come_sailaway | it's a war in there [March OTA, including memshare]

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it's a war in there [March OTA, including memshare]

Who: Cassandra de Rolo & those visiting her memories / OTA
When: March
Where: Around the Serena Eterna; also Whitestone, at various points in the past
What: Things are beginning to crack
Warnings: Game-typical angst; in memshares, murder, torture, vampirism, mindfuckery both magical and mundane, and potentially noncon/dubcon; other warnings to be added in reply headers as needed

A. you're just like them, you're unprepared

Cassandra's noticed the cracks, of course. Before she brushes against one, they seem alarming and inexplicable; are they a trick, a trap, a sign that this whole little artificial plane is starting to come apart?

(The thought she barely lets herself contemplate: a way out?)

After her first few encounters with them, the nature of them seems more apparent -- although there's no guarantee they aren't also any of her previous thoughts. The first time her own memories double on her, with faces she knows from here appearing in them, she locks herself in her cabin's bathroom and curls up on the floor of the shower, arms wrapped around her knees, struggling not to begin screaming for fear that she might never stop.

[This prompt is for interacting with Cassandra in the present setting! Feel free to run into her anywhere on board, either before or after memshares begin, or PM/ping me on discord to discuss a more specific prompt.]

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B. cause you don't know the terrain

Several cracks about the ship, as it turns out, lead to a world called Exandria and a little city-state called Whitestone. Those who tumble into them will encounter a younger Cassandra at some point in her past.

[Specific pre-discussed prompts are below! If you would like a different one, see the plotting post here or PM/ping me to discuss.]

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It's not enough. Of course it's not enough.

"I want my mother," she chokes out, and then there's nothing but the weeping, for some time.

Gradually, very gradually, she subsides into something close to sleep again.

"Me too..." he says it under his breath. He knows this particular heartache. But it's not about him. And he got more time than she did.

For as long as she cries, he continues to hold her close, rubbing those circles on her back until his hand cramps and not stopping even then. When she finally exhausts herself enough to drift almost to sleep, he doesn't dare move. He won't until the first light starts to peek in through the cracks in the wood.

When it first comes it isn't fully light, just a faint thinning of the darkness suggesting that the night is all but over. One of the cows starts to make a lowing noise, and the other joins in after a little while; it's a quiet gentle sort of sound, and doesn't wake either Percy or Cassandra. She's deeply enough asleep, by now, for him to shift her back to the pallet, and stand up to stretch his legs.

Fairly soon, the first glimpse of actual daylight -- or at least dawnlight -- comes in. It's still chilly, but the wind has died down.

There's still a cold draft, though, when the door to the barn opens. A cold draft and a gasp.

The man standing in the doorway in shabby work clothes stares at Crichton for the space of about two heartbeats, then drops the milk pail he's holding and seizes a pitchfork leaning against the wall, brandishing it like a weapon. "Ohhhh, you shouldn'ta come in here on your own, y'bastard," he snarls. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't spit you where you stand."

He started to get anxious as the very first hints of predawn started to show, so he had gently laid her back down on the straw bed. He's glad about that now because it means that when the door opens and a cold gust blows in, he's free to shoot to his feet and step protectively in front of the sleeping children.

The farmer (he assumes) wants a good reason? The first thing that springs to his lips is, "Because these kids will die without me."

He's got both hands up in the classic 'don't spit me' position, but he uses one to point down at the beds behind him.

"I'm sorry for using your barn without asking but we had nowhere else to go. Give me a little time and we'll leave. We don't want any trouble."

The farmer's eyes shift from Crichton to the two prone figures and back to Crichton; the hot wrath in his eyes doesn't go away, but doubt slowly joins it.

"You ain't with -- them," he says slowly, half a question. "Never seen you before, but ... you ain't with them murdering foreigners up at the castle?"

"Hell no. Not in a hundred years would I be working with them."

Okay. This is a gamble. But... if he could any kind of help, anything at all, it might be worth it.

"Actually... we're the ones they are looking for. You know what they'll do if they find us. They've already... they hurt that boy real bad. I'm begging you, please, don't tell them we're here. We'll go. I'll carry them both if I have to, but please. Please."

As Crichton takes his gamble, the farmer's eyes widen in a complicated set of reactions: alarm, surmise, unease.

"That boy," he says slowly, and then presses his lips together and shakes his head. And gives Crichton a very narrow look. "How do I know it wasn't you what did him that way? And that you won't take the pair of them straight back to the castle the moment I take eyes off you?"

Behind Crichton comes a small voice, low but vehement: "It wasn't. He won't. He helped us get away." And Cassandra, who has been awake for some minutes now, sits up in the straw and pushes her hair out of her face.

Crichton is opening his mouth to argue back but Cassandra beats him to it. He turns in surprise to see her awake. How long was she listening?

"Happy now?" he says, rounding back to the farmer. "Will you just give me enough time to figure out how I'm getting them away from here safely? The boy doesn't even have any shoes. Neither of them are dressed for the cold and we don't have any supplies."

The man looks at Cassandra for a long silent moment, his face increasingly hard to read.

Then he looks back at Crichton. "Cows got to be milked, whatever else goes on. Reckon I'll be back to milk em in ... say, an hour's time. If there's anything outside the barn door in half an hour's time, no one'll mind who might pick it up. If I don't see you here when I get back, then I never saw you. We clear?"

Crichton's eyes close momentarily as relief washes over him. Then he nods and emphatically thanks the man. "Thank you. Thank you."

He won't waste any time once the farmer has left again. He'll coax Cassandra up and ask her to go get some fresh snow to melt for water. They need to gather whatever they can so they can be ready to move in an hour. eventually, that's going to mean waking Percy up, too. But he's putting that off as long as possible.

The man shakes his head, with a smile that's grim and lopsided but genuine for all that. "Don't be a damn fool. Can't thank a man you never saw." And he turns and leaves, firmly closing the barn door behind him.

Cassandra lets out a shuddering breath, and gets to her feet. She goes to follow Crichton's directions, only to find that most of the snow has been rained down to muddy slush overnight; the good news is, there's plenty of water in a rain barrel just outside the barn.

"There are good people in this world," Crichton says with reverence, "and he's one of them."

Crichton has a small fire lit again by the time she comes back. He motions for her to put the bucket over it while he's busy pulling back the cover from Percy to check on the wounds.

"I think the swelling has gone down. I don't see any signs of infection yet. That's good. His pulse is steady, too. He's hanging in there."

A voice speaks up under Crichton's hand, cracked and weak but still faintly dry: "Glad to hear it."

"Percy?" gasps Cassandra, turning back toward them.

With immense effort, Percy lifts his head the smallest fraction, sees his sister, and manages a touch of smile before subsiding into unconsciousness again with a sigh.

She takes a tremendously deep breath and lets it out, trembling. "Oh, he'll be all right."

It doesn't take them long to pull together their makeshift camp, and they're able to rouse Percy enough to walk by the time they're ready to leave. And as all but promised, outside the barn door is a little group of items: a sizable bulging sack, a smaller and leaner sack, and a pair of shabby boots only slightly large for Percy.

"Your brother's got brass," Crichton tells her affectionately. He's feeling like a weight has been lifted from his chest. He's going to make it. They're going to make it.

The light of hope grows brighter still when they find the supplies and shoes waiting by the door. He pauses briefly to check what's inside and pulls out two worn but warm coats that will fit the siblings. There's some provisions and a canteen as well. He makes sure to top it off before they go. Without brooking any argument, Crichton hoists the larger of the packs up onto his shoulders. He's eyeing the small pack wondering if he can handle that too, but if would mean he'd have his hands full if they got attacked.

"Cassandra, can you manage that smaller pack and still help Percy?"

Cassandra, looking smaller than ever in a shabby coat too large for her, leans down to the smaller pack and hefts it experimentally, then straightens and nods with a look of determination. "I can manage."

"I'll try to make it without too much help," Percy says, his voice still weak but steady. "If we can get as far as Turst Fields, maybe ... or downriver to Drynna ..." He winces and rubs at his temple. "South, either way. Through the Parchwood."

"Okay. Let me know if that changes. I can carry it, I'm just worried about having a hand free if I need to go for my weapon."

He turns to Percy, considering his suggestions, and also giving a few more words of caution, "You two are going to have to lead me because I'm not at all familiar with this area. But I need you to promise to speak up if you're starting to feel too ragged. You'll make it harder on yourself and us if you push too hard. Slow and steady, got it?"

Percy glances down at Cassandra, rests his hand on her shoulder, and nods to Crichton. "We're in your hands, sir," he says quietly. "I give you my word I'll tell you when I'm approaching my limit. But we need to get away from here, as quickly as possible without being seen. Slow could mean the end of us."

"We'll go as fast as is practical. I'm as anxious to get out of dodge as you are, believe me, but if we aren't smart about this it's not going to matter." If they get caught, or if one of them collapses, they are as good as dead.

"We'll get a move on now. You two can fill me in about what happened on the way. I'd like to know why they did that to you, but if it's a secret keep it to yourself."

Another swift glance between the siblings, and a shared nod, and the oddly sorted trio starts walking.

The wet ground is miserable footing, especially once they're well into the Parchwood, avoiding the roads -- but it's easier than snow would be, and doesn't show their trail anything like as obviously. By the time the sun is well into the sky, they're out of sight of the last outlying farms.

The smaller sack proves to contain primarily food: a dozen crusty bread rolls tied into a linen towel, a large screw-top jar full of sweet buttermilk, a net bag of dried apples, other things. They sit down on a fallen tree to rest and eat, and the two siblings start to tell Crichton the story: how the Briarwoods and their entourage claimed to be looking for a place to rest from their travels, how the Lord and Lady de Rolo welcomed them in and held a feast in their honor, how the guests turned on their hosts with the aid of one traitor in their midst. How the rest of the family were killed. How -- haltingly, this part -- Percy and some of the others were questioned first.

"They wanted to know things about the castle," he says, turning the remaining crust of a roll over and over in his bruised and lacerated hands, staring at it. "About something under the castle ...? I didn't know what they were talking about, I told them I didn't know. They didn't believe me."

"I hate them," whispers Cassandra, her eyes bright and burning.

Once they are away from the last signs of habitation, Crichton finally allows himself to relax just a little. It's been one hell of a slog but they've made good progress and they haven't run into any danger yet. This is going about as well as it ever could.

Crichton is already planning to take less of the food than either of them in an effort to ration it out, but he doesn't find that hard as he listens to their story, to what they've already endured and lost. It turns his stomach sour.

"Your family's hospitality and generosity were betrayed. You were all betrayed. I know it doesn't help, but I'm sorry. That was an act of pure evil."

He pops the last bite of bread into his mouth and chews it down quickly so he can use both free hands to reach for one of theirs each to hold while he tells them, "Those people weren't there for the truth. They only had one thing they wanted to hear and it wasn't your fault you couldn't give it to them. I know from... personal experience." He meets eyes with Percy for just a moment longer, to communicate without saying it aloud that if he needs someone who's been through it to talk to, Crichton is willing to listen.

"You're right to hate them. I'm not about to tell you not to. Just be careful not to let them steal the goodness from you. Hate has a way of rotting a person from the inside."

Percy shudders at that, all over, all at once, and shuts his eyes. In a thin voice, as though he can't quite get enough air, he says "It's not the only thing."

Cassandra looks up at him in uncertain alarm, and then over at Crichton. And says shakily: "We should move on."

The list of reasons why Percy would shudder like that is too scary for Crichton to look directly at, but a noticeable shudder runs through him too. "You don't have to talk about it until you're ready," Crichton says, coming up to brace a gentle hand on that poor kid's shoulders. "But I promise you that whatever it was, whatever they made you do, it wasn't your fault."

He sighs and brushes the crumbs from his hands before picking the pack up from the patch of grass he'd set it on in an attempt to keep it from getting too wet or muddy.

"You're right. We should. Everyone up for it?"

Percy doesn't lean into the hand Crichton rests on his shoulder, but he doesn't pull away either, and after a moment he opens his eyes and nods.

They continue walking, without speaking much. Cassandra calls for stops to rest a few times; Percy only once, reluctant but resigned. At one point they all flatten to the forest floor for nearly twenty minutes, concealed in the underbrush, until the sound of a hunting party fades into the distance: horses' hooves, and the snarling of something that ought to be a pack of hounds but isn't, quite.

In the afternoon they find the river, and turn to begin following its course south and east. The weather starts to turn colder again, the sky clouding over, but there's no more snow yet.

The best shelter they can find that evening, before the last of the chilly daylight bleeds out of the sky, is a piece of a massive fallen tree. A great deal of the internal wood has crumbled away, but an overhanging arch of the trunk remains, almost like a little cave. It might make enough shelter to risk a small fire.

Crichton is used to being on his feet for hours, but tromping through thick woods is still exhausting work. He can only imagine how much harder it is on these two. That heart stopping twenty minutes where they lay prone waiting for the hunting party to move on was a nice rest for his feet if not for is blood pressure.

As the clouds crowd in overhead, Crichton lifts his hands to his mouth to blow hot air across them. He can see his own breath in puffs of steam as he does so. Damn, he was not built for this cold nonsense.

By the time the last of their light is draining away from the sky, he's shivering so hard his teeth clatter together. Huddling up to this fallen tree alone doesn't make much of a difference other than to cut out some of the wind.

"I don't know about you two, but I don't think I'm going to make it through the night without a little heat. Are you okay with me starting a fire."

"I think we have to," says Percy, shivering as well. "We're down low enough that it might not show from a distance, and ... it should help keep wild animals away, as well."

Cassandra's been stumbling along silently for some time now before they halted, and seems barely awake now. She doesn't respond to the question, even when Percy says her name, only rousing when he takes her bag off her shoulder and nudges her to sit down.

There's plenty of dead wood that's stayed dry in the shelter of the overhang; it shouldn't be too difficult to get a fire going.

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