Marius, Yvette - Friday afternoon

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

The kitchen is once again a scene of disturbance - Yvette discovers that there is something rather wrong with the Sad Boy.



Yvette hummed quietly to herself as she made her way to the kitchen. The good doctor, the one with the accent, had confirmed that her skin was starting to change, to be less hard, and the hope that one day she might no longer be a danger, plus her conversation with Angelo which had allayed her fears about going home, was enough to make the normally-quiet girl uncharacteristically audible in her cheerfulness. She planned to make a snack for herself and Tommy, and go share the good news. But as she crossed the threshold, there was an unholy clatter, as if someone had dropped an entire drawer of crockery, and she instinctively found herself ducking behind the doorframe. Peering cautiously out, she realised someone had dropped a drawer. It was the Sad Boy, the one who'd disappeared so abruptly the other day in the woods.

Summoning up her courage - Tommy had told her she could be brave, so she was trying - she came around the edge of the doorway, asking in her soft, accented voice: "Can I be helping you?"

"Not necessary," Marius said immediately, eyes still fixed on the contents of the silverware drawer that lay scattered at his feet. "Perfectly all right. Cheers for the concern. Was just lookin' for a . . ." What had he been looking for? He's opened every cabinet and then drawer in the kitchen trying to find it. Looking for something, something not in his room. To get out of his room. He was. More and more the past few days, teleporting into the woods and then going -- nowhere. Just wandering through the trees for who knew how long, unable to remember why he'd come, and finally, when the restlessness abated, 'porting himself back. In and out. In and out. His suitemates were complaining about the smell.

It was a moment before he realized the drawer that had contained the silverware was dangling from one hand. Marius raised it, distantly puzzled. "Just came right out," he said.

He seemed like he was having trouble focusing... Concern led Yvette to come closer, until she was in front of him. "Maybe I can be helping you look?" she suggested. "And picking up the cutleries."

Even muffled by cloth the soft drag of taloned feet sounded to his temporarily augmented hearing like a chair being hauled across a hardwood floor, but that detail was almost lost to him. The movement drew his attention, but finally registering the brush of her genetic signature was what did it. Marius knew her even before he looked into her wide blue eyes and the red, doll-like face he had lived with for almost a month, yet had never heard utter a single word.

The massive spasm that took his fingers almost saw the drawer crashing down right after the silverware. In an effort to disguise the flinch Marius dropped himself into a crouch and began scraping at the utensils, trying desperately to busy his hands so he wouldn't feel how they were beginning to react to the tiny girl's proximity. "No," Marius said, breath rasping through the respirator. "No, I'm fine. You're fine. We are all of us fine. Yes. Perfectly. Just a bit of an accident, so no worries, Pe--" He bit down on the name that came automatically just in time and tried to focus on the mess before him. Metal clashed as he dropped the cutlery into the drawer, two forks of differing sizes blatantly mixed with spoons.

Yvette flinched back at the noise, unsure now. Obviously there was something wrong here. "Are you being all right?" she asked, voice trembling just a little bit. "Should I be getting the doctor? You are seeming..." Frightened? Angry? Sick? And there was that maddening sense of familiarity, the same as with Jennie. Who'd also almost used another name for her. "Please, let me be helping you?" She reached out, meaning to help him pick up silverware, even if her hands weren't the most adept for such a task.

Gloved talons reached to fasten around a wooden mixing spoon inches away, and the mouth on Marius' palms jumped so violently the fork he'd been trying to pick up skidded across the tile and bounced off the base of the counter. He was struck by a horrifying image of seizing that small hand and plunging his teeth through the cloth that wrapped them, and then, in turn, the sensory memory of the first time his fingers had closed around Yvette's skin unprotected: an experience like clutching a handful of broken razors. Not caring about the pain, or the girl, or what Jennie and Manuel would think -- only taking. And now the need to do so again was so strong he thought the mouths were going to tear themselves out of his palms.

But it hasn't even been four days.

"My apologies." Marius snatched his hand away and rose stiffly to his feet, his hands held carefully in fists. At his full height he towered over a metre taller than the tiny girl crouched on the floor. "However. I am feeling a bit unwell. Please excuse me." He turned away and disappeared.

Yvette blinked at the spot were he'd been. A... teleporter, that was the word. Like Clarice. But realising that didn't make her feel any better. Something was very wrong with the boy. Normally she would have been too scared to do anything, but something about him made her only want to help him. Then like a bolt of lightning, it struck her. Penny. The name Dr. Voght had used in the medlab when she'd awoken, the same half-syllable used by both Jennie and this boy. But, you were in a bad situation and my friend took you out of it. That was what Jennie had said.

My friend. Jennie had been ill, and so was this boy...

With a determination strange to witness from the small, mouse-like girl, Yvette hurriedly scooped up the remaining cutlery and dumped it in the drawer, awkwardly shoving it back in its slot. Then she left the kitchen, heading for her suite. Hopefully the Sad Boy had gone to the medlab, but in any case, Jennie ought to know he was unwell.

She was his friend, after all.