After Lola leaves Marley, telling him to go to administration and get a uniform and let them tell him all his information, he walks to the building he's to live at. Lola called it home and Marley had to keep himself from doing a double take. He doesn't understand how anyone could think of this place as a home.

It's when he's about to enter the front doors, his hand on the doorknob and everything, that his phone starts ringing.

He pulls it out of his pocket and finds, Mom, flashing on the screen. He could really use the support of his mother, so he hits accept almost immediately.

"Hi Mom," he says into his phone. He makes his way around the outside of the building, leaning against the side of it. There's a disturbing lack of plant life here and he's left standing on cement.

"Hi honey," she responds, "how did the plane ride go? Have you unpacked yet?"

He scratches his thigh, "it went fine, and yeah I have. Thanks for packing Sushi."

He hears a silence from the other line, then, "oh dear. I did pack your fish. Did I put food in there too?"

"Yeah, he's good." Marley slowly starts sliding down the brick wall, his clothes catching on it and the roughness lightly scratching the skin of his back. He can't find it within himself to care, though. It'll probably heal pretty soon.

That's one thing he doesn't understand. He has never had any kind of enhanced healing in his entire life, why now? Maybe getting shot just brought it out? He has no idea, but he never knew and can't help but to blame himself for the gigantic fiasco that came out of him–and the whole world–finding out.

"So how's it going? Have you made any friends yet?" She asks from the other line. He doesn't know if he should tell her about Lola. They aren't really friends. She was talking to him out of obligation.

He definitely can't tell her about Nero. Absolutely not. The queen disliking you without ever meeting you isn't a good thing. He wouldn't wish that on his worst enemy.

Not to mention, he also doesn't want his mom to worry.

"No, Mom. I just got shown around and unpacked. I'll be getting a uniform tomorrow." He notifies her, leaving out a few details. His mom doesn't need to know any of that.

"Aw, don't worry! You'll find some people. You might even meet our future queen!"

Right. Queen. Female.

Gulping, he responds, "you really want the two people running the Westhem to be from 1-A?" He replies instead, leaving out the fact that his chest hurts at the reminder that he'll never be happy. Not when he has to get married and procreate with a woman. He doesn't have a choice, though, as the Westhem depends on it.

He's also not too sure he needs to make any friends here. He doesn't think he can.

Charlene seems to realize that, as the line goes quiet for a few moments. Maybe it's just processed in her head that, yeah, Marley is in fact a part of a level of society that his father has always viewed as disgraceful. The queen views them as that as well, but she loves Marley more.

Allorn, clearly, does not feel the same way. Marley has a sneaking suspicion that the king doesn't know his wife is on the phone with their new family disappointment.

"I suppose not. You'll be out of there soon, though. Nobody's invincible, I'm sure they'll find a way to cure you tomorrow!"

Yeah. Yup. Cure. That's one way of putting it. Marley hasn't experienced this place in it's full yet, but he's pretty sure they don't refer to the room for curing as the torture room for nothing. A part of him is hoping he really isn't all that abnormal and there's still some hope for him. They can wound him, maybe that assassination mess was just a one time thing.

"Yeah, I'm sure." He responds, gulping and wishing he could be as optimistic as his mother. Sadly, he's always taken after Allorn and therefore has been sculpted into a boy that hides his true feelings behind a polite smile. He's assertive when he needs to be and can keep up a conversation like no other. He doesn't allow people to see behind the scenes.

He's a politician.

Of course, this is an entirely different story. He's out of his element here, dealing with people his age. People who think differently. Hormonal, hard to figure out. He grew up young, he has a professional mind.

He's a politician.

The people here, however, do not think the same way he does. It's an obstacle that he has to keep himself from thinking about. Scratch that, from overthinking about.

The conversation ends with his mother in awkward goodbyes and promises to call tomorrow. Unrealistic wishes for him to be home soon and false reassurances that everything will be fine, even when he has an itch in his head, too deep to scratch. In his brain and telling him that that won't be the case.

After they hang up, Marley stands and starts making the slow, dreadful trek back to his room. The room that he's sharing with Nero. Nero, who hated him before they even met. Nero, with clear anger issues and an obviously interesting past.

Marley doesn't want to see him. At all. Honestly, he's half expecting Sushi to be dead on the floor just out of petty spite and a warning.

Thankfully, after reaching his room and opening the door, he finds that the universe is finally giving him a break. Not only is Sushi safe and sound in his tank, but Nero is nowhere to be found.

Holy mother–thank the lord. Maybe he won't be tortured in his sleep. He lets out a breath he was only half conscious he'd been holding, and deflates on his bed. The light is already off, and it's pretty dark save for the fish tank lights. He's tired, he really is, but it still takes hours for him to finally fall into a restless sleep.

-

When he wakes up, it's at 7:00 in the morning.

It's not peaceful in the slightest, because it happens to just be an alarm blaring deafeningly over speakers in the cracked ceiling that he didn't even know were there.

Marley unceremoniously falls out of bed, jumping and falling on the floor. Flat on his ass, the loud noises forcing him to cover his ears, clenching his eyes shut. He hasn't heard anything this loud in a long time. Well, except for his intrusive thoughts.

Eventually, the alarm stops, and he deems it okay to open his eyes. He immediately wants to shut them, though, when his eyes fall upon the very person he really did not need to see him in that moment of weakness and panic.

Thankfully, Nero is not looking at him. Marley doesn't have a doubt in his mind that the man knows he just fell flat out of his bed, but it comforts him to know that he has no proof of Nero actually seeing it.

Using the side of his bed to lift himself up to a standing position, Marley walks over to the dresser. Sushi is hovering at the bottom of the tank, and sometimes Marley feels the urge to stick his finger in the tank but Sushi happens to be an aggressive asshole so he fights that urge to the back of his mind.

He grabs a pinch of fish food from the bag and sprinkles it into the tank, Sushi swimming to the top and having his breakfast.

Marley doesn't feel like changing, not with Nero in the room and no obvious bathroom. Instead, he grabs the papers Lola had given him and starts walking towards the door. Nero doesn't say anything to him as he exits, something that Marley is thankful for.

He vaguely remembers where the administrative building is, and makes his way there. Nero was acting normal and he notices a few people roaming about in the hallways, most of them down the stairs with clothes in their hands, so he decides that the alarm was, well, an alarm.

Once he reaches the office, he walks to the room Lola had told him to–fourth on the right–and finds a woman at a desk busy doing something on a computer. She has frown lines and dark hair and Marley tries to not look tired.

When he reaches her, she doesn't look up, so he gets her attention by saying; "hello ma'am, I got here yesterday. Lola told me to come here first thing in the morning."

The woman looks up at him over her glasses. She looks just as unimpressed with him as every other adult he's met here. He clasps his hands together behind his back to keep from fidgeting with his keychain.

"Okay. What all did she explain to you and how much of the premises were you shown?"

Marley assumes she's asking this so that she can fill in any gaps that Lola left, so he constructs the sentences as best he can in his head before replying to her;

"She showed me the dormitories and the courtyard and the administrative buildings..." he tries to think what all she actually explained to him. "She told me we have breakfast and lunch..."

He tries to remember what else she'd told him. His mind is blanking out pretty bad with her staring at him like this. He'd rehearsed the first thing he said to her, now it's just fair game. He can't properly think without having some kind of plan so, yup, his mind may as well be empty.

"Right, well..." the woman interrupts, clearly fed up with Marley's incomplete sentences and trailing off, "did she give you any papers?"

Marley nods and hands them to her. After she looks them over for a while, she hands them back and reaches under the desk to pull out–

A book.

It's not very thick - 15 pages at most. The front says in large, bold letters;

1-A IAP HANDBOOK

"Everything you need to know should be in there, I have stuff to do and you're holding up the line."

Marley hadn't even realized there was a line, but when he turns around to see it there's only two people and they're both avoiding eye contact so he decides she's being dramatic.

He apologizes as politely as he can with the lady blatantly ignoring him–one of his ultimate pet peeves–and walks over to a stiff couch tucked into a corner of the room. There's a coffee table in front of it and they're both a darkish grey color.

When he opens the first page, he's met with the table of contents.

He doesn't even get through reading the entire page, because as soon as his eyes lay on the word Schooling–which happens to be the very first thing on the page apart from the introduction being on page 1–he flips right to it.

"Residents of 1-IAP," he begins reading aloud to himself under his breath because it's easier, "that are currently being educated between kindergarten to 12th grade will continue their schooling until they are eligible to graduate–"

Holy cow, he's gonna have to go to school. Here. Are there going to be teachers? Do they have a whole separate set of buildings dedicated to it or is it just one? Is it going to be like some shittier version of public schooling because he doesn't think he can handle that.

marley sighs, then turns the page.

Hospitalization, it reads, and his eyes widen. He doesn't want to read this, because he has a feeling what it will say.

"If residents are injured in any way (be it inflicted by other residents or supervisors of the facility) they shall be sent for hospitalization, where they are expected to restrain all abilities so they can be properly recovered..."

He has to close the book for a moment, fingers keeping his place, so he can take a deep breath. He's not ready for this. He knows he needs to read further, to fully understand what is in store for him here so he doesn't have one of his little episodes in front of people.

He's never had any around people before. He doesn't want to start now.

Begrudgingly, he reads the rest of the page. It's only about the nature of the hospital wing and the location of it and such, information he can use and it happens to ease his nerves a bit. In case they do find a way to truly harm him, he does have somewhere to go.

Then he reaches the next page;

"Punishments and Expectations." He reads, feeling as though his tongue has been cut out of his mouth and shoved down his throat.

"All residents are expected to follow this handbook and all of its rules in its entirety. If caught disobeying the responsible will be sent to Director Olucard for further action. Punishments include further time spent with Supervisor Rellik, assistance in classrooms, with supervisors, janitorial work around the facility, and isolation–"

He tries to talk more. He really, really does. Promise. He just can't seem to get his vocal cords to open up so he can continue his shaky reading. He wants to swallow the lump in his throat and ignore the feeling in his gut that is positively ill, but he can't. All because of one word.

Isolation.

That would break Marley, he knows it right now. His already loose grip on his mental stability will fall apart completely if he's alone with his hellbrain and he knows it. The fear of it is almost paralyzing, and he decides that that's just even more of a reason for him to stay out of trouble, keep his head down and do what's asked of him.

Right then, he hears someone whisper-shout "Prince Marley!" from somewhere off, and he looks up to find the same desk lady from before giving him an exasperated look.

He gives her a confused look, and she waves him over. On shaky legs he makes his way over to her and tries to say something, but his voice still won't work.

"Did you hear the announcement?"

At Marley's clueless look, she continues, "It said all yellows go to their wings for research."

Marley blinks, because, what? Yellow? Wings? Research? It sucks to say but he honest to god has no clue what this lady is on about and at this point he's not so sure if he should ask. She probably thought that he had the handbook at least mostly read by now but he'd been to busy freaking out for that.

"Yellow?" He asks, trying not to sound as stupid as he feels.

The lady, expression seeming to be running out of patience, responds, "15-25. You're 17. You're yellow. Breakfast is done, you are to report to G Building for the research you're here for."

Marley realizes that the research she's referring to is the research on him. Well, that make sense. The yellow residency label he'd seen from yesterday enters his mind, and he realizes that it's there because he's a part of their little color coded organization method they have going on here. Okay.

Well now he needs to be researched. In his group.

Oh, wow, this won't go well.

"Hurry up!" The lady snaps him out of it, staring at him as though he is not the greatness the TV has always made him out to be. Which is true. "There's a map in the handbook. Go before you get in trouble."

Nervous and terrified and dreading, he turns around and begins searching the handbook for the map. He finds it, eventually.

Then, on an empty stomach, he makes his way to the research building.