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

[saltwaterlungs]

"I tried to insult the Captain into making the ship start working again back in October by poking at his fear of being bound back into service again."

Sort of. Splays her hands out like 'what else is there to say'.

[decrypter]

There's a pointed sort of silence between them, for a long moment. Not out of an absence of things to say - it's the sensation that Helena's trying not to say something and instead let the admission be its own weight of guilt. If Darcy had tried to hide this, justify it, she would have walked out of the kitchen entirely.

Finally:

"As I said, try and try again. I believe he's owed a better attempt from you than that."

[saltwaterlungs]

"I know, okay, I already tried to apologize," she explains during the silence. But it trails off, eventually.

"I know," again, but quieter.

"It's not... easy for me. I thought I was helping at the time. I just- I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to do what everyone else just seems to be able to do. I don't- I don't know what's wrong with me."

[decrypter]

"Do you want my honest advice, or do you want to be upset at yourself for longer? I won't scold you, either way."

It's hard, when you're used to life being one way and one way only. It's hard to make those choices, even when that's not the case.

[saltwaterlungs]

"I'm going to be mad at myself until the final trumpets blow. So. Plenty of time for me to do that on my own."

Which feels easier than admitting she only said anything to hear Helena's thoughts on it. Could be dangerous, getting used to prying herself open just for Helena to hold each piece in her hands.

[decrypter]

She rearranges herself, adjusting against the counter. She wants to push herself up on it, but thinks better of the idea, and instead just tucks her cane next to herself so she can fold her arms instead.

"The truth is, it's not something anyone's born knowing how to do. You have to learn it, and some people learn it early, and some people never learn. Then, once you learn, you have to choose to do it. The good part of that is that you can choose to begin at any point."

Helena breathes in deep, exhaling slow.

"People aren't plants. We don't have proper seasons to lay seeds, to grow, and to be sheltered from frost. There's no right time to try except when you do."

They aren't her words, she knows. Something she read, or something her father said. But they feel right, so she's borrowing them.

"Forgive me if I presume too much - did you try to use fear as a push because it'd work on you, if time called for it?"

[saltwaterlungs]

It sounds like some nice comforting platitudes until Helena hits her where it hurts, very nearly quoting back to her what she'd said to Skulduggery after it happened. For a moment there's a panic that someone's said something and she's been set up. But that's ridiculous, it's just... Helena being sharp as she always is. The scalpel that cuts her open, touches where nobody else has.

"Yeah. Yeah, I- Clarke... did something similar to me, one time, when I was spiraling. I was trying to do what she did."

[decrypter]

"Mm. It's not a heinous idea, trying to goad someone into action. The true problem there, which you no doubt have long since identified, is that the Captain's wounds aren't the sort you can jostle."

Nor should she ever be doing that to anyone outside of no other options, but Helena promised no scolding.

"And it's a mix between wanting to do better because it's the right thing and wanting to do better because Mr. Pleasant loves him and you care for Mr. Pleasant. So it's even more important to get right, but all the more complicated and intimidating for it."

[saltwaterlungs]

This isn't fun anymore, Darcy feels her face heating up at the simple and obvious fact that she wants her dad's boyfriend to like her, past any ideology or posturing at virtue and principles.

"I guess."

Maybe if she wills the oven to go faster it'll unlock her latent psychic powers and then she'll be able to leave this room.

[decrypter]

It's fine, Darcy, she doesn't make a hobby of dissecting people alive. Only when they need her to, to bring something to light that they don't want to acknowledge.

"Now I grasp the situation."

Difficult, isn't it, when their jailer is jailed with them and the bonds of love run over everything like so much ivy on old stones, entangling it into something living.

"What does 'better' mean to you, in this context? What would be you being better about it? There aren't any wrong answers."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Less shit."

Because frankly she doesn't have much of a grasp on what it looks like beyond that. She's doing wrong, she wants to not be doing wrong, it's as simple as that only inasmuch as it isn't.

"I don't know. Not pissing him off, I guess. Not stepping on his toes. Finding some magic formula so my words land right and he doesn't..." dismiss her, make fun of her, hate her, "I don't know."

[decrypter]

"What would you want to tell him, if you had all that figured out?"

Where does she want it to head? If there's a destination, they can make a path. But she'll have to give Darcy a ladder out of that self loathing pit first before it can be walked, or she'll be struggling with every step.

[saltwaterlungs]

Her first instinct is 'literally anything' but that's not true, they've had conversations even before the truce that went okay for a while. He's answered her questions without snarking occasionally. He's a bitch, has insulted her off the cuff, definitely has his own ideas of what she's like- most of which are probably even true. But the fact is, staring her dead in the face, Darcy cares about the Captain's opinion of her. A conclusion as horrifying as working out she's part fish-monster in a Lovecraft story. One she doesn't want to voice. Maybe if she stands silently for long enough Helena will give up and leave. Or more probably the girl's stubbornness outclasses her own, and she'll only turn the thumbscrews tighter, peel more of Darcy out from herself, force her to look at it clearly.

"I don't even... I mean- it wouldn't ever work anyway, he already hates me and there's nothing I can do to fix that."

[decrypter]

"We're in the land of potential and maybes right now.. Anything is possible, Darcy."

She's not going to be let go so easily. Helena turns her head to the side - ostensibly breaking false, imitated eye contact, but truly to listen to her better. Her breathing, her tones, the stops and starts of her words. The doubt that laces everything, as if hiding in her proclamations of how things are will clear it from her mind. As if Darcy believes that she cries out loud enough, it won't have an answering echo from the valley.

"I'll ask again. If it was all sorted, what would you want to tell him?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"I don't know what answer you want from me," Darcy reflexively tries to smooth her hair out of her face when Helena breaks eye-contact, but all she achieves is ruffling her buzzcut.

"I can't even think about it without just- hearing him making fun of me or telling me that I should've written it in my diary instead. I don't know, Helena."

[decrypter]

"There isn't a correct answer here. I'm not your teacher, grading your work for marks. There's only whatever is in your mind. "

Like this, she can hear the faint hum of the oven, and the sound of Darcy's hair in her own hair.

"Let the him in your head say what he wants. And then say what you wish anyway."

[saltwaterlungs]

A few more seconds of the rustling of Darcy's hair and the sound of the oven, before a frustrated sigh as Darcy leans down, pressing her forehead to the countertop.

"I don't know how you do... this, either. This vulnerability talking about your feelings shit. It feels like I'm dying."

[decrypter]

"It feels like that, when you first start talking about them after a long time of not. It does ease up, the more you do it."

Whether Darcy catches the meaning behind those words isn't relevant. What is, is helping her through this, the most difficult time.

"It's closer to building a muscle's strength than anything else."

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy glances up at that, for once glad that Helena can't see her. The dots aren't crystal clear, not necessarily, but she does remember how cagey Helena was at their arrival. Maybe nothing, maybe something.

"Does it ever feel less humiliating?"

[decrypter]

"That depends on who you end up talking to."

It had been her chest ripped open in front of the bridge. It had been her breathing lungs in front of Peter Smith. In front of Darcy, it doesn't hurt. Like the knives in here will shield her, instead of prying out more of her flesh.

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy raises both eyebrows in acknowledgement. A fair answer.

"I'll think about it, ehn, and if I work out an answer, I'll let you know."

[decrypter]

She nods, willing to accept this arrangement.

"I won't press you for one before you have it. But if you take anything at all from my advice...try to give yourself a little more credit than you are currently. Just a drop, if anything else is too much."

[saltwaterlungs]

"I'll give myself credit when I deserve it."

Darcy heaves herself back up, rolling her shoulders back.

"You heard how bad I fucked up. I need to do better."

[decrypter]

"Which you've resolved to do and work towards, and knowing you, you've already started slowly working on. That's worth something, for all it is."

She tilts her head back, and pulls out the last card in her arsenal.

"If you need to justify it, if you can't give yourself any acknowledgement for your own sake...do it for mine." The same way her own anger is so stopped up on her own merits, but flows out for others. Sometimes, an illusion of a reason is enough.

[saltwaterlungs]

Yep, Darcy's short-suited and Helena takes this hand easily, as she feels her ears going pink. All things being equal Darcy would walk through fire for her, this is significantly easier and also more difficult than that.

"For your sake, then."

Difficult, like learning a new technique. But worthwhile.

"Do you... have other plans for dinner?" please say no please say no please say no.