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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“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."

Darcy would almost certainly condense to a singularity of infinitely dense matter if she were ever to find out that Izzy knew what she'd named her sword. Or that she'd named her sword in general. The embarrassment would kill her.

"Probably makes sense. Stede would be harder to turn against the crew. What did he offer you?"

She makes a disgusted noise at the new clause of the contracts, however, and grips the steering wheel a little tighter.

"If this is because of the Jinx thing, I'm going to be so fucking pissed. I've been keeping my fucking distance, we haven't come to blows since before the first meeting- and it's not like she's been making it fucking easy for me, ehn? Fucking 'nonviolence clause'."

Bold of you to assume he hasn't named his own.

Izzy considers answering Darcy's first question, but the follow up is far more interesting, and so he leaves threat of revelation to focus on an interpersonal drama he was not aware of. Darcy and Jinx clash.. that.. wow yeah that does not surprise him at all, actually. He and Jinx clash but Izzy has the weight of authority and experience to pin the girl's scatter-shot chaos into focus. Darcy isn't in a place of superiority.

"Drives you mental, does she?"

He feels like he already knows the answer, but he's interested and, well, nosy.

What follows is a ten minute summary of nearly every fight and conflict she and Jinx have had. With hand gestures that briefly takes both hands off the wheel. And voices. Mocking voices. Every blow in the conflict is a fresh and open wound that very clearly still stings her.

"-and she said she was going to make me her fucking plaything- who the fuck even says that? I have no fucking idea what's wrong with her but I swear to God if she keeps fucking with me, we're going to find out if it can be fixed by breaking her fucking nose."

Darcy huffs like a locomotive venting steam.

"So, yes, we don't get along. Sorry. Everyone else on the crew seems so fucking happy to just get along with everyone, but I can't. I fucking can't with her. Her breathing makes me mad at this point."

It's all completely valid, tbh. Every time Izzy hears Stede breathe he has to fight the urge to pull the man's lungs out through his stupid fucking nostrils.

"Yeah, I know the feeling."

Maybe he shouldn't be quite so open about his own interpersonal drama, but it's reflex. He just hates that fuckin' guy so much, suffering injustice after injustice. Working together? Teaching Stede to fight? Suffering his relationship with Edward. Acting his second, preparing to die for him!? Fucking insanity.

If it weren't in direct conflict of the order Izzy is about to issue crew wide, he would very much encourage Darcy to go ahead of break Jinx's nose.

Well.. there's still time.. the contracts haven't been changed yet so-

-no. No, no behave. Be a leader, Izzy. Show restraint.

"You won't be her plaything." t's gross to even say the word. He hates that so, so much wow.

"She's half insane but she doesn't hold any power over you."

A beat.

"N'violence is different than self defense. The Captain grows stronger with every scrap of malcontent we give him, but I won't ask you to suffer abuse of power for that goal. There is a line."

"Oh I know I won't be," there's a raw tone to her words, like she wants to be screaming even as she deliberately lowers her voice "I'm not going to fucking let her."

Hence half the conflicts. Trying to establish herself as someone who shouldn't be fucked with, like the bright colours of a poisonous dart frog. Negligible to say whether or not it was working, but the attempt was being made.

But Izzy's reassurance lances some of that anger from her. For the first time in a while, since Avery, she has an adult who knows that she has to do what she's got to do. Who's on her side and not the vague nebulous side of 'doing the right thing' that always seems to lean to favour the other party.
Izzy has her back.

"Thank you," she says, sounding audibly calmer, "I appreciate it. I knew you'd get it."

Because he really, really isn't subtle about his hatred toward Stede.
The thought crosses her mind that she ought to be on Izzy's side about that feud too, to pay back the favour. Something to think about more later.

Maybe some day he'll return the information in a ten minute rant of his own. Let loose all the vitriol stored up in his throat, Stede Bonnet's every fucking sin. Wet behind the ears, stubborn, lying, cheating idiot with some inexplicable control over his captain. Enough that Edward would throw himself, the greatest pirate ever live, under his own ship and the crown just to save Stede's pathetic fucking life. To completely disregard the plan Izzy put in motion, everything he had to do to make that happen. Do you have any idea what you have to sacrifice to be a friend of the crown? To trade Stede and his dignity to retain Edward's freedom? The pound of flesh cut out of him?

All for nothing.

The betrayal festers more and more every day. Even here, unacknowledged, with Bonnet flaunting himself with every step of his leather soled heels. It makes him sick to think about. Or maybe it's being in a car. Maybe both.

"I get it. She isn't cut from the same cloth as we."

And not to over step given the conversation they literally just had but-

"If it gets too much I will very gladly bring her to heel. Dogs need reminding of their collar from time to time."

This, unlike with Undine, is something she wants help with. This pest she hasn't been able to rid herself of just yet. The affirmation that they, Izzy and herself, are cut from the same cloth, and that he'll bring Jinx to heel if need be... it all sits warm and pleasant in her gut. Maybe Undine's right. Maybe it is a good thing having adults to be her adults. It's something she could get used to.

"I'd appreciate that," Darcy offers him a warm and haughty smile, "if she causes more trouble."

And, not needing to switch gears right this second, she offers her fist out for a fist bump.

Oh good. That landed as he had hoped. Some of the more modern people aboard this ship get tetchy when confronted with the realities of hierarchy. But not Darcy. Darcy understands him.

Also Darcy is very up towards the top of that hierarchy. Gee could those two statements possibly have anything to do with each other.

Satisfied, Izzy smiles back and mirrors the gesture, bumping fists with the understanding that they're good and everything is going to be ok. He's losing Edward more and more every day. He can not lose Darcy.

"I've given her a task for the time being. Hopefully she should keep our of everyone's hair for a bit."

Clearly unrelated. Darcy would absolutely not change her tune if she were at the bottom of the pecking order. Not at all.

"We'll see if she sticks to it, ehn? Maybe we'll be that lucky."

Darcy withdraws her hand back to the steering wheel.

"You didn't tell me what the Captain offered you," she says at length. Surprisingly, she does notice when conversations get changed on her, even in the face of her frothing rage about Jinx.

"Mgh-" Izzy thought he'd gotten away with that one and was already thinking about where he'd left Jinx under the hood of car with the express order to tear it to pieces and make as many wonderful weapons out of it as she can.

"It was weak, really. He offered me-" and this is said with every ounce of dramatic flair he possesses. "-a paradise world of my very own."

Complete with broad, artistic hand gesture and all.

"Complete rot of course. I can only assume it means he'd lock me in my own mind and leave me there to die. Hardly something to consider."

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