gentleembrace‌:

“I’m here. Today, I’m here.”

The sun burns overhead. Its rays pierce Laurence’s skull in a soft spray of bullets. The toll from his earlier exertion has begun to make itself present as numbness creeps through his limbs, through his nerves, a slight tremor in his hands becoming apparent. He has never been athletic, but lately he has begun to tire easily and often. Movement and speech is a great trial. His thoughts coagulate as soon as they form. The world is too bright, too loud, bearable only in small doses. In Yharnam, he could retire to the comfort of his room, curtains closed, door shut. Here exists only as a blurred pool of sand, sky, and sea. 

Laurence sighs and rests his forehead on Brador’s shoulder, buries his face in the matted, white fur. His fur, according to Brador. He supposes he should feel something about it. When he speaks his voice is flat and slow. 

“Brador…sentimental to the end. I didn’t mean to leave you behind. I try to do right by you, you know that,” he closes his eyes and tries to smile. “I know it does not come naturally to you, being candid. I know. I don’t mean to be difficult.” An apology without apologizing, words spoken before. He is too tired to tend to Brador properly. Inside his closed eyes, Laurence sees Caryll’s last rune gently glowing.

“It is really…very bright. Do you mind if I borrow this?” he says, tugging the pelt over his head without waiting for an answer, without looking at Brador. It is blessedly dark underneath. “I think I need to sit down.”

There is only the sand. His descent is more of a crumpling than sitting. Laurence lifts his head, but his blooming pupils can’t focus on Brador’s features. Just another face.

“Did you know that I can feel it? I can feel it moving through my veins, thickly, slowly, slowing. I can feel it moving. I can hear its song with each beat of my heart. I can feel it behind my eyes, pressing through. It is the only thing left within me, Brador. I need you to understand. I can’t stop now. I can’t give up hope. I can’t. I can’t.”

Brador struggles with himself, watching Laurence all folded up on the sand. He looks so frail. Brador thinks of an owl pellet he’d come across as a child, playing in the dirt, and how he’d picked it apart and found a delicate pile of bird bones within, all thin and white and dead. That’s what Laurence looks like. Tired, brittle. The sun beats down on his head. He wants to forgive Laurence; he wants to pretend it never happened and just start it all over, rewrite history, put in a happy ending. But that beast pelt draped over Laurence’s head won’t let him.

If he forgets, it’ll happen again. If he lets it happen, he’ll have failed himself and Laurence both.

He gets down on his knees, slowly, and puts his arms around Laurence. Holding him up, holding him together. A tenderness wells up in him that clogs up his throat and nose, and for a moment he can’t speak.

“I know, Laurence. I know… how important it is to you. But I also know it’s destroying you.” He takes in a deep breath to ground himself. And then another, to satisfy his racing heart. He’s afraid, he realizes with a start. Laurence was irritable towards the - towards the end, and singularly focused. Brador doesn’t know how he’ll react. “I don’t want to watch you turn again. There has to be another– we’ll find another way. This time… let me pull you back from the edge before you go over.”

ruthlessdaughter‌:

“If you really must know,” she replies haughtily, “I do not need to eat, seeing as I am not technically alive.”

Heysel begins to undo the straps of her headpiece. “However, I have recently discovered the joy of cooking. I may not require the nutrition, but taste is something I can absolutely still experience. I certainly have little else to occupy my time, since illegal murder is out of the question.”

She leans in and speaks in a low conspiring tone. “You get vaporized if you kill someone, or if you break any other of the Ark’s rules. Poof!” She snaps her fingers to illustrate. “Just like that, you burn into nothing and you wake a few hours later in your bed.”

Heysel straightens up and carefully pulls her headpiece off her head, setting it down beside her and revealing the array of bandages hiding her face, save for her eyes and mouth. “I haven’t an inkling of what constitutes legal murder, but sir Enforcement is not eager to provide me an answer. In the meantime, shall we sample the… ‘hot dogs’? It is a strange name, I know, and it contains not a smidgen of dog, but it is easily modified to suit one’s particular tastes.”

“Not technically alive,” Brador repeats flatly. For whatever reason, he doesn’t find her words shocking in the least. Perhaps all the indescribable things he’s seen in Yharnam and the nightmare have cured him of surprise. “I’m guessing that’s what you meant by undead. What exactly does that mean? You seem alive enough to me.”

If it’s true what Heysel says about murder, Brador will have to tread lightly. He’s not eager to be vaporized for picking a fight. Or defending himself. But something in her phrasing makes him raise his eyebrows. “If you had the choice, you would hunt the people here? For what, sport? …Or does the reach of your goddess extend this far.”

From his tone, he doesn’t think so.

He watches Heysel remove her headpiece warily, gaze flicking over her bandaged face briefly. In Yharnam, there was only one reason to cover one’s face so, and it was to hide tell-tale marks of the plague. Brador recalls Heysel’s mention of a curse in Lothric. Maybe she’s hiding the signs of her own curse. He decides not to ask. He doubts it’ll be pretty.

He snorts at the mention of hot dogs. Yes, he knows what those are. Salty, processed mystery meats sold as street food – in Yharnam, you learned not to ask what they were made of.

“Dog or not, as long as there’s meat in it I’m not opposed.” He looks past Heysel, scanning the signs until he sees one that declares, in big red letters, HOT DOGS. “Show me how to pay with the holophone.”

ruthlessdaughter‌:

Heysel nods. “Of course, Brador, of course.” If the sun has been provided for the comfort of the Ark’s residents, why must it be so horribly intense? The Mare Crisium may be dismal, but at the very least, it doesn’t cause one to broil within one’s own headpiece.

She selects a relatively isolated table in the food court’s corner and pulls out a chair for Brador. Seating herself on the chair opposite, she brushes aside the crumbs left behind by its previous occupants and maintains a pensive silence.

Yharnam seems to be in a very poor state. There are no undead, there is no curse, but there is something severe enough that Brador, a man of obviously vast and unparalleled skill, is called upon to exterminate impending cases of nondescript beasthood. He is not delving into details; is it hesitation holding him back, or an inability to properly describe the situation? It’s possible he just doesn’t know of the full picture. He is an assassin, after all, not a scholar.

“A scourge of blood—no, the blood, though the difference is lost on me,” Heysel recounts, “A threat of beasts. Lethal errands. Your life isn’t any more glamorous than mine is.”

She eyes the surrounding kiosks, all selling an assortment of foodstuffs. The accompanying smell drifting through the air could be considered appetizing, perhaps, if she had any inclination to eat. Does Brador eat food? Is nutritional sustenance something that anyone in Yharnam requires?

“Are you hungry, Brador? We have been provided with an allowance of currency on arrival for the exchange of goods, paid for using this, ah, holophone.” To illustrate, she pulls her own out of her bag, laying it on the table.

Brador stares at the holophone blankly. It’s the same as the odd device he found in his room when he woke up. He doesn’t understand how the little thing could be used to pay for services, but he goes along with Heysel and pulls out his own holophone from where he’s stashed it in his clothing.

When was the last time he ate? Before he entered the nightmare, he thinks. In that place concepts like time, hunger, thirst, they all ceased to be relevant. The Church hunters who came by from time to time never brought food, and Brador never became hungry. As if he was cursed the same way as those shambling, blood-drunk messes. (He supposes every hunter is cursed. Although he hasn’t been simply a beast hunter for quite some time.)

He remembers what it’s like to be hungry. He’s not hungry right now. But the thought of having food again is alluring.

“I don’t recognize most of this stuff.” His gaze slides over the various kiosks uncertainly, and then returns to settle on Heysel. “Tell me how to use this… holophone. I can tell you about the old blood, and you can tell me about Lothric over some food.”

Brador eyes the misshapen headpiece dubiously. “If you eat.”

hunterkristoph‌:

No good answers out of him, then. If this place did have something to do with Yharnam, the man in front of him couldn’t explain it.

More important than where he is, though, is how he can leave–but Kristoph doesn’t feel like he’d be having this conversation at all if Brador knew the answer to that.

He glances down at his clothing, starting to fiddle with the edge of his coatsleeve. His circumstances seem worse and worse with every passing second. He twists the fabric between his thumb and forefinger and doesn’t raise his gaze back up to Brador when he speaks. His voice is little more than a contemplative mutter. “Yes… somewhere else.”

His eyes flit up briefly at the almost harsh tone of the man’s question.

“Well.” He pauses to clear his throat uncomfortably. “Not by choice. And I certainly don’t intend to continue the hunt.”

“Giving up the chase so easily? Some hunter you are,” Brador scoffs. “But wise of you. Better to be a coward than end up blood-drunk like the rest.”

“There are no beasts to hunt here anyhow.” He hasn’t learned much – having barely ventured outside – but he’s spoken to a few of the denizens (large talking birds, thoroughly unsettling). “They call this place the Sea of Nectar. From what I’ve gathered, it’s an entirely different world from where we come from… like a dream. Or a nightmare. I suppose you’re familiar with both kinds.”