sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #10

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TEST DRIVE MEME #10

a. that's where we both belong

[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 aboard! I'm so happy you could join us!

[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.]

b. and there's plenty of that down by the sea

[it’s strange to think about, isn’t it? how all those new passengers, the ones grumbling or shouting their way through the forced muster drill, have absolutely no idea what happened just last month. no idea about the labyrinth. no concept of why anyone around them would be a bit more hesitant around shadows.

they’ll learn.

sometimes a shadow is darker than it’s supposed to be. very rarely does anything come of that; just a vague sense that someone is watching you, and little more. sometimes, though, the shadows move. sometimes they grab at your ankles as you walk. sometimes they give you a shove as you go down the stairs. sometimes they pull your hair, or pinch your arm.

sometimes you feel something sharp cut into your lower leg.

that’s not a shadow, though. that’s a fiddler crab. you see the crab, sometimes. the cut isn’t from its claws, which don’t look very intimating; it’s not a very large crab. the cut is from the large kitchen knife crudely taped onto its back. it’s probably fine. it's not chasing you. there isn't evil in its heart. probably.]

c. think I'll go back to the Keys

[one day, in the atrium, two pedestals suddenly appear. on each is a large button: one green, and one blue. pressing the blue button gives you a little treat, popping out of thin air next to you. pressing the green button sends a small electric shock through your body. weird, but, hey, pretty avoidable, right?

except, it seems to be spreading. to every other button on board.

in the elevator. on the soda machine. the arcade. your phone. the bell on Friday’s desk.]

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Even if she hadn't overheard Erik's multiple encounters with Erin, between her sensitive ears and, more importantly, her familiarity with his scent after the time spent in his mansion, Daisy would've realised he was here quickly enough.

Her feelings about the vampire are— best described as complicated. Does she actually like him? Eh, not really. He helped her, and she's grateful for that, but he really does remind her a bit too much of Elias and the whole thing with Max makes her squirm. Does she hate him enough to want to kill him, even if she wasn't on parole? Also not really, if in part for Max's sake. Which all squares out to her not giving a shit if other people kill him, whilst being on her best behaviour.

Well, sort of. Her best behaviour would probably be avoiding him entirely, but she's never been great at letting sleeping dogs lie and so, eventually, she follows his scent and leans against the nearest surface, arms crossed and head tilted not unlike a predator sizing someone up.

"Bet you've met a bunch of people who know who you are when they shouldn't, already."

Which is one way to say 'hi, I'm another one'.

He stops in the middle of the corridor and looks her up and down with an expression of tired boredom. (It's a bluff, he's already sizing up how likely she is to take a swing at him with those impressive claws.)

"Do you intend to attack me as well?"

Daisy nods her head to the side, shoulder rising to nearly meet it. "Probably not. I'm on a murder break. Bad for my health. But, fair warning? I'd probably win if I did. So, you know. Keep that in mind."

She's not actually entirely sure how true that is, it's not like she ever tried to fight Erik before, but she likes her odds and she's got the air of predatory confidence down-pat regardless. Practice from years of being the heaviest hitter in the room who's killed dozens of monsters in her time.

"Bold of you to say, but I truly have no interest in fighting." He can see her posture for what it is, but that doesn't make him back down either. He's also grown accustomed to a certain amount of power and respect.

"I have not, for the record, started a single fight since I got here."

"Of course not. You wouldn't be able to hold yourself above everyone if you started it. Though I did hear you calling it bad news for us that there's no accords."

Which is more making a point of the fact Daisy has been able to hear a lot of what's been going on, than making any actual point about it being a threat. Her ears only look human.

"I'm not just bold, anyway. I'm right. Everyone else that recognises you, they probably met you..." her mouth twists, "once? For an hour, maybe two." She's guessing, really, but she thinks its a fair guess. And it's not like Erik remembers any of it to call her bluff. "But me? I lived in your mansion for nearly a year, Lord Ozzy Osborne. We knew each other quite well."

Beat.

"—no innuendo, I probably wouldn't fuck you even if I wasn't gay." Implication: I've got better taste than that.

His eyes narrow on her as his expression hardens into a stony mask. So, she's been listening in, has she? Enjoying herself, no doubt. But she must be bluffing now. Lived with him? Impossible! He's never seen her before in his life. He's too confounded by the first accusation that her burn about not fucking him barely registers. Why the fuck should he care about that when there are larger issues to be concerned with.

"I have been willing to stretch my imagination to accept a lot of things here, but I draw the line at this. How can you possibly expect me to believe that you've spent that long living in my house without me remembering it? Who are you?"

"Daisy Tonner. Avatar of the Hunt. Comes with a side of near irresistible bloodlust. You said I reminded me of a younger you. Offered to help. Called me your honorary fledgling. Max even said you probably saw me like one of your vampire charges."

Which is all he's getting about her right now, just enough to back herself up. No need to get into all the deeper, personal details she's shared with him once before. He hasn't earned them, this time.

"Now see, I could tell you a bunch of stuff about life in the mansion I'd have to be there to know. But that's boring. That's the boring option. 'Cuz you told me all sorts of interesting things. Like how you ended up a vampire in the first place."

Somewhere in the multiverse, Jon is about to be either really proud of her or really the opposite. This is Eye bullshit through and through.

By the time she mentions Max by name, Erik's eyes have already further narrowed into angry slits. The rest of his expression remains a stony mask, until...

"Ha!" He rolls his eyes suddenly at her. "Now I know you must be bluffing. Why would I share that kind of personal history with you? Not even Max has heard it."

Daisy laughs, a low, short sound that cuts off abruptly as she cocks her head at him. Oh she's bluffing, is she? Just bluffing. Right.

...she tried to call Elias's bluff, too. ("Calvin Benchley. You recognise the name, don’t you Alice? You see, I know what you did." "I… don’t know what you’re talking about.") Until he pulled her life story from her head, recited it in such impossibly perfect detail as if he'd been there, even though no one alive should have known any of it. ("Everyone calls me Daisy. I like that because it sounds so gentle, and I’m the only one left who knows about the scar on my back.") She'd protested the entire time, ("That day, I dared him. That’s why it was my fault." "Shut up. It wasn't my fault.") made threats ("You shut the hell up, or I swear I’ll kill you.").

This won't be quite like that. She can't tell the tale in perfect, minute detail and Eye-touched prose.

But she knows enough. And Daisy's never been shy about turning the things that she hates about monsters back on other people.

"You started out as a vampire's servant, too. You and your sister. Years went by. You thrived. Then, one day, you were badly wounded during an attack, so your master turned you to save your life. And he did it against your will. You tried to kill yourself by refusing to drink blood, but that doesn't work, does it? Just makes you all sickly and weak. Makes the beast harder to resist. But your back's covered in scars 'cuz your master beat you and you still wouldn't drink. Not until your sister begged to become a vampire too, to join you. Soon as she was turned, you had to get your act together, didn't you? For her sake. Shame you had a falling out later, but that's family, isn't it? You can do so much for them and they'll still turn around and screw you over."

Edited 2023-06-20 18:25 (UTC)

He's determined, at first, to believe she's just surmising things she could have gleaned from conversations with Max or with enough guesswork. But then she goes deeper. These ARE things that Max never knew about, and would never have been told. His expression goes from defiant annoyance, to a cold mask devoid of any expression.

Then she mentions his scars. And his sister's fate.

White hot rage flashes through him. A snarling, bestial howl rips out of his throat, and before her very eyes his skin darkens at the collar of his shirt, across his temple and cheeks, at his wrists and the back of his hands, which are closer to hers now with great big talons suddenly stretching out of his nail beds. Those dark patches look fuzzy... like small feathers growing in. It could just be the rage twisting his expression but his already hawkish nose seems even more so now.

He rushes forward and grips her around the neck faster than the human eye can see, aiming to slam her against the wall. "Shut. Your. Mouth."

That's what she gets for metaphorically sticking her hand in the beast's mouth, knowing full well that doing so is a good way to get bitten (having once been the one doing the biting). Even then she didn't expect the equivalent of her lunging over the desk, an instinct she actually managed to resist acting on with Jon and Elias both, and it's only that unnatural Hunter's instinct in her that snaps her into awareness the second before he moves.

It's not enough to avoid the hand around her throat, nor to shake his grip before she's being slammed against the wall behind her (shouldn't have leaned up against it, rookie mistake). Daisy's lip curls back, flashing those wolf-like teeth as they grit and grind and let through a snarl. This time, she grasps at his arm; this time, she isn't shy with her claws as she does.

"Ha," she spits, just a bit of vicious glee leaking into her voice, "where's all that self-control now, m'lord?"

He's not the only one at risk of losing their grip, is the problem. The blood is pounding in her skull, screaming for her to give into the Hunt (isn't it better to just let go, isn't it better to just give herself over, isn't it better to not have to fight for every inch of self-control?). Not that long ago she wouldn't have stood a chance at resisting a call so loud, not with talons at her throat and her claws digging for flesh.

But it doesn't claim her right away. Not this time.

Daisy lets the blood scream and pulls her legs up between them to slam against his chest with all her strength, jerking his arm down hard at the same time.

He doesn't flinch as her claws bite into his arm. His eyes stare directly into hers, unblinking. "If I had no self-control at all, you would not still be breathing."

Still, her words have given him reason to pause and pull back on himself. Especially when he notices the feathers sprouting from the back of his hand around her throat. He is much closer to losing himself than he realized. In that moment of hesitation, she catches him in the chest with that kick. When she jerks on his arm, he lets go of her and staggers back.

"I wouldn't have told you. That. How do you know? Are you a mind-reader?!"

Daisy lands back on her feet with a thud heavier than her mass and falls instinctually into an easy, predatory stance. Ready and able to move in just about any direction.

"Nope," she says, edged by that same almost exhilarated tone. "Not my trick. Didn't spend long enough in the Archives for that."

She knows that means nothing to him, but she can't resist the comment anyway. She is no servant of the Eye, no matter how long she spent within its bastion's walls picking up bits and pieces from the Archivist. She is a Hunter, through and through, and still she is Watching him.

"You told me every word. Said how we're not so different. You might even be right. I've even got my own scar," singular, not referring to the visible, obvious scars on her arms or across her nose and cheek, "I even showed you. And you know what? We're both hypocrites, too. Got a friend with a scar on his neck I put there, marked him forever just like someone did me. And you— well. You know what you did. Don't you?"

"And yet I remember none of it?" How? How can this be true? How can she expect him to believe he would tell someone like her his most intimate secret? What the fuck would he have seen in her?

"Yes. I know what I have done for Max. If you really were there, you saw it for yourself. Did he not live comfortably? Did he not have his needs attended to with all due care? It seems as though yours were, too. Call me whatever you like, but you seem to have benefited from the arrangement."

Daisy rolls her eyes—after living on a cruise where five different Dean Winchesters came and went, she's so used to the concept of alternate selves that if Erik can't get with the program, that's his problem. No skin off her back.

"Do you hear yourself? 'My slave was comfortable. My slave's cage was so nice. My slave doesn't mind being branded.' Ugh. You think you're soooo much better. But you're not. Doesn't matter how hard you push the beast down. You're just another monster, playing with his food."

"The brand was necessary. He knew that at the time. I'm aware that it pains him, but it was to save his life. It was better than what was originally suggested; he doesn't know that there was a very strong demand to take one of his eyes." That way, if Erik had ever attempted to turn his human into a vampire down the line, he would forever have a missing eye as a handicap. He would be that much easier to kill. It took a lot of hard arguing to walk the punishment back to branding.

"I'm a monster. You're a monster. When did I ever claim anything to the contrary? Yes, I know the arrangement was not ideal for Max but given the circumstances it was the best I could safely offer. If you spent that long in my home, surely you saw what kind of dynamics are at play between vampires? In most vampire's estimation, humans are beneath us. To treat him as an equal in that kind of company would have put him more at risk."

His lips quirk just slightly into a smirk, "Besides, you must have observed that he likes being played with?"

In some ways it's like listening to all the things she used to tell herself to justify the harassment, the violence, the maiming, the murders. All the excuses about how of course they should face justice in prison, but the courts would never put them there. What she was excusing changed but the excuses never did. They were bad people. They deserved it.

Sometimes she might have been right. There were real monsters that died at her hands, both of the human kind and the Avatar kind; monsters that would have hurt more people, that shouldn't have been allowed to hurt more people, but...

She'd still made herself judge, jury and executioner.

And here's this bastard, saying all this shit that might even be true as if it excuses literally any of it. All that talk about how they weren't so different rings with a different tune, right now.

And then he has to go and get crude.

Her lip curls back, flashing those unnaturally large teeth of hers, snarl rippling up her throat, but despite the pounding blood in her skull and how easy it would be to lunge, to go for the damn eyes (she could do it, she knows she could do it, she's built for killing monsters)...

She just stands there, every muscle pulled tight like a rubber band waiting to snap. "...I could tell him, you know. Every. Word."

"You could."

He's standing there as still as a statue, only breathing when he needs to talk, not even bothering to blink. Just look at her. He's hit a deep nerve. He could keep going, provoke her into the fight she is so desperately trying to resist. If he dies what does it matter? He will be back in three days and she will still have to live with the consequences. But he thinks he knows why she's holding back. It's the same reason he doesn't believe she'll tell Max any of this. It would crush Max. And who would ever want to be responsible for that?

"So, why haven't you?"

Her fingers flex, claws all but physically itching to sink into flesh. She can feel her own heartbeat pounding in rhythm with the blood, but she stays steady.

She thinks she could rip his throat out and never fall into the Hunt.

It's a strange feeling, knowing that. It's a stranger feeling not acting on it.

"Woman of my word. Told you I wouldn't. Had some respect for that, despite... you." Not a lie. She could have told Max, she could have told Erin, but she didn't. So it doesn't account for everything happening here and now, doesn't account for how much she does not want to hurt Max, but it is not a lie. "But you're wearing that very thin."

He can practically taste her hate for him. The way her claws twitch, she's itching to have a go. Yet, she resists. That training she claimed he gave her must have been helpful after all.

"At least you know how to keep a vow." Maybe that's why he apparently decided to keep her. Who can say? He still doesn't buy that it's the only reason but if she wants to save face then, perhaps, he can still walk away from this encounter alive for once.

"Continue to keep it and we won't have a problem." With that said, he's turning his back on her to go.

There's a part of her, a part that she's not proud of, that for a moment wishes that this sudden sense of control would give. Then she'd have an excuse. He attacked first, her snapping after that would be believable and not really her fault.

But no. Despite feeling the tug to chase him, as his back turns. Despite the low, rumbling growl as she watches him go. She's in control.

She waits until he's long out of sight to whirl around and slam her fist so hard into the wall it dents. She presses her forehead against the warped metal and covers her face with her hands to muffle a frustrated noise, before turning around and sinking to the ground.

God fucking dammit. What a prick.

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TEST DRIVE MEME #10

wildcard probably

:)

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