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."

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[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?"

[midnightroads]

"Right now, I ain't feeling shit about it. Like. I have been outside my..." A small frustrated sound. He's grappling for a word. "...habitat? My own world, but more than that, my place for long enough, yeah? I don't even know if my original is in the city or back on Earth, and at this point getting fucked up about it seems...I'm not gonna say pointless, but there's a point at which you can shit in one hand and spectrulate in the other and see which fills up first. And we sure do got a lotta shit on hand."

He means 'speculate', honestly he does. But this is a man who doesn't think he's smart, especially where the English language is concerned. She knows, she's heard him text.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin nods. "We sure do. My folks...are not cait sith." She pronounces it in a flawless imitation of the Scottish Lost who taught her the name. "We're human. I'm human. And part of squaring the circle has been to learn to think about this kind of thing head on instead of trying to passively deny it so I guess what I'm really trying to ask is: could this be home, for you?"

[midnightroads]

"Get Jeff back in his own body, and sure. I could be at home in a cardboard box, so long as I was with him."

His heart may be a little biased by what's going on right now, in terms of answering that question.

[crushed_pearls]

"Glorious," Erin murmurs. Her haze pops into smoky roses that drift and float while she smiles wistfully. "Truly, deeply glorious, Bash. I can't help with ghosts but you have my best wishes for what they're worth, and my talents if you can think of a use for them. They haven't been terribly helpful in this uh, esoteric crisis but I'm ready."

[midnightroads]

"I'm supposed to be able to help with ghosts, but I got shit here." He rolls his eyes slightly. "Still, thank you for offering. I appreciate the sentiment. It'll be alright in the long run, I'm sure. It's gotta be."

He's holding onto hope with his teeth.

[crushed_pearls]

"And I appreciate your kindness, and your advice, Bash. Even if you think there's nothing else you could have offered." Erin sighs and stands slowly before crossing the room exactly enough to offer the thermos back. "... I'll think on it. Maybe I don't need to drag myself through the decks in chains but there are people who...do need to know. I have to figure out who exactly is on that list."

[midnightroads]

"You're welcome, and you are welcome." He accepts the thermos. "I'll be sure to sugar the everliving fuck out of the coffee for you next time. Do you have a strong opinion on demerara simple syrup versus white refined sugar?"

He won't judge her for liking it sweet. He might judge her for preferring the wrong sugar type.