Do you think that there’s a way I could ever get too far?

[saltwaterlungs]

CHARACTERS: Darcy and superfriends
DATE: Nov 1
LOCATION: Darcy’s cabin, sports deck.
SITUATION: Darcy reviving, and a memorial for the ghosts.
WARNINGS: Aftermath of Halloween event, so references to blood/violence/etc

come visit me in the back of an ambulance

The last thing she remembers is the fall. Darcy wakes up in bed, in her dented armour, with dried blood spattered all the way down her front. No Calcite. Fuck. She’s got to-
No pain. She’s been healed. A glance down at her hands reveals that the ‘Hold Fast’ Izzy had tapped into her knuckles is gone, as are the curling lines over her veins where the gauntlet had burned into her.
…

No time for feeling sorry for herself. She extracts herself from her armour and showers for… honestly an hour. It’s not like she has to worry about a water bill. Every now and again the memory of her hand inside Natsuno and around Fio’s neck flashes back into her mind, and she scrubs harder, until her now-unadorned hands are red and raw. It doesn’t help.

Eventually she drags herself back into her room, gets into her pyjamas- because she’s not going fucking anywhere- and fires off texts to basically everyone whose number she has.

you okay?

A saline communion that I held like a séance

That night, as she’d planned before everything went to hell, she makes her way up to the sports deck. Finds a quiet corner, sets up a sheet and a pillow on the ground. Whatever paper flowers she’s managed to scrounge go on it- as does some bread and bottles of water. Some perfume, a couple of candles she’d saved from the Spirit Halloween… it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. She sits at the foot of the bed and tries her best to remember what she’d written down.

“Dead of this ship. There are too many of you to name and honour individually. I’ve laid out this grave for you to rest in tonight, for all of you. Receive these offerings; if you hear this, it’s for you. I’m… sorry we can’t do more right now. Believe me that we are fighting for you. And… I’m sorry it turned out like this.”

Darcy will hold vigil here all night, until the sun comes up.

Comments

séance

[myagic]

Emotionally drained or not, Rita sure as hell can't sleep after everything that's happened. Antsy, she wanders the ship, a nervous and agitated sort of energy that she gets every so often on this boat, at the horrors out of her control--and the feeling's only worse tonight.

She ends up on the sports deck, staring in the direction of the bridge...before she finds her attention sliding to the weird display, and tiredly heads towards it.

"What's with all thi--ugh, it's you," she groans when she recognizes Darcy's face. Great. As if she wasn't already tired enough, now there's the moody weirdo (thinks Rita, who is not at all a hypocrite or anything).

[saltwaterlungs]

"No, close, 'ugh it's you' was my aunt."

Darcy huffs, not getting up from where she's sat.

"Its... a memorial. For the dead. It's for all of them, so any of them can... rest here. Receive the offerings and prayers and whatever. The dead being angry is what dragged us into this, so."

[myagic]

Rita sighs in exasperation--was that supposed to be a joke?--and crosses her arms, looking at the display again with a displeased frown.

"So, what, you're giving them offerings after what they did to us?" Logically, Rita knows that with all the hundreds of ghosts that must exist on this ship, they wouldn't all be like that. She still remembers (as if she could ever forget) the zombies at the diner, some of whom were almost recognizable.

It's just--still too soon, and she's angry at the ghosts for taking their anger out on her friends.

"--They had no right."

[saltwaterlungs]

"They didn't have any right. I got possessed too, I know. Some things you do not because the person or people deserve it, but because it's the right thing to do."

Darcy remains still and statuesque, her hands flat on her blade.

"They should be allowed to rest. They should get an end to their suffering. We should stop them if they start to hurt people, but we need to care for them too."

[myagic]

Any other time, Rita probably would've snapped back something along the lines of her not needing to be told what's right versus wrong. Tonight, she's too tired for that kind of petty bickering, so she just huffs out a sharp sigh.

...It's not like she doesn't sympathize at all with the ghosts, or doesn't think they should be allowed to rest. Even for as angry as she is, she doesn't think they deserve to be tortured in that void for eternity.

So, at length--and without looking directly at Darcy from where she's stiffly standing nearby--Rita finally asks, "And how's this supposed to help, exactly?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"...does where you're from not have like, funerary customs?"

Genuine curiosity there, and she looks directly at Rita with a tilt of the head.

[myagic]

"Of course there are," she shoots back automatically--then runs a hand through her hair and glances sidelong at Darcy.

"I mean... All that stuff is...determined by the living, though. Not the ghosts--not that my world has ghosts," she adds quickly, as if this is a vital detail she shouldn't forget. "So...how are we supposed to know what ghosts even find helpful?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Well, first of all, you remember the fact that this is what I do back home, right? I told you I hunt ghosts? Second,"

Darcy huffs, trying to remember how Terre Mére would've put it.

"Okay, you live your whole life in your culture. You know that when the dead are buried, and flowers put on their grave, and candles lit for them, it means everyone who knew the dead is super sad they're gone and miss them and love them. Right? So then you die. And you're scared and angry and nobody can see you anymore, and you're not ready, and all that. And then they bury you, and give you flowers, and light candles. And you know that the living still care about you. That's why we have traditions like that."

[myagic]

So much happened after that day, that...she actually did kind of forget, although she isn't going to admit it. "This isn't what I'd picture for hunting," she interjects instead, but does listen to Darcy's explanation.

...Hm. It's almost annoying that it makes sense. She does remember now--Darcy had said something about lingering...emotions, or whatever.

"...You got possessed too," she starts after a long moment turning the words over in her head. "So you were in that...void. Even if we'd wanted to...we couldn't have seen something like this. What makes you think the ghosts can recognize that you're even doing this for them?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Was anyone doing this while we were possessed?"

Darcy sits up a little straighter, looks back to the vigil.

"This is my job anyway. I have to do it, even if it doesn't work. I have to try."

And then a sidelong look at Rita.

" 'm sorry you got possessed. I... get it. It sucks."

[myagic]

All Rita can do is stay silent, because obviously she has no idea. The dubious look on her face only suggests that she finds it unlikely people were doing anything but fighting and panicking at the time.

She crosses her arms, then looks away after meeting Darcy's glance.

"...Feel sorry for the ones who were there longer than a few hours. Though I guess that's kind of what you're already doing, aren't you?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"Pretty much."

...

"I've... died a bunch before now. And it sucks, but... This grave is for everyone, even the people who came back. If you want a minute to sit with... it, then no judgement."

[myagic]

...She had talked about it a bit with Ava, a couple months ago. Had thought about how she'd never really done anything like this for Yuri and Flynn after they vanished, or for the zombie forms they'd seen at the diner, or anything else.

Maybe it's weird to have this moment after the explosive argument they had last time they spoke, but...

Wordlessly, Rita steps closer to the makeshift grave. She doesn't sit or offer any tokens or words. She just closes her eyes and brings her hands together.

...She doesn't take very long. Maybe a minute, at most. And then...awkwardly, quietly... "Do you think...it reached them?"

[saltwaterlungs]

"I hope it did."

Whoever 'they' are, anyway. It's not her place to ask.

" 'm not gonna tell you it did for sure or anything, but I hope so."

[myagic]

"...Yeah." She hopes it did too.

Another long, silent moment goes by before she speaks up again, glancing sidelong at Darcy. "So...here I thought you were all stab, no thinking, but there's actually a little more to you." She doesn't actually intend it as an insult, even if it does come out like the most backhanded compliment ever.

[saltwaterlungs]

"... was that genuinely meant to be a compliment?" Darcy asks, baffled, "because if I'm meant to be insulted right now I want to make sure it's on purpose."

[myagic]

"How did that sound anything like an ins-" she halts, brows furrowed, before trailing off with, "...Oh." The no thinking--okay, she supposes she can see how someone overly sensitive might take that--wait, she's trying not to start another fight here.

"I'm saying you're not as useless as you--wait, I mean..."

...

She runs a hand through her hair and then, finally, reluctantly, scrounges up the words for what she actually means. "--I brushed off all the soul and ghost stuff you were talking about before, but--I guess I'm saying that it--it was a mistake." And then, quickly, "But don't let that go to your head or anything!"

....Nailed....it....?

[saltwaterlungs]

Darcy watches with some impish amusement as Rita struggles to actually say what she's saying as a compliment and not just a backhanded insult. Rita gets there eventually, and Darcy briefly takes her hand off her sword to rest near her mouth.

"Thanks. Don't worry, I won't. But you know I'm like, not woo about this shit, yeah? Ghosts are this real in my world-"

She pulls up her sleeve to reveal one of the scars on her arm, long and jagged like the claws of a great animal.

"-and not every case we investigated was an actual haunting. One time it was just a bunch of rats. I knew what I was doing enough to do it, yeah?"

[myagic]

She huffs a little at Darcy's amusement, biting back the urge to demand if the other girl is laughing at her--stupidly embarrassing or not, she did finally get where she meant to go, and they're not fighting over something trivial. Which, after yesterday, she can admit...is important.

Her annoyance ebbs away at the sight of the scar--huh. "Oh...so the 'hunting' part wasn't always just metaphorical." And, well--the corner of her mouth twitches up despite herself at the rat thing.

"But, anyway... Compared to plenty of others, you have a better idea what you're doing here." Others like...herself. All this soul business was really out of her league, and her faint amusement drops. "I didn't know what to do yesterday..."

[saltwaterlungs]

"Nope. Metaphorical and literal. Usually it just meant seeing what we could do to help the ghost pass on, but that one... was a real hunt."

If Rita's interested she can ask, but no point launching into a whole story if she's not.

"It kinda went into a free for all right away, didn't it? I just... set my sights on taking down the possessed, went from there. It wasn't perfect. Lots of people still ended up getting hurt. Next time we need plans, I think. Solid ones. For the next time something like this happens. What to do, where people who aren't fighters can go."

[myagic]

Rita hums thoughtfully, looking at the makeshift grave again. "Taking down the possessed," she echoes quietly. She'd panicked, with the hypnosis suddenly wearing off. Could she have been able to take down something wearing her friend's face if her head had been clearer?

...She doesn't want to think about a next time. Not yet. Not with the now deeply-rooted worry that next time, they could be joining the ghosts permanently.

"Do ghosts possess people in your world?" she asks instead.

[saltwaterlungs]

"Sometimes. Not very often. It depends on the ghost. Culture influences a lot of how they act; most of the ghosts in my city haunted places, not people. But there was one of us in-"

Ah, Rita is probably from the same world as Jade, that means she doesn't know anything about Earth geography.

"-the capital city of my country who specialized in that sort of thing. I know how to do an exorcism, but that's... it's complicated. We- ghost hunters- are kind of a secret in my world, so we aren't like... the last word on the supernatural or anything. There's churches and shit with their own rituals and everything."

That's a lot of words about things and Darcy rubs the back of her neck nervously.

"Sorry, long way to answer that."

[myagic]

She turns fully to look at Darcy once more, lifting her hands in a slight, tired shrug. "That's fine. Most things in life aren't that simple. Or unlife too, I guess." It's weird, how quickly things turned--she finally admitted there were ghosts on the ship and they became a very real problem almost immediately. Or...maybe it was that she'd been ignoring the potential problem all along.

She considers the exorcism topic a moment, hand raising to her chin in thought. "So...I guess exorcisms aren't something you can just do at a moment's notice, right? Or else you would've gone for that last night."

[saltwaterlungs]

Denial certainly is a coping strategy that works all the way up until you have to face what you're avoiding. Darcy makes a small affirming noise and then... chews for a bit on how to phrase it.

"I used part of an exorcising prayer against the ghost inside a friend of mine. And it... looked like it worked. But then someone wrote that exorcisms don't work and... when shit went down, I figured we didn't have time for me to wonder too much about it. Every second they were up was another second they could be hurting people. I wish there had been another way."

[myagic]

One of these days she might even need to stop denying that this isn't her first time on a haunted ship. Today is not that day, though, and at this point that very short exploration of the Atherum feels like a lifetime ago.

Anyway...she gets what Darcy means. Once all hell broke loose, it wasn't like anyone had the time to test what would work and what wouldn't. So, all Rita can do tilt her head in a slight nod. "Yeah...me too."

She lets a moment of silence pass. "...Hey, you said before that you can see ghosts, right? Including the ones on the ship?"