An Episode of Not Quite Dead.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this show is a work of horror fiction and frequently places characters in situations which jeopardise their psychological and physical health. This episode contains:

– profanity

– references to sex

– sudden noises (door slamming)

– mentions/discussions of serious illness (illness undefined)

– mentions of suicidal ideation

– mentions of blood

– sounds of a character in distress

– discussions of killing

– mentions of loss and descriptions of complex grieving

Transcript

GARGLING

NEIGE

(distant)

Anything?

ALFIE

No, but I hear something?

SQUEAKING METAL

MORE GARGLING, A DRIBBLE OF LIQUID

ALFIE

Oh! It’s working!

A SPLUTTER, AND THEN THE SPRAY OF A SHOWER

ALFIE

Oh my god, running water, thank fuck. I’m going to shower so hard, I’m going to be so fucking clean.

FABRIC MOVING

NEIGE

Now that—

ALFIE YELPS

NEIGE

Désolé! Désolé!

ALFIE

It’s fine! You’re fine.

NEIGE

I’m going to– uh–

ALFIE

Neige! Ugh.

ALFIE TURNS OFF THE SHOWER AND THE WATER STOPS

ALFIE

Neige, come back.

NEIGE

I’m going to go into the city, see if I can pick up some light bulbs for the hallway.

ALFIE

Okay. But what was that about?

NEIGE

I didn’t realise you were undressed.

ALFIE

You’ve seen me naked before.

NEIGE

Oui.

ALFIE

Neige, you showed me a naked sketch of you that my fucking boyfriend drew. It’s fine.

NEIGE

That is different, it is art.

ALFIE

Saw the real you naked when we were away too.

(pause)

Neige, come on. Don’t make it weird.

NEIGE

Weird?

ALFIE

Yeah. We just fucked. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

NEIGE

(deadpan)

Doesn’t it.

ALFIE

I don’t– you used to just strip off in front of me!! you’ve like– you held my head up in the bath when I didn’t have the energy. You’ve seen me naked, I’ve seen you naked, it’s got nothing to do with sex. Why are you being like this?

NEIGE

It is a different kind of intimacy. It changes things.

ALFIE

It doesn’t have to! We’re both adults. It’s fine.

NEIGE

‘Fine’?

ALFIE

Oh don’t be– Listen. So what if it changes things. What’s wrong with that?

NEIGE

I am not— I do not do this.

ALFIE

What? Have fun?

NEIGE

I have plenty of fun, merci, I just– this is not. It’s not.

ALFIE

Did you not have a good time?

NEIGE

This is not about your skills as a lover–

ALFIE SNORTS

ALFIE

Sorry, ‘skills as a lover’, christ. Loosen up. It’s fine.

NEIGE

You have been a vampire for less than three months! You are vulnerable! You do not know what you want!

ALFIE

Yes! I do!

NEIGE

(deliberately antagonising)

Is it me?

ALFIE

I– What the hell does this have to do with anything?

NEIGE

Look honestly at yourself and tell me what it is you want from me!

ALFIE

I don’t know!

NEIGE

Of course you don’t. And I am not in a position where I–

(Neige takes a steadying breath)

I respect you. I want you to know I respect you. Which is why I am telling you no.

ALFIE

I just. I don’t get it.

NEIGE

Who knows what you will want in six months?

ALFIE

I– who knows what you’ll want in six months, either?!

NEIGE

Exactement! Exactement.

ALFIE

So, because you think we won’t want to fuck in six months you think we shouldn’t fuck now?

NEIGE

You want to do it again?

ALFIE

I mean. I wouldn’t be opposed.

NEIGE

I– no. It’s a terrible idea.

ALFIE

Right. Sure. Fine. You’re lying to me but fine.

NEIGE

Learn to accept a rejection. It is unattractive to be this persistent.

ALFIE

Uh, excuse me. Not everything I do is about trying to appeal to you. You don’t want to fuck, we don’t, but like. You’re bullshitting me about the reason why.

NEIGE

The reason does not matter.

ALFIE

It fucking does actually, not because there are right reasons and wrong reasons not to have sex, no is always no, but like, for fuck’s sake, man, I can tell you’re lying through your teeth about something here, I just can’t tell what.

NEIGE

Let it go.

ALFIE

Uh, no. Sorry, won’t be doing that.

NEIGE

In which case you are going to be very disappointed.

ALFIE

Uhuh, great, yeah, fascinating news to me, kitten, what are you lying to me about?

NEIGE

Leave it.

ALFIE

Nope.

NEIGE

I’m going out.

ALFIE

I’ll be here when you get back.

NEIGE

Maybe by then you’ll have realised you are being a fucking cock.

ALFIE

So charming. French really is the language of love, isn’t it.

NEIGE

I said that in English, like you fucking told me to.

ALFIE

I know.

NEIGE

Is this really the time?

ALFIE

I’m not sure there’s ever a good time. You’re fixing the fucking water when Casper is maybe being tortured, so, like, whose really got the weirdest priorities in this situation.

NEIGE

I thought you wanted to shower.

ALFIE

I do. Want to save my boyfriend more, though.

NEIGE

Oh, so he is your boyfriend today, eh?

ALFIE

That’s what this is about? You’re judging me for being unfaithful?

NEIGE

Alfie. You are being patently ridiculous.

ALFIE

Sure, sure. So it’s not infidelity that’s bothering you but I’m close, right?

NEIGE

Stop this.

ALFIE

Oh yeah, I’m close.

NEIGE

I’m leaving.

ALFIE

Sure.

NEIGE

I am.

ALFIE

Uhuh.

NEIGE

Stop looking at me this way.

ALFIE

What way?

NEIGE

Like I am some kind of painting you think is not very good.

ALFIE

Is that how I’m looking at you? Huh.

NEIGE

What has gotten into you?

ALFIE

Well, you. And you’re right. It has changed things.

NEIGE

Putain de merde.

ALFIE

Right.

NEIGE

Fuck you.

ALFIE

I thought you said you wouldn’t be doing that.

NEIGE

I cannot do this. Goodbye.

FOOTSTEPS. A LOCK RATTLES. A DOOR OPENS; WIND BLOWS OUTSIDE

ALFIE

Oh. Oh. Is it Casper?

(pause)

It is, isn’t it? It’s because of Cas. It’s because we were fucking, it’s because we loved each other. That’s what this is about isn’t it?

A DOOR SLAMS

ALFIE

(raised voice)

Okay, cool, so we’ll talk about this later then?

THE DOOR OPENS AGAIN. QUICK FOOTSTEPS.

NEIGE

You do not know what the fuck you ware talking about!

ALFIE

Oooh, raw nerve?

NEIGE

You are the most irritating man I have ever met.

ALFIE

Hmm, bit rich coming from you.

NEIGE

Stop it! Stop needling me!

ALFIE

I’ve run out of other avenues to make you fucking speak.

NEIGE

What the fuck are you trying to do here?

ALFIE

Listen, right. I have done everything you’ve fucking asked. I’ve trusted you as best I could, based on fucking nothing. I’ve sat here and gone places with you based on nothing. I’ve listened to your advice even when it’s glaringly obvious you’re talking shit. I take you on your word even when it’s hard, and I tell you that. And you just keep lying to me.

NEIGE

I’m not lying to you!

ALFIE

There are more ways to lie than just saying things that aren’t true.

NEIGE

You are being ridiculous.

ALFIE

Yeah, that kind of thing is especially uncool, actually. The lying is one thing, but pretending you’re not when outright confronted? Calling me ridiculous for noticing your bullshit? That’s like. That’s inexcusable. You’re keeping shit from me about you and Casper. There’s an extent to which I can let it go. You deserve your privacy, yeah, but there’s something going on here and it concerns me, distinctly, because right now, Casper is locked up somewhere and we are not going to help him specifically because you say we need more time. This is important. Talk to me.

NEIGE

I– I can’t.

ALFIE

Why?

NEIGE

There are things you wouldn’t understand!

ALFIE

Why? Because I’m new? Listen, pal. You may be ten thousand years old or whatever but I am not a child. You will treat me like an adult, and you will treat me with fucking respect. Not as a favour like you seemed to imply before, but because I deserve it, you hear me? I am an adult person. However old you are, whatever you have done for me, you will treat me like an adult person capable of making his own decisions because that is what I am.

NEIGE

You’re right.

ALFIE

I know I’m fucking right.

NEIGE

Ugh.

A DRAW OPENS. SOMETHING HITS THE COUNTERTOP.

ALFIE

A phone?

(pause)

Neige. What is this?

NEIGE

It’s my phone.

ALFIE

Why are you showing it to me?

NEIGE

It wasn’t a letter Casper sent to me.

ALFIE

(small, so small)

What?

NEIGE

He called me. I do not often have this turned on, you see. I do not like that it means people can know where I am. There is something wrong with the world now that it is so hard to move through it unwatched, unfollowed.

ALFIE

But. He– he.

NEIGE

I didn’t answer the call. The phone was off. From the way he was talking, I could tell it was what he’d expected, but it was three days after he sent that message that finally heard it.

ALFIE

Neige…

THE PHONE BUZZES

NEIGE

Here.

ALFIE

I don’t– I don’t want—

NEIGE

You should hear it.

ALFIE

Why. You’ve kept it from me until now. Why should I listen.

NEIGE

It was wrong of me to keep it from you.

ALFIE

He left the message for you. He didn’t– it wasn’t meant for me.

NEIGE

Alfie.

ALFIE

No, don’t, don’t!

FOOTSTEPS. ALFIE BREATHES FAST.

NEIGE

Come here. Hush.

ALFIE

No, I don’t– I don’t want you to— please.

CASPER, A RECORDING

Zima? I’m sorry to call. Truly. But I need your help.

THE PHONE CLATTERS AS IT HITS THE COUNTER

ALFIE

No, no.

CASPER, A RECORDING

I’m sorry about last time, but I need your help.

I’ve done something very, very stupid.

There’s this guy. He’s— I know what you’re going to think, but he’s not like the others. He’s different. He’s. Special. I have to save him. I have to keep him alive. Really alive. Zima– Please help me. I don’t know what else I can do.

There’s something– you remember last time we spoke I told you I was trying to find my friend? Well. I’m close to finding him. My last hope is he’s made good on this– sour promise he made to me last time we saw each other. I need your help. I need you to help me.

I really am sorry.

Miluji tě, Zima. Vždy.

A MOMENT OF QUIET

ALFIE

‘Really alive’. He didn’t want me to be a vampire, did he.

NEIGE

No. I do not think that he did.

ALFIE

He left me with enough of the blood to try it. He– I thought that’s what–

NEIGE

I know.

ALFIE

But it was too late.

NEIGE

Yes.

ALFIE

He was gone too long.

NEIGE

Yes.

ALFIE

At the end he– he was saying he loved you, right?

NEIGE

Yes.

ALFIE

‘Zima’. What’s that?

NEIGE

It means ‘winter’.

ALFIE

Winter. Why did he call you that?

NEIGE

My name is not Neige.

ALFIE

Uh. Right, fucking hell, I knew you were lying but that’s—

NEIGE

Non, non, vous avez mal compris, it is not my name because I do not really have a name anymore.

ALFIE

What is that supposed to mean?

NEIGE

Mon râleur, I am so old that the languages they spoke when I was born cannot even be reconstructed. The name I was given is in a language so dead not even I can remember it.

ALFIE

I– you forgot your name.

NIEGE

‘Neige’, it is french for ‘snow’.

ALFIE

And Zima is winter. Your blood. It tastes… cold? It’s. Wintery.

NEIGE

Other vampires, they have names for me. The blood is how I am known, mostly. That is the source of Antoinette’s fascination.

ALFIE

Why?

NEIGE

A vampire with a well developed palate can taste a lineage from the blood. They also how many generations out from the Ancients each other is.

ALFIE

The Ancients?

NEIGE

A preposterous construction. Vampires older than a thousand years. They think our blood is purer. They say we are closer to the source.

ALFIE

Who is they?

NEIGE

Other vampires.

ALFIE

This is what you didn’t want to talk about, right? This is why you’re glad Cas barely told me anything about vampire’s lives, except for how hard they are in the beginning.

NEIGE

I can see why this, specifically, would be something he would particularly want to avoid speaking about.

ALFIE

Why? Because of you?

NEIGE

No. Because of Antoinette.

ALFIE

Because the smell of you was why she picked him?

NEIGE

In a way. But it is the reason for that decision that he would want to avoid describing.

ALFIE

What’s the reason?

NEIGE

Antoinette was made by another ancient vampire. His name was Claudio.

ALFIE

And you knew him?

NEIGE

I made him. And I killed him.

ALFIE

I– what the fuck, Neige.

NEIGE

He was a fucking– he was the source of Antoinette’s ideas, he was a menace and by the time I killed him, he was also a war criminal, by today’s standards, so of all the deaths on my conscience, his is not one of the ones I regret.

ALFIE

How many vampires have you made?

NEIGE

I don’t know. I can’t remember.

ALFIE

Fuck. Jesus.

NEIGE

I don’t do it often. Maybe once every few hundred years. I have attempted it maybe three dozen times. I have been successful in less than a third of those attempts, I would guess. Claudio, he was one of the longest lived. It is hard for new vampires. You know this.

ALFIE

Oh.

NEIGE

What?

ALFIE

I just. When you said you couldn’t remember, I assumed it would be… well. More.

NEIGE

It is possible the number is higher. The first thousand years of my life in particular are fuzzy to me. It’s possible that some of the memories I have of vampires trying to make some kind of family by turning humans whenever they could, perhaps that is actually my own behaviour, but I will never know for sure. I know those arrangements never worked out, though. Too much sorrow and tension. Vampires, most of the time, they form connections with others of their own kind. One cat in a thousand cats might befriend a mouse, but overwhelmingly, that is not why cats and mice are meeting.

ALFIE

Right. But there were ones you did turn, so. Why make that call?

NEIGE

Mostly it was the result of a friendship or romance. Rarely these were well thought out instances. It was always horrible when such an attempt to create a new vampire would end the way so many of them do. It is– ah. Imagine someone you love, who you trust. Imagine holding them in your arms, knowing they trust you to. They– they look at you, they expect you to be able to help them. This act of love, it is violent. You bite, you bleed them as much as you can, and you cannot help but savour the taste despite the horror in your chest because you can feel their heart begin to stutter. You hear their breaths become weak, their limbs becoming heavy.

They are barely alive when you hold your bleeding arm to their mouth for them to drink. You smell your blood burning through them. You smell it spreading through their body. Their skin burns, sweats. They convulse, they bleed, they vomit. You mop their brow, keep them clean, wash the piss from their body. You carry them shaking, moaning, squirming. You wrap them in clean cloth as their temperature begins to drop. Their breath becomes a quiet rasp. You lay beside them. You run your hand through their hair. Finally, finally, there in the dark, their heart makes one agonising clutch and release. Their lungs rattle. You bite your finger and hold it to their lips.

Sometimes, their tongue darts out, and they drink and you push them away and they look at you, appalled with themselves. They’ve changed in ways they didn’t know it was possible to change, you did this to them. Now, new and naked, they look at you and see what they’ve not been able to see before. You are a predator. You have always been a predator. But you’re just so good at it that your prey finds it hard to tell. Now, they’re a predator too so they see you for what you are. They are naked, but you feel more exposed in that moment.

It is your responsibility to show them the world, then.

And that’s the best outcome possible. A friendship irrevocably altered. Someone who trusted you in that deep, impossible way, exposed to the truth that they did not understand what it was they were trusting you with after all. Mostly, a piece of them resents you for it. But they know, too, that this life is impossible to explain across that line. Especially when you, selfish creature that you are, kept back some key truths for fear that if you told them it all, they’d push you away without considering it. And though you struggle to live with yourself for this selfishness, the thought of living without them is worse.

And this is the best case of scenarios, you see? Sometimes, you put your bleeding finger into their mouth and they bite you, and they lurch forward, and you know right away that the movement is wrong. You know right away they are gone. They look at you, their eyes are empty. The person you love died in your arms, and you were the one that did it to them. Here they are, writhing, spitting. If you are brave enough, you tear their head from their shoulders, or shove a sharp knife into the base of their skull and watch them fall limp, like a rag doll, to the ground.

If you are not brave you shut the door and listen to them thrash against the wood, breaking their bones in desperation. You listen to them throw the dead meat of their body against the walls for days before you get the courage to end it.

But most of the time neither of these things happen.

Most of the time, you put your bleeding finger past their lips, and it stays there, a red smear on their chin, and their body grows cold as it lays still in your arms. The moon shines through the window. They are gone. You have killed them. Things will never be the same.

THERE IS A STILL MOMENT OF QUIET

ALFIE

Casper said– he said he only knew of one vampire who’d loved a human and made them and it didn’t go wrong.

NEIGE

Yes. You’ve met them, I think. Rosalind and Eponine.

ALFIE

Oh, shit.

NEIGE

Rosalind, she was turned by a vampire made by my Claudio.

ALFIE

What was wrong with Claudio? After all of that, you killed him. I can’t imagine–

NEIGE

No, you cannot.

(pause)

Claudio. He was the source of many of Antoinette’s, uh, notions.

ALFIE

She thought vampires should be in charge, right?

NEIGE

More or less this was her belief, yes.

ALFIE

Claudio believed that too?

NEIGE

Hmm. What was it that Claudio believed? He was… well. He was young man when I made him vampire, he had grown up in one of the greatest and most powerful empires on the planet, the height of its triumph.

ALFIE

Claudio… that wasn’t his name when he was human, was it?

NEIGE

Non, he went by Claudius for his human life. He was born a decade before Caesar came to power, at the very end of Rome’s true era of republic. He grew up during the violent birth squeeze of Roman imperialism, was at the edges of politics because of his father. He was outside the senate the day Caesar died.

ALFIE

That’s insane.

NEIGE

He was twelve years old. At twenty five, he and his father accompanied one of Rome’s two leaders out to the fringes of the Empire. He watched from a safe distance as Mark Anthony fell for the beautiful and indomitable Cleopatra. Within a year, Mark Anthony was dead, and the Imperial Age of Rome was truly born. He was a young man with all the world ahead of him. Beautiful, strong, well-spoken, but.

ALFIE

But?

NEIGE

During a day of training not long after his arrival in Egypt, Claudio was struck over the head with a wooden blade. This kind of thing happened regularly; it had happened to Claudio many times before. But something about the angle, the force of the blow. He was unconscious for three days, and when he woke, he seemed fine at first, after a few days of relearning use of his limbs, but. His strength never truly came back to him. He would suffer with terrible headaches which left him needing to lie in a darkened room for days, sometimes weeks at a time, unable to even stand the sound of another person breathing in his proximity.

I met him on a good day. Saturnalia, as celebrated Egypt, a heady dose of cross-pollinated traditions revelling in Saturn and the birth of Ra. I remember they were particularly big on the reversal of roles in this part of the empire at this time. Claudio, he was wearing a fine black wig, adorned in gold. His eyes were lined in thick black kohl, his chest was bare except for an assortment of necklaces. I was wearing a silk stola, one of my brooches had come unclipped. I remember he stooped to pick it up for me. It was not until I turned that he realised I wasn’t a woman. He said I was as pretty as one.

We drank an awful lot of wine and kissed under the stars. I drank his blood, took a little too much, I think, for he passed out in my arms and I had to carry him home.

ALFIE

So, how did you end up offering to turn him?

NEIGE

I saw him when one of his headaches took him. It was awful. He was in such pain. He was begging for death but did not have even the energy to take his own life. His father, he was distraught. When Claudio recovered, we walked together, he spoke of his suffering, how the level of pain would be so great he could not endure another second. And so I– I offered to take that pain away.

ALFIE

And it worked, when you turned him.

NEIGE

Yes, but. He had not truly understood what was being offered. He had a hunger in him from the beginning. Oh, I regretted his waking up a vampire within days. I had to almost drain him dry to subdue him, shut him away in a bricked up tomb, feed him bowls of blood through a hole in the ground. It took a year before I felt safe he would not kill every human he saw. He did mellow as the decade wore on, but I think he never truly forgave me for preventing his mass murder. His friends had shunned him in his sickness, he said. No woman would marry him. They deserved to die.

(he sighs)

And then, the empire began to crumble. Oh, Claudio, he could see exactly where each emperor failed. There was such a fury in him. He could not see how awful his rages would become. We parted ways some around the founding of Constantinople. I found the Byzantine emperors more interesting and accommodating, but Claudio, when I saw him, he was obsessed with Rome. Ah, he was so furious that it was my little Justinian who was the last Emperor who held Rome itself. I believed I’d never hear the end of it.

During our time apart, Claudio had… well. His views had changed and altered radically. In his eyes, the Roman Empire was the greatest success of any imperial power in the world. Forget that he had spent time in Egypt, a land of dynasties that spanned thousands, not hundreds of years, no. The pharaohs had nothing on Rome, they knew nothing of conquest, said Claudio. Honestly, I think he was just kind of racist.

The fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 really was the last straw for him, as far as humanity was concerned. He decided they could not be trusted with their own future. He travelled to the centre of Europe, and that is where he tried to begin a mass conversion. It was more challenging than he anticipated. The death toll was massive. But by the time I got to him he has created some two hundred vampires and sent them across Europe to continue his work. He has an whole master plan. He would infiltrate human power structures, take them from the inside, as he decided I had done with Justinian. He was a fool.

ALFIE

So you killed him.

NEIGE

So I tried to reason with him. And then I killed him.

ALFIE

By then he was what, almost two thousand years old?

NEIGE

Something like 1600, I think. It took a while between the fall of Byzantium to me finding and taking him out. News travelled slower then and he had been quite careful before that to keep his plans under wraps. It just reached a point that there were that many vampires who he had made that they were beginning to drift off into independent factions. That took about two hundred years to really get under control.

ALFIE

What do you mean by that?

NEIGE

Oh. I spent a long time breaking up the cells of radical vampires Claudio had created, trying my best to show them other paths, you know. Most of them died off of their own accord. The witch trials were an unfriendly time for both us and humans in Europe. It did not go over well. The vampire population swelled directly as a result of Claudio’s actions, and the number of half-mades increased massively, too. Many of his made vampires were poorly educated on the turning process and on how to properly dispatch an half-made, should they make one. It was a disaster.

ALFIE

So… Antoinette? She was one of the radicals?

NEIGE

Oui. Though I believe her beliefs were quite different to Claudio’s own. She came to think that trying to take power by infiltrating existing human governments was not the best or fastest course of action. She preferred a brute show of strength. She appropriated much of the language of the time. She was a couple of centuries old, had witnessed many human revolutions in Europe. Unlike many of the others Claudio made, she was smart. She kept quiet, experimented with turning before continuing on. She was trying to build a core faction of vampires she could use as a governing body, I think, and intended to convert existing vampires to the cause.

ALFIE

Anyone who disagreed with her, she’d kill them. Human or vampire.

NEIGE

Oui. It seemed to be her belief that a vampire who did not want supremacy over humanity was weaker than even a human.

ALFIE

But Casper killed her before you could.

NEIGE

He did. And her method of selection… she believed that vampires from my lineage were somehow superior. That I am older, she believed my blood more pure, closer to the source.

ALFIE

The source?

NEIGE

A kind of mythical imagined origin point of vampires.

ALFIE

Wait. There’s a vampire origin myth?

NEIGE

We have existed for as long as humanity and have similar propensity for storytelling. Of course there is an origin myth.

ALFIE

What is it?

NEIGE

It changes, depending on time and location. Most usually, there is a human who is cursed, or gifted. Sometimes the curse is given by a god, sometimes it is the moon or the stars. Usually, we come from a place of cold, because we do not age, you see. Our bodies are frozen. This is not exactly dispelled by–

ALFIE

The fact your blood tastes winter fresh.

NEIGE

Oui. But it has always tasted this way. Always I have been nicknamed snow or ice or frost. It is nothing to do with my being ancient.

ALFIE

What did Claudio call you?

NEIGE

Ha. Aquilo.

ALFIE

Why is that funny?

NEIGE

It was the Roman god of winter.

ALFIE

And Casper called you Zima.

NEIGE

Oui.

ALFIE

You introduced yourself to me as Neige.

NEIGE

Mm. I did.

ALFIE

Even if Cas had told me about you, I wouldn’t have known who you were by name.

NEIGE

No. You wouldn’t have.

ALFIE

Was that deliberate?

NEIGE

Somewhat.

ALFIE

Why?

NEIGE

Who knows what strangers want from us.

ALFIE

You’re afraid.

NEIGE

Yes. I am afraid.

ALFIE

Why?

NEIGE

Wouldn’t you be? I come here and it is obvious they have been kidnapping vampires, torturing them, I find out Casper, a man whom I still very much care for, has been taken by them. I find you, with blood and medical equipment. I listen to your tapes and find them mostly innocuous, to my relief, but how am I to know what else you have been working on in private? Did you test Casper’s blood in the lab? Your own? Whose to say what it is you could have wanted from me. You and Casper both.

ALFIE

You thought we’d lured you here. You thought– you thought we wanted to hurt you.

NEIGE

No. I was worried that would be the case.

ALFIE

And you still didn’t leave.

NEIGE

Of course not. I could not abandon you. You would have died.

ALFIE

And saving me, it meant more to you than saving yourself?

NEIGE

Non. Not more. But just as much.

ALFIE

Fuck.

NEIGE

What is it?

ALFIE

It would have been a lot easier to trust you if you’d told me this from the start.

NEIGE

Mon râleur. I did not trust you either.

ALFIE

Past tense.

NEIGE

Quoi?

ALFIE

As in. You didn’t trust me then, but you do trust me now.

NEIGE

Somewhat. Do you trust me?

ALFIE

Somewhat.

NEIGE

Progress.

ALFIE

Yeah. Progress.

NEIGE

I am proud of you. You do not see how far you have come, but you have come very, very far.

ALFIE

I– oh. Thank you.

NEIGE

What trust I place in you, it is because you have earned it.

ALFIE

You too.

[END]