trailofblood | (no subject)

You're a real piece of work, you know that?

[ Here he half expected to get smacked again. ]

Yeah. So I'm learning.

Have it your way.

[ Exhales, long and slow. ]

Thank you.

[Our only alternative is to become demons. . .]

Yeah, whatever.

[ Merely words, after all. ]

[gonna sit over here against the wall and twirl that quill between his fingers]

[ So...

If he sits down next to you, how's that gonna go ]

[twirling continues]

[ ...... ]

We could play tic-tac-toe if that'll help any.

The game where Liter died, I carved my name into my arm with a quill like this one.

[sorry were you trying to lighten the mood]

[ Typical. ]

... Why? Was that part of the game?

A member of each team got put into this glass cylinder fillin' up with water. Each round more water got added, until. . . [you can imagine] Liter was ours.

So we had to do "tasks" to slow it down.

[ Deliberately flat, ]

Tasks like carving things onto your arms.

So... what determined who won and who lost?

Like that, yeah. And drinkin' poison. [eyes the ink bottle]

The ones whose teammates didn't die, I guess. I wasn't really payin' much attention to who won.

What I mean is...

If you did the tasks, why did he still have to die?

. . .

You also had one chance to send a round's water to another team.

We got hit in the first and third rounds. There was one last round after that, but he'd already drowned.

... So in other words, you could kill another team's hostage to protect yours.

[ jfc thanks for this heart-to-heart, he's feeling much more chipper now ]

[you're welcome]

Not everyone's like you, spikey.

'Least we can't get fucked over by anyone else in this game. If we lose, it's our own fault.

That doesn't mean I can understand it.

[ ... hn. "Our own fault," that's right. ]

It's gonna be fine.

I can. Doesn't mean I can forgive 'em.

[glances at him briefly then away, tossing the quill aside]

We'll see.

[ He catches the quill as it goes flying, and eyes the bottle of ink where Wolfwood set it down earlier. ]

What will not forgiving them accomplish?

Nothin', really. Never found out who did it, and by now they're probably long since down in the pods where I was.

But that's not somethin' you can just forget.

And what would you do if you did know? If they weren't sleeping?

Nothin' you'd approve of.