come_sailaway | [OPEN] i'm taking back the crown

Entry tags:

[OPEN] i'm taking back the crown

Who: "Jeff" & anyone who wants to visit
What: Jail :(
When: Mid-month (immediately after this post) til... end of month? What's time anymore, I don't know
Where: The Brig :(
Warnings: Possible references to violence, possession, character death

Notes: it's pretty likely that there's somebody guarding the brig at any given time, even if they're not explicitly mentioned, so things aren't likely to go off the rails here. hit me up at

weeyotch / weeyotch#8200 if you want to plot anything specific!

I see what's mine and take it
Ughhhhhhh. The brig! Is! So! Boring!! How is it, after two-and-whatever years trapped in this hellhole (plus or minus a year, decade, century, whatever, who knows how long it's been since he shuffled off to the great Nothing), this is his first time seeing the inside of the brig? Back on his cruise, if he acted up too much, and someone had to put him down? They went ahead and did it.

But not this time. No, now he's just sitting in a cell, dying of boredom, because the passengers don't have the balls to kill him.

But hey, you know what? Silver linings, looking at the bright side, turning lemons into lemonade, whatever: At least he doesn't have to pretend to be Jeff anymore.

Anyone who comes and visits (interrogates?) him will find that while he may look like sweet, simple, stupid Jeff, everything about him-- the way he moves, the way he speaks, the expressions on this face-- he's all Chase Collins.

Not that... not that anyone knows who Chase Collins is. But, well, if you want to find out, now's your chance.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I'm not going to say 'it's nice to meet you', Chase. It's not. But I acknowledge you. I recognize you for yourself."

Instead of just as a scrap.

There's a pause. He offers the thermos of coffee through the bars. It's good, dark roast. Of course he'd choose a good coffee for this.

With a sigh, he moves to sit across from Bash, on the other side of the bars. Coffee accepted.

"I didn't pick this body," he says, as if that helps anything. "It was just pure, dumb luck."

"There's no body that would have been okay. Obviously I'm attached to this one, but...these people are mine to take care of. We're a community."

He pauses, moving so he's right up against the bars.

"Do me a favor, Chase, and turn around here. I want to hold you for a bit. You, uh. Clearly never had that, have you?"

For a moment, he wonders if it's a trap. Bash gets his guard down, then chokes him out from the other side of the bars... But no, all the memories floating around Jeff's head pretty much immediately disprove that as a possibility.

He just misses Jeff. It's just sentimental desperation. Normally, Chase would see that as a weakness to exploit, but...

Screw it. Even he could use a break from fighting and scheming right now.

"Cuddles for coffee? Weird price, but okay." As if he doesn't want to be held by a hot guy, come on. Chase shifts, turns around, and leans back against the bars. "Dating wasn't really a priority back home."

There. Answering the question without explicitly admitting that, no, he doesn't have much experience being held.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart." It...sounds sincere. And the way one of Bash's hands combs up through Jeff's hair, nails scratching gently against his scalp, that's entirely intentional, meant for Chase to feel, as his other arm snakes through the bars to...

Hold him. Just. Hold him. It is gentle and tender and kind, kind in that ruthless way Bash has chosen to always be.

This feels nice, so nice, and honestly Chase doesn't really know how to compute it. Bash is still his enemy here, and Chase's goals (to live, to avoid returning to Nothing, to take out the Captain somehow) aren't going to budge, so how's he supposed to take this kindness?

It's just a temporary ceasefire. It changes nothing. He can just exist in the moment, fine.

He can't remember the last time he's done that. Just... existed.

"Ugh. Don't pity me. The guys at my school were lame."

"I'm not pitying you, Chase." The chuckle on the back of his words isn't forced. "What's to pity, anyway? I mean...if you wanna talk about it, I'm here to listen."

"There's nothing." Nothing to pity, and nothing to talk about. Of course, for as much as he says that, the resentment's plain in his voice. But, magic and homicidal tendencies aside, Chase is a pretty typical teenager, simultaneously aggrieved and unwilling to communicate.

He takes a sip of the coffee-- it is good, even with the rum-- and looks down at the arm snaked around his-- Jeff's-- body.

"You really miss him, huh." Why else would Bash be holding him right now? "Must be nice." Like, not right now, maybe, but just ever having had this at all. "I can't relate."

Okay, that's not entirely truthful.

Edited 2022-10-18 13:13 (UTC)

"This is not for him. He's not here, you've already mocked me about that. This is for you, Chase. This is the absolute tiniest piece of the kindness you should always have had in your life."

He laughs, breath soft along Chase's neck as he continues to play with his hair.

"I know, accepting it is hard. But this is my gift to you."

Nope. Does not compute. He does not get this. There's a catch, some kind of string attached. Does he think this is going to make Chase give up? Make him see the errors of his way and turn on Pickles, Ginger, and the others?

He clenches his teeth for a moment, takes a breath, then takes another sip.

"I have had this before, you know." He's not a total sad sack! "Not at home. Here." He snorts a little. "There were good people on my cruise, too." Chase wouldn't consider himself one of them, but hey: not everyone was a ruthless bastard.

Edited 2022-10-18 14:14 (UTC)

"Yeah? Are any of the good people possessing someone, hiding and scared? I can reach out to them for you, if you want. You know I'm not gonna out them or fuck with them."

Or is it just the ruthless bastards who had the drive to possess a fucker?

"Nah." Chase shakes his head. It could mean no, there are no good people, or it could be that he's just refusing to tell. Or maybe Chase doesn't know at all. Regardless, he's definitely not going to be naming any names-- not of his fellow ghosts, anyway.

"But--" He looks over his shoulder with a scowl, just to show how serious he is. "--and don't tell anyone this. If the Captain wakes up or stops.... whatever the hell he's doing, and we end up getting kicked back into the nothing..." He looks ahead again, away from Bash. "Can you put a name on that stupid shrine for me?"

"What shrine? I mean, I absolutely will, but where did I miss a whole-ass shrine on this ship?"

The scowl is met with a bodhisattva smile.

"Some Ava girl made a shrine for all the dearly departed of your cruise. I don't know where it is." And he wouldn't add to it even if he did. It's too pathetic for him to try.

But outsourcing that sentimentality, that's fine. Chase can live with that.

Well. In a manner of speaking.

"That cannibal cop told me about it."

"Whose name do you want me to add?" He can find Ava and add it later, that won't be hard.

(He likes Ava, she seems to have a sweet heart under her turtle shell.)

"A friend's. Her name was Kenzi." He tilts his head back against the bars and laughs, for once without any real bite. It's just affection and nostalgia. "She was this... short little goth chick. Completely fearless. I just knew she could kick my ass. Hell, no matter how much I pulled the big bad witch thing, she would never take me seriously. She'd always put me in my place. Like a sister I never had."

Chase makes a soft, bitter sound.

"I wish my cruise had been nothing but power hungry assholes like me."

"She sounds like an amazing woman. I'll remember her, put her name on Ava's shrine. Yours, too, if something happens. I know that doesn't sound like much. But I don't got nothing else I can do for you, I think."

The hand wrapped around Chase moves to rest against his heart.

"I'm sorry. I wish I did have an answer for you. Some solution that worked out neatly, where I got Jeff back and you could somehow stay and see what our voyage is like."

Chase shifts a little, for once expressing some discomfort and uncertainty. It looks like kindness really is his greatest weakness-- or, at least, he doesn't really know what to do with it. "Thanks. For her sake, I mean."

He looks down at where Bash's hand is resting, right over his heart. It's a bit of a weird thought, but he kind of wonders if it feels different, somehow. If he and Jeff are so fundamentally different that even his heartbeat is off.

"Yeah, well... Happy endings are for fairy tales." He snorts. "Hell. Not even fairy tales, most of the time. Disney movies or-- whatever. The point is, none of us are getting out of this with a happily ever after."

Ah, the wise philosophies of an 18-year-old.

"You're right." There's a bit of resignation there. Not despair, but an honesty about the situation Bash wouldn't normally wear out in public.

"But that makes it all the more important, trying to help one another have as happy a right now as we can. It was like that in Duplicity, too. We all knew we were gonna get fucked over nine ways to Sunday. But in the meantime, we formed genuine connections with one another, so when shit went down, we could--strictly metaphorically--lick one another's wounds and heal together. I think the passengers of your voyage never got the memo about how that was supposed to work, on the large scale."

"There were some passengers like that," he admits. "We saw what all that compassion did to them." You either let all those soft, kind parts of you get covered in callouses, or you go fucking insane with despair. "Those kinds of attachments just make you weak in the end. It's like a big flashing neon sign: here's all the ways you can hurt me! Have at!"

"I dunno, man. I made my choice when I was a child, years and years ago. I'd rather be hurt for being kind, always, rather than hurt others. Other folks got their decisions. But I'm hoping...I'm hoping we look at all the ways we can hurt one another, and decide as a group not to."

"Mm." Well, at least he's not outright dismissing the notion of kindness, though he's clearly not sold on it. "So what's the kindest choice here? You save your boyfriend, and damn my soul to oblivion--" Which is worse than hell, far as Chase is concerned. "--or, you let me live, and he suffers instead." He huffs out a breath, almost a laugh. "Someone's getting hurt either way. Looks like you're in a lose-lose situation here."

Edited 2022-10-24 14:00 (UTC)

"I am, and I don't have an easy answer to that. It sucks, all of it sucks. It is not your body, and you know that. I hate the idea of you going back to Nothing, but you're using a body that's not yours."

He sighs heavily.

"I wish I had answers for you."

"Believe me, if I could have my own body, I'd jump back to it in a heartbeat." And for as insincere and smarmy as Chase can be, that, at least, is an absolutely sincere sentiment. "This is like being stuck in an outfit that doesn't fit."

He snorts.

"Even the magic's all wrong."