come_sailaway | He brought me out into the hall, I could have sworn it was haunted (OTA)

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He brought me out into the hall, I could have sworn it was haunted (OTA)

CHARACTERS: Darcy, Erin, and you?
DATE: Mid-october
LOCATION: Sports deck, Drunken Sailor, Life boats
SITUATION: Darcy’s no good very bad hell cruise
WARNINGS: Shit’s probably going to get dark here folks. CWs for underaged drinking and suicidal ideation at the least.

To hear that there was nothing that I could do to save you (Erin)

The fight club following Darcy’s talk with Skulduggery is… distinctly less enthusiastic than the previous iterations. Erin will find Darcy sat over by the training sabres, rumpled like she’s slept in her clothes. She’s keeping an eye on the rest of the club over folded arms resting on her knees, and she barely looks up when Erin approaches.

The choir's gonna sing and then this thing is gonna kill you

Friday apparently isn’t checking up on anyone sneaking drinks when they’re not meant to. Of course, initially Darcy wasn’t going to try and drink her problems away like she was in a fucking country song. It had just made her sad the one time she’d tried it with Izzy. But after a couple of days of a mess of feelings that she feels entirely unequipped to deal with, Darcy kind of wants to just deal with sad. It’s not like she can talk to anyone about one of her most important relationships aboard the ship utterly imploding. Once again, she is alone in her burdens.

Find her curled up in one of the comfy chairs of the Drunken Sailor with a bottle of rum, headphones in, avoiding everyone.

Something in my throat made my next words shake

Even being on the ship gets too claustrophobic eventually. Like all the secrets she’s been forced to keep will come spilling out of her at the slightest provocation. She can’t bring herself to try and help the aimless newbies, she can’t hunt the Bahamanal in the newly-halloween-ified Tommy Bahama, she can’t drag herself to training. Eventually she packs the backpack she got from camp with some changes of clothes and whatever she can find in the buffet that seems like it’ll keep for a couple of days. And then, she sets herself to stealing one of the life boats.

Stop her or help her, if you want.

And something in the wires made the light bulbs break (wildcard)

(go nuts, show nuts, whatever)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Darcy's distress seems to bring Erin back to herself. She turns her head, full of concern and shame, unable to continue.

She says, in a soft and fearful voice: "Do you need me to stop? It. It only gets worse, Darcy. It gets so much worse..."

Darcy takes a deep shuddering breath.

"It's fine. Just how the world is. You can keep going."

Erin tousles her hair violently. Takes a deep breath. After a moment she says something to herself, in an absent voice.

("The world is beautiful, and abundant.")

Finally she reaches into her pocket and gets a cigar. This she rolls across the floor towards Darcy.

"I don't want to touch a weapon right now. The round tip, it...needs to be cut. Please."

A knife joins the pile.

"...Two years in that cell. I only left to be shown off at the Patriarch's grand balls. Look, he would say. I have made this human thing into a thing that hates. Isn't it beautiful? Applaud my slave. Tell it how grand it is. And they did. Every time. Two years until I tried to escape. I challenged a god of nightmare to a duel of incandescent light, and ran in the chaos. The Patriarch found me before I even got out the front door, and he was ecstatic. He told me, I will bear you back to the mortal world, if you will serve my interests when I have need."

The last knife gets tossed. Erin fumbles at her sword belt, continuing like if she stops she'll never finish. "The people later, who helped me, they tried to tell me it wasn't my fault. That anyone would have done what I did to get away. But it didn't feel like that. It felt like enlightenment. Even a god needed to crush others to get ahead, and I was no god. I was just the thing that hated. Why should I be so arrogant as to think I could be different? I said yes. And he took me back home."

Darcy reaches down from the washing machine, blowing a firm breeze to push the cigar into her hand. She's seen people do this before- Avery, mostly- so she makes a decent attempt at replicating the process. She tosses it back to Erin and figures she'll catch it.

"So you were... his gopher when you got home?"

Erin catches the cigar and sets it aside; she's finally freed her sword belt, and she throws it onto the pile. Then, and only then, does she light the cigar and take a shuddering drag on it.

The lighter goes onto the pile too.

"...No. I didn't hear from him for years, at first. But when I got back...my copy, my Fetch, she'd killed herself. My parents...they'd always loved me. Fiercely. Genuinely. I hid so much from them because I didn't want my pain to hurt them. When my Fetch killed herself they thought they'd lost their daughter. My father started drinking. Took out a family of five in drunk crash and went to prison. Mom...followed her daughter's example. My people, the Lost, they took me in. Gave me a place to stay. I finally had food to eat, and a door I could lock or unlock, and people who understood. I signed on with Spring, because the idea of getting everything I ever wanted...I didn't know about the abundant world, then. I just thought it was the Fuck You, Got Mine club."

The smoke pools in her Mantle, curling around the crackling gunpowder and forming little shapes; a blade, trailing manacles, little hearts run through with the arrows of love.

"I wanted to learn how to fight, so I did. I sold my body for lessons and learned that I love women. I wanted money, so I conned people out of it and laughed when they were ruined at my feet. I wanted magic, so I dove into the fires of my Wyrd, laughing as I burned. I wanted. I craved. And most of all, I wanted to not be the person every painful memory had happened to, so I told myself a lie. Erin Peters is dead, I lied. I said, my name is Liz Malloy. Liz Malloy was beautiful, and powerful, and unloving. She was strong because she hurt people. She was strong because she didn't care about them. She was everything Erin Peters wasn't. Erin was shy, and wanted people to love her, and wanted them to hold her and comfort her and accept her. But Liz was the alpha bitch, and soon enough they were throwing themselves at my feet for a taste of the wonders I had on sale. I even bought my way into the Satrapy of Pearls and let them replace my eyes with the pearls of their station, and my people exalted my name further for it."

She pulls her knees up to her chest. She doesn't stop. Her words spill over each other like falling coins. "The Satraps are...they're...they're fucking vermin, is what they are. Spring Courtiers who exalt greed and avarice and buying and barter. Anything is for sale, to them. Your grief, your dreams, your loyalty, your family, your honor, your life. They fit so neatly into my new enlightenment. With their help I hoarded, and spent, and traded, and anyone who was ruined by me had no reprisal. If they didn't want to be crushed, why, they shouldn't have been dealing with a Satrap. It was intoxicating. I felt. So powerful."

A shuddering breath. "...And then my master came calling. For a favor. One of my rivals among my people had been the slave of the Patriach's newly favored party guest, and he wished to make a gift of the man's return. I took him in the night. I sent him back to the nightmare lands in chains."

Darcy doesn't have a lot of the context for this. She's not a Changeling, she doesn't understand what a betrayal it is to send someone back, the vision of a world ruled by barter and power, it's...

She's reminded of sticking her foot in her mouth with Ava about wanting to be raised a child assassin. And how it was true, even if she hated that she said it. Liz Malloy sounds like everything Darcy wants for herself- power and respect and strength. But Erin spits the name with a disgust that makes her skin crawl. Wanting people's love and comfort was just... childish. Not something anyone should want- any adult should want, much less a warrior. It dampens the otherwise very appalling news that Erin- unsurprisingly- is a terrible person. When did admissions of guilt like this become common to her? And why is Darcy still the one who has to bear it?

There's a hollow laugh. "My people call it privateering. Such a polite euphemism. I was a slaver. At first just for my master, but when the Satrapy caught me I got exiled and went to live between worlds full time. Stewing in my own delusions, leading a crew of other privateers. I played the damsel in distress, and with every victim I told myself the hurt in my heart was just weakness leaving my soul. I stopped counting my victims. Even now I can't remember most of them. I remember reading aloud to Annie. Drinks after a good haul. Side jobs for people desperate enough to hire the pirate with the pearl eyes. I helped make Fetches. Murdered for hire. Every now and again, actually helped people. I hated those jobs, but I was a Satrap, and Satraps are for sale."

She's trying so hard not to sob. Erin uses the cigar to avoid it, and the smoky haze makes her new lights look like will o' the wisps.

"Decades, away from human society. I'm happy, I lied. My friends love me. This is the way the world is. And then we took a job in New Avalon, for the Lady of the Lake. She wanted Arthurs to pull a sword from an engine block, and we culled them like cattle. I went after one of my own kind and he beat my ass in bloody. I bargained for my life. Ran to the client so I could hide in the nightmare's shadow. Arthur'd captured my whole crew."

Edited 2022-10-11 06:29 (UTC)

"I'm guessing that Arthur didn't kill you, then."

Darcy fiddles with her sleeve. He can't have- there's too much in between that life and what Erin was espousing before. It's hard to even feel outraged at her right now- she'd just heard similar atrocities from someone she cared about far more deeply. This is just... true. Correct. People suck and will choose to do evil if they can. If anything hearing what 'Liz' was like affirms her own sense that there is something wrong with or- or just... bad in her like all other people are fundamentally bad.

That gets a forlorn half-smile that looks so different on Liz Malloy's starved face. "No. He showed up with the Summer boys, to hunt the Lady of the Lake. He wasn't like me, you have to understand, he was...strong in the Wyrd, yes, but more mortal than Lost, more a man and less a monster. He chose to challenge a god in its place of power, and he won. To escape with my life I threw in with him, betraying the Lady of the Lake as I'd betrayed hundreds of others. One more on the pyre, but at least that one felt good. Arthur swore to let me go, but he stopped me, not with might or magic or mayhem. With a plea."

The cigar is burning down. Erin takes one last drag and grinds it out on the meat of her arm. She doesn't even flinch.

"He asked me what I got out of all of it. The final fucking insult. I lost it. Screamed at him. Said I got paid. That I kill and I maim and I steal and I kidnap and I get paid and it never stops. Crying like Erin Peters used to cry, alone in her closet so her parents couldn't hear. And he said, what if it could stop? He said, you can make it stop, now."

"He said, take my hand, Elizabeth."

Darcy sees what she's about to do with the cigar and waves a hand. For a moment Erin can probably feel a strong connection to the sea outside, to water generally, and the cigar is out before she can extinguish it on herself.

"And you believed him?"

Erin touches the tip of the cigar with a wondering finger. After a long moment she nods at it.

It goes onto the pile. She said she doesn't want to be touching weapons.

"...No," Erin admits. Her shoulders slump, and she hugs her knees like a god-damn child. "But he had my crew. And I was. So tired. Nothing had been going right for a long time. I was losing what was left of my sanity. I couldn't just abandon my crew, my friends, I'd worked so hard, for them. I even went to bat against the Patriarch and made him swear to leave them alone, and they never knew what I risked to protect them. So I took another risk. I told him something true, hoping he'd show mercy later when I had to beg for it. I told him: my name is Erin Peters."

She trails off. For a long time the only sound is the haywire gunpowder and the hum of the laundry machines.

"...New Avalon gave me a choice. I could agree to magically binding vows, which would make me a part of their community. If I betrayed them, the Wyrd would kill me, unstoppably. Full Final Destination shit. Or I could simply...die. A quick, clean cut by a headsman, and then it could all be over. Even then, I wanted to live. As low as I'd ever been since I lied about being Liz Malloy, beat down and bloody, bereft of my power, I wanted to live."

"...My crew took death. Every last one. They believed my lies, you understand? They believed that I was so heartless that if they chose life I would scourge them with a kindled wrath to shame even almighty God. They went to the headsman and they fucking thanked him for not being me. The only people I had left that I loved were so afraid of me they chose to die."

Darcy's mouth goes very dry.

At some point along the way Darcy began to understand that she needed people. That the ties that bound her to the people she cared about were unyielding. She imagines Dimitri killing himself rather than face her as the price of fearsomeness and feels like retching.

"Jesus Christ."

"Yeah." Erin shakes quietly in her place. "I'd written off Arthur as a lunatic, which, big clown hours from me. Ramona, the Spring Queen, I didn't have the courage to face. So I demanded to see the king of Fear, Raven, whose power eclipses mine. I threw Liz in his face. I demanded to know why I was alive. He put the final knife in Liz Malloy when he said he'd supported it. When he said he agreed with Arthur that there are none so wretched as to be beneath the law. I spent months in a daze. Seeing their therapists. Living with my keeper, who had been one of my victims. I didn't remember her. She'd thought about me every day. But every morning I woke up still alive, and I took their help. Arthur said...he said my captivity had never ended. That they needed to help me as much as any youngblood Lost, to give me my life back. And then. Colors. Needed my help, and Satraps are for sale."

The blindfold comes up, revealing hollow sockets. Erin's face returns to her natural form. "One last betrayal. For my power, my fee was her help leaving the Satrapy. I made her tear my eyes out with her bare hands and when it was done I'd never felt more free. The world...was beautiful, then. And I wanted to be part of it. For the first time since a thirteen year old girl tried to summon a demon, and lost everything to hate."

"I thought you said the Satraps banished you," she muses, still picking at her sleeves.

"Is that... why? Why did you want to feel like part of the world again after that?"

Erin shakes her head. "I'm - I'm sorry, I spoke imprecisely. The Satraps caught me, and turned me in to my Freehold - to the other freed slaves who had banded together, and given me a home, and their trust, and their love. The ones I'd been betraying. But the Satrapy of Pearls...they don't do refunds. I'd bought membership. They saw no reason to exile me just for privateering. People are for sale too, to them. Everything is for sale. Every. Mad. Whim. Available for purchase or barter. If one wanted your girlfriend they would not stop until they found the price of her love, and then once they had paid that price they'd kill anyone who tried to take what they'd rightfully bought. They're vermin. Filth. I hate them so much. I didn't realize how much until Colors was throwing up in my trash can and I realized for the first time that I could just...say yes or no, instead of 'name your price'. For the first time in twenty fucking years...I wasn't for sale."

"Fucking hell."

Darcy's... quiet for a good long while after that.

"Why did you ask me to be the one to decide if you get to live here? Why would you ask me to be the one who has to murder you?"

"You don't. I'm not asking you to keep this a secret, Darcy. It's...it's too big for that. Even if I'm just the second fucking nickel, it's too big for that. There's no time limit. You can walk out of this room right now. Consult anyone you like, tell the ship and every passenger. I won't stop you. I won't raise a hand to defend myself."

Erin buries her face against her knees. Keep it together. You're almost through this. You're a big girl now.

"...There will never be justice, for Liz Malloy. Not for a single one of my victims. Arthur said that a lot. Too many dead, or trapped in the nightmare lands forever to be tortured by gods that have never been loving or human or kind. Too many who know not to answer calls for help in the Hedge, because calls for help are Liz Malloy, waiting to get you. Even if I could dredge my fractured mind and give you exact numbers of everyone hurt by my own two hands I couldn't count every life I touched as a poisonous shadow spread on the world of beauty. It's too big. It's so fucking big. Colors...Colors didn't like me. Not when she asked for my help. Not when I fought alongside her. Not even when we dueled. But she made. Such an effort to reach out to me. I had to know why. I demanded to know why. And she said the question at hand isn't if there will be justice. It's if the tomorrow where I'm helping is better than the tomorrow where I'm dead."

The sobs start coming now. She's reached her limit. "I don't know how other people just...just know what's good or what's bad. I don't. But I want to. I want to be Erin, whoever Erin is. I want to be reborn no matter how many parts of me have to fucking die. But if this is my world, my only world, the only garden I will ever have as the second god damn nickel..."

She can't cry. She wipes her hollow eyes anyway.

"...Then you're the only one I've met so far who both cares that it be a just one, and isn't afraid of me."

Edited (I'M A FUCKING FOOL) 2022-10-11 08:11 (UTC)

Erin may have compared Colors to Darcy before- and Darcy will probably never know how apt a comparison it is- but Colors has one thing Darcy doesn't. A not-Catholic perspective. 'If the tomorrow where I'm helping is better than the tomorrow where I'm dead' chokes a sob out of her- she didn't cry with Skulduggery or throughout their talk but here is where the floodgates open. That Erin admits that she can never be sorry enough for what she's done, but... it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's the one shining moment of clarity she had before reality hit when she died the first time, her hand in her Geist's hand. Darcy did not deserve a second chance when so many others die ingloriously as she did. There was nothing special about her. All her Geist had seen was her willingness to help when called upon, and decided that the world was better with her in it than without.

She can't give Erin any answer, she's too busy trying desperately not to wail.

Something in Erin wants to snap that she warned Darcy, that she gave her an out twice.

But the person she wants to be staggers to her feet. Shuffles over, blind and uncertain.

Offers her hand, in comfort.

And says: "I'm sorry. But it doesn't have to be you. Pass this cup to another. I'm. I'm sorry."

This time, Darcy takes the hand. Nearly crushes it in her strong grip as she tries to get her breathing back under control. Not intentionally, and she eases up a little when she pulls the neck of her hoodie up with her other hand to try and wipe at her face. Full snotmonster happening.

"No, it's-" Darcy swallows, exhaling deeply.

"I want to believe you. I really- I want to. My Krewe- we used to tell people. None of us are especially good or strong or kind or anything. We're just... people who made the decision to be here. To do something. It's-"

Another swallow, and Darcy tries to look at the ceiling as if that will banish the flood of tears.

"The last time I really wanted to live was when I died. The first time. He... the ghost that brought me back... he said that the world was better with me in it because I was ready to do something. That as long as I answered when help was asked for me, and I asked for help when I needed it, we were in it together. And I believed it then. I want your help Erin. I can't do this on my own."

"What I have to offer is yours, Darcy. This...this is our world now. And it can be reborn too. I haven't come this far just to roll over and give up now. I'm...I'm not...I'm not going back to Liz. Never. Never again. I'd tear the hands from my arms and the tongue from my mouth first. I...you reminded me so much of me...I was hard on you because I didn't..."

Erin chokes back a sob. "...I can't watch another youngblood become me. I can't. The Erin at the summoning thought she couldn't ask for help and I know what happened to her. And I can't. I can't let someone else tell themselves that. I won't. But. I. Overstepped and I'm sorry."

I shall not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand-

Erin's clarity of sight hits her and she... buckles.

"You had people who could help you, I- there's not- nobody gives a shit about me-" her voice wobbles, and she hates in the moment how much she's probably reflecting the young Liz right then, "I'm just... useful. The second I stop being useful, they stop caring. That's- people fucking suck. I'm sorry. They do, they do and nobody gives a fuck- nobody except us."

Erin shakes her head. "You think Undine is just using you? To do what, dispense cuddles and happiness? Was Johnny just using me when he, when he...showed me kindness, while I was locked in my cabin before the muster? Is Tendi just using people, out there in the infirmary day in and day out, hoping people will accept her help? We're not...we're not sovereign, Darcy. That's a lie we tell ourselves to turn one kind of hurt into another that feels smaller. But it isn't smaller. It's just. Spaced out. Nobody gets to be perfect. Nobody gets to just...separate, from context, to atomize and be untouched."

She squeezes, softly. Slips her blindfold back down with a shaky breath. "...There's no escape from the abundant world, but all it has to do is be abundant. The rest is on the people in it. To be loved, to...to be part of the world we've got to let it hurt. I know it's scary. I'm scared every time I open my mouth. I've been so fucking cavalier here because I keep thinking that the person I want to be is honest, and that's the only way I can be honest instead of shrieking in terror and locking myself in my cabin. If I wanna live here...I gotta live here. And so do you."

"No I- if I stop being a good girlfriend-"

God it's all too much. Darcy folds back in on herself, restraining the urge to wail again and risk someone else's attention.

"You can't- you got it, you said you used to get it, it- it can't be- this can't be fucking worth it. I've been trying and it's- I never- I never-"

She knows she's going to sound childish and it still needs to be said, because it feels true.

"I never get anything for it. All I ever get is more work and more expectations and I'm sick of it, I'm fucking sick of this, I can't do this- I can't fucking do this."

"Darcy, breathe. What are you really afraid of? What is it you're not letting yourself want? It's not like I get to judge. My high horse is waiting for me in Hell."

Erin clasps Darcy's hand in both of her own; you can hold on, you can be steadied.

I'm here.

I won't leave you.

"You can't live under siege forever. Breathe. Let it hit you. Don't fight yourself and the world at the same time."

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