OPEN.

[bloodandbrass]

Comments

[hardlydead]

Fists. Feel like that's obvious.

[bloodandbrass]

weapons end a fight a lot faster.

[hardlydead]

Not as satisfying though.
I know you know that.

[bloodandbrass]

sure. but they make sure you never lose against some idiot who thinks his fists are all that matter.

[hardlydead]

Yeah? Why don't you just use a gun then?

[bloodandbrass]

used to. didn't end up here with me or i'd shoot anybody who trespassed.

but you know there's an even bigger difference between those and regular weapons than fists and knives. it ain't even close to the same and that thing knows it.

[hardlydead]

[ key difference, he figures. evan fights because he feels like he has to, david fights because he wants to. in some ways he envies evan, envies having a reason. but he's not gonna get into that. ]

Can't say I'm mad you don't have it with you.

[bloodandbrass]

be grateful. i had the best aim out of everyone i knew.

[ that is to say, he always hit his target. ]

[hardlydead]

You kill everyone else?

[bloodandbrass]

not all of them.

just had a better eye.

[hardlydead]

Just born to kill, huh?

[bloodandbrass]

raised to it. mostly used the gun for hunting.

[hardlydead]

When you say hunting, I'm assuming animals and not people?

[bloodandbrass]

where you think i got the traps from?

[hardlydead]

Not exactly the craziest thing to imagine someone using bear traps to catch people out in the real world.

[bloodandbrass]

didn't start that way, though. didn't think of using them on people til i saw one of them up on his hind legs, trying to break out that way.

didn't work. but i got the idea.

[hardlydead]

So you did use them to trap people before this place then.

[bloodandbrass]

sometimes. people don't look down in a mine.

[hardlydead]

What did you trap the mine for though? Workers must've needed to get about.

[bloodandbrass]

there were always abandoned shafts. half collapsed tunnels. places people didn't go looking.

[hardlydead]

[ he's so confused by this. are they talking about animals or people? does it really matter? ]

Animals a big problem down there?

[bloodandbrass]

[ he hesitates at that. how much of his life before this place does he actually want to talk about? it's not a secret that he killed everyone by the end, or at least almost everyone; there's newspapers around that tell the story, and over the time here people have put the pieces together if they haven't already heard the story as some kind of urban legend.

but that's still different than talking about it outright, even as a threat. ]

no. i killed most everybody down there. took a while.

[hardlydead]

Oh.
Couldn't have anyone getting away.
Got it.

[ he wants to ask why, especially given how protective evan is of his place, there's something missing there. some piece that'll make it make sense why he'd slaughter all his workers and ruin his livelihood, evan just doesn't strike him as stupid enough to throw everything away on bloodlust alone. it's got to be something else. ]

[ he's also highly aware this is the most forthcoming evan's ever been, and david at least recognises that if he pushes too much or the wrong way all he's gonna get is aggressively shut down. but while he's never necessarily saught to make evan open up or talk about his past, something about him doing it is almost magnetic to david. difficult to resist. ]

Why though?
That's a lot of hard work for what?

[bloodandbrass]

[ it was more than that, he thinks. but he doesn't say it.

already he gets the feeling he's crossing a line. one of his own, which makes it worse. he watches david's response come in and wonders why david's even asking. morbid curiosity, probably. ]

they deserved it. that whole place was infested.

[hardlydead]

Infested?