towerofanimus | Against the brain's better judgment...

Entry tags:

Against the brain's better judgment...

Characters: Enoch and anyone (except for one where it's closed to Lucifel and maybe his roommates too)
Setting: Outside room 1-12(closed to Lucifel and maybe his roommates), Floor 2, various
Format: I'm starting in prose but I'll match!
Summary: Enoch has something to give his guardian, and then it's time for his collar checkup. And he'd been promised to have memories returned to him re: his little hiatus trip.
Warnings: Repressed memories are repressed for a reason. Maybe mentions of death, trauma, mention of suicide attempt

Dorm Floor 1

Enoch had returned here after a visit to the mail room, where he'd found two boxes of chocolate, one of them for Lucifel. Tohko sure did take easily to people...he supposed he should be glad for that much, the last thing he wanted was tension between his friends. He stopped outside the room with Lucifel's name on its plate and knocked on the door, hoping Lucifel had slept late too. He'd been either nearly missing or completely missing breakfast, himself, ever since going to Meridian...

...oh, that reminded him, he'd have to go to the infirmary for his collar checkup after this.

Infirmary

The drones had to push him out of the room. Enoch wandered back out into the waiting room, his arms folded tightly. He shook as he picked through the now perfectly clear memories. Of waking beside a corpse. Of wandering under a vileness-red sky, and burying Asato, burying Sissel, burying Ashraf and Michael, and his collapse thereafter, his empty plea to the second level, burying Armaros in the sea(and trying and failing to join him), and the moment it really dawned on him - he was utterly alone. Isolated.

He made his shaky way back to the stairs, nearly running into things and people on his way there. He didn't know where he was going, but he couldn't stand still.

Anywhere else

The tower was much larger now, but Enoch was making his aimless way up the stairs anyway. Not even his usual resting floors, the eleventh and twenty fifth, were stops. He kept his head down, his face tear-stained.

He had forgotten them for a reason. It was intensely painful, recalling those moments of discovering corpses that should not be, interring an immortal's corpse in the sea. They, especially Armaros, they were never meant to leave him, Meridian was supposed to be safe, he had been trying to keep it so. And that soul-rending pain of being utterly isolated, having no one, mortal or otherwise...

...But he had wanted to remember for a reason, hadn't he? He paused where he was on the stairs to the eighteenth floor and looked out at the tables as if he'd never seen them before. So what was important about it that he'd forgotten?

He continued to climb and reflect. And, naturally, not watch where he was going.

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And he is glad about that.

"Yes, nothing and everything."

None of them knows what it would do. Yet should it be horrible he would have to reduce the damage that might be done to the scribe.

"I...think I understand." Let it happen...well, that's what he has to do either way. Enoch looks down the hall at the elevator and starts heading towards it, used to needing to use it rather than having Lucifel around - Lucifel can follow him, teleport there himself and wait, or just catch up and teleport them both.

"That's good." Lucifel smiled at him and walked with him, wanting to do a human thing for once. He followed him the rest of the way.

Lucifel could wait with him in the waiting room, but the worker units didn't let him follow him into the examination room.

A few minutes passed. A few minutes longer than other blue-collars were taking.

Then Enoch was more or less pushed out of the waiting room, where he stood in a daze, his face pale and his eyes wide and full of tears. He took one or two faltering steps forward and went still again, arms crossed tightly and his fingers gripping his upper arms.

How come he had expected that much? Well, then he would just wait outside...

When the Archangel saw the tear stained face of the scribe he choose not to make any remarks about how it went. It was pretty obvious after all. "Enoch...?" Lucifel got up and stepped closer to the scribe.

Enoch focused on Lucifel through the haze of his tears. He opened his mouth to reply, but all that came out was a small sound, and he closed his eyes and shook his head, stepping towards Lucifel.

Hopefully this wasn't scaring the new blue-collars, but...Enoch was nowhere near in control of his emotions at the moment. Maybe they should go somewhere else.

It was probably better to get out of here as quick as possible. With a quick flick of his fingers Lucifel got them away from the infirmary, to an elevator that was close by. The last thing he needed was people staring at them like they were animals at the zoo and ask why Enoch cried or why Lucifel didn't do a thing to calm him down or comfort him.

*That would be the tower's residential elevator! They could go to the bottom of any block or to the top of the dormitories.

Enoch was just going to shuffle past that last bit of distance and lean on him.*

I remember...

Right, Enoch had said that he would have memories returned to him. But what kind of memories? Lucifel pushed a button of the elevator, waiting for it to come.

"And what exactly do you remember now?"

It might be better to wait for him to calm down, hopefully he didn't push him too much into talking about what he just experienced. Enoch already looked like he was having a breakdown.

More credit to Lucifel for letting Enoch lean on him.

"I woke...and..."

He needed a moment, burying his head against Lucifel's shoulder or neck or whatever he was able to rest it against at the moment.

Lucifel was still obviously uncomfortable with being touched by others. Right now he was barely tolerating the contact with the scribe, but endured it. He could skip forward but he had wanted to know what the other was remembering.

"Yes?"

"Armaros...everything...it was..."

...Maybe Lucifel should encourage him to wait a little. Or at least get him into the elevator as it arrives.

"Alright Enoch. Calm down, take a deep breath."

The archangel then guides him into the elevator once the doors have opened.

Enoch leans on him once again when they're in the elevator. They can go wherever Lucifel likes of the elevator's stops, since Enoch isn't paying attention. He breathes deeply, slowly, shaking.

For now, he's crying silently on his guardian, trying to keep the bile out of his throat and the strength in his legs. It hurts...

Lucifel doesn't move from his spot and pushes one of the buttons that would give them the longest ride. He would repeat doing this for as long as necessary or until the scribe wanted to leave.

But like the last time he said nothing. He knew why the human mind sometimes choose to suppress memories that would harm the psyche.

That would be going up to the top floor.

"I...when I wrote that..."

Enoch was still trying to form words from his painful thoughts...

And then probably straight back to the bottom.

Lucifel didn't speak up but listened to the other. He would wait for him to find the words he needed.

"...When I woke, it was...beside a corpse."

Enoch shivers, locks his arms around his guardian as if he would leave him too, leave him when it seemed impossible...

When the archangel was about to speak he held his words back, slightly startled by the sudden embrace. However, were Enoch to look at him, he would see that his expression hasn't changed much. It might be visible in his eyes, but that's about it.

"... A corpse?"

"Armaros..." He whispered his name through his tears. Lucifel's lack of any movement to actually help was seeing to a very slow trickle of information ~~that neither Raphael nor Naoya had to sit through~~.

"There was even...a place on his spine for his tail...it's how I knew..."

Next time Enoch plans to touch him he would like a warning. By now he should know that he wasn't good with all this comforting stuff. Being his support sure isn't a simple task.

Well, it explains what happened to the body of Armaros. However, Lucifel is still highly doubting that what Enoch has seen is real. The eyes and mind could played and bent with even more when your were at a point of desperation. To him this was such a point.

But he was hardly in the position to make Enoch see that, as the only thing that was on the other's mind at this moment was the loss of someone the scribe saw as a friend. To Lucifel, given the point of time he is from, it was merely a confirmation that the fallen angel was gone, once again.

In an attempt to calm him down and hopefully get him to let go of him, Lucifel raised a hand and slowly patted is back.

But it turned out rather awkwardly, in his opinion.

He really wasn't in a state to warn anyone. The patting, awkward as it was, seemed to work. Enoch went still for a moment, and then relaxed, still holding onto him.

"Everything was exactly as I'd left...given seven months..."

Well, he could try to warn him in the future so it wouldn't be as awkward. How strange humans were, one touch could do so much to them...

"That explains at least some things."

Enoch looks up at him and nods.

"It...does, doesn't it? Everything was undisturbed except by time...

Except for the dust and-..."

And the decay of the dead. But he can't bring himself to say it...

"No need to say it, I can think of the rest."

Not that it was hard to come to that conclusion in the first place.

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