Skyler had been dreading this moment ever since news of this specific rift had reached her - and Angelo's - ears (thanks, Gunner Graves ).

As hungry-horizon as her dear husband, Skyler remains nonetheless a firm believer in sailor superstition. For one who'd laughed one too many times in the face of death, this, this crossing, felt like a reckoning of sorts.

Or maybe the captain had sat around with fellow sailors just enough times to heed the tales stretched tall across the darkening sky. Probably drunk off her ass too - but tales, in some shape or form, have a way to linger.

Mist dances around legs as she crosses over alongside angelo vestri . Her gaze is less that of wonder and more of a sharp caution, catching on distant mountainpeaks and impossible spires. "Interesting is a word for it," she comments, voice pitched low enough not to disturb the mist. "If anyone gets possessed or some shit, I'm punching them."

First and last warning.

She does have a reputation for punching ghosts - and Angelo has gleefully carried the proof in his pocket every single day since the fact, whipping it out any time he thought he could get a rise out of her.

Dickhead. The thought nearly brings an affectionate smile to her mouth.

While she's worked with Gunner Graves and angelo vestri before, the other man (Caleb Harcourt ) in their merry troupe remains an unknown, with the exception of what little Angelo has told her. 

As they walk down the cliffside, the mist thickens into an ethereal soup, and clear shapes turn into blur-edged phantoms. Behind her, a blue-tinted Dhelmise phases into existence, seaweed tendrils wrapping around Skyler's arm. "If you sense anything approaching, warn us."

A ghost would know, right?

angelo vestri Gunner Graves Caleb Harcourt

☉

'...watch yourselves, guys!'

The familiar voice stretches thin and faint in the curling mists between them, further away than expected. Alarmed, Skyler looks back only to be met by a shifting sepia haze that swallows everything in the vicinity - including any clues of her companions' whereabouts. Hadn't they decided to remain at voice distance from each other?

"Angelo? Gunner?" No response. "Caleb?"

Dread worms around her throat, pools in the depths of her guts. Unbidden, Skyler's hand drifts to seek the steel blade strapped to her leg - but if the gesture brings her any comfort, it is a cold one. As is the seaweed that clings to her arm, ever watchful.

"Can you find them?" Dhelmise's grip slackens for a sliver of time, then tightens again in response. An orange eye swivels down to her, then a firm tug points her in the right direction.

Mist licks coldly at her exposed skin as she traverses past its reaching coils, a path too long to account for the time that has passed.

"Dhelmise?"

She looks down at the seaweed wrapped around her arm - intent on turning them around - and sees blood.

Viscous and red, splashed across her hands like a macabre Jackson Pollock. On her right hand, the phantom weight of memories takes shape, as sharp and merciless as a finely-whetted blade. 

No. No, please no.

From somewhere in the mists comes the distorted echo of a supplication, as intimate as the murmurings of some long-lost lover.

'Please, Sky...'

You're dead.

Then she blinks, and the spectral world shifts back to its previous state.

prompts:
- becomes lost in the mist
- spirits messing with her and using her to distract angelo vestri pt. 1
angelo vestri Gunner Graves Caleb Harcourt

☉

People are often haunted by their bad decisions, or lack thereof. Looking back, Captain Dross finds that none of those have ever made her come to regret them.

No, Skyler had made a throne out of her bad decisions, and had sat proudly upon it like a queen.

She'd always taken control of whatever life had chosen to deal her. Had faced death and terror with snarled defiance and an unshakable resolve which had seen her through storms and tempests alike. It had never, not even once, occurred to her that - in doing that - she'd become her very worst enemy.

Because, you see, Skyler Dross had never regretted her bad decisions.

But her good ones?

Her hand is clean. Her hand is clean. Spotless. She tells herself this again, and again, and however many times it takes to convince herself. But the mists whisper, and it echoes within her ribcage, a cacophony of accusations: Liar, liar, liar. So as long as you live, it will never wash away.

Death has accompanied her in many of her adventures, a familiar shadow that she poked time and time again without ever crossing. She'd found life in those moments of defying fate, and a part of her twists and writhes at the one time she didn't.

Mists part before her feet, weaving a path that is not of her own making. She should've turned around, could've shouted for the one person she knew would always answer - because she'd seen constellations in his eyes and had chosen to follow them home. Her home. Their home.

Her mouth opens, and she chokes on the word before it forms.

Angelo.

"Hello, darling."

Terror grips her throat, as does the deathly cold whisper of blue-tinted fingertips. Goosebumps follow in their wake, as does the scent of recent putrefaction, cloying and musky.

You're not here. You're not. This isn't real.

A gentle smile drags her eyes down to the other, bloodier one across his throat. A single slash, she remembers. Clean by any standard, her mind provides. It'd been quick.

As quick as a slashed throat could be.

Skyler takes a step forward, a snarl ripping its way out of her throat. But the sound of it is more desperation than anger. "No. You can't be here, you're not-"

"But I am." Milky blue looks down at her, seeing in death what it never had in life. And a face so familiar she could trace its every detail in her sleep, one that had accompanied her to this very trip, twists into a pantomime of pity. "Don't you remember, Sky? You killed me."

You killed me. Killed. Killed. Killed.

There's no accusation in the words, only a terrifying gentleness. And it pierces through her very core, drowns out her anger to replace it with anguished acceptance. Because, of course, he's right. She'd killed him - and now he lived only in stolen moments within her nightmares.

A tragic figure stuck in a doomed world. One which she'd barely escaped.

"It'll be our very own secret." She feels the palm of his hand on her cheek, soft as a whisper. Closes her eyes as his lips press against her forehead, a memory of touch. And her heart breaks all over again.

Bad decisions had never brought her to her knees. But mercy? Mercy had bloodied her hands and made a killer out of her.

So when he disappears into the ether, she doesn't take notice of the yawning chasm at her feet.

prompts:
- spirits messing with her and using her to distract angelo vestri pt. 2
- it's dead!angelo time (angelo from a paralel dimension she killed whoops)
- fails to notice a fissure she's about to fall into
angelo vestri Gunner Graves Caleb Harcourt

☉