Against the brain's better judgment...

[warriorscribe]

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.

Comments

[warriorscribe]

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...

[brbtalkingtogod]

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.

[warriorscribe]

"...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...

[brbtalkingtogod]

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?"

[warriorscribe]

"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..."

[brbtalkingtogod]

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.

[warriorscribe]

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..."

[brbtalkingtogod]

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."

[warriorscribe]

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...

[brbtalkingtogod]

"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.

[warriorscribe]

"Everything was otherwise...undisturbed."

Even Armaros...

....wait. Something wasn't right about that...it's so painful to examine in detail though.

"...Not even...not even Armaros had moved."

Hopefully, Lucifel remembers Enoch's last journal entry mentioning sleeping in his embrace.

[brbtalkingtogod]

Now that's something he had noticed as well. Judging from what he had read in his journal, there was a lot that didn't fit together.

"As painful as it might be to you, something about this doesn't sound right Enoch."

[warriorscribe]

"I know...Armaros...he...he would have been disturbed."

He may be leaning on you a little more heavily, Lucifel.

He's...right. He could not have reappeared under Armaros's arm like that without disturbing the skeleton - in fact he should have appeared on top of his arm!

...

"I never moved."

[brbtalkingtogod]

Yeah, he can feel him getting heavy on his body. It's a good thing that the archangel is much stronger than he looks.

"Apparently not." It's a mystery.

[warriorscribe]

It's just become less of one.

"That means... That would explain it. Your body. That you need to eat and sleep..."

[brbtalkingtogod]

"... I think I get what you mean."

Although, it sounded hard to believe. But if Enoch was right, then that means...

[warriorscribe]

Enoch's body did not move. And Lucifel... Surely that was some sort of mistake, since he's seen beings that didn't need to eat here.

"I was right about the collars. They anchor us here... But to these bodies."

[brbtalkingtogod]

"That explains at least a few things... Not only are we trapped in this place but also got caged into these bodies."

Still not everything but at least a few things that had been confusing him.

[warriorscribe]

Enoch lowers his head, resting it on Lucifel's shoulder. Now that he's not forcing himself to examine those painful thoughts, now that he has his answer, the adrenaline is slowly dying down, leaving a mental exhaustion in its wake.

"Having a body isn't so terrible... I'll help you however I can."

[brbtalkingtogod]

Even more body contact? Does he have to endure this even longer...?

"I appreciate it Enoch. However, so far I can't say that having a body has been good."

[warriorscribe]

Sorry, Lucifel. It's just part of the role you stepped into a couple centuries or so ago.

"It's...hunger and fatigue, isn't it? Both eating and sleeping can be enjoyable, especially after you've earned them after a long day."

And he's kind of...going to deflect his pain using other peoples' problems. You know, like he usually does.

[brbtalkingtogod]

Yeah, that's the role he decided to take even before the journey. It had started with taking Enoch to Heaven.

"It's such a hassle that I need to do all of that so to be able survive."

That sounds like him, yes. But that's the wrong way to deal with problems, especially your own.

[warriorscribe]

"It's all right. You'll get used to it quickly...we do, after all."

Well, it's the way he works. Unfortunately for him.

[brbtalkingtogod]

It did make Lucifel wonder if it was the same for Enoch after he had become immortal... But it was better to save that question for another day.

[warriorscribe]

"Is there..." he lifts his head, finally. "Is there anything I could possibly help with?