#investigating

Sometimes these interventions work, at least insofar as our suffering seems to disappear for a while. But with time, suffering inevitably returns. It must return, because any attempt to escape from suffering can only guarantee its continued existence.

The only way to overcome suffering is to see it for what it really is. This means we cannot ignore it, we cannot hide from it, and we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted. We do these things not only out of the desire to escape, but also because we fear what we'll find when we examine our suffering. We're worried that the suffering we feel is the result of something we are, and in a way, we're right. It is because we identify with our desires, aversions, and beliefs that we suffer.

Rating: Explicit

Summary: The case moves forward. V is carrying more than she's saying — and River isn't saying everything either.

Read on AO3

Liability

One foot in front of the other. The corpo stairs rose in perfect symmetry, polished to a shine that made V’s boots feel like an insult to the floor. They were wide enough to feel like a statement. Everything here was.

They’d taken everything. Holsters empty, hands free, no weight at her hip or ankle or the small of her back where she usually kept the backup piece. They’d even found the knife tucked in her boot, fucking advanced scanners, and she’d watched it disappear into a little plastic tray.

The air was thick in the way money always made it, filtered and recycled and faintly sweet, laced with something she couldn’t name. Some scent that perhaps belonged to another part of the world she’d never visited. Or perhaps it was just the smell of walls that cost more than a life in this city. She let her fingers brush the surface as she passed. The texture was excessive, with embossed patterns in gold and black that rose under her fingertips. She pulled her hand back and kept climbing with River still behind her.

The stairs opened into a wide, bright space. Floor-to-ceiling windows along the far wall pulled in the grey of Night City’s sky. The room was mostly empty, all that square footage making you feel small before anyone even looked at you.

The only piece of furniture was the desk, which was positioned near the windows. A woman sat behind it. Young. Long pink hair, sculpted and cared for, not a strand out of place. Heavy makeup, chrome worked into her figure in ways that shaped rather than augmented, the kind of modification you got to look good, not to function. Expensive. She wore a long dress that made V’s jaw tighten on instinct. The kind of thing you couldn’t run in, couldn’t fight in, couldn’t do anything useful in. The heels that peeked from beneath the hem finished the thought. You’d risk breaking your own ankles before someone else’s in those.

She looked like something built to be looked at.

River moved alongside V as they approached, already drawing the visit card from his jacket. He placed it on the edge of the desk. 

I don't know if these are on purpose or not, considering they share the same writers lmao, but I still figured I'd point them out here:

Obviously the parallels between Tim and Kate: both being people who have been haunted by the Slenderman for years (if you support the theory that Kate was always doomed to be a proxy), and get their minds twisted into running around like mindless animals with masks on.

Another thing to point out between them is the fact neither of them actually want to hurt anyone, and the fact they have a friend who ropes them into delving deeper when they're trying to get away (Jay for Tim, CR for Kate).

Now the parallels between Brian and Lauren are stark, like: Both of them have friends who have been getting haunted by this eldritch monster without ever telling them, and then when they go venturing into abandoned places trying to help them it leads them to their demise.

Even the Slender Man Wiki points out the fact Lauren's death at the end is a direct parallel to Brian's!!! They both get dragged off-screen, and even the other death Lauren has where she falls to her death from the radio tower is similar to Hoody's.

The whole 'true ending' of Slender: The Arrival is just like Entry #51 of Marble Hornets, honestly.