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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It's kind of weird, singing a song that sounds so upbeat, ostensibly relevant to their situations. There's a weight on Darcy's shoulders but it doesn't feel like this, and it's too close to home to be relieving. Still, she agreed to it, and she'll keep to her word. But she's not having fun. Even if it's gay culture.

"Insanity laughs under pressure we're breaking-"

It's a little bitter in her mouth. She doesn't feel like she's breaking. Just... sinking.

Skulduggery can pretend to have fun for both of them, although even he's more subdued than his previous more full-bodied performances. "Can't we give ourselves one more chance, why can't we give love that one more chance," which winds up with him more-or-less humming the repeating line of "give love."

He gives her shoulder a gentle nudge. If she were to cut out in the last verse, he wouldn't complain. She's more than satisfied his desire for a few minutes' reprieve from reality, and besides... he did force her into this after taking out her knee.

He ought to know by now that if she's going to do something, she's going to do it properly. So she gets through the last verse, "because love's such an old-fashioned word, and love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night, and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves-"

It's not like it was going to kill her. She sits herself up properly, finally removing herself from where she was all-but glued to him, then eases herself up using the karaoke machine, managing to get herself back to her feet. Or, rather, foot, she's leaning on the machine.

"It's definitely going to need tape. And ice. You couldn't like, shoot me so I wake up with it better, ehn?"

She was leaning on him nearly the entire time, it would've been hard not to feel that he was actually wearing his guns now.

Her perfectionism does mean he gets to enjoy quality time with her, so... Worth it, honestly.

He keeps out of her way as she gets to her feet, although obviously when it comes time for him to stand, he just... does it. He's not the one with a battered knee, after all.

"I could shoot you," he reasons, "But I'm certain that you'd wake up missing your kneecap entirely. Or some other bit of body-related horror would ensue. Plus, it would be deeply traumatic. Probably." He tilts his head, then straightens his hat. "You should let me carry you. It'll be faster."

"Probably."

Yeah none of that sounded ideal, and she'd been half-joking anyway. She... wasn't the biggest fan of the idea of having to be carried. Darcy hated weakness, hid it like that story of the Spartan and the wolf cub until she dropped. She kind of wanted to pull what she did on the bus, denying the help, but now she had the memory of both Clarke and Watson scolding her for trying to be a tough guy. And probably would have Watson scolding her again when she showed up hobbling to the infirmary.

"Fine, if you think you can."

She didn't know how strong his bones were, after all.

Out of all of the things Darcy's done today to throw him for a loop, accepting the offer to be carried is by far the most surprising one. He stares at her for a moment, as if she might disappear all at once, but when she doesn't...

"If I think I can? Darcy. Really."

There is no preamble before he scoops her up. She's heavier than Valkyrie, being older and with considerably more muscle, but he has little trouble carrying that weight.

"Well, this certainly won't be endearing me to any more medical personnel aboard..." Sigh. Oh well...

"I can accept help-" she starts snarkily, but being picked up suddenly cuts that train of thought off, and she muffles a yelp in surprise. The bastard did that on purpose. Still, it's good being off the knee, and being carried is only... moderately embarrassing. Moderate-to-high.

"Okay- okay, point taken."

She tries to take some of her own weight, holding herself up by his shoulders.

"What do you mean? I tripped on some stairs. I'm not telling Watson you did shit."

There is something soothing about embarrassing teenagers. Maybe that can be one of his new coping mechanisms!

"The alibi is appreciated," immensely, because Skulduggery has sort of a bad track record with bringing teenagers in for medical assistance. Not here, of course; here, he's never actually been in the infirmary more than to casually poke around. "Although Watson cannot possibly be the only doctor who lurks in the bowels of the ship." Right?

It's become one of Darcy's hobbies, lying to people about where she got injuries. What's another one added to her long list?

"If there's another one, I haven't met them. Watson was the one who helped me with my stab wound, and he's the only person I see in there when I go past usually."

She's quietly glad to be leaving Chatterbox, having been not totally comfortable in there with the machine, in case it decided to start strangling again.

Skulduggery would have beaten the karaoke machine to death if it had tried anything funny with either of them. Honestly, the machine's likely just as happy they're leaving as Darcy is.

Skulduggery doesn't so much as slow his pace at her offhanded mention of being stabbed, but he makes no effort to hide his confusion. "You were stabbed? When did that happen?" He'd only been gone for... not even a day!

"... you wouldn't believe that was also the stairs, would you?"

Yeah definitely not. She huffed, leaned her head back.

"Last day of the camping trip. When the Captain showed up, I... ugh, Stede had this plan to hug the Captain to death, and I wanted to show him why it was a bad idea. I got stabbed over it. Yes it was dumb, I've been lectured on it by other people, and Stede didn't even see it happen, so it was extra dumb and didn't accomplish anything. It's fine, I got stitched up."

"...Oh."

Skulduggery's pace still doesn't change, although he falls silent for a few paces after Darcy's attempt to cut his arguments off at the pass. She does a good job of it. It truly is baffling, the idea that she would try to teach Stede a lesson by putting her life in danger like that. He supposes the lectures revolved around needlessly risking her life and making reckless decisions.

He actually doesn't say anything for a few moments, until they've reached the elevator and he's pressed the down button with some well-applied air pressure.

At last, he slowly says, "You're right. It was a monumentally dumb idea. I don't see the point in needlessly traumatizing either captain over Stede Bonnet's naivete."

"So that Stede wouldn't try to do it himself and get fucked up worse."

It was a dumb idea, and she really wasn't a fan of being lectured on it again.

"I just- I had him. I saw how much being up in his face really fucked with that cunt, it was like I finally had him cornered, like I could make him do something he didn't want to. He said we always do it to each other, ehn? I could finally force his hand and make him do something for once. And-"

The shaky anger briefly poking from her voice might have sounded familiar, and there is a cruel edge to it for just a moment. But then it flattens again, as she is reminded once again of her failure. A weak heart, too easily cowed by the friendships she'd made here. It was the whole reason she'd sat with him to do karaoke instead of actually chasing up the difficult questions she had pressing on her mind about Skulduggery's situation.

"It was dumb and accomplished nothing. I know it was dumb. It's not like I'm going to do it again, okay? It was dumb."

The elevator doors open and Skulduggery takes Darcy inside. He could probably put her down, if he wanted to, but he doesn't, so he won't.

The attempt was misguided, but... he can understand the desire. Darcy has died before, and so theoretically it wouldn't be as hard on her as it would be on the rest of them. Although he can't imagine what he would have done if she'd allowed herself to die. Certainly murdered somebody. Certainly, he would have died himself, in some ugly and equally misguided attempt at heroism.

"Okay," he says. "It sounds as if you've learned a valuable lesson about something or other through the ordeal, and that's what matters."

There's a tension that relaxes when Skulduggery seems to drop the subject without argument. She's genuinely relieved that she isn't going to have to bicker her way out of a scolding, or that yet another fairly decent hang-out wasn't going to end in a bitter argument. Darcy presses her face into his shoulder, hoping that nobody would see or recognize her through the glass of the elevator. As if Skulduggery could've been carting some other boyish teenager around in his arms.

"Sure did," muffled through the fabric of his suit, "good talk."

And they didn't even need to go back and do more karaoke to avoid it.

Skulduggery spends the majority of the ride down trying to spot imagined constructs as they ride through the atrium; a sort of psychological Where's Wally to test his own mental acuity. He barely notices Darcy's discomfort, and when he does, he mostly attributes it to her not wanting to have a long, drawn-out conversation about the captain. He is, after all, prone to doing that whenever the man is mentioned.

Well, this won't be as long or drawn out as usual, because he's on vacation. But it does bear to note: "I... think he was still wearing the friendship bracelet you made him. The one with the distasteful but accurate nickname."

Darcy emits a guttural noise like beams of metal being twisted by an incredible force.

"Fucking hell shit fuck, Mary Mother of God, that was my dumbest fucking idea. I can't believe he's still fucking wearing it."

She presses her forehead a little more firmly into his shoulder.

"He's such a fucking asshole."

Skulduggery shifts her weight in his arms and pats her shoulder. "You won't hear me disagree. But..." Hmm. "I don't know. I think it was rather smart, personally. I wish I'd thought to do it. Wish I'd thought to hug him first, too. That would've saved you a load of trouble."

"No you don't-" she snaps too quickly, "you really don't want to have hugged him. He fucked with my head, like he always does, and I took bait he set, again. It..."

She huffs, trying to find the words.

"The whole thing was a dumb idea. Nobody's ever been dunked on with a friendship bracelet before."

"You never know, Darcy. Maybe it'll turn out that somewhere in that empty void he calls a glamour, there's a heart that was secretly touched by the sarcastic efforts of a reckless teenager. That bracelet could be the thing that turns the tide of some long, bloody battle for our souls."

The elevator chimes and the doors open. Welcome to ~~hell~~ deck zero!

"Probably not, but it is extremely funny."

It's a testament to how much she's found herself valuing his opinion that for just a moment, she wonders if he's right, if the attempt was actually worth something, if maybe trying to get through to the Captain would work. If the Captain could use their relationships against each other, maybe they could do the same in reverse? Work out how to get the Captain to care about them, and then use themselves as knives in his back?

Then the doors open and Skulduggery reveals that he was fucking with her, and he earns a flick on the cheekbone for his efforts.

"You're also an asshole."

"And yet, since it isn't emblazoned on my friendship bracelet, nobody will believe you." Because that's how it works.

He takes her from the elevator down the hall, at this point fairly certain she'll be wrapping her own knee. If someone is actually spending all of their time down here, then why in the world would he trust them? (This area is creepy. That's pretty much the by and large of his complaints, here.)

"Well, we've learned that he has very strict personal boundaries, especially when it comes to affection, and that he enjoys gifts as well as games. That almost makes him seem like a real person, doesn't it?" Almost but not quite, like a well-used reflection.

"If I get my hands on more string and beads with letters on them, I'll make you a bracelet that says 'asshole' on it," she snarks, knowing that they both know she's not joking.

No Watson, which is a little disappointing, she kind of wanted to get her stitches checked out while she was here. But no matter, she could do this herself. Darcy gets him to put her down on the examination table and directs him to retrieve the right kind of tape. Hyper-extensions of the knee were common enough injuries in fencing, she'd seen the taping for it at least a dozen times. Hopefully she could remember how to do it.

"I guess," she rolls her sweatpants up, wrinkling her nose at the fact she hadn't shaved. The tape was going to hurt like hell when it needed to come off, but that was a problem for future Darcy. "what's your point?"

It's probably not normal to be as touched as he is by the idea of Darcy making him a friendship bracelet out of spite, but Skulduggery is nonetheless flattered by the notion. Enough so that he puts up no fight at being told what to do, from setting her down to fetching the necessary supplies.

"I don't have a point," he says. "Not a clear or good one, anyway. I just think it's interesting that he has any soft spots at all." Such as they are. He isn't pretending that they've found the ooey-gooey center, here, but it does feel as though they're getting closer to understanding who they're dealing with beyond the mysterious title.

Darcy sets about handling the tape fairly deftly, tearing off strips with her teeth. It's not that complicated, just an array of tapes to keep her knee from bending the same way backwards again. Then she can ice it and see about finding a crutch.

"I guess it makes sense. Like... if he really had no weaknesses, he'd be a God by now, ehn? Or at least like... less interested in seeing us go on camping trips and shit."

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