Everlasting - True Love - I Am Yours

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

[Camilla Bell continued from Beauty is Pain. Happiness is a Weapon.]

For the first time in a long time, Camilla had actually slept. On previous nights, she at least had a sweater, but she didn't have that now. That was okay. Even sleeping curled up on the forest floor was okay. The nightmare wasn't, but she just had to suck that up, didn't she?

She thought about it, as she walked through the woods in the morning.

Camilla heard her name twice on the announcements, and as if the description of her crime wasn't enough to make her want to curl up and die, they had to go and announce it was the best kill of the day and that she'd be rewarded. It was such a heinous concept, she knew that, everybody knew that, but how seriously disturbed it all was only just slapped her in the face. She supposed it made sense, for their situation, but she still hated it. In fact, she considered not going to pick up the meal and the weapon at all.

She thought about it, though she continued to walk to the bay.

Someone once told her that the best cure for Christianity was reading the Bible, and she wondered if, in its own way, this was like that- getting the best kill of the day and a weapon other than her own two hands only made her more disgusted with herself and what she did. She remembered the first day, when an undercurrent of desperation for any means to defend herself flowed through her thoughts.

But she also wondered- what would she do when she met Diego?

Well, she hoped at the very least, she wouldn't have to do anything. He'd die without her needing to intervene, and then all the gardening club could be together again, right? But she realized that wouldn't happen. Diego wasn't like Drew, or an innocent flower, he'd killed for someone, teamed up with a killer, the problem was that Diego was so desperate to survive that Camilla couldn't count on him dying on his own. But that meant she-

She had to-

And maybe for that, a weapon other than her own two hands would help. Maybe if she was lucky she'd get a gun with really long range and she wouldn't have to worry about Diego even seeing her or seeing the look of terror on his face when he realized she was-

Her mind blanked. Camilla kept walking.

As she got closer to the lighthouse, thoughts began to flourish again. She thought about the nightmare she had, the trail of corpses behind her, Beryl with the fresh bullet wound still in her chest but smiling, asking Camilla if she could hear what her heart was telling her. She offered to teach her, taking Camilla's hand and dragging it towards the wound in her chest, but Camilla pulled her hand away. Beryl still held onto her hand, though, and simply asked Camilla to follow.

Entering the lighthouse, she immediately understood Danya's warning, and her breath caught in her throat. Four corpses... she couldn't recognize any of them. That was for the better, she presumed. Only after she registered that, she saw a metal case, and the meal described on the announcements on top.

Camilla took the lobster rolls and the... 2 liter bottle of coke? Who drank this much soda? She felt a little gross just looking at it. But she took those and set them down on the floor beside the case, and kneeled next to it, to take a look inside.

It was a gun, as she presumed it would be. There was an instruction manual, which identified it...

...as a grenade launcher. And there were six grenades in the case with it.

The terrorists gave her a 2 liter bottle of coke and a grenade launcher.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she muttered.

She kept the instruction manual in hand, but closed the case for now, sitting down to eat. Well, not eat yet, she flipped through the instruction manual first, and while there was jargon she didn't really understand, she figured out how it was fired, at least. It was pretty obvious but it was still something, right? In all honestly her vision started glazing over, so she put the manual away and figured she can study it more when she got out of here.

There wasn't much to say about the potato salad, though Camilla was reminded had been a long time since she had lobster of any kind, she was pretty sure the last time was during her parent's anniversary when she was... seven? Eight? Somewhere around that age, and they went to a nice restaurant, and her dad was a little rude to the server, and mom chewed him out for it, and then they didn't talk for the rest of dinner unless they were talking to Camilla.

The rolls were pretty good though.

Later, with only minimal (well, still a lot but could have been worse) sticky soda spilling onto her hands, she poured some of the coke from the bigger bottle into one of her empty water bottles. With that, she picked up the weapon and gathered what bearings she had left, and went on her way.

As she walked away from the lighthouse, she remembered the dream, again. Hand in hand, Beryl and her arrived at a cliff. Suddenly, Camilla was thrown to the side, and Beryl walked on without her. Raising her head, Camilla cried out "Wait!" and reached her hand towards the back Beryl turned on her.

"Take me with you!"

Beryl paused, at the cliff's edge. She turned, and smiled softly at Camilla.

And then Beryl stepped forward and fell.


Camilla wondered, what she would do if the lighthouse stood tall enough that the sea at its foot was covered lightly, by mist.

"You know where I am, Henry," she whispered to the wind.

[Camilla Bell continued in Love itself is just as innocent as roses in May]