come_sailaway | AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

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AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

[it begins with a PA announcement on the morning of the 12th, Friday’s voice coming through clear and cheerful.]

Any passengers that wish to debark to our latest port of call can exit the ship through the metal detectors on deck zero! Please be advised that all alcohol will be confiscated prior to your exit!

[and whoever heads down to the lowest deck will find that what she said was true: there is a metal detector set up there, with Friday manning it. after placing all metal objects (including weapons, and all your weapons) onto the tray, she gestures for the passenger to step through the metal detector.

they exit in an entirely different location. suffering from a splitting headache, and wearing an entirely different outfit than they had put on this morning, but unscathed. they even got their weapons back!

the interior of the diner is essentially your average jonathan rockets establishment. the narrow lane between booths and counter is manned by an entirely mute Friday clone, who cheerily takes orders and serves up food (cooked??? somewhere???) with an almost unnatural talent for roller blading. there is a jukebox in the corner that can be fed with quarters passengers will inexplicably find on their person. the available songs range from the 50s to the 80s, with a particularly wide selection of songs from the platters.

outside, the diner is a great chrome boxcar, circled by a small parking lot. a large neon sign proclaims it to be GIL’S; it buzzes and flickers on and off often. passengers who have regained vehicles will find these vehicles parked outside. there are also a handful of midcentury American cars; none of them seem to require keys, and the gas tank seems set at full.

past the parking lot is a seemingly endless expanse of desert sand and scrubland, bisecting by the empty highway that the diner abuts. a few miles down this highway, the road forks into a smaller one, which winds its way up a steep, ragged mountain until plateauing into another parking lot, with only a small, old wooden fence between the cars and the edge of the cliff.

should they wish to return to the ship, passengers can leave at any time the same way they entered: walking through a doorway that now claims to be a mop closet. passing through will leave them on deck zero, again with a splitting headache. it’s probably fine.]

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"Can you drive one of these things?" Izzy asks, stooping down to hang in the open window of the car.

He, for his era related sins, can not. He has never been in a car, he has never seen a car before this day. But it isn't surprising for some reason to find Darcy sitting in one, face against the helm.

Also for his sins, the aesthetic move from leather clad pirate to leather clad greaser is not as far as you might imagine. The only real change is the updated leathers and black tee-shirt under his waistcoat. One sleeve is rolled up over a pack of cigarettes. Don't question it.

"Yeah, I can."

Darcy lifts her face from the steering wheel. Izzy really doesn't look all that different, but the fact they both have their hair slicked back in similar styles is. Well. It sure is something she's not going to look at directly right this very second. On the tail end of her conversation with Undine, she might need to, but not right now.

"Get in, I'll show you how it works. I want to talk to you anyway."

Hm.

Fair enough, really. He has some things to tell Darcy as well.

Izzy nods and walks around before sliding into the seat. They're so small, these things. Weirdly shaped and heavy. Nothing like a carriage. God, he can't remember the last time he was in a carriage. He isn't sure he trusts cars, really. But they are incredible despite his reservations.

"I've had it explained. Why must everything in the future run on explosions?"

Is he grousing? Maybe a little. A fish out of water, again.

"Not everything does. Some things in the future run on very small amounts of lightning."

Because she doesn't know how electricity works well enough to explain it to a pirate. Darcy turns the keys in the ignition and then locks the car.

"Undine told me you stopped by. You want to explain why for me?"

To get his side mostly. Undine told her very little about the shape of the actual conversation, and... there is a very small hope that she just misinterpreted his mannerisms and it wasn't a 'what are your intentions with Darcy' situation.

Izzy jumps a hair at the power locks and gives the door a dirty look. Maybe that's just a thing cars do? He doesn't like it. Too confining.

Also confining is the immediate cut of the conversation. Not that he can hold it against Darcy. Neither of them waste time mincing words and he respects her for it.

"I wanted to know who she is," he answers simply.

But Darcy has earned more than that.

"Without your influence."

"Oh yeah, just wanted to know whether she's going to 'make me weak' or fuck up the plan without me there to tell you to fuck off," Darcy huffs. She wants to start driving, but she doesn't trust her ability to concentrate if this turns into an argument, which it almost certainly will shortly.

"You know I've known her longer than you, right? Do you fucking trust me to pick my own relationships or am I going to have to start running my friends past you too?"

Mm. Yep. Careening into an argument. God, he feels so old.

And yet? He has arguments with adults just like this. Funny how some things never change.

Izzy shifts to look at Darcy, mind turning for the right words. He isn't very good at this. Make a list and I'll let you know, he almost says. For a second it looks like he might say something very nasty but he loses steam and huffs. Try again, Iz.

"Your friends are your own. I wanted to know what kind of person you've entrusted your heart to. That's what you take issue with?"

Excuse the fuck outta him for giving a shit.

"Uh, yes? Undine was very specific that you were checking if she was going to be an issue and not just like, meeting her normally."

And she does trust Undine's judgement on it, especially since he didn't really deny that it was what he was doing.

"Even if she was going to weigh me down, I'm strong enough to carry her. The kind of person she is is someone I trust, and that should be good enough. You're not my fucking dad, I don't need you to be doing protective bullshit like this."

YoU’rE nOt mY dAd

Izzy splutters, offended, startled, and as a reflex, angry. Is that how it looks? Absurd. Is that what he was doing?

It may be a bit too close to the truth. And it is certainly a bit too close to fondness. He’s going soft. This is bad.

Is it though? He wants to foster greatness in Darcy. Shouldn’t he care about her?

This is confusing. It’s confusing and he doesn’t like it.

There is a cold, quiet pause.

“Unlock the doors.”

"No."

Good to see her gut was correct and he would've tried to bolt. God knows she didn't want to be having this conversation either, but at least with Izzy there wasn't the entanglement and complication that she had with Stede and Skulduggery. This was... well. It was a re-establishment of her boundaries, enforcing her need for independence, obviously. But. Maybe it would've been nice for him to have affirmed her desire to protect her.

"You don't have anything to say for yourself? Just- leave her alone. And next time- I wanted to be the one to invite her to training, alright? Just- stop doing shit on my fucking behalf."

“I offered her a place,” he says instead of agreeing or fighting his case. He’s quiet as he says it, looking out the windscreen. A half beat and he looks back at Darcy.

He isn’t good with words, not when they’re important. It has dawned on him that this is important.

Did he give Undine something like a shovel talk? Yeah. Was it behind Darcy’s back? Also yeah. Was it out of order? No, he doesn’t think so and he isn’t sorry. He will do whatever he needs to ensure Darcy’s contentment whether she likes it or not.

Israel Hands has been owned by one person or another his entire life. Unsurprisingly, he has poor boundaries. Maybe even less surprisingly, he lacks the emotional maturity to recognise it. What he does recognise is the idea he does not want this relationship ruined.

“On the crew. Here and..in the future. With us.”

Edited (Typo) 2022-08-15 10:38 (UTC)

"I know, she told me. I wanted to be the one to offer it too."

Darcy rubbed at her eye with the heel of her hand, still boiling with anger under the surface, but it's hard to be mad at him when he's not being mad back.

"For... whatever it's worth, I am glad you like her. It wouldn't have changed my mind if you didn't, but I'm glad you do. Just don't do it again, alright? I can handle my own shit."

Izzy isn’t exactly sure how this diffused so easily but he’s glad it did. He has so much going on right now the last thing he fucking needs is a falling out. Especially with his second.

Darcy is his second…isn’t she?

It tugs something behind his ribs, foreign and uncomfortable. The same feeling he gets speaking about her to others. When he sings her praises.

Just pride, surely. He’s doing his job and she is performing to his standards. A perfectly good, perfectly prospective work engagement.

“Yes, Darcy.”

Very much in the same tone of yes, Blackbeard.

She is very young. He knows she can not always handle her shit. She shouldn’t need to, yet. But he was the same way at her age and he is the same way now. It’s a lonely life.

He glances at the door’s lock and scrubs his own face before sitting back in the seat. Is he forty or fourteen. No one knows.

“I didn’t mean to overstep. I guess… You’re important to me.”

He accepts the totally-not-order without arguing, and the anger in her simmers down to usual levels. It's important; he needs to be reminded that she can handle herself, she'd been handling her own shit well and truly before she'd even arrived aboard the ship.

But actually hearing that she was important to him takes the sting off what he'd done. Izzy wasn't her dad, but he was someone trying to look out for her. In a way that was unhelpful, yes, but he was trying at least.

Darcy leans to rest her head on his shoulder for just a moment. They're people of action and not words, and she can't think of a better way to phrase her appreciation of the sentiment, if not the execution.

There is a split second, not gonna lie, where Izzy thinks she might be attacking. In such a confined space there’s nowhere to go and so Izzy tenses- bracing for a fist that doesn’t come.

In his most savage moments he might argue what happens is worse. That Darcy leans over and rests her head against him, that’s it’s weakness and should be snuffed out if she knows what’s good for her.

He is not feeling savage. Nostalgic, sentimental fool he is. It is tenderness. Towards him. Entirely foreign.

Izzy closes his eyes against it, taking a deep breath to stay settled. All too reminded of how little tenderness he is afforded in life, and all too aware of how ruined he is when those moments do come.

Best not to dwell on that. He does not need to be reminded that he is drowning. Izzy relaxes into the contact and, after a moment, reaches with his farthest hand to lay it on top of her head by silent return.

Darcy recognizes the flinch, because she does it too. Affection is an indulgence she's only been able to let herself have here of all places; back home, there was no way she could let her mother hug her and feel for herself how her daughter had changed. The cold of a body no longer concerned with homeostasis, the faintest pulse of a heart that barely remembers to beat. Here... people know what she is. There's no happy lively living girl with rosy cheeks to compare her to. Here, where most only know her for her capacity for violence, here is where people have shown her the greatest kindness.

Darcy relaxes at the hand on her head, relieved that Izzy accepted the gesture. She'd intended on just leaving it there for a moment before pulling away, but- well, now it was cat rules, and she couldn't move. Exhaling deeply and purposefully, she adjusts herself to make the position a little more comfortable. Still no words- she'll probably say something when she works out what it is she wants to say.

They're locked in a standoff, then. Because Izzy is feeling much the same way while he wars internally about his feelings towards Darcy. Had he really started to get so protective that he's acting like her father? Is that good or bad? She's his protege, shouldn't he be protective and guiding and worried? Or has he simply been so lost without Edward's shadow to carry about that he'd grabbed on to the most relatable person he could find and crafted himself something else to do and believe in.

Who is he without Blackbeard? No one. And if he has to be someone, fostering in a new age, then who is he without Darcy?

The sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. He very much feels like he is disappearing. Changing hand to hand to hand to hand, it is exhausting. Was it a mistake? God, maybe he's really fucked up, here. And how can he be sure when he is a man living in survival mode.

Not only that, but it is a self imposed prison. He's gotten comfortable in that reality and isn't active about trying to go other ways because making that change means most of his world will come crumbling down. He'd have to attribute the things he's done wrong to much more than just the very nature of his work and the need to survive. He'd have to face the fact that he hasn't actually cared about Edward or Darcy as much as he thinks.

He'd have to face the fact that he's not actually listening to what they want, and telling himself that he's doing what's best because they need it whether they want it or not. He's being selfish and hiding behind his survival agenda, at least a little.

Working through all of that takes so much emotional labor that Izzy definitely isn't capable of right now. Or, at least thinks he isn't.

He wouldn't know the first thing about beginning to heal those festering wounds in himself, let alone anyone else. What a mess. He is a mess, and here Darcy is trusting him.

He would very much like the doors to unlock.

While Izzy's mind is ticking away beside her, Darcy...

There's a simplicity that comes from youth and inexperience. Darcy can overthink things as thoroughly as the next guy, but her history just isn't well-worn enough that she can turn to it for 'how she does things' or 'what she does'. The fact is, a couple of months ago her biggest worry was balancing her Sin-Eater responsibilities with her regular responsibilities. A year before that, it was caring for her mother. Prior to that it was competitions, her training, schoolwork, whatever semblance of friendships she had before her life went to hell. Darcy is still forming as a person, can still make choices about who and what she wants to be, and her life has upended so many times in recent memory that she clings to what she knows about herself like the nucleus crystal a snowflake forms around.

To allow herself this, to let herself be cared for by Izzy, would be to break one of the few things she knows for certain about herself. Her self-sufficiency. After the party with Skulduggery she'd been distressed enough to lay it aside, and then again with Clarke on the bus, with Undine's repeated affirmation that they're a pair who handles their shit together, and Dimitri offering to carry her weight when she can't. There's so little else about herself to cling to- if she gives this up, who is she? Her death already made her alien to herself. Who is this weak, sad child who can't just muscle through her problems anymore? When did the world get too big for her to hold in her own two hands?

Probably around about the time that she was stolen to a magic evil cruise ship and started having people to support her. If she really can't be self-sufficient anymore, if being entangled with other people is just a reality of how she lives now... Darcy will just have to find something else to rest her sense of self on. Her work ethic, her bravery, her willingness to help where she can. Good things, noble things, things she can be alone and with others.

"Sorry for losing my shit at you," she says quietly, after a while, "it's just been a while since I've had someone watching my back."

"I forgive you." just as quiet. It's good they're in the car, really, because the conversation would be lost to the busy hub-bub happening outside. And not that it really needs forgiving but it's nice that she's said it and also he thinks she maybe needs to hear it.

"It was fair."

Your boundaries are you own, he means but doesn't possess the vocabulary. Boundaries as a concept are largely not in his vocabulary. Except, perhaps, to rail against when it suits him.

But now he has to figure out how to navigate the unknown and that has never been Izzy's strong suit. Not now, not ever.

"I can stop. If you want me to."

Which is actually a much larger question about the future.

Edited 2022-08-16 16:10 (UTC)

That is the million dollar question. It's a Good thing that she did have that conversation with Undine, because otherwise she'd be taking that at face value as an out. Hell, it does still make her want to bolt a little. For all her talk about there being no such thing as complicated relationships, only cowardly people, she does a whole lot of avoiding actually talking about her feelings towards other people. The truth rain proved as much.

And she could still assert her independence and the freedom she'd been experiencing aboard the ship. But he... made the effort, went halfway, the least she can do is try and meet him in the middle.

"And if I didn't? What would that look like?"

Fussing over how much she eats and 'duck' and the pride when she gets a hit on him. She knows already, but it's worth asking.

Izzy wets his lips and wonders briefly if he's hand his hand on her head for too long. Is it weird? He isn't sure. To be safe, he leaves it another beat and then draws back with a sigh, pulling himself up a bit straighter without jostling her head on his shoulder. Like he's got some great master plan.

He does not.

"I suppose we just...continue on as we have. Maybe I...back off a bit. Interpersonally."

Well, that's the end of that it seems. Darcy herself straightens back up and tries to fix her hair a little instinctively- it hasn't shifted at all where she was resting on his shoulder, but it gives her a moment of buffering.

"Cool. Just, business as usual."

That was probably enough genuine sentiment anyway. They're pirates, a couple of tough guys, not... this.

She unlocks the doors and asks "Do you still want to go for a drive?", hoping to get the answer before he bolts like a cat from a bathtub.

Izzy gestures for Darcy to start the car, which growls to life under a powerful engine. It sounds like a wild animal to him, which is both mildly off putting and extremely exciting.

We waits before they pull off before speaking. Back to business for the both of them, it seems.

“So I met the captain.”

Which she knows, but he is vaguely willing to speak about.

“He didn’t even try to stab me. Bit of a let down if I’m honest.”

"I did say I thought you'd be fine," Darcy notes, "the motherfucker hates getting his own hands dirty. He probably would've been more likely to try and get you and Stede to stab each other."

And they both know who would've won that exchange.

"How'd it go? What did he want?"

Indeed so. Stede doesn't seem able to hold a sword for more than a few exchanges before dropping it. Tidecutter, or whatever it is Bonnet had called it, was a well meant but useless gift. Even with Izzy's training the fight would have been over almost immediately.

"It was pretty boring to be honest. He's got his eye on our crew, can't really blame him. Tried making a bargain with me, but not Bonnet. Not really sure what that was about."

Feels good though, not going to lie about that.

There isn't much Izzy can really tell Darcy, the meat of the revelations being strictly need to know.

"Best I can tell it just means we need to stick together, more now than ever. Keep each other safe. this is between you and I but we'll be reissuing new contracts soon with a clause that states nonviolence against other crewmen. I need to know that push comes to shove, we're in it together."

Wheels were spitting out sparks, scraping at the rails

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