Come Sail Away IC Inbox

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice mail message is in a weary voice: "Erin Peters. If you called in the middle of the night and I didn't answer, I'm dying. If I pick up and someone on your end isn't dying, they will be shortly. Text otherwise."

Comments

[crushed_pearls]

Wow the text-to-speech is no one's ally in this situation. Eventually Erin gives up on trying to figure out the object in that last sentence and just trudges down to Bash's door. She stops to peacebond her sword before she knocks.

Surely the vermin took the very clear chance to blacken Erin's name already.

Surely.

[midnightroads]

Bash answers the door, taking in Erin's appearance for a moment, before putting a smile on his face and into his voice that he doesn't quite feel. It's not her, it's really not her; Bash and Giles didn't end up discussing her in detail. But he's...well, he's in a state.

Again, that coffee-and-tobacco scent is present, mingling with her gunpowder-and-sex to make one hell of a BPAL scent in that room.

"Erin. Hi. C'mon in? I got a thermos of coffee that's still mostly warm, if you want any." This is his offer of hospitality. This is him playing nice.

[crushed_pearls]

"Wouldn't mind," Erin confesses as she comes inside. Her ears are flat against the side of her head, and she immediately picks a corner near the door to Be In with all the air of a frightened alley cat.

"...Our mutual interest attacked Ossie, or at least I'd be shocked if it was anyone else," Erin says. Business. Start with business. "He's not likely to survive the reprisals about to ensue."

Business.

Work up to keeping your word, Peters.

[midnightroads]

He walks the thermos of coffee over to the corner, getting no closer than he has to, in order to hand it off. To him, she resembles nothing so much as a stray cat brought into a house for the first time, all the fur sticking up as it hides under the bed.

"The death's a waste, but I suppose it's not my place to have an opinion."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin takes the drink with outstretched hands and cradles it close to her body. After a long minute she remembers her manners and takes a sip; now she's a guest. Her body relaxes, marginally.

"I don't think killing him will solve anything for long," Erin admits. "But to be...honest...if I take him out it's for me, not for everyone. He had. The gall to compare himself to me, after..."

She turns her head sharply and tries to shake herself off.

[midnightroads]

"If he dies and his body is brought here to revive, I plan to tie him up until I know which one of them wakes up in his body. And if I'm not sure, he might stay tied for a while." And if it's the vermin, the scrap...well, they'll all burn that bridge when they come to it.

Maybe Bash will learn to kill. Wouldn't that be something?

[crushed_pearls]

That makes Erin go still. She uses the coffee to get time to think.

She's more confident when she turns her head back, her voice low and clear. "If you can't tell, send him back to death. Our bodies fix themselves. Confinement would be a cruelty difficult for me to describe, and it would follow him no matter how many more times he died. I'd ask the same if it were me. My kind don't survive cages, not as who we are."

[midnightroads]

He starts to respond to that, but doesn't even manage to get a full word out, not quite, not right away.

A pause, a deep breath. "If I can't tell."

[crushed_pearls]

"Thank you, St. Expedit. It's a kindness few do us." Erin caps the thermos again and takes a deep breath. "...What did he tell you about privateers."

[midnightroads]

There's a sputtering sort of laugh, the sort that comes when the humor's really not appropriate. "Bash, please. St. Expedit is my father."

That out of the way...

"He didn't tell me shit. I wasn't interested in listening to him that night."

[crushed_pearls]

That feels ominous. Why does that feel ominous?

(Dunno but I agree. Maybe ask Darcy, she's Catholic she'll know her saints.)

Out loud: "Yeah...fair." Erin takes in a deep breath. "My people are big on polite euphemisms. Privateers are called that because they're mercenaries willing to work for our enemies, using their letters of mark as a kind of shield from the same. It can be an attractive bargain; the gods of nightmare leave you alone and even pay you for your work. You can avoid their cruelty for a long time."

She hesitates. And then finds her courage: "The work is mainly acquiring or recapturing their slaves. Innocents and our fellow victims. Privateers are the lowest vermin of any Earth, and I was one, for nearly thirty years. I was. Talented."

[midnightroads]

"You sound like you're not proud of that." He steps back to claim a seat on the couch, making sure he's not crowding her in that corner there. Or maybe he's getting space away from her, because he doesn't know what to make of what he's just heard, really.

[crushed_pearls]

"That it could be so simple. But...no, I'm not, in the main."

Erin shakes, clutching the thermos in a death grip. Her knuckles have gone white with the force of it. "I stopped before I ever came here but the past lies like a nightmare over the present. I. Accepted help, to kill the person I used to be, but burying her is...an ongoing project. To sort the poison from the medicine, to...to be better...I had people of my own kind to help me with that. The people here have been kind but they don't fully understand, even the few who know or suspect. At some point it's just me. Me and the corpse of my past still rotting in my mind. I can't blame that wretch for hating me. Mainly I blame him for not showing any god damn standards."

[midnightroads]

Bash St. Expedit is no Bishop, but he can see her grappling with her former self like Jacob with the angel. And he sits with that image for a moment.

"How important is it to you, that everyone else understand? Like. We're doing self-flagellation here, but how public and communal an act do you need that? Hair shirt, scourge, whole nine yards? I get it, you think that I oughta know what I need to in order to despise you, but. Like. You're lugging that corpse into my room and setting it at my feet like a cat. That's just a little bit of a dick move."

[crushed_pearls]

There is.

A long silence. Even Erin's gunpowder just stops, hanging unburnt in the air in a powdery haze.

"I would sell my good left foot for eyes to blink at you with right now," she says at last, with a touch of awe, a hint of disbelief. "... Doesn't my new home deserve honesty, from me? Am I not making friendships on false pretenses? I don't want them passively assuming I'm some, some scarred hero who lurched here after the long fight against evil."

[midnightroads]

"Erin. I want to know who you are here and now. Your past is yours, and if you really do want to share it, you can. But you don't owe it to me just because I'm here. I mean, if you start going back to old ways, we're gonna have an issue, but it is deeply core to my personal beliefs, outside anything I am by blood or duty that people can change. For me to judge the you in front of me by whatever you've got to say about past yous would be another violation of who I am that this ship has wrung outta me."

Because it's already gotten him breaking his personal rules in other ways: Don't raise zombies. Don't get angry. Don't pick the path of violence first.

"But beyond me, again, I think coming to people to tell them how you've fucked up when you barely met them...that's, like." A pause, as he sort of grapples for words a moment, before going back to his original comment. "A dick move."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin listens. She doesn't seem to know what to do with what she's hearing, but she listens.

Finally, in the apologetic tones of a child who broke something on accident: "I didn't tell you to flay myself. I told you because you kept your word to the wretch, even when it hurt you. I didn't...I didn't want anything he said to haunt you. Not when you'd been honorable."

[midnightroads]

A warm, lazy chuckle.

"I kept my word to him because I know better than to break a promise to one of your ilk. Yeah, our world's fair folks are different, but I had an oath I swore to a cait-sith back home, binding me to her; I was familiar with what I was doing when he asked for a night in the room and I agreed. Which isn't to say I'm not honorable, but what I really try to be is kind. Anyway, how about you tell me who you are now, 'cause I still feel like I only half met you, and you got me at my worst."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin gives Bash half a smile. "Your worst cleans up pretty nice, Bash," she murmurs, before she takes a drink to hide behind the coffee. The gunpowder goes off all at once, burning away entirely, before it drifts back into her Mantle in little snaps and sparks.

"...I'm not entirely sure who I am now. It's been so long since I was just Erin Peters, you know? Twenty months since I first said my name out loud to someone else on the day the old me got staked to the soil of my garden to die and be dressed for burial in my soil. And it's not like Erin is exactly doing okay. She spent a long time in the dark of me, being told she'd died in a far away place."

Erin drifts downward, eventually sitting heavily with one knee drawn up to her chest, the other leg just sticking out along the floor. "I'm still a fighter, and I am proud of that. I earned those skills the hard way. A believer in renewal. A singer, though it's young and raw on me and I've been too scared to share that with many people not even because I think I don't deserve praise but because I get stage fright like a little bitch, which is so...hilariously, comically normal that sometimes when I'm trying to convince myself to sing for my fellow passengers my panic attack gets cut off at the knees by the sheer relief of realizing it. I'm a wounded dog; I'm a garden in progress. If I can ever bear to let someone touch me again I'd like to be a lover of women, maybe not exactly like I used to be but...more like that than I am now. I've been a teacher, since coming here, and I like that. I've been a friend, I think, though I'm out of practice."

"...Mainly I'm Erin of the Serena Eterna, the Second Nickel, child of this garden that is now mine. My pleasure to meet you. Truly."

[midnightroads]

"...which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice." Someone actually gets the original reference for what it is. And from the tone in his voice, he's, uh. Mood. He's had his own 'two fucking nickels' experience, dragged from one jamjar into another, with a very different premise, setting and rules.

"I think I'd like to be a friend of Erin's. If you'll allow me to. Maybe hear you sing if you're up for it at some point."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's cheeks color faintly. "I make so few promises on that score that I might describe it as negative promises. So far I've managed to sing, really sing and not just...be silly, in front of exactly two people. But if I ever remember that Mrs. Peters didn't raise no bitch I'll put you on the list of folks who get an explicit invite. I do owe Captain Bonnet a rendition of the ballad of the Devil's Reach..."

She trails off. Takes a thoughtful sip. "...So, who's Sebastian St. Expedit, who prefers such a fun diminutive?"

[midnightroads]

"Damned good question. I can give you my earned titles as a demigod, but they've meant shit for about the past year. This isn't my first rodeo, with the kidnapped from my world and plopped into a shitshow. I was, in fact, kidnapped from my kidnapping, to end up here. So I've spent the past year adjusting to that and now I'm here. I dunno if any of my divine titles mean shit in a world where my dad ain't, but my power's sure still a thing."

He huffs quietly.

"I'm a dumbass trying to get by, I guess. Not smart, but I'm pretty and I'm kind, and that gets me pretty far to make up for that. My...partner...from the last place I was, he's here too. He possessed now, and I'm sort of trying not to lose my mind over that. He's in the brig now. I guess that doesn't tell you who I am, though."

Okay, one more try. "I'm probably the person on this ship who knows the most about coffee. Growing, roasting, where the best beans come from, best drinks to make with it. And I'm a guy who falls in love easy. Not necessarily sexy love, but I got a heart that's open wide, and especially for folks who's a little beaten up by life, I got a lotta space to hold for them. I miss driving. I was a cab driver, since I was young, moved to Ubering when I ended up in Boston. I'd pay dearly for a night and a road to drive on."

[crushed_pearls]

Dots connect in Erin's head, and she offers a widening smile. "Good to meet you, son of divinity. I guess that does explain some things. I remember a...friend is too strong but he read out this thing from the internet asking why people give the Grin Reaper grief. He just escorts people to the hereafter; imagine having to go all alone. That stuck with me. The coffee I'll take you up on with goodwill but I'll warn ya, I take enough sugar to kill a conventional human."

[midnightroads]

He smiles brightly at being recognized for what he does, when he's at home. "My specialty was roadside accidents and hitchhiker ghosts. I'm from New Orleans, originally, and there's parts of town where cabbies don't pick anyone up at night because ghosts have a habit of skipping on their fares. I ain't been a place with an actual underworld since I was on Earth. The city didn't have none either, though it took longer for people to bounce back from death there."

[crushed_pearls]

"Ahh, New Orleans." Erin sounds downright wistful. "Good memories there. Sorry to hear you're out of work, but..." She shrugs philosophically. "If the Captain gets what he wants we'll probably be in the market for a good psychopomp. This world is not yet in bloom."

The last of the coffee gets drank, and she sets the thermos down. "How you feeling about the whole... copy, bit?"