🏴‍☠️ IC contact; Duplicity

[calicoat]

INBOX text / audio / video / action "Captain Jack Rackham. Leave a message, or speak to me face to face like an adult." code credit

Comments

[calicoat]

What do you expect? If you reveal your closeness to anyone around here, people will assume you're fucking. You may as well get used to it.

[ Jack might, might have been a little extra about it in the case of his chat with Carver, but the point is solid! ]

Vangaurd. We'll teach him to handle the rigging, too, in case we don't need one.

[extramuralise]

Well I didn't deny it. [ Be proud of him! ] But do you believe that it's actually likely we COULD need a Vanguard?

[ Irving hasn't ever really had much to do with warships, so this does surprise him slightly. ]

[calicoat]

[ He IS proud, actually, even if it would be completely delusional for Irving to try denying it at this point... ]

I'd rather put a group of strong fighters' skills to waste than not have them at my disposal when I need them.

The SIN guards could give chase, we could run into that ghost ship, we could land on an island where the locals are even less friendly than the ones we've got. We truly have no idea, and I'd like to be prepared.

[extramuralise]

What sort of Artillery are you thinking of equipping us with? You know, I have got some decent gunnery training under my belt, though I've never actually managed to put any of it to use.

Very well. [ If this weren't text Jack would have just heard Irving's quite loud, quite exasperated "I am through with hearing about this ghost ship" sigh. ] He'll be quite good at it, I expect.

[calicoat]

It'll be sparse. They don't even make fucking cannons anymore, so whatever we can get.

[ Listen, he's not any happier about this ghost ship shit than Irving is, but it's a possibility he'd rather be prepared for... ]

What did he say about me?

[extramuralise]

[ Irving doesn't respond immediately, unable to predict how Jack will react to it. He types, deletes, retypes... then finally, just sends: ]



He said that you paid him to tell you how I took it.

[calicoat]

I gave him a knife I didn't need anymore because he was being a prick.

Does that bother you? It must, if you're asking.

[extramuralise]

No, it doesn't bother me. I know how he is. And that it must have been disturbing for you to learn about.

My only thought was that I should try explaining to you, the nature of why I...but I am not so sure I can explain it.

[calicoat]

It was. But you paid him for the service, can't very well argue it.

You don't have to. Unless you'd like to.

[extramuralise]

I thought it might help me. That's all. Really I was just being foolish.

[calicoat]

Help you with what, exactly? Find some sort of clarity, through suffering?

[extramuralise]

To not feel quite so defenseless.

[calicoat]

[ Paying a man to hold you down and drown you is an interesting way of doing that... ]

Against what?

[extramuralise]

Anything, Jack. Everything.

The point is learning how to retain some Control over the Mind, no matter what it is the Body Itself may currently be going through. But you need not worry - I'll not be trying it again.

[calicoat]

I would sure as hell hope not. If you feel the need to put yourself through something like that again, call me, won't you?

For what it's worth, though, he seemed to think you'd succeeded.

[extramuralise]

Jack. You know you can't always protect me from everything.

Nor should you have to. I should be more capable of enduring this on my own.

[calicoat]

You are capable. I know that.

Let me do this, please, John. I know no other way to ensure you are taken care of, the circumstances being what they are. No matter what you are capable of enduring on your own, why should you have to? Why would you want to, with someone eager to be at your side?

[extramuralise]

[ Jack really does have some kind of uncanny knack for always saying exactly the right things to, at least in the moment, cast out any and all doubts from Irving's mind that he's been making some huge mistake in all this, that every choice he's made in Duplicity has been wretchedly, horribly wrong so far, because--

And this is the part he especially isn't sure he could ever convince Jopson of, ever begin to make him understand, that... Jack really, actually, genuinely cares about Irving, to a level which Irving is deeply grateful for. He knows, somehow, how to help soothe Irving's nerves, his temperament, his vacillating and mercurial moods-- how to care for him in ways not even Irving could have possibly known he needed, or wanted.

Irving finds it almost, or even actually frightening at times. Not because of anything Jack's done wrong, but because Irving simply doesn't know how to... do this, really, doesn't know how to even feel worthy of it. ]

It is what I am used to; enduring on my own. Mostly I do not mind it. But here I find that it frightens me greatly.

Are you really sure? Even Jopson finds me tiresome, you know.
I know something is wrong with me, but especially here. Here more than anywhere.

[calicoat]

[ It’s probably Jack’s greatest skill, knowing what people need to hear. Whether they, themselves know it or not, if he knows what they want, what they need, then he can find a way to twist it so that it aligns with whatever he wants. It is a power that he can, and has, used to various ignoble means, to manipulate, to seduce, to feed destructive fires and put righteous ones out.

Soothing people, or keeping them happy, purely because he cares about their happiness instead of how it can serve him, is less common, but it’s the same core skill. He extends this side of it to a precious few, a group which Irving is now inescapably apart of. ]

Jopson’s a twat. 

You're no more wrong than anyone else. We’ve all got flaws here, surely you know who you’re talking to. Just because you've got the particular misfortune of finding yourself in a place tailor-made to poke at yours, doesn't mean you have to punish yourself. This place will do that to us enough on its own.

[extramuralise]

I have not been punishing myself. [ Or at least not quite... in the way he's assuming Jack thinks he's punishing himself. ] I am happy when I am with you.

[calicoat]

I'm glad to hear it. But what of the rest of the time?

[extramuralise]

[ ... ]

Sometimes. Yes. I am grateful for many of those who I have met here - and that I can be alive to see even just this one version of how far the World has come since 1848. It is not all bad.

[calicoat]

You're alive here. Or close enough to feel as if you are, if we are indeed somewhere in between. You don't have long, back where you were from. I would be happy for it, were I you.

I do not say this to downplay the seriousness of your distress, as I know you have good reason for it. But in your case, this is the only life you've got, really. You'd do well to find that happiness where you can. Not only when I'm with you, as greedy as I can be, you deserve more than that.

[extramuralise]

I have been trying. Really. But please understand how it has been like one ordeal after the next for me here. I cannot even take comfort in knowing how God will Reward our Suffering, in the end.

[calicoat]

I do. And I can relate. Hell, half of our ordeals are overlapping, at this point.

I know that I can not protect you from them all, and that often I am, in fact, the cause of them. It doesn't change that I wish to see you happy.

And I'm not so sure that God will see fit to reward me for much of anything, so, I'm resolved to live in the now and minimize that suffering as much as possible.