Work Text:
I'm here for you.
•••
Eva had always been a fan of mystery and death games. She enjoyed having to think about problems, and math often came too easy for her, so she found herself liking those games more. They often comforted her in dark times. Her enjoyment of mystery and death games was the very first thing that made her get along with Cassidy when they first met.
Now, their enjoyment would become a new experience for them, as their killing game was going to start soon.
It wouldn't officially start today. There were still some minor tasks that needed to be done, such as some cleaning, and the participants weren't planned to wake up until the next day anyway. If the participants were to wake up today, though, they would easily be able to start the killing game.
Eva preferred to wait until the planned date, though. As much as she would love to get started as soon as possible, seeing Cassidy so lost in her thoughts made her worried. Not only was she quieter than usual, but there was no way she was going to participate in a killing game if she knew that Cassidy was currently unable to give it her all. Being vulnerable with a death sentence in a place like this, and she refused to have Cassidy suffer a fate she shouldn't.
Cassidy didn't want to be in the bedroom that she had planned to have, but she was alright with staying in Eva's. They were in there now. Cassidy was sitting on the bed while Eva paced around the room.
"Tozu and Mara basically have everything done," Eva was saying. "All the worst-case scenarios have been planned for. Every rule should make sense, and no one should be able to access any of the rooms that they aren't supposed to yet. Tozu and Mara are also both ready themselves. I am too, so everything and everyone is ready...except you," she added when she realized that Cassidy hadn't been paying attention to anything she had been saying. She stopped pacing to stare at her.
She counted the seconds. It took a little less than two minutes for Cassidy to notice Eva. "Sorry, what did you say?"
Eva sighed. She sat next to her. "You don't have to participate if you don't want to."
"No, I want to," she hurriedly said. "I'm ready for this. I'm totally ready!"
Her voice had a strain on it towards the end. Eva had watched Cassidy try to practice being like her old self, but it drained her quite fast. She was worried that she wouldn't manage to keep it up tomorrow and however long it took for the killing game to happen.
"We can delay it," she suggested. "We can always drug the participants and make them unconscious for a little longer."
She shook her head. "Let's just get it over with..."
Eva put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled her closer, making Cassidy rest on top of her, her cheek pressed against her shoulder. Automatically, Cassidy wrapped her arms around her, but she still seemed out of it. Eva sighed.
As much as she was looking forward to the killing game, she didn't want Cassidy to feel like this was a chore. It would suck all meaning away from the entire killing game if that was the case.
She couldn't force Cassidy to feel a specific way, though. She had learned that a long time ago, when she tried cheering her up, but it ended with them hurting each other physically and emotionally. All she could do to keep Cassidy as happy as she could make her be was to do whatever Cassidy wanted, which often wasn't a lot.
Eva's hand aimlessly stroked Cassidy's hair. It barely felt like Cassidy was breathing. With how cold she felt, if Eva didn't know any better, she would have assumed that she was holding onto a dead body. With that in mind, she asked her, "Do you think you'll kill yourself in here?"
A laugh came out of her. "Where'd that come from?"
She frowned at how happy her voice sounded. "Just thinking out loud..."
"You don't need to worry about me," she assured. "I'll be able to take care of myself. I'll even be able to take care of you!"
Her acting was more accurate than before, but she could still hear the forced joy in her voice. At this rate, she would probably be able to act without a problem tomorrow, but that was only for tomorrow. She reckoned that she wouldn't be able to act believably for the next few days after that. People would begin to get suspicious.
But it would be alright. Eva and Cassidy had already agreed that they would keep their distance from one another, so no one would think that the two of them were running the killing game together. Cassidy was also unaware of what Eva had planned, but it was for Cassidy's safety that she had to eliminate herself from the killing game early, at least in the eyes of the other participants.
Cassidy was upset with Eva for not telling her that she was planning to kill someone. Eva hadn't originally planned on killing Wolfgang and was going to kill whoever made it the easiest to, but Cassidy was acting like she had targeted Wolfgang from the start. Now, she was ignoring her. There wasn't even anything that Cassidy enjoyed enough to jingle in front of her to get some of her attention.
Cassidy was doing a very good job at pretending, though. She easily had the other participants think of her as a loud and dumb girl who didn't take anything seriously. It was admirable, but it did bother her to see Cassidy be so popular and spending so much time with people that weren't her. At least being "dead" meant she could watch over her more.
Today, since Cassidy was alone, Eva tried cornering her to force her to pay attention to her. She said, "Again, I'm sorry for killing Wolfgang. I actually didn't plan on doing it..."
"But you were still planning on killing," she said, her eyes narrowed.
"Does it even matter that much?" she scoffed. "Obviously, I'm going to survive when I'm helping to run this killing game. I need to protect you anyway, and I'm not going to be able to do that when I'm alive."
"I don't need protection," she tried arguing.
"Yes, you do. We both know that you're not okay in the head. You're going to do something dumb, and that's going to end up with both of us in trouble. At least I can protect you more if I can actually stay behind the scenes."
Cassidy sighed. "You don't need to protect me."
But she really did. Cassidy was delicate, almost painfully. Eva was mentally much stronger than her. She could keep her from breaking in the hands of others. She just needed Cassidy to let her—but in all honesty, from the way things were going, it seemed that she would have to force Cassidy to let her protect her.
Eva cupped Cassidy's face. She lightly pinched one cheek, and she pressed a kiss onto Cassidy's forehead. Cassidy didn't react, already seeming to be in another world. This vulnerability was exactly why Eva needed to protect her, and now, she could. At least Wolfgang being so insufferable meant he did one good thing in his life.