come_sailaway | SEPTEMBER EVENT: WE'RE ON ISLAND TIME BABY

SEPTEMBER EVENT: WE'RE ON ISLAND TIME BABY

on the 16th, starting at 6AM and continuing until 10PM, Friday herself will be driving the ship’s tender back and forth between the ship and the excursion, making the trip about once every 30 minutes. those who board the tender will find that they are knocked out for the journey, but will wake up still on the tender, wearing whatever it was they’d been wearing before getting on, and with no side effects.

the destination is a tropical island, with white sandy beaches and turquoise water. the island is rather large, with dense tropical foliage inside the barrier of sand, but passengers will find it difficult to get more than a mile inland. not because of the trees or bushes, but because the villagers intervene around that point, and politely but firmly return them to the beach.

yeah, there’s a village. wood and frond huts built in a clearing just past the sands, populated by about twenty beings that appear to be some kind of bipedal salamander. if they have a verbal language, they aren’t telling it to you, and mainly communicate through gesture. there is a sort of vendor nearest to the beach, sitting on a blanket that holds a variety of exotic fruits, trinkets, and cool shells that they will exchange for literally whatever you bring from the ship. they are also trading bottles of a dark-red, citrusy rum; they also either have difficulty judging or don’t care about human drinking ages, and anyone who isn’t clearly a child will have no problem getting some.

the jungle is teeming with a wide variety of tropical flora and fauna. the plant life is whatever would normally be found in a tropical Earth location, while the wildlife is limited to what can be found on this island and in the jungles of Sumeru. why? because I feel like it. my fleeting whims decide every aspect of this game and i ain't stopping now..

the surrounding ocean extends out about five nautical miles before reaching what could most accurately be called The End of the Map: the water ends very suddenly, followed by the sky, and beyond it is an endless black void that makes your brain twitch the more you stare at it. if you try to enter it, you will die, and it will hurt the entire time you are dying.

there doesn’t seem to be any restriction on magic, except for one rather major one: anyone with the ability to fly will find that they are suddenly unable to. whether magical (i.e. Venti), biological (i.e. Phil’s wings), or mechanical (i.e. MB’s drones) in nature, anyone attempting to take flight will find it impossible to get any lift. just barely over the horizon, something gleams as it points to the sky.

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"The details are the best part," Diana remarked, even as her smiled started to falter a little bit. Unfortunately, those details that made romance novels and love songs so irresistible to Diana weren't quite so kind when it came to her own love story.

Actually, they kind of sucked.

She sighed a little, trying not to get mopey as she continued.

"He proposed to me in Paris. Didn't ask me to marry me because he knew I'd say no. He just told me that he wanted to marry me and slipped the ring on my hand." She looked down at it, remembering the way the candlelight made the pave diamonds sparkle like fairy dust. "I tried to talk him out of it, telling him he needed someone better than me. Someone human. But he was so stubborn and I was so in love with him, I agreed to marry him."

How stupid she'd been. They'd both been, really. That was love, though. It took away any sense of reason.

"Joseph wanted to elope, but I knew that would only cause trouble, so we ended up having an actual ceremony. I made it all the way down the aisle. And you should have seen the dress. I mean, it was a dress! But then..." She shook her head. "Things didn't go as planned."

What Clarke hadn't picked up in regards to always meeting at night and he had end of day stubble, it hits pretty solidly in the face at ...someone better than me; someone human. A cold reality slides into the fairytale haze, and it strikes her that: Joseph Penn had been a human in love with a vampire, and the world probably wasn't ready for that.

Of course there'd been a conflict. And Clarke visibly winces, and is suddenly reaching out to press her palm to Diana's arm, gently but firm. An attempt to snag and belay the conversation, as much as it is one to comfort what she imagines is still an open, weeping wound.

"You don't have to tell me — anything about it, if you don't want to." If you aren't ready.

Diana craved touch like a cat craved a pool of sunlight. The gesture was more than welcome, and Diana put her hand over Clarke's, applying some pressure in gratitude. "I'm fine," she said. "I've had two hundred years to...I don't know...deal with it. Which doesn't make it all okay. But..." She shrugged. "I know I need to talk about Joseph. Talking about him means he's not really gone, you know? He's still with me. A part of me."

Probably one of the best parts of her. And no, she didn't just mean the fabulous ring. Knowing him just made her so much better.

"My vampire granny had some pretty unconventional ways of thinking. Made her a lot enemies. She was at the wedding, so I guess it wasn't all that surprising that a couple of those enemies decided to crash the party, to prove a point to her, I guess." That was the part of it that still caused conflicting emotions. It hadn't been personal to her or Joseph. It had all been about someone else, someone no one really liked.

If they'd just stopped to talk to her...

Well. They hadn't.

She took a deep breath. "They basically lit the church on fire. It turned into a complete free-for-all."

Pressure to the back of her hand is all the green light Clarke needs to keep her palm anchored there, unflinching as the out she'd offered is circumvented and the story continues. It should not come as a surprise that it's heartbreaking — doesn't actually surprise at all, but still hits like a weighted semitruck through a guard rail. There's no way to envision a burning church in the middle of a wedding and not paint it in one's mind eye like a tragedy masterpiece.

"I'm so sorry, Diana." A heartfelt sentiment, but one underscored by the fact the speaker knows how little that does for a person. Sorry, for something that happened 200 years ago and can't be undone. Sorry from an outsider who had no part. Sorry, which is always the last thing Clarke wants to hear on the backs of her own tragic tales, but can't help offering forth now.

"Did —" No. She catches herself asking the question, when the answer is pretty obvious. Redirects into a grave statement and, with a tight inhale of breath tries again. "Not everyone got out."

"Not so much," Diana said, grimacing. "Although it could have been worse, I guess. Couple of people got..." She had to swallow. "A couple people got lit on fire. Which is horrible when it's anyone, but even worse for a Cainite." Thank God for the advent of electricity. And fire extinguishers. Not that she would ever joke about that kind of thing.

Well not out loud, anyway.

Her sisters, on the other hand...

Diana took a deep breath. "The guy who led the attack actually ended up captured. He spent a couple of years being psychologically tortured for what he did. Which I don't condone, but it did make him a better person." A friend, really. Even if she didn't love him the way he loved her. "But, they didn't catch him until after..." This part never got easier. "Until after he ripped opened Joseph's throat."

Afraid she would cry, Diana leaned her head back, taking a few deep breaths. "That's actually the last thing I remember. When I woke up again, it was three years later and I was on a different continent."

"Three whole years?"

She doesn't expect Diana to be looking at her any time soon, but if the other woman did cast a sidelong glance in Clarke's direction, she'd see a homogenous mixture of wretched sympathy and wonderment — the blonde girl's lost in a slew of questions she doesn't want to ask, doesn't want to make Diana answer, and at the top of the list is: did it make it easier, knowing so much time had passed?

But on second thought, that's a dumb question. Beyond dumb. It wouldn't have worked that way for Clarke, and probably hadn't for Diana. The grief must just have been out of season, and all the worse if people around her had moved on. For a few extended beats, there feels like nothing to be said. No way to help, not even enough context or emotional investment to openly weep with the brunette if that's what she'd wanted. Clarke does what lots of people do and fill in the blanks of a story with ghostly remembrances of their own, which teeters on the edge of backsliding her into memories of Lexa bleeding through compressing fingers, and Finn slack against a line of ropes and chain.

"I know they say better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all but... surrounded with stories like that, I'm not sure. How does anyone ever get through it?"

Diana did turn to look at Clarke. And that expression on her face was so sweet and so open and so earnest that Diana had to stop herself from laughing. Considering everything Clarke-with-an-E had told her about her life, it was easy to forget that she was, really, still just a kid. A kid with a decidedly raw deal.

A kid so much like the dhampir on the compound that it was a little heartbreaking.

She reached out, putting both hands on Clarke's shoulders. "Love is absolutely worth it. A thousand times over, a million times over. Because, as bad as heartbreak can be, it's so much better than the alternative. It's so much better than forgetting to have a heart in the first place."

Eye contact was a bit of a weird thing in the Cainite world. But Diana tried to lock eyes with Clarke, if only to drive her point home. "Empathy relies on understanding what pain is like and not wanting anyone else to feel that kind of pain. I get through loss by remembering that it keeps me human. Ish. And, I mean, also the hope of finding love again. Because when it's good, it's really, really good."

Forgetting to have a heart in the first place...

That brushes uncomfortably close to what she's done. What she's tried to do, what with keeping tight lipped secrets and openly telling Stede Bonnet he was an idiot for encouraging relationships on the boat. Only tried, because end of the day? Clarke's lackingly human and hadn't been able to resist the draw of accomplices, which eventually became acquaintances, and then subsequently slid into thick as thieves friends. The drive to keep her nose to the grindstone and not care what others thought about her methods, summarily undermined by shades of affection and protective instincts. It sucked. She didn't know what she'd do without it.

Diana puts hands on both her shoulders, makes and maintains piercing eye contact, and Clarke imagines she looks and feels a little like a blank ragdoll under that careful scrutiny. Part of her protests selfishly: not wanting anyone to feel that kind of pain — includes myself. But the thought dies long before it reaches the back of her tongue.

Instead what trickles past her teeth is:

"Even here?"

Spoken in the same meter of you still have hope? (To which Bellamy Blake had once responded, are we still breathing?)

"Dude," she said, a little laugh in her voice, "I fell in love during the French Reign of Terror. Love isn't exactly known for showing up at the most appropriate times. It shows up when we need it, I think. Even here."

Which wasn't to say she had any prospects. A little flirting here and there. But Diana flirted the way a fish swam. Often and usually without putting much thought into it.

Not the same as anything lasting. No one could blame Diana for being a little picky, though. The guys on the ship were...

...yeah...

"Don't get me wrong," she added, letting go of Clarke, in case she was getting a little too personal. "I still want off this barge and a way home. But I'm not gonna close myself off to any possibilities." She wrinkled her nose. "That's the kind of move my sister would pull. Artemis, the younger one. And she may be the loneliest person in the history of the multiverse. Makes her a little...loopy."

Okay, that's fair. Clarke's fallen in love twice, and once was on a half-science experiment, half-death sentence trial run on the ground. The second was in the midst of political tensions and war, with herself and the other woman serving as heads of the warring factions and it was just...

So fleetingly sweet. Mostly bitter and grief stricken.

Diana withdraws her hands, and she immediately misses them. It's half that longing for physical contact and half the weight of this entire conversation bearing down at an inopportune time, but in response to loopy, Clarke's suddenly blurting out:

"I don't want to be alone." In any sense of the word, that's her biggest fear. "I like a boy, I just —" And here, a pause, as her mouth moves but no sound comes out and she mostly looks like a fish gasping for air before finally settling on

"I don't want to hurt him, either."

Diana absolutely lit up with delight, reaching out to grab both of Clarke's hands. She was practically jumping up and down immediately. "You like someone?" she asked, the excitement palpable.

Considering Diana had been a teenager back in the 1700s, being trained and groomed to be a perfect prat, she was kind of making up for lost time now. True, she was far from a teenager. But that didn't stop her from giggling like some kind of CW star and pulling Clarke into an enormous hug.

"Someone here?" she asked. "Someone I know? You have to tell me everything!" She spun them both around in a circle. "Dish, lady!"

Meanwhile, the actual star of a CW show is absolutely overwhelmed when faced with sudden, pure, unbridled enthusiasm. Clarke just sort of stands there, feet as solidly planted in on the ground as one could root themselves in sand, in the event of any jumping-squealing excitement.

She also immediately regrets oversharing. Not because it's to Diana, but because saying something aloud feels like the weights finally settled and a thing's become real. And that's almost as scary as being alone.

"I don't —" want to say? Fair, but she catches herself and can imagine Diana didn't want to dredge up old memories of her dead fiancé, so where was the line in a fair and equal trade here? A bit rushed, Clarke decides it's drawn at saying his name.

"He's... tall? I don't know if you know him, but he's been here a while. We met at the first information meeting, way back at the beginning, but I'd heard about him before then. He's got magic; hand him anything innocuous, and he can tell you details normal people wouldn't ever be able to guess. That extends to medicine too; he could just touch me and tell if something's wrong, or use flesh magic to heal. He's theperson I went to after the first time I died here. And any time I ask about something, he'll teach me. He is so, so smart, Diana."

The last sentence is the only real bit she speaks with conviction; iron clad, unshakable in faith, a firm believer of most all facts that come out of Palamedes Sextus's mouth. Ideals, though?

"But we don't always agree on the right way to do things. And I don't want to fight..."

Edited (it's 5am, many edits incoming) 2022-10-08 10:15 (UTC)

Diana, for all of her enthusiasm, understood the need for boundaries on the subject. She'd been incredibly reluctant to bring Joseph home to meet Selene, after all. And even more reluctant to subject him to Grandmother and all of the others. Everyone had their own comfort level. And Clarke-with-an-E was clammier. Which was fine. It was who she was.

Although that didn't stop Diana's eyes from dancing with delight as she listened to Clarke, her smile getting bigger and sillier as she listened to the wonderful descriptions of this man of mystery.

"Every couple fights," she said, trying hard not to get so giddy that she drove Clarke away completely. "Love isn't in agreement, it's in reconciling those differences. Overcoming obstacles."

Ugh. Clarke's pulling a little bit of a face, not at the mention of couple, but at the reassurance to what she'd already expected. This isn't her first rodeo, but ask her to live through another battlefield romance steeped in betrayal, differing objectives, want, hurt, cultural differences, the comfort of familiarity, and inevitable pain, and...

"Phrase it that way, and it sounds like it's just going to end in a roadblock too big to overcome."

Is all that still worth it?

"God, you are such a pessimist!" Diana said, laughing gently. "Try turning it around. There is no roadblock too big for love to overcome. Not even death. Trust me, I have some experience in that department."

The love lived on.

But she didn't want to get quite as morbid as Clarke-with-an-E.

"Just take it one day at a time for now," she said. Because, after all, Clarke was still a kid. Not every love affair was meant to be 'the one.' Live long enough, and there were multiple 'the ones' anyway.

Now's the moment where, if Pal were around — even just lingering somewhere in the distance — Clarke would look directly at him. Eyes wide, taking everything Diana's told her into account and trying to size him up while simultaneously squinting to look at him through a new lens. Luckily, it's dark, there's a distant fire starting up for the future Never Have I Ever game, and Palamedes Sextus is nowhere to be seen. But the sentiment behind the thought stays, and she's struggling to decide a lot of things about her future.

Will she ultimately continue hanging around Pal like glitter hangs on glue? Would she kill and/or die for him at this point? Absolutely.

Has a decision been reached on where the barrier between like & trust and love & adore stands? Has Clarke personally decided if he's the person who she's willing to try something like that again for, or just a very comfortable presence at her side that she doesn't mind making out with between ethics arguments? Would that even be acceptable, or would it be an insult to the memory of the dead lover she carries in her chest and (very literally) in her chest of drawers back on the ship? Is she comfortable enough with the idea of there being any sort of future to build on board the Serena Eterna to start considering one? That's all — [ REDACTED, static brain noises ]

But finally, at least, Clarke seems at peace with this conversation. And dragging her gaze away from shadows of night, back to Diana's moonlit face, she nods. "I can do one day at a time."

It's just like survival. One foot in front of the other foot, you still have hope? Are we still breathing?

Edited 2022-10-13 03:54 (UTC)

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SEPTEMBER EVENT: WE'RE ON ISLAND TIME BABY

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