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[Envy, meanwhile, is sitting on a large rock out of the way of the makeshift jumping course, leaning back on his hands and content just to watch the pair go.]

[If it weren't for the heat, he would have probably been happy just to sit out here forever, but eventually he figures he ought to call her over for a break. Sitting on a fire horse can't make the heat any better. So after their next run of jumps, he lifts an arm to wave them over.]

Hey, come over and rest a second!

_{[It's true, even though Carousel definitely controls the flames to some degree, she can't exactly make them cool.]

[Acknowledging the call, Heather slows the Rapidash down to a trot, then a walk, as she heads over.]}

What, you can't stand ten minutes without me?

_{[She's grinning as she says it, and dismounts with a puff of exertion. It is hot, and today she'd been riding bareback.]}

Oh, I'll shrivel up and die before too much longer.

[He adopts a weak, raspy voice and waveringly reaches one hand out towards her.]

Help meeee.

Ugh, pathetic.

_{[She drawls this as she slips Carousel's bridle off and gives the Rapidash a pat on the neck before letting her settle down to a well-deserved grazing session. Draping it over her shoulder, she heads back towards where she left her bag earlier at the base of a tree.]}

C'mon, let's sit in the shade.

[Envy hops off of the rock, taking a moment to stretch his arms up over his head once he's on the ground.]

Yeah, okay. Hey, maybe we could have some lunch while we're at it.

[Hey, Carousel gets lunch, and it is about the time for it. He goes to settle in the grass next to the tree, leaning his back on it.]

So...what does have you wanting to train with Carousel so much lately? You've been riding her a lot more than you've been training anyone else.

Heh, not that I mind watching you ride.

You'll spoil your appetite for dinner, at this point.

_{[AND YET, she still makes a beeline for the snacks she brought along, pulling them from her pack along with a waterbottle, which she proceeds to take a looooong drag from, and then hold over her head to empty roughly half its contents all over herself, not caring about getting her clothes wet. She's already sweat-soaked.]

[It isn't until she's giving her head a little shake to sluice the water from her hair that Envy's question really sinks in.]}

... Huh?

--oh.

Eh, every six months or so, Carousel and I kind of buckle down and focus on the riding for a few weeks solid. It's just a thing.

[He's very happy to watch her do that, although he does lean away and put his hand up to cover his face from most of the drops that fly off her hair.]

Watch out, watch out! I didn't sign up to get rained on today.

[But he's more amused than annoyed. And maybe if it weren't so close to one of those weekends, he wouldn't have thought any more of it. He's still not thinking of it as anything big, but the pattern's there, and he's curious.]

Oh. Anything to do with the weekends, or just a coincidence?

_{[She pauses, visibly, as the water trickles down her cheeks and drips from her chin.]

[She hadn't honestly expected him to home in on that. Nor had she even thought about needing to answer a question along those lines.]

[She hasn't talked about it in years. It practically doesn't even feel like something she actively keeps secret anymore.]}

... Kinda, I guess.

_{[She sits down at last, popping the cap back onto the bottle.]}

[And he hadn't expected her to have that much of a reaction to the question.]

[Honestly, he'd been expecting more along the lines of her laughing and telling a funny story about having to ride Carousel away from that weird magic bus that shows up sometimes.]

[He nudges her arm lightly with his own, not minding the damp.]

Hey, you okay? You can tell me, if you want.

_{[NO FUNNY STORIES TODAY, ENVY.]

[She nods, although her gaze is still a little far-off.]}

Yeah, it's... I guess it's not really such a big deal anymore. I mean, it's been years since...

_{[Realizing that she's getting a little ahead of herself, she shakes her head.]

[It would be easy to make something up. Maybe she would, if it was someone else. But, well, Envy already knows a few of the many twisted pieces of the fucked-up puzzle that is her life. In the long run, this is kind of just one more.]

[Even if it's recent enough that it almost-- almost-- makes her queasier to think about than some of the things that she went through in Silent Hill itself, almost seven years ago.]}

You know how some of the stuff we see on those weekends usually pop up multiple times? Like, there's the random shit, but then other times you'll see the same person every time it happens? Usually people from back home, or that you knew before somehow. And sometimes they'll even remember seeing you?

[Envy listens, face getting more serious the more she talks. He may not have expected this when he asked, but he brought this up and he's gonna listen to it now.]

[Besides. Something about the weekends clearly has her spooked enough that she obsessively rides her firey unicorn in the weeks before, and what that is is something he wants to know about. Just in case he could do anything.]

[It's probably some kind of monster right? He'll fight that, he'll fight anything.]

Yeah...'s happened to me a few times, with a few people.

[He keeps his answer to the point, waiting for her to continue.]

Yeah.

_{[It's probably happened to most people, honestly. And incredibly, 90% of the time when it's happened to her it's been almost entirely positive. Getting to see her father, see her departed friends. Hell, even seeing the monsters was sometimes something she came away from feeling all right about.]

[Seeing them here is so absurd and out of place that it's honestly hard to be afraid of them. They just don't hold the same weight here as they did in the Otherworld.]

[But what she's talking about is an entirely different species of nightmare.]}

Exactly.

Well... for awhile there was this one thing that would happen. It would happen every time, eventually. Sometimes in the middle of everything and sometimes after all the other, generic-brand chaos wound down so everything almost seemed back to normal.

... It wasn't like anything else.

It wasn't even like anything from back home-- but at the same time, it... was. Familiar. Somehow.

[The fact that it apparently isn't something from her home that just followed her here is...actually kind of alarming. Envy hasn't seen too many truly frightening things pop up, even on the weekends. Really, there'd only been once or twice. Even Heather's monsters, yeah, weren't that spooky here.]

[The way she's talking about it doesn't sound good either.]

What was it?

_{[She chews her lip for a few seconds, debating whether to start at the beginning or just cut straight to the important part.]

[For once, the latter actually seems like a better idea.]

[He doesn't need to know the grimy details of the first time she saw those wild, rolling eyes staring at her from the shadowy corner of a department-store basement.]}

A man.

But... not a man. _{[It's clear from her tone that she's not referring to gender validity, here.]} Something else.

Like clockwork every time one of those weekends rolled around, he'd appear. Didn't do much at first. But it got... worse.

_{[She cuts off there, just for a few seconds. It's been years since she's so much as dusted off this subject and it is, quite frankly, just as hard to talk about now as it was back then. If not, in its own way... harder.]}

... You remember Dale Cooper?

_{[ABRUPT SUBJECT CHANGE, but SHE PROMISES IT'S RELEVANT.]}

[He scoots up next to her so that he can lean, lightly. Offering contact while she talks about this. He doesn't care if he gets all sweaty on that side.]

...yeah, I do. Did he have something to do with it?

[Despite not ever getting along with the man, Envy doesn't think that he'd caused anything purposefully.]

_{[She actually twitches-- not hard, just slightly-- in surprise when he leans on her. But then she awkwardly lifts one arm to sling around his shoulders.]

[It hasn't happened in years. She should be able to talk about it, by now.]}

Sort of.

He was, you know, a federal agent where he came from. Which I'm pretty sure was more or less the same kind of world I'm from, if not straight up the same one.

We were... we were really close. He was like... not a father, exactly. But, you know. Close.

Anyway, he...

... Cooper knew what he was.

What it was.

[Envy still feels that twitch and knows exactly what sort of reaction it is; his gut clenches in worry, and if she hadn't put her arm around him right after he would have scooted back over and let her have the space.]

[He crooks one elbow up, holding his hand up near hers. This time he doesn't initiate any contact, but his hand is there for her to take if she wants to.]

He told you?

Yeah.

Back when I worked at that diner in Ecruteak, if you remember that.

_{[She lets her index finger curl around a couple of his, but that's it. Even the arm around his shoulder, right now, is more meant to keep herself from recoiling completely. Which would be incredibly easy while talking about this.]}

Before he came to Johto, he was investigating a murder case. A girl who'd been beaten to death by someone. But it was more than that-- more than just another person murdering someone. There was something else.

A thing.

Something that could get into peoples' heads.

Not just the murderer's.

The victims', too.

[He leaves his own fingers right where they are. But as she talks, a cold, uncomfortable shiver runs down his back.]

[Yes, there'd only been one or two times that he'd ever been truly frightened by anything on those weekends. Once was when his master had shown up.]

[The other time...]

[His voice has gone hushed without him even really realizing it. It couldn't have been the same thing, could it?]

And it...? Did you see it?

Yeah.

_{[She's somewhat relieved that her voice isn't shaky as she says it. She'd been a little worried, leading into this conversation, that she might revert back to the literal MESS of a girl she'd been after her last encounter. That she'd go right back to tasting his filthy fingers in her throat and gag at literally nothing right there in front of her boyfriend.]

[But no, while her insides are still twisting with nausea and old, resurfacing shame, it's been long enough. Long enough that she can keep a steady tone.]

[That doesn't stop her expression and voice alike from growing murky as she goes on.]}

Every single weekend.

He'd find me.

Every fuckin' time.

[Even with his own growing sense of dread, anger manages to bubble up under it and make Envy's teeth grind. Someone, something had been hurting Heather, had gone after her more than once.]

[Heather doesn't scare like this easily. There's an edge to his voice when he speaks, even as quiet as it still is, not very unlike the one she gets when she talks about his mother. Protective and murderous all in one.]

Is it still happening?

_{[She hears his anger.]

[It's sharper than Cooper's had been-- and that's actually a relief, even though it probably shouldn't be.]

[Cooper had known too much. And that was why there had always been a note of heartbreaking helplessness in his voice whenever she told him about what was happening. It hurt. And even worse, it made her even more afraid.]

[But after all this time, it's also a relief just to know that her own anger survived along with the fear. That it hadn't been extinguished.]}

No.

It stopped, a few years back.

But I don't know why.

_{[Her mouth scrunches slightly in frustration and the hand resting over his shoulder curls into a fist, knuckles cracking audibly.]}

Because it's not like I ever scored any victories when we tangled. No matter what I did, or tried.

[It's a relief to hear that it had stopped, even if she didn't know why.]

[To know that she hadn't been dealing with this thing on her own, all this time, and that it's not likely to happen to her again in a few short weeks.]

[He still wants to hurt whatever it had been, wants to make it suffer for what it did in a rush of anger that he doesn't feel very often anymore. But at the same time, what she's describing...]

[There had been no winning. There had been nothing he could do, no matter how sharp his words or how fast he could run or how strong he was. All he'd been able to do in the end was scream and scream until whatever it was had grown bored of him and left.]

[He nearly doesn't say anything at all, but he swallows, and the question comes out anyway.]

...what did he sound like?

[There's something...different in his voice than the anger. Some of that dread is showing through, and his eyes wouldn't meet hers even if she turned to look at him.]

... Gravelly, and... growling.

... Like...

Like a rabid animal.

Like if a rabid animal had the throat and tongue of a human, if it could speak actual words. But every word sounded like it was trying to claw its way out of something too small to contain it. Loud and... and raw.

Feral.

_{[Now she shudders. Because oh, god, she can still hear it. There's FIRE in your hands, Heather Mason. And for a moment, because its echoes are still bouncing off the walls of her mind all this time later, she doesn't notice the edge on Envy's voice growing blunt with fear.]}

It would go from being a whisper to a scream in the space of a sentence. Sometimes less.

And I don't... I don't know what was worse, hearing it in front of me or-- _{[She lets out a growl of her own, staring straight ahead in disgust, teeth clenched.]}-- hearing it inside.

[She's not alone. He can hear it too--it's been years since he's even thought of what had happened, it had only been the once, and memories are always hazy and easier forgotten after those days.]

[But not nearly enough to truly forget that.]

[His breathing grows quicker, his heart pounding in his ears the longer she goes on, and he shudders again at the end.]

[There's no mistaking it now. It can't be anything but the same creature.]

Inside.

[It was barely a mutter, and he tries to take a second to get himself under control before he speaks up to continue. His voice doesn't shake, but his held up fingers have curled down into a tight fist of their own.]

I know what you're talking about.

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