I wouldn't be. [Said softly, immediately. She holds his gaze unflinching.] Not to you.
[Give her a moment though. It's a good thing this didn't happen last week, when feelings were bleeding all over the place. She gets to keep these ones in the quiet rumble of her chest, caged as they should be.]
And there's only two of them left to power it. We should count ourselves lucky it's working at all.
[It's not a surprise. Camille ducks her head, watches as she pulls at her own fingers. Thumbs the edge of her sweater. Can't say she'd blame him for shying away.
It hurts, though. To not look herself.]
That's very true. [And now they hit an impasse. She clears her throat, tosses her hair a little. Studies the opposite wall.]
...You're all very lively, it seems. Karlach said you were doing well.
It comes and goes, much like morale does for your side. It's obviously nice to be able to see everyone and be certain that we're all alright with our own eyes, after all the tears and blood shed past Thursday and into Sunday.
Still, we're concerned with where we're headed towards and what it could mean, what any of us can do. Rest assured, the less misery for all, the better...
Less misery is a good goal. But I don't know how we'll swing it, with the plan of action in mind.
[There's many things to ask. Practical demands, answers, explanations. Justifications. That would make him flicker, though. She's seen it enough times to know better.]
Either way, it's less than two weeks off. Whatever end is coming. Whether we'll all be joining you or erased in a more permanent way, who's to say.
If your side is safer, though, then...it's for best, that you've got the numbers. Someone's got to get out of this, alive or dead.
...They've really left you in a complicated stance, where this is concerned.
[ Found as a monster, failed to vote, assassinated, brought back... it's a lot of work only for misery. She gets a brief memshare AU of her at Jamba Juice. 'Why' listen. It's Jamba Juice with Karma and a few other deda if that helps. ]
[She fidgets with the hem of her sleeve. Thinks about how she'd slipped the scalpel inside of it, a hasty thieving from the surgery ward. How Alfyn's presence in the wing shamed her out of it. Things aren't there yet. Miraculously. Were she going this alone she'd have little reason to hold back.]
Can't say anyone else is having a picnic, either. [Her mouth twitches, uneasy.] But...thank you.
I hope you get one too. More than just whatever is over there.
[Nothing has been easy for Daan. Not once. Dying might have been the best mercy he's ever got.]
[ He says but like. He is actually in head bandages just like how he left everyone in W4, but also more bandages around what's visible past his sleeves. That's fine, normal shenanigans. ]
Hectic, but what can you do when there's this many people? I'd almost call it lively, but then it'd just sound like a bad joke.
...
You're a smart girl, as much as everyone else is. You've caught wind of what's being whispered around, haven't you?
[The energy of realizing he's been in bandages this whole time is like realizing W2 that Asa has only one arm.
There's a fond snort at that. She'd seen Izutsumi clambouring over him. No point in pestering him about reconciliation then, it seems the dead as a whole find themselves in forgiving moods. Jovial ones, even.]
...Yeah. Had a talk with Essek that put it in plainer terms. Bring the numbers too low to work, then send us all off where they can't find us.
[Death. If it all goes according to plan. Can't say she's looking forward to the Jim Jones finale, but she hates the idea of living under the cult's eye for any longer.]
Looks like we'll all be catching a break in a week no matter what.
[ STOP if it helps he's usually in longsleeves anyway and the fact that the head bandage situation is how he left off on W4 helps. Frankly he's not sure why Izutsumi bothers with him but he's not going to be a dick to her so becoming her catpole it is. ]
Great. Figured you'd be on the latest page.
[ He picks at a part of his fringe off to the side absently. ]
Of course. Doesn't keep it from feeling rancid. Nobody likes the conclusion we've reached.
She watches him adjust his hair and her own fingers twitch. Lovely soft thing that it is. It would only be mist if she reached for it anyway.]
Of course not. But it's better than any alternative. [What use are all their wishes if they can't use them where they're needed most? If there was ever a time for her to be endeared by magic, that ship has long since set sail.] It would be nice though. To see you all again. More solidly.
[Her lips press tight. She bites at them from the inside. Turns away, inhaling, feeling the tremor in her chest and loathing herself for it.]
[ Oh yeah, he's actually looking better on that front these days too. Hair actually kind of neat and less of that constant humidity-and-unkemptness-caused curls. Francy was like you can SPECIFICALLY talk about Jamba Juice and showers so there you go.
He only hums mildly at the first part. It's a conversation that's been worn down to bones by now for him. It feels like nearly every day, he wakes up and says something along the lines of 'wish it wasn't like this' to somebody, but that's all he can do. And then he goes silent, a slight frown on his face. Thank god it isn't emotionshare week, that particular feeling is mutual, because what he does feel makes him want to rip himself in half. ]
I've... we've all been worried very much about you.
[Dare she take that meager scrap and run with it? "I've." Single syllable, open ended. He could have followed it up with anything.
Why is it that he could only say the things she wants to hear when he was out of his mind and behind a mask, swinging scissors at her with perverted fervor? The purr and the promises made her skin crawl — all the worse that she'd wanted them too. A bond, a cure for loneliness, to know she wasn't too much to hold and have sweet nothings poured into her ear. Even death at his hands.
A nightmare that comes to her sometimes. It can stay at the lakeside and play by the numbers, or it takes any number of twisted turns. Tender ones. Impossible ones.
Camille laughs breathlessly. Her chest aches with the fresh burn. Why can't even this much come easy? Just once?]
Never did inspire anything better than pity, did I? [She scratches at herself, huffs. Tries to keep it under wraps. Richard comes to her now, looking fairy tale dashing as he pull her to safety, her Mother wailing at the police from the other room. Looking down at her hard-scrubbed flesh, unveiled for the first time in the bathrobe. "You're a cutter?"
Case closed for the comely detective. She never heard from him again.]
You're not the first man who couldn't look me in the eye, Daan. I just can't fool 'em anymore by keeping my clothes on. It's always been the way.
[ He can just barely hide that grimace. Pity. Condescending eyes. He hates the idea. ]
That's not what it is. Despite rocky circumstances and... unpleasant conversations, my fault -- I do care for your well-being.
[ He speaks stable, but picks his words carefully enough, just veiled enough. He'd be a fool to feign that level of ignorance though, given she'd kissed him as he was bleeding out into the wet lakeside dirt, even after he'd hurt her so terribly.
He feels it still, the awful thing nesting deep inside his blank soul that delights in it. He breathes quietly and slowly, a soft inhale of air through his teeth. ]
[She leaves the rebuttal at that, skin prickling. The words on her limbs scream at her. Whore. Always so ready to fall in line. Harmful. To themselves, to each other. Ripe. The pause swells, silence thick and growing putrid.]
...What's best for me.
[A concept that drags her limp-legged back to the rehab centre. Back to Frank and Eileen's basement, where they lock up all the sharp things and make sure she doesn't drink. Paying out the ass for the umpteenth professional to nod along and talk her through the same old stories, turning them over and trying to dump out a new conclusion.
Or maybe he's thinking of his own circumstances. What prospects he does or doesn't have left to him in his hell hole home. If going back to such a place is even possible. Then there's the grief he still feels for Elise. Whore pulses hard enough to deafen her. If she was such a good person she wouldn't entertain the idea in the first place.]
You can't decide what that is for me. I don't want to be taken care of. I just want someone who won't look away. Stay longer than a minute.
That's the problem, isn't it. I don't think I'll be any good at taking care of you. Emotionally, anyway.
[ There's always that. He can work magic on the body, sometimes as literally as that phrase can possibly get, but he's got bad faith in his abilities to do any more than that.
He hasn't met her eyes, picking at the cuff of his sleeve. It's a nice shirt. It's been a while since he got to wear something half-decent, since he stopped feeling like he did as a kid, making the rare occasional nice fabrics last. The war field didn't offer much more than scratchy fabrics that ghosted over his skin, scratching at his mind too with the sensation. He came back home to a hell house, and left with a set of nice clothes that got ruined pretty quick. And then here, whatever he could nab on the island and make it last. Anything nice enough to cover up, keep that hum and crawl over his skin quieter.
He drops playing with his cuff button. ]
I won't look away unless it's things you don't want me to see. I haven't, not intentionally at least.
But... it really depends on what your idea of solving solitude is, what "staying" means.
So what is it? I'd rather you be clear.
cw: Sexual assault references, including with minors, child murder
Can't say I'd be much better taking care of you, either. Seems all I've ever done is press on your bruises.
[Which should be proof positive: this shouldn't happen.
That's not how love works though. If this is love. She has a hard time telling what is. Every man she went to bed with either came along as a transaction or a tryst. With time she'd come to wonder if some weren't worse. Even her first time hadn't been tender. Thirteen and passed down the line of rowdy high school seniors, one, two, three, and four. Later lovers asked for favors, to put things inside of her, play out fantasies better women were too good to sully with. John Keene had been sweet. He'd also been a wretched mistake. Drunken, devastated, certain he was about to be convicted for his sister's murder, looking to her as she shot back bourbon and seeing a fellow in grief.
Was that the best she could do? Really? Maybe Daan could use a good tumble but it wouldn't serve as anything more than a distraction. Effervescent, there and gone again.
She wants more. Fears it. Would she come at love with a smothering addiction, as Adora did to her children? Or would she be more like Amma, obsessive and possessive, jealous to the core? Slipping into her room in the dead of night in what must have been a self-induced fever, trying to provoke her into caring for her as their mother did. "You like Lily better than me." Goodbye to Lily, found dead by the dumpsters shortly after, strangled and missing six teeth.
She's nervous. She doesn't know how long she's been silent for. Drawing air to say something takes the same effort it had to slash the scissors across his neck. What is she supposed to say? Don't leave, oh please oh please?]
I can't promise I'll be good for you. But I want to try. You make me... [There's a rattle in her hands. She clenches them over her knees to still them.] I want to make you happy. Or at least give you a safe place to rest. I'd like to be with you, Daan.
[In the most childish words possible. Fuck. Camille sighs and shakes her head.]
Odds are we're fucked, one way or another. You're a goddamn ghost, for one, and who knows what's coming at the end of all this. But that hasn't changed how I feel. It's insane and I still want to give it a shot. Will you let me try? Whatever pace you need, space you want. You've got it. I'll do what it takes.
[Her heart is thumping like a battering ram, her gut clenched like its gripping the blade of a newly plunged knife. This is hell. And the only one to blame for the mess is herself. She could have just kept her stupid mouth shut. Camille swallows, and carries on.]
And if not, then I won't push you. I want you to be happy. With or without me. That's...really, that's what I hope for most.
[Enough. Her jaw locks and she lets the curtain of her hair fall forward. A shield in the face of her foolishness.]
Edited (indecision....) 2024-07-26 13:47 (UTC)
cw also for similar content, exposure to minors, implications, etc...
[ His breath catches a little at the phrase, a dull pulse somewhere behind his eyes. Pressing on bruises, yeah. Maybe. He learned early on that nothing in life ever comes for free, that something always has to be given first. His body, his mind, whatever is demanded of him. He remembers being a kid, watching his parents strip naked and put on lagomorphic masks, wander off to the meadows and worship Sylvian in the oldest way. Everything he knew was determined by their wishes, how they saw Her as something glorious, goddess of love and fertility and healing. They tried to pass off the gift to him too, learning how to channel Her whispers, be a vessel for Her healing touch.
Miracle kid in the eyes of common Rondon streets. It served him well on occasions after his parents fully lost their minds to that wild pleasure and bliss, never coming back. He was loathe to use it openly, but it was a clutch talent when he was just a street urchin looking for quick coin who could heal through untraceable means, who wouldn't run his mouth to the authorities. All it cost was a little bit of his sanity and autonomy each time.
And the Baron, too. Daan is near-certain that had he not had his occult talents, the man wouldn't have spared him nearly as much of his time of day, let him marry his precious daughter. Permitted him to sift through his tomes of anatomia in exchange for teaching how Sylvian magic works, showing him how he could give a little bit of his mind to murmur vile promises, telling him how in the most primal form, fucking could restore entire lost limbs. And Elise... his sweetest love, but curious just like her father, not above prodding him then and again in her sweet way, just to see, to know.
The dull pulse only gets stronger, the familiar purr still always in his periphery, settled in his blind spot. If it follows you wherever you go, maybe you're the problem? You're the dirty one, degenerate filth, for how after everything, you can still manage to want. Emotionally, he's a guilty widow. Mentally, he's a car crash, burning, an ever-present murmur in his brain tempting him to baseness. What Camille wants for him feels like a distant dream. ]
...I don't want you to feel responsible for my happiness. That's a pretty big burden and you... don't deserve to have to shoulder that.
If you're looking for an honest relationship, I'm afraid I'll likely do you more harm than good. My mind's a wreck, Camille. Prehevil's fucked me up in unimaginable ways, I've got -- bad thoughts. Hell, maybe I was always this way. I'd give you my body, but I... I do care about you. Which is why. I don't want to be another one of those people in your life that've done worse.
[ He doesn't want to promise her some kind of relationship, dangle that thing in front of her when he doesn't know where he's headed, always clawing on the brink of distortion. ]
[The chokehold on her insides hardly loosens. It just shifts, squeezes and pops in different places.
He says so much in far less words than she. Doesn't need the filter of a keyboard and a blinking cursor to gather his thoughts. He takes a few things off the table and puts a surprise offer on. Frankly, if all she wanted was his body she'd have blown him by the end of the first week.
Maybe knocked on his door the day after the barrier set her free, when Aqua was put down and Camille was left waiting for her own noose. She'd considered it. Went to what she thought was a less tumultuous bet, someone who wouldn't give a shit before or after. Safer to drag to bed and forget reality with. Instead, she'd been marched to the pyre and talked out of a bad impulse by a two hundred year old vampire. That's the comedic side of this place. Astarion, who'd had infinitely more time and reason to go insane, was of sounder mind and body than either of them.]
...I know you do. [Have bad thoughts. A decimated mind. She nods, daring to look up again.] I've heard a few already. And I'm still here.
[The rest is no easier to broach. To hear him admit sparing her a second glance, well. Forgive her stomach for doing a flip. It's back in the squeeze right after, they're no further to a conclusion than they started.]
I don't want to be another one of your regrets, either. Someone new to lose.
[Which is a guarantee neither can make. She wets her lips, turning more fully to him this time.]
But I know what it's like. We don't come from the same place, and the shitty things in our heads don't match up perfectly. But you can bring yours to me. I won't judge you. I won't be afraid. I can listen, or help you put them aside for a while.
We could start there? [Her fingers crook over her knees. Then she lifts a hand. Puts it soft atop one of his, knowing it's futile. Mist and nothing but.] Just trust me. I won't turn away from you. No part of you. Let me be there for you.
[ It's probably, funnily, for the better. The body is much easier to give than love for someone like him, trudging around hidden wounds on his torso for his first and still-only love, not yet fully healed. He's not immune to his body's demands, but his senses, guilt, and indignity had a good chance of overpowering it then.
The fourth week (KNOWN COLLOQUIALLY AS W3) had been a bit of a tipping point, with Camille's assassination by the hands of people who thought they were doing right, and the fifth... strangely put his heart at ease in some ways regarding Elise, but it came with him finally breaking under the weight of his two monsters' whispers.
Except, that's the thing. It didn't start in that week -- he'd wrestled intrusive murmurs for a while, about killing this person or that, because it'd be a mercy, right? The moonlight's taint on his mind, that cat closer than ever right behind his eyes.
He'd have done it if only she'd asked that night they spoke after she was released from the pyre, instead of tearing herself away from his foul promises and snapping him out of it too. She can't keep doing that, he can't expect her to keep doing that. ]
I'm going to hurt you.
[ He says, thickly. It's his expression of fear rather than a promise, but it almost feels like it to him. ]
When I say Prehevil changed me for the worse, I mean it. I've practically engaged in bloodbath compared to what my father-in-law had done. It's still there in my head, an ugly desire to... I don't know what exactly it is. See them for their worst.
[ Confide in him darkness and the strange want to love them in turn. He shouldn't. He should want them to step out of that sort of thing. Camille's hand will feel awfully cold. Funnily to him, it feels so warm. But loathe to make it all about what he wants, despite it all being concerns for her. ]
Oh, yes he will. One way or another, they'll be coming out bleeding. Neither one of them is safe. Camille's hand is hovering over self-destruct at all times and Daan is one bad day away from gifting his body to the devil. No one could come near either without taking hits, no matter how stable.
It's the fear though. That's the difference for her. Amma loved to hurt, squealing about it in a drugged up bliss as she spun around their lawn. Her mother loved hurt things, loved the control she had over them. Camille loves the kiss of a knife, cooling her fits and foul thoughts as she annotated them into spare spaces of her body.
Daan loathes it. There's a part of him that revels in it, but it's parasitic. Unnatural. Maybe it's gotten hooks in him, perverted more corners of his mind, but it's not finished. He's afraid of what he might do, he feels the pain he inflicts on others and feels wracking shame for it.
It may not hold him back. But it makes a world of difference. Her hand feels it's hovering over frostbitten meat, a deep freezer with the door closed and the chill threatening to creep up her bones. It's clumsy to keep the hold up. She sticks to it though. Won't leave.]
Maybe. [Her expression is unmoving. Voice soft, impossible to hear from outside the thin space they've carved for themselves.] We've got a lot of sharp edges between us Daan. I won't pretend it'll be easy.
But, from what I've seen, what you and Marina have given me...I don't know who could come out of that place with their hands clean. Coming from where you have and landing where you did. I can't blame you.
So it's okay. If the urge hasn't gone away. Things like these are...They're not fixed. Just managed.
It's easier to do when you've got people who give a damn.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[Give her a moment though. It's a good thing this didn't happen last week, when feelings were bleeding all over the place. She gets to keep these ones in the quiet rumble of her chest, caged as they should be.]
And there's only two of them left to power it. We should count ourselves lucky it's working at all.
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[ Every time he sees the eyepatch, he's inclined to glance away. ]
I'm sure Death and Famine are doing their best to contribute what they can. We all have our own agendas, but ultimately the same goal.
no subject
It hurts, though. To not look herself.]
That's very true. [And now they hit an impasse. She clears her throat, tosses her hair a little. Studies the opposite wall.]
...You're all very lively, it seems. Karlach said you were doing well.
no subject
Still, we're concerned with where we're headed towards and what it could mean, what any of us can do. Rest assured, the less misery for all, the better...
no subject
[There's many things to ask. Practical demands, answers, explanations. Justifications. That would make him flicker, though. She's seen it enough times to know better.]
Either way, it's less than two weeks off. Whatever end is coming. Whether we'll all be joining you or erased in a more permanent way, who's to say.
If your side is safer, though, then...it's for best, that you've got the numbers. Someone's got to get out of this, alive or dead.
no subject
[ Found as a monster, failed to vote, assassinated, brought back... it's a lot of work only for misery. She gets a brief memshare AU of her at Jamba Juice. 'Why' listen. It's Jamba Juice with Karma and a few other deda if that helps. ]
...I've also made things quite difficult for you.
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...Well.
[Coming down from that high to grim shit, frowning.]
I'm not looking for an apology, Daan. You were going through things. I just stepped into the periphery of it.
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You don't need to force yourself to be kind and try to move on. I'm not a good person, Camille. Even beyond the "afflictions" and whatever else here.
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[She looks to him then. Drained, sure, and a little hurt. But firm.]
I put you through the same shit, just a week earlier. Maybe we didn't get physical about it but that's only because I didn't win the vote.
I'm no saint either, Daan. Before or after this place. And you tried to warn me. I didn't listen.
no subject
I just think you need a break, that's all.
[ That much he can say without a veil, filter, whatever else to hide any deeper thoughts or impressions. Camille seriously needs a break. ]
I doubt our definitions of saints are going to be on the same level.
cw self harm mentions yet again
Can't say anyone else is having a picnic, either. [Her mouth twitches, uneasy.] But...thank you.
I hope you get one too. More than just whatever is over there.
[Nothing has been easy for Daan. Not once. Dying might have been the best mercy he's ever got.]
no subject
[ He says but like. He is actually in head bandages just like how he left everyone in W4, but also more bandages around what's visible past his sleeves. That's fine, normal shenanigans. ]
Hectic, but what can you do when there's this many people? I'd almost call it lively, but then it'd just sound like a bad joke.
...
You're a smart girl, as much as everyone else is. You've caught wind of what's being whispered around, haven't you?
no subject
There's a fond snort at that. She'd seen Izutsumi clambouring over him. No point in pestering him about reconciliation then, it seems the dead as a whole find themselves in forgiving moods. Jovial ones, even.]
...Yeah. Had a talk with Essek that put it in plainer terms. Bring the numbers too low to work, then send us all off where they can't find us.
[Death. If it all goes according to plan. Can't say she's looking forward to the Jim Jones finale, but she hates the idea of living under the cult's eye for any longer.]
Looks like we'll all be catching a break in a week no matter what.
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Great. Figured you'd be on the latest page.
[ He picks at a part of his fringe off to the side absently. ]
Of course. Doesn't keep it from feeling rancid. Nobody likes the conclusion we've reached.
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She watches him adjust his hair and her own fingers twitch. Lovely soft thing that it is. It would only be mist if she reached for it anyway.]
Of course not. But it's better than any alternative. [What use are all their wishes if they can't use them where they're needed most? If there was ever a time for her to be endeared by magic, that ship has long since set sail.] It would be nice though. To see you all again. More solidly.
[Her lips press tight. She bites at them from the inside. Turns away, inhaling, feeling the tremor in her chest and loathing herself for it.]
...I've missed you.
no subject
He only hums mildly at the first part. It's a conversation that's been worn down to bones by now for him. It feels like nearly every day, he wakes up and says something along the lines of 'wish it wasn't like this' to somebody, but that's all he can do. And then he goes silent, a slight frown on his face. Thank god it isn't emotionshare week, that particular feeling is mutual, because what he does feel makes him want to rip himself in half. ]
I've... we've all been worried very much about you.
no subject
Why is it that he could only say the things she wants to hear when he was out of his mind and behind a mask, swinging scissors at her with perverted fervor? The purr and the promises made her skin crawl — all the worse that she'd wanted them too. A bond, a cure for loneliness, to know she wasn't too much to hold and have sweet nothings poured into her ear. Even death at his hands.
A nightmare that comes to her sometimes. It can stay at the lakeside and play by the numbers, or it takes any number of twisted turns. Tender ones. Impossible ones.
Camille laughs breathlessly. Her chest aches with the fresh burn. Why can't even this much come easy? Just once?]
Never did inspire anything better than pity, did I? [She scratches at herself, huffs. Tries to keep it under wraps. Richard comes to her now, looking fairy tale dashing as he pull her to safety, her Mother wailing at the police from the other room. Looking down at her hard-scrubbed flesh, unveiled for the first time in the bathrobe. "You're a cutter?"
Case closed for the comely detective. She never heard from him again.]
You're not the first man who couldn't look me in the eye, Daan. I just can't fool 'em anymore by keeping my clothes on. It's always been the way.
no subject
That's not what it is. Despite rocky circumstances and... unpleasant conversations, my fault -- I do care for your well-being.
[ He speaks stable, but picks his words carefully enough, just veiled enough. He'd be a fool to feign that level of ignorance though, given she'd kissed him as he was bleeding out into the wet lakeside dirt, even after he'd hurt her so terribly.
He feels it still, the awful thing nesting deep inside his blank soul that delights in it. He breathes quietly and slowly, a soft inhale of air through his teeth. ]
I don't think I can provide what's best for you.
no subject
[She leaves the rebuttal at that, skin prickling. The words on her limbs scream at her. Whore. Always so ready to fall in line. Harmful. To themselves, to each other. Ripe. The pause swells, silence thick and growing putrid.]
...What's best for me.
[A concept that drags her limp-legged back to the rehab centre. Back to Frank and Eileen's basement, where they lock up all the sharp things and make sure she doesn't drink. Paying out the ass for the umpteenth professional to nod along and talk her through the same old stories, turning them over and trying to dump out a new conclusion.
Or maybe he's thinking of his own circumstances. What prospects he does or doesn't have left to him in his hell hole home. If going back to such a place is even possible. Then there's the grief he still feels for Elise. Whore pulses hard enough to deafen her. If she was such a good person she wouldn't entertain the idea in the first place.]
You can't decide what that is for me. I don't want to be taken care of. I just want someone who won't look away. Stay longer than a minute.
I'm tired of being alone everywhere I go.
no subject
[ There's always that. He can work magic on the body, sometimes as literally as that phrase can possibly get, but he's got bad faith in his abilities to do any more than that.
He hasn't met her eyes, picking at the cuff of his sleeve. It's a nice shirt. It's been a while since he got to wear something half-decent, since he stopped feeling like he did as a kid, making the rare occasional nice fabrics last. The war field didn't offer much more than scratchy fabrics that ghosted over his skin, scratching at his mind too with the sensation. He came back home to a hell house, and left with a set of nice clothes that got ruined pretty quick. And then here, whatever he could nab on the island and make it last. Anything nice enough to cover up, keep that hum and crawl over his skin quieter.
He drops playing with his cuff button. ]
I won't look away unless it's things you don't want me to see. I haven't, not intentionally at least.
But... it really depends on what your idea of solving solitude is, what "staying" means.
So what is it? I'd rather you be clear.
cw: Sexual assault references, including with minors, child murder
[Which should be proof positive: this shouldn't happen.
That's not how love works though. If this is love. She has a hard time telling what is. Every man she went to bed with either came along as a transaction or a tryst. With time she'd come to wonder if some weren't worse. Even her first time hadn't been tender. Thirteen and passed down the line of rowdy high school seniors, one, two, three, and four. Later lovers asked for favors, to put things inside of her, play out fantasies better women were too good to sully with. John Keene had been sweet. He'd also been a wretched mistake. Drunken, devastated, certain he was about to be convicted for his sister's murder, looking to her as she shot back bourbon and seeing a fellow in grief.
Was that the best she could do? Really? Maybe Daan could use a good tumble but it wouldn't serve as anything more than a distraction. Effervescent, there and gone again.
She wants more. Fears it. Would she come at love with a smothering addiction, as Adora did to her children? Or would she be more like Amma, obsessive and possessive, jealous to the core? Slipping into her room in the dead of night in what must have been a self-induced fever, trying to provoke her into caring for her as their mother did. "You like Lily better than me." Goodbye to Lily, found dead by the dumpsters shortly after, strangled and missing six teeth.
She's nervous. She doesn't know how long she's been silent for. Drawing air to say something takes the same effort it had to slash the scissors across his neck. What is she supposed to say? Don't leave, oh please oh please?]
I can't promise I'll be good for you. But I want to try. You make me... [There's a rattle in her hands. She clenches them over her knees to still them.] I want to make you happy. Or at least give you a safe place to rest. I'd like to be with you, Daan.
[In the most childish words possible. Fuck. Camille sighs and shakes her head.]
Odds are we're fucked, one way or another. You're a goddamn ghost, for one, and who knows what's coming at the end of all this. But that hasn't changed how I feel. It's insane and I still want to give it a shot. Will you let me try? Whatever pace you need, space you want. You've got it. I'll do what it takes.
[Her heart is thumping like a battering ram, her gut clenched like its gripping the blade of a newly plunged knife. This is hell. And the only one to blame for the mess is herself. She could have just kept her stupid mouth shut. Camille swallows, and carries on.]
And if not, then I won't push you. I want you to be happy. With or without me. That's...really, that's what I hope for most.
[Enough. Her jaw locks and she lets the curtain of her hair fall forward. A shield in the face of her foolishness.]
cw also for similar content, exposure to minors, implications, etc...
Miracle kid in the eyes of common Rondon streets. It served him well on occasions after his parents fully lost their minds to that wild pleasure and bliss, never coming back. He was loathe to use it openly, but it was a clutch talent when he was just a street urchin looking for quick coin who could heal through untraceable means, who wouldn't run his mouth to the authorities. All it cost was a little bit of his sanity and autonomy each time.
And the Baron, too. Daan is near-certain that had he not had his occult talents, the man wouldn't have spared him nearly as much of his time of day, let him marry his precious daughter. Permitted him to sift through his tomes of anatomia in exchange for teaching how Sylvian magic works, showing him how he could give a little bit of his mind to murmur vile promises, telling him how in the most primal form, fucking could restore entire lost limbs. And Elise... his sweetest love, but curious just like her father, not above prodding him then and again in her sweet way, just to see, to know.
The dull pulse only gets stronger, the familiar purr still always in his periphery, settled in his blind spot. If it follows you wherever you go, maybe you're the problem? You're the dirty one, degenerate filth, for how after everything, you can still manage to want. Emotionally, he's a guilty widow. Mentally, he's a car crash, burning, an ever-present murmur in his brain tempting him to baseness. What Camille wants for him feels like a distant dream. ]
...I don't want you to feel responsible for my happiness. That's a pretty big burden and you... don't deserve to have to shoulder that.
If you're looking for an honest relationship, I'm afraid I'll likely do you more harm than good. My mind's a wreck, Camille. Prehevil's fucked me up in unimaginable ways, I've got -- bad thoughts. Hell, maybe I was always this way. I'd give you my body, but I... I do care about you. Which is why. I don't want to be another one of those people in your life that've done worse.
[ He doesn't want to promise her some kind of relationship, dangle that thing in front of her when he doesn't know where he's headed, always clawing on the brink of distortion. ]
they are a consumate mess
He says so much in far less words than she. Doesn't need the filter of a keyboard and a blinking cursor to gather his thoughts. He takes a few things off the table and puts a surprise offer on. Frankly, if all she wanted was his body she'd have blown him by the end of the first week.
Maybe knocked on his door the day after the barrier set her free, when Aqua was put down and Camille was left waiting for her own noose. She'd considered it. Went to what she thought was a less tumultuous bet, someone who wouldn't give a shit before or after. Safer to drag to bed and forget reality with. Instead, she'd been marched to the pyre and talked out of a bad impulse by a two hundred year old vampire. That's the comedic side of this place. Astarion, who'd had infinitely more time and reason to go insane, was of sounder mind and body than either of them.]
...I know you do. [Have bad thoughts. A decimated mind. She nods, daring to look up again.] I've heard a few already. And I'm still here.
[The rest is no easier to broach. To hear him admit sparing her a second glance, well. Forgive her stomach for doing a flip. It's back in the squeeze right after, they're no further to a conclusion than they started.]
I don't want to be another one of your regrets, either. Someone new to lose.
[Which is a guarantee neither can make. She wets her lips, turning more fully to him this time.]
But I know what it's like. We don't come from the same place, and the shitty things in our heads don't match up perfectly. But you can bring yours to me. I won't judge you. I won't be afraid. I can listen, or help you put them aside for a while.
We could start there? [Her fingers crook over her knees. Then she lifts a hand. Puts it soft atop one of his, knowing it's futile. Mist and nothing but.] Just trust me. I won't turn away from you. No part of you. Let me be there for you.
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The fourth week (KNOWN COLLOQUIALLY AS W3) had been a bit of a tipping point, with Camille's assassination by the hands of people who thought they were doing right, and the fifth... strangely put his heart at ease in some ways regarding Elise, but it came with him finally breaking under the weight of his two monsters' whispers.
Except, that's the thing. It didn't start in that week -- he'd wrestled intrusive murmurs for a while, about killing this person or that, because it'd be a mercy, right? The moonlight's taint on his mind, that cat closer than ever right behind his eyes.
He'd have done it if only she'd asked that night they spoke after she was released from the pyre, instead of tearing herself away from his foul promises and snapping him out of it too. She can't keep doing that, he can't expect her to keep doing that. ]
I'm going to hurt you.
[ He says, thickly. It's his expression of fear rather than a promise, but it almost feels like it to him. ]
When I say Prehevil changed me for the worse, I mean it. I've practically engaged in bloodbath compared to what my father-in-law had done. It's still there in my head, an ugly desire to... I don't know what exactly it is. See them for their worst.
[ Confide in him darkness and the strange want to love them in turn. He shouldn't. He should want them to step out of that sort of thing. Camille's hand will feel awfully cold. Funnily to him, it feels so warm. But loathe to make it all about what he wants, despite it all being concerns for her. ]
Is that really what you want?
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Oh, yes he will. One way or another, they'll be coming out bleeding. Neither one of them is safe. Camille's hand is hovering over self-destruct at all times and Daan is one bad day away from gifting his body to the devil. No one could come near either without taking hits, no matter how stable.
It's the fear though. That's the difference for her. Amma loved to hurt, squealing about it in a drugged up bliss as she spun around their lawn. Her mother loved hurt things, loved the control she had over them. Camille loves the kiss of a knife, cooling her fits and foul thoughts as she annotated them into spare spaces of her body.
Daan loathes it. There's a part of him that revels in it, but it's parasitic. Unnatural. Maybe it's gotten hooks in him, perverted more corners of his mind, but it's not finished. He's afraid of what he might do, he feels the pain he inflicts on others and feels wracking shame for it.
It may not hold him back. But it makes a world of difference. Her hand feels it's hovering over frostbitten meat, a deep freezer with the door closed and the chill threatening to creep up her bones. It's clumsy to keep the hold up. She sticks to it though. Won't leave.]
Maybe. [Her expression is unmoving. Voice soft, impossible to hear from outside the thin space they've carved for themselves.] We've got a lot of sharp edges between us Daan. I won't pretend it'll be easy.
But, from what I've seen, what you and Marina have given me...I don't know who could come out of that place with their hands clean. Coming from where you have and landing where you did. I can't blame you.
So it's okay. If the urge hasn't gone away. Things like these are...They're not fixed. Just managed.
It's easier to do when you've got people who give a damn.
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