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
He answers her question with a question.
"Is nausea a good thing after a head injury?" He asks, sounding incredibly nauseous, and also now slurring a bit.
That'd be a yes.
"I'm afraid we need to make the call," acknowledges Wyoming, looking unsteady himself. "Preferably before I bleed out."
no subject
"Jesus fucking... hey, Command," and just like that, she's calling it in, still picking off soldiers with rifle fire as she does, "everything's gone to shit, we need extraction. These two chucklefucks got themselves injured, the rookie sounds like he's about to hurl in his helmet. I can clear us an LZ but we've got enemy aircraft inbound so you're gonna have to be fucking quick about it."
Such a professional on the radio.
She barely waits for the response before she's picking off another group of soldiers with rapid gunfire. She looks back at Wash.
"Don't wander off, stick at my four o'clock and try not to shoot me, instead of the enemy, rookie. We can clear a route and an LZ if we play this right, even with your shitty concussion aim and Wyoming's— everything."
no subject
South, he doesn't exactly like, but the way she's willing to instantly take a possible hit in the rankings for a failed mission for two injured teammates? Yeah, that wins some points.
It's a rough go, but Wash does as he's told, and even despite his condition, manages to cover her a few times. The effort he makes doing it when he can barely stay upright is obvious. They all eventually make it and stumble into the Pelican and feel the ship vibrate as it shoots off. The sudden motion makes it so Wash has to rip off his helmet - it snags his short hair as he does - for some strange reason - and he immediately throws up on the deck plating.
He's actually bleeding from the back of his head, which really shouldn't be happening. A concussion is one thing - that can happen just from your brain sloshing around in your head - but the helmet should've protected him from that.
Then he sees what the fuck happened to his helmet and says, "Jesus fucking Christ."
He holds it up and shows the piece of broken helmet that was pressed inward - pushed there by a piece of shrapnel, probably from the rocket that had exploded close to him. It had almost pierced through, but been stopped just short of actually doing it. But the end result was that it had dented a chunk of his helmet into his head, probably at high speed, and had been so far in it wasn't really visible from outside.
He feels the back of his head. It's bloody but it doesn't feel like anything's been jabbed into his brain. Maybe his skull, though. Christ.
Despite his earlier panic in the fight, he doesn't look that shaken by it. He's not in danger anymore and it's not exactly his first close call. He mostly looks impressed at far the damn thing went in.
"Thanks for making the call and getting me out of there," he slurs. "I don't think it went in too deep but I think my skull's fractured. I'll let the Director know in my report you weren't the one that blew it."
Later on, he actually did.
An actual team player. He'd always been one back then, checking in on teammates, reassuring them when they failed. How many times had many of them had bitten his head off for it now and again? Or sniped at him about making things worse by trying? There's a reason he hovered around five or six on the chart and it wasn't just how much catch up it'd taken to move up from the very bottom of the rankings.
He didn't have the edge for anything beyond five or six. Couldn't outrank people that driven to beat everyone else. It's why another version of South had thought he didn't have the nerve to kill her and had unfortunately been wrong because of not recognizing the shape he'd been battered into.
Wyoming huffs indignantly at Wash's implication they both fucked it up and Wash gives him a 'Really?' look because come on, it was mutual.
"Don't give me that look, you're bleeding more."
no subject
"Okay, that's more fuckin' impressive than a simple concussion," South says, because jesus christ, that could have ended badly. "You got damn lucky, looks like I was almost carting your damn body out of there instead of just babysitting you."
South is still South, there's some things that have never changed; or, well, that's not quite true, because as much as she's always been rude, she used to have a better sense of balance about it. There's no real attempt at insult behind the 'babysitting' comment, it's just the kind of shit she expects any soldier their rank to be able to take from a teammate.
"You both fucked it up," she affirms, on Wash's side, giving Wyoming a look. "Big time. I probably took out more of those guys than either of you and I have maybe a few bruises. So yeah, damn right, rookie."
There's an actual flash of gratefulness in her, because no matter what point in her life she's at, South doesn't turn her nose up when someone acknowledges she did a damn good job.
"Alright, assholes, fucking triage before we get back to the ship. Wyoming, deal with your own shit, you can get at it. Rookie, let me at least clean that damn head wound so they can get a good look when we arrive."
Though she'd almost forgotten that, forgotten moments like these. Missions like this one were a dime a dozen, it's not until the memory is playing out that South really remembers it at all, and that branches off into remembering other little things. The earlier days of the Project, when things weren't so fucked. When she wasn't so fucked.
no subject
He'd forgotten a little of this too. The part where he sat on one of the seats, holding onto the edge like his life depended on it, as she cleaned the wound on his head.
It wasn't exactly tender, it was just the basic patching up most soldiers would give any other soldier, but it was still so different from right now. He was just sitting there, with his back to her. Trusting her.
It doesn't just show her he was right that she used to be someone worth being again - it actually helps remind him, too.
The Wash that was watching this all silently finally turns to her.
"That," he says, pointing, "You could be that. Maybe not to me, because I sure as hell don't trust you at my back like that anymore, and I may never trust it again. But you can be that to everyone else. There's got to be at least a few people here you haven't pissed off yet."
no subject
Her gaze lingers there for a long moment, on this memory that should be so inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things; just one mission, just a normal interaction between squadmates, somehow rendered strangely important by all the ways things have changed, since then.
When she pulls her eyes away, she gives Wash a look, but it's not got much strength behind it. "I haven't pissed off most people here, asshole. But... point taken."
She scrubs a hand back over her face, groaning under her breath. Okay. Okay.
It's undeniable proof, a memory of his bringing out a memory of hers. It's something that even everything going on with North can't take from under her feet. It's not exactly a whole new foundation, but it's something to stand on when everything else around her feels so unstable. She wasn't always this.
Or— not this, because this, whatever she is right now, isn't either of these things; she's not the South that let her brother die and shot Washington in the back, but she's not that South, sitting there cleaning Washington's head wound, either.
She's somewhere stuck in-between, trying to figure out what direction to turn; towards one of them, or off in another direction, adjacent or otherwise.