XXXVIII: Fairfield Memorial Hospital - Independence, California.

Soran Faerber, 19
Applicant #8

Everything is white again.

It's different, this time. Foggier. Thicker.

And everything is moving at an odd pace. His brain... is his brain even working? It has to be, if he's having any sort of halfway coherent thoughts. He's not sure anything else is, though. His entire body feels weighed down, a heavy pressure stretching out and down each of his limbs. He can barely feel them as is; there's no telling if they're even there.

The only thing he can feel, without fail, is his heart steadily chugging it's way up to the bottom of his throat as it tries and fails to find reasoning for any of it.

And one thing he can hear, too, a horrifically loud beeping that's worming it's way directly into the his ears.

"Hey, hey," a voice says, and he hates how instantaneously he recognizes it. "It's alright. If you're awake, just— just try and calm down, you're okay."

Fat fucking chance of that happening, and what does Icarus think, that his voice is going to help? His voice has done nothing but stress him out since the minute Soran met him.

His eyes feel like they're glued shut. He knows without trying that even if he even attempts to open his mouth not a single word will come out; his throat feels like sandpaper. There's something plastic-like digging into his cheek just enough to set his nerves alight, the pressure edging up against his nose. He knows what it is before he can get a hand up to feel it, which is good because it takes ages and he moves it three whole inches before Icarus grabs him and holds him still.

"Quit moving. I don't want you to re-injure yourself all over again."

He cracks opens his eyes, and it burns. It's too bright. He closes them again before he can get a good look at any of his surroundings, just more white.

It almost looks like a hospital, but that doesn't make sense. It would explain the tubes leading into his nose.

He tries to look again, and it hurts just a fraction less. Everything's swimming. He'd say Icarus is actively helicopter parenting him but he can't really tell because it feels like he's looking right through him, his outline blurry and wavering with every passing second.

"Are you in a lot of pain?"

He can wiggle his toes, on further inspection. It takes more effort than he'd like to admit. His entire right side is just numb, and his wrist down on the left side feels even worse. His chest, when he breathes, twinges with a familiar ache that he remembers from before...

He has no recollection of what happened before.

"What?" he croaks, finally, the word dragged out like a nail.

"I can go get someone."

Icarus offers, but doesn't. He's still holding Soran's hand, which seems to be a reoccurring thing, and he hears a scrape along the floor before Icarus disappears for a moment, reappearing a few feet lower, sitting down next to him. He's laying down. He can barely move his fucking neck.

"We're in a hospital," Icarus explains. "In California. Not far from where they were keeping us. We've been here for three days."

He doesn't remember those three days, doesn't remember the time immediately before that. Just a vague, important urge to feel something but not having the energy to. Trying to breathe, but not...

It finally hits him, above everything else.

"Did I—?"

Icarus looks very fucking distraught, something he realizes gradually as his vision filters back in. Face turned down, eyebrows knitted together in concern. It's a look he's actually come to associate with him.

"Yeah," he says hoarsely. "Yeah, you did. Tarquin and I left. We got help, sort of. Help found us. We got back and you were just... gone. For at least a few minutes, until we got you back. The second we got here they put you in surgery to screw two of your ribs back together because they fucking shattered while we were doing CPR. Up until yesterday you had a tube sticking out of your chest to drain the fluid buildup that had acquired because of the hole in your lung that stretched from here to kingdom fucking come, apparently."

There's a few more words, after that. He sounds like he's on the verge of a lengthy breakdown, which is what Soran chooses to focus on in that moment instead of whatever he's rambling on about. He just looks sort of manic - there are still enough cuts and bruises scattered across his face to make it even worse.

He can't even imagine what his own face looks like.

"You just ignored everything I said, didn't you?" Icarus accuses, but instead of looking annoyed he just looks exhausted.

Well, same.

"Not all of it," he answers. Icarus stands up, doing so with an ease that doesn't match how he was walking before. Soran knows something was wrong, just not what. He stretches out his fingers the second he lets go of them. Despite the numbness they don't seem to come back to life like he would expect them to.

"My hand is numb," he informs him, plainly, and Icarus grabs it again to turn it over, like he hasn't stared at it a hundred times while Soran's been out.

He knows he has.

"Nerve damage," Icarus says. "That's what they said anyway. From the bracelet, or from me nearly hacking your hand off to get rid of it. They said it could heal fine, if you give it time."

"Could."

"Yeah," he says quietly. "Guess you'll have to learn to be right-handed like the rest of us."

"Fuckin' boring," he mumbles, letting his head droop to the side. The tubes are digging into his neck, now, the skin there still tender and pulsating. He's not sure what position is worse. Everything hurts, in a distant way that doesn't require true agony but that's just present enough to be well and truly irritating. "Why are we here?"

"Are you actually going to listen to me?"

He shrugs, quickly proven to be a mistake. More pain crawls back up his side all the way to his shoulder and stays there.

"Sit still first," Icarus says, leaning up against the railings at the side of the bed. "You know Ferrox and Cambria Mervaine? They're the ones that showed up. You'd be dead if they hadn't. Hell, we probably all would. They got us out and they've been here every day since we arrived. The President knows we're alive; most of his inner circle too, I guess. He sent a group down here to make sure it was the truth, but besides that no one else knows except the people at the station and the doctors and nurses here. The ward's been locked down since we got here."

"What group?"

"Representatives, I guess." Icarus shrugs, too, and examines where he's holding onto the railing more intently than necessary before he meets Soran's eyes. Whatever was in them before is gone by the time he looks up.

He can see him caving, though, second by second. It would be sort of funny to watch it happen if his whole body didn't ache.

"If she's here—"

"She is."

"I don't want her in here."

"Well, I'm sorry to say you don't exactly have much power over that matter, and neither do I," Icarus snaps. "She's here, what the fuck do you want me to do? I'm not her handler. I can't tell her where she can and can't go. I can't watch you twenty-four-fucking-seven to make sure she doesn't come in here - I've tried! They keep fucking dragging me out to give me injections so I can walk and giving me meds and food, God forbid I fucking eat—

"Stop," he says quietly. He'd, you know, reach a hand up and cover his mouth, but he can't really do that. Why does he even fucking need two IVs in his arm? Isn't two a bit overkill?

Maybe he does need them, because he's already exhausted all over again.

"I hate being here," Icarus says. "I fucking hate it. I didn't want to be in a fucking hospital all over again."

He can't be faulted for not thinking that way, not with how slow his brain is processing. He gets it then, finally.

"I'm not dead, you know," he tells him.

"You were, though," Icarus reminds him. "You fucking were."

It feels like he was, weirdly enough. His body is about ready to give up on him again; he'd be convinced his heart was, too, if he couldn't hear it beeping regularly on the monitor somewhere behind him.

"I'm not gonna fight your sister if she wants in here. Just pretend you're sleeping."

"It's not gonna be pretend," he mumbles. His eyes are already halfway there. The drugs may not be getting rid of all the pain, but they're definitely reducing his willpower to stay awake. Icarus looks back at him, reaching over the railing to squeeze his hand. He can't feel it as much as before.

"Go to sleep. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Where?" he asks, hoping the single word conveys what he's asking. It might, but he doesn't know, and it doesn't really matter anyway. Icarus says nothing when he lets go of his hand; his eyes are already closed by the time he hears the door click open and shut again.

He wishes he could do something, say something. Anything.

He can't, but he wishes he could.

Emmi Langlois, 17
Applicant #13

She turns the corner away from her sort-of room and finds Icarus crying in the main hall.

It's not the most surprising thing she's ever seen in her life.

It is, however, slightly concerning. He's hunched over no more than two feet away from the door and ignores her entirely when she nearly nudges him out of the way, slipper and all, to get a good peak into the room. It definitely looks like Soran hasn't gone and died all over again, at least according to the monitor. Hopefully if it had happened again he wouldn't just be on the floor crying.

She crouches down next to him. "Rough day?"

Try rough few weeks, really, but there's not much they can do about that.

"You know, I cried in the shower yesterday," she tells him. "First shower they let me have and I just started crying. Wasn't even thinking about anything in particular."

He nods, or at least she thinks he does. It's hard to tell when his entire upper body is shaking. It's not entirely the truth, either. She wasn't thinking about anything in particular but rather a lot all at once. It was the first time she had been properly left alone with the door locked behind her, watching the pink-tinged water swirl down the drain.

It had been easier than she would've liked to cry her eyes out. It's probably something they're all going to have to do, though, at one point or another. It's inevitable.

"He woke up," Icarus explains.

"Oh," she says slowly. "That's good? How is he?"

"I should've went and got a doctor, or something. He's in pain still, I think, he needs more—"

"Alright," she interrupts, getting back to her feet. "Calm down, I'll go get someone. You just stay here and do... whatever it is you were doing."

Letting it all out, finally, and not caring about the repercussions of it. There's almost no one around to see it. The front desk area is around the corner, although there's a little cozy sitting area too. There's been half a dozen people in and out of it for the past three days, the group from the Capitol. And Pandora Quinn, right now, eyeballing the two of them in a way that doesn't exactly scream subtlety.

"Does she know?" Emmi asks, finally nudging him. He looks up.

"Well, none of us have told her?"

"He told the guard at the station though, did he not? They probably told her."

Pandora must sense that something's up, if not what exactly. She gets to her feet before Emmi's eyes, painfully slow, as if unsure of the movement.

"If you don't want to talk to her in this state I suggest fleeing the premises," she recommends. Icarus lifts an arm up without looking to wiggle the door handle until it pops open again, and then scoots back without lifting himself from the floor all the way into the room, until he can shut the door again.

That doesn't deter Pandora in the slightest. She keeps on walking until she's only a few feet away and only then do her footsteps slow, incrementally.

Oh, they've got people afraid now. This is sort of funny.

She's seen Pandora a few times, all through a screen. In photographs or on a news broadcast. She never looked so small as she really does; she's barely cresting five feet and is slight of frame, like a stiff breeze could take her away. She realizes, with a sort of hilarity, that even Ria doesn't look so fragile. Or maybe she just doesn't think of her that way anymore.

"Do you know?" she asks, and Pandora's feet finally come to a halt, leaving one very wide foot of space between them.

"Know what?"

She raises an eyebrow. Pandora looks slightly troubled and her eyes flick to the door more than once, as if she wants in. She'd have to barrel through Emmi to get there.

It's a good thing her stomach doesn't hurt so much anymore.

"The guard told me."

"Do you believe him?"

"I don't need to," Pandora says. "I asked my mother. She's good at knowing things. Not so good at choosing to share them."

She blinks. "Your mother knew?"

"If I knew my father, him getting sent away along with his mother was more her doing than his. But it's not like I can ask him."

Carnelia put a bullet in Renatus Quinn's head nine years ago, and Soran crashed their car and effectively ended her for good. She hasn't felt the urge to laugh in days, longer than that, but it almost bubbles up then.

What goes around comes around, she guesses.

Pandora's eyes trail to the door once again and stay there. Emmi can see hardly nothing at all from this angle, and she has no doubt that Pandora's view is even lesser. She never got the privilege of a sibling, not even the promise of one. Her mother was too sick when she was younger to think about it, her father too heartbroken after it to move on and consider it.

It's hard to understand those feelings when you've never been privy to having them.

"They also told me that his heart stopped," Pandora says. "That it was really bad."

"Bad is a word people use if they weren't there," she responds. "I'd use nightmare."

That's what all of this has always felt like - a fucking nightmare, one that she keeps waiting to wake up from. Sometimes she thinks she died when she fell off that cliff and is stuck in some sort of hellish in-between, trying to convince her brain that things can and will get better. She wouldn't have had to kill anyone that way. She wouldn't have had to suffer.

She wouldn't still be suffering right now.

"Are you okay?" Pandora asks. Her hand twitches, like she wants to step forward and grab onto Emmi's arm, offer some form of comfort. "Are you—"

"You don't have to pretend to care about the rest of us."

"I do," Pandora insists. "It's not just about him. I asked the President's permission to come before I even found out. Of course... of course that complicates things, but it's not that. This is all my fault. I was the deciding vote. If I had voted no none of you would have been out there - none of this would have happened. You'd be safe."

"Are you saying we're not safe?"

"I'm going to make sure you are."

It actually sounds like a promise, voice a level higher and a shade more determined. Her voice is too big for her body.

Maybe that's something they need.

"They told you everything?" she asks. "Everything?"

"Everything."

"And that doesn't change anything for you?"

They're not victors - they're fucking murderers. This wasn't about some sort of grand prize, some sort of scheduled yearly event. They got locked into a more terrible version of the bloodsport that raised them and made it even worse.

Pandora looked scared before, but now Emmi's beginning to doubt the source of it. There's no fear when they lock eyes, when Pandora shakes her head.

Emmi's scared of this place, of the threat of something else happening. Of the future.

And Pandora almost looks like she's afraid of the same thing.

Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17

Ria was eleven the last time she was in a hospital.

Her grandmother, her only surviving one, died three days before her birthday. It was a cold, cold day in February and her parents had been in the room when it happened. She had been in the closest waiting room, trying to put together a puzzle meant for five year olds. She hadn't figured it out before it happened.

After the fact, her father had asked her if she wanted to see her one last time. Hug her, kiss her cheek, say anything.

She hadn't.

And it sort of feels like that now, except her parents aren't coming to collect her and her grandmother isn't dead in a room down the hall. There aren't any toys or puzzles. Not even a magazine.

There's just a nurse doing some paperwork behind the front desk, and he's occasionally looking at her like she's about to shoot up the place.

She has half a mind to go off in search of Tarquin, but if he's not with her he's usually off with a doctor or napping. Both things he's earned.

There's nothing to do here. Nothing to take her mind off the numerous things swirling around in it like someone walked one too many laps around the pool that is her brain. It's a repeating process. Remember this person you killed? Remember this thing you stood by and watched? Remember trying to avoid the sight of your own blood? And boy, does she remember.

"Isperia, correct?"

She pulls herself slightly out of the chair she's nestled into but goes no further. Her legs are staying curled up here for the next century if she has any choice in the matter. One of the women that's been wandering around here the past few days is hovering over her, although she's not the most imposing. Her eyes are very kind. Kinder than most things Ria's seen lately.

She nods, and the woman smiles. "Do you need anything?"

Lots of things, really, but she shakes her head this time. "Who are you?"

"Eriska Maclain. Eriska is fine though, dear. Do you mind if I sit? I have a few emails to check over."

She nods, which is apparently all she can do. Eriska takes a seat in a similar chair two over, not too close to her, and gets to work tapping away at her tablet, otherwise silent. Ria's seen her a lot these past few days, off with Pandora, and neither of them have done anything obviously offensive that she's aware of. And Eriska isn't bugging her now, though she certainly could. It's not like Ria has anywhere to run to where someone couldn't find her.

It doesn't take very long for someone else to show up, though, and this time there's two of them to make up for it. They don't attempt to hide their rather obvious path, making it clear that they're coming towards her, for her, long before they get there.

When they do she regrets the few seconds she had to take off.

The woman sticks her hand straight out, a mere few inches from hitting her in the chest. "Eleine Tarigan. Nice to meet you. This is my associate, Andere Vukovic. We'd like to ask you a few questions if you have the time."

She has the time, but doesn't want to. There's a big difference. Eriska looks up, eyes skimming briefly over the two newcomers, and her kind eyes morph into something else. Maybe not so kind to them.

Ria hasn't given a yes or no either way, but that doesn't deter Eleine. "We're aware that there's five of you here - are you certain beyond a doubt that the other nineteen applicants didn't survive?"

She blinks, imagining that her eyes appear quite owl-like. "I— yes?"

"And the supposed Sentinels, you say? How many of them were there? Are you certain that they're all dead as well?"

Which of those is she supposed to answer first? Do they want them both together? She can't remember for the life of her how many there were. She has no clue if there are more out there, lurking, that she has no idea about. She's not sure if Eriska looks genuinely curious herself or progressively more annoyed by the minute, although she'd bet on the latter. No one should be curious about that, really.

"Miss Martorell," Andere picks up. His glasses make his eyes look impossibly huge, sort of like a fish. "There's been a patrol searching for the bodies these past three days, but they haven't been able to... find them all. Would you know—"

"That'll be quite enough, thank-you," Eriska interrupts, and she closes the case to her tablet with a snap.

"But—"

"Thank-you, Miss Tarigan. You too, Mr. Vukovic."

Ria's aware of the fact that she's said two words this entire time, but that may be because nothing else is coming to mind. They can't find all the bodies. How many are missing? Did whoever shot Mel come back for him, after she killed him? How are they even supposed to know?

Eleine smiles, a spectacularly plastic looking thing, and gives a curt nod before she click-clacks her way back down the all. Andere stares at her for a moment longer with his weird fishy eyes before he follows.

Without realizing it Eriska has stepped to her side yet again, and lays a hand on her arm, silently.

"How many?" she asks thickly.

"Three. It was five, yesterday, but forensics identified two more bodies that they picked up. Burned beyond recognition."

She swallows the sob. She knew— she knew Caiman never made it out of there, stared back at the smoke even while she got dragged away from it, but Jay...

How can she even still be called a human being after what she did to Jay, after she destroyed him?

"Who else?"

"Meliodas Vergara. And both of the Westmorelands."

She presses her hands into her eyes but the burn only intensifies, and if she drops her hands she's going to start crying all over again. How she hasn't run dry is beyond her.

"I don't know," she says weakly. "I don't—"

"It's alright," Eriska says, squeezing her arm. "You don't have to. You don't have to answer any questions coming from strangers, either. In fact, I'd recommend not. Decide who you trust before you start telling them anything."

People are going to want answers - it's only natural. These people were clearly sent here as part of the group the President put together; they're allowed to be here, allowed to roam around and harass them and get the answers the whole country will want, shortly. She may be able to stay silent now but that's not going to work forever, much as she wishes it would.

It's the only thing that feels good right now, along with being alive in the first place. Being able to keep quiet.

It's not going to last, though.

Nothing is.

And after a brief lull (yes that's what we're calling it) we'll start getting back into things. About time.

I attempted to edit this with the most delirious of head colds in the world so we're just gonna ignore that and take some pity on me. Or hope I die whatever happens first.

Until next time.