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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"I mean... It's real in the sense that I experienced this as you saw it," she gestures to the now empty coliseum. "It felt real."

Elle sighs.

"But this didn't take place in the real world. It was in a place called the Dreaming, which in my world is basically the realm where the Fae get their power."

It's all so complicated that Elle is unsure of where to start.

"The woman you saw is Roberta. These are her memories-- her lives."

The scene shifts. Now they're standing in a crowd of people wearing flowing chitons and drinking wine. It's a party in wealthy mediterranean home in Ancient Greece. The people move around Elle and Ange as if they're not there.

Two young girls, one who looks like a younger version of the woman they saw in the gladiatorial arena earlier, sit in the corner giggling and whispering to each other.

"The fae in my world act out stories over and over again through their lifetimes. Roberta's is one of tragedy."

Voices raise and the little girl flinches. Roberta immediately starts to comfort her. Elle watches sadly.

"She's a protector of children. But part of her role is to suffer for it."

Their environment changes once again. Elle and Ange now stand in an abandoned warehouse in an unknown city. There's movement around an unmarked van fifty feet away from them. Three men stand between Roberta and the vehicle.

A child screams inside the van. Roberta lunges towards the sound. The warehouse doors burst open to reveal an Elle a couple of years younger than the one who stands next to Ange. She rushes toward Roberta and the men, but she's too late.

There's a gunshot. Roberta falls. The other Elle calls for her, but before she can do anything another shot goes off and she staggers.

The men, van, Roberta, and the other Elle all fade away before the scene can finish playing out.

Elle looks between the twin pools of blood on the ground.

"I was sent into her memories to... change things. Make it so she didn't have to do it alone. Make her story a bit less tragic. Take her place, when possible."

A flash of Elle curled around a young boy as a building burns around them.

Roberta diving off a sail boat into a storming ocean after a girl fell overboard.

Elle and Roberta both sitting next to a teenager cradling a broken wrist while a couple screams at each other down the hall.

Scene after scene of Elle and Roberta throughout history trying to protect Roberta's wards from any harm that would befall them. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't, but it always ends in one or both of them sacrificing themselves.

She doesn't want to be watching this. She doesn't want Ange to be watching this.

Next to Ange, Elle's composure finally breaks as she cries out, closes her eyes, and covers her ears.

"Stop it!" she shouts. "Enough!"

The images still and fade, leaving them once again in an empty, blood-stained colisuem.

Edited 2022-04-06 22:27 (UTC)

So many questions come to mind, and none of them are as compassionate as perhaps they should be towards Roberta. 'Why would you want to do this?' 'Did you do this willingly?' 'Did you owe her something?' Roberta's past is tragic and painful, Ange can't deny that, but that Elle would try to shoulder that burden...her immediate thought is that it wasn't her choice, Ange's own negativity bringing these thoughts to the surface. Getting fooled into doing stuff bothers her so much, and she hopes that's not what happened with Elle.

Thankfully, she doesn't get to say such things that probably shouldn't be said. Instead, when Elle shouts that, she focuses on the person immediately suffering next to her.

"It's over. It's gone"

She'd have suggested to leave, but this is a mind palace. Leaving isn't possible, is it? Then...perhaps...

"Elle, imagine a vast space. Large and with infinite potential. Float up in the sky, be in the middle of a field, the top of a mountain, it doesn't matter what, just picture something else!"

When Ange learned how to use delusions to be able to use imaginary friends, one of the first things she had to do was imagine a vast space, meant to clear your mind and push away all distractions. Ange had meant her advice to come out calm and measuredly, but the distress Elle is in leads to she blurting that out as quickly as possible. She may not know Elle that well yet, but she's in debt with her after what happened in Agrabah. Trying to soothe her at a time like this is the least she can do.

It also gives Ange time to word her questions in a way that doesn't sound like she's scolding Elle for taking part in this rewriting of memories.

Suddenly a heavy fog rolls in and the memories stop. Between them there is a single pine tree that seems to be piercing through the clouds the two of them are now standing upon and fading into the gray clouds above them.

Elle takes some heaving breaths and and tries to calm down before she dares to uncover her ears or open her eyes.

When she finally does, she avoids eye contact.

"Sorry."

She feels more than a little embarrassed-- humiliated, even. Ange didn't need to see that and Elle didn't need to relive it, even from an outside perspective. Dying countless times over the course of history was unpleasant enough the first time, thanks.

"Don't say you're sorry. Are you okay?"

Perhaps this castle isn't all that safe and great, if it makes things like these memory palaces happen. If it's trying to make them all stronger by facing pain or something like that, it's not doing so well at all.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm alright."

Debatable, but Elle's as alright as she's going to get.

She looks around and makes a 'huh' noise.

"Thank you."

Edited 2022-04-07 23:12 (UTC)

"It's fine. I get how painful seeing this stuff played out is"

Both from her own memory palace and experiences in her world. Despite that outburst, Elle is still handling it better than Ange ever did.

"We all have nasty stuff hidden away in our memories. I won't tell anyone about anything I saw here"

It's up to Elle to decide if she'll tell anyone else, not Ange's decision, that's for sure.

"It's not that you have to keep it a secret. It's just. Personal."

Plus, some of these memories don't rightfully belong to Elle. It was bad enough that Elle intruded upon them, but now they're being shown to even more people without Roberta's consent.

"And they're not really my memories to share, you know?"

"I know"

It's still something Elle "experienced", so Ange has a bit of a hard time separating the thought of these technically not being hers. She's someone who sees things very black and white, and inevitably tries -- and fails -- to apply it to this.

Still...Ange has to ask:

"Why did you decide to do this, anyway? What made you want to help her in this way?"

Altruism for the sake of altruism seems unlikely to her, but that's mostly because she can't imagine anyone she knows doing the same.

That's a... complicated question. Elle would love to say it was purely altruistic, but that would only be partially true.

"I needed training and I wasn't willing to wait to complete it. Time passes different in the Dreaming. I'd say that I spent roughly a year there, but that's truly just a guess. In that year, less than a week passed in the material realm.

"I had a few options for how to go about it but... This was a way to get experience and to help someone. It seemed like the best choice."

It was absolutely selfishly motivated, but she wouldn't go back and choose differently. Elle was just very unprepared for what she got into. She was only going to learn by getting tossed into the deep end, so she went and found herself the goddamn Mariana Trench. She didn't feel like she was taken advantage of or tricked, but to say she was fully informed would be an exaggeration.

"I got out with a bunch of experience and helped someone along the way, and I didn't have to wait that long in real time to get it.

"And Roberta... she was ready to give up. She needed someone with her. She wasn't ever supposed to go through all of that alone. It sucked, but I don't regret it."

Edited 2022-04-09 03:53 (UTC)

"Leaving aside the training, did she ask you to do this or did you decide you wanted to do this?"

Although, admittedly, the desire to train is a good enough reason. Sometimes you just have to get stronger no matter what.

Elle looks down. "Neither. Someone else asked me to do this. Her... superior, I guess? The Duchess Zelda. I saw Roberta yelling at her about how she was done, that she couldn't do it anymore. We were going to the Duchess to ask for a way to get my training done in the Dreaming, and this is what she offered."

Only a child could do it, the Duchess said. She was right, but Elle didn't want any child to be put in that position. Roberta needed the help and she needed the training. It only made sense.

"...makes sense, I suppose"

Both parties benefited from this. Looks like there's nothing outrageously suspicious going on here after all. Ange seems so relieved, so glad there seemed to be nothing particularly manipulative going on.

Even though it was a couple years ago and she was...around fifteen or sixteen, in Ange's opinion that's enough age to know what you're doing -- although said opinion is rooted on her own desire to achieve her own goals, going against what others say.

"Did this person you helped ever find out what you did?"

If she inserted herself into Roberta's memories, it'd make sense she didn't, but...you never know for sure. Perhaps Roberta did find out, and Ange knows if she ever heard someone tampered with her memories, she'd be really upset, no matter what the intentions were.

Elle has mixed feelings about whether she was manipulated into it or not. If she could go back she wouldn't change what she did, but she also can't say that there was fully-informed consent. She would probably be upset to hear about someone else being put in that position, but she doesn't feel that way about herself. The situation was complicated enough that there really was no right way of going about it.

"Yeah. She wasn't thrilled but... we worked it out in the end."

Elle and Roberta are friends now. Kind of. There's no bad blood between them, at least.

'We worked it out in the end' seems like the best case scenario Ange had expected. She nods, seemingly satisfied with everything she heard.

"You have a complicated past, Elle. Sorry, I didn't mean to see part of it" she says, bowing for a moment. "I assume this is something you'd rather others not to hear about? I know I wouldn't want anything with my memories to be gossiped about"

Ange makes a face of complete disgust.

"This castle is the worst"

Don't pay attention to her, it's her bad attitude speaking -- but in her opinion it's not like she's wrong, what after getting influenced by the desires mirror and now seeing other people's pasts like this.

"Yeah, discretion would be appreciated. I'm not ashamed of what happened but... like I said, it's personal," and not just to Elle.

"It certainly hasn't done a great job of endearing itself with all of this. Though, who knows if it's even the castle that did this. It could've been the Green."

Elle doesn't think that's likely, but it's possibility, and the last thing Ange needs is to built resentment towards their living quarters.

That the Green had caused this seems to surprise Ange, who hadn't considered it before.

"Do you think the Green are the spiteful sort? We didn't exactly receive them with open arms. If they expected to be welcomed with enthusiasm or appreciation then the way they got treated must have been a nasty surprise"

So in order to have some payback the Green managed to dig up unpleasant memories and displayed them for others to see -- although in Ange's opinion if the Green expected to be received kindly, then they're idiots. Very few in this fellowship have reasons to be happy with this situation.

Edited 2022-04-14 18:09 (UTC)

Elle genuinely thinks about how to answer that.

"No, I don't think they're spiteful. I think they don't understand people, and I think they're scared. Those spirits are used to basically being all-powerful, but right now they're not. They're dependent on us to fix things, and what they do know about people is that we're chaotic and don't always do what's expected, and the stakes are high enough that they made the call not to give us a choice."

It was a shitty call, but Elle understands it.

"Like, imagine that suddenly you lose all your strength and power, and also the world is going to end, and you just need this group of-- of-- bugs to go to a place and do a thing. That's it. There are obstacles in the way, but the fact of the matter is that those bugs are the only thing standing between the world and total destruction.

"And bugs, they're annoying! You know they serve their purpose in the world and help the ecosystem and stuff, but they're also everywhere and have too many legs and try to sting you.

"So you try to tell the bugs all this but they're, you know, bugs. They keep getting distracted and going off to do other bug things, or try to argue with you. So you find yourself arguing with a bunch of bugs. And normally you could squash them, but you're too weak to do that right now. So you're stuck with depending on this shitty group of bugs to do the things you can't. And you don't know if the bugs even like each other or if they're willing to work together, so you're like 'well, I know a quick way to create emotional bug bonds'. Even if in the short term it would suck, they're still just bugs. They'll get over it and it serves their mission."

This metaphor may have gotten away from her.

"I'm not saying I agree with what they've done, but the stakes are high enough that I understand why they did what they did. I don't like it, but I get it. Trauma bonding is a thing, and if the Green is doing this, that's an easy way to get us to care about each other. It's shitty, but it gets results."

"...what an imaginative metaphor, and not a single mention of food. Not bad"

Ange is kind of used to hearing food and games for descriptions and metaphors. To not have heard either in Elle's opinion is somewhat refreshing! Still, the point Elle tries to make is noted. She's probably right, the Green may be seeing them all like that, and this could be an ultimately well-intentioned attempt to force emotional bonds. True, this theory relies on them being right the Green did it, so it's moot if they didn't, but...it makes sense.

"If that's what's happening then it's working. I have seen a lot of traumatic experiences today. As much as I'd like not to, I have felt...pretty bad for so many today..."

Ange has never been one to ask much about other people unless there's some common ground to explore. She has found out so much about others it's somewhat overwhelming!

"Like I said. It's shitty, but that doesn't mean it's not effective."

Even if it's not the Green directly, she wouldn't be surprised in the Castle (if it contains any sort of sentience. The jury's still out on that one) had a similar motivation. If it's not either of those things, who the fuck knows? There's only so much good pure speculation can do, and at that point she'd be grasping at straws.

"I have a feeling a lot of the things the Green has done and will do makes sense in the context of the "the greater good"--" she uses air quotes to emphasize her point "--but falls short of considering autonomy and what's best for us as individuals, or even as a group. They definitely could've gone about everything in a better way, but functionally..."

She shrugs. "It wouldn't really make a difference, other than having our cooperation rather than conscription. Which could end up making a huge difference, but right now we just don't know. And neither do they."

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MEMORY SHARE ※ 1

CW: implied child abuse, harm to children

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