You must fix your heart

[saltwaterlungs]

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)

Comments

[not_the_last]

"Poetry," she says with a dawning smile. "I've been reading some myself; last month there was a book of it at Sundries for me, all different poets. None I've ever heard of before."

She follows Darcy's glance to the vegetables, and then looks back to her. "Any -- do you mean of, of what you're cooking?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Cool. I don't- ehn- I mean I used-" but she feels her throat throttle close at the idea of sharing anything about herself with 'the other team', especially something as dumb as 'I got into poetry for my now-dead girlfriend'.

"Not important. I probably don't know any of the poets. But yeah- ehn- it's rude not offering. Its basically just going to be vegetables and chicken breast and rice."

[not_the_last]

It's rude not offering suggests, to her ear, that Darcy doesn't really want to offer. On the other hand, Darcy's demonstrated regularly that she has no problem being rude if she thinks the other party deserves it, so ...

"Thank you," she says, "it's very kind of you to offer. Might I do anything to help prepare it? I'm not skilled at cookery, but I can take direction."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Mostly the rice just need to finish cooking, but there should be half of a bell pepper still in the fridge, if you could chop that up just kind of roughly. It's not going to be anything fancy, but I don't know. I kind of want to just eat vegetables without them being smothered in other shit like the buffet does."

She taps the lid of the rice with her spoon, "should be another few minutes. 'm just going to stir fry everything together and put it in a bowl once it's done. That's like, eighty percent of every recipe ever, so it's not that hard to learn."

[not_the_last]

"All right. Thank you."

She learned fridge last time they were in a kitchen; the cold box that keeps things chilled, rather than the smaller cold box that freezes things solid. Neither of them magic, somehow. She gets out the half pepper, finds a sharp knife, and stands by the counter to pare off small pieces and drop them in a bowl.

"... Is rice something that was common, where you came from?" It's not the best topic of conversation, maybe, but the quiet was starting to feel awkward.

[saltwaterlungs]

Blinks.

Oh, right, some people aren't from earth. Darcy launches into her usual tone when explaining things to Dimitri-

"For me, personally? Yeah. But like... historically? Not in my part of the world. We had a different staple grain for a long time, rice grew ehn... further East, from where I was. Different climate. Rice grows in water, so you need somewhere that's pretty wet for at least most of the year. Wheat needs rain like anything, but it just grows in dirt. And we have good dirt where I come from. So. But it's ehn- it's good, we eat a lot of food that comes from elsewhere back home."

Not the best topic of conversation, but it's anything other than the situation aboard the ship, so by God she's doubling down on talking about rice.

"It's funny, whenever I explain things about Earth to Dimitri I usually end up having to explain like five other things before I can explain the one thing. There's a lot of history in food, especially. Like- I can't talk about my favourite sandwich back home without getting into like... geopolitics. Which is weird, ehn? It's just a sandwich. But everything's linked to everything else. So."

[not_the_last]

She nods, listening. "It's mostly wheat and oats, a little rye, in my part of the world. They grow barley further south, but where I live it gets too cold for barley. I've eaten rice and sweetcorn, but they have to be imported from farther away, so ... not often."

Piece after piece of the bell pepper fall into the bowl, one by one.

"And yes, you're quite right. Everything affects everything. Your sandwich doesn't just come from ... well, from the kitchen." She gestures, briefly and carefully, with the knife. "Though I'm sure many think of it that way."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Oh, right, yeah- corn is from the Americas in my world, which is further west. When I'm from though, we sort of... there's nothing you can't get anywhere, ehn? Sort of, anyway."

Darcy weighs up telling her about bánh mì, mostly because then she'd want one instead of what she's throwing together. But a lot of home is in that sandwich.

"Where I'm from, we have the best bread in the world, ehn? So when we... invaded other places, we brought it with us. The local people of one of those places we invaded put their own fillings into it- some preserves we brought, and some meat and vegetables they already had there- et voila, the bánh mì, the best sandwich in the world. It's like, a couple of hundred years of history in a bread roll. History is like- it's kind of dorky. But there can be cool parts, I guess."

[not_the_last]

Cassandra's hands pause only briefly in their work at the word invaded, and then continue as she listens to the rest.

"That's fascinating," she says, truthfully. "I can't think of anything like that from home ... I suppose there must be, though, with one or another of the empires in Wildemount."

A small, thoughtful pause. "There's an old story, but it's ... more of a fable for children. Not something that ever really happened, as far as I know."

[saltwaterlungs]

"If you want to tell it, go ahead," Darcy gestures, "not like I'm doing anything else. Rice is good but it takes forever to make if it doesn't have a dedicated cooker, and this kitchen doesn't seem to have one. Probably just have to hope one shows up in Sundries one day."

[not_the_last]

"I don't remember it well enough to tell it properly, but ... it's about how once upon a time all the different peoples of the world had different ways of keeping their food, and each of them thought all the others were ruining theirs. Something like -- the dwarves made great enchanted cold-rooms underground, and the elves laid things out to dry in the sun, and the orcs built smokehouses, and the gnomes had their pickling barrels, and halflings made preserves, and so on. And then humans started visiting each of them, and they brought each kind of food with them wherever they went, and gradually ..."

She shrugs, half apologetic. "I suppose it isn't very like. I was reminded, I suppose, because at the end of the story there's a great feast with everybody finding new ways to combine each other's foods."

[saltwaterlungs]

Record scratch.

"Back up like three steps- you have elves?"

[not_the_last]

Cassandra blinks at her, similarly record-scratch'd.

"... You don't?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Uh. No. No elves or orcs or anything. Except in some books."

Darcy will be avoiding mentioning the Lord of the Rings as to avoid logicking her way to DnD and causing a meta singularity.

"Just like- around? There are just elves and shit where you live?"

[not_the_last]

(For what it's worth, Cassandra has already learned about DnD from Eddie Munson and nothing's imploded about it yet.)

"Yes? There are more humans than elves where I live, but ... they're hardly uncommon? My sister-in-law's a half-elf, her father lives in a city that's almost entirely elven."

[saltwaterlungs]

"That's..."

Not like it isn't kind of what happens aboard the ship when a new sort of person shows up, but that as someone's normal existence is weird to think about.

"Huh. Yeah, no, like I said, just humans and animals on my earth. And like. Plants. And ghosts. Fish. Lots of things, no other sort of people."

[not_the_last]

"That's so odd." She regards Darcy with bemusement. "Is yours also one of the worlds where no one can do magic?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Not nobody," she explains, holding up a hand to demonstrate an odd shimmer like light through water, "but it's super rare. I only ever met... six? Three members of my Krewe, and I had to meet with a few members of a neighbouring Krewe one time. There's more, Like, elsewhere, but we're pretty rare. I've never heard of more than ten in cities of a couple of million."

[not_the_last]

"It isn't terribly common in my own country," she offers in turn, "but there are cities where they have whole universities and, and assemblies for spellcasters. I've been wishing for years that we could afford to keep a court mage."

[saltwaterlungs]

"That's pretty cool. I kind of wish there was a university or something for magic in my world. My Krewe all had pretty different powers, I've had to work out my shit through trial and error."

...

"Like, as a pet?" that doesn't sound right.

[not_the_last]

"Oh -- no," and there's maybe a little more vehemence than the question calls for, but she's been to one of Max's memories and it's still with her. "As a, a member of the castle's staff. A court appointee? I'm not sure how you would say it."

[saltwaterlungs]

.................


"Wait- are you saying you ran a castle?"

There might be the edge of a Normal amount of excitement under the question.

[not_the_last]

"... Yes?"

Have they really never talked about this?

"Only for the last year and a few months -- and I should say, I haven't been running it entirely on my own; my head steward Arla manages the domestic staff, and all the Chamber members have a say in the makeup of the larger court ..."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Badass," she says, awed, before she can think better of it.

"There's a bunch of old castles in the country where I lived, they were all like- these days they're basically only standing because of history nerds, but it was always like... they were fucking huge, right? I could never imagine what they were like with people in them. Like a whole staff and not just tourists or history ners in them. So it's just- it's cool that you, like, got to experience that. Not cool to you, I guess, but cool."

[not_the_last]

"No, it ... it was. Cool." She smiles a little at the unaccustomed word. "I miss it."

A beat, and then on impulse: "I received a book of pictures of it, recently. My home. Would you like to see it sometime?"