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 leaves only briefly in order to change into her own pajamas, settling onto the other side of the bed. "Colleen and I would have to share like this when our shifts didn't always mirror one another," she admits, speaking about her for the first time. "She was my roommate in New York," Peggy says fondly. "Lovely girl, terribly prone to illness."
no subject
But running away from it strikes her as silly, even cowardly, and possibly, given her injuries, unwise. Stella gives Peggy a dry look, but doesn't otherwise respond to that, focused on trying to get herself into a position that's something resembling comfortable. She's arranged things so she can lay on her right side or on her back, with a pillow propped under her shoulders to sit her up a little, which should in theory help with some of the swelling in her face.
The conversation takes more of a turn toward the personal, and — Stella's not really good at this, at sharing; even if the object of discussion isn't anything extraordinarily intimate, it feels awkward. But then she thinks back to that night at Belfast General, and Doctor O'Donnell keeping her awake by asking her questions, random superficial things like whether she could play an instrument or what her favorite season was. She'd allowed it because she'd been so tired and in pain and — as much as she would have never admitted it aloud — so in need of someone who would be kind to her without expecting anything in return, and she's still feeling some of that now. And she trusts Peggy, she does. There's no one else in the village she trusts more.
"Before this place," she says, "I hadn't had any sort of housemate in... Jesus, more than twenty years. Not since university." There's a slight twitch of her mouth as she clarifies, "Cambridge."
A thoughtful pause. "One of my flatmates was the reason I decided to go into policing." There's a story there, but it's sort of a sad one, and unless Peggy asks, she's not in any rush to elaborate.
no subject
"Were they already a policewoman?" she asks, assuming it had been another woman. "Or is this the opposite effect where you went into policing because they were a poor example and you wanted to do something about it?"
no subject
"Neither," she says. "She was my age — about nineteen — and studying maths. Beautiful, academically brilliant. Unfortunately, she had, at the time, awful taste in boyfriends. The sort to throw herself wholeheartedly into a relationship with any man who took an interest in her — and there were quite a lot." She is trying not to sound disparaging, because she'd liked Caroline a great deal, but at the same time she recognizes the woman had had a critical deficit in decision-making when it had come to her romantic relationships, a flaw she herself has strenuously tried to avoid developing.
"One evening she came home covered in bruises. She'd been over at her boyfriend's flat; they'd got drunk, had an argument, and he decided the best way to resolve the thing was to beat her within an inch of her life. I drove her to hospital that night, then the police station the next morning after she'd had a chance to sober up. They brought in the boyfriend, and he spun some sort of fantasy about how she'd fallen down the stairs outside his flat and that was where she'd come by the bruises."
Stella's face is very still, the sort of stillness that speaks of holding back anger. Telling this story all these years later still pisses her off, because it's so symptomatic of everything that's still wrong with policing in specific and with society in general. "There'd been no witnesses, it was her word against his. He got off scot-free. Later we found out his older brother was a police officer — so naturally they'd thought there was no way the younger brother could be anything but a model citizen."
She scoffs, just a huff of annoyed breath. There's a pause, and then she adds, "I'd been interested in women's rights and welfare for some time. I suppose at that point I thought that if the police officers we had — if men weren't going to stand up for female victims, then someone ought to.
"After I finished my first degree, I was a special for a couple of years," she says, referring to the Special Constabulary, the volunteer arm of the Metropolitan Police. "I joined the force full-time when I was twenty-four, and CID at twenty-six."
no subject
"That's terrible," she murmurs, her words hushed as she adjusts with the pillows and the blankets, thinking that after everything, this is the sort of intimate story that shouldn't leave a room. "I'm glad that it drove you to do something about it, even if the whole thing is awful and depressing," she says.
"It was 1947 for me," she points out, "I'd thought that just maybe, the rights of women would be somewhat better by your time, but apparently, it seems I'm doomed to be disappointed."
no subject
If a senior officer had ever asked her to fetch his tea, she probably wouldn't have been able to keep herself from telling him to fetch it himself, and that would have been the end of her career, or near enough to it. Fortunately she'd never been subject to that particular indignity, but the level of sexism she'd still had to put up with then had been quite enough as it was. There's something about an attractive, confident woman that has always elicited particular emotions from men, that combination of fear and desire that, quite frankly, Stella hates. It turns all too easily into loathing, and into uglier feelings still.
"Caroline turned out all right, at least. My flatmate," she clarifies. "Last I heard she was married with three children. I suppose she must be happy." There's the tone in her voice of someone who can't imagine being happy in a long-term relationship, let alone marriage; she's trying to suppress it, but it still shows through. "I haven't spoken to her... in six years, I think. Not since I made chief inspector."
no subject
She feels her jaw tense a little at the 'tea lady' comment, because she'd been that and the lunch girl and every other demeaning role they had in the office for her.
"That's lovely to hear," Peggy says, "for someone who wants that. Ever since my failed engagement, I put all those thoughts aside. Apart from the late night thoughts that I could never escape. Silly dreams, those," she writes off, making herself comfortable as she tugs the sheets up.