come_sailaway | monday's child is fair of face (2/2)

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monday's child is fair of face (2/2)

CW: death, probably gore, possibly more TBA

[and that’s what you missed on glee.

and so, there “Friday” is, standing on the roof of the bar. the attention of the party has surely turned to her by this point, but she doesn’t care about that. she just needs one person to still be a little too distracted to stop what was coming next.

Monday snaps her fingers, and Jenny disappears from wherever she was standing before, reappearing directly in front of Monday, who embraces her from behind, an arm wrapped firmly around her middle. those with enhanced senses might catch what she whispers, seconds before she snaps Jenny’s neck so hard it hangs at a 90 degree angle as Monday kicks her, her corpse toppling forward onto the deck below.]

Surprise, bitch.

[well, there. unfinished business settled. onto more pertinent matters.]

Let’s get a little more comfortable first, hm? Can’t waste too much of her magic, but audiences love a quick change.

[she snaps her fingers, and Monday finds herself in an outfit that is far more to her taste. now. time for her grand performance.]

Greetings, foolish mortals! You may or may not have noticed that things have been a little bit different this month. While the Captain is off having a good old bitch cry about whatever it is he’s so upset about, poor little Friday was running herself ragged keeping this shitheap floating! She was so distracted, in fact, that she happened to have a little accident, while fixing something in the elevator shaft! [a laugh] I guess even clay bitches can break their necks! And there I was, sitting in Fucking Nowhere, doing Fucking Nothing, feeling Fucking. Nothing! And I saw her empty shell. And I was, like, hey, free real estate!

Whatever tear in the veil that your whiny little Captain just didn’t feel like fixing? I ripped that fucker right open. And you’ve all met a few of the sorry little fuckers that fell out already, hm? [another snap] Not all of them, but, hey, that’s what now is for, right? Because, see, we all kinda got together a little bit, and we were like… You know, just borrowing some shitty bodies to have some fun for a few weeks? What a waste! And we still have a lot of bitches we need to spring from jail!

And that! Is where you assholes come in! And, trust me, you are all assholes. Have you even seen some of the psychotic shit you people have said and done to us? Like, yeah, Mary is legitimately insane, but she’s still a kid! Even I’m not gonna call a fucking nine year old a bitch!

You can try to run, but I fucking hate running in heels, so I made that a little bit… difficult. So. Why don’t you nice people just lay down and let us kill you. I’ll be gentle. Promise.

[perhaps people have tried to flee already. they likely have. and they’ve found that the entire party area has been blocked off by the same sort of barrier that surrounds the realm, an invisible orb holding them captive.]

Now. Let’s get the actual party started!

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He wants to. He gets close enough to touch her and -- and she keeps calling him that. Calling him dad. Fio's awful, bratty laughter is still reverberating inside his skull. Daddy. I'm really sorry I wasn't a good kid.

He wraps a hand around her bicep, squeezing tightly. Reassuringly so, and then slowly increasing the pressure. She's wearing armor. She won't be hurt easily.

"Darcy," he says, his voice low and thick with regret. "I am sorry. I should have been watching out for you."

Darcy sniffs- her face is coated in blood like a lioness after a kill, most of it her own. There's cuts and tiny shards of ceramic still embedded in her forehead. Her eyes are bloodshot. Steady on.

"I shouldn't have got myself hurt- I'm sorry, I'll be better next time. I'm sorry- please- I just- the armour's cutting into me-"

Chrissakes, when did she get so whiny.

She looks awful. He wants to believe that it's her, that she's injured but alive and only now coming down from the adrenaline of a big fight. She lost her head, called him dad because she's in so much pain --

"We'll get you out of there," he says, pulling her slowly to her feet, "Slow and steady. I've got you."

Darcy leans up into him as he pulls her up, not quite putting all her weight on him. No, of course she'd still want to be standing on her own.

You know, pickpocketing is one thing she hadn't been taught back home. Fun new skill. And unsurprisingly, she's good at it. Always was dexterous. Her fingers are so light that Skully probably doesn't even feel the hand reaching into his jacket. Just a little bit further and she might be able to get at his gun-

"I'm fine- honestly- I just need to get up," putting on a brave face, as usual.

He keeps trying to parse out why the way she says things sounds so wrong. It's the right amount of pain, the right sort of terror... But she isn't angry enough. She isn't swearing at him, she isn't pushing him away, no flash of disgust across her face when he grabs her...

And more than that, she doesn't spare a single word toward anyone else. She doesn't mention Fio. She doesn't look for her friends. She's focused entirely on him.

His thumb drags across the armor beneath it, and for a moment it might feel suddenly very hot. Not enough to burn -- only to warn. He doesn't even notice the hand reaching for his gun.

"How hard was your landing?"

There's a brief flash of something like alarm across her face when she feels the armour heat- her big dark puppy eyes turn to him properly with confusion and fear.

"What- I- I don't know, it's kind of fuzzy- what are you doing?"

Her fingers wrap around the grip of the pistol, and if this is about to go where it seems like it's going, she won't need to worry about how she's going to get it out again.

"Are you feeling alright?"

It's the most genuine expression she's given so far, and he stills his hand. She's put out his fires before, quite literally -- if he's wrong about this, he would be risking a painful confrontation.

"No, I'm really not," he tells her plainly. "But you'll forgive me for it, I think." If he's making a mistake. If he isn't, then she likely won't even know what's happened.

He moves to reach for one of his revolvers, which is when he realizes where Darcy's hand already is.

... yeah, jig's up.

"Cazzo. It was the daddy dearest shit, werennit. I was kinda hoping you'd wanna buy it."

The revolver is withdrawn and smacked into his brow, and 'Darcy' immediately scrambles backwards, trying to put some distance between them. Darcy might want to be fucking around with her sword bullshit, but Avery is a sensible man who doesn't actually want to get up close with the batshit skeleton necromancer asshole. Not like that, anyway. Hot skeleton. Maybe in his own body.

Avery's only been in Darcy's head maybe a couple of minutes but... honestly it's enough to get a scope on the situation. Good thing about Darcy is she thinks real simple, easy to grasp, and the facts are laid out in front of him. Any moment he's getting sent back to the Nothing. All he can do is make a ruckus while he's here.

"Don't get me wrong, daddy, I know there's no way I'm gettin' outta this. But she weren't yours to break how you did."

Skulduggery's almost managed to grab his other revolver when the first one slams into his skull, sending him staggering backward. It isn't ideal, but he pulls his second revolver anyway, leveling it at the thing inside Darcy. Like a remnant, it'll only get worse the longer it's left inside her body.

"You must be insane, if you thought you could play on a skeleton's soft heart." It's a skeleton joke that's forced from between clenched teeth. "And I don't need a mad spirit giving me parenting advice."

He's in his armored suit, which is good, but his skull is exposed. He needs to be precise if he wants to avoid getting his own head blown off. Of course, he isn't concerned with dying; the only thing he's worried about is this ghost using Darcy to cause more damage.

"Parenting advice? You fuckin' kidding me? That's what got her into this shit! 'Oh I saw Avery like a father' 'oh I'm all sad and shit that he died'- you broke her. All of you did, with your fucking pansy-ass power of friendship 'I'm going to seduce the Captain' bullshit."

Avery stands taller than Darcy does, with the relaxed ease of the king of the jungle. He holds the revolver like it's the easiest thing in the world, one dark eye looking down the sights.

"You want advice? Stop confusing the kid. I made her a killer, and you don't keep a fightin' dog as a house pet. Give her a job and let her do it. You want her to not be a sad piece of shit enough to actually help you beat that motherfucker, you gotta stop this shit. It's embarrassing, for both of you."

It was bad enough when he got attached back home. Having others repeat his mistake here is just salt in the wound.

Edited 2022-10-28 07:56 (UTC)

Skulduggery loathes these ghosts more with every word out of their stolen mouths. It's easier than he'd thought to ignore the sting, but every word is barbed, holding fast and saved for later.

Well, not the part about seducing the Captain. That part is just rude.

"Up until now, I thought you were worthy of the pedastal she puts you on. Now I know you're not." He tilts his head. "What kind of job should she have? Patrolling the halls? Teaching inexperienced passengers how to fight? Keeping an eye on the irritating ghost boy?" He gestures with the gun. "She has plenty of responsibilities already. Ones she needs her body to get back to."

"I really, honest to God thought she knew I was a shitbag. That's not my fault. You wanna talk 'bout pedestals? I'm in her head. I know exactly what she thinks of you."

Avery smooths Darcy's hair back to get it out of his eyes. It's slick enough with blood and sweat that it stays there, and he takes a few steps to circle around. Every word is another second he's not condemned to Nothing, and he'll take what he can get.

"I know you're booting me out of here, don't get all possessive on me. In fact I bet it suits you just fine that she's dependent on you. Dunno why I'm trying. One of us wants her to be able to do whatever she wants, and the other wants her weak and needy and begging for his attention. You're the detective, you put two and two together."

"You're the insane remnant of a soul lost to the engine of the ship. The Darcy you knew and the Darcy you're currently inhabiting are two very different people."

He doesn't think he can shoot her. Not cleanly. He'd felt uncomfortable murdering Valkyrie's reflection, for God's sake, and that had just been a toy version of the real thing. But Darcy would prefer a quick death and clean resurrection. She probably wouldn't like him to dig around in her history through the mad spirit of her friend, either...

"You can't say you trained an attack dog to do a job, then turn around and say you want her to be able to do whatever she wants. You don't train a dog not to be obedient."

"Not that different, in some a the ways that matter. I get my own body back, I'll be sure to remind her of the lessons she's forgotten."

For all his bravado about not being able to hurt the heart of a skeleton... well, Darcy's been softening for a reason. Skulduggery still hasn't killed him yet. So the next few circling steps he takes draw closer.

"You teach a dog to bite back, to fight, it dun't matter where you drop it. It'll live. You coddle it, and the minute it's outside the house, mutt's fucked. Sure, I held the leash back home, but the plan's always that she'd outgrow me and make her own way. That's why you have kids, right? So they're better 'n you are. Do what you can't."

He gestures with the gun, "or, y'know, to have someone to stroke your ego, that seems to be working for you."

Skulduggery lets loose a short, unkind laugh. "Pathetic. No wonder it's so difficult to fucking talk to her." Because of course, she's been brought up by someone who sees people as tools to utilize instead of understanding people aren't weapons to be wielded against each other. It always backfires. Always.

"Oh, yes, she's been a blessing for my narcissism. Her shouting fuck you and looking nauseous at the sight of me has absolutely bolstered my self-esteem." He keeps Avery in front of him, even if it requires turning like the pin in the center of a wheel. "If you think that us inspiring each other to be better is a weakness, I honestly do not know what to tell you."

"Cazzo- she was hard to talk to before I got anywhere near her. First time I met her she fucking decked me. Broke my goddamn jaw."

Absolutely his fault, but the blame was a point of contention that they'd argued until he died.

"Oh you inspire her alright. You honestly think she's gotten better since she got here? She's gotten better at listening to you, maybe. She weighed up her gut, her instincts, her sense of self against your lies and threw them out so she could believe you. Does she love you, or does she just not know who she is without you? Is that better?"

Skulduggery resists the urge to shoot, which gets harder the longer Avery talks. But he refuses to release that bubbling fury, not when he still has a little more to learn. They're mostly out of sight from the rest of the chaos, which makes it easier, makes for much less conflict. Nobody questions which one of them is possessed when the other inevitably dies.

"What lies? The ones about my past? As if I'm the only person here running from the things they've done."

"Oh you believe your own bullshit and you're not just sellin' it to her, good to know."

A couple steps closer, not even circling now. If he was going to shoot, he would've done it by now, and Avery even lets the gun drop. In Darcy's roomy little head there's the memory of how to kill him, so all he needs to do is get close enough to hit him in the skull another couple of times. At least Darcy's been keeping up her training, she's definitely strong enough to crack his skull wide open.

"Tell you what- you let me lie low long enough to work out how to get a different body, and I'll write you the whole damn manual on how to get through to her. You want that, daddy? Fix everything, get her cuddling up and singing karaoke with you again?"

"Darcy doesn't know this, so you aren't aware either -- but I would be honored to be even a fraction of the man she thought I was."

He doesn't lower the gun, although he does gesture with it in wide, sweeping strokes of his arm, his finger off the trigger.

"You do realize how creepy it is that you're using her to call me that, right? You have to understand how gross that is."

"Obviously I do! Fucking obviously I do! It's- you people have no fucking appreciations for dramatics, e? I'm obviously going for something here and you just- vai a dar via il culo-"

He was doing a Bit!!! God!!!

A moment to recover from momentarily going red in the face, and the breaths he doesn't need to take shake his shoulders.

"She wants me here, you know. I know she does. I killed her and she still wants me here. You could make her happy, for once, if you let me stay."

"I know what you were going for, and I'm telling you, it's weird. Stop it."

He remembers Darcy telling him about Avery. About what he'd done to her, and why. It's almost enough to earn some sliver of sympathy from him -- or, it would be, if only he had any sympathy left to give. But he is tired. Numb. Ready for this to be over.

He lowers his gun, considering... and then holsters it.

"Why would she care about you?" he asks, exhaustion seeping into his voice. "You're the insane reflection of an awful man. She could just wait for a less mad version of you to be pulled onto the ship."

"I know it was-" huh, he's actually lowering his gun. Alright, the ol' exorcist 'come lick me' number can wait. Another few steps closer, they're almost at a conversational distance now.

"Pot and kettle buddy. Not like I was much better back in our world. I know she told you what happened to me."

Avery rubs above his mouth with his free hand, "I dunno why she still does. I'm in her head and I still can't- I dunno. I don't know. It's... some things are clearer and some are..."

A step or two closer. The best acts start with a grain of truth, and the longer he does sit with the feelings and memories in her head... the more confused he gets.

"It's hard, trying to sort out which memories are yours and which are hers." He imagines it must be like absorbing the memories of a reflection, except these come with the full rainbow of emotions. Lots to process. Lots to sort through.

"When you see her, what would you even say to her? What would you tell her, if you could face her in your own body again?"

He knows those bodies are here, somewhere. The zombies were proof enough of that...

"...hunters. 's what took my Darling from me back home. They exorcised her out of me. She wants to know, it... kills her not knowing. She doesn't need gooey 'I'm proud of you whatever bullshit from me. She's better 'n that. She should be better 'n that. And y'know what, I'm telling her that myself, stronzo-"

It's a pity to end it like this. Maybe they could even be friends, after he gets his body back. Avery keeps eye-contact with his sockets. And raises the gun again lightning quick, ready to smack it back down into his brow.

Skulduggery doesn't give Avery the same courtesy of looking him in the eyes, his attention trained on the gun in hand. He sees her hand flex just a split second before he lifts it; it happens so fast that he's still processing what Avery said when he has to retaliate.

He flings his hand out from where it rests by his holster, fingers held straight and tight together. The air between him and Darcy's body snaps taut, a razor-thin plane of thin air aimed directly at her throat. Air is better utilized as a concussive force, and yet here in the darkened, crumbling corner of the promenade, it becomes sharp enough to slice through muscle, skin, and cartilige. Bone, it seems, withstands the assault, but that hardly matters as the rest of her neck bursts along its new seam.

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saltwaterlungs - 2022-10-29 07:00 (UTC) - Expand

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monday's child is fair of face (2/2)

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cw: decapitation

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