AN: Pre-game. Blake decides to go to Yarnham.


Clasps and hollow thuds. A sigh.

Addy turned the corner to see exactly what she'd been expecting: Blake, one hand propped on an open suitcase, the other poised over its open belly. He was too still to tell whether he'd heard her. His eyes raked over the mess of provisions on his bed – clothes, weapons, keepsakes – and his fingers closed and opened, closed and opened in fists, like flowers stuck in cyclical time. She'd never seen anyone looking so lost in their own home.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

His head gave a brief jerk, but he did not look at her. His eyes stayed focused on his half-filled case. "I'm going."

Addy could have mouthed the words along with him, yet something cold struck her chest all the same. "Why? Just let Matthews handle it. He's sent enough hunters already."

"None of them have come back. I have to try."

"You have to protect the town. They need you here."

He finally looked at her. "This is more important."

Addy felt a sick grimace pull at her lips. He was right – lord knows he was, but that didn't make it feel any less…wrong. She finally broke the eye contact to stare at the mauve sky, flickering out the window. The moon came out the other night and hadn't moved since. It was like a great white eye staring down at them, putting them in the spotlight for all manners of unnatural horrors.

Nothing's really right anymore, is it?

Addy turned back to see his suitcase had been dumped back onto the bed. Hope sparked in her chest, just to be snuffed when Blake began feeding supplies into the pouches around his belt. He tossed his spare clothes aside.

"I'm going with you," Addy said.

"No, you're not."

"Why not? I can hold my own."

"You're staying here."

"No, I'm not."

Blake closed his eyes, pressing his fingers into them as if to block out the moonlight. He let out an inaudible groan. One eye flicked open, fixed on Addy, as he spoke. "They'll think we deserted them, you know."

Bile slid along her throat. "We are deserting them."

This time, she held and returned his cold glare. Dryness pinched at her eyes painfully before he relented, his hands dropping into the mess on his bed, searching for something. "Get dressed," he said. "And eat something. Yharnam's pretty far."

She turned to go. "Wait."

Something light and pink hit her in the chest before rolling along the ground. Bread, wrapped in a faded floral print. Addy scooped it up before scurrying away, her eyes fixed on the wooden ground. Get dressed, eat, and go. She might have trouble with the second step, but she could do the rest. So long as she kept her thoughts down, forcing them from her head into her churning gut, she could do the rest.