Hey guys, new story! I'm working on another Worm fic while writing this, one much more planned out. That one is already at Arc 2 with 25K words, so no worries of me not posting it. If I stop writing it, I'll still post what I'd written already. Now, this fic is much more wish-fulfillment-y and for me to express my extensive passion for Bloodborne (and my hatred for Sony for denying me an actual sequel or remaster).
No clue about any lemons, but they are much more possible in this fic than my others. The NSFW (not in this section, I'll post a duplicate version if I do decide to do any lemons) is still deserved, as I'm still including plenty of gore and some such things!
The Hunt, it had been so long… My knees buckle as I slam onto the ground, white flowers parting almost gently as I do. "My dear Doll…" I mutter, thinking of my only companion. My guiding Moonlight. "Are you proud..?" I had done it, the blood of a being beyond my comprehension, even more so than those that came before it, was still dripping down the decadent blade of my two weapons.
One, my trusted Saw Cleaver, the blood-letting teeth decorating its serrated edge have not dulled since all those years ago, when I first took it from the gentle messengers. Two, the Chikage, a weapon of Cainhurst and one I picked up far later into my wretched journey. Nevertheless, its increased agility and unique bloodtinge related ability have served me as well as my very first weapon had.
From beneath my mask and hunter's hat, I gaze at the corpse of the Moon Presence, the orchestrator of my torment. My effervescent revival. My hell.
Even now, the Old Blood subsumes my veins, wrestling for control in my mind. But I will not let it, I have never let it. The thought of my Doll, of an end to the hunt has carried my will, reforged it to iron and crafted into a fortress, resistant to the harrowing temptations of the beastly blood.
A cold yet gentle hand lays itself on my shoulder. "I am." Her voice, her voice.
Memories flash in my mind, horrid deaths soothed by horrid stories told by a beautiful creation. Gently cold hands caressing my crying form, my despondent form, my dead form.
Her voice.
Her voice, piercing my clouded mind in moments of true despair, when an opponent rips me limb from limb, infects my mind and body with its curses, its insight.
Ever-present and almighty love subsumes my weak form as I turn my head. "Is… Is it over?" I ask yet for naught, as I see the pristine white clouds of the Hunters Dream start to part, to give easy to something else, my own mind's clouds parting in a similar manner to reveal a clarity I've never felt before.
In the middle of this painting of a view knelt the Doll, her smile washing away the despair and anxiety building in my heart. "He…" My heart chokes, as does my throat as I feel my other eyes gaze towards the second corpse on this battlefield, lying there almost peacefully. "Why?" I grit my teeth.
"Gehrman is the dream's custodian." She replies, though I already knew. "He only wished the best for you… even in his weakest moments, he sought the strength to grant you his mercy." And mercy is a gift of the strong, I remembered my mother would say, even as I fail to remember anything else of her. But on this night, no strength can grant the tainted souls roaming Yharnam any mercy past their calling death.
"But he should've known I'd win! He saw me drag the heads of beasts beyond our very minds here!" But if he did, he did not act on that knowledge.
"He knew, Good Hunter. But his duty remained all the same." She replied as my head slumped into her chest, tears, for the first time in a decade, streaming down my face, soaking my mask and her dress.
"And… and I thought this nightmare had nothing more to take away from me…" Memories, emotions, lives and friends. The list is too long, the graveyard in my mind spanning countries. Even my soul, if one were to subscribe to my own quantification of it.
"It will be alright, Good Hunter. I shan't leave. I will remain." I cling to those words as I try my best to calm myself. It took a while, too long to measure, as I wrestled with emotions I had thought discarded.
When I gaze back up at her, I see the reflection of my dead eyes in her own porcelain ones. It is over… I should… "I told you, once, of my home… I think." Or was that another daydream of mine? Of a world where there would be no more death? No more pain…
She nodded, thankfully. "You did, dear. A place away from Yharnam, from its blood." She did not say those words with the reverence and fear that I had come to speak them with. It is neither innocence nor ignorance that makes up her lack of reverence, it is simply the way she is built. Metaphorically and literally.
Her mind is made to love, not fear, and when I proved to be the Last Hunter, as the First had named me, she had manifested that final love for me. And without it, I would be lost.
"Dear," She gently nudges me and I return to the present.
"Ah, thanks…" I reply and she nods.
She smiles, projecting love and understanding. "You tend to get lost in thought often, dear Hunter." She chuckles lightly, holding up one of her jointed hands to cover her mouth. She had gotten more emotive the more wretched Insight I gathered and, even if only for that, it was worth gathering, despite its… heavy toll.
I nodded. "Well, it is not in this dimension…" I began and that reveal lacked the gravitas I had originally thought it to have. With me traveling to hell, a nightmare realm and a city of the twisted, multiverse theory being real really wasn't that surprising.
She nodded, equally unperturbed. "I had gathered. Yharnamite children learn the language early in age, regardless if they are in poverty or not." Ah, I almost blush as I remember the week I had spent learning the yharnamite language. It feels like it's not even made for humans to speak and for all I know, that is indeed correct. English is mostly spoken anyways. Though some… spells still required the somatic and verbal component, so it was not all for naught.
"Yes, my world is… bland, boring and dull. You may read of an interesting event or entertain yourself with banal media, but in the end, there where no beast to fell, no genocide-threatening enemies of human kind to fight." I spoke and found myself with my head on her lap as we laid in a field of white flowers, spotted with red.
"It sounds like a peaceful place." I squint my eyes and eyes as I try to remember.
"No, not at all. Wars were fought, but the layman and those in the… 'richer' countries found themselves with little life-threatening hardships." I replied as I recalled as much of my original world as I could. I could no longer call it 'home', that tether of melancholic feeling binding me to it had snapped long ago. One of the first sacrifices the Hunt demanded.
She did not ask for my family, nor what I had been like back then. She knew the effects of the Hunt better than most, having seen countless examples, and knew that those pieces of one's mind are taken away during the long night. "Maybe it is not, then, but it still sounds pleasant."
"More so than Yharnam, anyways." I lacked the strength to chuckle, but even through my mask, she saw my smirk and rolled her eyes in response to it. Yes, even if it exacted a heavy price, seeing her laugh and giggle, joke and jab was worth every tortured moment of expanding my mind.
"Then how did you end up here?" She asked and I grimaced.
"Not by choice… It was a sudden thing, a stroll to work became a stroll through the Yharnam clinic in the blink of an eye… worst part was the realization…" I shuddered at the days I spent in that first room, only accompanied by the sound of tearing flesh as the nearby beast wolf feasted.
"Of what, dear?" She asked and I closed my eyes, recalling the moment my memories became clear, the moment my mind resolved itself.
"This world was not unknown to me… ah, do you have plays here? Operas?" She nodded. "Then imagine an opera show, but for one person, localized in a tiny box and to be controlled by that person through a variation of mediums." She was smart, she understood quickly.
"Like a replicated world? A tiny realm to play with?" I nodded.
"Though they are fake, just made up of numbers and lightning in complicated patterns, forming life-like imagery." She smiled and briefly looked onto the dimming horizon, pondering a concept people of her time-period would agonize over with quiet wonder.
"Before the blood was found, Gehrman once told me, there were talks of using lightning, electricity then, for wondrous things… He could not remember clearly, he was not a part of such circles, he was but a child then." That implies heavy technological stunting for this world, which makes sense. If our early renaissance encountered something like the Old Blood, we would be fighting each other with swords and maybe gunpowder weaponry, not nuclear warheads and drones.
I nodded. "It was the road to the future, though not one Yharnam ever got to wander." She returned her gentle, loving gaze to mine and my body heated up once more with a hearth. "I explained all that because, in one such 'Game', this world was portrayed. It was a simple hack-and-slash-" for lack of an easier to understand term. "-where you killed your way through Yharnam in a bit over thirty hours of time, depending on your pace."
"So, like a board game?" I made a 'so-so' motion with my hand, finding myself with strength once more as I talked with her.
"Kinda. But you can understand that when I found myself in a clinic I remember seeing, knowing what was awaiting me…" I shuddered, I had cried and despaired for many hours before dying for the first time… and oh Cos, that death, more than the ones after despite their varying levels of agony, would be engraved onto my mind for all of eternity.
She nodded but didn't speak about that much further, instead- "You have talked to me once before, then?" She smirked deviously and I wanted to groan in a loving frustration. Along with everything else, she had gained a teasing attitude. "Oh, without me knowing, even!"
"H-Hey! Don't blame me, it was just a game! A popular one, but still just a game!"
"Popular, you say? A lot of Hunters must have spoken with me then…" She nodded, then looked down at me with a small grin, her hands caressing the sides of my face. "But I suspect none found their way into my heart like this, did they?"
My breath hitched. How do I get flustered?! After everything, she can still fluster me?! Unfair! "W-W- It… It wasn't an option in the game…" I muttered.
"Then you're all the more special, love." My lips smushed together as she played with my cheeks. "My special Hunter~" She cooed in a high-pitched voice.
My eyes softened and I reached for her wrist. I groaned as I sat up. "All yours, yeah." I didn't stray far, though, as I almost dove forward for a kiss. She accepted readily and, as with every time before, I found myself surprised at the searing heat of the act. A Doll, so cold yet so hot, burning with life.
As we separated, the kiss being cut shorter than usual, I stood up, as did she. "Well, I just wanted to be honest… because I know, from that game, that I should have turned into a newly born Old One by now, having consumed those disgusting Umbilical Cords and all…" I pondered.
"Well, I would suspect that it would take a while, a full transcendence is no small matter." She commented and I nodded.
My eyes drifted to Gehrman, then to his weapon. I had used it in… New Game Plus, I think it was called. The Doll's voice came from my side as she noticed. "He would have no objection, in fact, I think he would want you to inherit it. From the First to the Last…"
I nodded with a dry chuckle. "Sounds poetic enough for him, at least."
"You've regained a lot of your early spirit, Dear." She states as we approach.
"Have I?" I blink. "Didn't notice…"
"Maybe it has returned from the box you had to seal it in, when the Hunt demanded it?" Ah, that makes sense. As to why she is in the know about my fucked-up mind metaphors? Well, we've had a good two decades to talk to each other, with the main topic being the Hunt and, with her all-encompassing care, she worried a lot about me, so my mental health came up a lot more than you would think.
As I leaned down to grip the hilt of the Burial Blade, I found myself agreeing with her. "I think that's a good sign… maybe I can be some of my old self again, now that it's over…" But… what if she won't like me, then? What if she only liked the image of the Last Hunter that I represented f-
An arm gripped my outstretched wrist and my attention was brought to her stern stare. "And I'll love you all the same, I'm excited to see a new side of you, even." Ah, of course she'd say that. What was I thinking? She loves me, all of me. In any form, wearing any mask, committing any atrocity.
The early anxieties of a relationship where always something that was suspiciously absent for me with her, in contrast to my other relationship, so I guess it's good that venting to her about how I worked regardless of trying to solve that still resulted in a 'girlfriend sixth sense' for when I'm getting into my mind about stupid stuff.
If there was such an ideal thing as understanding another person fully, then we had achieved it.
"And I'll still love you too." I nodded and returned to the task at hand, namely wrenching the scythe from the literal death-grip of my old teacher.
My breathing quickened the longer I tried, my pulls getting more and more aggressive as my mind flashed with the battle-
Strafe left, Blood Step right, slash- DODGE! Searing pain, a bullet biting into my abdomen. Another attempt…
My breathing quickened, below his hat- was he staring at me? I'm- I'm sorry, please-
Parry successful, bullet tearing into his shoulder, he staggers. Go in, bite Saw into his skin. Let him bleed, it weakens the prey…
"A-Ah…" My vision blurred, the corners of my mind started glowing an ominous red. I-I need to fight… Blood. I need Bl-
"You have it, Dear. It's fine, you got it." I… I got it? My goal… I've completed my goal. Yes, I can stop hunting.
I blinked as everything returned to full clarity. I held the folded-up scythe in my hand, though… "Why are the flowers so torn up?" I asked. "Did something else stroll through?"
She shook her head, though she grimaced as she hugged me from behind, her head on my shoulder. "You had another attack, dear."
Ah… That's why the last few minutes seem blurry. And why in crying. And why my palms are bloody.
"Thanks for the help." She nodded as she caressed my chest.
"Always." She responded and, with a cute pet on my torso, we separated once more.
I adjusted my belt a bit, making the sheath for the Chikage lie a bit lower, until I could comfortably attach the Burial Blade to the small, almost unnoticeable straps on my back, barely peeking out through slits under my cloak. I took a deep, focusing breath. "Well, it seems like we've got a bit of time, so I'll work on the blade a bit, yeah?"
"I can watch?" She asked adorably, looking at me with the cutest set of puppy dog eyes ever seen.
My cold, dead, rotted and beastly heart melted. "Of course, I know how much you like to watch me work with the Blood Rocks." And rightly so! It is damn interesting how leveling up a weapon actually works and I'm glad that I seem to be regaining my own emotions now that the Hunt is over, so I can re-experience the wonder and experimental joy I felt when I first worked on my Cleaver.
"And I'm glad you enjoy me watching… heh." Did she just-? Yes, she did, she made an innuendo. Apparently, the amazement on my face was noticeable. "What? Did you think I am unskilled in wordplay of my own?"
"My bad puns and… and that are too completely different things!" I argued.
She laughed haughtily at that. I rolled my eyes and groaned.
The levity of rejoining with her in light-hearted conversation was only the beginning of the first good day I've had in Yharnam. Or the Hunters Dream, at least. After dying hundreds of times against Amelia, I found myself despondent, dead to the world. I had been suffering, at least, before that, a show of my humanity, but when I realized that even that would only hinder me in the Hunt, I found myself more machine than man.
That dreaded mindset I dubbed 'The Hunter' would only retreat when I talked with the Doll, but even then, it was less a mindset and more me suppressing everything in my head not related to battle for long enough for it to become automatic, so it couldn't just go away easily. Even with her, I recall being a muted, gray version of myself. One sarcastic comment in, what, two years? Not me at all, that I can tell you.
But she still found herself loving me and I still found myself loving her, even as The Hunter.
All that is to say, now that The Hunter can retire, [] can take the wheel once more… wait. What? My.. My name. I- I- "Doll…" My breathing quickened, I hated this feeling, this pressure. A panic attack, I knew. Not the first, not the last. "I-I can't r-remember my n-name." I shook, dropping my Blood Rock onto the table, faintly registering the clank of rock hitting metal.
Tears fell, even as she reached me quickly from the chair a bit off to the side. "I'm here, love." I heard her voice but… but it was so distant. Why-?
What's my name?
What's my name?
WHY CAN'T I REMEMBER MY OWN FUCKING NAME!?
"I-I thought it h-had nothing else to take…" Tears streamed down, onto the table, then my lap, then her chest as I found myself feeling a muted comfort, the world so blurry and distant, my senses so muddled and muted.
Only an encroaching feeling of terror remained.
"It's not fair." My teeth grit as anger usurped the fear. "IT'S N-"
As anger flooded my veins, my body recognized the feeling and, with the feeling, came the associated response.
The world cleared, my breathing stilled.
She sighed internally as she saw him slowly walk through the garden, past the gravestones, almost aimlessly. He had another attack an hour or so ago, and she wasn't quick enough to calm him down. Now he was searching for a hunt once again.
It was fine, she told herself, he would return once he realized there was nothing left to hunt. She sat herself down on her little flowery corner, watching her love wander the garden, empty eyes staring at empty graves, a calm hand steadily gripping one weapon or another.
He had yet to speak a word.
But that was fine, these silent accompanied moments were equally cherished by her. After she realized that her Hunter started to give her true life through unconscious utilization of his immense Insight, she had found herself being able to enjoy so many more things. So many more emotions. Expressions. Manurisms. Everything that made up a life, a human, she was now capable of doing, of possessing.
Even if only he had done that for her, she would love him eternally. But it was not just gratitude that drove her love, she thought with a smile, it was everything about him. The few times she saw his actual personality, and she was glad that it was coming back now, she had found herself falling for him all the more.
She would not tell him that he gave her life, that they now shared a soul-deep connection due to that gift, as he hated the thought of any kind of mind-control, not that her mind was influenced or anything.
She knew her mind was unbound, belonging to only her. But he would not see it that way, and so, until he asked, she would say nothing. He would only hate himself more than he already does. She'd love him enough for the both of them. If he thinks himself a monster, she'll tell him she loves that monster. If he thinks himself amongst the most wretched of humanity for his deeds, she'll tell him she'd plunge into evil with him.
A love born of gratitude, bloomed by genuine connection and solidified by understanding.
Nothing less, but so much more.
But for now, she'll sit here and watch him, or read that book on Sorcery that she always wanted to read after finding herself with her own goals. Ha! If the lifeless Doll of the past could see her now…
I cannot leave the dream. Conclusion: The Hunt is over. I cannot find any Prey. Conclusion: The Hunt is over. Hm…
I frown and blink, memories of a good few hours of just wandering around replaying in my mind. But I can't remember what I was thinking about during any of that time, which means I was the Hunter. I groan. "Ugh, really?" Why was I searching for a Hunt if it was over? What caused…
Oh…
My… My name.
"Are you okay, dear Hunter?" The Doll asked and I turned to find her standing next to me, at the foot of the tree where… where he had offered me the ultimatum.
I felt my breathing quicken, my v- "I'm here, love. The Hunt is over, there is nothing left to fight." Her hand was gripping my own, her soft skin, somehow so very life-life in texture, covering my shaking fist.
I calmed, centering myself around her, as I had done in memories past.
"Okay…" I took a deep breath. "I can't remember my name."
"That's fine, it is an opportunity, even!" She excitedly called out. I found myself agreeing. My… A name was just that, a word, or not? Why… it shouldn't hold this much weight… I shook my head and…
Discarded my Name.
I nodded. "You're right, I'll just need a new one." She agreed readily. Before she could continue, though, I butted in. "And you need one too, while I don't mind Doll, if we are to go out into a populated Yharnam, you'll need a name."
She smiled and nodded too. "Let's decide for each other." She suggested.
"Yeah, sounds nice." I found my hand caressing my chin in thought. She's radiant, white and pristine… "Lilly?" I offered.
She smiled wide. "I like Lilly." I nodded, then Lilly it is! Her own thoughts subsumed her then, as she contemplated. After a moment, "And for you, I think Break would suit you well."
"Break?" I ask, puzzled.
"You have broken both yourself and your prey, reforging one through the other." I shrug, not that anybody in Yharnam will call me anything besides 'Hunter' or 'Lord'.
"Melodramatic, much?" Smirking, I jab at her.
She… snorts? Wow, never suspected she could make such a noise, as dainty as it was. "You are incorrigible, Break dear. Furthermore, your own favor for the dramatic cannot be understated. Remember what you told me of the battle against my template, Maria?"
I felt myself blush. Ah, I had… well, "It ended fine, didn't it?"
She nodded, her devious smile remained all the same. "But it could have concluded in that end much earlier, had it not been for your need to… 'learn that flame move'."
"I fucking hate the Sharingan sometimes…" I mutter. Oh, had I neglected to mention? Yes, apparently, some part of my blood was of Uchiha origin, somehow. Maybe a blessing from the Great Old Ones who brought me here, awoken later on in my hellish journey when I gained enough Insight to awaken it, or maybe it was something else equally fantastically cringe.
"But you did learn it, and found yourself with another maiden." I wince, that conversation had been hard. Not because I tried to hide anything, more so because of her unusual reaction to such information…Maria and I had found ourselves bearing our souls to each other in our dozens of battles, quick verbal jabs turning to long monologues before each bout.
When I spared her life, she had… well, she had kissed me for some reason, proclaiming us soulmates via a 'feeling in her chest' and 'a connection forged in battle.' Ecchi Anime bullshit at its finest, even if I barely remember what that means.
I had panicked, warped to the Dream and had immediately vented to the Doll about it. She… was overjoyed. I had never been so confused, the shock had pierced past the Hunter rather handily.
"After all, you deserve all the love in the world." That. That was her reasoning. It wasn't a self-deprecation thing, she knows that I'm as happy with her as I would ever be with her and somebody else but she just… "You suffered enough to deserve it, dear." She didn't even ask me to 'always put her first', knowing, intrinsically, that I would. For her, the world is so simple.
"I should check up on her, too." I muttered and she nodded.
"The Grave to the Clocktower is still active, unlike the others…" And wasn't that a mystery for the ages? All of the inscriptions on the Graves for the various locations the Messengers could take me to had vanished, all except the Clocktower. Why my Hunter hadn't tried to go there when he was trying to hunt? No clue, maybe he saw it as a friendly-zone, due to Maria being there.
"You go on then… I have something to try, dear. A surprise, for when you return." She suggested and I nodded, heading back to the charred, but somehow still standing, manor atop the hill in the Dream.
"You return." The firm nod from Maria inspires bravery and warmth now, more than the resolve it had brought during our time as enemies. The light past her, shining through the clock, was… was white? "Ah, noticed it too?"
She turned slightly from her position on the small cushion I had provided her, along with an entire tent and camping set, when I found out she couldn't return to the Dream with me. So, I made a 'home away from home' for the both of us. Books of all kinds littered her living space in a rather orderly manner, if that's even possible.
"Yeah, it seems like you're in the Dream now." I answer, recognizing that bland sky anywhere, even if rays of sunshine now replace the rays of terrible moonlight from before.
"It is as you described, though I suspect the sun is a new addition?" She plainly asks and I nod, at which she continues. "Then you have defeated this 'Final Foe' you had told me about?" She prods and I sigh. I had told her, on the last of my visits, that I would be fighting Gehrman and, after, the Moon Presence, though I had not named it as such.
Nothing went as I expected, I could not talk Gehrman down and killing his prisoner didn't turn me into a newly minted Great Old One.
"You tried to leave already?" She nodded.
"To no result, the doors do not budge, no strike nor push strong enough to let me escape." She smiles, a much smaller gesture than Lilly's own. "Though it makes me appreciate your gifts all the more."
With my lower mask taken off a while ago, my returned smile makes her own bloom all the more as I approach. "Lilly reminded me to check up on you with the Night now broken, so I thought I'd stop by."
"Lilly?" She asked, perplexed.
I awkwardly respond, "Ah, um, the Doll and I decided we would need names, where we to ever return to civilization." She did not question why I needed one. "So we came up with Break and Lilly."
She nodded, a proud smile on her face. "Ingenious, as expected of my sister." In both appearance and in the 'Harem Sister' sense, she left unexplained. She had rather quickly separated art (Lilly) from the artist (Gehrman) and accepted her as she is which is really enlightened from somebody born in the equivalent of the middle ages mixed with an even more fucked up Resident Evil plague… what the hell is Resident Evil again?
"Yeah… so, Lilly said she had a surprise for me when I returned but needed some time to prepare… wanna play Uno?" I asked as I picked out my hand-drawn Uno deck (complete with a Yharnam aesthetic!)... What are you looking at me like that for? I just had a lot of down-time on my hands and took to loner hobbies whenever I didn't talk with Lilly!
Stars lit up in her eyes. "Yes!" I smirked and she blushed. "I- ah." She coughed lightly into her closed fist. "I accept the challenge, dear." I inwardly note how they give me the same moniker. So much alike but so different, too…
