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

[ 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. ]

( watson gets a nod of acknowledgement by way of greeting, but otherwise clarke has settled into the role of a watchful guard dog. she's said what she needed to say to darcy, bound them together in some existential friendship bracelet way, and now nestles her chin onto folded arms to observe like a second year medical apprentice.

there's no doubt of watson's medical abilities — she heard what he'd done for rita, and by comparison this is a very simple wound — but she still watches very closely as he dabs the edges of darcy's wound with the gauze. and barely, barely restrains a roll of the eyes at the notion of hugging the captain. really, that's never not going to evoke a perplexed and disdainful response.

...the urge to have a less than kind word with stede bonnet again rears its head. )

"Mm, yes. I can't imagine he much liked that."

Clarke's watchfulness does not go unnoticed, but Watson won't comment. Honestly, he's in no position to judge. Regardless, he's thorough about the cleaning. "Still, no vital organs, no major arteries. It's about as good an outcome as one can hope for, from a stabbing. Here, hold this there." Watson presses some gauze firmly against Darcy's wound. "Press firmly. I should have something for the pain and I'll put a couple stitches in it. It should heal just fine."

"Thanks, I owe you for this," Darcy does as she's bid, and it probably says something about how often she gets stabbed that she doesn't really wince at the antiseptic.

"I probably don't need the painkiller," she says, trying to regain some dignity and semblance of toughness, "you can save it for someone who needs it more."

....alright, Clarke had been very content to sit back silently and just watch as Watson worked. But suddenly Darcy is dismissing painkillers and — in this world that stands in stark contrast to the one Clarke had grown up in, with a readily stocked and resupplying medbay back on the ship and travel packets of Tylenol in the general stores — that's just not going to stand.

She'd gathered just how stubborn the other girl was from the staunch refusals of help she'd thrown at Rich just a few minutes earlier, but this is a new level of ridiculous.

"Don't, Darcy." That stern growl of reproach is back. Don't pretend it doesn't hurt. Don't waste time acting the martyr among friends. Don't be an absolute idiot, and don't argue with medical professionals.

Watson's eyebrows had gone up at Darcy's request, and when Clarke chimes in, he nods. "I've known any number of men, soldiers, insist they need no such thing, and then regret it. This will hurt no matter how quick I am about it, there is no shame in needing this, and we are in no danger in running out of morphine."

He holds a syringe in his hand, waiting for permission, but his expression is serious.

[ Ugh, getting ganged up on by people telling her she does need painkillers, feels like home. Darcy puts her cleaner hand over her eyes so she doesn't have to watch the syringe going in. ]

Fine. Just get it over with.

[ And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, live, she whispers to herself over and over. Clarke's mother may have been the one who taught her medicine, but Darcy's mother was the one who taught her tools of faith to keep her steady, things to make her feel better, even if they weren't any kind of magic. It's helping, somehow. ]

A quick shot, then, and Watson goes looking for a sterile needle. He threads it quickly, with the expertise of long practice under stressful situations, and places one hand next to her wound.

"Take a deep breath," he advises, and begins his work. It will probably still hurt a little bit.

[ She follows the doctor's orders and takes a breath that shakes when the needle punctures skin. Yep, definitely glad she acquiesced to the painkillers, this would have sucked way worse without them. Watson's manner is professional and doesn't involve berating her for recklessness, so it's already a better bedside manner than she'd had to deal with back home. ]

Sorry if I'm moving, I'm really trying to hold still.

"You're doing fine," Watson assures her, and he means it.

He works quickly, a series of several neat little stitches, and then he ties it off and snips it short. "There, that's the worst of it. I'll get a dressing on top and you'll be ready to go." He's already in the process of taping some gauze down over it, pleased with the result. "You should come see me in a week or so so I can remove the sutures. Sooner if it starts to hurt or feel hot or become full of pus."

Thanks. Like I said, I owe you one.

[ She pulls her shirt back down again, wrinkling her nose at the blood still drying on the fabric. ]

And thanks for not letting me be a tough guy, too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

JUNE EVENT: CAMP

CAMP AION

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject