trailofblood | (no subject)

[ 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.

... Wolfwood...

[ NOW he's standing to go retrieve the ink bottle ]

Don't even start. I let you have your shitty 'condition,' you don't get to argue with me any more today.

I'm not 'starting' anything, we never stopped.

[ As far as this discussion is concerned, they will probably never stop. He plops back down with the bottle in hand, across from Wolfwood this time. ]

Riddle me this, then: how do you feel when you kill someone? Do you actually get any satisfaction out of it?

. . .

What makes you think I remember killin' anyone?

Mostly because there are a few shards you pointedly didn't let me see.

[ (Yes he noticed) ]

[ And he's drawing a tic-tac-toe board on the floor now, fuck you if you thought he was joking ]

Did it occur to you that maybe that's cause you weren't in 'em?

[are we really going to play tic tac toe with a very sharp quill and poison ink]

It did.

But I also trust you to hedge around things like that, especially with me.

[ Yes????? Who do you think you're dealing with ]

[sigh]

There's still a lot I don't remember, Vash. Stuff about who I am, what I was doin'. . . I'm sure you understand that. There's some things I gotta figure out for myself.

... Yeah, I get it.

[ Putting an 'o' in the middle square and then holding the quill out to him ]

Just... do me a favor and remember that question I asked you.