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The silent judgement from Clarke was honestly the most familiar thing about the ship thus far. Darcy's school back home was single-sex, nothing but other girls with all that entailed. She never learned to navigate their occult rituals and dances properly, but she can weather those Looks like nothing else. Go on. Say something, she dares you.

"It'd be... weird for him to say he is if he isn't, right? Could easily be all, muahaha, what I am is beyond your imagination."

As much as she deeply wanted to just say 'I asked nicely' and look off into the distance like he gave the sword back just because she was such a stone cold badass, the last thing everyone needed was a muddling of information because someone wanted to look cool. So she explains;

"Whatever he is, he bleeds. He seems to control whether or not things can interact with him: my sword went right through, but a punch hit his shoulder. And... I offered things to make me suffer, but all he wanted was to hear me beg and say 'please'. And he likes us best when we're being evil and cowardly, apparently. Edgy motherfucker."

There's nothing to say. Nothing that matters, at least. Just quiet notes like — acrobatic, cocky, wields a sword, too young for this shit — that will be going into her running list of notes at some point later this evening. Whether Darcy proves useful and reliable in the long run is way more important than anything so mildly catty like fashion choices or if Clarke ends up liking her as a person or not. Hostile homefronts breed odd allies, and that's all she wants.

Humiliating honesty is the first step in that direction, and Clarke listens very pointedly to each and every word Darcy has to say; alternating between shaking her head, and nodding along.

"Did you make him bleed? Because it wasn't blood beneath my hands when I hit him, it was just... Black. Nothingness. Apparently caustic, if not fatal to touch with flesh." That last bit from the Captain's mouth itself, and reiterated with all the snide mistrust any comment from the smoke-man deserved.

But moving on — yes. Yes, yes, yes — that's the sort of confirmation Clarke lives for, because for as long as she's been reciting Pirate Jenny's insistence that the ship runs off suffering and the Captain's a sadist, there have been those who doubted. Most recently, La Pluma, the woman who'd murdered her on the island, and summarily tried to make her feel bad for trying to abstain from the violence. If Clarke ruffles a little with validation, those metaphorical feathers immediately settle as she realizes it's time to share the depths to which she'd stooped to get what she wanted out of the man.

"...I offered to let him cut me open and put back the kidney he stole. While I was still awake. But he didn't seem to want anything to do with that either. Edgy's an understatement, but lazy seems fitting. Like he doesn't want to get his hands dirty, and knows he won't have to. We're all just rats in a metal crate, and all he has to do is add new environmental stressors to see what we'll do to one another."

"He made himself bleed."

She traced her finger up the flat of her blade to illustrate, the frog holding it only keeping it in place on her belt and not covering it entirely like a scabbard. It might say something about her that she kept her weapon's edge live always, the blade catching the light.

"Cut his fingers on the blade. According to Skulduggery, the inside of his head... the Captain sees all our emotions, but has none himself. I'm not sure he feels pain. Didn't act like he did."

For all that Darcy is too young for this shit, she doesn't flinch at the offer Clarke made. If it weren't for the offer the Captain made her, she would've started offering limbs and organs too. If anything, it instills a respect. Either Clarke knows she's tough enough to weather the conscious surgery, or is willing enough to go through the pain for the cause. Either or is something she can appreciate.

"He said some shit about 'you can tell them what they're going to do to each other and they'll still do it'. How he never has to do it himself. But... my theory is that he doesn't want to see us go through shit we've already been through. He was willing to stab Friday in front of all of us, ehn? Weird for a man who doesn't like getting his hands dirty."

He bleeds, then.

He bleeds, he bleeds, he bleeds — and for all her time spent pushing peaceful agendas to avoid bloodshed back home, for all her high ideals, Clarke has the sudden urge to get blood on her hands. Despite how many hoops would need to be jumped through to accomplish that (fleeting tangibility, keeping the creature amused vs. unsuspecting, whatever fallout would follow, etc) it's a comfort to know it even possible. She almost threatens to get lost in thought on the subject of emotions, resolved to seek out this Skulduggery to learn more, but reigns in the violent day dreams and folds both arms across her chest.

"Of course not. That would be boring, wouldn't it?"

Tough as it is to tell on the surface, there's only two years difference between them. Arguably both are too young for the circumstances they've ended up in. But the real world never cared much for the innocence of youth, so why should this mysterious sadist dungeon function any differently? The ghosts are a new touch for Clarke, but she's acclimating. A war is a war, regardless of how many enemies there were to kill. Darcy weathers Clarke's admission of a voluntary vivisection with some ounce of respect, and Clarke looks at Darcy with the reverance of a dehydrated man looking at a glass of water — she likes everything the younger girl has brought to the table thus far; can use everything from this information to the outward turned sword in her beltline, and the willingness to act where others had actively stuck their heads in the sand.

"It's different, though. He doesn't view Friday as a person — he made her, and retains the right to make her bleed like a human shaped stressball whenever he wants. Or a tool, to set the scene. It'd be like... Goya getting paint on his hand while hanging Saturn Devouring His Son. All he really cares about is how it unnerved the masses. "

It was as she thought to herself when staring down the jaws of the shark back at the party; Darcy did not fear anything that bleeds. If it bleeds, it means it can be killed, in some capacity. Back home, Darcy was the weapon and the attack dog of her Krewe; standing in the way of ghosts and people with ill intent alike, keeping the rest of them safe, and if Clarke had actually voiced this bloodlust aloud, Darcy would've thrown herself into achieving it. If only for the satisfaction of seeing that fucker bleed.

It takes a minute, subtle as the shift is, but Darcy picks up Clarke's cues for her change in feelings with all the precision of a fencer trained to anticipate strikes. It feels good, having at least the positive regard of the older girl. Clarke and Darcy were of the same mind, in terms of being women of action, first in the fray and willing to do what nobody else will while others eat lobster and try and enjoy the party, and if it took her public humiliation to work out who else on the ship was worth a damn and would actually help her, then maybe the cost was worth it.

The image of the painting hangs in her head as she speaks again, placed there by cultural osmosis and jokes her Krewe had made about their line of work. She wasn't expecting Clarke to know about art, of all things.

"But that's weird too, ehn? He's just spent the last however long showing us people getting murdered, why wouldn't we be used to gore by now? Even if we say it's different on a screen. I can't work out the utility of it. If he hates getting his hands dirty and doing things himself, why would he kill Friday himself, even if she's just a walking stress ball? He could've turned her against us and made the party a blood bath without having to lift a finger."

It's that same vein of humanizing the Captain that'd had Clarke touching his chest and feeling for a heartbeat before being absolutely laid out on the floor by a donkey kick to the chest. The thrum that'd reverberated up her arm upon contact hadn't been like any pulse she'd ever felt, but still gave some insight into the idea that something powering him was resting beneath his ribcage. But she's not exceptional at this — despite the lengthy kill count that should have been tattooed on her back, back home Clarke's the commander. She's more likely to oversee and negotiate, dictate and delegate. Imagine violent ideals and watch her friends follow through with them, but until recently, she'd been... Well, not friendless here. Not even without guard dogs and protectors hovering in her atmosphere. But still resolutely holding onto the thought that the people on this ship weren't the same as her people. She owed them nothing, but in equal measure held no importance to them. She could play as recklessly with her own life as she pleased, if the outcome past pain and death was knowledge.

New developments... complicate that outlook. But Clarke's had her first proverbial taste of blood, and wants another bite. Forget Goya, she wants to be Saturn in this instance.

"It's not the screen that makes the difference, it's the backdrop. Tell people from the start that their island vacation ends in murder, it's not surprising when it does, right? But invite people to a fancy dinner, and cut a throat like one'd cut a ribbon, it... Leaves a different taste in the mouth. No welcome speech, no rules set. Just blood and the invitation to do whatever we want... I'd say he wanted to see what we'd do."

And... they'd played right into it, hadn't they? The attempts on the Captain, Maximilien stabbing Ebalon, Natsuno flipping La Pluma off the table... Clarke had initially entertained the idea of stabbing the woman on her table with a steak knife, but had turned her sights to larger prey and. Still ended up playing a game she detested. Because it had felt justified. She sighs a little, adding another layer of self imposed disappointment to her own attempt.

"I don't know how much time we can waste parsing out exactly why he does the things he does. He's bored, and all powerful, and has zero regard for life. I'd rather focus on how to stop it than understand it. Wouldn't you?"

Darcy listens along to Clarke's hypothesis of why he laid out the party the way he did. And it made sense, of course, Darcy always found herself looking too closely to notice the big picture. Her tunnel vision had meant she'd missed a lot of the peripheral violence that went on, narrowed to the two extremes of people doing something and people doing nothing. But their first real point of disagreement arises, and Darcy tilts her head like a bird of prey trying to zero in on the location of a field mouse.

"Do you have much experience, killing things that don't die? That don't pay attention to you trying to hurt them, things more powerful than you are. Because I do, Clarke," she uses her name purposefully, to throw her off-balance, "I kill ghosts. They don't go down to hitting them until they stop moving. If you're fighting magic bullshit, you need to think like them; what they want, what they're looking for, why they won't leave. Some things don't die when you kill them. Some things die when you figure them out. Trust me, I want to beat his face in more than anyone, but both parts are important."

It's not so much a punch to the face to have her own name trotted out as a means to pin her in place and make her listen — but it's definitely an unexpectedly low blow, to have her own methods of conversationally asserting superiority turned against her, and to such an intense sort of effect. Clarke's spine stiffens infinitesimally, shoulders squared and jaw tight.

But she's not so proud to be above admitting her own wrongs. Begging isn't a strange position for her either. It'd be detrimental to the cause to ignore anyone who spoke on a topic as an expert, and on this ship specifically — when everything ran on magic and mysteries and mythology, and Clarke's just disappointingly futuristic and rough around the edges — she's willing to listen and learn.

"No," she admits softly. "I've killed men, and things masquerading as men. And they all stay dead. So if you've got specific ideas, I'm all ears. Open invitation, I'm in cabin 108 for future reference. But I'm not getting slowed down by digging into the deeper psychological reasons why a sociopath does what he does.

We'd be here the rest of our lives if we tried."

Darcy notices that shift, closing herself off to mirror it. Dropping her name was a low tactic and she knows it, she just hopes it hasn't shut down this avenue of enquiry. Thankfully, Clarke seems willing to admit when she's out of her depth, and Darcy is more than willing to float to the surface and carry her across.

"You're probably giving him too much credit. Don't get me wrong, I hate him too, but... Back home, my Krewe investigated an apartment building where people were getting sick, and it turned out something was planting seeds in them. It was the ghost of a gardener, who was trying to understand the world through the fog of death. He found fertile ground, he put seeds in it, because that was the only thing he had left. We kicked his ass too, but he wasn't running off anything that made sense. It was like... Why does the dragon want gold, or the fairy give three wishes, or charity get rewarded? Because it makes sense as a story. I think the captain's evil, I think he wants to see us hurt. And I think he's stuck here too, wanting things he isn't getting. Doesn't mean we have to give them to him. But it'd be stupid not to look at what story he's living through, ehn?"

And as a sign of goodwill, she offers her hand.

"Darcy. I'm in cabin 121."

Edited (sexy genius disease (clarified wording)) 2022-05-25 05:20 (UTC)

Well, that's an absolutely horrific mental image, and the face Clarke pulls showcases that fact. Yike. Ew. Good for Darcy and her Krewe (kru?) for overcoming that specific monster, but the idea of tree sapplings sprouting out of people's nose, eyes, and mouth while they were still breathing is going to haunt Clarke's thoughts for at least the rest of the day. But that visceral, kneejerking sort of horror aside, she can't quite agree with the sentiment behind the story.

"Yeah, well. Credit where credit is due, right? Your plant man didn't build the entire apartment building out of bark, did he?"

Hate him or not, they have to admit the Captain's powerful. Stuck here, though? With the rest of them? That's... a new and novel idea worth exploring. Then the girl's extending her hand, offering her own name, and after a beat, Clarke takes up the shake.

"It's nice to meet you, Darcy." And on some level, it actually is. Their circumstances and surroundings suck. The walls they're running into are frustratingly solid, and their quarry horribly intangible. Nothing about the Serena Eterna is nice, but looking into the eyes of someone who seems to mirror her bloodlust, fierce drive for independence, tactical approach, and headstrong desire to dive headfirst into danger for the betterment of others and the sake of reconnaissance

Well. It's never bad to meet an ally — and a solider — in times of war.

"...properly this time, I mean. Thanks for leaving the rope down before."

Darcy has a few brief moments of visible confusion before realising 'oh right, my everyday experience is fuel for most people's nightmares for life'. The people who had their seeds removed would probably be haunted by it forever. For Darcy, it was Tuesday.

"No. But ghosts have their haunts, over time they can turn places against you too."

Don't ask her about the goop.

"It's okay. I'm guessing you needed to use it, ehn? Natsuno told me about the barrier," she uses the name that was on the screens, in case he used a pseudonym with her, "he's also how I got your name. I'm not psychic. Just a medium," she jokes, very lightly.

"I did in the end. After it became clear that no matter how hard I tried, it wasn't going to work."

Everyone has their horrors. Clarke's refrained from vividly explaining what it's like to watch someone die from radiation exposure: how their skin literally boils like hot water, splits open and oozes, and melts off their bones long before they stop breathing. She hasn't told anyone about the way people scream when splattered with acid rain, or what the corpses of 300 burnt men and women smells like intermingled with ash and mud. She doesn't want to scare the people here, nor open the venue for them to ask why she knows some of those details.

They all come from scary places. That's what Friday had said to Natsuno at least, and what he'd relayed to Clarke. And... yeah. It almost didn't matter what specific flavor of scary you were dealing with, there was always blood and suffering.

Though sometimes that disconnect leads to a weird language barrier — they all are forced into speaking English here, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that Darcy says medium and Clarke has to wrinkle her nose in thought. They'd not had anything like that on board the Ark, but the Grounders had a deeper connection to the Earth and old religions. What the sky people would call visual PTSD, they called ghosts; what her people called technology, their called god more or less. Give her a moment to connect the dots.

"What, like a priestess?"

"What? No, women can't be priests. Not in my denomination anyway- I know it's backwards and regressive, trust me, I know,"

Just because she's firmly in the church doesn't mean she can't be mad about it.

"It was a joke. I see dead people. Ghosts. I help them pass on sometimes, but I'm not like, a priest or anything. I'm a Sin-Eater, it's different."

She says, as if she's not quietly questioning if she isn't kind of doing priest-like things in her line of work.

Backwards and regressive? Clarke wrinkles her nose a little, skeptical of old world traditions and unimpressed. "That's an antiquated view," she mutters under her breath, as The Sixth Sense reference soars over her head without even rustling a stray baby hair.

Ghosts, though? That's... well, not a new idea anymore. They live surrounded by ghosts, and now she knows where they all come from — former passengers, once like themselves and ground down to the very shell of their souls in order to serve the next round osso bucco through the walls and menacingly throw dinner plates when riled up. Clarke's even seen a ghost or two in her life — visual manifestations of her own guilt, the faces of people she got killed who dog the edge of her vision until she confronts them and... apologizes, or swallows her own feelings so efficiently they never resurface again. Compartmentalizing, it's easy to do in times of war. Always a new crisis to address, and a new face to add to her nightmares.

So, a sin suppresser meets a Sin-Eater and has... questions.

"You're... You might have to explain that a bit more for me. I don't entirely follow..."

"Yeah, I fucking know- for like, hundreds of years they said it was some shit about women being worse than men, and then after ages when we finally know it's not true, they say it's 'tradition' and 'doctrine' and it can't be fucking changed. It's bullshit."

She gears herself up to do the whole explanation from the start, which does always suck, no matter how many times she's had to explain it.

"It's kind of a dumb name, but it's the proper name for what I am. I... died, a while ago. I got rescued by a ghost, got some weird powers. Since then it's kind of been my job to deal with the dead. It's like... someone helps you, you pay them back, ehn? Same with me and the ghost that saved me. I keep living, so I help the dead pass on, protect people if ghosts are hurting them, or help out if we notice something's killing people. That sort of shit."

This...

Is a lot. Even recognizing it to be a rather laissez faire cliffnote version of what Darcy might be, it's still a little overwhelming for a simple apocalypse kid. Clarke listens — oh how she listens, to everyone and anything around this ship that proves different from the world and ways she grew up in. Knowledge is going to be half the battle here, and she's a sponge to soak up any and all hints about magic and vanquishing it.

But listening and processing at the same time is difficult. Darcy's explanation paints a vivid picture — throws several facts into stark contrast, sure — but at the end of it Clarke's stuck on two points.

"I..." What's one supposed to say here? Well, whatever feels most natural, and with the air of utmost honesty and genuine sentiment. "I'm sorry that you died."

And once that's allowed to hang in the air between them for a few moments, a follow up —

"Helping people is always a noble cause, as difficult as it usually is, but. Do you want to be helping this ghost? Or is it just a debt, and you have to."

"Thanks. It's sort of a thing, when you meet another Sin-Eater, you say 'my condolences'. Because, you know, life sucks and then you die, and then you have to keep doing life after that if you're us."

A small shrug. She's had plenty of time to process her own death, and some days are better than others. Her follow-up question gets another shrug, not even really impacted by what could be taken as an attack on the most significant thing in her life.

"Oh I was fucking pissed at the start. I still am sometimes. It sucks, it's not fair, blah blah. But everyone has shit in their lives that they have to do. I don't always want to wake up early for training, or help my mum with her medication, or make dinner, or go to school, or whatever. But I do it. And it makes a difference, unlike most things. On good days, we're like this," she twists her first and second fingers around each other, "what I want and what the Geist wants are not different."

Life sucks and then you die — if that isn't the realest shit she's heard in her entire life...

Waking up on the Serena Eterna, dying twice, and still blinking up at the ceiling of her cabin covered in pitch black blood a few hours later is as close as Clarke will ever come to the second part of that traditional greeting, however. But even that feels like more than enough to set her teeth on edge and do her sanity in.

"...and what about the bad days?"

"On the bad days, I'm still alive."

For all the good and bad that means, for all that life is good and sucks, for all the mornings she wakes up and wishes she wasn't. She and the Scream had argued, obviously, had fought, had differences in opinion and philosophy. But the gift of a second chance had been given freely, and it was beyond the Geist's power to take it back, now.

"Nothing that can be done about it now, anyway. Even if I eat my Geist and try to live like a normal person, I can't. I know what's out there. What's that thing, 'you can't cross the same river twice'? Like that. I took the deal, and now I live with it."

I took the deal and now I live with it — well, if those aren't some incredibly relatable words. Clarke's own deals never included actual, fully fledged demons. But ask her how much of her soul still feels like it belongs to her, and the specifics might overlap.

"No. Can't cross the same river twice. Even if the waters flow and change, the rocks beneath them don't budge." A flowery way to acknowledge that hardship, suffering, difficult choices, violence, and in some worlds apparently physical manifestations of sin have always and will always exist.

"So you fight for humanity, right? All of it? Those in your home world, and everyone stuck here on this ship?"

"Something like that. You make it sound romantic, but yeah, I have a duty to the living and dead. Which includes the people and ghosts here, even if my Geist isn't here to enforce it. If you're angling to ask for help in getting us out of here, I'm already on it. I've been helping Skulduggery with his investigating, and I can help you if you need something done. I'm at your disposal,"

She offers in a strained formality, with a small bow of her head. Darcy wants to be useful, more than anything, and Clarke handles herself with the sharp calculation of someone that she could trust to make good use of her. A thinker, to temper Darcy's impulse and brute strength.

That demure angle of her neck, the formality of the bow... It's all super uncomfortable, but nothing Clarke hasn't stood tall and weathered before. She'd earned a reputation back home, and with it came a bloodied sort of respect. And no matter how much she'd hated it, she'd used it for the benefit of her people.

"I'm just a human." Augmented maybe, but rebuilt to withstand high levels of radiation, not head voids and resurrection magic. "I can't do anything nearly as complex as you do. I can't do magic, I barely even understand it. I could use your help with that, if you're offering."

Someone in her corner, you know? Except more accurately, someone at her elbow the next time she charges towards oblivion without a trace of abandon. She means to resist, but there's absolutely a glance down to Darcy's sword, then back up to her eyes. I need weapons, I need to win, the wartime narrative echoes over and over again in Clarke's head, her own personal Scream.

Of course, again another person wants her for what she's weakest in. Skulduggery for her wits and Clarke for her powers, as if they weren't an unwanted gift foisted on her for overcoming death.

"You'll want someone like Palamedes if you want to know how it works. I don't get a lot of it myself, aside from what I've picked up, I just do it. But if you want someone to do magic for you," she steps into Clarke's shadow and reappears in the rafters, Cheshire-cat-like, with a smug smile to match.

"I'm your girl." It's rasped out, and Darcy looks... considerably more fucked up than she was when she was at Clarke's side a moment ago. Bloodshot eyes, a hollow face like someone who starved to death... but it's gone again just as quickly, as if it were only a trick of the light.

"I know Palamedes already. We've talked about it a lot."

A rough translation being I already have the necromancer in my deck. But Pal's endurance is... less than ideal. He wields his wits more than any blade, and runs his mouth more than he runs with his legs. He is invaluable as far as Clarke's concerned, and those transparent shields he throws from his fingertips were absolutely clutch in a time of crisis, but that doesn't change the facts. Darcy hadn't hesitated to swing for the Captain's face.

One second the girl's right in front of her and the next, she's gone. Clarke glances to her immediate left and right, and almost does a full spin to scan the deck before Darcy's voice drags her gaze upward. The sudden change in her face is something straight out of nightmare fuel, and Clarke's eyes admittedly widen. Shock dances over her face, chased by a slight inclination of fear and alarm. It's an unpleasant visual surprise, but they'd just been talking about powers and if this is the face of Darcy's powers... Well. Give her a moment to adjust, and she'll look into the face of death and smile at it.

Darcy's features are back to normal by the time Clarke schools her own, but that doesn't extinguish the delighted spark dancing in her irises; a spark, set to blazing at the potential.

"With me. Not for me." Yes, specifics are blurry there; Clarke can't do magic to save her life, but the note she's trying to hit on is camaraderie. A joint task force. A team effort, despite what she's really after — and won't even admit to herself — is another blood thirsty guard dog to keep at her heel.

They're going to have a better chance as an army, and this isn't her first time playing Commander.

It's an odd feeling, when Clarke states that she's already familiar with Palamedes. Like she already has someone to run through theory and such, and she'd want Darcy's services for her own sake. Not the vague nebulous idea of companionship and camaraderie that anyone could bring like in Stede's crew, but Darcy, for what she and nobody else could do. It wasn't a bad feeling. It mingles with the moment of terror that Clarke in all her sharpness cannot hide, and Darcy really feels like she's got the upper hand here, like it'd only take a touch or two more to win the bout.

"With you, then," Darcy corrects, "I can do that. Let's hope I get a chance to show off more than just teleporting soon, ehn?"

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skaikru - 2022-06-10 01:42 (UTC) - Expand

inbox @ comesailaway

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cw: t...orture ment? vivisection ment?

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cw for I guess body horror?? Lightly??

right back at ya? just a lil

oh jeeze it probably will keep going for a bit

IDEALLY tbh

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slides back in here late

its fine time is fake

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