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TEST DRIVE MEME #5

1. not subtle revealings
[you wake up.
it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.
the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:
Dear Passenger(s),
As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.
At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!
See You Real Soon!
Sincerely,
Gal Friday
you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.
you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]
Welcome! I'm very glad to have you aboard!
[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.
after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]
2. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling
[the reflections are missing. all of them. in mirrors. in television screens. on the backs of spoons. nothing looks back at you.
then, figures do show up. not your own, like you'd expect. thin, wispy apparitions, people with pleading eyes and hands, reaching out to place their palms against the surface, from their own end. faces familiar and not, beckoning, mouthing words you just can't quite make out. help me, it might be. get me out, perhaps. just until you're close enough, until your skin warms the surface of whatever it is you're peering into. and then, those same hands wrap, all too real, burning-cold against your flesh, and pull, trying to drag you through the surface, making up for their lack of strength with desperation. any flesh unlucky enough to enter the reflection comes back bone-white and cold, all sensation dead, though it will fade within a few hours.
in retrospect, it looks a bit more like they were saying something different. something more like, better you than me. or maybe it's not even words at all. they look a bit more like they're laughing.]
3. complex mementos
[but, hey. sometimes changes are good! like, today, in Playback, there's a brand-new game available for all the children to play! it's an old-fashioned sort of claw machine, the type that's so large, a particularly dedicated kindergartner could wriggle their way inside. the prizes vary, and sit loose: bags of candy, stuffed toys, firearms, painfully early-00s electronics, actually that one just looks like a dead iguana, tiny ship-branded knickknacks... like all the other games in the arcade, the game starts up automatically upon being touched; lack of quarters shouldn't keep you from having fun! pro tip: they are loaded, and they will go off if you suck at claw games and let it fall.]
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"How is this your job?" He means -- sitting here and holding him while he gets tears and snot on Darcy's shirt, all over something that she has nothing to do with. It's not real distress, at least, not the start of another meltdown; just a last spurt of water pressure from a broken main.
Once again, Dimitri tries to get his legs back under him. This time he sort of succeeds, at least enough to sit up under his own power. He scrubs his face. " ... somewhere less public. Yes." Once he can actually stand up, anyway. The second half of the question is harder; he would love to pretend this never happened, but it did, and Darcy knows, and he knows Darcy knows, and that might actually be worse in the long run.
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Trust her. She went looking.
Darcy's more than happy to lead them back towards the cabins, aiming for hers so she can very quickly get into a shirt that doesn't have snot on it. She doesn't try and stoke the conversation, happy to leave it to more private quarters.
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By the time they make it to Darcy's room, he's got most of his feeling back, apart from a few burning prickles in his extremities like the world's worst case of frostbite. He's about to stagger into the bathroom to wash his face and let Darcy change, when he remembers a key feature of the Serena Eterna's bathrooms. He freezes, staring at the door-handle, and then looks away from the door-handle, because it's shiny, and in its curved, golden surface he has no reflection.
"Um. I -- bathroom. Mirror," he says articulately. And, on second thought, if they do end up talking about it, he'd rather be able to choose to be honest.
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Darcy indicates for him to turn around for the couple of seconds it takes her to change shirts, then pats him on the shoulder and sits herself down where she usually holds court at the corner of the couch.
"Sooo..." a vague gesture. He can start wherever he cares to.
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Assuming neither of them's been compelled to lie, which will just make things even more confusing.
"Tell me something we both know is true, and something false."
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"Okay- I fence sabre and my favourite colour-" 'is pink', she thinks she says, actually saying- "used to be black, but it's blue since I started dating Undine. Your turn."
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Is he stalling? He's absolutely stalling.
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Annoying, yes, but not insurmountable.
"Whenever you're ready."
cw mention of family death, mass murder
Foolish of him. Faithless. In the end, he can't escape being himself.
He settles himself on the couch, squares his shoulders and straightens his spine; fixes his gaze somewhere dead ahead, in the middle distance, and draws a deep breath.
"My father was murdered," he says dully. "We were travelling. Our convoy was attacked. My father, and my best friend at the time ... others ... t-they died protecting me. It's only because of them that I survived." His hands bunch in the fabric of his pants, crooked knuckles white and trembling. He does not look at Darcy. "Only I survived."
Now it gets tricky, but to be honest, he's already thought about how to explain this without giving away more than he needs to. If he hesitates, let Darcy think it's because the memories are difficult -- which they are. "The attack was blamed on the people living nearby. There was ... retaliation. I was a witness -- I knew the truth -- but no one would listen. I could do nothing. I -- "
He shakes his head, shoulders bunched, fists balled on his knees. "In Faerghus," he goes on more steadily, a little hoarse, "those who are killed unjustly, whose deaths go unavenged ... their souls are trapped in a frozen, lightless realm beneath the earth, unable to move on, unable to find peace. I'm the only one left. The only one who can save them. So when they called out to me from the mirror -- " Finally, he turns to Darcy, pleading for ... something. Understanding. Mercy. Judgement. " -- I had to try."
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What can she say.
Her mother lost most of one of her legs and Darcy's world stopped for a span of months. Drove her half nuts. It's what her father had said before he left- 'I can nurse a cripple wife or a batshit daughter but not both'. She'd witnessed how the world stops when someone who people care about gets hurt. Not herself, of course, but she's chewed on that bitterness long enough.
Darcy cannot fathom what it must be like losing so many. And then to be rendered helpless in stopping the deaths of others, forced to let the actual killers go free...
It's bitter in her throat. Darcy finds herself outraged on his behalf, her usual protective instincts forming phantom images of shaking sense into someone into her head. But it's not... helpful. It's the kind of impotent anger that achieves nothing.
"I'm sorry," she croaks at last, her expression grim.
"I... don't know how the afterlife works where you're from. I barely know how it works back home. But I know you need to be alive to be able to avenge them."
She huffs, makes her way over to where he's sat to rest her chin on his head.
"I'd be a hypocrite if I asked you to be careful, or not... try. It's important, and I know you had to. Just... don't. Don't be stupid. For their sake and mine."
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His forehead drops onto Darcy's collarbone. All the tension uncoils from his shoulders, and he only holds back the wet sting around his lashes with his reluctance to reset Darcy's honesty timer. "I'll try," he says. It's all he can promise. "If I can avoid mirrors, I ... should be alright."
He swallows. "I know. Both the living and the dead ... I need to live on to do them any good. But it's hard to ... it's hard."
There's more he could say -- more that churns, and festers, and burrows into the cracks and crevices of his mind -- but it won't do either of them any good to dwell on. Darcy's already gone above and beyond for him. Dimitri should -- he wants to, really he wants to -- sit up, and tear himself away, and reassure Darcy that he's fine; it was a momentary lapse, but he'll be alright -- but it would be a lie, and he'sso starved for comfort, and he should know better but it can't hurt, how much can it hurt? To sit here with his eyes closed, and breathe, and let Darcy be the one to step away.
" ... I'm sorry," he says quietly. This time, it's not an apology. "If you understand where I'm coming from ... I'm sorry. No one comes to understand these things for any happy reason."
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"Life sucks and then you die. I get it."
Darcy's still not really sure she's doing this 'comforting' thing right. But if she's fucking this up royally, Dimitri isn't saying anything or trying to pull away.
"It's fine. I-" she frees up a hand to rub at her face, "sometimes you do things because it's more important to be the kind of person who would. I don't... think I believe in good people anymore- if anyone were actually good, someone would've rescued me when I died. But I believe in making the choice to try and do good. If I didn't already know how ghosts work, and that not every ghost you see is real, I would've done the same thing."
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" ... but we have to try," Dimitri agrees. "There has to be some reason we're here. Even if it's one we create for ourselves. If the world is cruel, we have to be better. We -- we can't just let it be. I have to believe that."
He pauses. " ... did you say you died?" Was it figurative? Sometimes Dimitri almost believes he'd died, but ... Darcy didn't sound like she was being figurative. Another, more worried pause. "Did you mean to say that?"
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Finally breaking the contact, because she knows she's going to need to be sitting down for this, Darcy moves to put herself back on the couch.
"Back home, about a year before when I last remember being there, I... was walking home one night from training, and some guy pushed me off a bridge into a river. I drowned. After my Geist brought me back to life, I must've been sitting on the riverbank for hours. And when I... finally got myself up again, I had to walk myself home. Let myself back into the apartment. Reheat my own dinner. I hate having to think about it- it just... sucks, and I always feel like I'm just pitying myself if I chew on it."
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"I'm ... sorry," says Dimitri, feeling pathetic even as he says it. What good is 'I'm sorry' in the face of such an atrocity? Still ... it needs to be said.
Wanting to return the contact, unsure how, he settles a hand on Darcy's shoulder, lightly enough that she can shrug him off if she wants. "I can't tell you how to feel, but ... it's alright to feel strongly about it. Whatever that feeling is. What happened to you was unforgivable. Someone should have been there for you -- it should never have happened at all. I'm sorry you had to endure it."
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Darcy rests her head on Dimitri's shoulder in turn. It's a kind of sacred misery they're sharing, something raw and very real and without the usual masks of pleasantness and normality that they both of them are so used to wearing. They've both experienced an atrocity. There's no attempt at hiding that, for the moment.
"It's like, if I think about it, I just... get so fucking mad at everyone in my life. And- mum was sorry that she wasn't awake to worry about me, and obviously like, people were sad for me or whatever. But I'd still be dead if it weren't for my Geist. They can't be fucking sorry enough for it. Nobody even knows that I died from it- they all think it was just... an accident, and that eventually I'll be fine. Nobody gets it. God- I probably sound so fucking whiny."
No tears, the last thing she needs is to get Dimitri stuck in truth-telling, or worse.
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Dimitri tucks his arm more securely around Darcy's shoulders. What can he say? He knows all too well the need to stay present, stay moving, stay functional to stave off collapse. Like runaway wheels, their own momentum keeps them upright. If it ever runs out, they'll fall, and who can say if they'll ever pick themselves up again. On the Serena Eterna, so far removed from any context he knows, anything that's given his life meaning or purpose since that day, Dimitri is grimly aware of his own momentum wobbling. He wonders if it's the same for Darcy.
"Well, if you do fall apart," he says more quietly, "I'll do my best to pick you up. And if you need time -- space where you don't need to be useful to anyone -- I'll carve it with my own hands. It's not okay." He huffs. " ... and if you need to cry, I can keep my mouth shut for an hour. It's only fair."
It's not his first time holding someone who needs, who can't afford to feel the weight of everything they've been through. A different time, a different place, a different person, but ... the memories stir, all the same.
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Or at least, she assumed they did. She never spoke about it with her Krewe. They were all still moving, so they had to have been doing alright, surely.
Darcy wants to keep fighting him on it, to keep arguing as to why she's a unique case and their situations are different. But she's not expecting the... kindness that Dimitri shows her. It's as if he'd just revealed that the earth goes around the sun, both incredibly novel and blisteringly difficult to swallow. Darcy was the one who held people up. Who took the hits, who kept moving, who was independent and self-sufficient and strong enough to carry every damn person who needed her, because there was no other option. Kael had told her once that to save the people you loved, you had to be willing to do anything. If someone wanted them dead, the only way to save them was to kill their aggressor first. That action was love and safety all wrapped into one. For other people, not for people like herself and her Krewe.
In the firmness of his arm, the runaway wheel wobbles.
"It doesn't solve anything," she rasps, her voice choked on tears she's still swallowing, "even if I do cry for an hour, then what? We're still on this fucking ship and I'm still half dead and-"
Darcy forces herself to take a breath. The wheel is toppling, and she slides from his shoulder to curl up on herself, her head next to his leg, the pit in her stomach consuming itself.
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It's because Darcy's with him. Because she talked to him; because she listened, and offered up her own feelings in return. Because, at its root, crying is a social behavior with a social purpose, the first and most profound human instinct: help me!
"If I hadn't had Dedue, after it happened," he says, throat knotted painfully, "if he hadn't had me ... I think we both would have gone mad." Or, in Dimitri's case, madder than he already has. He's already hoarse from crying; his rallied composure slips away, leaving his voice raw, plaintive. "Does it have to solve anything? Can't it be enough just to hurt a little less?"
His own guilt would cry, no, it's not enough. The only relief he deserves is victory; anything less is a betrayal of those who've suffered, those who depend on him, who have no other choice. But Darcy is hurting. His friend is in pain. The wheel turns; the ouroboros swallows itself; a pair of broken pillars can lean on each other, and for Darcy's sake, Dimitri has to afford them both the compassion he denies himself.
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But the mention of Dedue, of someone being there to stop each other from going mad...
Darcy was alone after her death. Alone with a new part of herself, a part of herself that was steady and stable, a presence both alien and intrinsic. There was no way to map their relationship onto anything human; it was the bond between a person and their soul, a lichen and an algae, a ghost and a corpse. There are times when Darcy forgets herself and believes for a moment that this, the girl, is all she is. Being reminded of that tangible absence, like a missing tooth in her mouth, is what finally brings her crashing down. Not merely the loss, but the fact she was able to forget what had been taken from her.
Darcy stuffs her sleeve into her mouth to dampen a howl, reminded once again of how alone she truly was here, of the grief of losing part of herself.
But... not alone, at the same time. Alone in the way that drove Avery mad, yes, but not in the way he isolated himself, keeping his loss from others. Maybe she's weaker than Avery was in his last days, but maybe she's stronger. More willing to show her wounds in the valiant hopes that someone would support her through it and not just twist the knife in. When she grasps at Dimitri's pant leg, it's a childish desire to seek comfort, one she cannot deny herself any longer, her strong fingers pulling at him like a demand for it. Help me, the action says just as loudly as her muffled sobs, help me.
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-- he has to comfort her, because he has to be the kind of person who would.
Dimitri would rather die than twist the knife. But he finds his grip on the handle, and so he has to move carefully. It's alright would be a bald-faced lie; so would any other platitude. It's not alright. Nothing's alright. It may never be alright again.
While he still knows he can be honest, he squeezes Darcy's shoulder and says, "I'm here. I'll be here as long as you need me to be." It's the only promise he knows he can keep.
Slowly -- still giving Darcy time to shake him off, if she wants -- Dimitri scoops her up; folds her against his shoulder, and buries his face in hers, one hand threading into her hair. He's shaking again, his own tears welling up, but his grip is immovable and solid as steel. True to his word, he's going nowhere unless and until Darcy wants him to. And nothing's getting through him, either.
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Grief is big. Grief is everything when you're feeling it. All the fighting and suppressing and struggle to keep it down was, in Darcy's mind, the only way to keep functional and to stay useful, as she'd said. Because in the grip of grief, she's a tiny mote of dust skimming the surface of the ocean, unfathomably tiny and liable to be swallowed at any moment.
But here, with Dimitri's words and grip grounding her... she lets herself float. The frantic sobs come and go, and just as with Dimitri, sometimes she grips tighter, and sometimes she just leans on him, letting his presence comfort her.
"I'm sorry," she creaks at length, "I didn't mean to- I'm sorry."
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He hugs Darcy close, comfort for the both of them. Mentioning Dedue might have been a mistake -- he's remembered his own hollow ache, the missing half of his heart, the alien absence of someone who's been with him every day for the past four and a half years ... but he isn't alone here. And he'd missed this as much as anything; space to just be honest with someone about how much, in Darcy's words, it sucks. Time to hold someone, and be held, without needing to pretend or be strong. The ship's torn open old wounds, but the relief hurts almost as much.
Just as Darcy had for him, Dimitri rides it out with her: holds her, and rubs circles between her shoulderblades, and rocks them both; makes soothing noises, because there's nothing to be said even if he trusted the ship not to warp his words. Follows the ebb and flow of her grief like a harbor wall, stable and steady against the tides and the storm alike, until it calms.
"Don't apologize," he says. That should be safe, right? If he sticks to the imperative, and facts where it'll be immediately obvious if they're false. "You did the same for me."
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She hadn't envisioned how much it was still going to suck.
For different reasons, too. Now that she'd weathered the worst of it, her brain was working again, jabbing herself with cruel comments about how this was going to diminish her toughness in his eyes, a growing mortification at needing comfort like a fucking child, his steady hold quickly shifting from supportive to constricting in her panic.
But then Dimitri reminds her that she'd done the same, and her hackles ease back down again. This wasn't a hand-down from someone steadier and stronger and more in control of his own shit. It was a mutual support. A real, genuine friendship between equal parties. No pitying, no superiority, no ties or tethers except what they chose to uphold, not seeking to replace a loss or fill a void like she feared she was doing with some of her other relationships. Two broken pillars, each holding the other up.
Darcy relinquishes her grip on Dimitri's shirt and reaches up to ruffle his hair again.
"Yeah, I did. Thanks and I'm sorry and... yeah. I sort of... i don't think there's a good way to put it, but the thing that saved me... didn't come with me here. Him gone is a hole in my heart and my head, and you just... reminded me that he's not here."
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Dimitri winces at Darcy's explanation. That would do it. "I'm sorry. I can't imagine what that must be like." (At least Dedue is his own person. As awful as it feels to be apart from him, Dimitri has to wonder if it's not for the best. Like being stripped of his Crest, maybe, but even that would feel like a twisted blessing.) This whole scenario has been precisely tailored to recall the worst for each of them.
... perhaps not by coincidence, Dimitri thinks, recalling his conversation with Ossie. 'Hurt people hurt people,' the saying goes, but that's usually meant for wilful acts of harm -- not this, the incidental casualties of overlapping pain. Dimitri's tone darkens, and his body tenses. "You told me the Captain would torture us. Now I understand what you meant."
A severed limb still twitches in his peripheral vision, but it's not attached to anyone. Steadier, now, it's easier for him to ignore.
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