come_sailaway | [open] automated vacation message

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[open] automated vacation message

Who: Skulduggery Pleasant and...??? You. Definitely you. Really you, right?
What: After his canon-jump and the confirmation that like, technically he is both real and unreal, Skulduggery has decided he is mentally checking out for the week. Yep, definitely an appropriate coping mechanism that will not backfire continuously and spectacularly.
When: After the camping trip through the last week of June!
Where: Tommy Bahama, Karaoke, the pool, also far away from it all
Warnings: Auditory & visual hallucinations, probably talk of extensive torture, eldritch madness, and general trauma. Some violence is possible/probable.
Notes: See this post for an idea of how Skulduggery might be different post-canon jump! New CR will be more likely to see a balanced, "regular" Skulduggery (since his hallucinations are strictly people he knows), while his current CR might notice him avoiding direct communication until he can prove you're really there. He might also try to throw things at you. You know, it's fine.
(I'll match tagging style!)

[locked to Darcy] I know what I think doesn't matter anymore, but I'd say his mind is gone
[It takes Skulduggery approximately an hour after his conversation with the captain before he starts to have a complete and total meltdown about it. Not that he would classify it as such; no, this is just... a period of adjustment to new facts. He tries his best to write it all down before he forgets, but the more he thinks about it the less sense it makes and --

It takes him almost a full day to get some sort of grip on himself, and in that time he comes up with what may be the stupidest plan he's ever had. Well, the stupidest plan he's ever had thus far. If reality is burning him out, then he simply must not engage with it any more than strictly necessary. That, he figures, is as close to a vacation as one can get aboard this godforsaken ship, and that's just what he needs.

That means: no theorizing, plotting or hypothesizing about current or future affairs; no concerted efforts to solve any problems; no worrying about the captain's plans or personhood or name or anything; and most importantly, no taking things too seriously.

But to do it all, he unfortunately must break the last rule almost immediately. There is an unfortunate side-effect to his sudden temporal upheaval that must be dealt with, first.

The gauntlets haven't changed since he last laid eyes on them, but he has. There's a distant singing sensation in the base of his skull now when he touches them, like a finger along the rim of a champagne glass. He wraps them tight in a towel. Doesn't help. Stuffs the towel in a bag. Still doesn't help. Just being in the room with them is enough to feel it. Throwing them overboard isn't an option; he can't guarantee who will find them. The only choice he has, as far as he can see, is to find someone he trusts to hide them for him. Somewhere he'll never be able to go, or never think to look.

Skulduggery takes the bag, wraps it in yet another towel, and avoids the mirror on his way out. No need to look at himself to recognize the guilt already brewing at putting this burden on somebody else. Maybe it wouldn't sting as much if he were handing them over to Jade, or Palamedes -- but the former would put the pieces together too quickly, and the latter would likely wind up hurting himself. Darcy, he surmises, has no necromancy in her background, and therefore is unlikely to draw even the slightest energy from the cold, dead metal.

She's going to ask a lot of questions, and he'll have to lie to her face about most of it, but at least he can trust her to help. He just has to hope that she's actually in her cabin when he comes knocking.]

1. [tommy bahama] There was a reason why I came here (but I guess now it doesn't matter)
[There is a six-foot-four skeleton in a full suit somewhere inside the Tommy Bahama. You can't see him from the front of the shop, but if you walk the rows long enough -- maybe fifteen, thirty minutes down the aisle -- you're bound to come across Skulduggery. He seems to be browsing the shirts at first glance, but his movements are a bit... Stilted. He doesn't react to any of the patterns or the quiet muzak or the fake lime scent pumped into the store. Truthfully, he isn't even aware of how far into the store he's gotten. He'd been mostly trying to outpace the obnoxious Valkyrie hallucination following him, laughing at the ugly shirts he's pretending to look at. She's the only other voice in the shop, which makes her the one thing ruining this place from being truly peaceful. The silence, the solitude... if he could destroy the speakers, it would be perfect.

"Oh my God," Valkyrie says, "You are totally pathetic. Do you really think a sunhat is going to fix all of this?"

Yes, actually. Skulduggery does think a sunhat will fix things. For one thing, he can throw them at the bothersome figment. For another, he's now left a trail of various hats and pieces of clothing as a trail for him to follow back to the front. (Or, perhaps, for other people to find him...)]

2. [chatterbox] There is a certain kind of feeling that you get, when you're totally helpless
[Karaoke seems to be limited to a single hour every night, but Skulduggery doesn't want to wait for nine PM. He doesn't have time to sit around waiting for things to happen. He needs to be throwing himself into this vacation of his full force, and no semi-sentient teleprompter is going to stand in the way of his good time, damn it.

Skulduggery sits on top of the karaoke machine itself, having the monitor pulled up right in front of him for easy access. He sits in silence a lot for somebody who's supposedly trying to sing, flipping through the catalog seemingly at random. In the audience, he only has to worry about China, who smiles and hums What is Life Without a Wife. She only stops when he uses the ship's translator to translate some of the now-dead language he'd learned. Mostly, that just leaves him shouting things like "Help, help," and "The pain is everlasting," into a silent room. But that's okay. It's fine. Now he knows what those words meant when they were being shouted at him by survivors of a now-dead alien race. The more you know!

When he does sing, he throws his chest into it, so to speak, and for what it's worth, it does seem that he's having a good time. Every time the machine tries to rattle like it might return to its closet, Skulduggery reaches down and punches the side to get it to stop. The truth is, Skulduggery is holding the damned thing hostage. And he knows it. Which is why he will occasionally hit it extra hard and mention,] I will set you ablaze, you know.

[It seems to do the trick.]

3. [the pool] I had a good, good, good, good reason (but I guess now you couldn't care)
[The only one of Gordon Edgley's books that Skulduggery can find is The Vanishing Knight, which is a fun story about teleporters and based loosely on Skulduggery's knowledge of the Grotesquery. Now that he's gotten a little more real-world experience with both matters, he's decided to settle in by the pool and do a little post-humous editing. This issue's got some simple grammatical mistakes, and Gordon always tended toward rambling sentences; on top of that, he certainly took some artistic liberties with the way things were handled.

Interestingly enough, despite being a normally chatty friend, Gordon is a quiet sort of figment beside him, just there to listen and silently chuckle at Skulduggery's asides. He thinks maybe he's just worried he won't be able to get Gordon's voice quite right. That's fine, though; Gordon's a nice, comfortable presence to have lingering around. He doesn't complain, not even as Skulduggery gets lost in rambling asides that are half-spoken and half-thought. This might as well be the closest to self-care Skulduggerys gotten in either a week or a year, depending on which angle you come at it.

He's wearing his suit, but of course, the hat has been replaced by a Tommy Bahama sunhat. Valkyrie has not bothered him once since he put it on, and so as far as he's concerned, this is his new look.]

[wildcard] I got pressure bearing down on me
(Have something in mind? Message me or just throw something up and see what happens!)

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Skulduggery had found it a true disappointment that the karaoke machine's version of the song is not, in fact, the Louis Armstrong piece with the extended trumpet sequence. Still, it's a good song, and China is obligingly humming along as he lets himself drift mercifully in the oblivion of song. She'd think he was being childish and sentimental if she were really here, but thankfully, that is not the case.

"When you press me to your heart, I'm in a world apart, a world where roses bloom..."

Someone howls outside, probably an undereducated critic of his absolutely perfect rendition of La Vie in rose, and then darcy comes storming through the doors. He barely gets through, "And when you speak, angels sing from above, everyday --"

She grabs him, and Skulduggery immediately lashes out with a foot, aiming for her knee as he shouts, "-- To turn into love songs --"

She restrains from asking 'what is wrong with you' again because if he tries to act like his actual person is on vacation auto-response mode, she will work out how to strangle him. She wears the kick to her knee, failing to block low, and she makes a strangled snarl in frustration and outrage as it buckles backwards.

"Oh this is how you're going to- fucking- fuck you-"

She hates this fucking ship. She's definitely going to need to tape it later. Lucky for her she's running off pure adrenaline and hatred for this fucking song- and the English version? Really, Skulduggery? This is the worst version. Where's Edith.

Darcy tries to go for the collar again, this time trying to head him off at the pass by grabbing his leg when he tries to kick her again.

They literally cannot do anything but the English version! Maybe that's why she's being such an absolute pill about this, Skulduggery figures, scrabbling for the karaoke machine as he's forcibly dragged away from it. He refuses to let go of the microphone, much to the chagrin of everyone involved, he's sure.

"Get OFF of me," he snarls, resorting to using his elbows to try and free himself, the microphone squealing with feedback as it amplifies part of his demand, "Get AWAY!"

As she wears a couple of elbows to the ribs, Darcy remembers the Captain's gloating about how they all do it to themselves. Without her Geist to numb her pain she's so, so much less durable than she usually is, and she releases her grip, hissing, wincing at the noise. Back home, she could fight to the brink of death without flinching. Here, she is weak.

"Stop it!" Darcy demands, "just fucking stop it! Stop acting weird! You're- why!? You're the one who dragged me into solving these fucking mysteries, why are you doing this now?! Why won't you tell me fucking anything?! What's wrong with you?"

And fuck, of course more tears. It was like a faucet had been opened that she couldn't crank shut again.

Without her holding him up, Skulduggery finds himself abruptly sliding down against the side of the machine. It's an ugly, embarrassing moment, staring up at her as she shouts at him, demanding to know what's wrong with him when he doesn't even know how to begin to explain. How can he? The things that are upsetting him the most technically didn't even happen to him, exactly, and the things that have happened to him are upsetting in entirely new, horrific ways he hadn't considered?

And worse yet, Darcy's crying now. She's crying because of him.

"I don't know," he croaks. It's a terrible admission. "I don't know."

Her breath catches in her throat to see him topple like that. She berates herself internally. She should have kept holding him, should have been strong enough to keep holding him up. Darcy's hands are shaking and her knee really hurts, she shouldn't be standing on it, but she doesn't know what else to do for a moment. He doesn't get up. He admits he's as helpless and scared as she is, in not as many words.

The fear goes. The deep fear, the terror that the Captain will appear at any moment and make them both pay for caring for each other. She eases herself down to the floor too, minding her knee, and sort of flops herself across his chest in the best approximation of a hug she can do right now. She's still sniffling, even if she hates that she is. Her emotions have never obeyed her. They have always been stronger than she was. Maybe that's why The Scream picked her out of anyone.

"Please. Please just... Let me help you for once. I don't know what I can do, I don't know if I can do anything, but it's not fair. You don't get to take care of me without me taking care of you back."

He tenses as she collapses on him, ready to tell her to move, his nerves singing against the pressure, in anticipation of some further violence. But he doesn't. He only lies there and lets her crowd into his space, until her weight is less a threat and more a comfort. He doesn't relax -- can't relax -- but he doesn't try to move her.

The trouble with her request is that he has no idea where to start. There is so much suddenly wrong, not only with him but with their increasingly dire situation. It's the eleven months he spent in the hands of the Faceless Ones. The knowledge that he never left the ship at all. The fear of what happened in the time he did spend unaware of this reality. The ache in his new skull that's attached to the gauntlets now in Darcy's care. It's more, more, more than even that.

"...Where do I start?" he asks, as if she might have any better idea than him.

"I don't know."

Part of her knows they should probably move, probably get some ice for her knee, but she felt that tense when she laid down, and she doesn't want to interrupt this uncertain peace between them.

"I don't... think you have to deal with it all now. I know I want answers to the gauntlets and shit, but... I want you to be okay first."

Skulduggery can't help the hysterical giggle that comes with the thought of ever being okay again. He knows how it sounds. He can't bring himself to care.

"Oh, Darcy," he sighs, dropping his head back against the karaoke machine. "I am not going to be well for quite a while." If ever again.

But he can try to pretend, at least for a few minutes. He had half-assed the gauntlets, and he knows that now. It was too much to expect her not to have questions. Franky, it was unreasonable of him to demand she not. But with the ache settle far enough back to be forgettable, it's easier to circle around to the front of the matter once more.

"A necromancer wore the armor the gauntlets come from. He was the most powerful Adept of his kind, and the armor was his focus. ...Dead things, mm, like myself, and I forgot, like you, we can be more... sensitive to that power." He bows his head, chin nearly to his chest. Stupid, forgetful, and short-sighted. He doesn't even need China to say it. "I should have remembered that."

"I said okay, not well. There has to be room for improvement from depression karaoke."

This explanation... doesn't really cover every doubt she had about the gauntlets. But it must be easy to forget, when one of them is a skeleton and the other is fleshy and occasionally breathing, that Darcy is also a fellow dead thing. She's soothed a little, at least enough to end her line of questioning.

"I'm glad you can forget I'm dead," she teases extremely gently, "but okay, that makes sense. Mementos sound kind of similar to that- it's like... sometimes some objects end up attached to ghosts. Murder weapons, or a favourite toy, or a jacket they wore when they died. When I died, when the Scream found me, we tied ourself to a memento too."

"Okay. Well." He says it like he's weighing them and finding them coming up pretty much equal. What's the difference?

He can't help but feel petulant at the teasing; it isn't his fault that he's got a year of memories between him and the last time they talked about her being too dead for a heartbeat but too alive to go without food. But there's no point to arguing, really.

"Your reality is so weird," he says, partially to tease her in return and partially out of oblivious honesty. "But I'm glad for it. It means that we understand each other more clearly." Sometimes. "Contextually, at least. Vile is still, technically, bound to the armor, even if he isn't able to access it." He pauses a moment. "What's your memento?"

"Well is like, good, healthy. Okay is like, not depression karaoke. You don't eat or sleep so there's no equivalent to like, feeding yourself regularly, but- like, when I first died or my mum got blown up, there was a bit where I wasn't okay, and then I was okay and I could keep doing what I had to do. Then anything past that is a bonus."

The distinction is clear in her head, at least. She scoffs at his tease in return, "it's not that weird. But it does make things easier. Wait- was the necromancer dude's name fucking Vile? Like, he just called himself Vile?"

"It's the guard of a sword. But just the guard, no blade. It was at the bottom of the river I drowned in. The Rhone is old as fuck, and people have been living near it since like, before Roman times, so there's a lot of really old things in it, swords and shit especially. It probably could've been anything. I was just lucky it wasn't like, someone's bike or something."

Edited (Removed the implication that the French are mermaids) 2022-06-27 08:50 (UTC)

"I don't know if okay is in the cards, either." Here he was, thinking he was just trying to enjoy some mindless entertainment instead of wallowing in the cosmic horror of his newfound reality. And don't think he's not going to circle back around to that bit about her mom -- there is just so much more to deal with before they get back to that.

The most important being, "His chosen name was Lord Vile." God, so stupid. Unfortunately apt, but stupid. "And I should have known you'd be bound to part of a sword. That is terribly on-brand."

"We'll see, ehn? You're not going through it by yourself anyway," he's got the friendship bracelet now after all, it means they're best friends forever.

"Wow, that's dumber than I was expecting," she deadpans, "was 'Mr Evil' taken? Is it like, tacky to have the same name as someone else, and the dude picked late so it was that or 'I'm underscore Badguy underscore xx'?"

The act of communally dunking on an enemy is an honoured part of teenage girl bonding.

"Yeah, the Scream kind of got my deal right away. Got our deal. The Keystone- there's lots of specific words for what kind of thing a Memento is, but they're mostly all dumb- it's something that we keep for life. It's our heart, it's what links us together. And I'm always going to have a sword in my hand."

He does indeed have the friendship bracelet. It's still tied tight around his wrist, and admittedly it might be the thing that reminded him of Darcy's existence in the first place. A permanent reminder that he's been here, that he's still here, even when his memories feel unreal and distorted.

"No, Mr. Evil was already taken. Ironically, he was the sweetest man I'd ever met. Unlike Mr. Bliss, who was... decidedly not."

Darcy's tether being a weapon shines a brighter light on her as a whole. Her temper and the way she strikes out, parrying concern with hardened defenses -- of course she always carries a sword. She is a sword, double-edged as any good weapon might be.

"Makes sense. I like it. Not that you need my approval, since it's already happened." Though, if they're outside of the timeline and things in the past are still technically occurring... Maybe he could, theoretically, meddle and cause her to wind up with something stupid. Like a bicycle. Or a car.

Oooh, "Can you be bound to a car? That would be nice. It would be better than armor or a skull." Yes, he is thinking about being spiritually bound in death to his Bentley. Give him a break, he's going through a lot.

"The naming shit of your world is so weird."

If she ever meets another sorcerer from his world, she's going to start swinging just in case. Apparently there was no rhyme nor reason to how they picked their names, which seemed like it defeated the purpose of picking your own damn name.

He's right in that she doesn't need his approval on something she didn't pick, but it's nice nonetheless. He at least wasn't going to bitch at her about hammering herself to a plowshare. She knew what she was, it was just nice when others recognized her for what she was too.

"Can you, yes. But it's like- you wouldn't get to keep the car if it's your keystone. It goes into the Tw- the like," circular vague gesture, "place where most ghosts live in. There's so many fucking names for everything. It could be a regular memento though, I think I heard like. Bonnie and Clyde's car was a memento. The car JFC got shot in too. A lot of people die in cars."

Shit, she was rambling about ghost stuff. It didn't happen often, but whenever it did, it seemed to happen with Skulduggery.

"Sorry, you don't want to hear about Sin-Eater bullshit," she taps a finger idly on his front, trying to identify where one of his ribs was, "I'm not doing a good job of comforting you. I'm kind of bad at it."

"That's what happens when people are allowed to choose whatever name they'd like to represent themselves. Mr. Bliss was a complicated man but he did good in the end. And Mr. Evil is entirely made up." Haha. He's still got it. (Usually, he'd let the prank go on, but... well. Right now, he sort of needs reality to be as 1:1 as possible.)

"Oh. Well. Never mind, I suppose." He wouldn't want to be connected to his Bently because he died in it. That would be horrible. Also, it would likely be a complete wreck and he wouldn't be able to bear seeing it like that again.

"I don't want to be comforted," Skulduggery says after a beat of silence. "I want to be distracted. I want to not think about the ship or the captain or the last eleven months, for at least long enough that the memories have time to settle. For me to... readjust." Which sounds so stupid when he says it. He hasn't gone anywhere. Nothing's happened to him, aside from the change in his skull.

China's humming turns to The Man In The Looking Glass. Skulduggery tilts his head away from the audience, so as not to watch her.

"If you weren't having a hard time right now, you'd be getting punched."

Look at her, showing mercy. There were many ways to be connected to objects back home in her world, ways that Darcy knew nothing about, it was just that death had a way of clarifying the connections. A regular car became tied intimately to the person who drove it, a mass-produced coffee cup became the last thing someone touched. A song known by millions became a private joke, one where only one person knew the punchline anymore.

Darcy knew she should definitely be encouraging him to accept the comfort, to actually deal with what he's going through. It was the advice of no small amount of shrinks regardless of whether she was in for her own death or her mother's injury. But she'd gone back to training only a day or two after she'd drowned, was back at school by the end of the week. She couldn't exactly talk. Darcy huffed, rested her cheek back down on his chest. It was uncomfortable as shit to be laying on literally a pile of bones, but she didn't want to move, either. As long as she was here, he was safe. Enough, anyway.

"Alright. Just not la vie en fucking rose again. Literally any other old people music other than that. I hate that fucking song."

In time, once he's had a chance to let the million points of information settle into a recognizable pattern, he'll be able to cope. He's sure of it. But right now, he can't think about it. He has to be distracted from it. From the screaming and the pain and the way China just will not stop humming --

He abruptly wants to leap to his feet and run, but then Darcy rests her head on his chest and that restless burst of energy evaporates.

"No? At least it wasn't just my singing that upset you so." He wants to ask... but he won't. There's a lot she's said he wants to ask after, but the idea of trying to engage with anything heavier than a sad song upsets him to his core. "How do you feel about Thin Lizzy?"

"No, your singing was fine. You have a nice voice."

He'll be egotistical about the compliment, but she's willing to put up with that for the moment.

"No opinion. I don't think I've heard of them."

Darcy's delving into older music was mostly due to Avery, and even then, it was a lot of Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Tim Buckley. Avery often fed into her pretensions about hating pop music, or most music that couldn't be played at a funeral.

She expects his ego to rise to the bait, but he offers only a soft, brief laugh. "See? You're already cheering me up."

It's a bit of an angle, but Skulduggery manages to pull the catalog prompter down to a reachable level. "They're a classic rock band from Dublin. Phil Lynott, the lead singer, his wax figure was used as a sort of doorman to the Irish Sanctuary, at least until recently." Mmmm, maybe not The Boys Are Back, that one's a bit too upbeat for him now. Maybe later. Aaah -- "I think this one is about the ocean. Seems fitting. Then again, most Irish music refers to the sea once in a while..."

The song he picks, Philomena, opens with a twangy guitar string, just to ensure everyone knows this is a dad rock song. Skulduggery pushes the teleprompter back into place, the microphone half-forgotten as he mostly sings for Darcy's pleasure. Or, well, his own pleasure, but he certainly hopes she enjoys his singing.

"Well I've been a wild, wild rover, sailed all over the sea; but this thing that makes me wonder has made a fool of me..."

He knows the song well enough that he doesn't have to actively check the monitor, and he watches China's unreadable expression for any sign of relief. Valkyrie had disappeared with the hat -- what will it take to make China leave him alone, too? And for how long? If she's humming along, he can't hear it, singing straight through with more focus than necessary, "It's home, boy, it's home, when you fire across the farm!"

It's actually nice that he doesn't preen over it, that he just accepts the compliment. At least she can do this right. Darcy makes some minor attempt to move so he can reach the prompter, but he seems to have it mostly handled, so she doesn't displace herself too much. He doesn't ask her to move for him to sing either, and she keeps her head on his chest, feeling his voice reverberate in his chest. The song he picks is bad. Or rather she wouldn't admit to liking it, but she doesn't admit to liking a lot of things.

It's always hard to tell where Skulduggery's looking, due to his lack of eyes. But it is odd that he's looking out to the empty audience. Maybe he just doesn't want to be staring up at the ceiling, or looking at her, but she tries to follow his gaze a little, work out what has his attention. It doesn't... seem like he's staring into space, maybe.

Truly not one of the best Thin Lizzy songs out there, but it's a fun one, and Skulduggery can hardly pass up the chance for a deep cut on the karaoke machine. And he might as well pay some sort of homage to the second death of Phil Lynott. The wax figure was even more artificial than Friday, but it had just gotten the hang of singing Jailbreak all by itself, and it didn't deserve to be disintegrated like the rest of the Sanctuary.

God. How is he even meant to deal with that? How will he deal with it? The entire seat of magic in Ireland has collapsed in on itself and he has no idea how they'll handle it.

The middle guitar solo is significantly reduced, to a point that Skulduggery is almost offended out of his reverie, but he manages to keep to the beat. "--Tell her I'm keeping fine, will you tell her that I love her, and I'll try to write sometime?" Even with China frowning slowly at him, like he's the one who ruined a perfectly good guitar solo.

The lyrics are an easy fade-out from there, and he lets it go without a fight. As the music fades off into the usual comedy club silence, he turns his head to look at Darcy. She's been watching him, he knows; but he also knows if he tells her what's wrong, she won't let him continue with this pretense.

Instead, he holds the microphone out for her. "Would you like to take a turn? It's fun." And cathartic! He already feels a little better.

"I'm allergic to fun and I can't sing," she deadpans instantaneously, having prepared herself for when he suggested that she give it a go. But then Darcy feels a little guilty. This whole thing feels like being dragged out on a fishing trip with an over-eager dad where the both of you don't want to acknowledge the divorce, and he's trying to get you involved in what he's doing. She kind of doesn't want to break his heart further. So she takes the microphone, stating "it's not my fault if you hate it."

She scrolls for a bit, wrinkling up her face a little at the selection of music. A lot of it was too peppy for her mood, but she recognizes one of the names on the list, taps through, then picks a song she's pretty sure she remembers.
Northern Sky, this was one of the vinyls that Avery had smuggled out of Turin with him, one he'd occasionally put on while making post-investigation-night-meal, as he'd put it. She starts the song without ceremony, putting the microphone to the side so that nobody from the outside can hear her.

"I never felt magic crazy as this, I never saw moons, knew the meaning of the sea,"

Lucky for her, Nick Drake has a fairly low and flat register, one she can match easily. It's better than her first time with the machine. Even if she has to keep glancing at the lyrics.

"I never held emotion in the palm of my hand, or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree-" yeah it's making her think of Undine. This maybe wasn't the best choice, but she's going to power through.

Having been fully prepared not to push the matter, Skulduggery can't help but be pleased when she reluctantly accepts the microphone. Part of him knows that she's doing it out of pity, likely from the sight of him slumped on the floor. The greater part of him, comforted by her presence and the bracelet wound around his wrist, is just grateful she didn't make a big deal out of it.

It's a good song, a good choice. He doesn't know if he's heard it before, maybe he has, but he knows it sounds nice the way she sings it. Even if her embarrassment clearly shows, she keeps on going, and he knows it is entirely for his benefit. He doesn't know if she'd reduce herself to this level for many people aboard... he's grateful to be one of the privileged few.

He stops looking for China shortly after she begins, and the empty audience, for now, is well and truly empty.

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