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come_sailaway2023-05-10 06:27 pm
saltwaterlungs) wrote in come_sailaway2023-05-10 06:27 pm
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
(For anything else)
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)
no subject
..................
"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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
"Eugh, God- did you find out, like, why?"
no subject
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!"
no subject
"What criteria?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
At least the randomness (or presumable randomness) of the ship makes sense. It's luck of the draw. Only left-or-ambidexterous-handed-people-with-w-names is. Kind of weird.
"You managed to dethrone him though?" she asks mostly because that sounds a decent bit like a threat towards the Captain.
no subject
Wilson frowns and scratches at the back of his head. "Yeah, but I think that's what he wanted. Kind of. He got something he wanted either way, and I think he figured that out sometime between screaming at me for daring to not be dead yet and me showing up in his throne room. He put the portal to it underneath a series of increasingly horrible islands. Eternal winter, eternal darkness, giant swamp full of killer robots, etcetera."
"Anyhow, I got there and- well, I tried to kill him with an axe, you'd have done the same in my place, I'm certain, but as soon as it touched him a bolt of lightning shot out of the throne and it disintegrated in my hands. And he didn't even care. He said he'd already tried!" Without really noticing, Wilson's started pacing back and forth. "Looking at me like he'd been there for about a thousand years, it wasn't hard to believe. The Nightmare Throne wouldn't even let him stand up to greet me. I could have given up and left him there, but that'd be going back to running around like a mouse in a maze for his amusement. So instead I let him go, and he died pretty much instantaneously but he looked grateful for a second or two before that, and the throne grabbed me instead."
Ding! The crockpot's done cooking.
no subject
But then the crockpot dings and all her other thoughts immediately turn to how much she wants to see the weird hotdog soup in there, so Darcy wordlessly retrieves a couple of bowls. Because when it is weird hotdog soup, she's making him drink it.
no subject
Wilson takes the lid off the crockpot, revealing... recognisable pierogies. Not expertly cooked, and the water they're floating in is cloudy and still has a bit of hotdog smell, but miraculously edible considering the recipe.
"Ta-da!" He takes out a slotted spoon and deposits one in Darcy's bowl.
no subject
The world is wrong. Reality isn't meant to work like this. This is literally impossible, and yet there it is. In her bowl. The awful ill-begotten spawn of a cosmic joke. Darcy makes a croaking noise like her soul leaving her body, staring blankly at the crock pot, unable to begin comprehending the horrors she has just witnessed.
no subject
"These turned out pretty good." There's not quite enough to split them evenly and still each have a meal-sized portion. He looks at Darcy, who appears to be witnessing the face of horror beyond reckoning, frowns in concern, and turns to check that there isn't a pierogi monster erupting out of the pot behind him.
Wrap here?
Lacking any other recourse, she puts a pierogi in her mouth. It's fine. It's not even a fantastic pierogi. Or bad, either. But it is, somehow, real. And that's worse.
She hates this fucking ship.