By Ktrenal
Chapter Fourteen - Well-Earned Rest
Around him shone silver and brilliant white, the clean walls reflecting the light in a manner that seemed almost holy, something that to him seemed more than a little unnatural, although for the time being he simply accepted it. The scene was, of course, familiar enough, since he knew well the kind of setting a hospital set, and even the shining light around him couldn't disguise that. The sparkling, sterile corridors that stretched away both before and behind him were deserted however, no movement whatsoever.
He could, however, hear the typical sounds he associated with such a place; the rhythmic beeping of life support machines, the low speech of doctors that seemed to him more a gentle humming as thousands of words mingled together, creating the overall impression of speech but revealing to him no information. There were other noises too, the rattling of wheels as beds were rolled down distant corridors, the murmurs of pained patients, and on it went to form a solid background clamour that nevertheless seemed not to touch the empty passage where he stood.
He chose to ignore it, and began walking down the desolate corridor, feeling somewhat like a dark blot in the midst of all this shining brightness. The passage appeared to lead somewhere particular, maintaining a perfectly straight course, but also seeming to bend and curve in a manner that was truly disconcerting. Looking into the distance, he could clearly see the corridor curving away to the left, and yet as he walked the path continued straight on.
On and on it went, perfectly and completely straight, regardless of the direction it seemed to twist in the distance; to the left or right, up or down, or a combination of directions. On one occasion, the corridor appeared even to turn a corkscrew, and yet as he walked the path it remained level and even. It was, to say the least, a little worrying, although perhaps less so than the concern about the length of this seemingly eternal hallway. Despite the beautiful light glowing around him, he almost felt that the word 'ominous' was appropriate, although he wasn't entirely certain why.
Soon enough, however, the corridor lead into an open space, a shining imitation of the hospital's lobby, but like the passageway, it too was deserted, or at least it was at a first look. After a moment he saw the room's only inhabitant, a little girl sitting on her own, playing with a doll. The girl was young, perhaps four or five, with light golden hair that fell about her shoulders in delicate ringlets, and intense, but beautiful, blue eyes. She seemed engrossed in her game with the doll, and so it was several moments before she happened to look up and turn her ethereal azure gaze towards him.
"You still don't understand. Go outside, and see," she told him, and then turned her attention once more to the doll she held cradled in her lap, caring for it as a mother would a young baby.
He frowned, confused even about what it was he was supposed to understand, and with the utmost optimism for some kind of explanation, he padded towards the broad doorway, watching as the crystal clear glass doors slid aside to allow him to pass.
The world outside the glowing hospital was much darker, although the immediate area was still bright and clean. It was further into the distance, where dark clouds hung low against the jagged city horizon, thunder rolling ominously in the air. There was a red glow from that direction also, highlighting the rectangular shapes of the buildings, and radiating a subtle evil and darkness that he couldn't quite define beyond the most basic of instincts. A crack of red lightning shot across the sky, and the shadows seemed to enhance, creeping closer towards the brilliant silver building from which he'd come. It was followed barely a moment later by the eerie rumble, indicating the dark storm on the horizon was approaching; slowly, but nevertheless it was coming.
He retreated into the hospital once more, and looked towards the girl, who paid no heed to his return. She was humming softly to herself, rocking the doll gently in her arms. Even as he watched her, a familiar shape fluttered towards her, hovering for a moment in front of her. She looked up, and smiled at the silver and purple butterfly, before turning her gaze to him.
"You still don't understand, do you? It's all in your mind, waiting for you to realise it, but you won't. We can show you the way, but you have to walk the path yourself. Before it's too late. You have to understand," she told him, her soft voice sounding strange as she spoke so intensely.
What was he supposed to understand?
The words formed in his mind, and for now he didn't need to speak them aloud. The thought was enough to convey his meaning across, and enough to cause the girl to frown in confusion, and look questioningly towards the butterfly. The fluttering silver form remained in front of her for a moment, before disappearing into a small wisp of silver smoke that rapidly diminished in the glow of the lobby.
In response to this, the girl looked over towards him, and gave him a pleasant smile, before shrugging and disappearing as well, leaving him standing alone in the midst of his own confusion. There seemed to be an expectation of him, but for what he couldn't fathom. It was perfectly correct that he didn't understand, but he felt almost that these cryptic messages would help him none at all.
The sounds that had filled his hearing in the shining silver hospital intensified, and cleared, allowing him to discern individual sounds from the background clamour that he'd practically ignored up until now. But now the sounds seemed louder, and more insistent, surrounding him from all sides, and seeming to close in on him, echoing through the darkness around him.
It was almost irritating, being in such a loud environment when he really wished quiet to think, and to rest, too. It was with dull realisation that he felt the exhaustion of his own body, muscles strained to the breaking point where they complained weakly at the slightest movement, the slightest bit of tension brought about by his response to the sound around him. He could think of only one thing to say to this, and he voiced it in a gentle groan.
Opening his eyes seemed a little too much work for him, his eyelids feeling heavy and tired, and a return to sleep, regardless of the dream sequences he experienced, felt like the most sensible course of action. He lay on his back, however, a position he rarely found comfortable for sleeping, and so he forced his aching body to move enough to let him roll over onto one side.
The sudden pain of that movement jerked him more fully awake, realising that the pressure on his injured chest was too great for him to lie on his side, and something had also pulled at his arm as he moved. Forcing his eyes open, he soon identified it as the drip that had been attached to him. He knew the purpose of these were multiple; to keep him from dehydrating, and to keep a constant supply of various drugs travelling slowly into his system. These probably included antibiotics, painkillers, and likely some anesthesia, judging by how tired he felt now.
With the realisation that moving hurt a bit more than was strictly tolerable, he lay still, letting his eyes do all the moving necessary to take in his situation. He was, most definitely, in the hospital, although fortunately he'd been given his own room. That wasn't common for medical centres of his time, simply because of the lack of funds. Only the richest people, or the most valuable in the case of the Turks, had access to private rooms. But it seemed far more effort was put into the hospitals of this time; they actually cared about people here.
Talking of which, there should be someone around to pay lots of attention to him, seeing as he was the seriously injured guy that had wandered in off the streets. He cast his gaze around by the sides of the bed, searching for the call button he knew had to be around somewhere, and when he found it, he gave the button one gentle tap, just enough to alert whoever was on the other end that he was awake and would like some company.
Almost as if she'd been waiting right outside the grey metal door, a nurse entered almost immediately, bouncing in her step, and smiling at him in a warm, amiable manner, so that he couldn't help but smile back. She approached the bed, and studied the clip-board attached to the end. "Well, Mr. Fletcher, it seems you're awake. How are you feeling?"
"Tired, still... how long was I out?" Reno asked, only just remembering that he had in fact given them his true name, simply because he hadn't been in any state to lie convincingly.
"Five days, and you were in surgery for three hours," the nurse replied as she began checking him over. "I would say you need more rest, but I suspect you'd rather eat something first?" she asked him, once again flashing him a warm smile.
"Yeah, that would be great," Reno replied, although he couldn't help but wonder what the food here was like. Typically hospital food was worse than disgusting, and so he usually refused to eat it. There had been a couple of times, during longs terms in hospital while serious injuries healed, that he'd very nearly starved to death, before Tseng and Rude had given in and brought him real food. The red-head's ability to be stubborn was endless, when he chose to be, which was, of course, part of the reason why he was so used to getting his way all the time.
But chances were, food here would, at the very least, be edible; after all, these were nice people. Nice people made nice food, and wouldn't make him eat something that tasted worse than Mako waste from the Reactors, and probably less nutritious. Of course, Reno had, on one occasion in response to a dare, actually eaten Mako. Or drank it, as the case may be, although it wasn't quite either. It had been rather gelatinous by the time he'd got to it. And so, of anyone in the world, he was the most qualified to compare hospital food to Mako.
The nurse nodded, and retreated from the room, returning a few moments later with another woman pushing a heavy service trolley which, in theory, contained the food, and likely something more interesting than water to drink. He very much doubted that beer would be an option, but then he wasn't quite in the mood for alcohol anyway. That was the problem with being injured; it was something of a mood killer for him, and it took all the joy out of drinking.
Still, the contents of the trolley actually smelled pretty good, and the woman pushing it offered him a choice of several different meals. He really could get used to service like this, he reflected as he cautiously dipped a bread roll into the soup he'd decided he felt like eating. He knew from experience that after several days of not eating, his digestive system handled tamer meals more readily than those of a more interesting nature, and it was almost worrying that he'd been through enough occasions of this happening to know his own stomach so well.
As he'd expected, he discovered the food to be rather nice. Not delicious, but pleasant enough in an almost home-made manner. This was likely due to the lack of apparently nutritious additives, chemicals and preservatives he was used to receiving in practically every meal he ate, and so by comparison this thick soup had an almost wholesome, healthy taste to it.
Unfortunately, things like this wouldn't last long into the future, if the smoggy air outside the building was any indication. It was the beginning of the fall of Midgar, something that would take a slow, spiraling decline into decay over the next forty or fifty years. In time, none of the selflessness and intrinsic goodness of humanity would remain, or at least very little. Someone more compassionate than Reno might have considered this a bad thing, and something to be mourned, but the Turk himself merely accepted it as a fact of life. It wasn't in his nature to let such things touch him, even if his mind did linger over the possibilities for a while.
It was the nurse that returned his thoughts to the world outside the confines of his own head as she moved a chair in order to sit down on it, watching him with a smile and a curious look. A slight nod from Reno was all she needed to start talking, and she immediately posed the question of, "Who are you? Not your name, but who you are?"
"In what way?" he asked her between mouthfuls of his meal, being careful to eat in as polite a manner as he knew how, since the people of this time seemed to hold so much respect for civil and toned down behaviour. Reno might have found this stressful, but he was well used to covering his natural urges with actions that were significantly calmer and more controlled. Pretending to be someone he wasn't was almost a way of life, in the grand scheme of things, but that was a whole other train of thought.
"Well, you have those beautiful eyes, and you said you can do magic. Where are you from?" the nurse asked, elaborating on her original question. "And you told us when you arrived that you were travelling to Midgar. What's your purpose here?"
"I'm from Mideel, and as for why I'm here... I guess I could say it's on my way home," Reno replied, choosing his words very carefully. He was beginning to think that if he was going to be in the city for any length of time, he'd have to get his story, and his name, straight, in order to remain consistent. Multiple layers of lies would soon come back to bite him, metaphorically speaking.
"Not a very direct route, Darton to Midgar to Mideel," the nurse pointed out; evidently she had at least some knowledge of where in the world Mideel lay, and so understood that Reno's journey was very far off being a direct course towards the southern town.
"Well, I have to get some information here, although now I'm here, I don't know if I've come to the right place. Maybe you could help me with that?" Reno asked, flashing the young woman a questioning look, and a friendly smile. The kind of smile he usually used when picking up a girl in a bar; careful words and a charming smile were nearly always enough to get him what he wanted, at least from the female half of humanity.
"Oh, of course I'll help. What information are you looking for?" the nurse asked him, once again smiling at him. Reno couldn't help but wonder how much more difficult life would be if he weren't so great at making sure people gave him what he wanted. It would hardly be worth living to be someone who couldn't handle social interaction and be capable of subtly manipulating people. It was that much easier with the society of this time too, so innately trusting as they were.
"I need to find someone who knows about the Planet. You know the Planet's sort of alive, don't you? I need some information about that, and I figured that Midgar's big enough to have experts on every subject," the Turk replied, although he realised that it was entirely possible that no one here knew yet that the Planet was a living being in its own right.
"You were right, for the most part, but I've never heard of the Planet being alive before. Maybe it's one of those new sciences that everyone's talking about now. There's so many people looking at new ways of thinking, and it's almost rather worrying how everything's changing around here," she told him, and her tone of voice dropped a little, as if she didn't like speaking of the matter, but knew well enough that things were going downhill.
"You mean it used to be better than this here?" he asked carefully.
To this she gave an affirmative nod. "It's all this technology we're getting, and having so many big companies around. It's destroying the wonderful society we had a few years ago."
"And there I was thinking how nice it is here compared to what I'm used to," Reno replied, giving the girl another smile.
"I suppose you're right. I've heard a lot of stories about the people in Mideel," the nurse said with an understanding tone of voice.
He found himself wondering what these stories actually entailed, as he knew from more than enough experience that 'hearing stories' very rarely amounted to anything more than rumours dispersed by a very small minority. But then, his views were coloured by the nature of society in his own time, and he could recognise without any difficulty that this place was vastly different. As if he even needed to go over that thought in his mind yet another time.
"Perhaps you should get some more sleep," the girl suggested, evidently judging his lack of response to her words to be an indication of dropping energy levels; Reno couldn't help but feel a little irritated at his apparent weakness now, although he realised it couldn't be helped.
"Yeah, I think I will," he said quietly, watching as she nodded and took the tray with its empty bowl, plate and glass. He had to admit that the warm food had added to his slowly rising desire to sleep, and he knew full well that he needed more rest. If he was going to pull his usual action of a quick recovery from his injuries, he would require all the sleep he could get, and it was something of a matter of principle not to remain in the hospital for too long. A few days of solid rest and relaxation would help him enough to let him get out and about once more, although experience suggested that he would be somewhat below peak condition for a few weeks to come.
Not that it would matter, since it wasn't like he lead a particularly active lifestyle at home, and he certainly didn't intend to remain here any longer than he had to. As soon as he was permitted to leave the hospital, he'd be able to return to his own time, although there was a nagging thought in the back of his mind that was quietly pointing out that it wasn't as simple as that. It was the logical part of him that suggested time travel required more than simply arriving in a given location, and just because he'd reached Midgar didn't actually ensure his return to his own time.
But it was part of his mind he was doing his best to ignore, for now, if only because in the midst of various drugs from the doctors, he found his thoughts weren't exactly as clear as they should be. He could think about all these problems after some rest, he decided. For now, he was going to take advantage of the fact that he had people here, ready to wait on him hand and foot. It wasn't often he had the opportunity to benefit from such treatment, so Reno was going to make the most of it for as long as he was able to cope with prolonged inactivity; remaining cooped up in one small room had never been his idea of a good time, and he knew he'd probably become cramped and restless long before his injuries had properly healed.
Disclaimer - Once again, Reno's not mine, but pretty much everything else is. You know all this by now, right?
Author's Notes - Well, this chapter was a bit of a struggle to write, but here it is. A touch shorter than most, I think, but there we go. I didn't each achieve a whole lot, either, other than some scene setting for the society of Midgar, and such. If it counts for anything at all, I did have to start putting together a timeline to work out how the events of this story tie in with what we know from the game; it's a very scruffy timeline at the moment, though...
This chapter was beta'd by Phoenix, this time, for which I'm eternally grateful.
Oyt, and how many reviews did I get for that last chapter? I'll have to do freaky weird flash-back thingies again, I think. *snickers evilly*
Tijuana Pirate: Glad you're liking the comparisons between the past and the future; I was wondering if I wasn't going a little overboard with them, considering they seem to be a fairly continual theme throughout. There's a point to them, but even so...
WrexSoul: Poking is, as always, fully welcome, although I have to admit I seem to have lost the ability to write chapters as quickly as I did originally. Poking helps though, it really does. I had most of this chapter written by last Sunday evening, but didn't have much chance to finish it til now.
Bob The Almighty: More chapters there will be, in plenty. Glad you're enjoying the story so far.
The Burning Misery: Not too sure on that, actually; I almost think if Reno'd had a better upbringing, he might be an entirely different person. Must put that onto my list of ideas to explore once I've finished writing this story.
Sqifer-fan: Romance is one thing you'll find very rarely in my stories, simply because a romance is something that takes a long time to develop, far more time than could be well portrayed in a story; at least, that's how I see it.
Aha! And it is the return of the long author's notes... Mwahahaha!