wildestlogs | MEMORY SHARE ※ 1

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MEMORY SHARE ※ 1

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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She understands. She can't talk about Adam, either. Anytime she's tried, she chokes on the words.

"It's so fucking violating."

Elle has things that she would rather not share, that others wouldn't understand. Even things that aren't traumatic or private... they're hers.

(Turnabout is fair play, she muses. She'll have to tell Roberta if when she gets back home.)

"You don't have to look," she moves so she stands between Dan and the memory, her back to the scene. She's giving the moment as much privacy as she can.

"Yeah." That the best word for it, and it's still so insufficient. He swallows and tries to compose himself, hating that he doesn't have a pack of cigarettes to crawl into, taking a shot from his flask because Elle's already well aware what Dan's crutches are.

It's her kind gesture that keeps him from being able to get it together. It's that little bit of tenderness that creates a break in all the tension that's holding him in one piece. He turns to not look and presses his palms to his eyes, even though he can still hear Ellie in the background asking when do we get to the mythical creatures?.

"I'm so tired of crying," he says, and to his credit, by the most literal definition, he isn't. He's just hovering on the edge. "And I feel like that's all I- that's all we've done since this all started. Someone wants us to hurt."

Gaia's words ring in Elle's ears.

Magic requires sacrifice. Hardship.

Is this what she meant? If so, that's bullshit.

"I think. I think it has something to do with the fact that we're on an adventure like they go on in stories. A hero's journey, like Odysseus or Frodo."

She's hesitant to get into her meta-textual theories about the nature of their journey at this moment.

"But that doesn't make it okay. It's cruel."

"Fuck that," Dan mutters. "If someone had wanted us to go risk life and limb for them, for goodness, for the world, what-the-fuck-ever, they could have might just asked."

Because Dan would have jumped at the call, and so would half of the people here.

Elle bites her lips and says the thought that's been in her head since the meeting.

"I don't think they could. not saying just dragging us here was okay but... during the meeting Gaia implied that it took most of the Green's power just to get us here in the first place. I don't know what asking would've taken, but if it's between getting us here and asking us if we want to come. I can see why they did what they did."

She hopes that this is distracting him from the scene behind her, at least a little.

"Not that any of it's okay."

"Come and then slam us with all this mystical trope bullshit getting in our heads." Dan sighs and rubs his hands over his face, then does so again. Maybe these narrative techniques are part of their heroes' journeys, but Dan knows that there's no narrative to a life story, not really. Bad things happen and good things happen, sometimes linked and sometimes not, and sometimes you learn from the bad things and sometimes the bad things just cut pieces out of you that never come back. "Last time this happened, there was some way to control-"

And as if bidden, the memory shifts to something a little less acutely terrible, or at least as less terrible as a seven teenagers and children sitting around a campfire splattered in blood can be. Their mood is jovial, at least, even while a young version of Dan is busy applying stitches to the youngest, a girl shy of seven, on her arm.

"Just for tonight, because we're celebrating," the oldest girl says, passing a bottle of whiskey around to her siblings and smoking a cigarette. "And let's take a moment to praise Tabby for her sharpshooting!"

A pre-teen girl takes a bow and does a twirl, and the rest of the kids holler and applaud. One of the boys ducks behind the van to change out of bloody clothes, and teenage Dan comes with him, leaving the little girl eating a candybar and snuggled up with her big sister.

"You did great out there, Eli. Dad would be proud." Young Dan strips off his shirt and tosses it into the back of the van, rooting through a van that's clearly got all the possessions this family owns - including a rack of firearms - until he finds shirts for himself and his little brother.

"Yeah, I did that breathing trick he taught me. Real came in handy." A fleeting solemn look passes Eli's face, then passes. "Do you really think we can break the curse?"

"We rid the whole of East Texas from crocottas. We got to have some good luck coming our way. We deserve a break." Dan pats Eli on the shoulder. "Come on. We'll go together, just you and me, to pick up the hoodoo tomorrow morning. When was the last time we got some quality moments away from the whole clan?"

"It just feels too good to be true," Eli says. "But now that I say that out loud, I don't want to be someone who says that about things."

"Ain't nothing too good to be true." Dan holds out a pack of cigarettes to Eli, and the two of them sit on the bed of the van as they button up their flannels. "You can have one. I won't tell Kitty."

The real Dan, more than twice the age of the kid in the memory, sighs and looks over to Elle. He wants to say, proof that narratives ain't shit - he and his siblings put themselves at great mortal risk to drive some evil out of the countryside, and they were rewarded with more blood.

"I told you about how we got swindled and one of my brothers died," he says.

Elle smiles a little at the new scene: this family sitting together and celebrating what victories they have.

A broken family sitting around a campfire in the woods. This, Elle understands.

She sobers a little when the Dan next to her speaks.

"Yeah-- witches, right?"

“One witch. I don’t want to attribute to a group what I should blame on an individual.” Dan has to hold onto that. He can’t let grief and hurt pull him into the sorts of traps that make people uncharitable, cruel, suspicious. “One witch and…a long string of folks who said they could help us and couldn’t.”

Or wouldn’t. In some cases, Dan isn’t sure. He tries to give the people who exploited these hunted kids the benefit of the doubt; it’s easier to bear than feeling persecuted by the whole world.

In the memory, Eli and Dan rejoin the group. The little girl demands a song, and the whole family barks with their husky, off-key voices to “Hound Dog”, clapping hands and stomping feet.

“Reckon that was the last night we were happy. Happy as we could be without our parents or our home.” Dan looks over at Elle with deep sadness in his eyes. “Me and Kitty, her?”

He points to the oldest girl, raising the whiskey bottle like it’s a toast of champagne.

“All those kids were in our care. And Ellie, who you just…I got a terrible track record.”

And it tears him apart, that every kid he’s ever loved and taken care of died, that he still feels so compelled to take care of the ones he runs across, that he almost wonders if he’s jinxing Elle by bringing her into his heart.

"They would've been worse off without you," she says without a trace of doubt.

"Who else could've taken care of them? Or your girl? Maybe you couldn't give them everything they deserved, or even everything they needed, but you gave them everything you had. And they were better off than if you hadn't been there. That means something."

She won't tell him he couldn't have done things differently or that things couldn't have gone better. But she knows that without him there to open his heart and look after his siblings-- his kid-- they all would've been worse off.

"And now you're not doing it alone," she isn't even talking about herself, or Stacia or any of the kids Dan seems to have unwittingly adopted, because they could be here and gone in a flash. She's talking about Bunny. "And you'll never have to do it alone again. The good or the bad."

And they still ended up dead, Dan chokes on. Elle's kind, truthful words are meager opponents for the tidal wave of hopelessness Dan feels when faced with the faces of all these bonds that were severed by violent death. He makes a tortured, wordless little sound, and bites down on the side of his hand.

From there he takes a breath, because it gives him space not to shoot back a you don't know that to Elle's assertion that Dan will never have to do it alone again. She's right, but not for the reasons she may think. Dan won't ever have to do this hard life without Bunny because losing Bunny would be the last straw. Death is the escape hatch, and with one more grave to dig Dan would throw himself through it.

Dan doesn't figure it's codependent to preemptively say I can't grieve one more time and plan accordingly.

"I can't help myself." He laughs without humor. "My plans to fuck off to the desert and be a loner keep falling through."

"You missed your chance. You got people who care, now," she jokes hesitantly, knowing that this is also a sore spot. (Dan seems to have a lot of those.)

Elle watches the siblings sing around the fire.

"Have you felt happy, since then?"

She asks it quietly enough that Dan has the out of pretending not to have heard her.

"Lucky me," he says, sounding utterly joyless about it. Usually there's a certain casual air Dan has, a certain warmth, but right now it's dampened. He doesn't sound callous, but just like his spirit's been squelched, tumbling down memory lane like this.

"Flashes here or there." There are times when Dan enjoys life, when he's sufficiently engulfed in endorphins or stimulation or even love, high on ecstasy in a club or swimming in oxytocin in bed with Bunny, times when the line between happiness and just distraction have blurred too much to distinguish. "I know that ain't the answer anyone wants."

People who care, as Elle puts it, tend to want Dan to be happy, and he can't give that to them. He tries and he just can't.

"I didn't want any particular answer other than the one you're willing to give," she corrects him. "I didn't ask because I wanted to the answer to be yes. I asked because I wanted to know the truth, even if it's not pleasant."

Elle isn't here to give or take bullshit. She's not going to guilt Dan for feeling the way he does. She doesn't need him to be happy. Would she like that? Yeah, of course. But she wants Dan to be able to be honest about how he feels more than she wants him to be happy all the time.

"You don't owe anyone your happiness, Dan. But you don't owe them your pain or sorrow, either."

Time and again he's impressed by Elle's emotional acuity, the clearsightedness with which she sees others, and time and again he's sad to see it, aware as he is that it's a mechanism of survival.

"I don't feel guilty," he says. He wraps his arms around himself. "I know I did everything in my power and if it weren't enough, that weren't on me. I forgave the woman who- who murdered them all. Forgiving myself was easy."

Elle might be one of the only people he can say that to who understands that Dan's life wouldn't be any better if he were to get angry. She might be one of the only people who understands that Dan's ability to forgive is one of the few ways he can feel any sort of power or control over a situation that's always been bigger, more dangerous, more violent than he's capable of being.

"I just ain't been happy to wake up each new day since I was sixteen and I don't reckon there's nothing to be done about that."

Elle slowly moves to take Dan's face in her hands. They're just about the same height so she's able to look directly at him.

"Dan," she says quietly; seriously. "Happiness isn't a permanent state of being anymore than sadness, or anger. It comes and goes."

She pauses, both to let her words sink in and to figure out how she wants to words her next thought.

"Just because it doesn't last doesn't mean it's not real, or that you can't find it again. You don't need to be happy to wake up everyday. You just need to wake up."

Dan finding it in himself to face a new day, happy or otherwise, is a miracle in and of itself.

Dan exhales deep and places one hand over one of Elle's. He doesn't argue with her, but the hesitation, the incredulity, is very clear in his eyes.

He just wants things to get easier at some point, and it feels like they never do. The grief never gets less intense, it just makes him cry out loud less. The fear curdles from acute terror to just lifelong anxiety and vigilance, an intractable pattern of feeling doomed, of feeling so doomed he hardly registers that he exists at all. The sun never dawns on the future; it always stays shrouded and grey and indistinct.

Elle says that sadness isn't a permanent state of being and he just doesn't believe her.

"Well, I done woke up in a lot worse places than a gorgeous castle on an adventure with some fine people, so I reckon I can't complain too much," he says, dodging having to talk about that sadness. He and Elle are too alike, and he doesn't want her to expect that his patterns of behavior and thought are ones that she'll eventually get trapped in just because she, too, has lost loved ones and she, too, is so keenly attuned to the moods of those around her.

"Dan," she repeats softly. "You don't owe anyone your grief."

He's been grieving for so long that she doesn't think he knows how to stop. She lets her hands drop from his face, but doesn't let go of the one he gave her.

"Here-- now? You may be stuck with people, but you're free from the things that society expects of you. You have a chance to learn what it feels like to live without waiting for someone to try and arrest you just for existing. You have guaranteed food and shelter and company. Your survival isn't dependent on your ability to provide for yourself in those ways."

She hopes he understands what she's saying. It's not that things are easier-- it's that he has new challenges. Different challenges. It's not a case of fighting for his existence, now. Even if he smarts under the idea of the group forming leadership or being told what to do by the Green, he isn't going to incarcerated or punished for doing what he has to-- what he needs to.

He has an opportunity to explore what it feels like to be a person and to exist without fear. He doesn't have to take it-- but she needs him to know that it's there.

"Throw parties, do drugs, flirt with every consenting adult you meet... as long as you aren't hurting people, you're free to do what you want."

She wants him to realize that for as much as he's trapped, he can be free too.

He gives her hand a squeeze and looks down, sighing. In the memory, the kids are starting to roll sleeping bags out on the ground, preparing to sleep under the stars. Kitty gets a copy of Where the Red Fern Grows out of the van and perches on the slope of the hood, reading by flashlight to the younger kids, her voice dreary with alcohol.

"I know. I mean, if I do too many drugs I got to worry about my marriage, but I know- I know this is as free as I get." This is as close to his life growing up on the farm as he gets, as close to the only career he was able to stick with. "I don't know how to get out of this rut. It feels like I ain't progressed a day since all this happened. It feels like I ain't even started to process it."

And it started over twenty years ago. He hasn't even told Bunny how much it feels like he's frozen in time, unable to move forward - but Elle might have a point. Dan's spent every day of his life since he was sixteen scrabbling for survival, has been unable to stop long enough to catch his breath so long that maybe he doesn't even recognize the opportunity to relax when it comes along.

"I don't know where to start."

Elle squeezes his hand back. She doesn't have an answer for him, as much as she wishes others.

"I think this is a good start," she leans into him a little and exaggerates her breathing a little for him to follow; to give him something to center himself with.

"Just... breathing. Living. One day at a time, yeah? So when you don't know where to start, remember that the first step is always to breathe."

It sounds so simple. Childish, almost. She knows it isn't.

Dan doesn't generally like to receive comfort. He's always eager to dole it out, keen to find the hurts that others have and try to alleviate their suffering - it's been his calling since he was a child, since he would beat his mother to the crib whenever his baby brother would cry at night - but receiving comfort is something that always sits uneasily with him. It's not insecurity or any sort of wrongheaded belief that he doesn't deserve comfort; it's just that to show his wounds to someone else necessitates acknowledging they exist at all.

Dan pretends his wounds don't exist quite a lot for someone who telegraphs with his every commiserating word, every flinch, every hit from his flask, every sigh, every quick bond towards others, that his heart's been maimed throughout his life and never healed. No amount of mystical energy sharing memories is necessary for that revelation.

He nods and leans back into her, following her breaths the way he's done with Bunny before, focusing attention on the fact that his body is alive. He thinks that Elle is the same way, so much more comfortable aiding others than she is having her own pain be the focus of the conversation. It reminds him of her hesitance to approach him to stitch her back. The two of them feel like mirror images this way. Or kindred spirits. It's easiest to care for others.

Around them, the memory melts away, leaving just the castle walls. Dan's breathing hitches and shudders, and he feels tears coming on and his hands going numb.

"You should go," he whispers to her. "I need to be alone. This- thanks. Thanks for your gentleness. If you could keep everything you saw to yourself..."

Elle nods.

Before she goes, she squeezes Dan's hand one last time and leans in to give him a gentle kiss on the forehead. A reminder that someone cares, and that someone caring doesn't have to hurt.

She doesn't feel great about the idea of leaving him alone, but Dan actually asked for something for himself and she's going to respect that. His boundaries are more important right now, especially after the violation he just suffered.

She leaves the room quietly and reluctantly and with the hope that something-- anything-- she said was able to help.

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MEMORY SHARE ※ 1

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[cw: suicidality]

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