[center]» [u]Cadence[/u] «

I'm just painting that's still wet:
If you touch me I'll be smeared,
You'll be stained.
Stained for the rest of your life!

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For a few minutes, Cadie and Jax ate in companionable silence. A couple of the other patients trickled in, but they didn’t pay any more attention to the mutant than she did to them. Her focus was fluffy eggs and crunchy bacon, hot coffee and cool, crisp melon. Whatever else you said about the Institute, you had to admit that the food was first-rate. It was almost peaceful just then: the only sounds were from a quiet conversation three tables over, distant and metallic din echoing from the kitchen, and the rustle of Darlene’s Cosmo magazine as she periodically turned a page.

The young telekinetic wanted to enjoy her moment of numb contentment… but as was usually the case at Osmond’s Institute, some[i]body[/i] happened. One of the Terrible Triplets (Creepy Goatee, to be exact.) brought in a guy Cadie had never seen before, and deposited him roughly at a table near the center of the room. The guy didn’t [i]do[/i] anything exceptional. In fact, he just stared at the table. She almost dismissed his presence, almost let her one good eye fall back to her plate, but she realized something. His hair… his hair was [i]moving.[/i]

It wasn’t moving as if he’d sat under an air vent, either. It was moving as if the young man was underwater, in a perfectly still pool. It just sort of [i]floated[/i]. The girl blinked sleepily, and then it occurred to her that maybe this was just a side effect from the drugs they’d given her not-so-long ago. She ate a spoonful of the honeyed oatmeal, then turned to Jax.

“Is it just me,” she murmured, and licked her lips, “or is that guy’s hair moving?”

Cadie tilted her chin in the direction of the fellow she was referring to.

Jax twisted his head in that odd, avian way of his, peering at the stranger for a long moment. Then he looked at the table, shook himself a little, and turned back to Cadie.

“Moving.”

The girl nodded, and though Jax always spoke too loudly for her tastes, the trippy-haired guy in question didn’t seem to notice. He was still just staring at the table. Cadie concluded that he probably wasn’t the human he’d appeared to be at first glance. She tucked in to the oatmeal again, diverting periodically to the eggs, sausage and bacon. Thanks to her extra drugs, she bit her fingers twice.

[i][b]This[/b] is what makes you a monster, Cadence,[/i] she thought rather too cheerfully to herself.

Jax nudged her slipper under the table with one of his sharp, black claws. She jumped a little; although it was more like flinching from the unexpected contact, Cadie rationalized it into surprise. She looked up, and he just blinked at her. Her only functioning eye slid sideways, her head following, as she scanned the room for whatever it was her companion was trying to show her. It must have been the girl with Nurse Buck, who had her hair pulled forward instead of backward and ponytailed over her nose. Whatever facial features she was hiding with her mahogany hair, Cadie figured it must have been pretty gross… because her arms were crisscrossed with fresh-looking wounds, roughly stitched together and still a little bloody. The mutant frowned. She was willing to bet that hurt… a lot. And there was something about the other young woman that made Cadence feel better immediately: she was almost as skinny as the mutant herself.

[i]Almost.[/i]

Cadence tried again to return to her meal. Oatmeal, gone. Eggs, gone. Bacon, gone. Sausage, gone. Bagel, gone. Coffee, gone. Milk, gone. Slowly, the mutant became aware that Jax had stopped eating and was sitting with his shoulders hunched forward, head moving back and forth. She set her fork down and took a few deep breaths, steeling herself for what came next.

The girl gingerly placed her slender fingers across the back of Jax’s hand, where it lay splayed on the table. The warmth of his skin under her digits was almost enough to make her draw back instantly. It was like holding her hand in a fire. Even though Jax wasn’t human, it felt an [i]awful[/i] lot like human contact. She took another deep breath as his dark head stopped moving, one black eye fixed on her.

“What is it, Jax?” she asked very quietly, trying not to sound as if she was asking Lassie if Timmy fell into the well. Of course, she licked her lips.

“Watching. Me,” the raven croaked in reply. He tried to be quiet about it, which made his voice even stranger and more raspy.

“It’s okay,” Cadie soothed, forcing herself to [i]rub[/i] the back of his hand gently, even though it kind of made her feel nauseous. The physical contact helped him keep a connection with reality, she knew from experience, so she tried not to think about it and focused on what she was saying.

“They’re [i]new[/i],” she said in hushed tones. “And they’ve never seen anyone like you before. I stared at you too, remember?” She licked her lips several times, feverishly. The prolonged physical contact was starting to stress her out.

Jax looked at her for a long moment, and she could clearly see in her own mind exactly what he was remembering. She smiled, thinly, and nodded.

“So, relax. They’re just jealous of your wings,” the girl whispered.

Then Jax did something Cadie didn’t expect. He turned his hand over, clutched her fingers in his, and squeezed them gently. The feathers at the base of his neck puffed out a little again in the Corvinian equivalent of a smile.

Such a simple gesture, such a small connection that normal people were able to have on an everyday basis. It said thank you for being here, thank you for pulling me back from the edge. Someone else could have shrugged it off, squeezed back, and smiled in return. Cadence was not that someone. Her stomach dropped and every muscle in her body tensed. She couldn’t force herself to draw in a breath. And then she heard a sound… a horrible, despicable sound…

…the sound of her coffee cup starting to rattle against its saucer.

Thankfully, blessedly, Jax seemed to sense that this was too much for Cadie, and let her go. As soon as he did, the weight on her chest lifted. She inhaled deeply through her nose and exhaled through her mouth several times. The coffee cup had stopped shaking, but now her hands were doing it instead. Her appetite was completely gone, which was really bad. She’d been down to eighty-eight pounds when they’d weighed her two days ago, and the nutritional nurse had said (in a rather threatening manner) that if Cadie got down to eighty-five she’d have to have a feeding tube put directly in her stomach so they could pump nutrition into her overnight while she slept.

She shuddered involuntarily, and reached for the double-chocolate muffin. Three bites in, the sound of a food tray slamming down made her look up again.

The source of the sound was a man, a man she hadn’t noticed walking in. How she’d missed him, she didn’t know: a combination of the painkillers and hunger, she supposed. He was tall, well-built but a little thin, with blonde hair long enough to brush his shoulders and a rough shadow of stubble on his square jaw.

[i]Oh no! Why today of all the-[/i]

Cadence didn’t have time to finish the thought before the vision in her one good eye dimmed… and then abandoned her completely.

“Son of a bitch!” she cursed, loudly enough to startle Jax, and slammed her hand down on the table.

“What. RRRAAAnn?” the raven man squawked in alarm.

“Blind. You see the big blonde guy at my…” she had to think for a moment, “at my two o’clock?”

Cadie was pretty sure Jax nodded, but she couldn’t see. “Knock once for no, twice for yes.”

Immediately, he rapped twice on the table.

“Good. Tell me when he leaves.”

Again, two taps.

“And… could you help me find my muffin?” she asked, in her usual whisper, licking her lips again.

[center] ---»«---

» [u]Nurse Buck[/u] «

Welcome to the jungle,
It gets worse here every day!
You learn to live like an animal
In the jungle where we play!

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[b]“Th-... Thank you very much, Nurse Buck,”[/b] She said in a voice so small she wasn't sure he had heard her, [b]“This is all much more than I deserve... I think if it is okay with you, I could possibly have some toast? And perhaps a small drink of plain water?”[/b]

The patchwork young lady had come along rather quietly and willingly, despite her obvious terror. She’d almost balked at the sight of the males in the cafeteria: you didn’t have to be a genius to read her eyes and her body language. Buck genuinely felt a little bad for the girl: maybe he’d missed it in the file, but he didn’t realize she had a compulsion to cover her face. Of course, it made sense, considering.

But when she asked for food, Buck couldn’t help wondering how she would eat with her hair fixed like that. The stitches on her bare arms were oozing blood that didn’t even smell like blood, and peeking out from behind her hair she was saying that she didn’t deserve even water and bread. Where had she been before this? The vampire wished he’d had more time to read the files.

“If you would like people food, Aniella,” he replied calmly, “I would suggest a blueberry scone and some hot coffee or tea. But if you would prefer something else…”

The vampire stepped away from the young woman and picked a coffee mug up off the steam line. Then he moved to the punch bowl he knew would be there. It was always there on New Patient days, even when there were no new vampires. By now, Buck was certain that the punch bowl was just for him sometimes. He was also certain that it was completely clean, completely real, somehow warm, actual human blood. The blood was ladled into his cup without a single drop being spilled.

“…I suggest you go ahead and get it. You’re not the only one here who eats from the carnivore line.”

Then he paused, and his lips twitched in what might have been a ghost of a smile. Of course, Aniella probably wouldn’t see this because she didn’t seem to be able to look any higher than his chest. He raised the glass to his lips, and drained it halfway. He really didn’t care how Morgan came by all that human blood. It was [i]good.[/i] Buck swallowed, repressing the natural shiver, licked his lips clean -which gave a little flash of fang, if she was looking- and then moved to get a tray for the girl.

“Tell you what, I’ll fix you a tray with a few different choices, and you can eat what you want.”

As if on cue, to illustrate his point, a girl Buck assumed to be Simone sauntered over to the inhuman selection, picked up a bag of lycan blood, and bit straight down into it.

Buck would prepare Aniella a tray containing her water and toast, the offered blueberry scone and coffee with sugar and creamer packets… and a second coffee cup of warm blood, and what looked to be a completely raw ham steak.

If nothing else happened, he’d lead her to a table near a corner of the room, and seat her where she could see the door.

[center] ---»«---

If you got a hunger for what you see,
…You'll take it eventually.

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