open

[acreage]

WHO: Holden, you!
WHAT: A catch-all for the month(?)
WHEN: After Satinalia and onwards
WHERE: Kirkwall, Gallows
NOTES: There'll be post-murderhaus stuff in here, so there may be references to some of the horror movie occurrences!

Starters will be in the comments! I'm sorry, I'll write a real log one day.

Comments

[acreage]

"Hey."

What he's hoping for, before he goes on, is eye contact — though he'll at least take some kind of acknowledgment.

"This happened to all of us. There isn't a single person who got off easier than anyone else. We were all the mercy of a psychopath, and we were all lucky to make it out in one piece." Some more than others, but you know. "That goes for you as much as it goes for me."

[muckspout]

He does meet his eyes then.

"I had him. I had him several times and he just kept--it kept happening. And everyone got hurt and I could've stopped it."

That last point comes out louder than expected and Edgard is surprised he's voiced it at all.

As always, all he can see in reflection are all the ways in which he should've seen something, should've acted differently. If he acts on instinct, he messes up, if he thinks too hard, he misses the moment. No matter what he does, it is always the wrong thing, and people just keep dying.

[acreage]

Oh, he knows where Edgard is. It's Naomi's we saved a few; we should've saved more. It's Alex's we lost 25 people because I made that choice. It's his own I opened those gates. So I'm responsible if anything comes through them.

He knows where Edgard is. He lives here.

"He got the better of all of us. We all made our own choices, and we all did our parts. It took three of you take him down in the end. No one of us could've done it alone."

Even though, again, the dude was a spindly human raisin. Details.

"And, no offense," he adds more lightly, "but tough as you are? You aren't tougher than every single one of the rest of us who were there, or all of his past victims. Stopping him was never on you."

Naomi has reminded him, more than once, the accidental arrogance of this kind of thinking. It's helped him a little, is worth trying.

[muckspout]

Edgard blinks a little and intakes some air.

"I don't think I'm tougher." He says wondering. He's not thought of it like that before. "I'm just always making mistakes."

He's surprised at Holden. He's not angry or telling him he did something wrong. (Although he did, he always does.) Instead, he's reassuring him and making some solid points. It reminds him of his brothers in the Invisible Hands, but that acknowledgement is also acknowledgement of a deeper ache so he shoves it down.

"Thank you." He says in the same wondering tone. "You're a good man, Holden." And he means it. Edgard trusts few and himself less, but on this he does not doubt.

[acreage]

That just earns a smile, a friendly shoulder-clap.

"I'll be feeling better soon," he says, like a promise, and, "I hope you will be too."