come_sailaway | You must fix your heart

Entry tags:

You must fix your heart

CHARACTERS: Darcy and probably someone
DATE: it's (already) May
LOCATION: Various
SITUATION: Depressed teenager has a normal time
WARNINGS: None yet!

Let our bodies lay, mark our hearts with shame (Skulduggery)

In this moment, after Fio’s hugged Sparkles and everyone seems to be wrapping up the arguments and the… frankly inexplicable tea table (??? who does that?) Darcy is reminded of how badly she had wanted a threat to be able to punch. Sparkles, another undeserved recipient of begrudging mercy, was not that. All she’s got is adrenaline and pain and potentially some more bruised relationships than she had at the start of the day. So y’know. Tuesday.

She’s already back at her room by the time Skulduggery messages, at her limit of human contact before she disembowels someone, and by the time he arrives she’s doing what she was doing when he texted; which is to say, biting into her arm through her hoodie sleeve to muffle her screaming.

Let our blood in vain, you find God in pain (Meta + Ruby)

Darcy had been expecting some sort of sense of real triumph when all was said and done. But as it always goes, there's no ticker-tape parade when it's over. The Captain's back, Sparkles is somewhere, her friends are safe, she's… fine. The ship will just go back to business as usual. And she will too, eventually; back to the endless loop of training and more training and different training and finding ways to pass the time in between waiting for… something. What is she even waiting for, now? The excursions aren’t lethal anymore, the most recent threat to the ship has been dealt with, and they still can’t leave and... She’ll get back to it, honestly, it’ll all go back to the way things were, into the comforting rhythm of routine. She just… needs a minute.

Darcy passes out for about a day.

When she drags herself back to consciousness through drool and the pattern of pillow crease pressed into her face, she suddenly remembers her discussion with Ruby; and if she’s lying around feeling bad for herself, she has the time to do it to benefit someone else, so Ruby gets a text that is valiantly attempting to not seem frantic.

you still up for depression day?

Now, if your convictions were a passing phase (Kitchens + OTA)

Honestly, Darcy kind of worries she’s dreaming when she spots them for the first time. Just like December: the bright gleam of industrial steel, the smell of a kitchen freshly cleaned, a good array of knives. Not amazingly well-stocked, she’ll have to hope the Easter-Erda delivers her some of ingredients or equipment she notices are lacking (seriously, what sort of kitchen doesn’t have a rice cooker or orange oil), but literally anything is better than nothing, and it irritates her to no end that she’s going to have to thank the Captain for it.

So find her;

A) Making a batch of bread-rolls to test out the oven with: in the process of kneading, proofing, or waiting for them to finish baking.

B) Throwing together lunch for herself: cutting up vegetables, kneading pasta dough, reading a book of Christina Rosetti’s poetry while waiting for pasta to finish cooking, whisking a sauce together, and eating by herself on the floor in the corner.

C) Making a bigger meal at dinner to share: peeling potatoes, cooking off onions and garlic, browning meat, doing stretches on the floor while waiting for the food to finish cooking in the oven.

D) Or most commonly between meals: cleaning. Sharpening and washing the knives, wiping down the benchtops, doing the dishes, mopping the floors while levitating a few inches above it. It’s the first taste of real sanity she’s been able to find in… definitely since the labyrinth, probably since she arrived. Do not step on her clean floors or risk getting the mop shoved somewhere delicate.

May your ashes feed the river in the morning rays (Gym + OTA)

She imagines that a caged bird being freed feels the same way as she does setting up the treadmill. Darcy is a well-tuned machine that needs to be in motion, which is sufficient motivation to ignore the risk of getting cornered by someone in the gym again (thanks for that anxiety, Clarke,) and actually go to train during the day. Like some sort of animal.

Between the treadmill, deadlifts, one-armed push-ups, rowing machine, and the intensity with which she’s hitting the punching bag, an observer might come to the conclusion that she’s either trying to push past her limits, or run herself ragged. Either way, stay out of her way and off the machine she’s about to use or risk getting scowled at.

Get up, coward. (wildcard)

(For anything else)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

my room?
i dont have a roommate rn so 
ill see if theres snacks and stuff too
and lemme know when youre coming over?
it doesnt have to be right now or anything

yeah, yours
mine is, you know, also clarke's, so
give me like, an hour? if that's not too quick?
I just need to stop being a puddle of grimm goop long enough to like, shower
put clothes on that aren't ridiculous for just lying around
stuff like that

hours good 
see you
just come in dont bother knocking

The door is unlocked whenever Ruby finally arrives, and both comforters arrayed on the ground, with pillows, and a couple of bags of snacks that she managed to scavenge from Sundries. Darcy's setting up a record player, which crackles into life not long after. A classic depression album, acquired into Avery's collection shortly after his first divorce. It helped him through the second one, too.

When Ruby peeks, and then steps inside, she comes in PJ pants with Grimm faces styled like hearts and a comfortable hoodie, wielding a single wolf-Grimm cushion, and with her still kind of damp hair thrown into a really lazy ponytail. That she looks emotionally and physically drained will come as no surprise, but at the same time she still seems at ease now she's here.

She glances around the set-up and just listens to the music for a moment or two, hugging her cushion tight to her chest, then breathes a, "Hey."

Darcy doesn't startle at the sound of Ruby speaking, you startle.

"Hey," she answers back, in... well Darcy's outfits only ever really change if she's dressing up for something, so it's a black hoodie and sweatpants as per always. But her sleep sweatpants, specifically. They're a slightly different shade of black.

"Fuck," Darcy offers by way of 'hey isn't this entire situation majorly shit', as she sets herself down on the floor.

Ruby flumps down on her front on the laid out comforters, dramatically enough that it would probably hurt if she didn't have Aura. She buries her face in the cushion she brought and makes a noise that straddles the line between a groan and a scream, before she echoes: "Fuck."

She rolls over onto her side facing Darcy, huffing to blow a strand of hair out of her face. It falls right back into place, still tickling her nose; it wrinkles. She sighs.

"...everything is such a mess..."

"It's like new depths of worse keep getting invented every time we get used to this level of bad."

Darcy looks at the snacks momentarily, but the effort to open and then eat one is far greater than how hungry she actually is. Mostly she's just tired.

"And I'm sorry about the lobby and everything. It... meant a lot that you tried to defend me. I never want to be locked in a room with everyone again."

"I wish it surprised me. How things keep getting worse, I mean. I think a part of me is always waiting for the next big revelation," she rolls onto her back, waving her arms dramatically above her, "because that's how it always was at home, too. Every time you think you're used to it, or you understand what's happening..."

Something else comes along. Salem's existence. Salem's immortality. Summer confronting Salem. Salem's giant Grimm whale. One thing after another. Always another layer.

She heaves a big breath, arms flopping back down. Her head turns back to Darcy. "...I'd do it again, the defending part. Not being locked in with everyone again, that... that really did suck. Everyone was ragging on you, like you were the only one who'd done anything wrong and— and it just wasn't fair. We were all stressed and..." she sighs, "I bet I was the only one who got an apology from Rita too, huh...?"

She's really not sure how she feels about the apology, still. It's not that she doesn't appreciate it, exactly, but...

"I did act like a dick for some of it," Darcy notes, tugging the comforter up to her chin. It'd be nice if she could warm up from it.

"Rita would rather take an entire cactus up her ass than apologise to me for literally anything. I rescued her in one of her memories and she insulted me the entire time until I found a way out. She's just... decided that me being dead is weird and creepy and that means she doesn't have to treat me like a person," which sucks and she wishes she didn't take it as personally as she does.

"Because you know. I totally chose to die. Woke up one morning like 'I really wish I could have something traumatic happen to me' and then went out looking for it."

"Mmhm, I know. But you weren't the only one acting like a dick, you know? That's what I mean. Rita started a whole new argument for no reason and hardly anyone else pushed back on her, let alone so— publicly. That's unfair and stupid."

She'd probably usually be more eloquent about this, about her reasoning, about why she said exactly what she said when she stepped in... but she's tired. So, 'unfair and stupid' it is.

She knows what it's like to end up in the spotlight when things are bad. Even if it's never been like what happened back in the lobby... it wasn't hard to project a little.

"Even worse if that's any of why she's so... like that, with you. What are you supposed to do about that? Just spontaneously stop being dead? I-I don't know how someone can live on this boat for this long and still be weird about other people not being, I don't know, the right kind of human. Imagine if I went around being mean to people because you don't have Auras and I decided that was creepy because it clearly meant you didn't have souls or some nonsense like that."

"Nobody yelled at discount Bash for starting shit either. And like- she went after Dimitri after that argument had ended. For no fucking reason."

She's felt guilty enough about the whole thing that it's kind of nice to just be angry and justified about it.

"She thinks everything to do with ghosts and shit is creepy. You know she didn't actually believe that the ghosts running the ship were real until October? And then she made it this huge fucking announcement and everything. I had like, two interactions with her that weren't awful, one of them was at the diner, and the other one she's been using against me ever since, because I was dumb enough to admit literally anything personal. I just-"

Darcy pulls the pillow out from under her head and screams in frustration into it, just kind of leaving it there when she's done.

"Ugh, she's annoying even when she's not here. Fucking bitch ruining depression floor time."

"I'd never even talked to her before all this and this... apology or not, I don't know if I want to again." Ruby sighs. It's not easy to get on Ruby's bad side, and the apology certainly helped, but her overall impression of Rita isn't exactly great after all this. "But! We don't have to talk about her anymore, she shouldn't get to ruin depression floor time too."

She throws her cushion up in the air and catches it before it lands on her face. Then she does it again. And again.

"...if— if I'm honest hardly anything since we got out feels— real. It's not like Halloween, I spent the whole day after that so out of it I never left bed even if I never slept, but... I-I feel like I've just been floating through everything. Never touching the sides."

"No totally," she agrees, glad to move on from Rita entirely, "I get what you mean. Nothing's felt really real since like... fuck, December, I guess. Everything's gone so fast and so slow all at once. I haven't even had time for my own personal shit, it feels like."

Darcy tugs the pillow back down from her face, hugging it to her chest.

"People keep telling me I'm going to have time to work my shit out in between everything else, but like... You know I've been..."

God, this is so much harder to phrase outside her head.

"For a couple of months I've been sort of like... asking myself if I'm... a girl? But I haven't been able to talk to literally anyone about it because shit's been on fire and everyone's busy and it really honestly doesn't, like, matter, it doesn't change anything even if I'm not. You know? I want to have time for dumb personal shit that doesn't matter."

"Hey, it matters. The 'dumb personal shit' totally matters. Which— I realise this is me saying this as if I didn't admit to burying every personal issue I've ever had in the name of being a good leader, but—" Her brow furrows and her nose crinkles as she thinks, "gah, how to put this, my speech brain hasn't recovered yet..."

She keeps throwing the cushion. She blows a strand of hair out of her face and this time it actually stays away.

"Without the personal stuff, there'd be no point in... any of this, right? If the personal stuff didn't matter, then why does surviving matter? Why does fighting matter? Sure, you can argue about which should come first, and how hard it is to just... find time makes it feel like maybe putting it aside is the right answer, but... I-I mean, you were there for me when I had my gay crisis in the corner of the wedding, right? And since then I had this... whole other conversation where I found out I'm probably ace, and..."

She catches the cushion once more and sighs, squeezing it between her hands. She's rambling, she knows she is.

"...I guess my point is, I think people would be willing to take the time if you want, y'know? I-I mean, I am, if you wanna talk about that now. We're taking the day anyway, right?"

"Please, no more speeches," Darcy moans, leaning her head back, "no speeches for like, at least a month, I hit my upper limit of how many speeches I can handle in that fucking waiting room."

But she doesn't interrupt Ruby talking- it's less of a motivational speech and more of talking to Darcy like she's a person, which either means her speech brain really hasn't switched back on or Ruby's just really good at it. She's right, ultimately, even if she is a hypocrite. Darcy's coming to realize that basically everyone is, herself included, when it comes to personal issues.

"Congrats on that," she adds to Ruby saying she's ace. Darcy can't relate, but good for her.

"There's not really much to talk about. I mean- I already suck at being a girl and I don't want to fix that. I'm not like, changing my name or my look or anything. I've just never really... known what I'm meant to be doing, like, if I'm a 'girl' or whatever. I like girls, I like a lot of things about girls, but I can't imagine ever like... wearing make-up or shit myself."

...

"I wasn't going to say anything, but Dimitri called me his brother-in-arms when he was about to leave in the lobby- and obviously I was kind of busy trying to hold my shit together- but... it felt good. I want to do what's good for me. It's not like my parents are here for me to disappoint or anything. So. I'm basically just going to keep doing what I'm already doing, I don't want anyone making a big fuss, but I don't know. Even like... pronouns are weird. We only have male and female in French, for everything, in English it's weird and different and-"

Darcy pauses, then waves a hand vaguely- "sorry- that's a lot of words for me not having anything to say about it."

It's the grim irony of Ruby Rose that the traits she thinks she needs to suppress to be a good leader are often the very things that make her such; or that are, at the very least, the traits that make her Ruby Rose in the first place. The speeches don't work because they're masterpieces of social engineering and inspiration, they work because she's earnest, and hopeful, and loves her friends more than anything.

"I think we always have more to say than we think we do," she says lightly, now fiddling with the ears of the Grimm cushion. Bending and squishing them. "Doing what's good for you is the important part. I know I won't ever really fully understand what it's like on worlds where this stuff is, like, an issue? When all my baggage was entirely self-wrought, but— like you said, your parents aren't here. The standards of other worlds aren't here. If you don't want a fuss, there doesn't have to be a fuss. And if you just... don't want to be thought of as a girl anymore, or whatever, you don't have to be. Which— I don't know, maybe I'm making it out to be too simple."

She pushes the cushion's ears entirely inside the rest of the cushion and waits for them to pop themselves back out.

"...Remnant's only had one language for centuries and I barely know what French is, so admittedly I'm next to no use on that tangle, but— would you use pronouns differently if it was less weird, you think? That's a weird kind of hypothetical itself, I know, but..."

"It probably is that simple. My dad's a skeleton. Called Skulduggery. If people respect that then they can call me a guy sometimes."

... Darcy scrunches her eyebrows up a little at that- because French is already five languages stapled together, much less all the smaller regional dialects that crop up in between larger languages. But 'how do you only have one language' is not really a question to pose to Ruby of all people.

"Oh- French is what we mostly speak where I'm from. I'm French, we speak French, it's why I sound like this when other people from Earth don't."

As for her question, "I don't know. I mean- like I said, neutral doesn't exist in French. Groups of people are ils, things are ils, men are ils, it's sort of... deliberate to use elles by comparison. I guess in French I'd just switch to ils, but 'he' in English isn't... the same, really. It also feels kind of deliberate. There's no... 'I don't care' pronoun past just, using whatever. So. I'm just using whatever."

...

"I was studying, like, three languages back home, and I had to translate for my Krewe a lot, it's something I just end up thinking about."

"Okay, faaair point. If there's anywhere in the infinite universe that it's going to be that simple, it's here. Especially with people that really matter." People like Dimitri, and Skulduggery, and... so on and so forth.

Ruby, incapable of staying still, rolls back onto her side again and tucks her cushion under her head. Her cheek squishes. "I think I get what you mean, even if I obviously don't have a head for language. In French it sounds like it'd be like... choosing the pronoun of least resistance, but in 'English' it's more. Specific? So, no, I hear you. 'Using whatever' works as well as anything."

"...I actually hadn't thought much about your accent, I think. We have accents but the more noticeable ones tend to pop up in families that moved from one of the more isolated settlements, at some point. The main kingdoms are pretty, like... blended."

"I guess that makes sense. Even in like, the same language, we get regional accents spring up. Back home, the city where I live has some accent differences to like, a city on the other side of the country. But I also have no idea how that would happen without other languages to draw from."

Weird.

...

"God, we're kind of bad at this, like, depression floor time thing, huh."

"I guess we might've had other languages centuries ago? But stuff from before the Great War is a mess of lost records and..." Ruby waves it off vaguely, it's a bit out of the realm of her expertise. Her historical knowledge pretty much extends as far as the war itself and that's mostly because it led to the Huntsmen system.

After trailing off, she laughs the softest little laugh. "Heh, we might be. Just a little. At least we're still not really doing anything else but lie here and talk? We're like, half there."

"Wow, there is so much to unpack there," like. A war that apparently wiped out other languages??????? Jesus Christ.

"And we're not unpacking it! We're going to lie here and feel sad and listen to Leonard Cohen singing about being sad because he's great."

...

"But I am absolutely going to ask you more shit when we feel better, because what the fuck."

"Heh, Remnant's history is... let's call it colourful? That feels appropriate. Technically the war is why my name is my name, too." And why most people in her generation's names are what they are. Yes she's just going to drop that out there with no additional context. "I'll totally give you a rundown another time. When I'm not floaty. Because I am definitely still floaty."

She waves her hands around in what's probably meant to be a demonstration.

Edited 2023-06-05 21:30 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, she's just going to accept that and not question it until Ruby can give her a rundown, it's fine and it won't haunt her.

"No, I get what you mean. I used to get like that a lot, usually I'd just get some ice cubes and hold them against my arm until it hurt, and then eventually it'd snap me out of it. Usually I just have the opposite problem now, some shit happens and it's like all of me is a live wire and everything is super grating."

...

"The ice cube thing was actually probably bad, maybe don't do that."

There's a soft flash of concern before Ruby just nods, "No ice cubes. Got it. I—"

She fusses with her pillow a bit, face twisting thoughtfully. "...when something pushes me over the edge, I-I guess I just... shut down. My whole body just stops. Working. The way it's supposed to. Like there's just too much of the bad stuff and it's pushed everything else out. In a crisis I can pull it all back, even if I never feel like I get all of it, but then sometimes... yeah."

The lobby. The floatyness now. In some ways she actually feels... better, here, than she has after moments where she had to rush herself back to functioning, which she supposes is rather the point of taking a day off. Even if it makes it feel like the episode is lasting longer.

"None of that," Darcy adds quickly at the flash of concern, which thankfully doesn't warrant anything further when Ruby just nods and moves on.

"That sucks," she offers, since there's really... not much else she can do. Or anyone can do, really, it's not like there's a therapist aboard. Not that any of Darcy's did much to help. Maybe just talking it out will actually help her in a way it never seems to help Darcy.

You must fix your heart

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hehe grimm irony

:3

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cw self harm reference

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Wrap up around here?

yes!