Games so far:Memories Lost: One; the loss in the Dismemberment game was cancelled by winning Truth or Lie.
Meeting her grandmother.
Seven memories for the memory share game:
Saving Miku
being named
waking up for the first time
the river
drowning
seeing her own face for the first time
dying
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waking up
Th- thump.
Th- thump.
Darkness. Quiet. A heartbeat. Your heartbeat. Slowly, the murmur of sound. Footsteps. Voices—
—and then loud high noise, so much noise where there wasn't before it's like a physical blow. Fear; something changes (you open your eyes) and everything is bright, bright, bright— you don't understand what you're seeing. You don't have words for what you're seeing. You don't have words at all.
There are people, moving. Shouting. You can't understand them, it's all just noise on top of noise on top of noise and it's too much, you want it to stop, and no sooner do you think that than you see... someone. Just their back, the line of her shoulders and the white-gold of hair and your heart squeezes in recognition. That person will fix this, you know she will in a way that you don't know anything else at all—
But. But. Her face.
You only see it for a moment as she turns and runs, and her face— the face she's making is the same thing you feel. Then she's gone, and nothing stops at all.
...Why? Why did she leave? Why didn't she make things better?
One of the other people is there, making sounds at you; they're like the hands on your face. Gentle. Too quiet, though; someone talks over them, ("We didn't think this through, did we?" "Is there anyone even in that thing? Maybe it's a failure—") but even when you can hear all of the sounds that person makes they don't make sense. It's just noise, noise noise noise—
You want to leave. You can't stay here. It's too much, it's too loud, it's too bright— there are hands on your face again and you lash out, blindly to make it stop and something hits, cracks. The voices all stop, the people all stop, the person who was touching you is on the ground, stopped— and you didn't mean to stop them that hard but before you can see whether or not they'll move everyone in the room is adding to the high loud ("alarm?") noise and you can't stay there you can't so
You run. You run, too, you run, you run run run run—
the river
(You can't feel it, but that doesn't seem strange to you at all. Why would you be able to feel it? Why would you be able to feel the body you're in at all?)
...You like it. The sound is gentle in a way that makes you want to sit and listen, and though you somehow know it's dangerous, it's a quiet danger. It wouldn't hurt you for no reason, you would have to do something to make it hurt you. And you're thirsty, and when you lower yourself down without falling the water is good in your mouth. (Even if you cough it out the first time. It's cold!)
So you spend some time there, letting yourself think about the water instead of worse things. Letting yourself go quiet. You let everything drift off so far that you almost don't notice when something splashes where it shouldn't, off to your right where the water (the river?) is going.
But then you do notice, and... there's a person. A small one. A... little girl, is the thought you get, looking at her; she's splashing around further in than you went, but doing the same sort of thing you were doing. It's still scary, because she's still a person, but if she's doing the same thing as you... maybe she'd understand? Maybe she's the same in other ways.
You stand up to go hide, so you can watch her more, but before you can do more than that, she falls. You see her go down, you can hear the sound of her head hitting the rocks under the water even above the gentle river noise, and you see the way she doesn't move after that.
You know enough to know that people can't breathe water. You know enough to know that that sound would mean she was hurt. Person or not, you still splash up out of the water and run to where she is to get her out, because you can't just leave her in the cold water, you can't, she's so small in your arms when you finally pick her up and carry her out. She didn't hurt anyone. But she's not breathing even now that she's in air and you put your hands on her chest, not knowing what else to do—
"—get off of her! What did you do, you—"
—there's a man.
You didn't see him. But it's an adult man, holding— you don't know, you haven't seen it before, but it's long and looking at it you get the impression of danger, something fast moving and pain and that's enough that you pull back. Try to show that you won't hurt him, you weren't hurting her, please. You're scared. You're so so so scared, you don't understand why he's so angry and that thing is still pointed at you—
You see his face as he looks at you and he's scared, too, and then— noise. Impact. Loud enough to hurt, and then just hurt— you have nothing to compare this to, no words for this, just bright overwhelming agony in your shoulder and you scream and scream and you. You don't understand. Why did he hurt you? You hadn't hurt him. You hadn't hurt the girl. You didn't make any sort of mistake this time and it hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts it's his fault and you didn't do anything wrong, you don't deserve this.
...He deserves it.
He deserves to hurt. Him. Not you. You, you can show him how much he's hurt you, you should— and that hurts less, thinking that way. It's like a soundless scream in your chest, in your head, pushing the pain out the way your screaming is pushing out air and before your thoughts are pushed out, too, you realize that you don't know how to stop screaming.
...you stop on your own, at some point. Your thoughts come back, slowly, in small spills like water rolling off of leaves. You're breathing. Your shoulder is throbbing with a low, uncomfortable itch. You're looking at something— your hands. Your hands are...
You're covered in red.
her reflection
It's still, this time. Small. Safe. Mostly, anyway— when you stumble over you nearly fall, and you have to look down and see the way the mud slips around your feet to get the rest of the way there. And when you do... the surface is hard. Ice, you think, although you don't know exactly what that means at first, but the impression of cold and solidity that follows makes sense. ...You think. Maybe. (Why would cold make water hard...? Maybe it just looks hard?)
The moon and stars shine above you through the trees, and you can see them in the pond: bright and clear against the dark, even in the reflection. You can feel yourself going still looking at them, so for a while you just let yourself look, and be quiet.
Eventually, though, you want the water more than you want the quiet. So you move, lean forward to get ready to break the ice and there's something looking at you, there's something in the water and you shove yourself back and almost fall over yourself trying to get away from— from...
...it had your stitches.
Your body is locked up; you can feel your heart beating. You're scared. But... you go back, and you look.
It isn't so bad, this time. You're expecting it, and it's just a face. The stitches on its face (your face...?) are ugly, and the skin is pale and bad looking. Its hair is dirty and has things stuck in it, just like you know yours does. It's still just a face. But the more you look... the more you know there's something wrong with it. You don't know what you look like, but you know- you know it isn't like that, it doesn't even look like something that would be on any of the people you've seen. So that can't be you, but there's nothing else it could be—
Your stomach hurts. Has been hurting, but it suddenly feels like it flips and you pull back. The back of your throat burns; putting a hand over your mouth feels like the right thing to do, so you do.
It isn't until the stitched up place on your face starts to burn, too, that you realize you're crying.
drowning
"knight in battered armor"
"eve"
"Hey, hey Eve! Can you hand me the... um. The book with the thing about... um..."
At an apparent loss for words, she flaps a hand helplessly at you and you find yourself snorting, lips curling up at the corners without your permission. She does this, sometimes, when she gets engrossed enough in whatever she's doing; all the words but the ones she's working with going out of her head. You've adjusted enough that you can usually hand her whichever reference book she's trying to name first try, as you do this time. She rewards you with a smile like the sun coming out, and you glance away, expression carefully nonchalant.
(Like the sun, it feels like she'll blind you if you look too long. This was never meant for you.)
She, of course, sees right through the attempt to be unaffected and giggles at you, which also makes you realize that you'd responded to that name without thinking about it again. Damn it.
"Why do you insist on calling me that?" you hastily grumble. This isn't the first time you've complained about it, but it's the first time you've actually asked; you're not sure what kind of answer you're hoping for. As long as she stops looking at you like that, though, (like you're worth something) you can live with it. ...Probably. You really need to stop making that assumption with her; more often than not she proves you wrong.
"Well, I'm not gonna call you "hey you" no matter how many times you tell me you don't care! So I had to pick something, and..."
She hesitates, looking away herself— and you know from her expression where she'll go, but with her you don't mind. It's sadness she wears on her face, not pity or fear.
"...you're... um. You're something new, aren't you?"
... It's such an innocuous way to put it. 'Something new.' While it's technically true, it's also not true at all. Whatever it is you are may be new, but monsters have been around for a very long time.
"...I suppose," you wryly agree. "But in that case, wouldn't it be more fitting to name me after the first woman—"
She doesn't give you a chance to finish.
"I'm not calling you Lilith, jeez! No matter what angle you look at it, it's not right, anyway—"
"So you name me after the woman responsible for original sin, instead?" you interrupt right back, and— that's it, you're both off, bickering without bothering to settle in and start actually arguing one way or another. It's comfortable, and to your surprise, you realize that doing this, being there... you're happy.
You want it to last.
the end
The first bullet tears through your leg, a flash of impact to agony to dull numbness that leaves you tripping over yourself; the second hits the middle of your back and rips out just underneath your breasts and takes your breath with it, knocking you down onto your hands and knees with pain and the force of the blow as you struggle for air you can no longer pull in.
There are footsteps behind you, laughter, cursing— you somehow get yourself turned enough to try to fight back like the rabid, wounded thing you are, snarling and throwing yourself at the lot of them as red hazes your vision and if you can just get to them you'll kill them, you'll make them hurt like this, you never asked for this, but the next gunshot is loud enough to hear even over the crazed shrieking in your head and ripping raw out of your throat. You can feel impact against, through your stomach and—
There's a split-second of visceral knowledge that something in you is broken, something is horribly wrong before your joints stop responding. Your body collapses like a puppet with cut strings and oh God, it hurts, it hurts so much it hurts you're sorry, you're so sorry, you know you asked for death over and over and over and you deserve so much worse but you can't do this, please. please. please please plese why won't they just end it (you can hear them talking but the words don't make sense anymore, it's all garbage, error error error. but you still know what they're saying, you've been hearing that tone of disgust and fear all your life)—
One of them grabs you by the hair and pulls and it's stupid, how badly that still hurts even compared to everything else. But you can feel the press of something red-hot to the side of your head, and you can't even fight it anymore. You're going to die here, crying like a child, gunned down like a dog, and you won't even fight, because you just want to be done.
You just wanted—
domesticity
despite how nervous and put upon you feel, you're not sure you actually mind.
while you work, so does she: she's talking and typing, chattering away and occasionally pausing to gesture wildly. the thread of her rambling is familiar, and therefore isn't that difficult to follow even with how little you're listening— common figures and themes between religions and what that says about human psychology and culture. there are a lot of Judeo-Christan references, though they all make sense in the context of the memory.
as you finish sorting out ████'s hair you feel safe enough to start splitting your attention in order to play the Devil's advocate, poking holes in what she's saying and pulling her back on track when she starts to wander too far from the topic or repeat points she's already made. that derails things in a different manner, though; pretty soon she's ditched even the pretense of working in favor of turning and focusing on you, gleefully teasing you with bright eyes over having indulged in a melodramatic turn of phrase.
it's incredibly domestic. you're all at once terrified and so happy you want to cry. ]
a fight