Invasion!

[goneawaymod]

Who: The New Hires
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After Intermission
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 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 cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people. Of course, there's always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up memories unbidden.]]

Comments

[gempathizing]

When it's not connecting to someone or something that can't communicate any other way, when it's not about grave necessity, things like this feel like he's perpetrating a huge invasion. Learning about people, communicating with them, helping them with problems is important to Steven, but just as important is how he goes about it.

Pushing something and forcing something are different. Of course, if this is up to his dumb dream powers again, it still doesn't change the fact that this is happening now. Tucking that worry and guilt away for later, that's the easy part. He'll figure it out. Genuine easiness sort of stops there.

The broad strokes of seeing something terrible or hearing about something terrible aren't new to Steven. There's familiarity in minding his own business and abruptly running headfirst into something painful, something genuinely horrifying. That's... just the way it happens sometimes. Not a typical Tuesday stroll, per se. More like a hiking trail he frequents.

Some part of him is already picking what he's seen up with cautious hands, turning it over to process it, finding points of new connection practically on autopilot. Because he's Steven Universe, and this is pretty much what he's made for.

(The crushing guilt, feeling responsible for something terrible, the understanding of making a choice and having it, directly or not, tie into something terrible happening to somebody else-- the worst kind of consequences of all.

He doesn't know the engulfing feeling of loss. Not really, not like this. If Steven Universe were a fish, someone else's old grief would be the salt in the ocean water he swims through, though.)

The other parts of Steven, when he finds himself standing next to present-day Ben-- Peter???-- are crying. Crying is also something that he's always been good at doing and may in fact have been made for. There's simply no getting around that part.

"Can I put a pin in that joke for a minute and ask if you're okay?" Nailing it. Absolutely. "I respect humor as maybe being part of your process, but you'd be doing me a huge favor if I could just check in really quick."

[stickypete]

"Are you okay? That's some pretty intense sympathy crying," Peter says, jumping down from the air conditioner unit to land lightly on his feet.

He doesn't want to see the kid sad enough to cry, especially over his memories, especially over a memory so old, so carefully processed and laid to rest. And he's hoping the reason Steven is crying so hard is just that he's an empathetic kid rather than suffering similar grief.

Peter walks over and places his hands comfortingly on his shoulders.

"This happened over twenty years ago for me. I had a lot of time to process, grieve, and move on, and because of May I had someone to help me do it. It's not exactly easy watching it all over again but it also isn't really unearthing anything."

He looks at his younger self, kneeling, quieter now, raising his eyebrows.

"The up side to dealing with grief the right way is even facing the memory head on, it never feels the way it did back then. And there's so much good of Ben I can hold onto, that when I look back, that's what stands out most."

For someone who usually acts a little offbeat, who's flippant and weird, it's a very mature, peaceful, and well-reasoned outlook.

[gempathizing]

Steven's expression shifts, rapidfire, lands somewhere in the area of vague offense at the question before he can help himself. Embarrassment over crying doesn't factor into the equation even once. He feels that the tears are both natural and merited. Much like he, not two years ago, felt that crying about snakes being armless was both natural and merited. Wiping his face is more for convenience than anything.

"Wh- I'm fine!" There's no such thing as sympathy crying that isn't intense, right? If you get up to the crying point, you're already there. Especially over seeing a really good person and great uncle die.

Why is he even surprised anymore, though? Based on past experience alone, he should've seen this coming a mile away.

Is it all that genuine and well-adjusted and simple, really? Nothing to put on the table after a long, tiring journey through time? Or has he just not wound up digging deep enough yet? Hasn't put in the convincing legwork to get there yet.

"I'd rather have you keep taking care of yourself than worrying about me handling stuff I already know how to handle, you know? Especially when what's happening right now is about you."

Subtle redirects are for quitters. Another day, another moment of considering that he maybe really has forgotten how to talk to humans about important stuff.

[stickypete]

"I'd rather have you keep taking care of yourself than worrying about me handling stuff I already know how to handle, you know? Especially when what's happening right now is about you."

It's not subtle and that means it says a lot. One, that doesn't understand that a kid's feelings should be prioritized. Two, that he's used to contending with the grief of others.

"Look, kid, I'm not going to pretend that I'm 100% okay when I, like, you, like all of us, are currently imprisoned by some evil corporation. And it hasn't been an easy last few years for me."

He lets go of Steven's shoulders, and walks around the roof, look at his younger self in the center, now frozen in that moment.

"May passed away from old age. I messed some stuff up with my wife and we got divorced."

He plops to sit down and look at the memory, take it all in in full.

"But what this moment taught me is that no matter how bad it gets in the worst part of your grief, it can still get better. Just because it felt like the end of the world didn't mean it actually was."

And while he'd been in some pretty intense pain from the divorce, meeting the other spiders, realizing he wasn't alone in the multiverse, feeling that camaraderie... that was huge.

"We're not our worst moment. Or moments. And we can always learn and be better."

The memory shifts again and this time, Ben is alive and there, sitting next to Peter on the couch, arm around his shoulders. Peter has a bruised eye from picking a fight with one of the school bullies.

"Peter, one thing you need to understand is that with great power comes great responsibility."

"What power? I don't have power at school. Stupid Flash is always making fun of me."

"You don't have power now but smart men rule the world, Peter. With that big brain of yours, someday you'll probably wind up like that Bill Gates fella, inventing something and running some big company, with people you have to decide whether to cheat or take care of. Your Aunt May and I want you to learn now how to treat other people, and that includes how to deal with the difficult ones."

The memory shifts again, and Ben's arms are around Peter's shoulders as they walk away with a crow from a stadium. They're wearing Mets hats and Mets jackets. Peter's got a baseball glove in hand - brought in case he could catch a stray ball from the seats.

He's sulking because the Mets lost.

"What's wrong, killer. You didn't like the game?" Uncle Ben asks.

"I'm not coming here again. This blows."

"Look, Petey, it's okay, really it is. You can't get upset over one game. If the players got upset after every loss, they'd have to retire and work on horse farms or something." Ben places his hand on Peter's shoulder and crouches down to his level. "You can't always win - that's the way life works. Sometimes it doesn't matter how hard you try, you lose anyway."

He goes on, "Life is a very long season. Some you win, some you lose, and it's good to lose once in a while. It makes winning all the sweeter."

The memory shifts again to teenage Peter running through the halls of a burning building, sticking to the walls as he avoids the caved in floor of a hallway. A little girl's terrified crying can be heard. He breaks down the door to a room and starts checking places, under a bed, in a closet, and finds her hiding in the latter.

Gathering her up in his arms and wrapping her in a blanket, he manages to run over creaking walls, and over burning stairs, getting her out the front door just in time before the floors in he building collapse. It was a fast blaze, the firefighters are only just pulling up and never would've gotten there in time.

"Mama," she coughs, after he unwraps her, reaching her hands for her parents. "Mama!"

They run over and take her into their arms weeping.

It shifts again to Peter in his room, sewing a different version of his wrestling uniform, much closer to the costume he's now wearing.

And then again, a clip show, one moment after the next, at various ages, pulling people out of burning buildings, webbing guns out of robbers' hands from the ceiling during a hostage situation at a bank, webbing falling debris from a rampaging supervillain, saving the people under it just in time. Then knocking the villain out and webbing him up.

"I don't actually know that this moment is about me. Maybe whatever's doing this is trying to help me show something to you."

[gempathizing]

It's a lot of the kind of sentiment he's heard before. It gets better, we're not our worst moments, anyone can change and be better, it's never too late. Change happens anyway.

Usually he's the one saying all that, going out of his way to share something. And Peter shares a lot. Doesn't drop it onto Steven's shoulders or leave an opening that says Need Help Here. Just shares.

"Maybe. I guess I've heard of weirder things happening." The turnaround itself is unusual enough to keep Steven from interjecting with the impulsively irritable assertion that he knows this already. Doesn't need to hear it. Gems and humans play different sports and he won the whole game two years back.

(Why are you still here looms over him, again. He's almost used to it.)

Sometimes the willingness to make the gesture is more important than the content. More accurately, whether he admits it or not, sometimes a teenager kind of does need to hear something like this no matter how hard he avoids thinking about it. It shows in the drop of his shoulders, the wrinkle in his forehead as he absorbs it all.

Steven can't even picture being twenty, whatever it'll look like, let alone being twenty years out from anything that's happened.

It's a nice thought. The idea that even he might not be a total wash long-term.

"But I... do have a moral responsibility to tell you that it might just be me getting my psychic dream powers back."

It doesn't feel like it does when he uses them. Just in case, though. If he knows anything, it's that he's never done causing magical accidents.

[stickypete]

"If that's the case, and this is your subconscious, then what do you think your subconscious is trying to say?" Peter asks, as if Steven being behind it isn't a big deal, as if those powers kicking in are maybe just some kind of learning moment.

"Or what is your subconscious looking for?"

He shrugs.

"I'm no shrink, but if your brain's reaching out and booping the nose of other people's brains, maybe there's something you don't consciously realize you need."

[gempathizing]

Peter takes things so much better than most humans. Must be the history of sticky-powered superheroism. It's a relief in itself. Extremely weird, like so many things about Ben, Peter, note to self, remember to ask what he actually prefers.

The relaxed-ness of it makes him miss his dad. What's another drop in the bucket of people he misses back home?

"Yeah, I dunno about all that. If this tells me I need anything, it's to get a handle on it. I like to think I'm pretty needless otherwise."

Apart from the fix-this-world, get-everyone-home-if-they-wanna-go-home need in the name of greater goods. That old standard spiel. He assumes it's a given.

Not being a very good fibber hasn't stopped him from putting in his denial practice. Not that he's fibbing. Obviously. Objectively. Objectively, he knows he doesn't need anything. Not enough to make into everyone else's problems. They're not the ones who dug the hole he got stuck in.

Steven hesitates. Debates. Kind of figures that if he's in for a penny, he might as well be in for a pound on at least one front.

"And I mean. If it is my fault, I might've ended up booping your brain specifically because I can't... really figure you out?" Oh, does that sound bad? That probably sounded worse than he meant it. "Uh. No offense."

[stickypete]

His desire to not need anything doesn't seem healthy. Everyone needs things sometimes.

But there are better angles into that than confronting it directly.

"What's there to figure out?"

And why does he need to be figured out?

[gempathizing]

Steven shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Yeah! Exactly. Usually I meet someone and there is something to figure out. It pops right up. But I dunno, it's like you're on a different rhythm? Not bad. Just different. So the thing to figure out ends up being, uh. If there's anything to figure in the first place."

He's starting to relax into the concept that it would probably take a lot of doing to seriously offend Peter, which is at least helpful in the word-finding moment.

Since he can't grab this man by his shoulders and go what am I supposed to do with you, or what do you need.

"It's hard to explain." Hearing it out loud, honestly, Steven is pretty sure he sounds like he's being a baby about it. They just watched a deeply personal memory of death and he's talking about Peter's brain being a weird puzzle or whatever. "I'm, I'm probably stuck in Gem ambassador mode or something is all."

[stickypete]

It all clicks and falls into place. What the problem here is.

Kid's too used to playing hero and everyone's traumas are a puzzle to be solved - specifically by him.

"You know, it's easy to fall into a trap of feeling like you need to fix everything and help everyone. And that can be exhausting. Some people deal with that by quitting at some point."

The memory shifts to Peter, perhaps in his early twenties, slamming his Spider-Man costume in a trash can.

Peter gestures to the costume he's wearing, pointing out that obviously he went back to wearing it after throwing it out.

"Other people get habituated. Maybe too used to always having to be that guy. It's not necessarily anyone's fault, but bad things happen and whoever's in the thick of it has to adapt to needing to be there to save the day."

He shrugs and walks over to Steven.

"But not everyone needs fixing or puzzling out. And even if they did, you don't always have to be the one that has to do it. I don't have deep traumas I need help with because I dealt with them a long time ago. And the worst, most recent stuff is my divorce and if I were to talk to anyone about it, it'd be someone my age that understands long-term adult relationships."

He puts a hand on Steven's shoulder.

"Maybe sometimes you don't have to be in ambassador mode here, around people like me. Maybe sometimes you can just be in teen mode. Take it from someone else who has to fix everything basically all the time: it's okay to not be needed sometimes. It gives you a chance to breathe. To just...be you. And to figure out who 'you' is. Which is harder when you're growing up on the go."

[gempathizing]

It's not often that Steven feels completely and utterly cornered.

Well, physically, sure, he's been backed into a physical corner more times than he could count, but this is-- not that. This is clear and specific and patiently accurate in a way that's equal parts embarrassing and terrifying. That wraps around his chest like a vice, freezes him.

These are things he's secretly maybe wanted to hear from someone. Or anyone at all, even weird as it is to be the person on the other end of a talk like this. He can't hold Peter's gaze for more than a quick second, fixing his eyes somewhere down and to the left instead. Anyone in Beach City would've just shrugged and gone well, that's Steven for ya by now and called it a day. They're used to weird stuff like that. The Rig keeps landing him with things he doesn't know how to work with. With people who listen to him talk and just get what he means.

Like he's really obvious.

What is he supposed to do with it? If he wound up back home tomorrow, is he supposed to drag the Gems back down because he's the only one who doesn't take his own advice? Another version of a claustrophobic kid that holds everyone back because he can't just move on? A talk that turns into them blaming themselves and him having to pick the pieces back up? The graduation ceremony was bad enough. The Cactus Steven incident was bad enough. There's a common denominator here.

"I'm not-"

I'm not a real person, he thinks, strange deja vu and swallowed-back hysterical humor.

He always just figured he'd never really be done fixing what his mom broke. Even when he's scraped-out and tired thinking about something cropping up again, it's still something. He had to put so much work in to make himself feel like he really deserved a place. He's spent so much time having to live around the ways he's not Rose Quartz or Pink Diamond, in every direction, everything about him is put into the barrier itself. The only thing under what he can do is a tied-up package of ways he can generally mess anything up otherwise.

(What does anybody want him for if they don't need him for anything?

What's wrong with him?)

"I don't, I don't wanna talk about this. Uh, I'll." Valiantly not yell at this kind grown adult for daring to be kind and understanding, or something. "I'll take it under advisement. Teen mode. It's fine."