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]

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."