MEMORY SHARE ※ 1

[wildestmods]

MEMORY SHARE

It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking out from the gardens at the landscape passing by below. Taking a moment to catch their breath after a jog in one of the castle's larger magic rooms.

The squad is suddenly connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can prevent the link.

To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?

And if they were there, who was in theirs?

[ooc: So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can also be invisible until the memory is finished. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.

They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can sometimes control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]

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Cammie MacCloud

[tr1xx]

Sleepless Night

[tr1xx]

~900 words. Cammie wakes up from a nightmare and one of her friends, Kazu, takes his turn to comfort her to try and get her back off to sleep. Unfortunately, sleep doesn't come easily tonight, and they have to find a way to occupy some time. So, British Sign Language Lessons it is.

They're not the last signs Cammie teaches Kazu, that night. She feels bad about keeping him up, even now, looking back on it, but he didn't seem to mind so much. None of them ever seemed to mind, so much. She spent so long hiding her nightmares from them before the day she finally couldn't, and then after, they were always so nice, and...

This isn't Cammie's first rodeo, with sharing memories. She isn't surprised. And it's a good memory. It really is, it's a quiet little memory she holds dear to her heart. Still, it stings, and she just hopes whoever ends up seeing this doesn't notice the way she looks ready to cry.

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan notices, of course, but he's not about to say anything. He knows Cammie feels a complex knot of emotions around what she perceives as her own weaknesses, the same way he does: frustration at being unable to bounce back quickly, fatigue with spending so much energy trying to get back to zero.

And now she's being faced with what she lost. What the world lost, Dan thinks. Kazu seemed a sweet soul, all the sweeter in retrospect.

He signs to her in BSL: I see where you got to be a good teacher.

[tr1xx]

She does visibly relax a little, when she realises it’s Dan who’s been dropped into this memory right now. If she does start crying, he’s the top of the list for people she can kind of handle the embarrassment around, here in the Wilderlands. Kazu and Val might top it back home, they’ve seen it so often now, but they’re not here.

She knows the echoes of the memory can’t hear, but sticks to sign in return for now. It feels wrong, somehow, to disturb the quiet more than her past self’s laughter already has.

This was after I taught you, technically, she signs back, with a bit of a smile. Timelines sure get complicated, with the way she hadn’t lived any of this not that long ago. Might be teaching you that helped here.

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan smiles, and it reaches his eyes even though it's sad. You'd think for someone who's traveled in time myself, I'd be better at keeping these things straight.

He doesn't want to ask her too much about it, because Kazu's death is a relatively recent wound, even without the jerking back and forth between worlds. But Dan knows he's somewhat unusual in wanting to shed his memories of lost loved ones; most people like to preserve the deceased in memory.

I wonder if you can show me more memories of him. If you want.

[tr1xx]

You’d think, she teases, and though the cheeky glint in her eye isn’t as strong as it usually is, it’s not completely absent, either.

She watches the lesson in the memory for a moment, as she thinks. Giggles a genuine, if quiet little giggle when past her does something to tease Kazu again and he reacts with the same, ridiculous looking angry bunny ears of her sign name. Big tough Kazu, such a dork really. Regular big softy, not that he’d hear it.

Never told him how ridiculous he looked. He would’ve stopped. She takes a big, steadying breath and wipes at her eyes. Yeah. Yeah I can show you some more. Let me just get my head on straight.

[hallelujahjunction]

Take your time.

Dan suspects that if this is like the Rig, he could wrest control of the memories and replace Cammie's on display with some of his own - but he worries about the content of his, of bringing it down when the mood is so tentatively, tenderly warm right now.

Some folks are at their best when they don't realize how they look.

[tr1xx]

For a moment, Cammie closes her eyes, just to think. To try and pin down a memory, not let her mind wander towards those that she doesn't want to relive. She only really knew Kazu for a year but there's so many memories, anyway, because the team spent all of their time together and so much of that time literally in each other's heads.

She aims for something small, first. Mundane but memorable. Kazu being a little shit at her the way she was always a little shit at him. Something older, too, distant from recent events. The room around them doesn't change, though objects move around and so do people; Cammie is visible asleep in her bunk, whilst Kazu is sat up on the bunk above his actual bed, level with her. Valentina, is gently shaking Cammie awake whilst Yaz mills about.

"Moya Zaika," Valentina says, firm but gentle, "sleepy head."

Past Cammie just rolls over, grumbling in her half-awake state, seemingly determined to go back to sleep. Kazu... has other ideas.

"This one goes out to all you late night gaming addicts out there," he teases, speaking Japanese.

Electric guitar fills the room and Valentina covers her ears, glaring up at him, meanwhile Cammie—without her ears, and thus only barely able to hear the guitar at all—just grumbles and flips him off with a V sign.

"Leave me aloooone," she whines, as present Cammie snickers softly to herself, seemingly not finding these antics to be annoying at all, looking back on it. Or, perhaps more accurately, appreciating the annoying antics for what they are, anyway.

"Only Yaz and Valentina could even really hear 'im. Talk about ineffective methods of torment."

[hallelujahjunction]

Kazu reminds Dan of his little brother, Eli, the first to die, or his sister, Tab. Joking, grabbing attention, buoying people's moods with irrelevance and drawing their focus from the stress around them. It's an underrated talent, a vital one. Dan's family unit fell apart without it.

Did you let him in on the secret that you can't hear worth shit? Dan asks, grinning, staring fondly at this kid that he never met. He's glad that these are the memories Cammie can conjure of him.

Little Ones [cw: potential talk of child death, after the memory]

[tr1xx]

~900 words. Cammie and her twin little siblings on an average morning in their family home, back when the MacCloud family was still intact and happy. Cammie is the best kind of bad influence, thank you very much.

They lay there for far too long, until her Gran comes to get them all out of bed herself. It's a good morning. The nasty weather outside doesn't matter at all, because the home is warm and full of love. There's good tea and good food waiting.

Another happy memory, by all accounts. Yet Cammie finds herself hoping, again, that no one's going to notice how close to bursting into tears she looks behind the faint smile on her face as she watches.

[unsealthecatbox]

Ange certainly notices. She had smiled softly when she saw Cammie and her family, enjoying their time together. When she sees Cammie is on the verge of tears, her smile disappears.

"You seem tense"

[tr1xx]

Cammie sighs, and rubs at her face. "I'm fine. I mean— this is a good memory, it's nothin' stressful or anythin', there's actual traumatic stuff this memory shite could've picked out, y'know, so it's not..."

Ugh. Ange is her friend and she's seen her upset before, this shouldn't be so different, really. Especially not thinking about the whole mirror thing and...

"It's just— this one's kinda bittersweet. None of them are... they're all..."

Apparently, she still can't actually say it. Fuck.

[unsealthecatbox]

Ange's immediate guess is definitely one influenced by her own experiences: they're dead. She suspects Cammie, like her, lost them all.

"...you don't have to say anything else. I get it"

She's pretty sure she gets it, at least.

[tr1xx]

“…aye. Aye I think you do.” What horrible things to have in common. There’s a lot of that going, around here, it seems. “Is it weird that I feel like I should say it? I never say it. As if not saying the words ‘they’re all dead’ changes anything. Oh, wow.”

She sort of instinctively covers her mouth like it betrayed her, it might be funny looking in other circumstances. She didn’t actually mean to trick herself into just getting the words out there, but it worked anyway apparently. Christ.

She sighs. “Anyway. If that’s— what you expected, then yeah. Yeah, you get it.”

[unsealthecatbox]

"...if it makes you feel better, I haven't been able to accept it either, even though it's been so long"

Indeed, Ange too refused to accept her family's deaths, always hoping for a miraculous return. Recently she lost all hope and began referring to them as dead people, but that took a while.

"If you'd like to cry, don't worry about it. I...I get it"

[tr1xx]

"S'kinda the thing, I really dinnae wanna cry. I hate cryin'. I'm so fuckin' tired of cryin'."

She knows it's not really healthy to try and hold back her emotions like this, but knowing it doesn't actually make it any easier to stop. That day she went home and came back was an exception that proves the rule: she only cries when she really can't help it. The bar for not being able to help it's just been gradually lowering for months. Or maybe she's just been that stressed. Probably that.

"...how long, for you?"

[unsealthecatbox]

"Twelve years. I was six when they left"

She can't blame you for not wanting to cry -- although she thinks it's more because of her own presence here than because Cammie doesn't want to shed tears anymore. Ange looks away.

"The Ushiromiya family had a conference every year. They'd gather and discuss stuff with my grandfather, at his private island. That year I got sick and didn't recover in time, so they left me in the care of my mom's parents, and they...they left.

I don't know what happened, but two days later they told me everyone was dead. My parents, my brother, the servants that were there, and almost all my relatives...gone"

The Power of Friendship (no, really)

[tr1xx]

4 minute clip. The gen:LOCK team do a full-team mindshare for the first time to defeat Nemesis, the original version of their friend Chase who was taken and broken by the Union and has been attacking them. The power of friendship genuinely saves the day.

It was the first real victory, first meaningful one. Cammie felt capable, that day. With her mind connected to all of her friends, she felt at her best, she felt like they could do anything, especially after they actually won. Nemesis was gone. The tide could be turned.

It didn't last, of course, but it was still a cool fight. She was still impressive. It was still nice to realise that she really did have a family, again, even if they were all just figuring that out.

"...designed those myself. The looks of our armour an' all our weapons, I mean," she says, to whoever's here, because that's the easiest bit to focus on. "Everyone loved 'em. Still one of my prouder moments."

[ahelpingpaw]

Filbo has been watching everything happen with so much admiration he's overflowing with it, eagerly taking it all in. He finds watching Cammie perform admirably gives him a faint feeling of being proud of her. They're not close, but he already considers her a friend, so of course he feels proud when she does something great.

"You really should feel proud, that's for sure! I said I wanted to look at the stuff you had mentioned but I didn't think it'd be like this!"

For once a memory shows something neat. The memories he has watched so far have been either horrible, or shows facets of the people around him. This one is a refreshing change.

[tr1xx]

She does genuinely smile at that—out of all the memories she's had on display, this is the least bittersweet because it's easier to focus on just how goddamned cool they all looked. She's damn proud of her work on those Holons. She doesn't think she's cocky to think she could take over the program, one day, honestly.

"Thanks, Filbo." Her ears are upright, and it's not forced. "My memories do 'em so much more justice than me just describin' it ever could. I've never seen this from the outside before, seein' them in action really is somethin' else. D'you wanna know who's who?"

That might sting a bit, but only a bit.

[ahelpingpaw]

"Yeah! I-I have been wondering for a while--what kinda people you do this sorta thing with"

...he has been so curious how Kazu is like. He changed what he was going to say, not wanting to remind her of that name without Cammie taking the first step on that regard. The loss must still be so fresh, he's sure. That wound needs to heal.

[tr1xx]

Cammie nods, starting to point towards each Holon as she names the person uploaded to it. The colour-coding luckily translates to the avatars that look like their human selves, too.

“The yellow one’s Yaz, she’s kinda overbearin’ sometimes, bit of a team mom? It can be kinda annoying, but I still love her all the same. She used to be Union, the bad guys, but she defected. Takes some guts, that, so— she’s cool.” Despite momming her sometimes.

“The purple one’s Val. He’s kinda cynical an’ he’s that edgy ‘I don’t trust anyone but myself’ type, y’know? Except he trusts us now, because we’re just that special. He’s kinda a party boy, not that we get a lot of chance to do that stuff lately.” Not that it stops him, really. She patched the mindscape so he could get digital drunk.

“The blue an’ teal one is Chase, he’s kinda just the robot now? That’s what we were talkin’ about, at the start. He gave up his human body to stay uploaded an’ give us time. Which— that body was already stuck in a tank? It’s a long story. He’s been havin’ a hard time, for a lot of reasons, but he’s been at this longest and it shows ‘cause he’s real good.”

By process of elimination, that leaves Kazu, but she doesn’t go straight on to him.

[ahelpingpaw]

If there's one thing Filbo values, is bonds. Cammie has friends to rely on, and to someone who puts so much emphasis on that for the sake of unity, it's such a relief to hear her say such appreciative words about them.

"They sound like very reliable partners in arms! A-And I saw how you all managed to do this together, it was pretty cool!"

He's gushing so much. Seeing others in their coolest moments is such a great thing -- and seeing this after the many rough memories he witnessed before makes him get more attached to it. Sometimes, after swallowing a lot of lemons you just want some candy for once.

But this seems like it could stop that. There's one person left to mention, after all. Having committed to memory every color and person so far, there's one person left.

So this...this is Kazu. Filbo gives him a good look. That Cammie doesn't talk about him was to be expected. Maybe she isn't ready?

Giving her an encouraging grin, he says:

"That leaves one person to be named. Do you...feel ready to talk about him? If not, we can step away. Sometimes hard things need more time before you feel ready to face 'em"

He knows that, and who is he to push Cammie to talk about Kazu? So he leaves the choice to Cammie. In Filbo's opinion his entire existence is meant to support others as much as he can, so of course, he'll try to do so.

[tr1xx]

"Mindshare makes us all the best versions of ourselves. We're damn near unstoppable like that, when it's all of us together."

It's what kept them all alive for so long after things went to hell, really. Duo and trio mindshares give them an edge, but there's nothing quite like all of them together.

...she's not sure what it'll be like without Kazu.

She takes a deep breath. "It's fine, I've... talked about him on an' off, since that first day. He's— he's like I said, he was this goofy big brother kinda guy, liked to play around, tease me; I always gave back good as I got. He loved his Holon, despite denyin' bein' into the manga I based the design off."

RoboShogun. He became kinda re-obsessed with an animated adaption of it, in the end. Dork.

"He was never any good at emotional stuff, worse than even me, but— but he knew how to show he cares. Food, mostly. He'd let me sleep by him, if I couldnae sleep, too. An' he— he died protecting Yaz, she woulda been gone if he hadn't."

[ahelpingpaw]

"He was...a truly noble person"

That he died protecting someone else doesn't make anything better, but it does hit Filbo with a pang of familiarity. Still, he's pretty sure that, if Yaz had been the one to perish, Cammie would have been very affected by that too.

"Oh, right, you said he had accidentally beamed an entire language into you by mistake. He did seem to have a different language than the rest of you"

It was just a few words, but it was enough for Filbo to notice!