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

[takethatnature]

"I know what I'm doing!" He adds a potato and, presumably the source of the hotdog smell, two weiners from the infinite box. Well, originally from the infinite box. They just appeared out of thin air.

[saltwaterlungs]

"That makes one of us."

...

"Okay-" the book gets set down, "what are you making?"

[takethatnature]

"Pierogies."

Wilson begins rummaging through the fridge. He mutters under his breath, "Well, this isn't going to work, I don't want to waste butter or milk on a filler." Instead he adds more hotdogs, and some tap water, then he turns the slow-cooker on.

[saltwaterlungs]

She's experiencing all the stages of grief. Darcy is undergoing ego death watching this man cooking 'pierogies' like this. This is a katabasis. She is standing in the middle of the nadir of her life and she can tell because he's adding hotdogs and tap water to a slow cooker to make pierogies. This has to be a set-up. Is she getting pranked? Has the last year of her life really been a set-up to this moment? Watching some fucking guy monumentally fuck up making pierogies? She physically cannot pick her book back up. This is the start of a Kafka novel. Darcy is going to spontaneously develop shingles from the stress it's putting her under. Is she sweating? At some point she started gripping the counter with white knuckles and she doesn't know when. Like her entire reality has been turned sideways.

And all of this without knowing it's going to work.

"Can I have one when you're done?"

She just... wants to see how badly this can turn out.

[takethatnature]

The kid's giving him a funny look. Looks downright unwell, actually. Wilson had never made pierogies before coming to the Constant, admittedly, but surely it can't be that unorthodox of a recipe?

"Yeah, sure, why not."

The slow-cooker bubbles. It's going to take around an hour to complete its work.

There is a long, awkward pause.

"So... I'm Wilson P. Higgsbury. What's your name?"

[saltwaterlungs]

Don't laugh at his name don't laugh at his name don't laugh at his name yes Higgsbury sounds like the name a cartoon British bear would have but she doesn't need to further worsen her reputation with some random guy, even if he's fucking up pierogies in a way nobody has managed to do before.

"Darcy."

...

"I'm the only Darcy here so I don't usually, like, use my surname or anything. Kind of like Prince."

[takethatnature]

He's also voluntarily wearing a waistcoat over his Tommy Bahama plain white button-up and black dress pants. And formal-looking black shoes, though they're battered to hell and back.

"Prince what?"

Either he's not doing a bit or his acting is impeccable, because he sounds like he genuinely doesn't know what Darcy's talking about.

[saltwaterlungs]

"No, like- that's the point, it's just Prince with nothing else."

She wouldn't be surprised if he's from somewhere without Prince, considering the variety of worlds and time periods aboard the ship.

"He's a musician. Was. From my world."

[takethatnature]

"That's a weird stage name." Wilson furrows his eyebrows. "Is his music any good?"

Live action Wilson spotted!!

[saltwaterlungs]

"One, he's an icon, two, he's an icon."

Darcy waves off the line of inquiry with a hand, "not the point. Point is, just Darcy. Any other Darcy shows up and they're using their surname. I was here first."

:sightingcircle:

[takethatnature]

"Fair enough."

Wilson doesn't want to wander too far from the crockpot because he will 100% forget to come back in the right amount of time to get the pierogies while they're hot. Having not thought far enough ahead to bring a book like Darcy did, that means he has to either socialise or sit in awkward silence for another fiftyish minutes.

"What were you making before I showed up?"

Meanwhile somewhere in the multiverse, one of the player's OCs sneezes.

[saltwaterlungs]

"Rice."

She sort of gestures to the pot on the stove.

"I was literally going to just. Heat up some vegetables and some meat until it's edible. Which I guess is sort of a stir fry but it's mostly just. Food."

Her diet is pretty boring when not cooking for others.

"So are you from earth?"

[takethatnature]

Oh hey sure enough it's rice. That didn't grow in the Constant, so he hasn't eaten it in quite a while.

"I've eaten a lot of meatballs that fit that description. It's food, it's better than eating the ingredients individually, in it goes." He makes a gesture like he's tossing imaginary food into the pot.

"Yeah. Originally, anyway. This isn't the first extra-dimensional nightmare-world I've been trapped in, so I haven't seen Earth in..." He gazes vaguely upwards as he works out the numbers. "A couple of years, I guess."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Yeah, a lot of French cooking started out that way. Using whatever you have on hand. Eventually that got codified into recipes and shit, but there's a skill in throwing random shit together and making it taste good."

... Wait-

"Oh- you're a Changeling?"

[takethatnature]

"I guess even the fanciest cuisine has to start somewhere."

"What's a changeling?" He doesn't quite manage to reproduce the capital letter, but it sounds like a specific thing. "Does that happen to a lot of people around here? Aside from the current nightmare world."

Does getting trapped in one nightmare world put you at greater risk of it happening again?

[saltwaterlungs]

"Uh... Like... Erin... is?"

Yeah she's just gonna find a ditch to go die in.

"I don't know I think it's just Erin anyway it's not important-" she says too quickly to cover her ass, "we're all in the same nightmare boat here so it doesn't matter if you've done it before or anything- hey could you get me one of the things of sugar snap peas in the fridge?"

[takethatnature]

?????????????

"Doesn't sound like it's not important," Wilson says, while he rummages through the icebox for peas. He can be suspicious and follow directions at the same time! He's not familiar with that type of pea, but there's a clearly labeled bag of 'em, which he passes to Darcy.

"Is it something you can be and not know it?" Now he's a tad concerned.

[saltwaterlungs]

"I don't... think so?"

Darcy takes the peas, scavenging a couple of bowls- one for the tails and string, and one for the peas themselves.

"I'm literally just talking shit, it's really not important, honestly. What was your nightmare world like before this?"

[takethatnature]

Wilson gives Darcy a squinty, skeptical look. But maybe the weird backpedaling is a moody teenager thing and it really isn't important; he can ask Erin about the Changeling stuff later. He leans against the counter.

"This guy tricked me into building a portal that sent me on a one-way trip to an island with no human habitation and the first thing I saw when I got there was him making fun of me. Then he disappeared and left me to my own devices with the packs of not-quite-dogs that wanted to eat me, the spiders the size of my head-" A shudder runs through him at the thought even now. "The living darkness who was only deterred from tearing me apart by keeping myself in range of a light source every waking moment, what I thought were stress-induced hallucinations until they bit me in the face, the giant mutant deer that showed up in mid-winter and took personal offense to the structures I'd built, et cetera, et cetera."

"It seemed like it could be Earth when I first got there, but even before I ran into any monsters, the animals were weird and the ocean was fake. It looked like a stage backdrop."

[saltwaterlungs]

...

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

"Yeah, that's a fucking nightmare."

She doesn't even know where to start with literally any of that.

"So did that guy, like, build the nightmare place? Or?"

[takethatnature]

"Told you so." He punctuates it with an understated shrug, palm flopping over toward the ceiling. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly he could complain about the Constant for hours. Recreationally.

Wilson exhales through his teeth. "Most of it. Not as much as he would have had you believe he did. And he wasn't personally carving out every boulder and planting every tree that has a face on the trunk and groans when you chop it. He'd make the first one and set the rules for them to proliferate, and then they'd appear in the world. Sometimes they'd evolve from there, like the underground spiders did."

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy chooses very carefully not to voice 'oh great another evil dude who's less useless than the Captain'. She bets that dude knows about root systems.

"Eugh, God- did you find out, like, why?"

[takethatnature]

He's seen the root systems of so many of Maxwell's creations. On the other hand, Maxwell combined flowers and butterflies into the same life cycle, so it's really just trading one inadequacy for another.

Wilson catches some kind of look crossing Darcy's face, but fails to grasp the significance, except that it's not the kind of horrified or checked-out expression that heralds the end of a conversation about a particular topic. So it can't be that bad.

"From what I gathered, it was really boring before that. There was nothing for him to do, nothing for Them to watch..." The emphasis is very concentrated on that one pronoun and then he trails off and stares at the wall for a second. Then he continues, with awkward haste. "So he had to put some stuff in it! And some people who fit a weirdly persnickety set of criteria!"

[saltwaterlungs]

"I don't know if that's better or worse than why we were brought here," Darcy muses.

"What criteria?"

[takethatnature]

"It didn't seem like the Constant was eating people, but there were a few skeletons that no one except Maxwell recognised, graves we didn't dig, sometimes inhabited by presences that we couldn't resuscitate." He will not admit that he just described a ghost. He won't. It's too unscientific.

"All of us answered to a name beginning with the letter W- that turned out to include Maxwell, because he only took that name after he met Them, although after he got dethroned we started calling him Waxwell and They seemed to agree with that- and none of us were right-handed, we're all left-handed or ambidextrous." He holds up his left hand as if this is a quality requiring demonstration. (It has a black fingerless glove on and his fingernails are long and a bit pointed.)

Wilson has his suspicions about other commonalities between the survivors, but he barely knows Darcy and his previous impression was when she was picking fights in the lobby of the death maze, so the way more men than women stopped to stare when Wolfgang flexed and his shirt came off will have to wait until he knows if Darcy can be discreet about it.