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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
"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."
no subject
"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.
cw self harm reference
"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
Sorry Darcy, she's pretty good at knowing when not to push but she is, unfortunately, afflicted with an incurable ailment known as her face, which betrays her concerns regularly regardless.
"It really sucks. And sometimes it makes me miss the stuff about home I shouldn't miss, because at least back there I could pull myself together quicker. Instead of... instead of being an open mess."
She rolls back onto her back, pressing her cushion against her face to groan into it. It's still there when she speaks again, muffling her. "But I don't— I don't want to be that girl who can't be anything but the brightest light in the room without feeling like I owe everyone an apology, either. I don't know. I don't— I don't know. I think mostly I just want to cry about it a bit more."
no subject
Mostly because Darcy did not think there would be this much talking involved in this depression day and she's just about reached her limit considering the previous ??? amount of time.
no subject
"Mm. A nap's also tempting." Ruby sighs into her cushion, burying her face somehow deeper into the thing as she breathes. When she moves it back under her head again, her eyes are wet. "Feelings are— exhausting. And stupid."
And she's all out of them for the day too, honestly.
no subject
And really, Darcy is intending on leaving well enough alone, but the discussion of feelings and all just reminds her-
"Hey- what's up with the girl you kissed before you left?"
Sorry Ruby, the ship's most junior detective has a need to know everything.
no subject
Ruby's traitorous face instantly starts blooming with colour that's likely to rival the colour of her hoodie before long. "O-Oh, um— that was, uh—" Ruby takes a breath in, and then, almost entirely in the span of that single breath: "—that's Eleanor, she arrived a few months ago and I was her first friend and I maybe-kind-of-sort-of tripped face-first into a crush when she cleaned the blood off my hands one time and then she said this— completely unwittingly super romantic stuff when we were waiting and I was apparently spontaneously possessed by the will of an old friend who kissed her crush before she ran off to her death!"
The second the final word is out of her mouth Ruby is rolling to lay face down as if hiding from her own explanation.
"...so uh, that's. What's up."
no subject
"Well. Good luck with that, ehn? If she doesn't feel the same way, I'm always available to stab you about it."
Because Darcy's just that kind of friend.
no subject
Despite the dramatic everything, Ruby snickers into the cushion she's faceplanted into and peeks out with one eye. "...thanks, Darcy. If it comes to that I'll drop my aura and welcome the stabbening."
The eye disappears again for a dramatic groan before she shifts to rest with her chin digging into the cushion, but head up. "The stupidest part! Is that she seems, like, open to it? B-But she's also already dating someone! Which I did not know! Or I would've stayed a complete and utter chicken for the rest of my life, probably! But now there's talks and complicated feelings and gaaaaah." She pouts. "I probably should not have taken Pyrrha as a role model. In this instance."
no subject
Eleanor very swiftly goes onto Darcy's shit list, and she hopes quietly that Dimitri isn't too attached.
"That should've been your choice to make with like, all the information. God. Do you want me to punch her about it?"
no subject
Ruby's eyes flit wide fora moment and she waves her hands vaguely, "No, no, it's— I didn't explain that well, she couldn't have told me before because I didn't say a word to her before that kiss. I sprung that on her out of like, nowhere, she told me as soon as I was like. Alive to tell. That one is like, totally on me. Totally, awkwardly on me. Emphasis on the awkwardly, gods."
no subject
Fucking Christ. Ugh. Now she's just mad on Ruby's behalf, and especially mad that Ruby's finding reasons that it's her fault. Classic Ruby.
"Also, really incredibly sorry to break it to you but I do somehow really doubt it was out of completely nowhere. You have no poker face."
no subject
"She was being romantic in that— 'I don't even realise I'm being romantic' kind of way, which I recognise because that's how I used to be with Penny even when I was so deep in denial I thought my excitement about Penny wanting to move schools to spend more time with me, after knowing each other for a single school term, was a completely platonic straight girl reaction— and okay also I so totally have a poker face! I faked mental stability for years!"
All said as her poker face for literally anything but that continues to fail to exist.
Wrap up around here?
"God- okay, sorry, forget I said anything, I'm cranky-tired and that's not- sorry."
She huffs like a dog settling in.
"We can talk about it more when I feel less like physically biting someone's head off. If you want. I'm napping. Right now."
And she pulls the blanket over her head before she shoves her foot further in her mouth.
yes!
Ruby turns her head so it's her cheek pressing into her cushion again, looking over at the Darcy-shaped blanket with a softening expression. There's a moment of quiet where she shuffles around to get fully comfortable, adjusting the cushion and her limbs and even re-tying her hair, seeming for all appearances to be settling down for her own nap with no additional commentary.
Until she does say: "...I do appreciate that you'd have my back if something was wrong, you know. If anyone ever does need punching on my behalf... I'll know where to turn, huh?"
She lets out a slow, steady breath and closes her eyes, letting that hang there without pressure for a response, ready to join Darcy in the quest for a nap.