come_sailaway | ( catch all | november ) i hold you so proudly, traumas they surround me

Entry tags:

( catch all | november ) i hold you so proudly, traumas they surround me

Who: clarke griffin + you!
What: revival, then general coping attempts throughout the month
When: november
Where: all around
Warnings: blood & gore, mentions of more blood & gore & also murder & possession, will add as necessary

i. say you're here, but i don't feel it ( windjammer → cabins, november 1st )

( clarke wakes up whole and mostly unscathed. the hole blown in the flesh and cartilage of her chest is healed, the eye she doesn't remember losing is returned, and this time she doesn't thrash and fight around in the covers of the bed. just lays there for a few heartbeats, and starts wailing — likely in concert with several other newly revived passengers in other rooms. sometimes you just need to scream about the futility of death, now that you can breathe deeply enough to do so.

afterwards, she checks her phone. they've been operating on the 3-day revival for a month, and she has to wonder if that's persisted. half expects it to be november 3rd when looking for the date, and then any pleasant surprise is undermined by seeing message notifications she'd never gotten the chance to check. she's up and out and dashing down the hallway without so much as changing out of the utterly ruined, gore streaked remains of last night's nurse costume. out of one crisis and immediately into another, she's seeking deputy pratt and won't stop moving until she finds him. that's easily the first hour of her third revival spent right there.

it'll be later, somewhere between 7 and 8am that she's trailing from windjammer all the way back to the cabin halls. the space between clarke's ears is alive with an unfriendly, overwhelming sort of buzz; she's vaguely more aware of the setting around her being made whole again, no more scorch marks, scattered debris, or blood. walls reformed, doors back on their hinges — the works, and it's all perfect. if she had any sense of self, she'd now feel extremely out of place walking against a backdrop of luxury looking like a silent hill knock off. the white of the nurses outfit is mostly stained black by now, though the blood has dried into a stiff mess. there's a decent sized hole in the the fabric on the right side of her dress, though beneath that mess is smooth and unblemished skin instead of exposed cartilage and a hint of bone. blood is drying and flaking off from her hands, the bandages still wrapped around left forearm and right calf are filthy. blond hair made a dull sort of ashy tan with the dust of the floor collapse, and at some point she'd lost the dumb little nurses hat. and maybe the most alarming, the distinct halo of pitch black blood encircling her left eye — where it'd been torn out, bled profusely, then replaced but none of the gore wiped off while being put back together again.

around her she can hear the sound of other people, be that weeping or shuffling around behind their cabin doors. life has resumed, but clarke can't bring herself to rightly engage with it yet. just sways slightly as she walks, staring straight ahead like she can see through the walls and people alike. )

ii. give me peace, but then you steal it ( various, all month )

( so that had been the nothing. that was what befell every previous passenger before them — clarke had done the math once: 100 to 150 people, every six years, for at minimum 200 years based on the age of gil's diner... came out between 3,300 to almost 5,000 souls just existing, tortured, here yet nowhere at the same time — and that was what they were all heading for once they'd exhausted their usefullness to the captain. it'd been a shaking, soul shattering thing to experience. and she'd only been there an hour.

there's no quick bounceback. one may go about their day to day activities, but clarke at least has a hard time shaking off the hangover feuge state.

( a. ) she may be sitting in the library, books open and notes half-heartedly scratched to her left. but then her mind will catch onto the memory of that numb, lacking sensation, and her gaze will wander until she's just staring blankly. at the walls, at people, at, resoundingly, nothing.

( b. ) it's a common occurance in windjammer as well, with a forkful of food halfway to her mouth and held there, suspended, until the entire meal goes cold.

( c. ) a less common occurance, a one off if you will: see clarke griffin standing in front of the wall that produces their ghost-made meals in stellar. she's picturesque tension, but still. holding a bowl of tomato soup so fresh-hot it's mildly scalding her hands. still and staring, still and staring — until with a wet crack, she's hurling the dinnerware at the wall, painting a portion of it red with well seasoned soup. then she's just watching it seep down to the baseboards.

( d. ) even rarer, catch her in sand dollars, hunched over at one of the tables and staring out the expansive windows that look out onto the promenade. sometimes she catches sight of her reflection in the glass and startles slightly. but it's not a big enough series of jumpscares, and there's no such thing as enough caffine in this shop to prevent her from eventually leaning her head onto the sleek tabletop. just for a moment, she insists. her eyes are burning from a lack of rest and the salt of tears long since cried, they just need to rest. she doesn't mean to outright fall asleep, but —

( e. ) or else find her, for the first and probably one of the only times, in the pool. in a black serena eterna branded one-piece, floating on her back, staring at the evening sky, and trying her best to barely move while still staying above water. letting the water fill her ears in that sensory-dulling way it does, breathing shallowly; pursuing that sense of nothingness once more, like given a second crack at it would allow her to parse out how she's supposed to deal with the panic that dredges up everytime she closes her eyes to blackness. (it won't work of course. eventually she'll have to get out.)

iii. watch them laugh at all my secrets ( photos at sea, november 6th )

( no matter what she's been told about the end of the party by those who managed to live through to see it, it's still a strange sort of violating. knowing her body had been out there under the control of someone not herself, wrecking havoc, and even killing someone clarke would struggle to call a good friend but is confident she'd at least never hurt like that. it's not quite a memory gap, as she remembers dying (almost dying, apparently) but still feels like lost time. and it eats at her that she doesn't know what she — he — had done. there was no forced broadcast like the battle royale, there's no highlights replayed that could be watched. but there is the photo shop. and several days after reanimation, clarke can be found standing in front of a big display of prints, stiff backed and staring — aggressively searching for any sign of herself amid the display.

most of it seems party-centric now. there's some bits and pieces she remembers: one extreme close up as she'd been wound up about to punch a jump scare animatronic. she sees one or two of erin as smurfette, vance in the silly edgy vampire get up she'd mocked him for, and rita in her even worse cat dress. there's also a candid of natsuno laughing with his hand on fire in front of ebalon, that's a scene she'd watched play out in horror. and, in the background of a chaos shot she can see herself sitting, bleeding out, while he'd been holding her hand.

and then there's others: a close-up of her face contorted, looming over a struggling rita on the ground, and screaming something she doesn't remember. there's one where she's standing with a foot on the back of a man she doesn't know's head. another where she's smiling fondly at fio, who looks furious in a way she'd never imagined the little girl could, and the world seems to be burning in the background. another where she's lying on her back in the midst of some rubble, peaceful like she were tanning at the beach instead of half paralyzed and waiting for death. but the one that really gets her is, again, featuring natsuno yuuki. in it, she's holding his face with both bloodied hands, smiling a fiercely unkind, delighted smile which he's returning in kind. it doesn't look right on either of them, faces distorted past overarching personality. it's like witnessing a weirdly intimate and familiar moment between strangers, something she's not supposed to see, and certainly not featuring her visage as a main player. along the bottom of the portrait is thick script that proclaims "best friends for life", just to seemingly add a little insult to injury.

and clarke hates it. she hates it so fucking much. hate as a steady, slow filling replacement for every drop of blood in her body until — she's all full up and moving to rip each of these pictures from the shelves. you ever get struck with the aching desire to remove all traces of your existence from the record, and go off the grid? it's a bit like that. some she rips up immediately, some she hugs to her chest with one arm like collecting kindling for a fire. but the ships mechanics seem to be working flawlessly once more, and it seems like every time she turns around the photos have replaced themselves, or alternated into new tableus of awfulness. removing them all is futile, the flash of images relentless, and eventually clarke snaps.

just stops, drops everything in her arms and reaches behind the counter for anything big enough to absolutely hurl at the display wall. the register's next. and if there's a stool behind it for their ghostly cashier, that's third, fourth, fifth, sixth... )

iv. scream and yell, but i feel speechless ( playback, second half of the month )

Hey.

( the arcade has, inadvertantly and unexpectedly, become a place of solace. the distraction of lights and bright sounds from the game systems, the gentle swell of music from the teen lounge area, the dark of the room as a whole juxtaposed by the illuminous opportunity for escapism. even the tinkling disembodied giggle that seems to live here is easily ignored. it's where she'd run with natsuno after cracking a hole in the side of the captain's head that failed to kill him. it's also where the two of them had shot dinosaurs in the wake of the desert death race, and she'd cried to him about killing her mother in the future. usually when clarke ventures here, it's with her best friend in tow, but today she's here alone. and there's really only so far she can get in a game of air hockey just alone.

so, first person she sees nearby gets flagged down. politely, if not enthusiastically. you can stand in a shower and scrub gore off your skin and out of your hair, but not much can be done for the bags beneath the eyes and exhaustion practically etched into your dna. there's no smile, but a sweeping open gesture to the opposite end of the table. )

I need a second. Feel like a game?

v. ask for help, you call it weakness ( sports deck, every tuesday )

( maybe the only good thing that comes from being distantly introduced to ivar the boneless via pictures and vague retellings from party survivors is —

clarke can use this as a push in a direction she'd been considering for a while.

the second and third fight club of the month will find her up on the sports deck, notebook and pen abandoned in favor of a blunted practice sword. no attempt to be covert and sneaky like how she'd previously stared longingly at the gun range, but also no attempt to seek out guidance. just a girl, standing in front of a sword rack, trying to twirl a sword in her hands and accidentally yeeting it a few feet away.

or fumbling and dropping it directly onto her toes with a yelp.

or losing control and smacking herself in the face with the flat side of the fake blade.

...at first she'd been disappointed these blades weren't real, but after further experimentation — )

Ow, shit, goddammit!

vi. lied and promised me my freedom ( wildcard! )

( y'all know the drill! feel free to take these prompts and twist 'em a little to fit your needs, hit me with something left of field, or hit me up on discord or inb4circlejerk for further plotting! this post will also be a catch-all for any closed threads that crop up during the month! title inspiration. )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ylva creeps up, quiet. She'd had some notion of sleeping in a chair on the pool deck, but there's someone in the pool, surprise surprise. Carefully, she sits herself down on the edge, feet dangling in the water.]

Are you all right?

With water lapping around the side of her head and flooding her ears, Clarke admittedly only half-hears the inquiry. It comes through in that murky, muffled way words do when one's half submerged, but it's more than enough to grab her attention. She lets her legs sink down to the point she can stand, chlorinated water lapping idly around her shoulders and regarding Ylva with... Well, something between wariness, curiosity, and dead, flat eyes of exhaustion.

But nods in return to the question.

"Totally fine," Clarke lies gracefully. The ship isn't big enough to avoid people completely, she's fairly sure she's seen the other woman around plenty. But given they've never held so much as a conversation before, Clarke figures she won't be called on this line of bullshit.

"...If you're wanting to get in, don't let me stop you. I can float myself over there, in the deep end."

"I mean, the pool is big enough for two people. More, really. And a lot of the time, I like to be an otter in the water anyway, and otters are... well, not real small, but smaller."

Still, Ylva stays on the edge, kicking her bare feet gently through the pool.

"It's okay if you're not okay, you know. After... well, everything."

That sounds like something Clarke would say, a kindness and comfort she'd readily extend to anyone other than herself. And it's almost enough to make her grin, albeit sadly and without the expression truly reaching her eyes. Instead what they get here is a slight twitch at the corners of the mouth, then her brow furrows and she tilts her head.

"An otter?"

Classic deflection, but also a very real curiosity. She's done her best to come to terms with the many varied sorts of people around her — omnics, magicians, gods, vampires, ghosts, etc — and is well aware of shapeshifters amongst the masses. But coming from a world devoid of anything but the destructive nature of man-made apocalypses, it's still a wild concept, and she wants to make sure she heard the other woman properly. Be an otter...

"Mm. I'm a druid. I can shapeshift. I'm a wolf, first, but I have a bunch of shapes."

Casual, like it's not a big deal, because it's... not, really. Not to her. It's just what she is. "And otters are better in the water than wolves are, you know. That's just how it is."

The puzzle piece slides into place, the lightbulb goes off. She'd been distracted in the desert at night, but not distracted enough to not notice a dinosaur stomping along in her sideview mirror. On the beach, Natsuno Yuuki had shared a name and a history of being... raised among wolves? Her memory's spotty but wolves were involved — this lady was a wolf actually? Right?

For the first time today, something undercuts the dead-eyed, here-but-not-really-here glaze in Clarke's eyes. She visibly perks up, even wades a step or so closer to Ylva, and gracelessly (excitedly) babbles:

"Are you the dinosaur?"

She grins broadly. "Yeah, sometimes. That's a fun shape. Being that big isn't always the best plan, but I mean, surrounded by zombies? Definitely the way to go. They can't do much to you that way."

Ylva shrugs. "You can call me Ylva."

"I'm Clarke. One of the drivers."

They don't have to actually dwell on how awful that whole zombie episode and the mad dash through the desert was in order to chat about it idly, right? It already feels like it happened a long time ago.

"...thank you, by the way." For being one of the main contributing factor for keeping the number of deaths she would have felt responsible for, having dragged a rover full of people out there in the first place, at zero.

"Oh, you were?"

It does seem like a long time ago, and yet in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't. It's just that things are so eventful here, sometimes. Still, Ylva's expression softens a little. "You're welcome, I guess. Look. I'm just glad I could help. It was... pretty bad."

"It still could have been worse," Clarke insists, to better drive home that there'd been a running thread of gratitude long before they'd met properly. But then she's remembering that she doesn't actually know how many people had died out there, never bothered to tally, and some of the light in her face dims out.

That's how it's been since the Halloween party, a momentary flare of something enthusiastic, then the slow decline back into reserved and shell shocked.

"Look," Ylva says, gesturing vaguely with her hands, "we have to look out for each other here. We have to. If we don't... well, what's the point if we don't? I don't care if it's stupid, that's what I'm going to do."

She takes a deep breath, and kicks her feet through the water again. "I'm not going to let myself be convinced to not take care of people."

Clarke ultimately and easily nods along with Ylva's proclamation, because it's right. But there's a perpetual undercurrent of thought in her brain that screams the sort of peaceful cooperation it'd take to really matter is probably beyond them. No way 100% of this ship falls in line with each other, disagreements and vendettas have already sprung up. She's not entirely innocent in that regard.

So, principle? Hands-down agree. Practice? If only the same conviction was there. And in the moment —

"That's good. That's noble and necessary, and I'm pretty sure most everyone agrees that's the mindset it'll take to get out of here."

"Almost everyone, yeah," she says, with a wry edge to her voice. She knows. Doesn't know what to do about it, but she knows. She's not innocent either.

"You'd think that being able to be a giant predator would do more for making people listen to you, but it actually doesn't."

"Reputation's a bit weird here," Clarke muses, because she assumes Ylva means she's talking to people as herself and not as a terrifyingly large and feather-bristly Allosaurus. Which is fair and unfair in the same hat, but people seldom listen to Clarke either.

"But I can't think of anyone who wouldn't immediately stop what they were doing if a giant dinosaur roared directly in their face though, so... Don't stop trying?"

"I mean, I wasn't going to stop trying, but yeah."

She gives a little laugh, and reaches down to drag her fingers through the pool water. "Maybe I'm just not much of a leader. But I guess that's okay. I can keep people on their toes if they do start plotting against the boat. Or in favour of the captain. Or something."

"I've never met a leader who could hold rank without the support of seriously good enforcers, though. That's more than just okay."

Even coming out of her mouth, Clarke can feel that this might... miss the mark as a form of encouragement. But she'd never have gotten anywhere back home without the likes of Bellamy and Octavia Blake, Raven Reyes, and a wide range of others backing her plays so. It's the first and easiest sentiment on her tongue.

A brief, awkward pause of self awareness. But inevitably soldiered past in the name of curiosity, and also because this may be one of the most interesting conversations she's had this month — and hasn't tempted too many negative memories to the surface yet.

"Is it rude to ask what all else you can turn into? I mean, I heard you just say you have a bunch, do you have other favorites?"

"It's not rude."

She kicks her feet again, idly. "I'm a wolf first. That's... whatever I look like, I'm a wolf. I can also be a dire wolf, which is a really big wolf, and that's a lot of fun. Um." Ylva shrugs. "I can be any animal I've had a chance to watch for a little bit, figure out how they work. I like otters for swimming, and a rat for when I want to go unnoticed. I know a few really good snakes, though. I know a really good giant snake shape, and oh, we went to this jungle once where there were these snakes with wings. Those are fun."

She pauses, then adds, "Once I entered a camel race, as the camel. My friend Have Mercy was the jockey. We won."

For what feels like the first time in a long time, Clarke can't help but crack a small sliver of a smile at that last anecdote.

"Would that technically have been cheating, or was shapeshifting fair game?"

"It wasn't cheating! I didn't have an advantage over any of the other camels. Maybe I'm smarter, but it was also the first time I'd been a camel and those legs are kind of a lot."

Ylva glances to one side, and smirks. "But it's true that we didn't exactly say I wasn't a regular camel."

The lines around her grin deepen infinitesimally. "I say if it wasn't expressly written in the rules, it probably doesn't count."

A long beat, then —

"I'm sorry, a snake with wings? Like... a miniature dragon?"

"... Not really like a dragon. Maybe a little, but they aren't dragons." Ylva waves her hand vaguely. "I can't turn into a dragon because dragons aren't animals. They're people."

These are important rules and classifications, okay.

"That is... not how I expected that sentence to end."

Because I can't turn into a dragon because they're not real had been shining bright in Clarke's predictive text. This in turn gives her pause, but after a beat of silence spent in further thought...

"But, different worlds I guess. Do you not consider human beings to be animals?"

"Well, of course. But it's... I don't know." Ylva looks puzzled. This is actually a very good point that Clarke has raised and there's no good reason except Game Mechanics Say So. "I think it's just maybe that it's too much like what I already am? There's no way to become different. And dragons are shapeshifters, a lot of them, which complicates things."

She tilts her head. "How did you expect that sentence to end?"

That's a decent answer as much as it's a lacking one. Please picture preteen Clarke Griffin as being That Kid who raised their hand too much in lessons and debated the teacher, or asked for specifics that they didn't know about which just got them rankled and annoyed. The urge is there in this moment, too. Ylva is unlike anyone she's ever met before, there's so many questions, but — chill out.

"'Because dragons don't exist'. But saying it out loud, I'm hearing the home-world prejudice, sorry. We didn't have a tenth of the powers represented on this ship where I came from."

"... dragons don't exist where you're from?"

Ylva is honestly, truly, openly baffled. This is a thing that had never occurred to her. "I mean, I knew a lot of the worlds people were from had no magic, which also seems crazy to me. I don't know how anything in your worlds can even work. And I know there's an awful lot of humans here. But I never thought that maybe there weren't dragons."

( catch all | november ) i hold you so proudly, traumas they surround me

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