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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[crushed_pearls]

Erin lights up without a word and lets Crabb's passenger's words hang in the still air. Smoke trickles into Tauva around them. She props her elbow on the table, still attentive, still there, and yet there is quiet. Such long quiet.

"...I do wish we could have met under better circumstances," she says at last. "I think you might be the kind of mistake I'd like to make for a night or ten. I do get it, you know. The appeal of being sovereign. Of having some small group to just be alone together with, and damn the fires outside the door. People can be so fucking aggravating. Deluded. Annoying. Weak, small, petty, vicious. The days I stay in my cabin and see no one are when I wake up and all I wanna do is let the hate run free, make them understand that every day there's not a massacre they should be throwing me a fucking ticker tape parade for my self-restraint."

Erin tilts her head up and blows a ring of smoke. "...But y'know what? I did my time like that. Carved my way through the abundant world like a burning saw. I was king of a mountain of bones and the only thing it ever made me was tired. I can't be that person any more."

[pointofhonoria]

There's what's almost an... amused? Raise of her brow at the first part. Or maybe it's insulted at being called a mistake to make. Daisy herself isn't actually quite sure. It's probably somewhere in-between, in the end.

What she says is... familiar. Until the end, of course. Until the part where Erin is trying to move beyond that whilst Daisy is digging her claws in and refusing to let go.

"Well. Bully for you. I'm not done. I don't want to be anything but what I am. I don't want anyone but Bas— my partner." Honestly, the way she says it, it's really hard to tell what kind of partner she means, things with Basira never did quite keep their colour between the lines. "I am who I am."

[crushed_pearls]

"And who is that, sovereign?" Erin asks softly. "I mean it, when I say this is your garden too. If there really is nothing to be done, then I'm for you. You're one of us. Who is this who's come back to live in a home made strange to her?"

[pointofhonoria]

There's another dismissive noise made at the idea of being one of them, one of any us except the us that she and Basira occupied for each other almost so as to create a them to be against, but then there's quiet.

There's a real war here, even stronger than when Murderbot asked her name of her. She doesn't want to be Crabb. That should be plenty clear, by how she sees the woman she's shunted from her own life. But she also hesitates to be seen as who she is by these people she doesn't care for.

The glass would be shards, if only she had her own face.

She makes a low growling noise that doesn't vibrate right from Crabb's chest and stands in stark contrast to the name she finally spits out, "...Daisy. My name. Is Daisy."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin nods softly. She drains half her whiskey in one go before setting the glass back down; she makes no move to get up. "It's my genuine pleasure to meet you, Daisy," she murmurs. "Even with all this going down. Even here, with the ship listing and torn, alone among strangers, it's nice to meet someone who understands a little. Thank you, for that."

She tilts her head up, 'looking' at the face Daisy is wearing, and folds her arms over each other on the table. "I came when you called. Now I'll ask my favor in turn. Think about what it is you want. Really, honestly think about it. I hear anger in your voice but I don't hear a lot of conviction. I genuinely hope your partner can be returned to you, but once she is, what then? She, too, is not sovereign. Any more than you are. Any more than I am, be I ever so mighty. There's no escape from the abundant world. Its generosity ensnares us all. I hope the next time we talk you have an idea about your future here, in the garden we share."

[pointofhonoria]

She regrets saying it pretty much as soon as she hears it on Erin's tongue, but it's too late at this point. Erin wasn't a threat that night, crying on the floor and exhausted from a lack of sleep, but Daisy isn't stupid. She knows Erin could fuck her up in this body. She could probably fuck her up even if she had her own body.

So despite the way her teeth grit, despite the way she considers slamming the glass down hard enough to shatter it... she bites it back. Self-preservation comes first.

She really doesn't know what happens if this body gets killed.

"...I'm not going to make any promises. But. Fine. Whatever. I'll think."

[crushed_pearls]

"I can't ask anything more," Erin murmurs. "...And I wouldn't even if I could. Good luck, Daisy. I hope you can make your fate your own."

[pointofhonoria]

The noise she makes at that is somewhere between a growl, a grunt, and something that's not so easily categorised. She sets her drink down a little too hard and... pushes it Erin's way. She isn't going to drink it. She never was.

"It already is," says the woman who's fate has been entangled with an entity no one can ever truly comprehend since she was eleven years old. Her choices are her own, but her fate hasn't been for a long time, has it.

She pushes up from her seat. "Keep up your end of the deal. Alright?"

[crushed_pearls]

"You contacted me, Daisy. I'll only breach the silence if I have serious reason to believe you'll be affected, or at your request. You have nothing to fear from me as long as the state of harmony our truce is founded on persists."

Erin combines the two glasses and sighs. "I think I'll stay here a bit. Stay safe."

[pointofhonoria]

"Good. You do that."

She doesn't know how to deal with the 'stay safe' sentiment so she doesn't say a word about it, just slips away from her chair and strides off to go find somewhere to process the conversation she just subjected herself to.

She's going to go mad if they don't do something soon.

Whatever that something may be.