My bad habits don't heal [OPEN]

[hadnoright]

Who: Daisy Tonner & you!
What: Daisy's... dealing?
When: May???
Where: Various places around the ship
Warnings: Mild passive suicidal thoughts, possible references to police brutality, possible poor attitude towards other non-humans/left-of-human types, others added in subject lines
Notes: Hunt Sense Permissions, what does your character smell like? Feel free to flip me to brackets I am comfortable with either style.



1. I'm coming down with something [Laundry Room]

Daisy is sat on top of one of the machines. It's running. Sometimes, so is the tape recorder that sits next to her. She doesn't turn off the tape if people come in. No one will be able to understand it well enough for it to matter. The audio that floats out of the speaker is, frankly, nearly unintelligible; it's distorted horribly, and even what little sense you can make of the contents doesn't actually make sense out of context. The sound of growling and gore and Daisy laughing manically. Questions like 'do you even know what a hand is?'. Strange, unnatural voices. An explosion.

The Unknowing made no more sense from the inside than it does out of it, but Daisy keeps playing it over and over anyway. Sometimes, she rewinds and replays one part a few times in a row: Her own growling and laughter, the sound of a creaking hinge, and an exaggerated cockney accent saying: "Almost a shame you don’t know your own coffin. But you will. You will."

If the trend continues, she knows which tape will come next. After that... after that she's not sure.

Should you walk in at the end of a wash cycle, you might find her pulling out sopping wet and yet still inexplicably filthy clothes. A practical t-shirt and jeans, a jacket, even some old trainers. Caked in dirt. With a frustrated growl, Daisy throws them back into the machine and starts another wash cycle.

2. I lost my own respect [Stan the Man]

The bars are back the way they used to be.

Stan the Man, Rainbow Renly, Bobby B's. It's not like she'd ever really got used to calling them by the bastardisations of Jenny's brothers names—old habits die hard, and all that—but it's still weird to see the change. Feels like being back on her first cruise again, but she isn't.

She's the only one left who ever was, now. The only one who remembers what it was like. Even Jenny's off, reunited with her brothers (and oh doesn't that sting, when Daisy still remembers watching Basira die before Jenny got her too?). She doubts there will ever be anyone else, not after all the hourglasses got smashed. How many souls from her voyage are still down there? How many of them were finally set free?

Why is she the only one left when she wanted nothing more than to be done with it all?

For the first time since she reappeared on the boat, when Daisy takes a seat in Hurikane Stan's she orders actual alcohol and starts drinking. It won't get her drunk, not unless she really pushes it, but it's just that kind of month.

3. My hands, they wander off [Calgona Spa]

Daisy is painting her claws.

They can look like a particularly sharp manicure at a glance already, and painting them in pastels, brights, iridescents, even adding patterns (especially, predictably, daisies) is a habit she developed after they became prominent. Part of that front of hers, the soft, pretty things layered over strength and violence. A way to draw attention away from the little inhuman things that piled up over time, make her look and feel more human.

So maybe it says something about how she's feeling that she's in and out of the spa changing the varnish every few days, this month.

Anyone who comes in at the same time will get a passing look and maybe a wave of wiggling fingers, flashing the claws. "Don't worry. Won't be any slashing from me until they're done drying."

It's a very dry joke. Perhaps an inadvisable joke, but a joke nonetheless.

4. I'm not afraid of death [Pool Deck]

Daisy is floating in the pool in a tankini. She's staring up at the sky, or, occasionally, lying on her front staring at the bottom of the pool in a way that might look just a little bit concerning to a passer-by. It's fine, she technically doesn't need to breathe, it's just more comfortable to.

Still means she's sometimes lying face down in the pool though.

5. I'm just afraid of feeling numb [wildcard]

Find me at bluecitrine or at artisticblueteam#5757/in the discord, or just throw something at her.

Comments

[hadnoright]

Daisy snorts. "I'm not quite that self-pitying. I made my choices, yeah. But I know who changed my life for the worse, and I killed him. Doesn't make me less of a piece of shit though, does it? Ugh."

She rubs a knuckle between her brows. She doesn't even know what to call the mood she's in besides shitty. She's here when others aren't. And for some reason that feels like a splinter under her skin.

[redlightgreenlight]

"I think it's a pretty good excuse."

In only Fenrir and Amos were dead like Daisy's monster.

cw: references to police brutality/serial killer bullshit

[hadnoright]

"Ugh. Don't do that. There's no excuses. You know how long it took me to accept that? Nearly two decades. Amount of people I hurt or killed, some monsters some just— petty criminals? I don't think I could count them all. Don't think I remember all their names. Then here..." Daisy snorts derisively at her own expense, shaking her head. "Doesn't matter that Calvin changed everything, doesn't matter that the Hunt had me, that was still me. So— don't."

She buries her face in both her hands and breathes. Listen to the quiet.

"I made the choice to not be. Like that. Anymore. But it doesn't change that I was. It doesn't make me good. That's just fact."

[redlightgreenlight]

"You aren't going to find human morality from me, Daisy," Valdis takes a drink. "I'm not sure I regret my past at all, and there's a lot of blood on my hands."

The only thing she might fear regarding that part of her past is Max rejecting her.

[hadnoright]

"Yeah, well, I was human once." When did she give up on her humanity so completely? She's not even sure. Daisy once clung to her humanity so hard she carved claw marks into it, and now... "And fear avatars don't have morality. So human morality's all I've got. Give that up and February happens a lot more often."

[redlightgreenlight]

"I'll stop you if it happens again."

She might be the only one who can.

"But overall, you seem more agreeable than before. So I think you will be fine."

[hadnoright]

The only one who can who would, at the very least. Daisy has little doubt Erin could kill her if it came to that, but ability doesn't mean willingness.

"Agreeable. Is that what we're calling it." Daisy traces a claw around the rim of her glass. "Think I've just given up thinking I'll ever be allowed to just die. May as well make the choices I can make."

[redlightgreenlight]

"I am not able to die, and even here, it is not death that awaits us, but the Nothing. Part of me wished recently to escape so that I might find rest. I...don't want to be alone again."

Valdis watches her out of the corner of her eye.

"I suspect that despite your belief that you are not allowed to die, you may no longer wish to. Because, like me, you are finally starting to learn how to live."

[hadnoright]

"Yeah, right. 'Cuz life on this boat counts as living." Protesting too much? Maybe. It doesn't really feel like she's learning how to live, is the thing. Every bit of progress she makes feels like dragging herself through thorns. It catches and tears and stings and she wants to know when it will stop feeling like that, because right now it takes everything not to give up because she's making progress.

Daisy is terrified, because that's what it means to be an Avatar like her. You fashion your own fear into a knife used to slit others throats and you, in turn, fear that knife being turned back upon you.

Good things can be taken away. Hope means you can be broken.

God, she's a mess.

[redlightgreenlight]

"I never said life was easy, Daisy."

[hadnoright]

Daisy buries her face in her hands to muffle a frustrated noise, then slumps forward onto the bar, arms folded under her head. She turns enough that one yellow eye can glance up at Valdis. "'Course it isn't. It never is. Be nice if it got easier for once instead of harder, though."

[redlightgreenlight]

Daisy has never had it easy. Her monster is far more evident in everything she is, from the yellow eyes to the scars.

"At least you have friends here now."

[hadnoright]

Friends didn't help before, she almost says. Melanie (though how much Melanie considered any of them her friends, she's not sure), Basira (that complicated mess of a relationship), even Jon (two monsters can understand and even comfort each other, but they can't fix each other)—none of it helped, in the end (and yet still she misses them so much it burns).

"...guess so," she mutters instead, with a sigh. "Some."

[redlightgreenlight]

"I'm an empath, Daisy," Valdis says, lifting the bottle to her lips to take another drink. "I know you are simply resigned and not happy."

[hadnoright]

"Right." She sighs again. "Used to live with a guy who used to get random factoids about our lives and current thoughts. Beamed into his head. You think I'd be used to shit like it."

She lifts her head from her arms to scrub her hand across her face. She needs to trim her hair again.

"Just— hard adjusting. Not a cynic for the sake of it, y'know. Home— none of the stuff that sort've helps here would've helped there. None of it."

[redlightgreenlight]

"I can't say here is better for me, because I don't know what life would have looked like with all my memories intact back home. But I do know that being here is a unique opportunity for some of us, not all of us."

She sets the empty bottle down.

"Do you want to go home?'

[hadnoright]

"No." No hesitation to that. "I go home and the Hunt has me. I let it back in right before I woke back up here again. Here, I can still snap out of a Hunt. Back there... I'm gone. Not even dead. Worse."

Everything that makes her anything but the Hunt will be completely subsumed by it. Drowned in blood.

"Even made someone promise to kill me. Which, yeah, alright, fucking— two nickels or whatever." You know since she asked Erin to kill her and everything.

[redlightgreenlight]

"Funny. I have the opposite problem."

Siffleur telling her to kill him should she need the boost. Daisy's issues aren't so different from hers, much as she hates to admit it.

"Unfortunately for us, dying solves nothing."

[hadnoright]

"Would've at home. Y'know it used to bother me, that I could actually die here? Got used to being the scariest bitch in the room. And then here." She rolls her eyes. "But you're right. Death means less than nothing here."

[redlightgreenlight]

"I mean, I was the apex predator on my world. My kind at least. The Demons came in a close second." She shakes her head. "Being here is nothing new when it comes to death, except that it will perhaps be more frequent."

[hadnoright]

"After a point, Avatars can't die to just... anyone. Normal humans? No chance. Couldn't even scar me. You'd need another Hunter. Maybe someone slaughter-y. A reaper. But Hunters— we're the only ones that can kill anyone."

So the boat was a downgrade in... a couple of ways. Any son of a bitch with a gun could kill her, and there were the odd folks who could actually match her anyway.

She laughs, a little. "You know, the most humiliating thing? Getting killed by superpowered kids. Ugh. So stupid."

[redlightgreenlight]

"There are only two things I know of that might possibly allow someone to permanently kill me. My own weapon and something else hidden quite well on this ship."

It's true that invincibility doesn't exist here, anything could happen. She could slip up or make a fatal mistake in any battle.

"I mean, at least they aren't complete mortals?"

[hadnoright]

"I guess, but you try getting murdered by a twelve-year-old. See how you feel. Fucking humiliating." Daisy shakes her head, taking a swig from her glass before adding: "Also. Saying something's 'hidden quite well' sounds like inviting it to backfire."

[redlightgreenlight]

"I can honestly say I have never been killed by a twelve-year-old."

She smiles at the comment about the weapon.

"I'm sure it may backfire eventually, but it is with someone I trust and I don't even know where it has been hidden."

[hadnoright]

Daisy shrugs a shoulder. "Still sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Sundries thing?"

She's guessing she wasn't carrying around something besides her own weapon that can permanently kill her in a world where that's possible when she arrived on the ship.