found that hard to believe. It wasn't anything at all like his room. His room had pale walls, and much less…things.

He said to them, the people that he was living with, that he didn't want anything from them. But the man and the woman just kept buying and buying, so now they both didn't have any money, and he had a bunch of useless junk.

They insisted, so much that they cried about it, the man and the woman, and he couldn't do much more than let them go out and buy him whatever it was they were compelled to buy him. It was as if they thought him a God or something. Was he?

The way they were acting, bending down to his height and asking what he wanted for breakfast, anything at all, whether he was going to be "alright," and always, was he alright in the first place. They were strange people with…different…needs, and he remained comforted by the only thing that remained consistent in his life. Pill-taking in the morning, and at night. This didn't change.

The man and the woman, who told him to call them Dad and Mom (sometimes, when she got weepy and especially strange, Mommy) were always very concerned when he did this, and watched him carefully.

He glared at them while doing so, and that shut them up. They looked scared. They left the room.

Really, eight years of downing the same pill after pill, he should know how to do it by then, but they acted as if just because they pulled him from his home and stuck him in their little suburban fantasy that he was just going to forget about protocol and get as dumb as they were.

As if that would ever happen. The nurses were adamant that the take his medications on his own, and that was what he did. He cleaned his room and even the hallway outside (for Mattsi, the boy down the hall, he did his room too). The sheets were replaced on his bed at home and his bed in the new house.

The lack of a mess hall was confusing.

He wondered where they got their food for a while, until he was met with the unsettling truth – they got their food from the fridge and the cupboards.

Ben didn't have his I.D card anymore. The woman took it away from him when he left.

He felt the gooseflesh tear up and down his arms, and he began to wrap them about himself, glancing from one dot on the floor to the next. Well, damn her, damn all of them. Trying to starve him like that, taking away his card.

She knew, he knew that she did. She knew that he needed that card to get into the fridge and the cabinets. All patients did. He helped Mattsi with his, and was often called out for it. Mattsi was just so dumb and helpless it was annoying, but he did it anyway. It was the only way to shut him up.

But here, in this place, there was no Mattsi.

Ben shuddered. And back at the Ward, there was no Ben to get food for Mattsi. Mattsi would starve. Poor kid. Not like he had a long life ahead of him, but it still made Ben feel sick, letting him go like that.

Well, if Mattsi can't have food, than Ben couldn't either.

With that settled, he went back up to his "bedroom."

And didn't get past the threshold before being assaulted by the mass of colour and general busy-ness that there was in there. No clean, pale walls, and no pristine bed, lined with thin blue blankets. No curtain to cover the window overlooking the roof where he watched the helicopters land above MedBay. There was no simple nightstand, no light bolted to the nightstand.

Instead, there were red flags.

Everywhere, protocol was violated and his skin crawled from the disorder of it all.

Shot one – there where small things. Choking hazards. Mattsi and a few other kids, even the adults he sometimes spoke with, liked to put things in their mouths. He didn't, he hardly put even food in there, but safety, the nurses said.

Shot two – the mess of it all. Ben, you know better than this, put it all away and then come with us, you can see your friends later. You'll see them again, Ben, just pick these things up and come with us.

Shot three – It was just too much for him. Too much in such a small space. It reminded him of nothing but chaos and a train wreck combined with the nightmares about dying on the operating table. The helicopter crashes. The power fails. the prisoners are free and theres nowhere to go

Ben was suddenly brought to a crashing halt when he felt thick arms wrap around him and stop him in his tracks.

He froze up, and grew limp, the person holding him up.

For just a moment, hallelujah, praise the Lord Almighty, he knew that the nurses had come for him, they'd come to take him back home, and he wanted to turn about and cry into the nameless man's blue uniform. The man would restrain him, and take him back to his bed, but the restraining would be like a hug, to him. Nice and warm, and with people he trusted.

So he went limp. Fell to the floor, and expected the inhumanly strong hospital man to hoist him up and carry him back to the waiting nurses, asking him if he wanted a sedative (they disguised it as food, but he knew, he'd seen too much, he'd known too much) and he'd happily say, "Yes, I do, thank you very much, I do want your magic-making knock-out drug, yessir, branded from the finest form of Secure+Capture resourses."

He bitterly crushed by the sight of the man's, no, the real man's, the bad man's, sleeves, and heard the sound of the woman's distressed voice. And all he could think of was confusion, hatred, anger, and nothing but unnerved insanity that made him sane all the more.

They talked things out. They always did. They had to, but he still liked it better when the nurses did it. These people didn't do it right. They were too quick to jump out and grab him, the nurses kept their distance until Ben said that he wanted to get close.

But these people had no respect, and that was why he was angry.

They were asinine. Utterly stupid, dumber than Mattsi, and that was saying something. Even Mattsi, who thrived on things like food and toys and being unexpectedly hugged and grabbed like he was wasn't as stupid or inane as they were.

He tried going back over to Brendol's. It was much better there, and he liked Brendol better.

The man and the woman wouldn't let him.

There was a lot of screaming, crying and maybe frantic pacing from both the man and the woman before the problem was pinpointed, and finally the stupid man took all his stupid toys and brought them somewhere where Ben couldn't see them.

He didn't want that, he wanted to go home.

He voiced this too, but then they where both crying and now he really wanted to go over to Brendol's. He never did this. He could tell Brendol that he wanted to go home, and Brendol would say "go for it."

They talked over soup. Tomato soup.

Ben insisted. He said that it was Saturday, the day that they got soup.

The man said otherwise. That he could have whatever he wanted.

Ben cried.

Soup it was.

There was no choice back at the hospital, and Ben knew that he'd be damned if that was going to change. Nurses or no nurses, somebody was going to keep the God-damned peace in this place, and apparently it had to be him.

That meant schedule was to be followed. Maybe they would get the point and send him back to the hospital. Send him back home. Home, where he could help Mattsi eat his soup, and watch the other people eat theirs. Either that, or leftover pizza from Friday.

"Do you like soup?" The woman asked him as he ate.

"Not really." He said, but didn't bother to look at her. It wasn't a serious question, and it was just something that one of his fellow patients at the Ward would say. The nurses would say that he needed to give them his full attention too, but he couldn't be bothered.

"Then why did you want it so badly?" She asked, and he glared at his soup.

"Because today is soup day. We eat soup on soup day. Got it?" He asked, and there was a silence.

This quiet he liked a lot, until the woman decided to talk again. "What other days are there?" She asked. Seemingly polite conversation.

"You'll see when we get there."

And that was that.