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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The word rings a bell. A distant one. It's related to talisman magic, I think. [But voodoo is not his purview by any means, so he knows nothing more than that. He really wouldn't say anything at all if it weren't for Gordon sitting there, keenly interested in what Pal has to say. Of course.]

...Alright. Fine. [With an impenetrable head-turn towards Gordon, he props himself up in his chair. You win, bastard.] The vacation is on pause for five minutes. What did she have to say?

[Pal sits down in a nearby chair. Maybe it will only be for five minutes, or maybe he can coax this slightly different Skulduggery into a slightly longer conversation.]

She called the lei a gris gris and warned me that the more we know about it, the less effective it might be. As such, she didn’t give many details, but she did confirm that it can serve as protection in catastrophic situations.

[A pause] Based on our conversation, I would say that she’s even more capable of defying the Captain than I anticipated. She’s an ally, Skulduggery.

Well, then, I'm glad I know next-to-nothing about it. [Not that he thinks it's done him much good. What, should he have been wearing it this whole time? Would that prevent this from happening again?

He... ... ... is trying so very hard to comprehend the idea of somebody's magical construct being an ally against them. That literally does not happen. It isn't allowed to happen. But Friday is a convincing reflection. It's... admittedly more difficult to tell the difference between her and the passengers, now that he's had eleven months and a single conversation with her.

Also, Gordon is directly beside Pal and is giving him that look.]

I... don't know how that could be. She's not... [Alive? Real? Is he either of those?] ...Hmm. It would be very strange for a construct to be able to circumvent... ah. We shouldn't be having this conversation in public. [He definitely is extra paranoid of people abruptly showing up these days...] Well, can't be helped, I'm not moving. We'll just have to whisper. [He makes no attempt to lower his voice any more than the conspiratorial tone it was already at.] That isn't normally how that kind of magic works. At least, I thought. Then again, I did think a lot of things differently a year and one reality ago...

[This is hard. Focusing is hard.]

[He waits with eyebrows slightly raised as Skulduggery first suggests being a little more cautious with their conversation, and then promptly ignores his own advice. Pal, for his part, pitches his voice slightly quieter, leaning his elbows on his knees]

It doesn’t make sense to me, either. But all evidence points to it. My hypothesis is that she sort of…evolved sentience over the course of a myriad, or however long it’s been. [he shrugs helplessly, knowing it isn’t an elegant theory, but it’s the best he has.] She makes the leis using some kind of magic one of Pirate Jenny’s brothers taught her. And she suggested keeping them at hand, quote, ‘if it ever seems like the world is ending.’

He pauses again, studying Skulduggery, half wondering if he will find some sign of the new madness that has driven that baffling text. But given Skulduggery is a skeleton, he’s kind of hard to read]

What sorts of things do you think about differently?

Hm... [That... has worrisome implications. The only thing he knows of constructs disobeying their masters is that it always ends with a dead construct and possibly dead humans to go along with it.

Still. It isn't his homunculus to worry about. It really seems like anybody else's problem, really.] A fair thing to suggest, although alarming to think this world could possibly end.

[What sort of things, indeed...] Reality, mainly. My reality. Our reality, I suppose. You're here, too, after all... [His head tilts and his gaze seems more directly fixed on Pal than before.] You may be lucky enough not to have to worry about it, though. [You might be dead in your reality! That's a good thing. Really.]

Agreed. It wasn't the most comforting answer. But if the leis even have the potential to protect us from such a disaster, the I'll hang onto mine, thanks.

[Hm. Okay. They're back to talking in riddles.] I don't have to worry about what? Reality?

[Yes, they're back to riddles! At least until Skulduggery decides on which version of himself he wants to care more about. This one, or...]

Yes. You read my text, didn't you? I laid it out as clearly as I could. [Thankfully, he breezes through that without an answer, because yikes...] I'm me, and you're you, and we are... here. And yet. I am not me, and you are not you. Because you are on the timeline. All of you is still on the timeline. Ten years ago, ten years into the future -- that is, if you didn't die. If you died, maybe you really are the only you that matters at this point...

[He's going to look back on this conversation with a newfound respect for some of the flightier sorcerers he's met. This stuff is actually impossible to explain.]

[As clearly as you could, Skulduggery? That’s…really very depressing.]

Ah, those realities. Hm. [It is an absolutely mind-bending idea, but it’s one that Pal thinks makes a sort of sense. He thinks.] So there are sort of…branching realities? One version of us continues on the path we were on back in our own universes, while another version takes a detour here. And you are the product of another reality that has somehow been both here and there at the same time. [He rubs his temple] God, that is infuriatingly metaphysical. The Captain told you all of this?

No, no, I am still myself, [as he waves his left wrist at Pal, just long enough to hopefully give him a glimpse of what's clearly a camp-made friendship bracelet,] but now I am also me. I gained that me's... essence? Maybe. Not sure. He said a gain for me and a neutral event for the other me's... Memories for certain, but he is so abominably difficult to talk to when I'm in my right mind and...

[Oh did Pal ask something? Right, right,] He did, yes. Sort of. I think I understood what he was saying, at least. [As he smugly relaxes back into his chair at last, he says:] I kicked him first. Several times. It was cathartic.

[Pal knits his brows together. Okay, maybe he shouldn’t fault Skulduggery for explaining things poorly. For a moment, Pal thought he had understood, but now the meaning slips away like water through cupped hands.] But I am right that there is a version of us back there, where we came from? Doing what we are meant to be doing?

[It’s a relief, in some ways. That other him can still find his way back to Camilla, they can work with Gideon and Harrow to finish what they’d started before everything went to hell at Canaan House.]

[He suppresses a smile] That does sound cathartic.

Yes. [He thinks. He's pretty sure. Unless the version of himself he absorbed memories from ceased to exist, and then... well, what would that mean for the rest of him?

Yeah, there's a good reason Skulduggery has decided to check out this week.]

It didn't matter, of course. He said 'ow' once, then kept playing with his stupid leaf. [He probably just said 'ow' to make Skulduggery feel better about kicking him. ...Should that really be the first conclusion he comes to, here?]

Either way. What's done is done, and I'm here as much as anyone can be here. Of course, at any random point, I could again be forced through another time-skip, and become another version of myself altogether. Probably up until I relive my own death; then I'll be done, I think. There can't possibly be another time-skip after that...

[Which was why he suggested Pal might not need too worry about it happening to him...]

[Pal isn’t so sure, though, that death would be the the end of the line. After all, it wasn’t for his life the first time, and it wasn’t for Skulduggery.]

I think we both know that mortality is a little more flexible than that. a beat Can you die? Again, I mean.

I suppose that's true. There could be some sort of afterlife in my reality. Ah, that would be miserable.

[He's told one person on the ship how to kill him, and that person is not Palamedes. So, he's cheerfully going to avoid answering that too directly.] I don't know. I thought I could, but recent events have led me to believe that I am... mmm. Perhaps a bit more tethered than previously suspected. [His teeth feel momentarily loose in their sockets, and he finds himself flexing his fingers as if testing the joints.]

I'm sure if I can die, one of you will figure it out. And then, hopefully the Captain will be competent enough to put it all back together again.

Hm. [realizes, belatedly, how this line of questioning must sound] To be clear, I’m not plotting your murder. I’m merely curious under what circumstances you would relive your own death and be done, as you put it.

[He chews on his lip] You may remember that I told you that I died not long before coming here, but I found a way to make my death less…permanent. Or less complete, at least. So I may yet experience a time-skip of my own, mortality be damned.

I wouldn't hold it against you if you were. [It would be pragmatic, really, and he's a fan of forethought, even if he's incapable of it for now.]

I do remember that. Something about... a bubble at the bottom of a river? [Pal's reality had the river, he thinks. Or was that Darlington's? Certainly not Jade's... his had slots...]

I'm very sorry if you aren't dead yet. I doubt you'd enjoy this any more than I have.

[wry] I don’t know. I think we would find ourselves far less capable of getting off this ship if I decided to break your skeleton into pieces. I’ll let you know if that assessment changes.

Technically on the banks of the River—but yes, close enough. [a pause] I am sure you’re right that I wouldn’t enjoy a time-skip, but it occurs to me— Hm.

[A thought has just hit him, and he isn’t sure how he feels about it]

At the time of my arrival here, I was working on a theorem that might very well be of interest to the Captain. If I was feeling particularly arrogant, I might even call it an apotheosistic theorem. [hm] If I were to time-jump, I might return with information that could significantly help his efforts, and therefore our own.

…Or I might return having only discovered that my bubble disintegrated and I was swept into the River, where I would lose all sense of reality. Really it could go either way.

If you change your mind about bashing me to bits, I wouldn't recommend telling me first. [Pragmatic as always, even if he's a little... you know.

That curious tone, however, draws a bit of uneasy clarity from Skulduggery. While he doubts Pal would be able to force a skip, he doesn't doubt that the necromancer might be stupid enough to try.]

You'll lose all sense of reality either way. I'm not sitting here with you and Gordon in this silly sun-hat because I've become more grounded and rational, you know. [Which is probably the first time he's actually mentioned his hallucinations to anyone outside of Ava and Max...] I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Well... Actually, I would. But not you.

[Okay, okay, maybe Pal was considering what it would take to force a time-skip. Maybe. Just a little bit. Thankfully for everyone, he wouldn’t even know where to start.

In any case, he quickly sets aside the thought because Skulduggery is being weird again.]

…I’m sorry, Gordon?

[oops]

Sorry, what?

[He turns to face Skulduggery square-on, his gaze searching.]

You said ‘you and Gordon.’ Who is Gordon?

[Drat. That totally worked on Skulduggery when the Captain pulled it...]

Ah, did I? ...Yes, well.

[(Gordon rolls his eyes. Of course he does, he isn't the one stuck here explaining his own mild psychosis to a relative stranger!)]

...The time-skip wasn't the... only reason for my vacation. [If he's being honest, it was only the feather that broke his mind, but they've got a bit of time before the water turns them too honest.] My experiences at home required... mm. New coping mechanisms. Nothing you need to worry yourself about.

[And yes, that's all you are, Gordon, which is why Skulduggery refuses to so much as tilt his head in your direction!]

I see.

[Skulduggery might not reveal very many details, but from the little he says, Palamedes has to assume that he experienced something particularly dreadful. He almost says I'm sorry, except that he gets the impression Skulduggery would not appreciate sympathy.]

And one of your coping mechanisms is called Gordon?

Yyyyes. [It comes out as a defeated hiss, disappointed in himself for getting this far without making too many slip-ups. Already having come this far, he resigns himself to lifting his book, cover out for Pal to see the author's name: Gordon Edgley.]

He was a friend of mine.

[He absolutely does not want to elaborate.]

[A skeleton should not be able to radiate 'don't make me talk about this' with his expression, but somehow Skulduggery manages it. And Pal doesn't, not directly. He does, briefly, focus his gaze on a spot near Skulduggery's chair where the skeleton's gaze has turned to look from time to time during the conversation.]

I see.

[This is humiliating. He reaches up and pulls the brim of his hat back down over his eye sockets.]

No, you don't.

[It would be a joke if he didn't sound so sullen about it. Pouting, maybe. Certainly not hedging away from a painful conversation he doesn't want to have!]

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