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[walk_ins]

The room is small. Cosy, almost. Six beds, carefully made every day, white sheets and blue blankets turned down precisely. The walls are a pale, soft blue, painted with wispy clouds floating near the ceiling. Small flowers and shrubs, also painted, edge the bottom of the wall. Shallow niches, like doorless closets, hold clothes and soft shoes. In one corner is a collection of dark blue beanbags and overstuffed ottomans, making a comfortable corner for students to lounge in. A door, always open, leads to another room with long tables and chairs, supplied with datascreens and a few books.

It's a dorm room, for this live-in school. Well-designed, both comfortable and functional.

Except in most dorms, the furniture isn't carefully made to avoid sharp edges and potential blunt instruments. In most dorms, the beanbags aren't fixed to the floor. In most dorms, there aren't call buttons above every bed and by the door.

In most dorms, nurses don't patrol from room to room every night with sharp eyes and medications, and the students don't cry and scream in their sleep.

It's bedtime, at the Academy. Nearly time for lights-out. Sleep well.

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[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

She's escorted to the dorm, and they wait for her to step inside; the door slides shut behind her.

Five of the six beds are occupied, with neatly piled clothes at least. The untouched bed is at the far left, and Anthy pads toward it without making eye contact with any of her dormmates.

A simple pale-blue shift; she lays it on the bed, and begins to undress.

[walk_ins]

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, the youngest student in the room appears to be entirely absorbed in counting and recounting her own toes.

And muttering.

"He thought he saw an Albatross that fluttered round the lamp...."

[walk_ins]

Beth is lying on her bed, on top of the covers, staring fixedly at the ceiling. Her hair, pulled back during the day, now spreads about her on the pillow.

Her eyes flick to the girl who seems to be River, when she enters, and then return to the ceiling.

She is lying very, very still, as though any movement might upset some delicate balance.

[walk_ins]

"He looked again, and found it was a Penny-Postage Stamp."

Zillah pauses, frowns at her left foot, and shakes her head.

"'You'd best be getting home,' he said; 'The nights are very damp!'"

[walk_ins]

"Climate-controlled," Lilli says, a little reprovingly, from the beanbag chair where she lies in a loose-limbed sprawl. Her eyes are on the wall, gaze sliding from one painted cloud to another. "Temperature and humidity. It's very comfortable. Quantify the physical elements."

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

The slippers and the uniform she stows away in her doorless closet. There's a half-open door to the left of her bed, and Anthy slips inside, still without looking at the others.

About fifteen minutes later she steps out again, barefoot, with River's hair dripping down the back of her shift.

She sits on the edge of the bed, and looks at her hands.

Anthy's not often homesick, but there's a sharp pang now, for the half-moon bed, and Utena's face across from her.

[walk_ins]

"You're okay." Sarai says it as though pronouncing the solution to a particularly complicated quadratic equation, looking directly at RiverAnthy. "Frightened you. But you're okay. Safe now. Here with us."

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

A few moments more, and she looks up, and forces a weak smile.

"Okay."

Back down. River's done this before, study some unremarkable object with fascination, and River's hands are genuinely interesting. Not much larger, if they're larger at all; squarer, and more wiry than slender. Fingernails much shorter.

Capable hands. Hands that can catch a rose on the flat of a blade, unharmed.

[walk_ins]

Lilli gives her a small smile. Approving, earnest, a little satisfied.

Lilli believes in the work of the doctors; she makes no secret of that. Believes that there's a goal here, and even if they haven't learned enough to understand it yet it's a good one. For so much suffering, it has to be important. And they are safe, here; they're doing important work, and learning as much as they can, and the doctors and nurses help them through the painful process of it.

Far safer than being outside. When River Tam vanished, Lilli cried for her sake.

[walk_ins]

Mavis lies in bed, under the covers. She's curled on her side, almost fetal, with her back to Lilli and Sarai.

She's watching the girl who isn't River. Her eyes never shift away.

"In her head," she sing-songs softly. "Where she's safe. In her head. Everything's shining."

Slow tears leak from her open eyes, rolling over the bridge of her nose and soaking into her dark hair and stark-white pillow.

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

Anthy doesn't look up. There's little sign that she's even heard Mavis chanting.

Then, with a soft sigh, she leans back, and lies staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling.

[walk_ins]

Zillah has unfolded and dropped to the floor, and pads across to the bathroom. Small for her age, she looks about ten or eleven. The pillow she clutches like a teddybear only adds to the impression.

A nurse intercepts her at the bathroom door with a quiet "No, dear," and gently takes it away from her. Zillah scowls, and mutters, "We cannot go back to that. The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind. If one may say so," and closes the bathroom door firmly behind her.

[walk_ins]

"That is not what he said," Beth tells the ceiling, biting off her words. "Not at all. No." Her voice is starting to rise. "It's wrong. Wronged her. Do not follow into wrongdoing. Do not, do not--"

Nurse Todd hurries over. "Shhh, dear," she soothes. "Beth. Beth, it's all right. Shhh."

"Not!" Beth nearly shrieks. All her muscles are too tight, her body arched with tension. "Do not, do not, do not--"

The nurse sits on the edge of the bed. "Beth," she reprimands gently. "Beth, it's all right. Time to sleep. Nobody's wronging anyone, Beth. Do you want a soother?"

Another moment and then the stiff bow of Beth's body collapses, and she rolls over to lie on her stomach, face contorted with weeping. She nods, gulping back sobs. "It's wrong," she whispers, and holds out an arm. "It's wrong."

The soft hiss of a pressure injector.

[walk_ins]

Nurse Latham has begun dimming the lights, quietly, one by one.

"Lights-out," Sarai says like an echo. "Time to sleep. Lights-out."

She glares at the closed bathroom door. Her voice isn't loud enough to carry through it, but she says it anyway: "Time to come out of there."

[walk_ins]

The bathroom door opens and Zillah steps out, eyes fixed on her own feet, walking a straight heel-and-toe line across the floor as if walking a tightrope.

"A great disorder is an order. Now, A
And B are not like statuary, posed
For a vista in the Louvre. They are things chalked
On the sidewalk so that the pensive man may see."

She raises her head, and looks at RiverAnthyRiver, and breaks into a sudden brilliant smile. One hand soars upwards as though miming the flight of a bird.

"The pensive man ... he sees that eagle float
For which the intricate Alps are a single nest."

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

And Anthy stares back in the darkness, eyes wide and, catlike, reflective.

She can't see the smile, but she hears it in Zillah's voice, and she sees the movement of her hand, dimly outlined by the glow from the bathroom.

It's a moment before she speaks. Quiet.

"Sees a lot."

[walk_ins]

"The lights are out," Nurse Latham reminds them, with gentle firmness, tucking the blanket around Beth. The soother's done its work; she's already asleep. "Quiet now, everyone."

She moves across the room, to take Zillah's arm and steer her towards her bed. "It's time to sleep now, Zillah. Go to sleep."

[walk_ins]

Zillah obediently follows the nurse, but is still murmuring:

"...Your pillow the nine bright shiners,
Your bed the spilling sand,
But the terrible toy of my lily-white boy
Is the gun in his innocent hand."

"Shush, Zillah," says Nurse Latham, still quietly but with an edge now.

Zillah gives her a sidelong look, and lowers her voice to a whisper but doesn't stop:

"You must take off your clothes for the doctor
And stand as straight as a pin,
His hand of stone on your white breast-bone
Where the bullets all go in...."

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

River's face is paling, though it's hardly easy to tell, with the lights off.

She rolls on her side

(Listen, Himemiya --)

and whispers, dispassionately,

"Hands of blue, not stone. They'll hear you."

They probably won't, but it might shut her up.

[walk_ins]

Zillah's crawling into bed now, and burrows under the covers without acknowledging the whisper -- but she's stopped her own recitative, and that may be acknowledgment enough.

Nurse Latham and Nurse Todd exchange glances, and their gazes sweep the room again, and then both head for the door. One or the other will be back within minutes.

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

Anthy rolls back and stares at the ceiling, with River's long hair spread around her on the pillow. She's braided it, before, sitting behind River.

The walls are painted with clouds. Just gotta float.

She glances sideways, again, at Zillah.

[walk_ins]

"Lions came loping into the lighted city," Zillah tells the ceiling, very quietly.

And then shoves off the covers with a violent thrust of both legs, and turns her head sharply to stare directly at AnthyRiverAnthy. Her eyes are wide in the dimness, and very blue.

She does not say the words aloud, but Anthy hears them:

I see you. See you very well.

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

A soft indrawn breath.

(If you ever have a problem, come to me, okay?)

Anthy stares back, silent and helpless, and less afraid than she should be.

(I want us to be friends like that.)

She raises one hand an inch or so, and drops it.

[walk_ins]

A tiny smile, fierce with suppressed glee.

"I know what you are;
You are a rose in disguise, and very, very wise."

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

(and someday --)

"They'll hear."

Pleading.

[walk_ins]

Zillah looks at her for another long moment, then sighs and turns her gaze up to the ceiling again.

"I close my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I think I made you up inside my head."

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

"Might have."

Beat.

"What's your name?"

[walk_ins]

"By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am."

A pause.

"Zillah."

A slightly shorter pause.

"You're River."

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

"Her name," Anthy agrees.

The door opens. Jana Latham, checking a yawn. Anthy lies very still.

[walk_ins]

Zillah flings an arm over her eyes, and turns to bury her face in her pillow.