Painter was somehow both good at giving directions and completely terrible at it. He was adamant that he knew where he was leading them, with the assurance that he’d done this a lot, just with Good People — but he must have grown too used to leading something considerably more animalistic than them around, such that his directions very much consisted of a constant clicking this way, a that way, a no, not that way, a the other way, or a definitely not that way, I really, really mean it. All of this, mind you, through the incredibly unpleasant to navigate superstructure that was the Blacksite, with all its miserable twists and turns and little pockets meshing with the general state of disrepair the thing was quickly falling into, hallways twisted by unseen anomalies into fractal labyrinths or broken everythings preventing normal passage of what would otherwise be a relatively simple journey. Everything, too, was framed by the knowledge that most of the time they were probably being watched, anyway, and not until they got in range of Sebastian would they be safe in a definable way, and that itself was a special kind of hell.
Finally, though, they made it to their destination, a fact which became incredibly apparent the second W.M. was able to pull themselves through yet another doorway (agile, despite their size, but still, all that crouching to fit their head through gets old fast). As they might have expected, Sebastian was, in all his glory, very much asleep on the floor, passed out in what looked to be an incredibly uncomfortable position, at least more than usual.
It was the first time they’d gotten a good look at him in a long time. A few fresh wounds — a few new scars — had made themselves a place on the length of his body; some of them looked particularly irritated, but none of them were properly covered nor did they appear to really be treated at all, beyond the bare minimum of washing them. Maybe drying them. Sea water was less of an issue given that aside from travelling inside the facility when he had to they’d never seen him in the wider waters outside of it, though still the little contact with it probably wasn’t great either.
He’d never have said it himself, not to them, but they could with ease guess the reasons why he was choosing not to treat them; if they were more like him (pah — if they could get that way in the first place), they’d probably be the same way, too.
The rest of him, mostly the same as they remembered, save for the being clothed part. When they’d brought him… that corpse, when their food had first run out, he’d only been sporting the jacket. Which, to be perfectly clear, was still a welcome sight and a relief if they’d ever felt one; it suited him much better than a collar and was generally less awful. Other than that, he seemed generally worse for wear, if that were possible given all the before, but somehow looking more alive than he had in ages; and perhaps calmer than they’d ever seen him during their tenure down here. Even when he’d been sedated he’d never looked calm, in any sense of the word; and while of course he wasn’t now a paragon of tranquility by any means he didn’t seem to be… in a bad way. Not like he was, at least. And as they brought their head down, and stared at his face—
Nope, no. No way, pal. Not at all. You had your chance, a long, long time ago, and you blew it. You didn't even care — you were too busy thinking about offing yourself to care. And now you do? After all this? You two are acquaintances at best now, and hey, acquaintances don’t think of acquaintances like that, not least acquaintances who lied to their acquaintances' faces by not telling them the one thing they probably would have liked to know most in the world. And, literally, for what? Because you thought he knew? Why would he? Or because you were worried about what he’d do — to who? To himself — what would he even do? And did you really give a shit about the fates of anybody down there? Any of the people torturing him? Offering you false platitudes? Yeah, they really respected you, they respected you so much they shoved your brain into the DNA-dump demon you helped them make. All that time fishing for attention and praise and you got this. All that wanting to be needed, all that getting told what to do and who to be and why to be it by some stupid cogs in their stupid machine, and you got this. You deserve this. You could have told him, hell, you could have done something, something way sooner, and you didn’t, and you fucked up, because you’re an asshole who ruins everything, of course you are, and you’re not allowed to even entertain that kind of thought. So genuinely, knock it the fuck off.
…It was mostly the same as they remembered it, too.
They shook their head as if to clear their muddled thoughts as Painter made a sound, clearing his non-existent throat expectantly.
“Right,” W.M. muttered. “Right, yeah. It’s all good. I’ll just…” in a bit of an awkward way they managed to wedge themselves between his massive form and the floor, lifting him up off the ground in an unpracticed way using the spear that jutted out from their forehead and draping him across their back as best they could, and though he was by and large dead weight right now they didn’t mind much. The feeling of physical contact in general, though, was weird. They hadn’t felt it in such a long time that now it felt foreign to them, but not disquieting; it was a welcome kind of strange — feeling, doing something other than ripping apart smaller bodies with rending claws or tearing meat from still-warm bones. Or impaling people, or drowning them, or dragging their lifeless corpses through the depths either in claw or in jaw, or… anything of the sort. It was nice, though it felt wrong for it to feel nice.
They turned to look at the navi-path screen with a soft blink of their eyes. “So where to?”
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Getting into Sebastian’s room, if one could call it that, was mildly uncomfortable to say the least; it was very much not designed for two creatures of such a size to comfortably fit inside, and mostly they found themselves dangling from the ceiling as they tried desperately to lay him on the ground without dropping him and thus ruining this whole gambit, the hem of his jacket firmly clenched between their teeth like the scruff of a particularly hefty lion cub as they craned their neck towards his usual spot. Not that they’d been in here, of course, but it became self-evident which part of this room he usually occupied when one considered the placement of everything else and the wide-open space enough for him to almost-comfortably turn around in. Almost.
With some difficulty, though, they managed, mostly-gently laying him down on the floor before beginning the equally delicate process of pulling themselves back up through the ceiling without breaking anything, or falling, or both; which was much easier said than done, as the ceiling threatened to bend under their misplaced weight, though in the end they managed with only some minor claw-scrapes in just a few places.
Looking back down from above their gaze softened as they watched him, the slow rise and fall of his breathing telling them they’d done something right, at least for once, though they couldn’t help themselves but feel a deep sense of guilty longing as they did. They missed him, they really did. A lot. What they’d done was terrible. What anyone had done to him, in the past twelve or so years, was terrible. No sorry would ever suffice, they knew that; in the face of unrelenting cruelty such as he had faced there was no word or combination of words in this world or the next that would ever make up for it, that could ever really soothe any of the wounds. They didn’t blame him for blaming them, or anyone else. Didn't blame him for being angry, or for being the way he was. It was only fair.
…But still. Some selfish part of them clung onto the hope (there that was again — that word; of course, no matter how hard you try, you terrible thing, you can never stay away from it too long, can never pretend not to care forever) that they might make things right, might put things right — righter than they’d found them. Righter than they’d made them, at least. That they could save, if not everybody, then a few people. These people. They had to hope.
And sure, it did seem very much that the very nature of this terrible world was to crush hope, and it was ever apparent that their makers were banking on its defeat to secure their victory — when they grew tired of fighting, when they grew tired of trying, then getting what they wanted would be easy; but so long as they lived they had to hold onto some thread of it, had to believe a better world beyond this place, that escape, was more than just a passing fantasy. Something to stave off the dark. That change was real, and possible, and that it may in time come for them; maybe not that this pain had meaning, but that this pain wasn’t permanent, wasn’t an immutable fact of the world but… something. That it could be something else even if they weren’t sure what something else was.
It had to be.