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The Mods of LifeAftr ([personal profile] lifeaftr_mods) wrote in [community profile] aftr_ooc2018-05-13 08:42 pm
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TEST DRIVE MEME ( 011 )

Test Drive Meme #11
Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! We’re pleased that you’re expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.

Remember that Reserves will open on May 17th, and Applications on May 24th!

Two important notes:
1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which exists apart from the real world and possesses a dream-like quality that characters are innately aware of from the moment they appear on its shores. No need to panic or fret. Dreams are odd things, after all - and anything can happen in them. Why would anyone question where their mind chooses to wander in its sleep?

2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but can be accepted as game canon as well. In fact, certain choices your character makes in Mu have the potential to bear in-game consequences, largely in the form of test drive reward items.

Damn It, Todd
The island breeze is cool and pleasant, temperature-wise. The sun is beaming cheerfully overhead, and the waves lapping up against the beach are a crystalline aquamarine. The place may as well be a postcard, with how picturesque it is: from the thick copses of palm trees to the soft white sand, it's a truly gorgeous, becoming setting.

It makes up for the chaos of its inhabitants.
Mu has adopted what promises to be a highly frustrating backdrop for its dreamers, this fine evening. The island looks normal enough, seems normal enough, but for whatever reason, the physics and general behavior seems oddly...glitched.

We don't just mean in the general sense, either. At random intervals, you may find yourself being launched several feet in the air by an invisible abuse of physics, or clipping through trees at breakneck speeds. Maybe you're walking around several feet above the ground, or your hands are much larger than the rest of you. Regardless, the possibilities are virtually endless and promise to be, for the most part, quite harmless for those afflicted - just very annoying. Whether you're swimming in the air, repeating the same lines of dialogue over and over again, or stuck halfway through the ground, it's not clear how one is meant to undo these glitches once they set in.

You could always try helping each other! Though that may simply make things worse; who can say if these glitches might bleed into one another and complicate things even further?

(Oh, and they do. They absolutely do.)

This is Dragonna Suck
When you wake in a lovely, tranquil woodland, it perhaps seems too good to be true. The trees are dense with canopies flowering overhead, and the grass has formed a thick, plush carpet on the forest floor. There's the sound of birds chattering happily in the branches, and the rustle of forest creatures in the undergrowth. That's around the time that a loud, angry roar splits the silence, and something very large and very green barrels into the clearing you occupy with large, barklike claws.
This, dear adventurers, is a rootwyrm. While undeniably draconian in appearance, the effect is offset by the fact that the rootwyrm's skin is more akin to the texture of bark than it is scales. One can generally discern the age of these creatures by counting the number of rather stubby legs that support its ample middle - the youngest will only have two, while the oldest will have as many as twelve.

Rootwyrms move slowly, thanks to the turtle-like shell that sits astride their back in lieu of wings, but they make up for this by hitting quite hard in a fight. Instead of breathing fire, rootwyrms spit a caustic, stinging acid if they can't get close enough to their prey, though they'll be more than happy to try and dispatch you the old-fashioned way: with an extremely large set of reptilian jaws.

Did we mention they don't like trespassers? And that you're standing square in the middle of their territory?

You're Pollen My Leg!
The open spread of the grasslands allows for a clear view of the cloud-scudded sky. This particular setting is that of a meadow, vast and seemingly infinite, hosting a sweeping expanse of rolling hills. The wind's rippling over the fields of rich green and buff-colored grass lends itself to the impression that the hills are in constant motion, as if you're standing in the middle of a verdant ocean.

Naturally, such is not the case. As you roam the landscape, you'll probably notice the dollops of color sprinkled here and there: flowers growing in bright clumps amidst the tufts of grass.
They're not ordinary flowers. Why would they be? They're in full bloom, meaning that thick spores of pollen have begun to waft freely into the air. Careful not to draw too close, because this pollen, when inhaled, ingested, or otherwise interacted with in any nonspecific capacity, will have a variety of...side effects, depending on which particular plant's spores you've just unwittingly imbibed.

There are five variants you may encounter in your dream-travels, each of which will have a different result, depending on the color.
[ ♆ ] Blue flowers will induce short-term amnesia and general confusion. Forgetting your sense of identity, difficulty discerning the difference between right and left, and an intense sensation of vertigo are all common side effects.

[ ♆ ] Red flowers will make you intensely and inconsolably angry at just about everything. You know that guy who chewed gum behind your ear that one time? Fuck that guy! That person over there, with the yellow shirt? Fuck their shirt! Yellow is a stupid color, and you're stupid for wearing it!

[ ♆ ] Green flowers will induce a loss of one important sense - sight, smell, taste, touch, or hearing - though loss of powers is also known to have occurred.

[ ♆ ] Purple flowers will induce silence. We hope you aren't very talkative by nature, or that you can communicate exclusively via rude hand gestures, because now you can't speak at all.

[ ♆ ] Orange flowers will fill you an indescribable terror regarding just about everything. The slightest motion, the most innocent hello, the most harmless small animal - all will tap directly into every primal fight-or-flight response to danger you have.
These status effects can and will stack, by the by. Maybe start up a little game of pollen bingo, and see how many fanfiction tropes you can rack up in one day.

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counterblows: (϶ but a dollar for your insights)

agent washington | red vs. blue

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-14 04:11 am (UTC)(link)
dragonna suck ; we call this one a schüt game
[So basically, fuck this.]

[It's not Sangheili brutes. It's not jackals screaming as they plunge from Covie dropships, but those are the closest equivalents Wash himself can readily access when he looks at the thing. It's more reptilian than it is insectoid, but it is large and sprawling and the clip he's palming into his BR55HB service rifle feels pitifully inadequate in comparison.]

[Odds have never not been shit. Not in the Great War, not against Insurrectionists. Not even when it was the Meta's one-man A.I.-gestalt burning holes into what remained of Freelancer's gut-fucked infrastructure. So right now it's just Wash with a heavy-barrel battle rifle and four full mags of rounds that look like they'll just rebound harmlessly of the unfurling green thing's scaled hide, and he breathes slowly and takes stock of his biocomms, steady as ever. They've smoothed over since the jag of adrenaline spiked when the rootwyrm abruptly made its presence known, crushing tree trunks like matchsticks as its heavy, dragging tail swished to and fro.]

[Wash takes aim and opens fire, igniting the scales between the thing's eyes with a hot spray of cordite and lead.]


pollen my leg ; memory is the key
Even after confirming the air quality of this particular planet and ensuring it wouldn't kill him within minutes of taking a lungful of unfiltered air - the chemical mixture checks out to support carbon-based life, mercifully enough - Wash isn't in the habit of removing his helmet on the fly, particularly in the middle of a situation that's so divorced from context that he can't tell if there's an actual threat level present. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to have mattered: about two seconds into glancing, offhand, in the direction of some rich blue blooms nestled in the grass, he hadn't taken into account that the spores of pollen they released would be too dense pass through his helmet's filtration systems.

It takes about twenty, maybe thirty seconds for every carefully constructed barrier separating the lives he's spent years compartmentalizing to decay utterly. It burns through them like gasoline, like a viral injection stripping away firewalls, and the jerking whipcrack impulse to seize at his head only arrests him for a moment before the fog drops like a shutter over every lit-up section of his brain.

This is how you find a fully-armored space marine who walks like a civilian, talks like a civilian, and seems to have forgotten about the BR55HB SR hanging loose from one hand. This is how you find a space marine with two fingers pressed into the comm built into his helmet, snarling in a drawling Earther accent: "Agents Texas and Carolina, please respond," before dropping his hand with a muffled sound of frustration. This is how you find a space marine shaking his head frantically, as if that might be enough to clear it, murmuring phrases both broken and breaking, "I'm trying, I'm try - I need more time, okay? I just need more time, don't send anyone else in until I can clear the scenario first, please, just - these schematics are complicated and I'm fucking trying here, please, please - I just need more time, please!"

This is how you find a fully-armored space marine screaming his guts out in the grass, gripping at the sides of his helmet as though in terrible, terrible pain, struck with dozens of memories of having pieces of a digital soul being sheared and frayed away into displaced fragments.

This is how Agent Washington is ripped back to his howling lack of coherency in the days following Epsilon's implantation into his head, locked in the hardscrabble desperation of trying and failing to differentiate between Director - Alpha - Epsilon, trying and failing to decouple himself from layers of memory in triplicate.

This is how memory once again becomes a noose drawn tight around his neck, and threatens to burn him alive.
encircling: (salty sweet.)

memory is the key also ur horrible

[personal profile] encircling 2018-05-14 04:23 am (UTC)(link)
She comes upon him, dressed in full armor, and screaming his head out. Her first instinct is to tear the helmet off, but she's so worried about calming him down that, instead, she drops to her knees. Mira isn't quite sure what's wrong, but she gets the distinct feeling that she shouldn't touch him. Still, her hands hover over him, even from a distance where she's just barely close enough to keep from getting hit, if he lashes out.

"Listen to me," she says urgently, firmly, "you're safe here. Whatever is happening, I can try to help you, but you must tell me what is wrong, if you are able."
counterblows: (} we're alone)

am i though......AM i...

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-14 04:32 am (UTC)(link)
It turns out the human brain is really fucking good at replicating the exact feeling of a digital brain being stripped down to its base components, being cannibalized, being wrung out to the point of complete and utter numbness. He wrenches halfway upright, trying to parse an unfamiliar face through the blackout haze of static screaming in the pounding dome of his skull.

"I'm trying," he says - today, he is Alpha, a shattered holo-projection huddled behind a partition in the diagnostics ward, crumbling beneath the strain of too many no-win scenarios being foisted on him, sick the phantom pain of something he's missed (beta) something he's missing (beta) something that's never been a part of him (beta) because it was never here -

"I'm just - it's too complex, okay? It's too much, I just need, I need a new way to think, I need more time, that's - just give me more time and stop sending your agents into the fucking field when I can't account for what's gonna happen to them."
encircling: (leave me alone.)

u are and i accept that part of u

[personal profile] encircling 2018-05-14 04:52 am (UTC)(link)
His reply confuses her, but at the same time, it makes things a little clearer. While she doesn't know what he's talking about, it tells her that he thinks he's somewhere else. Not a physical wound that's tearing him apart, then; it's something in his head, or his heart, and Mira knows she can't heal that as much as she wishes she could. What can she do, then?

Help him through it, as much as she can.

"Wherever you think you are--you are not there. You are on an island. Whoever you think I am, I'm not them." Almost hesitantly, she reaches out to touch his arm. If he knocks her away, she won't even be upset, though. He has every right to, but if it helps bring him to his senses? Then that's good.
counterblows: (϶ but we walk the plank)

flatterer

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-14 05:14 am (UTC)(link)
I am very confused, says every fragment in an aching synchrony. To some extent, this much is familiar: him, taking orders from someone who seems to understand what's happening. Ready to give him orders (unless he's the one giving orders) or ready to issue some new query he'll have to throw himself against until they gut him for something else, anything else.

"I just needed more time. I just needed more time to think." It still fuzzes his eyes, blurring them, the pressure of the headache that is so unlike the way a program is deconstructed, that is distinctively human in ways it shouldn't be.

(Which one is he? Which one is he, today?)

There's a hand on his arm, skin against the gray-and-yellow striped plating of his power armor. Realizes that AIs aren't suspect to that kind of sensory feedback unless they're tapped into someone else's nervous system. Realizes this is a tangible body.

Tries not to retch over the realization. "You could probably throw up in your helmet and it would take care of it for you," says someone in the banks of his memory, a blur of turquoise. "Agent Washington would likely drown," says a spark of green glowing at someone else's shoulder.

Tries not to retch.

Remembers there's someone else here, talking to him, keeping him steady, which means he should probably address that.

"Which...who are you, again?"
encircling: (think of you.)

blows kisses

[personal profile] encircling 2018-05-14 05:21 am (UTC)(link)
She doesn't reply to the first thing he says. To do so... it wouldn't help to pull him back to reality. Gently, she tightens her grip briefly on the metal of his armor. She fights the urge to tear the strange helmet off his head; she'll give him time, explain things slowly. Wait for him to do it, because doing it herself seems like such a violation of personal boundaries, and that is the last thing he needs.

"I did not gave you my name, not just yet." She pauses. "My name is Mira. You are on an island. You have been brought here like everyone else, as a new chapter in your story."
madebyhumans: guiltfreeicons on tumblr (Used an attack)

Mewtwo | Genesect and the Legend Awakened

[personal profile] madebyhumans 2018-05-14 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
[This is Dragonna Suck]

[This is completely unfamiliar territory to her, and Mewtwo hasn't seen a single Pokemon since she got here. It's... really unnerving. Forests like these should be completely inhabited by other Pokemon, going about their daily lives. But if she presses on, something's bound to look familiar. She floats, rather than walks, through the confusing maze of trees.

A dragon-like creatures bursts through the foliage, staring her down. She steps back cautiously.]


Are you a Pokemon?

[Her mouth doesn't move, but her voice can be heard by anyone nearby. The creature roars, reaching down to snap at her with its jaws.]

Stop! I don't want to fight you!

[You're Pollen My Leg! | Orange flowers]

[Fear is an intense thing, and one that Mewtwo is all too familiar with. It strikes her as she looks more closely at a colorful field of flowers. The urge hits her suddenly - the need to escape, run away where no one can find her, can hurt her again.

Everyone here is an enemy.

If anyone approaches her, Mewtwo charges a psychic attack between her hands.]


Stop where you are. Don't come any closer!
Edited 2018-05-14 05:37 (UTC)
counterblows: (϶ there's a world outside my front door)

uwu

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-14 05:48 am (UTC)(link)
There's no prefacing. There's no PFC or Captain or Agent, which implies that she must be a civilian. Isn't he meant to be restricted from two-way interaction with anyone who falls beyond the uppermost echelons of the Project's chain? Always seemed like a pretty fucking stupid rule. What would the harm be in talking to any of the Agents, the people he's supposed to be protecting? Supposed to be -

Simulation, some part of him says, a low warning tone. You can parse this.

"Just...Mira? Not - I dunno, Doctor, or anything like that?" Something about the dry crack of the words against his teeth is both familiar and deeply, intensely wrong in ways he can't place. That's him, isn't it? Pointed remarks and wry commentary and the way he can communicate the rolling of eyes via holo-form projection alone?

Unless he's got it wrong.
encircling: (bones.)

[personal profile] encircling 2018-05-14 06:06 am (UTC)(link)
She shakes her head. Usually, she'd be flattered--doctors help people, and that's what she wants to do above all else. But she's not a doctor, just a young woman who happens to excel at healing, among other things.

"No. Just Mira." She keeps her hand on his armor, gives it a light squeeze with every reply she gives him. He hasn't shaken her off, and that's a good sign. "What is your name?"
counterblows: (϶ as i'm the worst of all)

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-14 06:15 am (UTC)(link)
The pressure is comforting in some ways, but...still confusing in others. When did he get a body? Occam's razor eases the strictures by increments - if it is a simulation, something new, some complicated scenario he has to decode, then it's one with way more fucking variables than is standard. But when's the Director ever done shit by the book?

"Alpha," he says, trying to shake away the echoes that introduction invites: Beta, and then Epsilon, and then Dr. Leonard Church, and then...others, less distinct, other names that swim beneath a layer of code.

(It's code swarming in his metaphysical veins here. Isn't it?)

"Wh - listen, if the Director's here," he says, fresh urgency coloring the words into coherency, "we can do this...later, okay? I need to talk to him. Tell him it's fuckin' urgent."
encircling: (leave me alone.)

[personal profile] encircling 2018-05-14 06:22 am (UTC)(link)
"Alpha?" she repeats back. It's... a strange name, a name that doesn't sound quite like a name. Still, she nods. "A pleasure to meet you."

... And back to the confusion. He's somewhere else again, and Mira shakes her head. It's likely that the person he's looking for is here, but for now, it's best not to tell him a lie. She wonders if he thinks she's part of his home.

"No--I have not met anyone here by that name. As far as urgency, you have little to worry about. Time halts at our homes when we are here."
counterblows: (϶ but a dollar for your insights)

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-14 06:36 am (UTC)(link)
He shakes his head as though to clear it, trying to dislodge...something, trying to shake something loose. Feels like a loose bolt in his gears. Like there's something he's forgetting.

There's too much he's forgetting.

"Yeah, okay, nice try, but you can shut it all off now," he says, snapping the words out in a perfect imitation of Alpha's caustic default. "I just...I need to talk to him. Who gave you the idea for time dilation, anyway? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I'd've remembered if it was me."
tokenflavortownie: (Default)

Pyrrha Nikos | RWBY | Airlocked CRAU

[personal profile] tokenflavortownie 2018-05-14 08:10 am (UTC)(link)
[Damn It, Todd, we can't keep doing this]

[This wasn't the way Pyrrha expected to be spending her day, not such a nice looking one at that. Or at least, that was how it seemed at first. The feelings of a dream-like state were curious enough, as well as the totally unfamiliar setting, but those things had only just eased into Pyrrha's mind before it took a turn for the truly bizarre.

After all, she'd experienced zero gravity before... but not like this. She was upside down... except not. She swore she could still feel the earth beneath her boots, but when she looked down (up?) all she saw was he sky above (below?). Every so often, she felt as though her head was sticking into the ground.

So this was already a fun time.
]

Excuse me? Hello? [Pyrrha wanders about, the young space pirate obviously looking anxious at her predicament. But at least nothing terrible had happened. Yet.] I was wondering if anyone could help me with my... situation?

[What dragonna do about it]

[There's something deeply familiar to Pyrrha about a large creature emerging from the trees and underbrush, letting out a furious roar in her direction, at her. The cries of Beowolves and Ursas instantly assault her mind, but Pyrrha's too seasoned by now to be staggered by fierce cries, she she readies her weapon...

....This is happening a lot slower then it normally does. Perhaps it has something to do with the creature's stubby legs. That manages to throw her off the most. But without any way to ward it off, she knows she needs to take the offensive.

The weapon in Pyrrha's hand, what appears to be a metal broom, shifts suddenly, taking the form of a long handle with a shining blue blade forming out of one end. And she charges the beast, making a test swing that slices into its chest, forcing it to reel back for the moment.
]
tuskenlancer: (you're not worth anything to him)

pollen; hope you don't mind murdergame crau

[personal profile] tuskenlancer 2018-05-14 08:16 am (UTC)(link)
She hadn't been there for Wash's breakdown. Church had told her, once they'd finally had a chance to talk, to compare what she knew from Project Freelancer and what he'd done after she'd died and before everything else, and she'd been properly horrified - "they implanted Epsilon?"

But she hadn't been there. Hadn't seen it because she'd been gone by then, far away from the Mother of Invention and everything that had gone on there. Had been dead, maybe, before they brought her back and pulled her across time and space to kill her again, far, far away from the Project and the Freelancers and everything else.

She's seeing it now. Somehow, she knows instantly, the moment she sees him, muttering desperately into his comm (there's no way there's anyone on the other end of the line), falling to his knees and gripping his helmet as if trying to crush his own head as he screams.

Her blood goes cold in her veins, and before she can think twice or spare a thought for her own safety she's racing across the field toward him, stumbling through the grass in her own armor, dropping to the grass in front of him and pulling his hands away as she speaks to him urgently.

"Wash. Wash. It's me. It's C-Connie. Look at me!"
craterwave: (10)

dragonna suck

[personal profile] craterwave 2018-05-14 12:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[If the huff of a mocking laugh wasn't any indication Wash was being watched, the hand grabbing his shoulder to push him aside and out of the way might.

A bald woman covered head to toe in tattoos and a crop top and baggy orange prisonwear pants pushes her way past Wash, not content to just watch him get his ass torn apart by this thing, which is clearly where this was going.
]

You're gonna need better ammo than that to pierce this thing's hide, genius.

[Her arm glows blue and she gestures a sweeping motion into the air, sending a huge Shockwave of blue element zero particles cascading towards the rootwyrm. It's knocked off its feet despite its size, falling onto its side, but it still slowly stumbles back onto its feet and looks pretty angry.]

That sure pissed 'im off.

[Still, Jack is grinning as she takes out her own shotgun. It's been a while since she last took on something this big.]
counterblows: (϶ as i'm the worst of all)

EYE EMOJIS

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-14 01:49 pm (UTC)(link)
An unbroken flash-flood of memory garroted tight around his neck, and it really is incredible, it really is fucking fascinating, how quickly everything can break down after someone ingests a microscopic amount of pollen, and how that will be more than enough to utterly strip away every barrier someone spends years of their life erecting.

He wasn't there to watch the axe slam into the plate on her chest and leave her bleeding, and he wasn't there to see Agent Texas, streamlined into a dark bullet slamming its way into the heart of the Project, and right now, it seems that's for the best. It limits the amount of memories available to him, limits the diverging of potential pathways until there's really just the one.

"So the prodigal child returns." That's undeniably the Director's low drawl, filtered through Agent Washington's scraped-raw throat. "That was considerate of you."
counterblows: (϶ and i can't stop)

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-14 01:54 pm (UTC)(link)
You think I don't know that?

[Thankfully, the retort's already heavy on his tongue before he can process this - who she is, what she looks like, the way she resembles an intergalactic ex-con who couldn't so much as afford a standard set of power armor, which doesn't explain how she's able to implement something that looks like an armor mod. Even the rebels on Chorus could shell themselves in that kind of protective gear, even if it was mostly the armor their parents wore.]

[That's what war does. Strips away everything.]

[There's absolutely no time to process the specifics of what he's seeing, so he takes them apart. He takes them apart the way one would field-strip a heavy barrel service rifle, reduces them down to their base components. Act now. Questions after.]


I'm trying to get it to open its mouth. Doesn't have hide inside it, now, does it? Think you can manage that?
tuskenlancer: (I'm not talking about you guys)

[personal profile] tuskenlancer 2018-05-14 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
She hadn't been expecting that, and she jerks back as if she's been burned, eyes going wide and terrified behind her helmet as fear shoots through her. A moment later, her eyes narrow again, angry and determined. It can't be. This is Wash, the Director's dead, Church had told her so himself.

That doesn't mean anything, of course. She'd been dead too. But she moves forward again anyway, grasping his arm again.

"Leave him alone," she growls, voice low. "Wash, I know you're in there. Talk to me."
tenthstreetbred: (Question)

give me this wonderful Pokemon oh yes

[personal profile] tenthstreetbred 2018-05-14 11:51 pm (UTC)(link)
[Shepard doesn't wander into Mu very often while she sleeps past the monthly Storytellings- perhaps her mind is too rigid too often and without the Storyteller's influence she may have never ventured into Mu on her own. Regardless, when she realizes where she is, she explores, knowing she may run into anyone in need of help.

When she hears the roar she makes her way over- those plant dragons are killer, and it sounds like it's attacking someone. Once the dragon is in sight she Charges, blue and white light wrapping around her as she body slams into the dragon to stop it from biting at- at-

What is that?]


Hey. Are you, uh. All right?

[In the brief few seconds while the creature gets back its barings, she looks to the odd... floating, grey, monkey thing that she's Pretty Sure was talking somehow with curiosity.]
counterblows: (} we're alone)

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-15 12:43 am (UTC)(link)
The reaction is immediate. There's something about her he knows he should remember, something about her that one of him should remember. There are too many memories screaming over one another, and above all - Agent Washington watched two of his best friends in the squad betray everything he thought he believed in and he never saw it coming.

Connecticut. Something in the fire of what she says generates a reflexive shift, a lateral snap into some other region of his brain lit up in all the wrong ways.

"I know there was an accident." That's a higher register, now. Still Church. Not the same Church. Frantic, half of him shelled away into pieces, and the rest desperately straining to hold it together. "Just...just tell me who died. Tell me who."
tuskenlancer: (not nearly as hard as they're going to b)

[personal profile] tuskenlancer 2018-05-15 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
She recognizes this voice too, even filtered through Wash's vocal cords. She knows this Church, the guilt, the desperation, the knife-edge of despair. Not from the Project - she'd never met the Alpha there - but from everything after.

Wiping away a frustrated tear, she edges closer, moving her hand from his forearm to grip his hand instead.

"It doesn't matter." Stubbornly, she shakes her head. "It doesn't matter. You're Agent Washington, and I'm Agent Connecticut, and we're here and we're safe. It..it's okay."
counterblows: (϶ but we walk the plank)

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-15 03:26 am (UTC)(link)
Which one is he? God, god, which one is he? You're Agent Washington. You're Agent Washington. You're in Agent Washington, sliding into his synaptic pathways like acid, feeling him tense up, waiting for you to unspool in his nervous system in a slow chemical inflorescence, waiting for a steady tide into having a program nestled in his skull, and you're setting him on fire. You're burning everything alive and listening to him scream and listening to you scream while she refused to say goodbye and you fucked this up, because you wouldn't say goodbye, just burn it to pieces, just burn it, just gut it and stop being the thing you are, stop being memory calcified into a digital soul, stop stop stop stop stop stop

He has a gloved hand pressed up to the side of his helmet, wishing he could feel the pressure up against the throbbing in his temple. The dark, almost insectoid patternings of an EOD helmet correspond with one direct memory, and it's the one that burned on the way down.

That's a lie. They all burned. They always do.

You're Agent Washington.

He's one hand to his head and one hand someone else is gripping, repeating words with so much conviction that he almost believes it.

"I don't understand." The words are strangled, but at least they're not anyone else. "Why can't I remember - ?"
tuskenlancer: (just trying to prepare myself)

[personal profile] tuskenlancer 2018-05-15 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
Memory is the key. She almost laughs, bitter and jaded, but the sound dies in her throat.

At least he sounds like Wash now. A confused, frightened Wash. A lost Wash. Not one she'd ever wanted to see, and guilt stabs through her like a knife, because this isn't the first time he'd been like this. They'd implanted Epsilon and the memories had flooded in and she hadn't even been there, she hadn't even known. He'd nearly lost himself and she'd been somewhere else, she'd abandoned him, and even if she'd been trying to stop it all she hadn't saved him.

"You don't need to remember, Wash." She threads her fingers through his own, voice quiet now as she looks down at their joined hands. "It doesn't matter now. You can forget."
counterblows: (϶ that gets off on being down)

[personal profile] counterblows 2018-05-15 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
"How can you say that?" Is that Alpha again, or some impulse belonging to him? The inflections are nearly seamless. Bifurcated memory draws parallels where none should exist - A long memory. Look at that, you've got me talking about repressed memories now.

Is that why they chose him? God, is that why they chose him?

He's not the man who chases ghosts. That's not him. That's not who he is. He's still piecing it together, knitting fractures and fragments into the barriers that he had to use to partition his mind away from the memories that wouldn't. Stop. Screaming.

Before he remembers "Washington," he remembers "David."

Before he remembers "David," he remembers her. He remembers the post-mission report. He remembers...far too much, most days, but particularly now.

He has to speak slowly, parsing it as he goes: "You were...KIA."
tuskenlancer: (Who do you think gave them the ammo?)

[personal profile] tuskenlancer 2018-05-15 04:51 am (UTC)(link)
She smiles at that, twisted and wry. Inexplicably, maybe, but she's been through a lot. Her own death - that first one - doesn't hold the same amount of horror for her that it once had. ("I'm dead, Varric. I'm dead.")

She pushes the memory firmly away, and makes herself focus on Wash, shaking her head.

"Soldiers are KIA." CT hadn't been a soldier anymore when she'd died. She'd been a deserter. A traitor. She sucks in a breath, raising her head to, if not meet his eyes, at least look at his visor. "But...Yeah."

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