come_sailaway | [closed] water up to my knees

[closed] water up to my knees

Who: Dimitri, Darcy
When: early September
Where: Infirmary
What: Darcy finally pins Dimitri down for a talk.
Warnings: The usual for Dimitri (self-loathing, passive suicidality, discussion of violence)

No matter how badly he wants to avoid anyone on the ship, and the ship altogether, Dimitri's injuries still need treatment. The cottage can supply bandages, but when the scratch around his eye begins to grow puffy and feverish, he's forced (with stern insistence from Ossie and Giles) to the shipboard infirmary for some actual medicine.

He slips onto the ship in the small hours, a few doors down from the infirmary. It's dark and empty, as he'd hoped. The hinge creaks faintly — Dimitri freezes, but it's nothing, barely audible except to his thundering nerves. It's fine, he reassures himself. He'll be quick. He'll have plenty of warning if anyone comes down the hall, and he'll be gone before anyone has any cause to notice him.

His pupils flare in the dark, flashing red in the remnant light from the hall, but his night vision is too fuzzy to read labels. After a moment's puzzled frustration he remembers that the lights work by switch (in his defense, it doesn't come up often). After another moment of groping around the wall — unwilling to turn his back on the space, even if it is empty — his hand finds the panel.

The lights flick on.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a shadow on the back of the door. A perfect replica of Darcy's shape. A pair of eyes exactly like Darcy's opens, and then suddenly there she is, 3D again, and her hand slams the door shut.

"Where the fuck have you been?"

Dimitri whirls on a gasp, hand flying for a weapon he's not wearing (of course not, why would he bring a weapon to change bandages?) What he finds isn't an enemy. What he finds is worse. Oh no. This is the nightmare scenario.

"Darcy! You startled me," he says, a nervous edge in his voice. He palms his key in a sweaty hand, casting a panicky glance around the room. Who designed this place? Why is there only one door? He doesn't suppose a cupboard door would work. "I've been -- around. I -- I'm sorry, I just came for some bandages, I'll be quick and then I'll go -- "

"That was kind of the fucking point."

Darcy shifts to lean her whole shoulder against the door, intent on being a brick wall should he try and dart past her.

"Really. You've been around. Just not in your room or at training, and you haven't been answering any of your fucking messages but you've been 'around'."

She levels a glare at him.

"Do you know how worried we've been? How many people I've asked to keep an eye out for you? But you've. Been. Around. We're not leaving this room until you tell me why you went missing."

"I won't cause any more -- "

Dimitri's brain catches up with Darcy's words, and stumbles. That ... was not what he expected.

" -- what?"

"Cause any more what? You're not going to make us worry more? Is that it?"

Whoops here come the tears- Darcy's found herself more of an angry crier since coming here, which frustrates her to no end.

"I didn't even fucking know if you were still on the ship until Skulduggery told me he saw you. And you just- why? Why did you-? Did I do something wrong?"

What. What? Oh no. Dimitri was wholly unprepared for this. The situation is so far beyond the nightmare scenario it's achieved escape velocity and is now careening into the uncharted void of nightmare space. "No -- no! No, Darcy, of course not, you didn't -- I did -- "

Dimitri had been been edging backwards, eyes darting for an escape route; now he's frozen, torn between his urge to bolt and his instinct to reach out, no matter how unwelcome it might be. His voice sinks, muted and miserable.

"You saw what I am. A beast, craving blood. I put you all in danger -- you were hurt saving me from myself." He swallows. "I -- I'm sorry I deceived you. I don't blame you, if you hate me."

Edited 2022-09-04 23:01 (UTC)

"...what?"

Now it's Darcy's turn to be utterly confused.

"With the- when you were yelling at the Captain? Are you an idiot?"

The deep scratches where that particular zombie had clawed at her shoulder still stung a little, sometimes.

"You were angry. Surprisingly enough, that was a pretty good time to be angry. You're not an animal. I don't know who you saw there, but I'm guessing whoever it was was important to you. I'm not going to say you weren't being reckless or that it didn't freak me out a little. But you're my friend, and you needed help. You know I would've died for you if I'd needed to. A scratch is nothing."

"Hh -- "

It's a choked little sound, like Dimitri's been punched. "That's exactly it," he pleads; now he is backing away again, hands raised in a desperate ward. "You can't die for me. I can't allow it. Never again, not one more soul on my conscience. I swore it to myself. I promised you I wouldn't throw my life away. And I would have broken both those oaths, because I am a monster. I -- I don't know if you're saying it to be kind, or because you really believe it, but I know what I am."

The back of his knee hits one of the cots.

"'How many times shall I kill you?'" he quotes; without the volume, but picking up the bitter snarl. "'Shall I tear this car apart?' I would have done it, if you hadn't stopped me, and who knows what the Captain would have done? Can you call that mere anger? Can you honestly tell me you see me the same way after that? That you still see me as a friend?"

"Dimitri-"

Darcy flinches in a split-second instinct to follow him. But stepping away from the door is liable to enable him to bolt. So she stands sentinel by the door still, trying to coax her face back into grim resolve.

"And I swore an oath to protect the living. I swore that if the cost to keeping the people I care about safe is my own life, then I'll pay it. You're not a fucking monster."

Darcy folds her arms, trying to act as sturdy as she know she has to be.

"I don't have to worry about that, because I was there. I stopped you. I don't know what the fuck it was, Dimitri, I don't know the inside of your head. But I know you. I know why you're angry. I know you care about keeping us safe and righting wrongs. Why the fuck do I care if you punched some zombies?"

"They could have been people." Dimitri's voice rises, his tone sharper. Angrier. "Flesh and blood. Able to know fear, and pain; to flee for their lives, or try to protect themselves. Able to scream and beg for mercy. I would have done the same, because I have done the same. I have killed more people than I know how to count, by lance or sword or my bare hands."

He still thinks about that locket. The miniature portrait of a woman. A mother, a sister, a lover, a sweetheart? A local saint whose patronage could not protect her faithful? Not even the dead man can tell him; his ghost has no face to speak with.

Without thinking, his hand goes to the scar beneath his ribs. His fingers curl, digging in through his loose shirt. "Their commander -- he deserved to die. I knew his face. He served in the slaughter of Duscur. His spear ran me through and I clawed my way down it to tear his living guts from his belly and his lifeblood is the only thing I've tasted in the past five years." Dimitri's lungs bottom out. He gasps in a breath. "But the rest? The infantry? Some of them may have served in the massacre. But more of them knew nothing of their commander but that he paid their salary, and I killed them all the same. I enjoyed it, because in my rage I believed that they deserved it, and only after the battle did I realize what I'd done. I am a monster, and if those creatures had been people they would have begged you to save them from me."

Dimitri meets Darcy's eyes, challenging, pleading.

"Would you have let me kill, for the sake of stopping me and sparing my life? Or would you have put me down to save the lives I would have taken?"

Of course he's a killer.

That much is obvious; he's too adept at fighting, was too fearless during the excursion to not be. But there's a wide swath in between being a killer and... this. For a long minute she doesn't know how to react, and then when her brain is able to catch up all it offers is excuses and explanations- so long as it gets the job done, so long as they get what they deserved, so long as people are kept safe. And for a moment, her stomach turns. She believes it, she believes in what she does and fighting to protect people, she doesn't regret the lives she's taken back home enough to want to take back killing them. But it makes her wonder when it shifted for her, when she went from someone who wouldn't take a life to someone who wouldn't think twice about it.

Did she enjoy murdering Steven?

Darcy can't recall. It's all a haze of cold rain on her skin and vile words in her ears now. She knows she felt safer afterwards. Maybe that's the same thing.

But... one thing is for sure, one thing is still crystal clear in the mist of uncertainty churning in her.

"If I thought you were going to hurt people without reason, if I thought you were really the monster you say you are... Then I'd do it. I'd put you down. I will, if you ask me to, or if you start hurting people. And I hope you'd do the same for me."

Is this not an act of love, to save someone from themself?

Edited 2022-09-05 02:34 (UTC)

Dimitri's knees buckle. He sits heavily on the cot, shoulders folding like a stack of cards. Now he's looking up at Darcy, and the shadows on his face are more obvious -- bruises beneath his eyes, weight carved from his cheeks and jaw when he'd had little enough to spare.

"I don't want you to have to," he says, ragged. "It's a terrible thing, to put a friend to the sword. Would you? Could you really do that to someone you care for?" His eyes are hollow. "I don't want to do that to you. But I -- I can't be anything but what I am."

"It wouldn't be forever, if it's here," is her first point, almost whispered, most of her anger having drained out, "and of course I'd do it. I don't want to either, but... I trust you. And I trust you to know what's best for you."

She still doesn't shift from her spot in front of the door.

"I hope you can trust me to be strong enough to do this, in turn. If this is the cost of caring for you, then I'll pay it. I can't do this on my own anymore, Dimitri. I need you here."

Edited 2022-09-05 07:14 (UTC)

He wants to trust her. Cichol, Indech, Macuil, he wants to trust her. He is so tired and even he knows, in the back of his mind, that his vanishing act isn't sustainable — it's already failing, against all his will and better nature. He can't creep around like a rat in the walls forever.

But it's beyond reason, beyond sense. It's wormed into his bones and yanking at the stem only drives the roots deeper. Dimitri knows that he is a monster, a living curse, anathema to all that is beautiful and worthy, and isn't this proof? Darcy is hurting. Darcy is hurting, because of him.

"Darcy, please. You don't know what that cost means. My vengeance leads only to further vengeance. Everyone I slew on that day deserves my life as penance and I cannot give it until my own vengeance is complete, and my debts will only grow deeper before it is done. Join me and you'll only be made a monster, too."

He trembles, his breathing fast and shallow. His head spins. He could shove past Darcy, if he really wanted to, slam clean through that door and make his escape. He should. He should ask her to kill him here and now. So why isn't he?

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm sorry I did this to you. You cannot save me because you have never known a Dimitri who was worth saving. He died before we ever met. Me -- this -- " He gestures at himself -- "is no better than those shambling corpses. I should never have pretended otherwise."

"...no."

Fuck it. If he runs he runs. Darcy takes a step towards Dimitri, already digging her thumbnail into the palm of her hand. Her voice simmers with outrage already.

"No. No! You don't get to fucking decide that. That's not your choice to make, you fucking asshole! You don't get to help me and then decide I don't get to do the same!"

Another step closer. This is dangerous for a couple of reasons, but not least of all because she fears she's going to punch him if he says something else stupid.

"If it's about deserve, then I shouldn't be here. I didn't deserve to get murdered, but I didn't deserve to come back, either. I'm not kinder or smarter or stronger or better than anyone else who was ever in my position. The only difference between me and them is that I'm here now. And I'm making the fucking choice to do something with it. Maybe you deserve to die, maybe you don't, I don't really give a shit."

She closes the distance with a few more steps.

"But I know, right now? You're making the choice to be a fucking dick. You're making decisions for me that I never fucking asked you to make. You don't 'deserve' my friendship, just like I don't deserve yours, and I'm giving it. To you. Anyway. That's a choice I'm making."

Darcy forces herself to take a breath, to keep her composure steady.

"If you want to keep doing this hiding bullshit, then just fucking tell me, dude. Just... tell me and don't leave me to fucking worry about you when you don't want me to."

Why isn't he running?

Why isn't he running?

Darcy draws closer, and closer, and closer still. The set of her shoulders shifts and for a split second he prays for Darcy to strike him, knock him sprawling to the infirmary floor and leave him with a bloodied nose and the world set to rights.

She doesn't. Dimitri stares up at her, transfixed like a rabbit under a falcon. His shoulders ratchet higher with each shallow breath, fish-mouthed gasping that fails to actually bring any air into his lungs. The world closes in, sparks and swirling figures clouding his vision. "Please," he rasps, shrunken and strangled, "please -- "

Dimitri is right. He is an animal. A scared, cornered animal, and for a moment he flinches and Darcy feels like one too. What is she even doing here? He's... not well, not right, not himself. It doesn't feel fair to be interrogating him like this. She flexes and relaxes her hands a couple of times, forces herself to take a breath so deep it bubbles and gurgles the water in her lungs, and then she crouches in front of him. Both hands on both of his shoulders, her grip firm and steady.

"Please what? How do I help you?"

Please. Please go back to being angry with him. He understands that. This is as much himself as anything he's ever been, as much as the kindness, as much as the fury. Dimitri will never not be like this. How many times can Darcy come to save him before she realizes it will always happen again? Before something terrible happens to her?

Once is an accident; twice is a sign; three times is a pattern. Twice now Dimitri's told himself he's better than that, that he must be better, and twice now he's failed. He knows better than to promise anything, to Darcy or himself. How can she still want to help him? How does he make this situation stop?

"I don't know," he croaks. The floor lurches under him. He buckles forward, head dropping into Darcy's shoulder, chest heaving without drawing breath. How can he ask for help without knowing what he needs? How can he ask Darcy to answer that question for him? "I -- I don't know."

When Dimitri collapses, Darcy's already catching him, already stepping closer to sit on the bed and draw him into her lap. A pietà in miniature; she can't help but think of the imagery, the repetition of grief and hurt and suffering carried forward by her ancestors. At least now she knows what it's for, and Darcy strokes his hair, silent for a few moments.

"We'll work it out. But I can't do anything if you're not here, alright? I need you here."

Not this. Anything but this. Dimitri flinches away from the touch, tightening into a ball with his arms over his head and his nails digging into the back of his neck. (Only one leg makes it into the ball. The other's too stiff.) A chorus of alarms sounds off through his half-healed wounds but that's better, that's easier, that makes sense. It's worse than if Darcy had struck him.

"Please," he gasps, one last futile, strangled effort, "please, don't. Don't. I can't -- I can't -- "

He can't fucking breathe --

Darcy very nearly lets go when he asks. Nearly. It conjures a rage in her gut that brings her close to snapping and storming off. Of course he can- he's choosing not to. Choosing to reject her reaching out again.

But at the same time, that anger feels oddly detached from the situation. It's like she's watching herself, fuming somewhere outside her body, while her hands continue to stroke his hair. She can apologise later. Now, she... needs to be an asshole about this and not let him go.

"I've got you. Just... take some deep breaths, feel this out, and you'll be able to handle it again. I've got you until you can."

The spring of Dimitri's body has been wound too tight. He can't handle this much gentleness -- the voice, or the touch, but not both. His skin burns, Darcy's hand in his hair an agony he cannot flinch from. His chest heaves, his eyes wide and blank, spit flecking his lips. He can bear no more tension.

Something breaks.

Dimitri's ribs crack. Air rushes in. He gasps so forcefully it wracks his whole body; he slips off the cot like a sack of flour, crumpling to his hands and knees.

His guts wrench, with only watery bile to bring up. It's no more a choice than a fever, than a bloody cough. It's physiological, a refeeding sickness of the soul, so alien his body rejects it like a pathogen. He hacks another coughs, spits, and turns his face in Darcy's direction. He's shivering, his eyes unfocused, flicking to shapes unseen at Darcy's sides and behind her shoulders.

"Sorry. I'm sorry," he croaks, his voice weak and undirected. "I'm trying -- I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

It's when Dimitri falls out of her grasp and lands on the floor retching that Darcy realizes maybe, just maybe... She's not the best person to be handling this.

It's a terrifying thought.

He's there pleading with her and god knows who else his apologies and all she wants to do is ask his forgiveness, that whatever she's doing right now just isn't working and it's clearly her fault.

But the last thing he needs right now is for her to drop into her own spiral. Suppress it, keep herself together, do anything to keep going in the face of a friend needing help.

"I'm going to go get someone," she stands from the cot. Who? No idea. Rich? César? Watson? She'll work it out when she gets there. But Darcy can't bludgeon this problem to death, and so she's useless.

"Stay here, okay?" She says, moving to the door.

"No -- no, I -- "

Movement breaks Dimitri's holding pattern. He can't see anyone else right now. He can hardly cope with Darcy -- no one else can see him like this. If Darcy leaves then Dimitri will be gone when she gets back, he knows this like the motion of a wave breaking, and he can't do that to her again. So, though his tongue feels like an hammer and his teeth an anvil, he chokes out,

"I have to -- I need to -- I-I'll go."

He scrabbles to his feet and bolts. Lucky his hand's been white-knuckled on his key this whole time. There's a flash of crisp autumn air and buzzing insects as he hits the threshold, a moment where the door frames night sky and grass instead of hallway and carpet.

The door slams. He's gone.

Darcy blinks and he's... gone.

She opens the door to chase him out but whatever weird... somewhere that it had opened to doesn't reappear. It's just the hallway, and a dead girl standing in the infirmary, alone.

"Dimitri?!"

She calls down the hallway.

No response.

"Fuck!-" Darcy kicks the closest object in range and leaves, gripping her own arm, her nails digging through the fabric of her jacket, tears pricking at her eyes.

continued here

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[closed] water up to my knees

I dare you to close your eyes

and see all the colors in disguise

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

gore cw

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject