DSU Stella Gibson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ex_assertiveness90) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sixthiterationlogs2018-03-18 05:24 pm
ex_assertiveness90) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2018-03-18 05:24 pm
let the only sound be the overflow
WHO: Stella Gibson
WHERE: The fountain/Peggy and Stella's house/the woods
WHEN: 13th-14th March; Stella disappeared from the village on the 10th and returned on the 13th.
OPEN TO: Two locked sections and one open section, all labeled below
WARNINGS: Spoilers for series 3 of The Fall. Mentions of male-on-female violence, suicide, possibly more — will update as needed.
WHERE: The fountain/Peggy and Stella's house/the woods
WHEN: 13th-14th March; Stella disappeared from the village on the 10th and returned on the 13th.
OPEN TO: Two locked sections and one open section, all labeled below
WARNINGS: Spoilers for series 3 of The Fall. Mentions of male-on-female violence, suicide, possibly more — will update as needed.
take what the water gave me
13th march ; the fountain ; locked to Kate Kelly
On one early morning, Stella Gibson vanishes. At first, it might be simple enough to excuse as a jaunt into the woods or over to the other village, which she's done before; but as several days go by, it becomes clearer something else is going on. Those who are close to her, or who at least know her routines, come to realize she's actually, truly gone.
On the fourth day, however, there's movement in the fountain, a stirring in the water and the splash of someone surfacing from the depths. For a long, breathless moment, Stella is totally, completely disoriented. Five minutes ago, she was cleaning out her office at the Down Serious Crime Suite after the total collapse of her investigation, and the leap of logic required to take her from there to a fountain in the middle of nowhere in that space of time is nothing less than impossible. There's a second of genuine panic as she doesn't recognize her surroundings or the circumstances that brought her here or any of it— and then it comes back to her all at once, the reorientation of a person waking up in an unfamiliar place suddenly remembering where she is and what brought her here, and oh, fuck.
Stella swims over to the side of the fountain and just... stops, lays her arm on the broad stone rim and puts her head down on it. That brief moment of panic had been the first thing she'd really felt in days — although has it really been that long? It seems like she hasn't seen the village for weeks, but for all she knows it's been no time at all here. It's too much for her to try to sort through right now. Somewhere underneath the numb haze she's been in since Paul Spector committed suicide is a roiling torrent of emotion — fury, grief, exhaustion — that she knows she has to let herself feel sooner or later, but right now she can't deal with any of it.
She hasn't got out of the fountain yet, partly because the water at least is something reassuring, familiar, and partly because she's working up the energy to haul herself out when her left side is a mess of half-healed bruises and even swimming up to the surface had pulled at sore muscles. She knows her face is not any better, and she's probably going to get concerned questions, but there's not a lot that can be done about that. Nothing except time will heal the marks of one of the last things Spector did before he killed himself, his one and only attempt at revenge taken out on the woman who forced him to show his true colors beyond a shadow of a doubt.
There's the sound of footsteps nearby, and Stella finally picks her head up from where she'd been resting it on her arm. "I'm fine," she manages, before she even sees who it is. The words ring hollow, of course. She's not fine, and she knows it's obvious that she's not, but the reflexive attempt to brush off any impending offers of help had come out anyway.
pockets full of stones
13th march ; house 13 ; locked to Peggy Carter
Eventually, later in the day, she goes back home. Home is somewhat of a misnomer, because home is London, and fuck she just wants to be back in her own flat in Crouch End so badly she can taste it — but she's not been allowed that luxury. Instead she's been yanked back here, where the observers can continue whatever ridiculous fucking game they've been playing with her and the other people trapped in this place. It's just adding insult to injury, and yet she doesn't even have the wherewithal to be angry about it right now.
But the house she shares with Peggy is the closest thing she's got to a home here, and at the moment she needs even this small familiarity. She comes through the front door and just stops for several moments in the front hall, looking around her. Everything is more or less in the same place it was when she'd left. She goes into the living room, and only then calls out for her housemate.
"Peggy?" She's not ready for this. She isn't. Unlike Kate, who isn't quite there yet, Peggy is a friend, and Stella's sole reliable source of mental and emotional support in the village more or less since she first arrived. She's going to have been worried that Stella was gone for good, and Stella truly doesn't know if she can cope.
She's going to try, she has to, but she can already feel something awful and vulnerable bubbling up to the surface, pushing through the cracks already forming in the superficial emotionless facade she's been living in since the Spector investigation fell to pieces. Years of practice at keeping herself together when everyone else around her is falling apart are the only thing allowing her to keep her tenuous grip on self-control; how long that will last is another question entirely.
and the ships are left to rust
14th march ; the woods ; open
There comes a point where Stella can't stay cooped up indoors any longer. Since the previous afternoon she's spent most of her time in bed, eating only when she has to, and more or less keeping to herself — but it's not good for her, she knows it's not. The fresh air will help, as will some semblance of her old routine. Do normal things when you've had a bad shock; that's what a therapist told her once, when she was young and green and new to CID, after she'd coped badly with her first time seeing an ugly murder scene. Do normal things and eventually some sense of normalcy will reassert itself.
She does. She takes the basket she's been using to collect edible plants from the woods, herbs and mushrooms and berries, and spends a good hour or so doing just that. For a woman who had absolutely zero wilderness survival skills when she'd first got here, Stella has got fairly good at marking out which ones can be eaten and which she should avoid; another skill to add to her list. Eventually she has a whole basket full, but instead of going right back to the house, she decides just to sit for a few moments, propped against a sturdy tree tall and stout enough to be decades old. The weather is pleasant after the bitter chill of winter, and it's quiet here save for the wind in the trees and the sounds of little forest animals going about their business, and she doesn't really have to think about anything.
Stella hears the rustle of footsteps and looks over. Her brows arch a little, but she can't quite manage a smile, even a small one. "There's a whole thicket of blackberries just over there," she suggests, turning her head a bit in the direction she means, "if you're looking for something." It's spring, or it must be, more or less. Things are growing again. She ought to take comfort in that.
no subject
She regards Beverly for a long moment before looking away, down at her own hands. "Thank you," she says, softly, meaning it, because even if this sort of thing is hard for her, she appreciates the sentiment. Selfless compassion is so rare, and almost never extended in her direction; part of that must be her fault, she thinks, for spending so much time putting up walls, keeping people from getting to know her beyond more than a superficial level.
Beverly doesn't even know her much more than that, really, but Stella is beginning, slowly, to trust her. And maybe it's because the other woman hasn't pushed her for answers that Stella finds it a little bit easier to tell her what happened.
"I went home, briefly," she says. At least, she gathers that she was not gone here that long, even though she feels like she was in Belfast again for weeks. "I think I've told you I'm a police officer, a detective. Before I first came here, I was hunting a man responsible for the murders of three women."
Stella pauses, clears her throat quietly. "He was the one who did this to me."
There is a great deal more to this story than just that, but Beverly's brought up her injury and Stella finds that easier to address than the rest.
no subject
She lets Stella take her time, simply resting against the tree until the other woman's voice floats over to her. The idea of going home briefly isn't unusual, but it makes her think of the talk she had with Peggy, about how that return had been so very wrong and how it had only strengthened Beverly's conviction that this really isn't real. That it's just a simulation. And maybe those "return home" trips are simulations, too.
"I take it that means you found him," she offers, instead of voicing any of her actual thoughts. "What happened?"
no subject
She hasn't yet applied that theory to herself, either. While the outcome of the investigation had been exactly the opposite of what she'd wanted, the events had occurred in a logical, sensible order and in a realistic fashion. Dreams don't make sense, and she thinks it lasted too long to be a hallucination. Stella is treating what she'd experienced as real unless she finds proof to the contrary.
"Yeah," she says. A pause, wondering how much she should tell Beverly — how much she feels like telling her. The story is long and complicated, after all. But really what matters is the end result, awful as it is— "He's dead. He committed suicide before we could get him to trial."
It's easier saying that, the third time round. Stella has to close her eyes for a few seconds and just breathe, but she feels steadier now, not like the anger is going to shatter her.
"I needed justice," she says, looking back up. "For the women he killed, for everyone else he hurt. I needed him in prison. We had him, but it wasn't enough."
Her voice is steady, almost conversational, but it's clear in her eyes this was a blow to her, emotionally. Stella has a tendency to throw herself into cases like this wholeheartedly — especially when the victims are women — and to fail this badly is something taken very, very personally.
no subject
"It reminds me a little of something that happened to me a few years ago," she starts carefully, focusing on a point off in the distance. "A brilliant scientific mind was murdered on the Enterprise and his work was almost stolen. It was... a huge ordeal. In the end, the man who was trying to steal his discovery forced me to kill him. I would have preferred to have been able to stun him, but his physiology made that impossible. I had to kill him to stop him. But the important thing was that he couldn't hurt anyone else. He didn't get to run off into the stars with that special shielding."
She glances back at Stella, watching with concern and understanding. "I put everything I had into that investigation, into finding out who had killed Doctor Reyga and why. I would imagine you did the same with yours. In the end... that man you caught can't hurt anyone else. He can't get what he wanted ever again and no one else will feel pain or loss by his hands. It might not be much, but... it's something to hold onto."
If she knew what the man really did to his victims, she would be using a much different example, something she hasn't spoken of since it happened and something that only Jean-Luc knows about. For now, this is what she has and she hopes it can be something of a small comfort for Stella.