TEST DRIVE MEME #5

[sailmods]

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.]

Comments

[prince_of_beasts]

It's not the first time Dimitri's done this. He knows better than to hope it'll be the last.

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."

[saltwaterlungs]

In her idle dreamings about what it would have been like to have someone to comfort her after her death, Darcy had envisioned something like this. A hug, soothing words.

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."

[prince_of_beasts]

That's the way these things go. The worst part isn't the happening; it's the aftermath, when the dust has settled and the tide receded and you're left in the ash and mud with all the awkward, uncomfortable consequences. We have stories upon stories about tragedies. Not so many about what happens once you're left behind.

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.

[saltwaterlungs]

"Mhm," she affirms, not moving to separate for the moment, "he fucks with your head. Doesn't matter if it's people who are alive and here, or dead and back home. He uses them against us."

Which makes this entire endeavour about as sensible as cuddling a bomb, frankly.

"I sort of... I thought I could avoid it if I just didn't care about people, for a bit. But I don't know if I can not care about people. I think I just..."

Darcy sighs, "I don't know. It's probably going to bite me in the ass. But I'm just not that scared of him. Not scared enough that having friends and shit isn't still worth it."

[prince_of_beasts]

"I have to care," Dimitri says quietly. "I don't think I'm capable of doing otherwise." When so many lives ride on his own, on his decisions and his judgment, he has to care about each and every one. But even otherwise ... Dimitri can't help but care. He has never been able to hold himself separate, cannot help but imagine behind every face the unseen web of blood, debt, circumstance, affection, lives touched and changed, that binds every person to countless others. He can't help but love, abstractly if not personally, the beauty in those webs; can't help but hate their destruction.

He's not pulling away either. He needs the anchor; needs to know that Darcy, and this conversation, is real, so the doubts and the guilt can't start prying into his head again. Each and every passenger has been plucked from their web like a spider by a bird, left to fall amidst torn and tattered strands ... but here they are, catching each other, forging webs anew through sheer will.

It's easier said than done, and Dimitri's hardly an exemplar, but he's saying it anyway. "We're not meant to be alone. We have to offer each other our hands. We can't survive without each other; certainly none of us could face the Captain alone. I care about you, and Rich, and everyone else on this ship, and everyone at home, and -- if that leaves me at the Captain's mercy, that's the price I'll pay."