FOUL TARNISHED

[seethesun]

Who: Eleanor, Ruby, Dimitri, Dedue, and YOU
What: Eleanor took a very shitty vacation and now she's back
When: Just Before The Mini-Event
Where: Muster Drill, Locker Room, Wherever Her Swains End Up Being
Warnings: Shock & trauma, possible violence

Thy Armor Reeks Of Death | Muster Drill

It takes a moment for Eleanor to realize she's back on the ship, in no small part because she is, you see, in Nepeta's fucking cabin. She rolls off of the bed immediately, a process which might make some noise, hastily looks around, and then teleports out.

This is the cabin hall. Right. She'll just -

- She'll just -

"God damn it," Eleanor whispers, in a voice that has not said anything aloud for some time. Fine. She'll get this over with. A series of chain teleports brings her to the muster drill. You might catch this seemingly new knight as she flashes through the ship in perhaps-familiar clouds of purple, but if you're the kinda person who checks the muster drill then it'll be easiest to catch her there.

It Hath Not Been Washed In Many Moons | Locker Room

Immediately following the muster drill comes a challenge greater than almost any Eleanor has ever known: getting out of the fucking armor. She hasn't had to do this in...

...She wasn't counting. But it's been awhile, and it is at this point that she's learning there may have been downsides in asking, as a random, nonspecific example, a puckish blind grandma to summon armor wrapped in thorns around Eleanor's body. The barbs bite into her flesh through gaps in her gloves the first time she tries to do anything, drawing out a hiss of pain.

If you're anywhere near the locker room, this process is extremely noisy, but Eleanor herself is quite quiet. She hasn't talked in awhile. Not in a long, long while.

Value Your Life | Somewhere | Closed to Dedue, Dimitri, and Ruby

Once she's nebulously free, has managed to shower vigorously, and secured new clothing from Tommy Bahama (her previous outfit she hurls into the sea; the armor has annihilated it), Eleanor holes herself up at the highest point she can find and sends a group text to Dedue, Dimitri, and Ruby. Thank God for that function of these devices...and that she remembers how to use them.

My Loves,

I do not know how I came to leave, or why; I know less about how I got to where I went, which was further from my home than even this place, and of a more fantastic and cruel brand of misery, want, and isolation. But I have returned, to beg your forgiveness for my absence, and in the hopes that I might see your faces again. I am not as I once was...the battle has been long and full of horrors, and even now I am avoiding the society of others out of a nameless dread of the dance of polite manners and courtesies, and questions I would rather not answer to those who dwell not within the halls of my heart. There are those on this ship who would receive violence to the very reasonable question of 'what happened to you', and it is not my wish to be party to such an injustice simply because I am unwell.

To this end I would like to see each of you again, preferably one at a time. I do not trust myself not to break down or flee if confronted with all of you, and for this I can only beg your further pity. The journey has been long. It has been so long.

Love,
Eleanor Lamb-Delta

No "Big Sister" this time. She always signs off with that...

Comments

BEHOLD, The New Icon

[seethesun]

"I'm back," she whispers. Her voice is strangely hoarse; she hesitates before each word, piecing her sentences together no matter how short. "Just did the...the...damnit...muster, that's it. I was hoping you wouldn't see me like this."

Her hand strays towards her belt, weighed down with pouches along with a strange palm-sized metal sigil and a wicked knife. The barbs on her palms snag the leather, and Eleanor's head snaps down while she hisses at it in clear frustration, her distant expression alighting with Wrath for a split second.

Her gaze wanders slowly back towards Dimitri. "...I can only hope you don't lose respect for my intelligence when I say that I got into this suit on purpose. I had good reasons at the time but now I can't get back out."

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri is so far from being able to question anyone's intelligence right now.

"You're back," he says, very faintly, and then louder, "You're back -- "

He leaps forward (hands spread wide, dropping to his knees, making himself small and inoffensive though he's moving fast), hits the floor and scrambles to the locker-room bench across from Eleanor. His hand hovers, halfway to reaching out, waiting for permission to touch.

Damn Canon Characters And Their One-Liners

[seethesun]

"...Be careful. They're sharp enough to bite through armor."

[prince_of_beasts]

Shaking -- carefully, as careful as he's capable of being -- Dimitri reaches up, and brushes his fingertips against Eleanor's cheekbone.

"You're back," he croaks.

[seethesun]

"I'm filthy," Eleanor chides in a bare whisper. "...But back. I'm here. I don't...I don't even know why I left, but I'm here. And I'm so. So sorry, Dimitri. To all of you. I didn't want to go."

"...Please believe that I didn't want to go."

[prince_of_beasts]

"You know I've had my hands in worse." Dimitri cracks a smile, rare and bright, like broken glass. "I know you didn't. I know." His voice softens. He smoothes his thumb across Eleanor's cheek, glove leaving a cleaner streak through the grime. "I know."

The smile shatters. His chest seizes, and he goes to pull Eleanor into a hug.

[seethesun]

An instant of blind panic; Dimitri is suddenly holding nothing at all, a cloud of purple mist where Eleanor was.

There's another, maybe three feet away. In about a second, both scatter, bringing Eleanor back at the second location. She holds her palm out, and her gauntlet is, too, wrapped in metal briars; her palm is bleeding, the blood washing grime away.

"Don't," she murmurs. "...Not until the armor is off, not until I'm. Clean again. I need help getting it off but don't make me explain to Dedue why you're hurt. I can't. I can't do that right now."

[prince_of_beasts]

There's a moment of gut-wrenching terror in which Dimitri thinks he was wrong; that his mind's found a whole new way to be cruel to him, and let the visions promise him they're real. Everyone is shouting, loud enough to drown out most of what Eleanor says, but in his wounded-animal staring he finally registers the strange armor and the barbed brambles fusing it shut.

What happened and Who did this and Which of their organs should I remove first all collide in the back of Dimitri's throat. What comes out, compressed into ironclad calm, is, "How do I help?"

[seethesun]

Relief. Eleanor relaxes, and even ventures a brittle smile. "The armor was placed on me by...magic is the easiest thing to say, but it's no curse. It's an object like any other. The problem is the knotted brambles. If they could be clipped, or cut..."

She flexes her palm slightly; the thorns would have to bite it any time she grips a weapon. Good thing the claws on the bench slide over her wrists?

"You can probably unwind the knots with your strength...just be careful."

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri nods, mouth dry, and shifts closer to Eleanor again. He doesn't particularly trust his voice right now.

Fury steadies his nerves and his hands as he works. The wrench whenever a slip pulls the thorns into Eleanor's skin only twists into more hate. Someone did this, someone made this armor and someone put it on her and if Dimitri ever gets his hands on them he'll --

(The air stirs, heavy with static and the smell of rain.)

-- after a few false starts, he works out that he can snap the thorns off. It leaves some rough barbs on the cable, but it's better than the cruel, piercing edges. It's painstaking, but there's something gratifying in being thorough. Not just freeing Eleanor, but ruining the armor's ability to hurt anyone, ever again. Once the cables have been stripped, it's easier to unwind them from Eleanor's joints -- or rip them apart -- freeing the pieces of armor to disarticulate.

Dimitri hesitates, hand resting on the clasp of Eleanor's gauntlet. "I'm sure you could take it from here, but ... may I?"

[seethesun]

Eleanor is, for her part, seemingly getting...

...Relaxed. She has to hold herself tense for Dimitri at first, especially as he works on her gauntlets which need steady arms lest she impede the process. As he moves further, to unwind and to break the brambles around the chest, the waist, her legs...Eleanor's eyes close, and her breathing steadies.

She's bleeding anew, from wounds that only weren't bleeding because the thorns stopped them up, and it's so worth it. The sting is refreshing. Cleansing. Soon she'll heal, and then...well, then this armor might be something new. It's served her well, it shouldn't be left behind.

Wait. Dimitri was -

Eleanor's eyes open, and she gives him a brittle smile. "Far be it from me to stop you from playing the squire...no, I jest too far. It would be. It would be very pleasant, Dimitri."

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri blinks. "Squire? No, it's not that -- just ... "

Sometime during the process of being raised as royalty, Dimitri internalized a lesson no one meant to teach him: that if people are going to be loyal to him, he'd damn well better be worth it; and if he can't protect them, it's his duty and obligation to look after them.

" ... no one has been taking care of you for too long. And someone should."

[seethesun]

"...Not no one. But precious few." Somewhere through the grime a blush touches her cheeks. "Please. I...might ask you to stay while I shower too. Once I'm clean..."

...

"...Fuck. I can't go streaking through the halls to get new clothes."

[prince_of_beasts]

"I'll be here as long as you need me."

If nothing else, Dimitri can promise that.

Shedding the rest of the armor goes more smoothly without the thorns interfering. His tremors don't get along well with buckles, and the angles are all different when he's doing it for someone else, but the frustration is something to focus on. Armor draws the line between battle and rest; each piece set aside promises that the fight is over. Whatever happened on the field, now is the time for triage, and comfort, and care.

"I have a change of clothes here. They won't exactly fit," being as Eleanor is at least six inches taller and much narrower than Dimitri, "but they'll serve long enough to get you back to your room. Or I could ask Dedue to bring something -- I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

[seethesun]

Beneath the armor, and the padding, are the remnants of the clothes Eleanor left in; the layers from the Tommy Bahama that she favored once upon a time, now all but completely annihilated by filth, by tears and cuts, by burns and grime and more. Almost mechanically, she starts tearing them away, and the cloth is so far gone that there's no resistance.

Eleanor is so far from thinking about modesty right now. The layers of filth caked onto her make the idea of thinking about such things laughable at best. Instead she reaches out to take Dimitri's shoulder, and to favor him with the ghost of what might be a smile. "Walk me to the shower?"

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri could care less about Eleanor's state of dress. All that matters is that, somehow, impossibly, she's here, and all the gold and silks and jewels in the world couldn't rival the beauty of a second chance.

He wraps his arm around Eleanor's back, taking as much weight as she wants to lean on him. The smile he returns is shining, sincere. "Would you like help, or should I stand guard?"

[seethesun]

"Help," Eleanor murmurs. "...Help being back feel real, Dimitri."