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

[saltwaterlungs]

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)

Comments

[crushed_pearls]

"Wounded soldiers get rotated to the back lines for treatment, Darcy. Broken swords are given to smiths for repair. Empty guns get reloaded. You thought I was pranking you with the Muppets. Maybe you even still think it was an insane move. I can't prove otherwise in the course of one conversation...but I can show you, over time. I'm crazy but I like to think I'm not stupid."

Erin lets out a long breath. "...If the people here decide I don't belong, seek out Johnny and Tendi. They know what I'm talking about too. The passengers want to be good. To be happy. To live in a beautiful world. We all want a life of peace. I still think we could have one, but I can't make you. It'll be bloody, humiliating work. It's going to hurt. But it's going to be worth it."

[saltwaterlungs]

"...it can't be."

Darcy sniffs, finally withdrawing her hand.

"It can't be as easy as just... giving up. And if it was really worth it..."

She rubs angrily at both her eyes, leaving her palms there.

"I'm not you. I don't want to be taken care of or coddled. I want to be fucking useful. I've been handling my own shit since I was like, 14. If it were that easy and people gave that much of a shit..."

She wouldn't have had to.

[crushed_pearls]

"Darcy, I keep hearing you equate taking a break to giving up and every time you say it I'm hearing my voice out of your lips." Erin sighs. She seems...frustrated, but she makes no move to leave or step back. "...Are you saying I'm not being useful? That I'm being coddled? I don't think that's what you're meaning to say, lass. I think you're trying to avoid realizing something. I know that trick. As established I was very good at it. It's a trap."

Erin 'looks' away, debating something. "...Not to state the obvious but the past is not now. There is not here. The people that failed you are not these people who are around you today. The world changes. People change. Circumstances change. I know it's hard. I still...flinch...at some things. My demons aren't dead. You're not weak if you ask for help in the fight with yourself, Darcy. No one can fight themselves for long. That's an enemy that won't tire, won't quit, and won't relent. No one just makes it on their own. I know it sucks to see that some folks always had the help you need and then think they did it all on their own, but they didn't and you shouldn't have to."

Erin's heart is straining. Please girl. Just give it a try.

It'll all fall into place if you just give it a try. If you breathe the free air you'll see the cage.

[saltwaterlungs]

"No, I'm-" she tries to correct Erin but she already knows, because of course she does. Because Darcy doesn't even get to be special in her suffering.

The fact is that Darcy has been fighting herself nearly her whole life. There has not been a thing she's allowed herself to have without caveats. No relationship without expecting herself to be useful, no sport without demanding excellence of herself, no interest without a use or purpose. Always viewing herself through the eyes of a third party who hates her, starving herself, pushing herself, cutting off softness where she finds it. Avery had made her stand prouder but it was all wrapped up in a pursuit of respect, of the exact kind of power that Erin had walked away from.

"There's people who've failed me here too. Even if I did want any of that shit it's not like I'm going to get it. I'm just not worth the fight."

[crushed_pearls]

"Tell that to the people who are fighting for you right now and see if they agree." The words are so soft. Gentle, the way the river that cuts the land is gentle. "...There are none so wretched that they can't bloom again, Darcy. Your garden has been torn and poisoned but it is not dead. When I say that all you have to do is tend it, I know it sounds simple. But this is simple too."

Erin steps back and draws her blade; she holds it out, flat, resting on the palms of her hands. "Three simple machines; two wedges and a rod. An ape could make it, and they did. But who mined the ore that became this blade? Who made the tools for the miners? Who grew their food, and who made the tools for the farmers?"

Her voice picks up, settling into a cadence that is almost like a prayer. "When the food was grown, and the miners clothed, and the tools made, who taught the smith, who does not make his own food? Who cut the wood for his charcoal, and who burnt it? Who planted the trees that gave him that wood? Who purchased the blade, and how many bought and sold it before it reached my hand? Who first learned to use it, and how did they pass their knowledge on? Who taught my teacher, and who fed the lineage of swordsmen? Tended their wounds? Taught them their prayers? Ten thousand ten thousands of human lives touched these three simple machines before I ever purchased it. It's a simple weapon. It is the world entire."

[saltwaterlungs]

The cadence to Erin's words do a lot to settle her, and for a moment she wants to find a quiet corner and pray a rosary for a while, or something- to lean on those words that kept her ancestors afloat through crop blight and noises in the dark. They're pretty words. Darcy still feels adrift and alone but they're pretty and she holds them on her tongue, mouthing a couple after Erin has finished speaking.

"The... thing that happened. I still can't tell you any details. But the person who I trusted the most... he did something wrong in the past and he hurt me to cover it up. And when I asked what he was going to do, he had plenty of ideas on how to fix what he'd done in the past and... nothing for me. I don't know if he just assumed I'd be mad forever or fine or anything, he didn't tell me shit, but... I think I'm just always going to want things I can't get. I can't make people care about me, but I still want them to."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin nods, thoughtfully. After a moment she sheathes the saber, and lets her hand rest on the hilt, for the comfort of the touch on her palm.

"People are good at assuming things. We're usually even better at lying to ourselves. After all, we're our own most attentive listeners...well, usually." She sighs, and chews her lip. "...One of the fun ones people just keep doing is telling ourselves, when we've wronged someone else, that nothing we do could ever make up for it. We see the future in which we are not forgiven and conclude that to even try is to intrude, to wrong further. When we get caught in that lie it can often fall on the person we wronged to take the first step, which fucking sucks when you're the person that was wronged. But. It sounds like whatever he did, you still want him in your life. Does it hurt more that he hurt you, or that it seems like he's trying to walk away?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"I don't," she lies, "I'm just fucking mad that he didn't even think of making it up to me. Even if someone doesn't forgive you, you still say you're sorry. And like- he did say it, but you can't just 'sorry' that. You have to actually fucking do something. You have to do sorry. And you're right- it does fucking suck. It sucks that I'm the one who has to live with this and he just gets to stop fucking trying. I still have to keep my promises to him. He's a piece of shit and I hate him."

Darcy huffs, "the point I was making is that it's just- it doesn't matter how much I care about people or how hard I work for them, they don't think I'm worth trying for. This isn't- you don't know everyone on this ship and you don't know everyone who knows me, you can't say that."

[crushed_pearls]

"You're right. I don't. I probably can't. I can't work on those relationships for you either. I've barely got a handle on whatever this is between us right now. But...I would have torn out a lot more than my eyes if it would have convinced my crew to talk to me instead of to the chopping block."

Erin can't keep her mentor air after that last line; she shies away, back towards the wall, and gently hugs her arms around her armored body.

"...Who will you consult? About me being here, and...Liz."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Probably nobody. I don't think anyone gets to make that decision for you. If you want to be here, if you want to keep trying, I don't... get to take that off you, I don't think."

Darcy shrugs, heaving herself back up off the washing machine like a boxer in the twelfth round. Her face is puffy and gross and her dark eyes are glassy and dead.

"I wish I could believe you're right about all of it. I think I'm just too old for this."

[crushed_pearls]

"..."

The silence somehow is audible and judgemental.

"Youngblood I'm fucking forty-three. Forty goddamn three from my perspective, something like ninety in Earth years not trying to count all the times I stepped out of the Hedge before I walked into it, which, don't ask, I don't know how that works. You're too old? You know that's silly and you knew it when you said it. Don't bullshit a bullshiter."

[saltwaterlungs]

"And this is the oldest I'm ever getting if we don't find a way off this fucking ship before it chews me up and turns me into a ghost."

Her voice has returned to a raspy evenness, and she makes some half-hearted attempt to clean her face up.

"Next week I'll have my shit together. I'll run you through the training sabres then."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin sighs. "...We catch things off our teachers. Off our peers. Off the people we spend time with. If you won't do this for you, do it as a favor to me: don't consult no one. Talk to someone you trust before we meet again. All my cards are on the table now. Everything you deserved to know before I ever offered to teach you a goddamn thing. So. Consider that, alright? I'll be here next week to hear your yes or no, and not before then."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Sure, fine," flat and monotonous as anything as she makes her way back out, "I'll try and find someone who won't immediately try and murder you over it."

And with that, she slinks off.