Act 19, Placid.

Human experience is what binds to people together, lived experience.

They were both practically orphans, both suffering this same affliction, both intersex and both the same age.

Then why?

Why was Kacper taking it so well? Rolling with the punches, one could say.

There is no definitive character trait who can hold this curse better than the other, it all churns out the same in the end.

In the end there is none.

Kacper stirred, his head aching from the uncomfortable position he had took, head on a box on the floor. Emily hadn't touched him since their scuffle, it had gotten dark out.. so it must've been at least a day.. though, he was drugged for a while so he had no true idea how long he'd been here. The stench of urine that was so jarring back then was.. a weird comfort now. He woke up to the smell, reminding him that it hadn't been a dream and yes, yes.. he was stuck here.

He had yet to try the door, having already assumed it was locked.. not wanting to annoy Emily more and not wanting this high-like feeling to fade into dread once more.

It was macabre in a sense, grotesque maybe, knowing what was bound to happen - sensing it with such clarity - but being completely accepting. Waiting his hours patiently, waiting for the death penalty that was right around the corner with open arms.

A deer standing in headlights, begging you to take its life.

Though he did miss the days in the sun, the days in the library, the days spent aimlessly walking all spent with Eve.

Kacper leaned against the concrete wall, exhaling, inhaling, then sighing.

He was beginning to - or already had - accept his death.

There was a naturality in death, a stillness Kacper hadn't thought on before, the prey animal had to eventually stop running. Was he facing the music or was he being a coward? In this in-between he couldn't quite tell anymore. He'd stopped crying, there was no use in it. He'd stopped hoping, he'd stopped yearning, he was just.. existing, now, he supposed..

A bunny, or perhaps a deer, nuzzling against the hunters gun, fawning at their knees and not moving an inch as they loaded the fatal weapon. It was natural.

Everyone died, children, adults, plants, animals. It was natural.

He didn't want a big funeral.

He wanted to be buried beside Eve, when she dies too.

Forever intertwined, maybe the roots will bless them by binding their carcasses together.

Kacper lifted his head up, staring at the ceiling, he hadn't realized until his face started to feel sore.. that he'd been smiling.

Dying so close to Eve wouldn't feel like dying at all.

Despite all these.. suffocating, gnawing thoughts he wasn't actually sure how this event would go down.. would he starve to death? Would he be killed by her? He wasn't sure.

Kacper wouldn't beg, not like last time, if she wanted his silence so badly... he'd slump over and give it to her, he'd go lax like a dog rolling over.

Kacper would smile and hope it wouldn't hurt too much.

His thoughts had become more and more drab as time went on, it didn't batter if he had been here an hour or a week, he couldn't help the progression from hope to despair.

It was to the point of hysteria, now, he was cradling himself, spine pressed flat against the wall, thinking of all the outcomes with would spur on after he was laid to rest, it wouldn't be by his own hand, there would be sympathy but.. would people blame Emily?

Kacper couldn't have that.

Scrambling around the basement floor like a bug, he tried to find some sort of writing utensils to construct a hysteria spurred will. His breaths were shaky as he ripped a bit of cardboard from one of the many boxes on the floor, barely flinching when a rat had skittered out, clearly having been disturbed.

Next was a pen or something of the sort.

He looked around, his locks falling over his face with the motion - the hair tie worn and the elastics gone. He hastily brushed the hair away from his eyes, hands shaking as he scanned the concrete upon concrete room.

Kacper had to push himself up to continue searching, his legs weak but he pushed on, leaning against the support beam of the basement as he circled the room, halting at a small door. He opened said door to reveal a boiler and electrical cabinet - halting in his tracks.

If he tampered with the electrics he could get out.

If he messed with the boiler, even, he could get out.

They'd send someone down to fix it, right? Regardless of what Emily could offer them?

But even as these thoughts whispered enticingly at the back of his skull his hand moved forward, finding a cheap pen tucked into one of the wood supports surrounding both the boiler and electrics, probably for an engineer to use when writing the 'date last checked' section on the sticky label.

Kacper collapsed back onto the floor, getting to work with his writing:

'Not Eve's fault.' was the basis, he was naïve enough to think it wouldn't be taken up with police if he wrote such things. Kacper did nothing to describe his thought process, spending all of his time hyper focused on defending Emily's actions.

Then, he heard footfall upstairs, he'd heard this multiple times, followed second by the beeping of the machine that scanned fobs and vague voices from the apartments above, nothing concrete, nothing life saving.

Kacper felt a pit in his stomach when he heard a yell, something vaguely like his full name, then louder foot fall.

Someone was coming down to the basement.

He scrambled back, throwing his pen and pushing himself back into the chair in the corner, his body shuddering all over again. He wasn't ready to be separated, not now.

Kacper's mind went into a blissful state of blankness as the door was pushed open, lost in trying to find excuses for being down here, too lost to put together that the man standing in the door...

The man approaching him, now.

The man kneeling down to check him.

Was a police officer.