[ ...He hums, but doesn't finish that thought, actually. ]
Sure. I haven't been keeping track really, but it may as well be for as long as I can remember. Yellow eyes, always around the bend, in the shadow of the woods...
[She swallows. Easy now. Don't lose your cool again. It never ends well for you, and definitely not for him.]
So it was always coming for you. [She presses her thumbnail into the palm of her hand. A bright and shallow sting.] That can't have been easy, having something tailing you all the time.
Why does night follow day? Why did the Baron kill Elise and then himself? Why did I find the same sign on their flooring in Prehevil? Why did my mother and father leave?
Not all questions get an answer. And they never will.
Though, maybe if wherever I go, it's always there, then the problem is myself and it lies in me.
[The finger nail scrapes and draws no blood. Just scratching imaginary itches. It's not enough. What's in the camp ground proper? She never went up to the radio tower.]
...That pit lies in all of us. Anyone can slip down it, if they're not careful. If things don't let up.
[And they never did for Daan. Camille's pressing her lips together, moving forward.]
It's not that you're the problem, Daan. You're not just the horrible things that have happened to you. And you weren't born to be a problem. Nobody gets to pick their starting ground. They don't control the things that other people do.
You kept choosing to try finding something better. It's nothing wrong with you Daan, it's the world you were living in. You needed a way out.
[ He tilts his head a little bit. His entire face distorts with it, the slight change in gravity, blank hare eyes staring back at her. Nothing behind that glassy stare, but almost carefully so. ]
[Her eyes meet that herbivore vacuity with a shitty sort of serenity. If she gets anything she wants from this conversation — the last conversation — she'll be a damn lucky woman.
Yet she'll keep scraping the stone wall he's thrown up with her fingers. Her teeth. Bones. She'll be here until morning if she has to. Scrambling for the leftover crumbs.]
Why bother? I'll be dead on the morrow. Never seen anyone break the Sunday pattern, after all. Or are you hoping that I'll confess to you in this sanctity where it's just us, alone? Describe the crime, how I felt when I came to with a corpse under my hands? Lay myself bare before the fire and let me whisper every sin and degeneracy I've long held onto into your ears over the barrier of fire? Tell you all about the person that barely ever was?
You know, I really did consider it. I could have killed you. I would have killed you, set you free of your misery and guilt. I would have been as gentle as I could with it. If only you'd say yes.
[She recalls, suddenly the way her mother seized her one of her first nights back in Wind Gap. Traced the bare spot on her back, where her razors couldn't comfortably reach.
"The only place you have left. Someday I'll carve my name there."
Would it have been setting her free? Or simply more marks on a body? New ones she didn't get to choose. It wouldn't be her death: it would be his murder. She'd slip away under the deed and he'd go on holding court, talking circles around former friends. Then he'd die, and their bodies would disappear, but everyone would remember Daan and his mania, and how sweet he'd been before. People liked the shock of a killer better than the tragedy of a victim.
She should know. She's lived with both.]
Once was enough. And Rondo took very good care of me. Thank you for your consideration.
I don't get it though. Izutsumi? [She knows her own killing was happenstance. Cloud grabbed the drugged drink and painted the bullseye on his own back. Where does skittish, testy Izutsumi fit into this?] Did she say something to you too?
I don't know. It's all a blur. Such a long week...
That weekend you were set free, I saw him again. Yellow eyes. It was only for a half-day, but he'd returned nonetheless. It was like I was reminded, opened that particular floodgate, and I kept turning his phrases over and over since then.
Then that... Thursday adventure. He returned. Asked if I'd give my finger in exchange to save Pickles. Always in my periphery. You know, it didn't matter in the end -- I had to kill Pickles myself to "win" the tournament, save Karlach's life instead. And look where that got me. Isn't that funny? I really can't crawl out of this fucking pit, Camille.
[ You love, and you lose. That's what you do to others. ...But he digresses. ]
Those yellow eyes stayed, even after I'd returned. Followed me even when I stayed up past the usual hour. I thought, maybe that was it for me. Then it's all really a blur from there. Yellow eyes, fear. Next thing I know, there's a corpse under me, but it's not of the cat I wanted to see dead.
[After she'd been set free. Two weeks then, soaking in the filth. Watching things get worse, and worse.
Her breathing stops as he finally fesses up about the finger. She can just see it too. Scalpel to the knuckle in a desperate plea. Scalpel to the dog. Karlach alive but Pickles down, Elise rending his face, then down, a purring in his ear and a certainty that it won't ever get better than this.
You love and you lose. Banging it right on the head.
Her mouth is dry by the time he finishes. Sour with the booze, still. Her stomach does an ugly roll as she imagines Izutsumi fighting for it, tooth and nail. Just a fucking kid and a man possessed, trapped after dark with nowhere to run.]
...I see.
[Look at that, she got some answers. Not good ones, but they're here. Limp and stinking on the ground in front of her.]
It's...contrived. You have to know that. The things that happen here aren't natural. Prehevil isn't either. The point of the game is to twist you.
So I don't blame you for taking the deal. I can't, I'm... [She shakes her head, quick and done. Purge the thought.] They set it up for you just right. Everyone. We're not meant to win in this arena, and I can't blame you for choosing this.
I just wish I could take you to a kinder place. Because they're real. More real than most of this. I'm pissed you won't get to see them. I'm pissed that you're too far gone to consider it.
[She'd be giving up fingers too. You dangle Marian in front of her, she might walk right off the high road to catch her. Camille can feel the tears rolling now. The booze is kicking in, tired of being sidelined for the tension. She pats her face with her sleeve and never takes her eyes from his, even if it burns to look.]
I'd wanted to help you see something different. I'm sorry I wasn't much good at it.
It's too bad. I would've felt better after this week. I'm invested in my own survival now, even without this monster also screaming at me tooth and nail to live.
[ Nobody knows what week six, seven, eight (real time not mg-scheduling naming) will have in store for them. But at least Daan'd just found a way to make it digestible, even if it's in a way everyone else hates -- including himself.
Did you know you can unlock dialogue from him talking about what he'd like to do in the future? Get out of the city, move on? Carve out a new life? You can only get this dialogue in the ending where he is guaranteed to never escape. ]
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no subject
[ ...He hums, but doesn't finish that thought, actually. ]
Sure. I haven't been keeping track really, but it may as well be for as long as I can remember. Yellow eyes, always around the bend, in the shadow of the woods...
no subject
So it was always coming for you. [She presses her thumbnail into the palm of her hand. A bright and shallow sting.] That can't have been easy, having something tailing you all the time.
Why did it pick you?
no subject
Why does night follow day? Why did the Baron kill Elise and then himself? Why did I find the same sign on their flooring in Prehevil? Why did my mother and father leave?
Not all questions get an answer. And they never will.
Though, maybe if wherever I go, it's always there, then the problem is myself and it lies in me.
no subject
...That pit lies in all of us. Anyone can slip down it, if they're not careful. If things don't let up.
[And they never did for Daan. Camille's pressing her lips together, moving forward.]
It's not that you're the problem, Daan. You're not just the horrible things that have happened to you. And you weren't born to be a problem. Nobody gets to pick their starting ground. They don't control the things that other people do.
You kept choosing to try finding something better. It's nothing wrong with you Daan, it's the world you were living in. You needed a way out.
no subject
And yet, that seems to make you unhappy too.
no subject
[She comes closer. Hands splayed to the barrier.]
I'd like to see your face, Daan. May I please?
no subject
I don't think I want you to, Ms. Preaker.
no subject
Yet she'll keep scraping the stone wall he's thrown up with her fingers. Her teeth. Bones. She'll be here until morning if she has to. Scrambling for the leftover crumbs.]
What would happen if I did?
no subject
What do you get out of that?
no subject
[She doesn't move.]
Even if it's wasted, there are worse ways to waste it than with you.
no subject
no subject
You're nothing that low, Daan. Not to me.
no subject
You know, I really did consider it. I could have killed you. I would have killed you, set you free of your misery and guilt. I would have been as gentle as I could with it. If only you'd say yes.
cw: self harm mention, abusive parents
"The only place you have left. Someday I'll carve my name there."
Would it have been setting her free? Or simply more marks on a body? New ones she didn't get to choose. It wouldn't be her death: it would be his murder. She'd slip away under the deed and he'd go on holding court, talking circles around former friends. Then he'd die, and their bodies would disappear, but everyone would remember Daan and his mania, and how sweet he'd been before. People liked the shock of a killer better than the tragedy of a victim.
She should know. She's lived with both.]
Once was enough. And Rondo took very good care of me. Thank you for your consideration.
I don't get it though. Izutsumi? [She knows her own killing was happenstance. Cloud grabbed the drugged drink and painted the bullseye on his own back. Where does skittish, testy Izutsumi fit into this?] Did she say something to you too?
no subject
I don't know. It's all a blur. Such a long week...
That weekend you were set free, I saw him again. Yellow eyes. It was only for a half-day, but he'd returned nonetheless. It was like I was reminded, opened that particular floodgate, and I kept turning his phrases over and over since then.
Then that... Thursday adventure. He returned. Asked if I'd give my finger in exchange to save Pickles. Always in my periphery. You know, it didn't matter in the end -- I had to kill Pickles myself to "win" the tournament, save Karlach's life instead. And look where that got me. Isn't that funny? I really can't crawl out of this fucking pit, Camille.
[ You love, and you lose. That's what you do to others. ...But he digresses. ]
Those yellow eyes stayed, even after I'd returned. Followed me even when I stayed up past the usual hour. I thought, maybe that was it for me. Then it's all really a blur from there. Yellow eyes, fear. Next thing I know, there's a corpse under me, but it's not of the cat I wanted to see dead.
no subject
Her breathing stops as he finally fesses up about the finger. She can just see it too. Scalpel to the knuckle in a desperate plea. Scalpel to the dog. Karlach alive but Pickles down, Elise rending his face, then down, a purring in his ear and a certainty that it won't ever get better than this.
You love and you lose. Banging it right on the head.
Her mouth is dry by the time he finishes. Sour with the booze, still. Her stomach does an ugly roll as she imagines Izutsumi fighting for it, tooth and nail. Just a fucking kid and a man possessed, trapped after dark with nowhere to run.]
...I see.
[Look at that, she got some answers. Not good ones, but they're here. Limp and stinking on the ground in front of her.]
It's...contrived. You have to know that. The things that happen here aren't natural. Prehevil isn't either. The point of the game is to twist you.
So I don't blame you for taking the deal. I can't, I'm... [She shakes her head, quick and done. Purge the thought.] They set it up for you just right. Everyone. We're not meant to win in this arena, and I can't blame you for choosing this.
I just wish I could take you to a kinder place. Because they're real. More real than most of this. I'm pissed you won't get to see them. I'm pissed that you're too far gone to consider it.
[She'd be giving up fingers too. You dangle Marian in front of her, she might walk right off the high road to catch her. Camille can feel the tears rolling now. The booze is kicking in, tired of being sidelined for the tension. She pats her face with her sleeve and never takes her eyes from his, even if it burns to look.]
I'd wanted to help you see something different. I'm sorry I wasn't much good at it.
no subject
[ Nobody knows what week six, seven, eight (real time not mg-scheduling naming) will have in store for them. But at least Daan'd just found a way to make it digestible, even if it's in a way everyone else hates -- including himself.
Did you know you can unlock dialogue from him talking about what he'd like to do in the future? Get out of the city, move on? Carve out a new life? You can only get this dialogue in the ending where he is guaranteed to never escape. ]