betterthanaplan | Port of Fandom, Sunday evening

The portal let off at the end of the docks. Duke walked through, his head down, shoulders hunched, looking like a man under attack.

He wasn't anymore, at least not from the outside.

He paused just long enough to get his bearings, then started down the docks, not waiting for his partners to follow through the portal. He wanted to -- something. He didn't know what. Yell or hit something or dive into the ocean or maybe get on the OceaNyx and sail off over the horizon and just. Disappear.

He was pretty sure no one was going to let him do that last one, though.

[for said partners, please! And the return and general mood is fine for broadcast, but maybe not the precise details of conversations]

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From:

my_own_advocate

Oh, for-- Lucifer paced after him. "Duke," he said sharply. "You did the best that you could."

That probably should've sounded more consoling.

From:

betterthanaplan

"Fat lot of good that did anyone," Duke said darkly. He reached the gangplank for the Rouge and no matter how tempting it was to just keep going -- started up it.

The OceaNyx wasn't stocked for a long trip. And he didn't sail unprepared.

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia was just glad they seemed to be actually getting home. Maybe she could faceplant into bed and just... not be awake or around for a while.

So she kept following them.

From:

my_own_advocate

Lucifer was contemplating the pros and cons of surreptitiously unfastening all the cables keeping the Rouge tied to the island and just letting them all drift off to sea.

"Duke," he said again, and reached to grab Duke's arm as soon as they were aboard.

From:

betterthanaplan

"What?!" Duke spun again, jerking to pull his arm from Lucifer's grip. His adrenaline was starting to fade, and he clung to his anger, trying to keep the sore muscles and aching heart he knew were coming at bay. "What are you going to say that'll make this better, huh, Luce? What could you possibly say?"

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia stopped again, sort of... teetering right on the edge of the gangplank.

Something in her tried to tell her to say something, again.

From:

my_own_advocate

"I understand," Lucifer said, and didn't let go, and kept his eyes on Duke's. "It is not your fault."

From:

betterthanaplan

Pulling against Lucifer when he didn't want to let go was useless, but Duke did it anyway. Even as his muscles yelled at him (there wasn't a single part of him that didn't hurt, not after getting tased), even as his energy ran out faster (he'd barely slept last night, none of them had, they were all running on less than fumes).

"That makes it worse!"

From:

okteiviakom

"Can you two just get inside?"

Not the profound thing that something in her had been trying to get her to say, probably. It was flat and tired, to boot.

But in spirit, she was still sitting on the police station floor, trying not to hurl her guts onto it, so this was the best that she could do.

From:

my_own_advocate

"I just--"

Lucifer made a strangled noise.

"You two go on ahead," he ground out. "I'm going to pull up the gangplank or whatever the bloody thing is called."

From:

betterthanaplan

Duke darted for the hatch that led below decks the moment Lucifer let him go.

Not that he made it much further than the galley. He found himself a large, unopened bottle of bourbon and wondered how hard it would be to convince Lucifer to just leave him alone to wallow his way to the bottom of it.

Octavia, he suspected, wouldn't be a hard sell. She was doing her closed off thing, and was probably looking for her own alone time by now.

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia was still standing on the edge of the gangplank.

"No," she told Lucifer.

From:

my_own_advocate

"No?" Lucifer said flatly. "No, I think I will."

From:

okteiviakom

And Octavia replied just as flatly, "Why?"

From:

my_own_advocate

"Because it shouldn't be easy for any of us to escape home at the moment," Lucifer said flatly.

From:

okteiviakom

Something sharpened a little in Octavia's expression. Not by a lot, but it was there.

"I would've listened to worries about outside forces." There was just a little bit more rasp, but it sounded exhausted. "Trapping us in isn't going to fly with me."

From:

my_own_advocate

Lucifer stared at her for what felt like an hour.

He hadn't anticipated pushback from her. Duke, yes. Her, no.

"Fine," he found himself saying, "Then I'm going back to the mansion. Have fun."

From:

okteiviakom

Of course not. He hadn't heard the things his voice had been telling her all too recently. After he'd put her over his shoulder, there had been a lot about how undeserving of any freedom she was.

His statement just made her look more tired, somehow. But she didn't move.

"So the flight risk is you."

From:

my_own_advocate

"No, it's Duke," Lucifer said. He gestured wildly at the ship. "I have been where he is. I know what he's capable of. But if you want to play Russian roulette with that right now, be my guest. You're just going to have to do it alone, if you're going to torpedo my ideas blindly."

From:

okteiviakom

"All that, and it's still you," Octavia replied. "Just go inside."

From:

my_own_advocate

"No," Lucifer snapped, and got back onto the gangplank.

From:

okteiviakom

Sorry, Octavia continued to be standing on the edge of it, so it wasn't that easy. Unless he was going to shove her aside into the water?

"Gangplank's not the answer, Lucifer."

From:

my_own_advocate

"It's the start of one," Lucifer said, and while his voice was flat, it trembled at the edges with restrained, helpless rage. "You can either get on board with that plan or go come up with one by yourself."

From:

betterthanaplan

They . . . were actually leaving him alone.

Duke was kind of insulted.

(Hurt. He was hurt. But he was pretty sure he wanted to be left alone, so the hurt didn't make sense, so he was telling himself he was insulted.

("Insulted" sounded less pathetic.)

He'd managed to down a good quarter of the bottle already, and between the exhaustion, the lack of a decent meal in the last several hours, and the mix of bourbon with his still-new medication, he was definitely already feeling the effects as he swayed his way past the pillow room.

They'd expect him to hole up there. That's what he'd done last time. He wanted to be left alone (it hurt that he was being left alone) so he went looking for a spot they wouldn't necessarily think of.

The boat had plenty of those.

From:

okteiviakom

Well, that was gonna be an issue for someone very soon.

Octavia looked at Lucifer and wondered whether there was even a point to talking to him, anymore.

She shook her head. "You're trying to protect him from your imagined worst case scenario by hurting me to my face." And pushed past him. "Just know that."