Found Friends

Dwight hated the stealthy killers in particular. He wasn't the best at focusing on multiple (very stressful!) things, and inevitably would either blow a gen trying to keep an eye out or get pulled off of said gen when he accidentally neglected watchfulness. Even when he managed to get away from the generators, he'd always end up turning a corner and slamming right into the Ghost Face, or the Shape, or, most relevantly, the Pig.

He gave a half-hearted attempt to wiggle out of her grasp, kicking his legs against her shirt a couple times, before simply giving up any pretense of struggle. The hook was right around the corner, he was vaguely woozy from the stab wound in his abdomen, and the killer had a solid grip around his waist. Nothing he could do about it.

The Pig was one of the most human killers in the fog. Dwight had heard her speak to some of the other survivors, and seen her give mercy to the few she favored. If she was asking him to talk, that meant she would listen. Right?

Nea and Steve were already dead, and he could see Jeff a couple rooms over. The other survivor's aura was just fading out of visibility as he crouched on the edge of Dwight's ability's sight. He hoped absently that Jeff would find the hatch before the Pig found him.

No help from any other survivors was coming. Alright, whatever. She wanted him to make his case? Anything was better than those stupid claws in his guts again.

He let out a huff of air, anxiety churning in his stomach. There had to be SOMETHING he could say. Moments like these he cursed the fact that he was too busy hiding in bathrooms to join his high school's debate team. God, no, not the time.

What did she even want? Something witty? Worship? Begging for his worthless life?

Nothing came to mind, unless he wanted to ask her what the weather was like on the killer's side. Dwight looked down at the floor over her shoulder, dejected. He had no ideas. Onto the hook it was— so much for the killer's brief talkative moment.

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the tiny rainbow clip he'd added onto one of his bracelets. It was just something for himself, a little thing he'd attached just the week before his impromptu move into the fog. None of the other survivors had even noticed it was there (or, at least, they weren't saying anything... he'd think about that one later) and most of the time Dwight himself forgot about it.

Before he could think better of it, he was opening his mouth. "Killers these days are so homophobic."

What the hell, Fairfield.

"I mean, y'know," he interlocked his hands over the Pig's shoulder, twisting his fingers together nervously. "Targeting me, the gay man? Come on."

Dwight propped himself up on his elbows. The ground underneath him was cold, hard, and objectively much better than a meat hook through the chest.

That worked?

The killer's laughter was... surprising. He honestly figured she would just hook him then and there for being a moron. Instead, she just laughed. At him? With him? Whatever, he was never good at figuring that part out. Laughing was a good enough sign that he could forgo the semantics.

"Dwight! Um, my name is Dwight Fairfield, if it matters." He was sure he was speaking too fast, caught up in the surprise of actually being put down. And the secondary surprise of the killer being worried about being homophobic. It was a weird day. 

The Pig's mask, tilting to look around like Jeff would appear if she glared hard enough, seemed much less scary now that he'd heard her losing it over the idea of hooking him being a hate crime. Apparently she drew her line in the sand at homophobia, not murder and torture (or whatever it was she did with all that.... Stuff.... In the meat plant that had appeared in the fog with her. Dwight thought there were a few too many corpses for comfort in the stupid, winding, maze-like factory.) It was almost comforting, that these insane murderers could have a decent side.

He finally sat up. "I can tell you where the last survivor is!" He winced at the thought of betraying his friends, but pushed through. "In return, I want to talk to you for a little bit."

Dwight paused.

"Oh, but, people used to tell me I talk too much all the time, and, basically, you can kill me if I get annoying and I won't be mad or anything!" Dwight fumbled for a moment, his front of a funny and collected gay person disintegrating into the wind. "I just want a chance— I've just never talked to a killer really, and you seem cool? And not homophobic, at least? And I'm kinda curious about what your side of the fog looks like and how you got here and yeah I'm gonna shut up now, okay?" His hands flailed for a moment before he finally wrapped up his nonsensical rambling, defeated.

Dwight lowered his voice, just in case his friends could hear his betrayal all the way from the campfire. "Jeff— the other survivor, that is— is 3 rooms down to the right, crouching behind some stuff I think?" He gestured vaguely to the last place he had caught the other man's aura.

"Tell him I said sorry, when you find him!" He blushed. Him and Jeff didn't talk frequently, but Dwight liked him a lot. His hair was nice. If he could help it, Dwight didn't want to end the encounter with another person hating him.

"I mean, last words should be memorable, right?" Dwight laughed, sure everything about him was coming off as uncomfortably stilted. Talking to the killers wasn't something he made a hobby of, and the Pig actually using his name had somehow surprised him even further. He wanted to make another joke, but he didn't feel like he was that far in the woman's good graces.

He gazed curiously at the Pig. While he was hoping to talk to her, he wasn't expecting her to be quite so eager for conversation. She seemed nothing but genuinely curious about him— and evidently, she had no plans to go back on her offer. It was... nice.

He watched her crouch, breathing a sigh of relief as the ever-present feeling of crushing terror weighing on his chest faded. Dwight had a love-hate relationship of a kind with that unnatural heartbeat. On one hand, he relied on it more than he wanted to admit; except for a select few killers, it was always there to warn him when the murderers were closing in. On the other hand, it was physically awful. He hadn't had the confidence to ask the other survivors what they felt, but for Dwight it was like something was reaching through him, inside of him, grasping at his lungs and forcibly pushing blood through his veins much faster than his body wanted to accommodate. At this point, he was used to it, but it reminded him a little bit too much of hiding in bathroom stalls and trying to muffle the sounds of his crying.

Dwight huffed, struggling to his knees so he was about level with the Pig's crouched stance. Normally a downed survivor stayed down, but with the killer not actively pursuing him, Dwight could gather the strength for a kneeling stance. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if she wanted him to stay in a more submissive position, but shook it off. If she said he would be safe, he'd choose to believe her. The reassurance was, well, reassuring.

The idea of telling her about his abilities was kind of nervewracking, but Dwight decided that if he wanted this to go well, an exchange of information would be better than an interrogation. It was also just kind of nice to have someone new to talk to, though he vowed never to admit that to another living/dead/purgatory-bound (he tried to keep his mind open when it came to theories about the Fog) soul. "I think I'm the only one who can do it like this, but I can see the other survivors when they're nearby me. The- the auras? That's what everyone else calls them, anyway. It's... weird."

It had taken a bit of an adjustment period for Dwight to get used to literally seeing through walls. At this point, he got anxious when he couldn't see one of his fellow survivors. Jeff was still out of his limited range of magic sight for the moment, but he was content with the knowledge that nothing was going to happen to his friend. There was only one killer and she was occupied. With Dwight Fairfield, the survivor, in a normal (as normal as things ever got in the Entity's world) conversation. Weird.

She didn't seem to be planning to leave, for now, so he pressed forward with his questions. Dwight kind of wished he'd had some time to think of actually useful questions, but he'd take what he could get. Conversation with the Pig was shockingly easy.

"So... you have a campfire?" He asked curiously. According to some stories he'd overheard, the killers had their own realms. The areas that appeared with them in the Fog, Dwight assumed, but he'd never taken to adventuring as some of the others around the survivor campfire had.

Right. She was probably only going to find the homophobia bit funny the first time.

For a single, absurd, blindingly desperate moment, Dwight needs her to think he's cool and funny— needs her to be impressed with him, to find him worth talking to. This gets shaken off very quickly when he realizes that he’s being ridiculous, and she's a murderer, and really the whole "seeming cool to her '' thing was a pointless venture to begin with, Fairfield. He digs his nails into his palm in an effort to clear his head and convinces himself he isn't worried about being a loser, because he knows he's a loser. 

To be honest, this whole thing was absurd to him. He would never have expected a killer to want to talk to him at all, let alone hold a full-on conversation when she had better things to do, more interesting people to kill, et cetera. It was probably pity; he could practically feel it in the air, even if he couldn't see it in her eyes (with the pig mask in front of it and all).

He did wonder what she looked like without the mask. Kind of hard not to, when it was the only thing he could really look at. It seemed heavy. It seemed awkward. It seemed like a lot of things. Most of all, it didn't seem to fit her quite right. Whenever she wore the pretty maroon clothes with the flowy sleeves, Dwight was always somehow hit with the specific notion that something there was conflicting. That the full picture was one of two people welded together where their edges didn’t match up, grating against each other. That some part of the whole outfit was a front or a costume, and the other part was who the Pig might actually be, as a person. He just... didn't know which part would be the costume. Or if there was anything that deep to it at all— he didn't know the Pig in any way. He didn't even know her name. Five minutes of stilted, possibly-invasive conversation and a joke about homophobia didn't make them friends of any kind. 

Dwight swallowed down the part of himself that wondered if they COULD be friends, eventually. He had questions to ask and information to gain, and daydreaming about riding off into the sunset with the women who’d gutted him more times than she’d spoken with him was ridiculous.

In the corner of his eye, the bright yellow outline of Jeff's aura faded back into existence. The man looked like he was stealthing his way through the lower floor, moving with a cautiously-handled purpose. Dwight pointedly turned his head away. 

There weren't any helpful questions he could think to ask at that moment. He didn't continue his line of questioning on the auras, the Entity's "gifts" of sight in the realm. Neither of them seemed comfortable with it.

... He was honestly curious about the killer's realm, though.

"I can't, ah, see many of the killers sitting around roasting marshmallows, haha." Dwight winced. She obviously knew that, dumbass. "But— um! Your 'space' is... this place, right? This weird factory? With the bloody floors and the scary mannequins and the... everything about it, really. No offense, but I hate this place." God, Dwight hoped that there really wouldn't be any offense. What if he just insulted her childhood home or something? And now she would kill him and tunnel him in trials for the rest of time and he'd never get a chance to ask why she does the things she does with the traps, or where she gets them, or how she ended up here, or—