first one who touches the ground loses

Last week had been actually pretty okay, and no one was more surprised than Octavia. What a difference it made when you gave in to the... help you had at home, right? Didn't mean it hadn't also still been aggravating and frustrating at times, or that she hadn't still longed to go disappear into the woods and things like that, but it had been good. A weird sort of bonding experience, even.

But having full control over herself was better, so she'd been enjoying this week, too. And now that this week was drawing to a close, she was enjoying it at the mansion, where she was setting the table with some nice seafood pasta she'd ordered from town, while waiting for Duke to show up.

(Look, it was the guys that cooked, mostly. And she'd wanted to keep this one simple.)

[ooc: For the date, duh.]

( Earlier in the day (NFB) )

And all that done, come evening, Octavia was back on the island. She'd had plans to cook something simple, but with her brain so thoroughly shaken by the entire day she'd had... A big vegetarian pizza had just arrived at the house.

Just in time for Duke to arrive, too.

[ooc: Stuff under the cut is NFB, but everything else is fair game! For that guy.]

Thursday night was still on-going had been something else. Stupid, probably, but it had made Octavia feel alive in a way that had been in short supply in the past few weeks. And she'd come back, late at night but with no major injuries, taken a shower, crawled into bed. Played it all off like a long walk. A breather. Nothing too different from all the other walks she'd been taking.

Even just this morning, a full day later, she'd already taken one. Just around the island, nowhere near the preserve, or the woods, not even in the park. Streets and stairs and beach, confined. Thinking, whether she wanted to or not, about the dreams she'd been having the past two nights. Walking into the preserve and letting the undergrowth bury her. Her mother had been there, too, bathed in a golden light from somewhere beyond the treetops.

It all seemed a little heavy-handed, if you asked Octavia.

Anyway, the walk was over. She was yet to go back inside, although she felt like she'd probably need a shower soon. For now, she was sitting on the deck, right by her little garden. Like it was enough just to be near it.

Because it had to be.

She had to be fine. She was losing entire days to pretending to be, acting her usual self for Duke and Lucifer's benefit, doing the usual things, with her quiet snark, holding hands, playing her part while they fixed the shit between themselves. (Ignoring the ache that came with them doing it someplace she'd spent years developing a big stake in. Ignoring that she'd almost dropped by the house for a bath just this morning, only to find herself unable to actually go in.) Sometimes she pretended so convincingly she even fell for it herself.

And wasn't that the goal, really?

She had her phone out. Checking out the news for anything new on the chemical plant. That was where it had started, anyway: now she was just scrolling through whatever else happened to be there. Maybe she was stalling? Didn't really matter. Something caught her eye either way, in her recommendations. A fresh discovery in Pompeii.

She tapped it open. Read, scrolled.

Came to a stop when she came up on the photo of the altar. Two snakes, surrounded by greenery, painted two thousand years ago, but their color still retained, unearthed from the ash.

Something in her chest clenched.

(It all seemed a little heavy-handed, if you asked --)

[ooc: Expecting one, open.]

Octavia had urged Lucifer to fly Duke back to the boat. Something about safety, and security, and a defendable spot that was closed off and sort of separate from the rest of the island --

So in one word: control. Which Octavia was grasping for, had been grasping for from just about the second she'd laid eyes on Mara at Selkie Peak. Something she'd thought she'd had, with the portal idea, only to immediately find out how wrong she'd been.

Making Lucifer get Duke home as soon as possible had been another flaily attempt at it.

Of course, as Octavia had come to realize very soon after, it meant she'd had to let both of them out of her sight. She didn't know if Duke had come to yet. Didn't know anything, except that this was the fastest she'd ever crossed the island, trying to race an angel back to port.

Her heart was thumping like thunder in her ears and her lungs ached when she burst onto, then into the Cape Rouge.

And yet: "Lucifer! Is he still out?"

[ooc: For the two modded with permission! Follows this. Note to squirrels: That Octavia and Lucifer got Duke back to the boat is fine for broadcast, everything else NFB pls and thank you!]

Wednesday had made it two weeks that Octavia, Duke and Lucifer had been out at sea on the OceaNyx. Things on Fandom had gone back to normal, according to Eric's texts on Tuesday, but they were still out here.

Octavia was pretty sure everyone agreed that their second week had been much worse than the first. What she wasn't sure about was whether the others were finding being on the boat to have gotten as suffocating now as she was. The only times she felt like she could really breathe was when they docked at one of the random islands.

Like at this one, right now.

She was sitting at what could charitably be referred to as a tiny stretch of beach, her shoes off, just her toes in the water. It was a grounding, sensory thing.

There had been such little room for screaming in the past week.

[ooc: NFB due to distance, open to the guys and for texts/calls.]

Jennifer had taken off for Baltimore. If anyone had asked Octavia about the why and how, maybe even the when of it, she wouldn't have been able to say. Something in her had shut down at the sight of the island, the knowledge that they were no longer in Haven, and she only had one single shred of focus left, and one single goal to go with it:

Just herding Duke across the island, to the port, to the Rouge, to deliver him to Lucifer.

She hadn't said a word the entire way over.

But when they finally stepped onto the dock, with the ship just up ahead, she was almost running.

[ooc: For the two! Follows this.]

So Octavia had stayed the night over on her own boat, yesterday. She wasn't proud of it, but apparently there was just something about waking up to one of her partners having turned into some sort of a blue horse-like thing that was just too much of a living fever dream for her. Thankfully, she'd had the preserve to run off to, and then her own boat to hang out on, waiting for all that to pass.

And now, this morning, she had gentle amends to make, in the form of fancy takeaway coffees and extravagant pastries from town.

(The big thing of just straight black coffee was for her. Hadn't actually slept all that much.)

"Ha yun," she called, as she was making her way down into the galley of the Rouge. "Everyone human-shaped?"

Please say yes. Everything had seemed normal back in town.

[ooc: For those two, if they are so inclined!]

Had Octavia's feelings really mellowed any since Wednesday night, when she and Duke had agreed on this date night? Even Octavia herself wasn't really sure, in all honesty. There was still something that wasn't quite sitting right in her brain, but at least the urge to run off and be anonymous in a crowd somewhere loud had lessened.

Somewhat.

They were out on the water, so there wasn't any room for running away now, anyway. She was letting Duke pick a spot (since he owned this boat, and was steering it, and that made him the captain), and the takeout bags were waiting, delicious smells occasionally wafting from them into her nose to mix with the smell of the ocean.

The sky was getting dark, up above.

Maybe this wouldn't be bad.

[ooc: For the pirate.]

Octavia had been dreaming of many things, this week. Mostly Haven, mostly horror, but many other messy things, too. Sheep and tilling fields and glowing butterflies and a week on a farm (sheepskin blankets and bonedeep exhaustion and a warm voice in her ear talking about what use was fighting at the end of the world?) had featured in jumbled everything of it all, but that was not out of the ordinary enough for Octavia to have really paid it much mind.

(And, well, she always felt drawn to the woods. And particularly when traumatic shit had been going down.)

So this was just any old Saturday morning.

She had a coffee cup in hand when she emerged onto the deck, with faint plans of at least finding some nice stretches to do in a bit that wouldn't irritate her wounds too much. But of course, all that was forgotten when she looked up and saw a young man standing at the edge of the deck, just barely over the gangplank.

The cup fell from her grasp as she stared at him.

[ooc: Opennn.]

Octavia had no clear, good reason for why she'd been drawn to this task on this particular morning: why she found herself sitting out on the dock with all her various bladed weapons she'd gathered from the Rouge and her own boat (her sword, a bunch of knives of different types), making sure they were all clean and appropriately sharp, and doing whatever she could to fix them if they weren't.

She'd even taken one or two furtive glances towards the Rouge - she knew she had more weapons, old ones, down in the hold from when she'd emptied the old apartment, but... Maybe that day would eventually come, too, when she'd manage to make herself go down there and sort through the boxes.

Probably not today, though.

Anyway, that train of thought got cut short when some of the port's porg population waddled over to be curious at the weapons laying on a towel to one side of her. Maybe they were attracted to the way the clean blades caught the sunlight?

"Hey, nou ste gon yu, strikon."

Predictably, the birds did not give two shits, just burbled at her in indignant fashion when she leaned over a little to shoo them further away.

[ooc: Open!]