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poisonf0rest · 16 days ago

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𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧

Plip, plop, plip, plop.

“The walls are crumbling.”

Plip, plop, plip, plop.

“Can you feel it? The ocean is rumbling.”

Today marks the beginning of a new era.

After years of disproven theories and failed experiments, the Byrgenwerth Council has finally granted you approval to perform the surgery you’ve been perfecting since your days as a student: a procedure that will grant eyes to the inside of the brain.

A method to elevate the mind to the plane of the gods.

A way to see beyond.

You’ve been tinkering away in the laboratory for hours already, prepping for your opening surgery as you disinfect drills, scalpels, and needles all from muscle memory. Shoulders stiff from hunching over the tub, you set out the last set of equipment to sterilize and dry, lacing up your white coat before stepping into the main corridor.

Strange, you don’t remember it being flooded before.

Wading through the murky liquid, you feel it slosh at your ankles with every step, the once pristine tiled floors of the Research Hall’s grand entrance were now cracked and eroded under the layer of water stretched as far as the eye could see.

No matter. Your surgery is scheduled for a quarter past, you have no time to waste on such trivial matters. You’ll simply ask one of those orphans to begin mopping up this mess.

Continuing forward, the building seems to deteriorate with every step: grand columns and statues of Church scholars from decades past erode before your eyes, the mist eating away at the very soul of the Hall, leaving it deserted and ugly and starving. It beckons you further. Closer.

You pause at the base of the stairs. The railings have all but rotted, and at your feet is a patient- which you do not know- scrambling for something in the water as she mutters incoherently.

“Where is your caregiver?” You ask, beginning towards her until she lurches forward, tripping over her bound ankles as she slips down the last few steps, falling headfirst into the murky water with a dull crack.

Rushing to her side, you help her up, “Are you alright? Tell me how I–” Dark liquid clings and oozes down her hair and skin. Like a rotten egg cracked open.

Her face is gone.

You feel her body twist and contort against your palms, elongating as the patient garbs rip and tear along all the new angles that should never exist on a human form. And over her head is a leather bag, strapped onto her shoulders and fastened around her neck with layers upon layers of buckles fastened so tight that dried blood sticks them to the bag itself. There is no face left. Under the leather there is nothing but a bloated, tumorous mass that bubbles with fluid, and when the patient tries to speak again it sounds like the roar of the ocean.

You do not scream.

You have seen this before.

After all, you are the one doing this to them.

“Oh,” The patient pulls away from your hold, gasping as she goes back to groping around in the water. “Has someone, anyone, seen my eyes? I'm afraid I've dropped them in a puddle.”

Plip, plop, plip, plop.

What is the suffering of one when it could mean the salvation of a thousand?

What is justice in the face of true madness?

You do not know. You simply listen to the science, to the teachings of the Great Ones, and pray that They are right. Pray that this was all worth it.

Plip, plop, plip, plop.

The further up you climb the more patients you run into, all in a state of transformation and decay due to the surgeries you and your fellow researchers conducted on them. Most simply stagger about, blind under their leather bags and bloated heads, others wriggle like worms in the puddles forming from the cracks on the floor, and some are nothing but heads, praying to gods who will not listen.

You try and listen. Anything to ease their suffering.

Suppose that’s a little hypocritical though, isn't it?

Or perhaps that makes you their god?

Some patients have undergone trephination three or four times. None have gotten better. But the true chances are noticeable. Sure, there is a base loss in appearance and more human-like qualities. However, that is in exchange for insight into something even greater, something beyond the average human’s comprehension. It is the key you’ve been searching for.

They are lucky, you reason, to be the chosen ones for this grand endeavor. After all, each and every patient here enlisted themselves for research, wholeheartedly believing in the holy crusade the Healing Church has undertaken to cleanse Yharnam. It is your honor, truly, to be working alongside such devotion.

After all, in a city without hope, there is only so much one as an individual can accomplish. Either you're a scholar, a killer, or fodder for the prior. Fodder to feed the stars, fodder to raise hell. It gets harder to tell which way is up with every passing day.

Are we rising?

Or sinking?

Plip, plop, plip, plop.

Finally, the staircase ends, falling apart behind you, and you pull on your surgery gloves. You smile to yourself as you prepare for the operation, remembering just how close you are to finding the knowledge of transcendence. The Council has entrusted you- Micolash himself has entrusted you- and this could very well be the next stage in humanity’s correspondence with the realms beyond.

Up until now, all of your patients have stagnated. Despite their altered forms, they were still undoubtedly stuck on this plane of existence, only sometimes slipping to the higher planes of the Great Ones once you drilled more gray matter into their brains, recalling the dripping pattern of rain and the roar of the ocean.

Water, you hypothesize, is the key.

Bodies of water act as liminal spaces- gateways, if you will- from our own world to one of the Great Ones. Like looking down at one’s own reflection, that relationship mirrors the relationship between the world of the gods and that of our own: our realm is merely a moment’s imitation of true existence, one that is warped and fragile, disrupted with but a ripple.

To be able to reach beyond the water’s surface, to break free from the role of a mere reflection and sit atop the true world alongside the Great Ones. That is your purpose. That is the goal of the Research Hall.

And so this is all but a necessary sacrifice.

Walking into the vast operating room, you feel the burn of the spotlights as you set the tray of tools down aside the patient, the rough click of metal on metal reverberating through the room. The rest of the researchers watch you, like spectators at the coliseum as they surround you from the observatory decks. You hope Micolash is among them. You hope Lady Maria is there too.

Strapped to the table is a patient you’ve come to know well, a woman who was as dedicated to finding the key to ascension as you were. Your first success.

“Saint Adeline,” you greet, bowing even though she cannot see you through the leather bag buckled around her head.

Adeline giggles. “Ma’at, Themis, my beautiful Yama. Has the day of judgment arrived?”

She tries to reach for you, but the buckles strapping her to the operating table chain her in place. As if knowing she’s being watched, her voice drops into a drowsy whisper, “Is the ocean falling? Rumbling?”

You hum in response, filling up a syringe with brain fluid- not your discovery, not your choice in name, you’re aware it’s rather silly- the grayish amoeba crawling and bouncing along the vial. However, you were the one to recognize its use, for once extracted from a patient whose transformation was complete, you hypothesized that re-injection into a brain could stimulate the formation of internal eyes.

And today, your hypothesis will be proven correct.

It has to.

“Yes, Adeline, today the surface will break.” You prepare to make the opening incision, a drill straight through the occipital bones, only to drop your hands when you realize there is nothing in them.

Adeline smiles up at you, and you curse at yourself for never noticing how beautiful she was. Paler than moonlight both in skin and hair, blonde strands cascading over the operating table as she sits up, taking your face in her palms. Wrenching your body towards hers, her grip fractures your wrists, lips brushing by your ear as she gives you one last kiss. Breath as cold as ice, eyes as pale as the moon.

"Only an honest death will cure you now."

Plip, plop, plip, plop.

She is dead.

Everyone is dead.

A rogue Hunter broke into the Research Hall, slaughtering everyone in the observatory deck in the midst of your surgery, blood from the bodies pooling down over the railings and steps. Years of research- of true progress - destroyed by a man worth little more than a beast.

You can hardly think. You just run.

Church Hunters are killers by nature, beasts who oh so easily give in to the Scourge. Clearly, this one was already lost, driven mad by his own bloodlust.

Dying screams and unanswered prayers echo down every hall like a haunted church during worship, and no matter how far you run their last words ring in your ears and rattle your skull. The air tastes like iron and you feel something warm trickle down your lips. Your nose is bleeding.

Running into a laboratory, you duck as bodies are thrown against priceless equipment, vials shattering and blood splattering onto countless records as the Research Hall runs red. The water runs red. The ocean rises.

Surely someone has raised the alarm, more Church Hunters should be coming to the rescue, but by then you fear it may be too late for—

“Stop running, you fucking scum.”

You freeze.

You swore you had outrun it. You swore it was behind you, lazy and greedy in the carnage it had already created. And yet here it stood, blood-soaked and snarling before you.

Death itself.

Hunched in the corridor before you was the rogue Hunter, standing in the ocean of blood as he bites into a trapped scholar’s neck, the poor boy writhing with a violet scream until he goes limp in the Hunter’s arms, drained.

Vampyre. Vileblood. Accursed beast.

“Monster.”

He smiles back, fangs bloody and bare. “Likewise.”

With a lunge, the Hunter is upon you, but it is not the harsh tile but rather a soft thud of soil that breaks your fall. The petals of crushed sunflowers shrivel under your body as they dim in their dying moments.

No, not sunflowers, there is no sun, not anymore. Instead, these ghostly imitations of sunflowers seem to feed off of something else entirely, curling around your bleeding legs and stretching towards the Hunter as he too appears in the gateway to the garden.

Unsheathing his claymore, the Hunter stalks forward, shadows warping his form with every arch he passes under, ticking closer and closer and closer still. But instead of swiftly delivering you the killing blow, the Hunter stalls, pausing at the last archway before the garden as he sees a patient writhing against the marble.

Their bloated head was too large for their deformed shoulders to support, and instead of fleeing they were doomed to writhe on the dirt, chained limbs flailing with every gurgled cry. The Hunter barely wastes a moment, cutting free the patient’s bindings before a dull thud echoes down the garden walkway.

You watch the patient’s head roll across the marble and scoff from your place on the ground. What a waste of a valuable test subject.

Even in death’s face you can’t help but laugh at the self-proclaimed righteousness of this Beast. “Do you think yourself a savior?”

At first, he doesn’t grant you the dignity of a reply. “I hold no illusions. I'm just a different breed of monster from you, heretic.” Swinging his claymore, it glints the same violent red as his hair. It’s as beautiful as it is blinding. “But at least I’ll die knowing I haven't condemned hundreds to an early grave for the selfish illusions of gods and power.”

You laugh, “Illusions? Your kind will never comprehend the truth. Their lives were willingly offered for the sake of evolving mankind, so that no plague or war or sin could corrupt us again.”

The Hunter is above you now, kicking a boot onto your chest as he forces you to the floor with the tip of his claymore pressed to your throat.

You simply greet the kiss of metal with open arms, saying a final prayer in hopes the Great Ones accept you in your next life. “Kill me, Beast. Kill me, but know that our pursuit of knowledge can never be quelled.”

“You call it knowledge, I see only carnage.”

“And the dog can stare at language so long as it desires, but it shall never speak.”

“Then howl.”

And with a single slash, the Hunter severs your head from your shoulders.

Plip.

We fail to realize our own latent potential until the moment it is lost, and we sense its absence. Ironically, this is the very nature of insight, like the moment one licks one's own blood, only to be startled by its sweetness.

And your blood, mon cherí , was oh so sweet.

Plop.

· · ─────── ·♰· ─────── · ·

Every night, without the sun ever coming up, the lunar cycle inches closer to the full moon. And with every cycle, the neverending hunt grows more violent and vicious.

And when the full moon finally takes up Her place in the sky, She hangs low with a silver glow and the promise of blood. She is enchanting, haunting, and hungry in a way only the divine can be: utterly insatiable.

The early spring snow has long since melted, slathering cobblestones in a bloody sludge, the cold air tainted with the rotten stench of iron and the screams of the Beasts, newly transformed and starving. Down the flickering streets, far in the distance, and even inside alleyway buildings, the howls of the damned are inescapable.

Everybody who has once called Yharnam their home is dead, dying, or transforming into something else entirely.

You’re not sure which is worst.

Where the Beasts go the Hunters follow, two sides of the same twisted fate, and the hunt quickly turns into a bloodbath. To quell public panic and unrest, the Healing Church has deployed wave after wave of Hunters, and soon both man and monster prowl the streets of Yharnam, nearly indistinguishable as they are doused in red and silver.

The Church has eyes everywhere tonight, and yet, with so many injured you cannot help but keep your clinic doors open. You took an oath, and you shall keep it no matter how dark this night gets.

Within hours, your clinic is overwhelmed.

The main floor only has three rooms, several dozen cots crammed in between supplies and maze-like walkways, and the stench of gore and panic overwhelming the small space. Even with extra makeshift cots you and the orphans scrambled together, several dozen Hunters and injured civilians lay sprawled across boxes of medical equipment, bleeding out against tables or on each other.

You tried to mandate Scourge infection screenings at the door, checking for darkening veins or fogging pupils, but with only the children and yourself left to run the clinic you’re quickly overrun and forgo the physical examinations. Perhaps that was the first mistake. By the second toll of the bell the clinic already reeks of blood and piss and sweat and death. Combined with the rising temperatures due to the growing crowd of bodies and the overlapping screams of your patients, it was nearly unbearable.

For the sake of basic sanitation, you tried to delegate each patient to their own area and medical equipment, but cross-contamination is inevitable as panicked townsfolk and aggravated Hunters scramble and fight for the quickly dwindling supplies. It was a nightmare come to life.

“Doctor!”

Turning, you nearly barrel into an elderly woman, helping her out of the way before you rush to Alison, who is still calling your name as she and Edwin fight to keep a patient down. He’s a Hunter, you quickly realize, pinned onto the cot as he thrashes and screams, a black rot squirming and crawling like a parasite burrowing into the gash across his open stomach.

“ Merde ,” you curse, watching the rot spread, “It’s the Scourge. Edwin! Strap his limbs down and ensure no other patients come near.”

The boy nods, already shouting orders to the other children as they struggle together to tie down the screaming Hunter as you force panicked observers out of the way.

Running past, you shove past the door to your lab, scrambling up the stairs and between the numerous experiments until you find the mixed cultured samples of Diluc’s vampire blood.

There was no time to check which of the trials- if any- actually contained an antibody capable of fighting the Beastly Scourge, but you’d be damned to have collected this much information and not try when a patient was dying right below your feet.

You pick one randomly. “Please,” praying into the syringe, you fill it with culture #9801. “Work.”

Downstairs, someone screams.

A few seconds later, you hear a loud crash, a body hitting the floor, then nothing but panicked shrieks, chasing you down the stairs as you burst through the clinic doors.

The infected Hunter was already in the midst of transforming, one furry arm freed from the restraints and thrashing widely at the air, snarling like a mad beast as Edwin and Alison fight to keep the other limbs locked.

Disregarding the flailing claws of the half-beast, you duck beneath the equipment, crawling until you lay under the mad Hunter’s cot. Snapping up, you lunge to avoid getting pierced, twisting around the bottom of the cot before thrusting the syringe into his side, pushing down as you watch the gray liquid inject. He howls and you tremble, fighting to keep the needle lodged in his rotting skin.

Then the Hunter lies still.

A moment of silence.

And, before your very eyes, he begins to revert, fur receding and bones snapping back into place as he groans and gasps in human pain. It worked.

It worked.

It really worked.

Giddy with hope, you’re already running through countless possibilities of furthering testing on mice and the logistics for mass producing a vaccine, the reality of finally creating a cure for the Beastly Scourge so impossibly wondrous you’re physically shaking. Biting your cheek does little to hide your smile, and it's only another look around the packed clinic that reminds you of the task at hand.

Rolling out from under the cot, you instruct the children to leave the man’s restraints on, just in case, you tell yourself, and move them on to treat new patients.

Notes can wait. Plans can wait. Hope can wait.

Your patients cannot.

You repeat the mantra over and over, yet it does little to ground you against the flurry of thoughts surrounding this potential cure. Which, in hindsight, is probably why you failed to notice a fallen medical tray, boot skidding across the metal surface as your ankle rolls out from under you.

You couldn’t even process the fall in time to scream. Only a blink, and your vision swoops to the ceiling as you plummet backward.

But you never hit the floor.

An arm wraps around your waist, holding you tight the other hand re-balances you from the small of your back. Then you’re hoisted up, the walls shifting back in place. Even so, your savior’s touch lingers, the burn of his palm radiating even through your lab coat. He smells like smoke.

“Careful.”

You breathe in deeply despite yourself, “Diluc.”

You didn’t even notice him enter.

But then you falter. Why is he here? Your Hunter makes it a point only to arrive when the clinic is empty, or at least sneak by to avoid as many people as possible. There is no way he wouldn’t have heard- or frankly smelled- the blood and panic in your clinic from miles away with his enhanced senses.

Your brows furrow, and Diluc flinches ever so slightly as your fingers graze his jaw. “Is something the matter? You look weary.”

Refusing to meet your gaze, Diluc notices Alison and Orton struggling to drag another cot through the crowd of patients, and vanishes from your side. He single-handedly lifts the bed and sets it down across the clinic hall, reappearing beside you within a fraction of a second. His palm immediately returns to rest against your back.

“You seem busy.”

Avoiding the question. Typical.

And yet it’s really quite hard to stay mad at Diluc when he subconsciously hugs you tighter, shielding you from the mass of patients pushing past, so clearly overwhelmed by the noise and the crowd and yet lingering by you. For you. Not only that but the heat of his touch and the looming reminder of how much his form towers over you makes you far more distracted than you’d like to admit.

But before you could even think of teasing him for the habit, Diluc pulls you even closer still, making your tongue twist in your mouth as your jaw goes slack. His hand comes up, skimming past your collarbones as it pauses by your neck.

Is he—? Here? Now?

You’re still in the midst of processing the initiation of this very public display when Diluc frowns, his hand brushing past your jaw.

“How…” Ever so gently his fingers tilt your head back, tracing across your neck with a touch so cold it almost feels like the tip of a blade. “When did you get this scar?”

“Scar?”

Startled, break from Diluc’s hold, picking up a medical tray for a makeshift mirror as you crane your chin backward.

Sure enough, slashed across the near entirety of your neck was a needle-thin scar, silver and almost invisible in the low light. You would have thought it a trick of the fluorescent clinic lights or side effects of your fatigue if not for Diluc questioning it first.

How had you received the scar?

You can’t remember.

Your vision swims for a moment, distorting as if a veil has been thrown over your eyes, focusing and unfocusing as if the cloth of reality danced and fluttered just outside your perception. Seeing through omission. Noticing only that which is not there. Remembering that which has not happened yet and what is to come.

It rushes against your ears, a sound strong enough to be a feeling, like getting tossed under the waves until your very sense of being is distorted, not knowing which way is up.

A blink and it’s gone; you’ve resurfaced, and your head throbs in its absence.

“Saints.” Groaning, you cradle your temples, muttering that you’re fine over and over again as you manage to hear Diluc’s voice through the roar of the surf.

He says your name again, louder this time, and the sound of the ocean cuts off with the scream of a child. What the fuck. You look wildly around the clinic, and yet there are no children in sight, only a young maiden and a few young Hunters getting treated for their wounds.

“If there something you’re keeping from me—”

You force a smile. “I’m fine, Diluc. Just a little tired from all of this,” you motion, arms sweeping across the clinic and towards him before running your hands up your face and into your hair. Even so, you keep the grin, eyeing the infected Hunter still sleeping peacefully in his cot. “Enough about me, did you see it? The cure?”

He still looks abnormally tense, eyeing you with something you can’t quite place, something between reverence and regret that makes your chest pang. You step forward, about to ask again when another voice cuts across the chaos of the clinic.

“Pardon me, are you the lead physician of this establishment?”

You jolt away from Diluc, whipping around as you find a young man— A patient? A Hunter?-- grinning in an almost overly-friendly manner as he approaches the both of you with clasped hands. Correction: as he approaches Diluc , clearly mistaking him for the physician.

Clearing your throat, you step before the stranger, offering him a gloved hand that he takes half in reflex and half in confusion. “Correct. However, if this is a request for quicker treatment, allow me to remind you that we treat every patient here equally and you or your friend will simply have to wait your turn.”

The man's face lights up in surprise, and he immediately shouts out an apology. “I beg your pardon, I only assumed that–” the man stops himself, nearly doubling over in laughter as curls of thick blonde hair flop with every hearty chuckle. “I suppose that was the problem to begin with, no? No more assumptions. A pleasure to meet you, m’lady.”

“Doctor will work just fine.”

"Oh, well beg your pardon, Doctor. You may call me Alfred!" He says, offering a deep bow and salute, his elbow pulled across his waist as he bends down, almost parallel with the ground.

You shift in place. Despite Alfred’s unfaltering smile you cannot help but feel on guard around the boyish man: a type of unnerving fight or flight instinct one gets when cornered by a being that resembles something almost human.

A wolf in sheep's clothing. A monster in human skin.

A mirror.

Scanning his heavily embroidered cloak, you note its uncanny familiarity, a solid gray from top to bottom and covered in tight lapels and buttons. It was adorned with the rune stitched right into the center of his chest, revealed only when the heavy cloak hanging from his shoulders swung out to the side.

That’s why you recognize them. They resemble Choir garbs. Not exactly, and he’s definitely too young to also be an orphan, but the similarity is undeniable.

And that rune, you now remember what it stands for: God’s Executioner.

You instinctually go for the dagger kept sheathed away in your lab coat. One strike. The clinic begins to warp with silence and static, and somewhere through the haze you watch Alfred lean closer, your vision narrowing into the hollow dip of his throat. One strike to the carotid artery, and the monster will bleed to death almost instantly.

Trembling, your arm raises, snaking under your coat almost in slow motion, clasping around the handle just as someone’s hand stops yours in an iron grip.

“M’lady?”

Their touch snaps you back to the present. Breath is punched back into your gut, and your senses are rushed with the smell of gore and rubbing alcohol, remembering the chaos of the clinic and the conversation you were in the midst of having.

Alfred’s smile is twisted with concern, but you’re hardly coherent enough to stop him from coming closer as he continues talking about something or other you can’t quite hear above the roar of your own heartbeat.

“The Doctor is rather overworked right now.” Your hand is nudged away from the concealed blade, and your back hits something firm, grounding you. ”Excuse us.”

Diluc. It was Diluc’s hand that stopped yours just moments before you brandished your knife in the middle of the clinic. It was Diluc’s chest you’re pressed up against, an almost casual position if one failed to notice his hands lingering around your hip and wrist.

Saints, what is wrong with you?

Alfred opens his mouth to speak again, but your Hunter cuts him off with a curt nod, turning the both of you away before pushing towards the clinic's back door. You squirm against his hold, constantly twisting around as you watch Alfred’s gaze obsessively follow you.

“Diluc, that man was wearing a Holy Shawl.”

“I am aware.”

“You- you don’t understand, he’s a hunter.”

“I know.” Diluc keeps pushing you forward, turning your neck back around when you fight to look behind you.

“No, no, you do not. He is a hunter . An Executioner, a hunter of Vilebloods, and he saw you-” This time when you turn back, Alfred is gone. You scan the clinic wildly, fighting against Diluc’s grasp.

Diluc calls your name. “I know.” His hands slowly cup your cheeks, forcing you to quit looking erratically over his shoulders and finally meet his gaze. “I knew.”

The overwhelming smells and sounds of the clinic fade away as the sudden rush of the cold night air nips at your skin, the clinic’s back door clicking shut as Diluc leads you into the dim alley. You don’t realize how much you’re shaking until you try and pull his hands from your face, your fingers trembling against his own.

How could you have been so fucking careless? You’re not a registered physician, not as far as the Healing Church is concerned, and that alone could be grounds for punishment, anywhere from mutilation to public execution. Not to mention, as a woman there’s no guarantee accusations of witchcraft or colluding with the devil wouldn't be charged against you as well. Now not only have you put your practice and patients at risk, but also Diluc and the children, not to mention jeopardize the cure you’ve only just managed to—

You need to get the Church off your trail.

It’s only the lingering heat of Diluc’s palms against your face that keeps you anchored from the voices rattling your skull with promises of violence. Breathe.

You step back. Diluc lets you. Inhale. Your eyes are still locked with his, and your breathing syncs with his own, and you watch the worry fade from his crimson gaze before you curse at the ground. Exhale.

“Don’t.”

“What?” You flinch at your own tone.

Diluc crosses his arms, blocking your path back into the clinic as you are forced backward. “I’m not a fool. You almost brandished a knife at a church executioner, you’re not thinking clearly.”

You scoff. “Very well, so I panicked. But if you had let me lure him outside alone I could have taken care of—”

“What, and you believe the Healing Church would simply fail to notice when the Executioner they assigned to investigate this clinic doesn’t return?” A snarl, and you swear his eyes glow red in the dim light. He steps forward and instinctively you shrink back. ”I knew you were reckless, but I never took you as plain stupid. Do you want a larger target on your back? You like throwing yourself in danger?”

Before you could even think to respond Diluc lets out a curt, mocking laugh, humorless as he motions between the two of you before snapping back to you. “Of course you do.”

Now it’s your turn to see red.

How dare he.

How dare that impulsive, violent, martyr of a Hunter accuse you of being the reckless one.

And then— “You will stop seeing patients.”

The sheer absurdity of the request is enough to give you physical whiplash. “Excuse me?”

Not a request. A demand.

You gape up at him, insults and plain curses boiling up against your throat as you stare at Diluc’s apathetic, unchanging face, scowling down at you as though disciplining a bratty child or spoiled dog.

“I certainly will not .” You step towards the clinic, the screams and prayers of patients resounding even through the door frame. “Tonight's Hunt has no end in sight, and already there are dozens who need my help. Not to mention I finally might have a cure for the Scourge.”

“That is precisely why you must lie low! You saw the Executioner prying, what makes you think the Church won’t send more dogs?”

"This is my duty, Hunter. Just as you have yours."

Diluc snarls, "I'm fully aware of what being a doctor entails. But you are not—" He catches your gaze, tired and frustrated, and goes silent. Fuck. How is it that everything he says around you comes out wrong? He thinks it might be the curse of being undead. Oh, how easy if he could blame it on his lack of a heart, to blame it on Vampirism to blame it on the Church. But he feels it, he feels it skip when you look at him like this, he feels it tremble as he fails again and again to hold on without leaving claw marks and open wounds instead.

His anger has a way of always attacking the people he wants to protect.

“You’re right,” You whisper. “We have only failed before, but that is precisely why we cannot fail again. If I can somehow manage to get the Church to distribute this cure, everyone in Yharnam could be immune in only a week's time. We could stop the Scourge in a matter of days- is that not worth every risk?”

"It was foolish. There was no guarantee that cure would have worked."

You stare at him, and by the gods are you tired. You’re tired of reaching, tired of convincing yourself that there must always be a catch, a drawback, a trap, that every effort is just an illusion of hope waiting to shatter. You simply want the conviction to truly believe that for once the world will get better.

You think you have to hope.

After all, that is why you saved him, is it not? It’s why you couldn't pull the trigger all those months ago. It’s why, after knowing all these reasons not to, you’re falling in love with him.

A sigh, and you're overwhelmed with the need to hold him. So you do, resting your head against his chest. He’s warm. "There are never guarantees, Diluc. Every treatment is subject to trial and chance, but at the end of the day I still treat my patients, and you still hunt your monsters."

And Diluc wants to fight back. He wants to stop you, to stop you before you truly cross the point of no return. To tear himself open and display the horrors of what the Hunter’s contract has forced upon him, anything to make you realize how much of a privilege the option of ignorance and the ability to just look away is.

But all that you hear next are the screams coming from inside the clinic.

You tear yourself away from the Hunter, jerking towards the backdoor before Diluc stops you, one hand pulling you backward as the other lands on the hilt of his greatsword. He unsheathes his claymore with practiced ease, kicking the door wide as you both push into the clinic.

The stench of blood and gore nearly knocks you over.

Bile crawls up your throat, and you drop to your knees in time to dodge an operating table hurled at the door. Diluc cleaves it in half, the pieces clattering to the floor. A Beast, writhing in pain as its ribs crack open, fur and limbs emerge from its writhing body in bloody spurts, still half restrained to a cot as it screeches and drags behind him.

You lunge for your rifle, aiming for the Beast’s head when you recognize that torn uniform, the Hunter garbs. He’s the patient, the patient you cured.

The rifle trembles and your finger loosens on the trigger. “I can’t...” The cure had worked.

You can’t kill a man.

But your Hunter knows no such hesitation. Diluc moves with an eerie grace, his sword flashing in the dim light of the clinic as he meets the Beast before it lunges at the mob. Blade strikes claw and the monster roars. Diluc ducks a swing, twisting his grip before punching the claymore upwards, slicing through the Beast’s ribcage as blood sprays in an arch across the clinic walls.

"Stop! Don't kill him!" You cured him. You saw it, the cure worked. It had to have worked.

Diluc pauses unnaturally, stopping mid-swing as if his heart and instinct were fighting for control. "Are you mad?” It snarls and he drives the blade in again. ”It’s the Scourge, it's beyond saving!"

You shake your head, your eyes locked onto the Beasts. You can see it, the pain flickering in his cloudy, poisoned gaze, the slight twitch of his furry limbs as they resist the transformation. Only a human would fight that hard to stay alive.

But Diluc doesn't listen. The Hunter sees only a Beast.

Panicked, you’re about to drop your aim when your head rushes with an eerie ringing, a muted toll of bells throbbing through your ears as your balance gives. You barely register the pain of your knees ramming into the tile as your vision spins, throbbing in time to the ringing. Then, with a suddenness that makes you jump, it speaks.

The Beast’s snarls part to form words, his voice now broken and guttural, as though attempting to make human speech from an animal tongue. "You believe you can save me?" it howls in laughter. "You believe you can break the curse that’s been wrought upon us?"

Fool.

Foolish greedy human, always wanting knowledge that should never have been yours.

Diluc steps back as though stunned, his sword lowering slightly. The Beast takes advantage of the momentary distraction and charges towards him. Your body moves on instinct. With a bang, your rifle goes off, the Beast howling as it convulses over its bleeding stomach, its flesh bubbling around the silver bullet with the stench of rotten flesh.

Diluc takes the opening, claymore following a clean arch over his shoulder. The metal sings, hitting the clinic’s floor at the same moment the Beast’s head does so too, its massive body following suit in a bloody heap.

The screams of the other patients fade into the background as you stare at the lifeless body of the beast. Diluc turns to look at you, and you ground yourself in the inferno burning in his eyes. Such a violent, violent red.

“Did you…” Diluc kneels before you, and you cling to him, gaping. “Did you hear him?”

The Hunter's brows furrow, and he lifts you slowly, as though scared of startling you. “Hear what?”

You don’t remember.

Your gaze flickers back to the corpse of the Hunter. You lock eyes with his decapitated head, skull morphed into something half-wolf half-man, eyes still blown open as he stares back, frozen in horror.

He’s dead. The Hunter is dead.

Your cure failed.

And yet, before it failed it worked, did it not? There was a moment of time where it worked, where it truly worked, and in that moment alone you imagined a Yharnam cleared of the Scourge and of the rot. And it was beautiful.

You have to try again. You must find the cure. No matter the cost.

You don’t even realize you’re muttering it to yourself, over and over again until Diluc’s hand clasps onto your shoulder, ripping your gaze off the Hunter’s mutilated body and back to his own.

Diluc’s words are quiet, recited more to himself than you. "You cannot save everyone."

You know, and yet.

“If I don’t, then who will?”

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