Work Text:
Unfortunately, work takes them close to the sea.
It had to, eventually. But this does not still the waves of dread in Ishmael’s heart. She knows how work goes. They’ll spend hours upon hours in some shoddy, crumbling complex, and maybe they’ll accomplish their goal with little to all casualties. Then back to the bus they go, corralled on like rowdy schoolchildren, rinse and repeat. Though sometimes, they’d all be allowed an hour or two to themselves to roam around wherever they please, as long as they don’t get into serious trouble and come back on time (which was something that the Sinners all honoured, if only under the threat of death from Vergilius’ stare alone.)
Today they are given time to themselves. Mephistopheles is parked before a quaint little beach, fairly hidden and out of the way. Ishmael was the first to depart the bus, her body moving towards the waters in a trancelike state.
The sea calls to her.
—
A crewmate once taught her how to navigate rocky outcrops like these.
You have to find your footing step by step, no rushing. If you’re going down, find somewhere flat enough to sit on, then find something that you know IS sturdy, not LOOKS sturdy, mind you. Kick or wiggle around where you want to step a couple times. You don’t want to slip and get a face full of razor sharp barnacle shells. And don't just go putting your feet in any pool of water you see. If not slippery algae and mussel shells sharp and aplenty, then angry pinching crabs or stranded jellyfish might get at you. Don’t go hopping across little ditches either, unless you want to know what it's like to slip and break your legs then die of exposure out here.
She’s long forgotten their face and voice. But their little lesson in navigating rock pools at least stuck.
Slowly but surely, Ishmael makes her way to the far edge of the outcrop, towards a small plateau that overlooks the sea in whole. There she sat upon a jutting rock, and from her coat took out a chunky piece of driftwood she had taken a few paces back, and her whittling knife.
Today, she knows what she is carving. She shapes the wood into a little rectangular box, only slightly bigger than her hand. From this chunk, she cuts a thin piece from it lengthwise, the lid to her little hearse. She puts this aside and begins whittling into the bigger chunk, carving a crude, rectangular hole, big enough to put a dead fish in, if she so wished to give one a sailor’s burial. Finally, she finishes her little hearse by putting the lid on, and using some spare loose string within her pockets, ties the lid snugly shut.
It looks just like the one that had saved her life. It looks too much like it. Far too much like it. Memories flood her, far too much to bear. It weighs her down and constricts her chest. Her heartbeat quickens, her eyes turn to pinpricks, her fingers are deathly pale from gripping the little hearse in her hands so tightly. Another crack forms in her already cracked soul, and she crushes the little wooden hearse and flings the splintered remains into the unforgiving sea.
She picks at the splinters now embedded in her flesh, then buries her face in her hands. From behind she hears footsteps light and quick, perhaps too quick for terrain like this, but she does not bother to call the stranger out about it. A loud voice calls to her, shattering the silence between her and the sea. How grating.
“Hark! So this is where thy wanderings hath brought you, friend Ishmael!” Don Quixote yells, nonchalant and free, without a care in the world.
“Quiet down. You’re giving me a headache. What the hell do you want?”
“Ah, nothing! Just merely checking in on thee!”
“Well, here I am. No major injuries, internal or external, and all my limbs are attached. I’m perfectly fine and healthy. Now piss off.”
Don Quixote furrows her eyebrows, unconvinced.
“Your hand is bleeding, friend Ishmael.”
“Yeah, and? It’ll stop bleeding and I’ll be fine. Don’t make me repeat myself again, you know I hate that shit. Leave.”
“…Thou’rt in pain. Not bodily, but spiritually. Is mine assessment apt, my friend?”
Ishmael says nothing. She is tired, just so tired. So achingly she wished for the waves to rise a titanic height, to swallow her, to take her down into the watery graves, lay her to rest amongst her long dead comrades, in their hearses of seaweed and headstones of coral.
Don Quixote gently claps a hand on Ishmael’s shoulder and forces herself into her gaze, front and centre. Reluctantly, she looks up into her bright eyes, watching as the sun behind the horizon crowns her, like a halo does a holy figure. Between her and the sallow, sinking sea she stood, a shining, almost ethereal figure, perhaps one so shining bright as to banish the dark waves that lulls in her cracked and spilling soul.
It is not enough.
The sea calls to her. Wistful memories that all slip between her fingers, silt and sand. The whistling winds and rappelling waves, they are as now, as they were then. It sings her shanties that she barely remembers, holes in the words that once she sang along to with jovial gusto, rolls in rhythms steeped in nostalgia. It is all memories. All just painful memories of such merry days gone by, a life she once lived that her heart ached to relive. She stands up from her rocky seat and walks past Don Quixote, staring at the waters, staring so wistful and forlorn, so wrapped in her melancholy that she took no notice of the tears streaming down her cheeks.
From her shivering hand, she feels the warmth of another. Ishmael still stares out at the open waters in tearful trance, her silent vigil unbroken even as Don Quixote lightly squeezes her hand and speaks in a low, soft tone, a voice so far from her usual loud exuberance.
“Friend Ishmael. I shan’t ask of the tragedy that scars thine soul and plagues thee greatly. But please, if it be companionship that thou seeketh, a shoulder to cry upon when thy melancholy doth crush thee, then fain I am to offer my arms. For thee, my dear, they shall always stay open, and thou shall always be a welcome guest.”
Ishmael says nothing. Does nothing. Don Quixote only hoped that her words had reached the torpor of her grieving mind.
The bright sun sets upon the horizon. An equally bright companion holds her hand beside her as they watch. Their warmth cannot reach her.
Only the sea’s chilly winds did she feel upon her skin, passing through the cracks of her heart, whistling a sad lament.