I get the feeling any minute I could break [OPEN & CLOSED]

[hadnoright]

Who: Daisy Tonner & you!
What: Daisy fucking snaps and gives into the Hunt
When: Closed prompts on February 16th, opens either side
Where: Many places on the ship
Warnings: Graphic violence, people being hunted, death, possible references to police brutality, themes of (supernatural) addiction, (metaphysical) starvation etc.
Notes: Hunt Sense Permissions, what does your character smell like? Feel free to flip me to brackets I am comfortable with either style.


1. I don't wanna need it [OPEN, windjammers, decks, library]

Daisy doesn't go to the carnival.

There's a handful of reasons, ranging from still not trusting excursions not to end in bloodshed to the one person she thinks actually likes her being busy with her girlfriends to just feeling generally like shit. She's so weak these days. Eighteen months without really feeding the Hunt, eight buried alive and six at the Institute and another four on the boat, and she truly feels like she's wasting away. And the worse she feels, the worse her attitude is.

Most of this time she's holed up in her room, but she can still be found ducking out to get food from Windjammers, or wandering the decks to get some fresh air, or dropping by the library to get a book she probably won't even read.

She won't bite if you bother her. But she might glare.

2. But I just can't leave it [CLOSED, headers in comments]

The thing is, of course, that in the end something was always going to have to give. Eighteen months is a long time to starve, even if that starvation is technically metaphysical. Eighteen months is a long time to fight back what is essentially an addiction with no actual treatment. Eighteen months is a long time to spend telling yourself that this is for the best whilst also feeling worse and worse every. Single. Day that goes by without giving in.

Eighteen months is how long it takes for Daisy to finally snap.

There's no one thing that does it. No final push. Nothing besides the gnawing sensation of need and the sound of blood pumping in her ears, in the depths of her mind, in the air all around her.

It's all but out of her hands, after that.

3. I know I went and got complacent [OPEN, cabin 122]

When all is said and done, Daisy feels worse than ever.

Not physically, no. Physically, at least once whatever Valdis did to her wears off, Daisy feels better than she has since before she went into the Buried. She even looks better, no longer so scrawny that she looks malnourished and instead appearing a healthy weight. But mentally?

She feels like the monster that she is. Angry at herself for losing it and hurting people. Disgusted at herself for the way a part of her wants to get right back out there and do it all again. Horrified by her own capacity for violence and harm. Ashamed of being so weak she couldn't stop herself. Exhausted at the idea of going back to letting herself starve. Terrified of the idea of facing the rest of the ship after she gave such a display of Old Cruise Pride. Hopeless in the face of a life she barely even wants to keep living. Absolutely certain that she will never be anything but a monster, because that's all people will see her as.

She's not going anywhere. Erin's probably not going to let you kill her, but she's not going to stop you talking to her. And Daisy doesn't have it in her to tell people to go away, not really.

If you have something to say, come say it.

4. But I know that I can save this [wildcard]

Find me at bluecitrine or at artisticblueteam#5757/in the discord.

Comments

[Cabin 128, the next morning] For Erin, then OTA

[not_the_last]

The first breath is sucked in so swiftly that it rasps in her lungs.

In the same moment, she's half sitting up, clawing at the blanket over her and struggling to push it away, still half in some formless nightmare.

Re: [Cabin 128, the next morning] For Erin, then OTA

[crushed_pearls]

There it is. Waiting here has been a compromise on Erin's vigil, and soon she must return to it; the others will be alive soon too.

But it's Cass. Her lady, her love, her glorious ex villain, whom she failed to protect. Again.

Erin knocks firmly. "Love - it's okay. I'm here, I brought breakfast."

The tiniest gesture, but what else is there to do? The plate is all potatoes and toast and pancakes.

No meat. Nothing that bleeds.

[not_the_last]

She hears Erin's voice through the door, through the last wisps of the dissolving dream, and goes still. Memory trickles in, slowly fills her mind.

The words go away form in a cold lump in her chest. If she opens her mouth, she doesn't think she'll be able to say anything else.

She reaches for her phone and unlocks the door without a word, and then wraps her arms around her knees and puts her face down on them.

[crushed_pearls]

Into the room. Erin sets the plate down and sweeps Cass into a hug, folding her into those wings. She can't suppress a sob of relief. Cass didn't vanish. She's really here.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry..."

[not_the_last]

"Don't," she croaks, without lifting her head or opening her eyes, and fumbles for some part of Erin to cling to. Hand or wrist or shirt, it doesn't matter.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin takes Cass's hands, and squeezes tight. She's here, she's here now...

"Daisy's locked up in her cabin," Erin murmurs. "She's still recovering, Valdis hit her hard, she won't be coming out for a bit. You're safe now, love."

[not_the_last]

There's no sound from Cassandra.

Her head ducks down lower; her back and shoulders under Erin's wings, her hands in Erin's grasp, tense up to the point of shaking.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin just holds Cass close.

After a moment, she starts humming softly.

[not_the_last]

It's the humming that breaks her.

"Stop." Low and hoarse. "Stop it --"

The shaking is worse now, the tension like something trapped in a prolonged struggle.

[crushed_pearls]

The humming stops immediately. "Talk to me Cass. Don't...don't just sit with it..."

It's the barest plea. Erin's scared.

[not_the_last]

"S-stop trying to tell me I'm safe." There's a corrosive bitterness in the word. "I'm not. Safe. We're not, none of us -- nothing's safe, not anywhere --"

[crushed_pearls]

"...Alright," Erin whispers. She resists the urge to hold Cass closer, but can't quite keep the sob out of that word. "But - no, not but - it's - I'm sorry."

[not_the_last]

She shudders all over, but it's a shudder of something like relief, with the terrible thing spoken aloud.

"Nothing is safe," she whispers again, and it's hoarse but it isn't choking her anymore. "Nothing is -- I thought I learned that before, but I keep, I keep forgetting."

She leans into Erin again, clutching her hands, rocking a little with the rhythm of her words.

[crushed_pearls]

"I know love," Erin murmurs. "...We're not safe here, I know, it fucking sucks. I'm sorry she hurt you. I thought...I expected a relapse but...I thought it'd be contained faster, she'd get her face beat into the floor, learn firsthand that shit doesn't fly with us. I'm sorry."

[not_the_last]

"I tried," she whispers. "She, she kept healing."

[crushed_pearls]

"...Hrm. I see." Erin files that away for later. "I know she can still die, she bitches about it all the time, but...still. You did the best you could in a bad situation."

Erin doesn't know yet that Cass couldn't follow her advice not to run.

[not_the_last]

For a long moment she doesn't say anything, just burrows against Erin with eyes shut.

Finally, in a low gulp: "What ... happened to her?"

[crushed_pearls]

"I promise I'm not being a smartass love, but...do you mean what stopped her, what started it, or why she's like that?"

[not_the_last]

A pause.

"What started it." No louder. "And what stopped her."

The first is what she meant to ask; the second is what she now also wants to know.

[crushed_pearls]

"Second part is easy enough, if mildly horrifying. Valdis hit her in the soul, couldn't walk it off." Erin makes a soft sound, frustrated, worried. "...Daisy's been starving. The god that took her changed her, and even though it's gone, she's still...as it made her. She'd been starving for months, trying to fight off becoming something worse, and then she got here and kept starving. I think...she planned on getting back to the nothing. But I'm not sure she's very good at dying."

[not_the_last]

Cassandra's silent.

But she reaches up to lightly tug one of Erin's wings a little closer, trying to keep the silence from feeling like a rejection.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin answers with a tighter embrace, wings folding closer. Poor Cass...

"...Don't get me wrong, I'm pissed," Erin whispers. "She hurt you. She hurt a lot of my friends too. Wouldn't surprise me if on some level she was trying to burn her bridges. That fuckass god likes lone wolves, hungry and afraid, more human idiocy...but..."

"...I'm not ready to give up on her either." The barest whisper; almost a plea. Please understand.

[not_the_last]

"Oh," almost a sigh, "I know that."

She doesn't look up.

And then she does, with slow belated misgiving rising in her eyes. "... Who else did she hurt?"

[crushed_pearls]

"...Peter. Phil. Some man I've never met, dude with big hair, suppose I've technically had worse introductions. Dimitri and Dedue got taken down, but Dedue lived it. And I know Valdis took some hits before she finally ended it." Erin cups Cass's cheek with the lightest of touches. "...You might notice a bit of a theme."

Erin kept trying to apologize. Cass will put it together.

[not_the_last]

Cassandra straightens up, still holding Erin's hands, the misgiving in her face scaling up to alarm.

"Is Crabb all right?"

(Yes, she's spotted the theme.)