2021-07-18: Only Half of a Heart

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  • Cutscene: Only Half of a Heart
  • Cast: Xander Lovell
  • Where: A rare lake in the Filgaian wilderness
  • Date: 7-18-2021
  • Summary: Betrayed, empty, and aimless, Xander sets his roots where fate happens to land him. He retreats into himself, haunting a lake in the middle of nowhere and lets his survival instincts take over. Maybe in time he'll recover enough to think... if someone doesn't come to slay the monster first.

You should have taken his hand.

Xander doesn't know if he means four years ago, or if he means in the river, or if he means standing over a body in Lindow. Doing it in any instance before means he wouldn't even need to call upon doing it after. But does it matter? It's Riley who let go. Isn't it? Or is it?

Either way, Xander's alone now. Washed away in the river and letting it take him until it landed him in a lake. He injects himself with another health vial and begins to pick the bullets from his wounds, desensitized to the process.

Disheveled, injured, and no spark in his eye as he sits exhausted by a lake that he can't find the strength to drink from. An easy target. He gets another bullet to his shoulder from a gunshot he doesn't remember hearing, and for the first several moments, Xander just lies there, bewildered by his luck. He doesn't realize this means the the bandit who shot him thinks he's dead. The bandit doesn't realize his own mistake until he reaches for Xander's pockets and gets a dagger in the throat for it.

Xander's life has been so brutally transformed that this is what good luck looks like. An easy kill. Came right to him. Xander laughs soundlessly. Why isn't it ever that way when he needs it? Xander should feel less guilty about this one, he thinks numbly. It was self defense, they'd say. They're all self-defense. This poor bastard wasn't any different than him: hungry and desperate and on the hunt, struggling to change his fate. He didn't deserve to die.

Does anyone?

Riley's not here and Xander has to bury the body himself. The man has a knife that might be useful, but the handle is worn, the blade is well kept, and there's an inscription on the hilt, so Xander leaves it for the corpse to keep. He marks the site with a little stack of rocks in a futile and worthless gesture, but so is everything else so he might as well. Red flowers will begin to grow over the grave by dawn.

Xander's never stayed in one place for long, especially not after killing someone there. But where else does he have to go? There's no where. He didn't take Riley's hand. Did Riley feel the kill, wherever he is? Is he relieved? Disgusted? ...Disappointed?

It doesn't matter.

The next time the odd traveler comes for a drink of water, or to rescue what appears to be a drowning stranger, or simply to inspect the rarity of desert flowers peppering the murky water's edge... they'll find a Fang.

For each one that doesn't escape his blade, the lakeside garden will grow.