Ok, here's the thing. Whist lost last round (understandably, my opponent was high class) so the official story is Roku actually realized what Blink was doing just in time, avoided the touch, and then finished off Whist and Zoro quickly before the dog could try again. I'm writing this interlude from that point on.
Whist opened his eyes slowly, wincing and moaning as the battle caught up to him. He sat up slowly, finding himself in an infirmary, with Zoro on the bed nearby. The room was a huge, utilitarian affair, with plain white walls and linoleum floor, with a bleach-white cot every ten feet along the wall; a good several of which also held the losers of the last round. The light from the windows that lined the opposite wall was diffused through the entire room by the dull reflection of the waxed floor, giving it a gloomy afternoon feel. Blink dozed at the foot of his bed, and with a small smile Whist leaned forward to scratch behind his companion's ears. He may have lost the fight, but he felt a far more important victory had been won. Blink opened his eyes for a moment, whuffed happily and then snuggled closer to Whist. As Whist gave Blink an affectionate rub-down his mind wandered over the battle, and slowly settled on the memory of Li'ain, standing on that ledge watching him coldly—he wondered if she had worried about him at all after he passed out. He scoffed and shook his head. It didn't matter anyway, he didn't need her, he would just shrug her off his back and head out on his own once this was all over anyway. But then…it was all over now, wasn't it? He didn't have a shot at the prize money or the wish anymore, and that was the only reason he was fighting to begin with.
"What do you think Blink?" Whist said. "Time to call it a day? Let our next opponent have an easy round and leave this god-forsaken tournament?"
Blink grumbled uncertainly and Whist sighed deeply, wrapping his arms around the dog's bulky hide in a bear hug.
"Yeah…I don't know either."
He heard a moan and looked over to see Zoro stirring in the next bed, he sat up as well, and Whist was glad to see that Zoro was as magically healed as he was, and Whist for a brief moment wondered how that kind of healing was possible. But he discarded the wonder from his mind almost immediately, he was no stranger to surreal things, he merely shrugged it off as yet another one of them.
"How ya feeling?" Whist asked.
Zoro grimaced and rubbed his forehead. "Like I got hit in the head with a canon ball." He said, obviously still feeling the internal effects of the battle, much like Whist. "What about you?"
Whist shrugged. "I've had worse…much worse."
Zoro nodded. "Not a bad set up they've got here, eh?"
Whist shrugged again, truly apathetic about the wonders of their magical technology. "I s'pose…hey, listen—"
"If you're gonna give me some crap about apologizing for the way the battle turned out, don't even start. It was a good fight, but that guy is just way too powerful, we were lucky do as well as we did."
Whist raised his eyebrows. "Hell no I wasn't gonna apologize. I came the closest to actually winning that fight anyhow."
Zoro stared at him a moment, and then burst out laughing, prompting Blink to join the ruckus with howls and barks of his own. Whist smiled and leaned back, waiting calmly until a nurse came in a shouted at Zoro and the Blink to stop disturbing the other patients or she would hang them both upside down over the vat of angry narwals in the aquarium. She was a formidable woman, being a demon made of wood and rock as she was, and the trouble-makers grudgingly obeyed.
"What I was gonna say," Whist said, after she had left. "Was thank you. And before you give me any 'aww you shouldn't have' crap you better know that I don't hand out phrases like that lightly, so you damn well better appreciate it."
Zoro turned so he sat with his feet dangling over the side of his bed, looking at Whist curiously. "What're you thanking me for?"
Whist laughed softly, shaking his head at himself. "For having some damned common sense, and letting me borrow it for a while."
Zoro nodded slowly, taking in Whist's statement with a small smile. "Anytime."
Zoro left the hospital soon after, but Whist was asked to remain for a short while, until they could be sure there was no mental damage done from his encounter with Sylar. Whist waited patiently, being exhausted as he was, and in no hurry to get back into action, and let the nurses run their strange devices by his head and scribble on their clipboards, and murmur things about how his brainwaves were very strange and hard to read and then shuffle off to examine the results of whatever odd test they had just conducted. Whist accepted the ensuing boredom with a heavy sigh, letting the moment of calm seep into his bones and restore him. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, one hand still scratching Blink's ruff, half-dozing but keeping his ears alert for the nurse's return and any further announcements about the tournament. There was talk of Kyuubi and Orochimaru whispered from every mouth as the other patients were visited and talked amongst themselves. Whist had not yet met either of the demonic creatures being discussed, but the more he heard, the more he considered it a blessing. As was, he realized, the fact that Roku had not caused him a hell of a lot more damage. Besides the evil rage of Kyuubi, nothing was more common chatter than the man who posed probably Kyuubi's only real threat. As he heard talk of people with strange powers even he hadn't heard of and the reputed power of gods, he began to realize just how big this thing actually was, and how much more intense the next round was likely to be. Running away and cutting his losses was sounding better and better.
He heard heels clicking by briskly, and opened one eye to watch Massie Block, with bruises still showing on the exposed skin of her midriff and shoulder, stalk by with her nose in the air and her leering gaze cast sideways at Whist. Whist smirked and blew her a kiss, to which she rolled her eyes, made an exaggerated gagging motion, and stormed out. His little scare-tactic hadn't worked at all; her ego had recovered quite nicely. Li'ain didn't have to throw such a fit after all.
Speak of the devil… Whist though, as Li'ain crossed paths with Massie at the door, and stepped inside the infirmary. She looked around briefly, but Whist was never hard to pick out, and she walked over to him briskly, her expression stony. Whist felt his amused smirk fade instantly into a scowl as she approached his bedside, stopping rigidly at his shoulder and looking him over with cold consideration.
"You lost…" She said, blankly.
Whist laughed without smiling, narrowing his eyes at her. "I'm so sorry I don't have the arsenal to defeat a guy with the fucking planet on his side. Next time I'll be sure to keep my store of infinite power on hand."
Li'ain stared at the floor, her jaw tense, her eyes lackluster. Whist rolled his eyes and folded his arms as Blink whimpered pleadingly, moving his morose gaze from Li'ain to his sulking master.
"I figured you never wanted to see my face again. What the hell brings you here?" Whist asked, tilting his head curiously, wondering if he could make eye contact, stare her down. She was purposefully avoiding his gaze, glancing downwards at an angle towards the shining linoleum. The fuzzy reflection of sunlight limned the curves of her cheekbones and the slender slope of her nose, and not for the first time Whist was struck by how, even in the most frustrating of conflicts, she had a cold poise that was hauntingly beautiful. It made him even angrier, to have his thoughts wander down that path, and just the plain fact that she was lovely irritated him on some childish level.
"If it's any comfort to you, I won't make you stick around." Whist grumbled, looking away finally. "I'm sure you can find a job in this massive place."
"I just…wanted us to get the money," Li'ain sighed. "I wanted us to have the chance to start something really worthwhile…"
Whist straightened. "Excuse me? Us? Li'ain, I don't know what misconceptions you've got about me, but there was never any us. We were two separate people doing our own thing for own gains. That was always the agreement, and I am truly sorry if the past few months have made you feel like anything else was building there."
Li'ain looked up at him, her lips poised to spit a curse, but instead trembling silently, the rest of her face as stone cold as ever. For a moment, her eyes sharpened, and then she loosened her tense shoulders and turned on her heel to stalk away.
"Hey!" Whist called after her, and she paused but didn't look back. "If you're gonna keep making a big show of storming out like that, don't bother coming by at all from here on. We on our own paths now, I'd prefer it if they stopped crossing."
Li'ain took another step forward, and then turned halfway, looking back at him with a blank stare. "That's fine, Whist. You can go on and scurry back to some rat-hole and keep living life in your own way. You never change. You make no great success or failure you just keep surviving right? Go on, drop out, your other opponents will be better off for never knowing you."
Whist leapt from his bed, and would have jumped at Li'ain had Blink not bitten his hand with just enough force to keep him there and bring back some sense. Whist and Li'ain held each other's gaze unblinkingly, chilling hatred seething from both parties, locked in a staring contest that expressed on some animal level the emotional rage their words were not expressing. Finally Whist scoffed and sat back on his bed, folding his arms and grinding his teeth so fiercely it could clearly be heard through the room.
"I'm staying in this tournament Li'ain. And just you watch, I won't lose again." He hissed.
Li'ain shrugged. "As you will." She said coolly, and was gone.
Whist lay back down, and he got the distinct impression he had flunked an important lesson somewhere within that conversation.