deercountry | Catch-All: Featuring Swords

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Catch-All: Featuring Swords

Who: Fakir (

lludw), and OPEN
What: Catch-all for a nerdy knight boy and a sneaky viking boy, featuring general prompts where they poke around things and Winter Mourning memories where there's violence.
When: late November through all of December
Where: Generally around Trench, Gaze and the Arcane Archives (Fakir), the frozen boats and Pandora Hearts house (Lucius)

Content Warnings: Memories contain warnings for animal attack, child endangerment, parental death, and assumed drowning (Fakir) and child endangerment/abuse and mental health issues (Lucius).

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"They're for looking at. Like my needlepoint."

If this child was wondering who would possibly hang up in the sitting room or for that matter create in the first place a lovingly crafted yet unrefined needlepoint of a ham, this is the culprit.

"Or my dresses; if I didn't like looking at nice clothes I'd wear whatever fit and have done with it."

This isn't meant to be a passive aggressive jab no matter how Lucius is dressed, if she was gonna jab him she would do it directly. She is, now that it has occurred to her, blatantly scrutinizing his outfit situation.

Needlepoint? He raises his eyebrows - she hadn't struck him as someone who occupies herself with traditional feminine pursuits. But now that he thinks of it, that likely explains the embroidered...chunk of meat he saw hanging up.

Things just for looking at. It's a luxury. But a nice one.

It makes even more sense when she makes the point about clothes. There is something wonderful about things that combine form and function beautifully - the carefully engraved hilt of a sword, or a belt buckle.

But making more sense isn't hiding the judgement that's now coming with it. Lucius's outfit situation is, really, pretty rough. He wears a too-large shirt under a somewhat moth-eaten three-quarter-sleeve sweater, topped off with an oversized overcoat that does at least have nice embroidery at its frayed edges. At least his trousers fit. The boots don't, but stuffing them with straw for insulation is standard practice anyway and makes up the difference. Altogether, the clothes couldn't say 'scavenged' more clearly if they'd tried.

"Doesn't that get expensive?" The best defense is a good offense.

Alice does whatever she wants with little regard to whether something is feminine or not. Also, she likes to stab.

"No, I found plenty of my old clothes on the beach, and some more out in the boats, and took some nice things from pirates my first day here."

Lucius clearly is not the pirate-fighting type. Also, it's not really pirate season. Possibly they have all been scared off after they heard about Alice...? Well, there remains a clean and simple solution to multiple problems.

"Let's go out to the boats and find you a shirt that doesn't look bad, if you hang around here you should at least be nice to look at too."

Ah, yes, the pirates. That was a nice coat, he admits.

He almost asks now? But keeps it back - not because he's not baffled by the suddenness with which Alice decides things, but because he'll be damned if he shows that he's been thrown off balance.

And...actually, why not now? It's not as if he has any obligations. He hadn't looked for clothes in his rounds of the boats, focused as he was on food and tools. There could be some good things that were overlooked.

"Alright," he says, leaning back slightly with a deliberately casual air. "You know some good places to start?"

Alice takes a moment to think about it before going "ah!" and pounding her fist into her palm triumphantly.

"One of the boats way out far, of course! I can't stay out there for long because it's freezing cold, and you couldn't get there at all on your own. But if we combine our powers we can use each other to get what we want!"

This is the exact definition of friendship, as far as she's concerned. Look at that wide beaming grin. If this pans out they are friends and maybe she will tell him this like six months down the line.

If she had said something more, well, socially acceptable, like 'we're friends, so we can trust each other' or other nonsense like that, Lucius would have...smiled politely. But only because it's stupid to laugh in someone's face when they're offering you something. We can use each other to get what we want, however, is a kind of pure honesty and practicality he can get behind. It helps, of course, that she's actually come up with a good idea.

He grins back. "Then we'd better go before it's too dark."

The required gear is assembled, by which we mean that Alice gets a couple of sacks and puts on another layer. She learns that she should bring things with her the hard way, and so far: mittens. It's cold out there.

On the way, negotiations:

"You can have all the jewelry to sell or wear or whatever you like unless it's red; that's my favorite color, and I get first pick on any dresses, and I want all the dried meat if there's any to be found."

Lucius himself finds a spare pair of mittens. He may not feel the cold, and seems to genuinely be unaffected so far, but he's still not inclined to risk his hands in freezing temperatures. Those located, he hefts his welcome bag onto his back. The thing has consistently proved very useful.

Alice is as straightforward about the division of spoils as she is about everything else, which does make this rather easier. He's not inclined to quibble with most of the terms. He expects other jewelry (if they find it) will outnumber anything red, so he should make off well there. And he is, demonstrably, less picky about fashion (if nothing else, it can be traded for something better back here). However, there is one point that needs clarifying.

"What about dried fish?"

Alice makes a face.

"I'm coming around on fish again but I don't want it in my pockets."

She has eaten by a whale trauma and doesn't want to own up to it. Frankly smelling of fish is not great even if you have not had to live in a whale and it's a perfectly valid reason, she feels.

More fish for him, then. Lucius doesn't necessarily mind the smell, if it means a good food supply.

Her expression, though, and the mention of coming around again, catches something in his memory. Tell me you didn't get eaten by a whale, Break had said when they met the second time. Lucius looks at Alice with curiosity.

"Were you one of the ones who got stuck inside a whale?"

Gross, couldn't she be famous for something cooler? She makes a face.

"Yeah. It sucked. Lots to eat, but it was all whale. We lived on a ship that got stuck crossways in the gullet so it couldn't eat us up proper, but we could eat it back."

That would make one rather sick of anything to do with fish.

Which is an understatement, but exactly how else can you react to someone living inside a whale for who knows how long?

The most important part, he thinks, is that they somehow managed to escape. "How did you get out?"

Wow, he wants to know? Boys like gross stuff, she supposes. Or he wants to know how to get out if it happens to him. Well, why not talk about it?

"Hacked through the side. We didn't have good tools or weapons for it, so it took us a long time. We'd have to scratch it back open again whenever it started scabbing over."

...Gross, now she's thinking about it again.

"It only got really nasty when we were almost out - there was this thick layer of fat, and that was easy to work with; you could bail it out with a bucket if you pushed hard enough, but it stuck to everything."

She idly checks under her nails. Still clean.

It is, indeed, the practicalities he's concerned with. It's certainly possible that one way or another he'll end up back in the ocean, and who knows what might happen after that.

It's not easy to gross Lucius out. He's spent far too much of his life mucking out stables and clearing away trash for much to phase him. So he's not grossed out, but he can imagine pretty vividly how unpleasant it would have been for things to cling, and how awful the smell must have been. "Ugh."

It's about as sympathetic as an expression of distaste can be. But being him, he follows up with "You really couldn't make a ladder or something like that?"

Alice stops mid-stride.

Considers the resources available to her at that point. Could... she have...? In hindsight - look, she's not going to consider hindsight she looks to the future okay.

"You can just make a ladder?"

He is actually surprised enough that he doesn't laugh at her (yet). Instead, he simply appears confounded.

"...yes? You had wood, right?"

This being winter, Alice has not encountered the people who have taught her so much expanded vocabulary. She does have one appropriate word in her holster, at least.

"Fuck!! We had wood! We could have built a ladder!"

As far as Lucius is concerned, this is a completely standard word, so Alice is saved any disapproval of her new choices in language.

She is not, however, spared laughter. He can't hold it back now.

When he can breathe again, he offers "Digging was probably more foolproof." It probably was! Climbing inside a living thing had to be risky. But they found a ship and didn't even think to try- oh this is hilarious.

"We could have built a ladder... Hey, it's not funny!"

This is incorrect, it is hilarious, but that does not stop her from protesting and flailing about. The diplomacy helps soothe her pride, a little.

"Correct, even a fool cannot foil my plans."

Diplomacy once more saves the day, keeping him from pointing out that in this case she was the fool. Truly, a heroic effort for the sake of peace.

"So for today's foolproof plan, shall we head north?"

THEY HEAD NORTH. THEY REACH THE SHORE. It is a foolproof plan indeed.

"I'll let you ride on my back on the way over, if you promise not to fall off."

Alice has climbed around on shoulders in order to be taller and finds it quite fun. Also, she doesn't want to carry him.

Well, how else would it work, really? It's a less embarrassing and likely more comfortable way to travel than being thrown over a shoulder.

Lucius holds up a hand theatrically. "I promise."

Alice high fives him in a spate of confusion over which otherworldly gestures are which.

"Well, up with you, then!"

She crouches a little bit.

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Catch-All: Featuring Swords

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cw: gore

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