come_sailaway | JUNE EVENT: CAMP

JUNE EVENT: CAMP

early on June 10th, Friday's morning announcements end with a request for everyone going on the latest excursion to meet her in the atrium. she seems in noticeably better spirits than she had been last time, and she leads them cheerfully to the tender. once they are all aboard, and the door is securely shut, the interior fills with gas, and, perhaps, their last thought before they slip into unconsciousness is "oh shit, not again."

passengers wake up on a rickety old school bus, driving down a dirt road surrounded by woods. what is it that they notice first? that, no matter what they were wearing before, they are now wearing a camp t-shirt and legitimately horrifyingly short shorts? the overstuffed backpack between their knees? the words "take one down and pass it around" dying on their lips? the fact that Friday is absolutely driving the bus?

or, maybe the fact that it's already slowing down, pulling up in front of a massive wooden sign, saying:

CAMP AION

when they get out of the bus, Friday is the one to divide them up into their cabin groups, and she is the one to give the counselors their very official-looking clipboards and whistles. she explains that they are in charge, and that she will be back to pick them up in a week, and... very little else. she responds to nothing outside of whatever is on her unseen little script, and she gets back on the bus shortly after, leaving them there.

welcome to camp. let's make some summer memories!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I-

[Rich reels back as if she's shoved him, and he has to take a moment after that to compose himself. Surely, she's just in shock and lashing out in her fear, but it doesn't make the words sting any less.]

Listen. I'm not taking pity on you. I can tell you myself, I fucking hate when people treat me like a charity case, so I wouldn't do that to you.

[There's an angry edge in his voice, but more at... whoever made them both feel this way. Whoever made them this afraid of getting help.]

It'd matter to me if you died, though. So I want to try to help. That's all it has to be, I promise. You can tell me to fuck off as soon as I know you're safe, and I'll go.

[ Darcy forces herself to turn around, hoping that actually glaring him down would get Rich to drop it. ]

Then stop it. Leave me alone, and fuck off. I don't need your fucking help.

[ The effect is probably diminished by the fact she sounds miserable instead of angry, her voice wobbling from a kind of pain she hadn't felt since before she died. She can't even really glare properly, not like this, when she's having to stop herself from tearing up. ]

( a minute or two back, in the middle of the heat of their argument, clarke stomped onto the bus fresh off the heels of her own confrontation with the captain. it'd ended in significantly less bloodshed — who tries to hug an eldritch horror wannabe-god? oh, darcy. darcy does. — but still leaves her in a cloud of conflicting, violent, angry, confused thoughts; admittedly a little deaf to the entire world around her as the swell of ideas buzzes in her ears like furious hornets, sliding gracelessly into the seat directly in front of darcy and rich without even acknowledging them.

but gnashing her teeth and fuming can't block out the repeated sentiments of fuck off and the scramble at her back. she doesn't mean to eavesdrop, but darcy might as well be snarling directly in her ear and the self restraint clarke had employed with the captain snaps. she's twisting in her own rickety bus seat, up on both knees and folding her arms across the worn faux-leather covering of the headrest. )

You don't want his help. That's different than not needing it, so shut up for a second, take a breath, and let him go get you a bandaid.

( or watson, whatever you want to call the man. )

[ She's preparing for another round of vitriol to try and ward Rich off when she realizes Clarke is sitting in front of them, and is hearing her attempts to preserve whatever dignity she has left. It very clearly isn't working, and even less so as Clarke tells her to just shut up and deal with the problem. She hisses through her teeth, forcing herself to finally take a breath. It's just pain. It can only swallow her if she lets it. ]

Fine. Get Watson.

[Rich hates the look Darcy gives him, all miserable hatred and exhausted tears. He knows for a fact he probably had a similar look when his roommate found him on the verge of a breakdown and withdrawal. It's the look of someone who needs care that they just won't accept.

He wants to say as much, but thankfully, someone else interrupts before he can say it wrong and jam his foot further down his throat. He turns to the other woman with a bit of surprise, but that shock is only compounded when Darcy actually listens.]

I... okay. I'll be back.

[It... stings a little, that he couldn't have managed to get her to accept his help without someone else twisting her arm, but he ignores that in favor of dealing with the whole emergency, running off to find where Watson is seated.]

( hey rich, don't be like darcy — accept help wherever help comes from, even when it's in the form of a rather rude interruption.

clarke doesn't much look at him, just notes his acknowledgement and intention to return, and sudden disappearance from her peripheral vision when he slips from the bench seat to find the good doctor. all her attention is on darcy, quietly observing the way she's sulking and barely suppressing winces for a moment before speaking again. )

Let me see it.

( the wound, as indicated with a jut of her chin at the other girls chest. her tone is still terse and business-like, demanding if that's what it takes to get darcy to listen to her. )

It's really not that bad, [ Darcy rasps, hoarse with suppressed tears. She pulls her shirt up a little, shifts the gauze bandages aside. The skin around the wound is sticky with partially-dried blood. Meanwhile the actual injury isn't too deep or wide, but any puncture bleeds, and she's lucky it didn't go any deeper. It could have broken her heart, again. The tone is oddly comforting in familiarity, and Darcy is willing to show her throat and obey it for the moment. ]

I would have lived.

( skin is barred, and without expressly asking permission clarke reaches a hand to touch the area around the wound. gently pushes and pulls without touching the actual ragged edges of the puncture, but no matter how soft she'd like to be, there's no way to thoroughly inspect a wound without casing a bit of discomfort. rich just left to get watson, but the impending arrival of an actual doctor doesn't erase the years clarke spent at her mothers elbow in the medbay of the ark, nor the instinctual desire to triage assessments on all hurts. )

You will live, ( comes the eventual assessment, and clarke withdraws her fingers. gives a little gesture for darcy to press the gauze back in place, but now that she isn't worried anymore they can move on to more important topics like — )

What were you thinking?

[ Darcy very nearly recoils at the touch, a breath hissing out of her. Clarke's hand may as well be a live wire against her skin, uncomfortably warm and alive as it touches blood that is just on the verge of too cold to come out of a living person. Darcy's skin temperature and the blood are very, very close, almost like... a corpse, having come to equilibrium with the air or water around it. The wound joins other scars on her chest, too. Other stabs and slashes, and... ragged claw-marks. A couple of distinctive bullet scars. Almost all are faint and silvery, as if very very old, or if they healed exceptionally well. Darcy breathes through the discomfort, clenching her jaws to further halt any tears. When Clarke removes her hand, she misses it. ]

Stede had this idea that we were going to hug the Captain until he killed us. I was trying to fuck with The Captain, and to get Stede to see what that would actually be like.

[ Darcy replaces the gauze over the wounds and applies pressure once again, using her other hand to rub her face. ]

I don't think he was even looking.

Edited (Forgot some detail) 2022-06-23 03:45 (UTC)

( ugh, stede. )

Don't waste your time falling on proverbial or literal swords just to prove him wrong. ( yes yes, she knows there's this weirdly established and oddly binding terminology of crew and captain assigned to the ragtag group of passengers stede bonnet's managed to assemble. but that doesn't change the disdain clarke holds towards the notion.

a quiet scoff, an ounce of vitriol poured over the idea of group hugging it out with the captain because — ) What a stupid idea. What would that even accomplish?

It wasn't to prove him wrong.

[ To serve as an object lesson, more like. To ward him away from danger, like a scarecrow at the edge of a field. Darcy huffs a little- the immediate panic having given way to weariness. ]

It's the only thing we know really gets to him, getting in his personal space, I learned that when I stabbed him. And I learned something from this time too.

[ When she speaks again, it's... resignation, mostly, stretched across the surface, hiding whatever lurks deeper. ]

He's using us against each other. The only reason I'm not dead is because he threatened to make Fio sit next to my corpse on the way back. We've lost, Clarke. We played into his fucking hands with our alliances and crews and friendships, and now we're all just... knives for him to use.

[ She curled up on herself, turning back towards the window again. ]

( the stern look of disapproval blanketing clarke's face pinches here. if she could read minds and knew the true, self sacrificial nature of darcy's attempt to embrace the captain, she'd only disapprove further. their lives were already so meaningless here, to use them as a teaching moment for idiots is just rubbing salt into the wound. frankly she can't see what matters of use could have been learned here; making the figment of a man uncomfortable wasn't going to be enough to kill him, they've already mapped out that his personal space is dangerous and something fruitless to attack so blatantly.

and as for being used against one another... )

I know.

( that notion had sprung to mind somewhere between pirate jenny lamenting about gifting the beast of a man the soul of every single person she ever loved, and the captain's own preference for pain and suffering. it'd been the reason she'd so aggressively approached stede bonnet after snatching down some of his many flyers from around the ship, and why she'd cowed him into a panic attack in the middle of the battle royale viewings. after all, what held the power to hurt you more than someone you cared about? but humans are social creatures, they gravitate towards one another and feel safer in packs. they work better in groups, a sustainable community is built of cooperation, and no war was ever won by just one man. despite clarke's own reservation towards making new friends here, she had.

and right now one of them is curling up on themselves right in front of her, and despite every reservation telling her not to do it — )

Hey.

( — if she can drag darcy's attention away from the window, clarke extends a hand again. just to hold this time, not to poke and prod at any physical wounds on her person. just maybe unintentionally aggravate old ones. )

...we're at least cool knives, right?

( clarke's sense of humor is deader than darcy but she's trying okay. a cool knife throwback ftw. )

Edited (literally just for one period but whatevs) 2022-06-23 05:31 (UTC)

I'm so glad this is funny to you.

[ Times like this, Darcy can feel her anger bubbling from somewhere deep inside her. It's outrage more than anything else. She's just finally connected the dots that the situation is hopeless and not only does Clarke already know, she's joking about it. Like Darcy isn't going to have to sleep at night knowing one day she'll be used to hurt Undine, or Skulduggery, or Stede, or Lucius or or or. She already feels like a weapon made flesh, more useful for hurting than anything else, unable to get close to anyone without cutting them, and now Clarke is mocking her for it. Fucking 'cool knives'. How dare she. ]

I hope you enjoy being right, Clarke. I really hope it makes you happy. When the Captain makes us hurt each other over and over again, I hope you get to sit where you're sitting and laugh at us all for thinking we might actually stand a chance if we worked together. Fuck you.

[ Darcy spits at her feet. It's all she can do not to aim it at Clarke's face, which she's presuming is smug. Not that she's looking. ]

( ah, so that backfired spectacularly. this is why she doesn't make jokes and honestly just shouldn't even try. sometimes it's a very thin line between laughing about a situation and crying about it, but. gallows humor doesn't land after the rope's already drawn taught and you're swinging, does it? obviously she should have just cried.

with a sigh, clarke withdraws the hand she'd extended and tucks it back along the backing of her seat. then slouches lower, settling her chin on her arms. this isn't the first time someone's spat at the very idea of her and accused her of being the coldest of coldhearted bitches. it won't be the last either. )

Who could be happy being right about something like this, Darcy?

( there's nothing smug in clarke's features, just... the ghost of fury suddenly blanketed by exhaustion. )

I actually think our only way out of this is if we all work together. I hope it is, because it's the only real idea I've got. But hope isn't going to change the fact that at the rate we're going, a lot of people are going to get hurt before we can ever make that a reality. A lot already have.

[ Finally, finally, she can't fight the tears off anymore, and her face wrinkles as if trying to force her eyes into her her head to stop them. It's no good, and they streak the dirt from her face in lines that feel thicker than they are. It's not just that the situation is hopeless, even if Clarke claims that the situation is still salvageable through the same means that they're all going to die from. It's not just the insult, that Darcy was so stupid as to believe anything good could come from this place.

What finally breaks her is the fact she's still too soft for this. Still too weak. Everything she'd done, all the peril she'd faced, all the lives she'd taken, all the sacrifices she'd taken onto herself, it still wasn't enough. Her flesh was not yet mortified. Darcy was still a child. A child who would be too weak to do what needed to be done, who could be used and manipulated by her heart as easily as any puppet. The realization was humiliating, and Darcy pressed her head against the glass with a hearty thunk. ]

I can't- [ Darcy croaks mournfully, ] I can't keep doing this.

( ah yes, there it is.

clarke hadn't set about this conversation with the intention of making darcy cry, but faced with the other girl crumbling in on herself in the wake of some deeply personal realization, she's not surprised. or put off. so all that anger was predictably a masking technique for the overwhelming sensation of fear, or feeling too small in the face of big things, or loss, or disappointment — that's usually how it goes. clarke tends to get mad at inanimate objects and just sweep everything off her desk before settling in for a few seconds of gasping around sobs.

in their own way, tears were a better release. it's easier to wipe your face and get back to business than it is to ice bruised knuckles or stitch up stab wounds in your chest.

clarke's voice finally drops the last vestiges of stern. if she were honest to herself, the tone she adopts reminds her of her mother, dr. griffin at the bedside of a mortally wounded patient that doesn't want to fight the pain anymore. soft. quiet. accepting and even, giving options while keeping her own opinion thoroughly shoved into a glass bottle. )

We're going back to the ship. You can rest if you need to. And if you mean all of this — everything we're being forced to endure, on top of everything we already dealt with back home... No one's going to judge you if you need to give up, Darcy.

( except yourself. )

[ Darcy is very familiar with the different forms of hell already. There's the underworld she's ventured down into, the Inferno of Dante, the older concepts of complete separation from God. People. Then there's the one she's in right now. Even now, even in the worst of her patheticness, even in her misery, she isn't being left alone in her suffering. There is still a voice offering acceptance and complacency and some sort of love, and she wonders what it would take, what circle of hell she'd need to descend down into to free herself of it, how awful she would need to be to finally no longer be granted this mercy.

Clarke's offer is genuinely tempting, and it would be easy. Despair is a familiar grave to throw herself into. She could just stop. It's always an option. She could stay here free of judgement in the worst of it and never have to get up again.

But it's outraging too. The idea of just giving up makes her angry, worse that someone else is giving her permission to. Clarke's strategy is clever, and if their roles were reversed, she would probably be doing the same thing with less grace. She clenches her jaw. Whatever it looks like, however it happens, she's dragging herself out for another round. Hell is always there, she can always fall into despair again later. If she truly is as weak as she feels, then she'll be back in the pit again soon anyway. But Darcy lives on proving people wrong, on breaking their narrow expectations of herself. Even her own. The side-eye she shoots Clarke is red and exhausted, dark and cold as staring into the eye of a shark. ]

No.

[ It's all the defiance she can muster right now. Rallying speeches about not giving up are for commanders and leaders. Darcy is a boxer stepping into the twelfth round, a cornered animal at spear-point. Death or victory, and she's choosing to fight. She has no idea what it's going to look like, how she's going to move past the weakness of her reliance on others, but however she squares that circle can't be worse than laying down and waiting around to die. ]

( leaders and commanders can give all the speeches they want, but at the end of the day they're only tapping into the common sense, human desires, and the deep — bone deep, marrow deep — rage that drives their people to fight for their lands, loved ones, and lives. and that can be just as easily accomplished with a few hushed words spoken over the headrest of a bus bench as it is with a megaphone and a podium. there's no promise for a better future, because that's not something clarke feels she can make a reality. she quietly thinks this entire ordeal ends with killing the captain and watching the pocket world they're all living in crumble into darkness around them — tragic, but satisfactory in the sense their sacrifice would mean this fate never befell another.

to reach that end, to reach any end really, they were going to need fighters. the sort that darcy is, running on fumes but stitching herself back together securely enough to solider on. the sort that natsuno is, driven and unstoppable, willing to lay across fire to save others from being burnt. true resilience couldn't be taught, it grew from the darkest pits of the soul. kept the body moving even when the spirit broke. and whenever it started to waver, that's what leaders were for.

darcy says no, and clarke just gives a nod of acceptance. )

Yeah.

( that's what i thought.

whatever weaknesses darcy perceives in herself, whatever flaws in her conviction or pitfalls to her ability to cope, clarke sees none of it. she's young, she's tired, she's got the weight of multiple worlds around her neck and threatening to choke. but the refusal to concede is telling, and exactly what she'd hoped to hear. )

...give me your wrist.

[ Darcy takes a moment, wipes the tears off her face, only managing to smear a little blood. She's not sure what Clarke has planned, but she feels for all the world like the lifeline that Darcy's pulling herself up by. Darcy would probably go back out and hug the Captain again if Clarke asked. She offers the wrist of the hand not currently being used to press her wound. ]

( while darcy is wiping tears from her face, clarke is dropping one hand to dig in the overstuffed backpack she'd dumped beside her in the seat while boarding. what she drags out is roughly the same consistency of the friendship bracelets a lot of them seem to have made in the arts and crafts hall, but.

it's almost two feet in length. and comprised of enough strands of thread that it's nearly as thick as a pinky finger, tightly woven and a little stiff. it wraps around the wrist at least four times, and when clarke fastens it, she uses a rough equivalent of a manger hitch — tight and secure, but pull the right thread and it's designed for a quick release. this had been made on her fifth day at camp, braided with the specifics expectation that she'd need some sort of garroting weapon at the ready whenever the second shoe dropped. but they'd made it through camp, and clarke has the improved version undine had taught her still nestled in a zipper pouch of her backpack, so it only feels right to offer this one to darcy.

besides a weapon for strangulation, it could also serve as the rope for a medical sling. something to lash items together. a means to tie someone's hands. or even just a bracelet if she wanted, but the overarching theme seems to fall perfectly in line with what darcy desires in the moment ~~you snagged my word before I could even use it bash omg~~. )

In case you ever need a lifeline.

[ Undine's bracelet was pure aesthetics, a sweet testament to her attentiveness, how much she noticed about Darcy as a person. This was a weapon. A multi-tool in the same manner as a knife; good for a few things, but always threatening. It was a hard line for her to walk, in between her humanity and what death had made her. A person with feelings and a weapon at the side of whoever needed her. It felt balanced. Both sides tied together, like the rupture through her was pressed tenderly back together. As close as she could get to being with her Geist in this strange place without him. ]

Thanks, [ she croaks, holding Clarke's eye for a meaningful moment, before she turns to try and see where Watson and Rich are. ]

Here's Watson, sliding into a nearby seat, bag in tow, professional smile on his face, though it's not without worry. He never totally hides the worry.

"I hear that my expertise is needed?"

[ Perfect timing, she lifts up the front of her shirt enough to display the wound, shifting aside the bandage so he can get a better look at it. ]

I got stabbed. And my expertise is only being on the other end of the stabbing. So yeah, stopping it bleeding would be nice.

[ Her gallows humour is back at least. ]

It's not too deep. Clarke says I'll live.

"Well, at a quick glance, I would be inclined to agree with Miss Clarke's assessment. Still, I'd feel better about it if we had some stitches in it."

Watson goes rooting around in his bag for what supplies he has, and comes out with a roll of gauze and some antiseptic. He's done worse in filthier conditions, he supposes. "Dare I ask how this happened?"

Hugged the Captain. Dumb idea, don't do it.

[ She turned her head as to not look at his work. She wasn't squeamish about blood or injury, but things going into her injuries was a first class ticket to nausea-town, from her own experience being patched up back home. When he started work, she started mumbling something, low enough that it was difficult to make out what she was saying. ]

JUNE EVENT: CAMP

CAMP AION

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