Piper 90: Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goneawaymod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
3..2...1...CONTACT!
Who: The New Hires
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.
Contact.
It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.
The New Hires are 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 help the violation.
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?
[[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 talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.
They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can 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.]]
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.
Contact.
It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.
The New Hires are 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 help the violation.
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?
[[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 talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.
They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can 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.]]
no subject
South is wrong. CT's fate hadn't been a mission parameter, only the return of her armor had mattered to the Dir- ....to Command. They hadn't cared. Tex certainly hadn't cared.
South is right. Carolina hadn't wanted it to end this way, and what she says is:
"I know."
She is not what she once was; Carolina has learned to face her failures. Having this one shoved in her face again hurts, and now South is here and everything is much worse, but she doesn't get defensive. The past doesn't change with excuses.
no subject
South spins to face her. The line of her shoulders is tense, her fists clenched so tightly her knuckles are white. There’s a raw look in her eyes, the line of her jaw just as tense as her shoulders; wasn’t seeing her brother die again enough torture from this stupid memory shit? Why this, too?
“She was begging you to listen to her,” she says, her voice downright cold. All that time CT had just needed someone to listen to her, to see the truth right in front of all of their eyes, and none of them did. “She was right. She was right, the whole time.”
no subject
"It took me too long to see it that way. Tex knew before I did."
There's probably a deeply unfunny joke in there about how she never could beat her.
no subject
"I didn't even know until I got here. No one ever— North never even told me. That she wasn't a traitor, not until Price started spinning his stupid sob story the day you got here. For years, I thought..."
It's that fresh for her. It always hurt, knowing CT was gone, but she could rationalise it, back then; she was a traitor, an Insurrectionist, an enemy. Except she wasn't, except she was probably one of the better people among them, the first person to see what was happening around them for what it was. So now it hurts afresh.
"God, she was pleading for her life," she says, with a genuine sense of horror. "She was backed into a corner and you guys just—"
She wants to hit something, but she doesn't, instead turning on the spot and starting to pace in tight, antsy circles.
no subject
Carolina's been trying to speak carefully to South. Not just now, but in the time she's been on the rig. She's known her potential for making a lot of situations a lot worse is very high, and she's been trying to handle it responsibly.
This, however, just escapes from her: It's something she's never actually said to anyone. Even Wash, when she told him about it, didn't get to know the degree to which she'd been conflicted.
Even when she was at her most bitter over what was done to them, Carolina had rewritten her own uncertainty.
"The Director would've sent Tex with or without me. So I thought..."
She shakes her head, and looks off down the length of the room toward the locked door. "It doesn't matter what I thought. It didn't make a difference."
no subject
Despite the still potent rage coming off South in waves, the comment gives her pause. Makes her brow knit together, her eyes settling on Carolina properly as she stills again. That's not exactly what she'd expected of her, but then what did she expect? She's not seen much of this... new, older Carolina yet, but even she can tell there's something different about her. She's not the CO that used to piss her off so much, anymore.
Still, South snaps a, "No fucking shit it didn't," because rage is still easier than dissecting any of that.
She turns away again, covering her face and muffling a frustrated noise in her hands, then dragging them back through her hair. It's too damn long, now, and that almost pisses her off more in itself, in the moment; little frustrations piling on a tense situation.
"Even if you'd brought her back they'd probably have found some way to dispose of her. You don't send Texas after someone you want brought in quietly. The second she made it down here it was over for CT, wasn't it? Hell, not even. The second he authorised the damn mission."
no subject
She doesn't stand up, she's leaning her weight back in the chair a little bit. "I like to think it was because CT was a member of my team. And that's part of it. But I know I was also grabbing for control of something that was getting further and further out of my hands every day."
Both of those things are true. Both were suspended there in the memory: Carolina's revulsion at what she's been ordered to do, Carolina's desperation to maintain a status and win the unwinnable.
"I failed her."
no subject
"She was a threat in the only way that fucking mattered to him."
Her shoulders tense up and her fists clench, her posture shifting as if she's going to suddenly lash out at something—it's the kind of body language Carolina may still recognise, from the many times South took out her frustration on door panels, locker doors, and other inanimate objects.
But then, just like that, it falls away. South's shoulders slump.
"Damn fucking right you failed her," she says, and, beneath the anger, her voice threatens to crack. "You were too wrapped up in the Director's fucking games to really see anything else, too busy trying to get what you wanted."
There's a sense she's not just talking to Carolina, anymore.
no subject
And she regrets that.
Carolina watches South, carefully. "...Do you know what I wanted?"
This isn't a game. It isn't a gotcha, or a trap. Carolina just probes the edge of seeing whether South has bothered to put this together. It's not whether she can, it's whether she's bothered.
no subject
South wonders, sometimes. Wonders if, maybe, she could have been easier for CT to trust if she'd just tried, if maybe then...
She tries to shake the thought away, and it's easier when Carolina asks that question. It makes South's back straighten up a little, her head half turning back towards Carolina. Her mouth opens, then closes, her jaw flexing subtly.
"You wanted to..." her brow furrows. She wanted to win, right? She wanted to beat Texas. She wanted to...
What did she want? Why did beating Texas matter so fucking much to Carolina? Why did any of it matter so much to Carolina? What mind game were they playing with her? For her it was her brother, but Texas was only...
Wait. No. Texas was something else. North told her, the day Carolina arrived, the day Price did that stupid 'apology' and...
"...shit."
no subject
It's over, between Carolina and the ghost that raised her. No matter how many times Price tries to raise the specter, Carolina has her closure.
"But maybe some things make more sense now."
no subject
"Yeah, uh. Yeah. They do. Shit."
It was bad enough having her brother around, pseudo-dad as he always has been to her, but to have your father be in command of the program, and then the whole weird shit with Texas...
Yeah. Thinking about that's enough to cut through a lot of the surface-level rage. It makes some things slot into place in a way they couldn't before.
South groans, turning around only to sit herself on the floor, knees up loosely and elbows resting on them. She drags her hands through her hair again, taking a deep breath.
"...not like I have a leg to stand on. I fuckin' all but killed my brother. It's just— this," she gestures around, vaguely, "this is... fuck."
no subject
Carolina didn't expect it. Her hopes only went as high as 'endure memory purgatory and not start an actual fight.'
"Yeah," is what she says. What is she going to do here, now? How do you follow this up? Carolina isn't wise, she's just tired.
"I'm serious when I say I don't think I'm better than any of the rest of you. I was trying to be, once, but..."
no subject
South’s hands fall away from her head and droop between her knees, instead. She looks the kind of tired sleep can’t fix and uncharacteristically unsure of herself, now that so much of the rage has fallen away.
This certainly isn’t the South from the Project, and it’s probably not even the South that so baldly let Carolina know everything she’d done wrong when Carolina first arrived.
“No shit,” South says with a weak snort. “I... fuck. You pissed me off so fucking much with that— that golden child act, the way you freaked the fuck out about being number two when they just kept pushing me down and...”
She groans, again, dropping her head. She takes a breath.
“I was so fucking done with your shit I petitioned for one of your fucking AIs if you died or became a fuckin’ vegetable, as if that wasn’t fucked up as hell.”
It was callous and cruel and maybe South should have known then that she was on a path that would only end in her causing irreversible harm, but at the time...
“I was just so... so... done. With Command’s bullshit. With all of you. CT was fucking gone and North cared more about his stupid AI and—”
Another breath. Her hands cup over the back of her skull, now, her head down.
no subject
She rests her forearms on her legs, a crack in the composed posture she's been holding.
"I finally had a place where I had done everything he asked of me, and it wasn't enough. So, I kept trying. And he let me, because I pissed him off and he knew it would hurt me."
He knew. Carolina can see it in hindsight, it slots into a pattern of other times where her father lost his temper and let her charge ahead to prove a point. It was the same way the last fight about how her decision to enlist had ended, once.
"I think wanting to be done with all of Command's bullshit is probably the most rational thing any of us can feel. CT, you, hell. Even Tex figured that one out before I did."
It's fucking embarrassing.
no subject
“Fuck. And I thought my dad sucked. Which, I mean, he fucking did, but once I was out of there I was fucking out of there.” He wasn’t her fucking boss, jesus christ.
She exhales something resembling a laugh without any humour.
“S’not like I was done with their shit for the right reasons. CT— she saw what was happening, I sure fucking didn’t. I was just done with being treated like... like I’ve alway been fucking treated. It wasn’t even new. Fuck.”
That’s almost the worst of it, it wasn’t new. It was the same old bullshit she’d been dealing with her entire life, just planned instead of organic. Her life experience condensed down into a fucking experiment.
“I kept working for them. Even after everything. I kept fucking working for them and— and—” then she let North die. “Ugh. Look, my fuckin’ point is— I didn’t figure out shit, either. Not really.”
no subject
Carolina did. It all made a twisted kind of sense to her that she could only pick apart later. It hadn't been right, but she'd spent so long trying to win the system it had to be if it was going to mean anything.
And it wasn't just the system.
"I thought I deserved it. Good parts and bad parts."
For not being good enough.
no subject
South lifts her head to look at her. There's not exactly something as obvious as concern or sympathy in her face, but there's something there.
"...fuck. We really were all some kind of fucked up, huh."
She's always sort of known that subconsciously, of course, but knowing it consciously is new. Thinking about it. Realising the ways the Project fucked with them all in ways that were designed to hit them where it hurt the most, pulling on strings that, for many of them, had always been there, but were placed into the hands of the Counselor and the Director.