Snippet #1816032

Bernstein, of course, was being just as amiable and polite as ever. It always disgruntled Akira--people like that were always fake. Bernstein didn't honestly give a shit about any of the people here--he just wanted his money, and the quicker the lot of them were outta here, then the quicker he got his money for doing his job. "I bet everyone is ready to get out of this place as fast as possible," he commented, all smiles at the lot of them. Well, no shit, Akira thought sharply, figuring everyone present wanted nothing more than to get outta here as fast as possible. The good doctor saw fit to turn to her, however, motioning for her to remove her headphones. On any other previous day, her appropriate responce would have been along the lines of "Make me, freakshow"...but then again, this was the last day. Even someone as impulsive and pig-headed as Akira could figure that if she wanted out--and she sure as hell did--then it was best to just go with it one last time. Her headstrong pride could take one such wound if it was the cost of getting out of here all the faster.

So Akira, with an indignant aire, simply reached up and pulled the headphones from her ears, allowing them to hang around her neck. Which wasn't so bad, since they were still blaring music well loud enough to be heard.

...well, it wasn't like she could just go and make this easy on anyone, herself included.

"Who wants to volunteer to come up first and share with the group?" Bernstein asked, smiling again at those gathered there--his query met with a solid wall of silence. Akira sure as all hell wasn't about to go and volunteer to rant about herself and whatnot. It'd been that way all this time--Akira didn't say a damn thing about herself, her past, why she ended up here except for one word: heroin. And she'd say nothing more than that, though were you to meet her without her jacket, with her arms bared of all but the tattoos and scars engraved across the skin, you'd find the injection sites that were only very slowly beginning to fade away. Didn't matter at this point. She hadn't shot up in all the time she'd been here, of course, but Akira still felt that as soon as she got out of here, she'd probably fall right back into her old patterns. It was always that way. She couldn't change, and even if she could have...she didn't know if she would've.

"Ian, since you came here before everyone," the doctor turned at last to the Westerner, who'd been sitting there blankly listening to the song he could hear from Akira's headphones (which he recognised) before he glanced up at the mention of his name. "Would you like to share first?"

Ian sighed, and shrugged. "Don't really know what I'm sharing," he replied, words inflected with an American accent. "Since I really have no idea why I'm here. From what I'm told, I spontaneously became an alcoholic without even realising it." A note of bitterness wormed its way into his words.