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The streets of Central Yharnam were eerily quiet. Bodies littered the ground—some of beasts, some of hunters—but none stirred. A small breeze swept through the town and gently tugged at bloodied fur and clothes.
Only two figures stood, overlooking the aftermath of the night's hunt. One was exceptionally tall and held an axe at his shoulder; Father Gascoigne's hat cast a dark shadow over his bandaged face, and his coat and scarf trailed behind him as he walked. The other was small next to him, a tattered feathered cape hugging her shoulders and a worn beak mask hiding her face. Eileen the Crow's boots tapped softly on the pavement in an effort to keep up with the other’s steps.
"Hell of a night," Gascoigne said. Eileen replied with a quiet, half-hearted laugh.
The two had not seen each other for most of the night, with Gascoigne tracking beasts and Eileen tracking hunters. On some nights, their paths would cross, but rarely had they a moment like this, where everything was still and they were focused on nothing other than filling their lungs with the cool night's air. It had been a hell of a night indeed; the beasts were getting worse, more sinister and more violent, and the very hunters that swore to stop them seemed to mimic them now in their thirst for blood.
Eileen's job certainly wasn't getting any easier. The skills of the hunters she tracked continued to grow as time passed, and tonight she had run into a particularly aggressive one. Though he wasn't exactly intimidating, he'd put up quite the fight. She managed to take him down in the end, but not before he got a few severe hits in.
The hunter had caught her just below her right knee with his saw cleaver, as well as her left arm, before she had killed him, and she tried to hide her limp from Gascoigne. Even when she wasn't wounded like this, his stride was difficult to match, but walking with such an injury proved just as challenging as the actual fight she got it from—every time she took a step, sharp pain shot through her leg, and she would wince. She couldn't keep weight on it for more than a second without feeling as if she'd collapse on the spot. Injuries like this had been common when she started out, but she was much older now. She'd managed to stop the bleeding with a torn section of her cape, but she was afraid that the more she forced herself to walk, the closer it was to opening up again, and she'd already lost so much blood.
Gascoigne soon became aware of her subtle movements, and slowed his pace. Focusing on keeping up, Eileen barely noticed.
The priest’s voice was low. "How badly are you hurt?"
"Hm? Oh, 'm fine," she mumbled, but now the pain from her arm began to act up as well. It wasn’t as deep as the cut to her leg, and she’d been able to grit her teeth through it, but now it began to sting and she could still feel blood trickling down her arm.
There was a small pause, as if both of them were considering what to say. Gascoigne spoke up first. "D'you need blood?"
"Rather not."
"I've got extra."
"Of course you do," she snapped, and quickly put her right hand over her mask with a regretful sigh. "Gascoigne, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I know you're trying."
He didn't respond.
The two continued walking in silence. By now, the moon hung low in the sky, and the night wasn't quite over, but to both of them it felt like days had passed since it began. Eileen tried to find the right words, but failed. She looked down at the ground away from him and could only hope that he knew she was sorry. Her limp worsened.
They walked past smoldering corpses and up a small hill, where they walked under a bridge. Eileen reached her right arm out to the wall and leaned on it, no longer trying to hide her heavy breathing, afraid she really was about to collapse. She looked ahead to the other hunter.
"Gascoigne, please, I need a rest. I'm sorry."
Gascoigne continued for a few steps and turned his head to the side, silent. Eileen opened her mouth to speak again until she realized he was listening for any threats down the street or up a set of nearby stairs. After a few seconds without any sound or movement, he turned back around and sat down with his back to the wall, laying his axe to his right. Eileen did the same, but much more carefully, cradling her left arm and sitting with both her legs pointed to an empty carriage that sat across from them.
Eileen closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, trying to steady her breath. She felt dizzy from blood loss, growing more tired with every step she had to take. Sitting down was a blessing, with pressure off of her leg, but she knew she shouldn't fall asleep. Not here, and not yet. The night was not over, and the streets seemed to have been cleared, but they needed to finish their final patrol, and still had to get back to Gascoigne’s house.
"D'you want me to carry you?"
She glanced at him, and he had the smallest hint of a smirk on his face. She couldn't help but smile for a moment.
"I'm sorry. I don't like lyin' t'you, I got a little hurt from a fight is all. I'll be alright. I've had worse."
She leaned forward to adjust the makeshift bandage around her leg, as it had started to slip below the wound, held down by the weight of her own blood. She'd had worse.
"Are y'sure?"
"Yes, and listen, about what I said—"
"That's not all. Something's troubling you."
Eileen straightened up. "What?"
"You've been quiet."
She bit her lip. "Don't have much to say t'night."
Gascoigne fell silent, and Eileen looked at her feet. With her mask hardly moving, her eyes wandered across the sky, tracing the horizon, the moon, then the carriage, and fell back to her feet.
She took a deep breath. "Sorry. Again. I don't know. I mean, I shouldn't say. It doesn't matter."
"Eileen, it does."
"Why does it?!" She raised her voice, and bit her lip again. When Gascoigne didn’t speak up, she took another deep breath and continued. "It's... been a tough night. I tracked a hunter for a while. He was good, didn’t look like it, but very skilled with the saw cleaver. It was..." Her voice trailed off. She had been scared. She didn't want to say it, but she had been scared.
Gascoigne remained silent; for all she knew, he had probably fallen asleep. She sighed quietly, and started to mumble more to herself than him. "I was scared. For myself, and for you, and Viola, and the kids. What if I'm not around to..." She clutched her arm.
"We'll be fine. All of us."
"You can't say that, you don't know!" Eileen tried to keep her composure, but it started to slip away. Her voice grew louder and more frantic, breaking every few words, as she continued speaking. "Something might happen. Something did happen! I'm getting old, and these wounds won't heal easy as they used to. It might be a while before I can actually hunt again. What then? I won't be able to keep an eye on you, and Henryk's old, too, what if he can't do anything?"
"My problem is not your responsibility."
"Gascoigne, I can't just… not worry about you, you have a family to go back to, and that's more than any of—"
"Eileen," Gascoigne waited until she had turned her head to look at him. "Don't speak as if you're not part of it."
Tears that Eileen had been fighting stung her eyes, and a few escaped down her covered face. She tried to keep it quiet, but her breathing became shallow. She squeezed her arm and tried to stop herself from crying, but Gascoigne was already well aware of what was happening. As he reached out to take her shoulder, she pulled herself closer to him and buried her face into his chest, taking care to turn her head to the side for her mask. He put his arm around her shoulders, and held her limp left hand in his right.
And so she told him. She told him everything, of being the hunter of hunters of Yharnam, how she feels like she's the only one who can do such a thing, she doesn't want anyone else to deal with this, wouldn't be able to trust anyone with this job anyway, because what if they become dangerous, who hunts the hunter of hunters, but sometimes, no matter how sure she'd be when tracking someone down, she'd feel like she'd made a wrong call and killed some innocent hunter who was only doing their job and protecting other innocent people, and sometimes she didn't feel anything, no remorse, no regret, no sadness for what she had done and knew she would do again, and that scared her, and sometimes she felt as if she was going mad and in killing other hunters like this she was the one that needed to be stopped and gods she just wanted everyone to be safe, she wanted to watch the kids grow up in a world without fear of the scourge and have him and Viola be there for them without worrying about who knows what next, and she cursed the Healing Church and then apologized, and she didn't know why, she was tired, she was old, but she shouldn’t let that stop her because Yharnam might be just a little safer because of her work, and besides, everyone else seemed to be able to handle being a hunter and gods she was so selfish for worrying about herself like this, for crying about getting hurt like a child would, and maybe that's all she was, just a child complaining of the responsibilities of growing up, and then she laughed, bitter and shaking, because in the end she really had no idea who she was.
Gascoigne listened without saying a word up until this point, keeping his breathing slow and steady for her.
"Eileen."
"What?!" She huffed, pulled away, and leaned back against the wall. She waited for him to say something. Anything.
Eileen.
Something, something about how it didn't matter after all, she was just wasting his time.
Eileen.
Something, something about how she shouldn't be so dramatic, he had it much worse, his problem was much more severe, anyway.
Eileen.
Something. She shouldn’t have opened up, there was a reason she never did, and she was right, anyway, just a child, didn’t deserve this.
Eileen the Crow.
"...oh," she said quietly. Under the mask, she felt herself blushing. She closed her eyes and her fingers found the small bell necklace that hung over her chest. She let herself smile. "I s'pose I am."
A long silence passed over Central Yharnam. Somewhere, far away from these streets, hunters and beasts continued their endless struggle with each other, but here, it was quiet. With the morning closer than it had ever been, the older hunter felt the gentle warmth return to her torn, tired limbs.
"Y'know, I wouldn't mind bein' carried home."