ossie_oswald | Come Sail Away Inbox

"I want to be kind," he not-growls. "I want to understand. I want--to, to be a guy who maybe you don't want to piss off but you're not afraid of pissing off, right? But I also don't want to get angry. I won't think right when I'm angry. But Demona--"

And then a real growl as the freshest anger bubbles up again, "--god, I wish I could just be mad at her! But no, not only does she have all this damage, one of my close friends who I like much better is in kind of the same boat as her and is really sympathetic to her situation, and I can't just..."

"We all have damage. Many of it rhymes with each other's. If you want my permission to be angry, in here, where it can't hurt her or anyone else, you have it. Throw a teacup or two if you like. While I'm at it, have every permission- I'm not going to tell you to be angry or not to be angry, but if you want to be conflicted about it, if you want to feel one way and act another, you may."

That expression doesn't waver, even when he growls.

"What outcome do you want from this whole mess? With Demona, I mean."

Oh, he wants to do more than throw a teacup. But he won't do that to Ossie's nice place.

"I'm not gonna be wanting the same thing I got with Daisy. I want us to be able to live on this ship without her attacking one of mine at the bare minimum. She can hang around my friends if she behaves, but unless we're being forced to cooperate, she stays away from me and my family."

He angrily forks at his food and eats some. Maybe that will make him feel better.

Hm. Now there's a thought. Perhaps later, though.

"I was saying to Johnny this very issue. That if someone were to behave in a truly antisocial manner, we have little recourse for them. Still- you've sounded the horn, so to speak, and I've no doubt that if you or yours were in need again, people would come to your defense."

Ossie leans back in his chair again, "and what of what you can control, in this situation? How do you want to move forward?"

“The only thing you can control is yourself, right?” he scoffs. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. Like you said, I already put out the word, and I’m not in the mood for planning apologies.”

Well, that's not strictly true either. But weaseling Demona into a contract of nonaggression would be one hell of a feat, even for him.

So Ossie nods, happy to move on from that line of thinking for now.

"You mentioned that you erred with one of your children a few months ago? Would you like to talk about that?"

Wow, they’re really running the gamut here. That’s one hell of a transition, which is to say none at all.

“I—give a guy a minute, ehn?”

He sips at his coffee while he tries to switch gears. When he does, he sighs, the rage boiling off, leaving room for regret to settle in like a shroud.

“Yeah, I… I did. Stupid of me, honestly, it was… after the July excursion. We met up again. I’d… gotten injured. Pretty badly. They weren’t there to see it, but after we revived, I was in too much of a hurry to clean up, and Darcy didn’t…” sigh, “take seeing it very well. And later they asked if I was okay, and they’re not someone you hide stuff from, so I said no, and I told them why.”

He’s sort of just staring off at a spot somewhere to the left of Ossie. “It was way too much. I didn’t have to explain it the way I did. Somehow I didn’t… expect them to care that much. Which isn’t on them, they always care, but for some reason I…”

Darcy’s nausea. Cass’ tears. Grace’s fury.

“Somehow it’s strange to see people care about me. Them reacting that badly didn’t feel like a possibility at all.”

"That was a 'would you like', Phil. I can take a no. I'm an expert at graceful rejections, in fact," he teases, allowing Phil his moment to recover.

...

Christ, what is it with people aboard this ship and making baffling decisions with teenagers. Darcy specifically, now he thinks of it. He shifts a little, to be closer to where Phil is staring.

"They do often try and posture more sophisticated and sturdy than they are. Children, I do mean. And often we don't know what we mean to people until that sort of thing happens. Injury, illness, et cetera. Especially here, where we have grown quite used to death being a non-permanent thing, wot? Tch-" Ossie clicks his tongue- "I do wish we had non-fiction aboard this ship. Have you happened to have read any Didion?"

“The answer was yes, I just thought the proverbial sidewalk had a bit more to go before it cut off into someone’s lawn.”

Here, like this, he can taste the bitterness of his own convictions. Any comfort at all on the topic of his eye was one he’d taken easily, but doing the same now feels… unsavory. Unfair. It shouldn’t matter how Darcy postures if he’s the one who’s supposed to know better. It shouldn’t matter how used he is to dying if he’s supposed to be better. And it isn’t fair to Ossie either, who doesn’t know anything about the loop or his reservations around being a dad. It’s his own fault, really, just as the rest of this is.

“A little. I can’t claim familiarity with her work, though. Why?”

Arthur, while being shepherded like a particularly socially pressurable sheep, has to wonder whether it's his imagination or whether Ossie's hand is kinda sliding on his shoulder. Did Tommy's suddenly get a silk gloves section or what.

"Well, if it's not... that- that is, if you were going to anyway..."

He should be remembering to eat now more than ever -- he's never going to shift this malaise if he doesn't -- so maybe accepting Ossie's offer is worth the mixed feelings and the vague sense of dread. And the food will be good. And he'll avoid the inconsistency of the restaurants -- it's the inconsistency that really gets him; when the food arrives he can deal with it, but when he goes looking and doesn't find it, it scares him so badly that you'd think there wasn't a mostly-stocked buffet a few doors down. And that's why, no matter how much Crichton complains about it, there are loaves of bread multiplying in their wardrobe, and bottles of water taking over their bathroom cupboard.

His voice is keeping up appearances, but his face has slipped unintentionally into a flat-eyed and dull expression.

"That would, tea - tea would be nice as well. Thank you."

Edited 2023-10-26 00:17 (UTC)

"Back home, I was given an essay of hers to read. 'On self respect'," and he makes a point of wincing because it was not one he was given as a fun beach read.

"Wish I had it here, she writes terribly eloquently. The key to it was that fostering a healthy self respect means acknowledging your mistakes, living with them, and assigning them their appropriate weight. Understanding that you are not uniquely flawed, that your loved ones aren't irredeemably blind for failing to notice your defects, nor are they uniquely generous or empathetic for forgiving you for them. Much prettier out of her mouth, I'm afraid. You know back when the memory portals were opened, I aided in torturing Dimitri for a frankly allegoric amount of time?"

He takes a long sip of his tea. Just to take a moment.

"Myself in the past did, in any case. And worse, he met a version of me before all of my nasty unseemly damage. Gah. Dreadful. Worst case scenario. The very worst version of me, and the version I am certain everyone would prefer. Terribly charming fellow, that one. But... even so. Seeing the worst of what I am capable of, and seeing my best days long behind me, he prefers to know me as I am. To consider me his friend. He's not an unintelligent boy, his judgement is usually better than most. So I suppose if I am to continue to trust in him, I must simply trust that there are reasons he cares for me now. Does that make sense? Terribly sorry, still getting used to the whole-" vague wavy hand-gesture, "telling the truth about things. Awful. Like pulling teeth. Utterly uncharming."

Phil wonders how much of this--not the whole thing of what they're doing, but this bit right here--is more for Ossie. At the same time, it is very much for Phil, to admit all of this. None of it is light. Phil saw it himself, those red eyes, the perfect skin, the graceful hands. Remembers the joy that Dimitri got to shed that touch.

He listens. Tries not to misunderstand. He's very still.

"I don't think I'm uniquely bad or that they're uniquely blind. I don't have to be unique to just... be someone with issues sometimes." He wishes people would trust that he's smarter than that. He wasn't unique before. He certainly isn't now.

...

Darcy saw him at his worst. Darcy's tolerance for bad is also much, much deeper than that.

"Darcy's. Not that stupid. But."

But.

"They're so loyal. When they think you're worthy of it, they swear fealty, and then that's it. I..." a hand swipes down his face over an inhale, "they're just... an adult they trusted in their life tried to turn them into just, some, some attack dog. And they trusted him and followed that. And then Skulduggery killed them in his negligence and yeah, Darcy actually got pissed at him for it and Skuls was regretful, and Darcy bullied me in a memory where I was just, the worst, I figured out how to end myself before I figured out how to make a single friend, but I... I know what I did isn't some, some apocalypse on our relationship. But I--"

...

"I don't know that I really figured out what it meant until then. How much they were willing to do for me. How much they were willing to justify. Hurting each other is one thing. Even my wife and I hurt each other. Deeply, sometimes. But I. I wish... I wish I could trust--"

That if I were making them worse, they would leave.

That's not fair to Ossie or Dimitri's decisions though, is it? Even what Ossie described, it's not that. It's not.

...

"That," Ossie says softly, "is the very reason why the training of child soldiers are abhorrent. Adults are one thing, but children rely on us for safety, love, comfort. They will starve themselves before they let go of it."

Wire mother, cloth mother.

"I wish I had something more comforting for you than that... you have to be the adult. You need not be perfect, of course, but. You have to be the adult. You have to manage your behaviour, you need to ensure that you're safe to be around. I've every faith you won't make the same mistake again."

"I know," he grumbles, and as though he's reciting it, "A dad doesn't have to be perfect. He just has to be there."

He'd made that vow already. That if Darcy can't leave, then he has to make staying worth it. It doesn't get any easier. They've run this topic in a circle, but maybe it's done something to hear it outside of his own head.

...

"Sorry about the, uh. Memory stuff with you and him."

"That's my line," he demures, "and in any case, if I must spend my days petrified of cocking up the whole bloody thing, don't think I'm letting you get away any easier."

A small dip of the head, "I can't say it's anything I was inviting, but having the worst thing you could possibly imagine actually occur is... well, it certainly has a way of putting things into perspective, wot? Rather like surviving a train wreck, I should imagine."

Eventually, that is. After he spent a month as goop. And had to be forced out of it by being literally teleported into a death labyrinth. You know how it is.

“Right. Something like that.”

He lapses into a bit of silence then. God. Parenting. He never thought he’d end up doing it, much less alone. … Well. Skulduggery is co-parenting. But it’s still not the same; still not what he had in mind, not what the plan was. He misses her so much.

...

"Arthur?" that's not a face he should be making, that is distinctly a not-good face.

"Are you feeling alright, my good man?"

He should lie and say he's just not been feeling well. He should leave and figure out an excuse for it later, much later. He should hold everything that happened tight to his chest, in his mouth, on his tongue, and choke on it.

But he remembers, at one and the same time, that Ossie has also experienced being snatched away, and that his own holiday to somewhere even worse than the ship lasted many times longer than Arthur's. And he is overwhelmed, suddenly, with the need to connect with someone on this. John is gone. Parker is dead. Crichton is... Crichton. He has friends here, but he still feels so fucking disconnected from everyone, like the lines mooring him to humanity have been cut, and he's grasping at them while they slip through his hands.

"I, er," he says, his voice wandering.

"No. I... no." It takes a lot to just... say that, bluntly, without it being a self-effacing jab, or at the end of an emotional outburst. "I, er..."

Ah.

He probably should have supposed that this was something more than just feeling poorly or losing one's appetite.

"Arthur," he says carefully, softly, "it's alright. I can ask Giles to leave if you'd like, if you want to talk about... this. But you don't have to, either. Can you take a deep breath for me, please?"

Oh no. He's being patient and understanding, Arthur's own personal kryptonite.

He obliges with a deep, slow breath, and then blows it gradually out again, and he wonders how on earth he went from zero to coming apart at the seams so quickly. He can feel himself starting to tremble. He had shaking hands when Parker talked to him like that as well, though not for the same reason.

"I-is Giles here now?" Arthur would very much like to know who he's having a normal one in front of. "I'm sorry, I... christ, you- you didn't ask for this."

"Not in the room, no. It's quite alright. Here- let's get you over to the couch."

And while Arthur is setting himself down, Ossie will dig through his pocket for his Blackbird Bishop brooch. You know, again. It's fine, two is hardly indicative of a habit. Right?

"Another couple of deep breaths, if you wouldn't mind?"

This time, having been appropriately chastised, he gives Phil a moment. As many as he needs, before he speaks again. Even if he feels longing shivering off him, a kind of desire for what cannot be attained.

Another room is all right, Arthur tells himself, as he lowers himself slowly onto the couch. He can keep his voice down*. He's not going to ask the man to leave his own home just so that Arthur can have a breakdown in it.

Where does Giles actually get his ingredients from? he wonders suddenly, and not without urgency. Where does Ossie get his little biscuits and crustless sandwiches? Where do they get their cups of tea? From their personal cottage somehow, or from the ship? He's been trying very, very hard not to think of the ship as having dwindling supplies -- there's food in the buffet, there's drinks in the bars, he's been told the lights are on -- but when meals are skipped in the restaurants and the dining hall, it's hard not to see it as the visible hairline crack of a deep and foundational splitting. And he doesn't know if that's paranoia. He doesn't know. It must be: everyone else seems to eat and drink without worry, as far as he can tell. But he often thinks about the ship becoming its own shrinking, gasping pit, and the stories of sailors lost at sea without anything to eat, and the gnawing that makes you think you'll lose your mind.

He only manages to nod, this time, and his breath makes sounds in his throat as he breathes in. and out. and in. and out.

*down here is a space for you all to put your Doubt emojis.

"At your leisure, whenever you feel sufficiently prepared for it... Can you tell me what the matter is?" he asks, slowly and gently and cautiously.

He clears his throat in the specific manner that Giles used to when one of his Aunts was in and on the war path. It doesn't specifically mean 'go out the window', but that was often how Ossie (usually hungover or half-asleep) interpreted it.

"Just preoccupied," Arthur says with half a breath. The lie is automatic, and against his wishes, and doesn't even have the decency to be convincing. He shakes his head, performs the arduous task of breathing in, and then on the out-breath corrects himself: "No, no nonono. No. Fuck."

It is, per usual, taking a hot minute to get from 'making the decision to say' to 'saying', and even now Arthur feels the urge to hedge, to find safety in secrecy. He's done it before. He's built a whole relationship on it before. But that was a worse and more buried secret than perhaps even the worst moments of the pit.

He takes a few more seconds and another breath to gather himself.

"I never- I don't think I ever told you about the- the King in Yellow. No, I- I'm sure I didn't."

There's no particular inflection on the name, but his hands are more expressive, the right (his other right) pushing down into the couch seat, the left (wooden finger and all) curling into a shaky sort of fist.

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cw touching on disordered eating (in this tag and probably ongoing)

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