#memory headcanon

[disabledstraydogs]

Atsushi has memory loss that comes from a dissociative disorder

"came to me in a dream"

(Submitted by anon)

[bennydwight]

TGAMM Oneshot (Spoilers: S2E3 A Soda to Remember)

Summary: Practically every visit to the Ghost World in the past year had been a result of the Council dragging Scratch under, kicking and screaming the whole way. And now, here he was, seeking them out.

All because of a STUPID soda.

(A oneshot born from a headcanon. As always, ao3 format here)

Scratch hovered, staring at the swirling black portal, and wondered if he might be crazy.

He avoided the Ghost World on principle, too many people he couldn’t just disappear from if he didn’t want to be seen, too many eyes on him, especially now that he wore The Cloak. The food was serviceable at best and the company worse. Plus, practically every visit to the Ghost World in the past year had been a result of the Council dragging him under, kicking and screaming the whole way, so obvious negative connotations there.

And now, here he was, seeking them out.

All because of a stupid old soda.

Most of him was grateful to Molly, and Libby, and Darryl, for risking their safety on their dumb little heist. It showed (in their own obsessive, pushy, annoying way) that they cared for him, and he could appreciate that. But a smaller part regretted the whole ordeal, a pain in the neck that had opened too many doors.

Like this one. To the Ghost World.

Scratch turned away, the portal swirling closed behind him. This was stupid! He shouldn’t even bother making the trip to the Council, all they’d do was stuff him into the robe again and demand he make decisions that weren’t ‘where to hide the caramel ribbon ice cream so Sharon wouldn’t find it’. Lame, unimportant things, and a two minute trip would take two hours, and he had a nap scheduled that he couldn’t afford to miss, and—

A vehicle pulled away outside, the sound drifting in with a breeze that rustled the curtains, and Scratch was slammed into the Memory without warning: curly brown hair, a sunny smile that matched a yellow shirt, artificial strawberry on his tongue. “Every time we drink this soda, we’ll think of each other—”

And just as suddenly, the world crashed down again, leaving him disoriented and annoyed and shaken. He gripped his head in his hands and growled at the dark sensation of loss clawing open his gut, riding out the displaced emotion like a wave of nausea. Why? Why this memory? Why couldn’t he remember something nicer, like a family pet, or a nice meal, or even his own name?

The next portal opened, inches from his nose. Well that was embarrassing, he was making them involuntarily now.

Way too many open doors lately. In his head, in the ether, downstairs whenever Ollie came over. What he wouldn’t give for some closure.

Yeah right. Like he was ever that lucky.

Scratch paced in angry circles, fists flexing at his sides, all the while eyeing the new portal. He moved towards it, backed away. Advance, retreat. He turned his back on the twisting abyss, form tight with stress. No, he wouldn’t go, he’d call it off—

“That way, I’ll never forget you. And you’ll never forget me.”

Spirits below, fine!

He launched himself through the portal before he could change his mind. The Ghost World hit like a smelly, dour slap to the face. Or maybe that was just the vibe of the Council chamber. His four ‘advisors’ sat hunched over their massive curved desk, quill pens in hand, and not a single one of them looked up at his presence. Almost out of habit, Scratch flinched at the empty slot between them, the silhouette of the (former) Chairman looming in negative space before Scratch blinked and the illusion disappeared.

Not foreboding at all.

He waited, hovering over the spot where he was normally summoned. Nada. “A-hem.”

Alistair gestured over his shoulder to that huge, vacuous with his quill. “You know where to be, Scratch.”

Curse these chuckleheads and their rules. “Yeah, no, I’m not ‘Chairmanning’ today,” he fingerquoted. “Taking my two weeks vacation. All year.”

“Then you’re dismissed.”

Oooh no, no one could just dismiss Scratch anymore. “Trust me, I’d love nothing more than to be as far away from you guys as possible, but I got a quick question.”

“Is it about competency,” Bartholomew grinned nastily, “because then it won’t be quick.” The others sniggered loudly at the quip. It wasn’t even that funny! Pete could do better! Fury spiked down Scratch’s arms and back in a ripple of agitated ectoplasm, size swelling briefly as he fought down the urge to adopt a scare form. They’d probably just make some kind of dumb comment about how he could catch up on his scare quota.

There was really no one else in the Ghost World for these questions?

Through gritted teeth, Scratch bit out, “it’s about memories.”

Quills stilled and the Council glanced at each other in that secretive, in-jokey way that made his form bubble. Alistair set down his quill to rest his chin on the bridge of his hands, looking an equal mix of suspicious and smug. “What about memories?”

How to get them back? How to get rid of them forever? Suppression? Answers? All those felt too… personal. “Why do ghosts come here with out memories of their past life?”

Another infuriating round of glances, and Scratch was tempted to put The Cloak on just to yell at them in Scary Chairman Voice when Grimbella said, “All ghosts have memories.”

The world tilted, the metaphorical rug whipped out from his metaphorical feet, and the world dimmed as Scratch’s opacity flickered the slightest bit. All ghosts. A fact. So why didn’t he? “They remember everything?”

“Not exactly,” Lucretia set her quill down in its pot. Had none of them ever heard of pens? “The amount of retained memories change with the ghost, but generally important memories regarding personal identity remain intact.”

He’d intended to come into this conversation casually, but to his humiliation, Scratch burst like a dam. “But why only some memories?” He demanded, floating up to their desk and pacing again. “Why are some more important than others? Who decides? What makes a memory important enough to bring to the afterlife?”

Grimbella answered easily, not one iota of attention paid to his turmoil. “A ghost keeps them based on what they knew in life.”

Oh, if they’d been keeping this from him, he was going to sic the frightmares on them so fast. “What do you mean?”

“The exact details are still being researched,” Alistair admitted with a snooty shrug. “But patterns suggest that a ghost’s memories are most strongly linked to the interpersonal connections that they held in high regard during life.”

“Like you,” Scratch turned on Grimbella, and her cool disinterest brought up another surge of annoyance. “Grunhilda, or whatever. You know your name!” And he got it wrong on purpose out of spite.

A shimmer of satisfaction lit his core as her unflappable brow finally furrowed. “Grimbella,” she corrected icily, and Scratch made a mental note to get her name wrong at every possible opportunity. “It’s true, my family name was very important in my upbringing. Most of my strongest memories are of the pride my parents showed when teaching family history.” She trailed off, wistfully staring into the middle distance with a dreamy look. Gross.

“But names are a low bar,” Bartholomew cut in, casting Grimbella a side-eye. “An interpersonal relationship doesn’t have to be strong for a ghost to remember their name. As long as there was someone to give voice to a name during life, a ghost could remember it after death.”

“Not that you’d know much about that, Scratch,” Alistair pointed out greasily, and the next round of barely contained snickers nearly popped Scratch’s eyes out.

“At least I didn’t get stuck with a name that sounds like it crawled right out of a medieval toilet,” he snapped back.

Up went the quills again, their interest in him noticeably waning. “Don’t get waspish about it,” Alistair’s face hardened. “Some ghosts would kill to be in your position. Not all memories are warm and fuzzy.”

He’d mentioned something about his dad once, hadn’t he? On the list of ‘Things Scratch Cared About’, Alistair’s past was somewhere below ‘amount of carbohydrates in a loaf of garlic bread’, but recent events pulled a twinge of guilt from him.

He’d said he didn’t want to know. That was still true. And it wasn’t. Would he be better or worse if he’d remembered every second of being a lonely, bitter, jaded man in life? He’d still be Scratch either way, right? Except he wouldn’t be, he’d have a human name.

He’d absolutely been Scratch this morning. Now he wasn’t sure. Was anything about him real?

“Scratch?” His head whipped around to Lucretia, half from being torn out of his thoughts and half because he’d never heard her sound so gentle. Almost sympathetic. She still hunched over her book, but pinned him under an unreadable stare. “If it’s any consolation, there have been numerous cases of ghosts discovering more of their memories as their time here lengthens.”

Scratch’s colour shuddered, and he refused to believe it was hopeful. “How?”

“Through intense meditation and unparalleled self-discipline, of course.”

Scratch gagged. “Hard pass.”

Lucretia’s expression clouded back to it’s normal stormy gray. “Then I hope you enjoy your afterlife as a nobody.”

He knew a final dismissal when he heard it (those jerks, still finding a way to snub him even after he became their boss). He wasted no time building a portal back to Molly’s room, and the moment it closed behind him a huge weight lifted from above his head. Hello, Damocles. Ugh, every second he spent in the Ghost World was a second too long.

Something pulled insistently at his mind, and the ripples of his ectoplasm went still. The confusion and uncertainty and sorrow tearing at him as he faced the Council had… just flown away with that weight. He wasn’t a ‘nobody’ in this room, in this house.

He was Scratch McGee.

He had a best friend, and two (three?) good friends. He liked bread and ice cream and comedy, and thought the Crazy Carl movies were overrated, and got into arguments about it. He’d had a sleepover, and ridden a motorcycle, and hadn’t done pottery yet but still kind of wanted to try. He had a family that loved him, and a house, and a town.

Maybe he’d been someone before Scratch. But Scratch had a life too, and it was pretty darn good. A forgotten past didn’t make his present any less real. He had experiences and fun and wants and dreams, like any living person.

Like now, in fact. After dealing with the headache that was the Council, he dreamed of leftover meatloaf and a nap on the couch.

Maybe his past would come up again. Maybe not. But in the meantime, he’d enjoy being Scratch McGee.

 END

[hollowheartwitch]

📝

The day she met Remus is a day that has both good and bad memories for her. It started off good until she was found by the people who’d been hunting her. She lost her familiar, finding herself so lost and desperate that she’d called out to the nearest person she saw for help. That person had been Remus. He’d been kind enough to offer her help, and even bought her a hot drink so she could sit and calmly explain her situation. After that, he was even more inclined to help her and even called in his friends for as well. So, the as scary and upsetting as that day was overall, the memory of meeting such a kind, gentle friend will always be close to her heart.

[thievingxnori-blog]

🍒 -happiest childwood memory

🍒 -happiest childhood memory--- [N]ori his happiest childhood memory is a hard one. He actually has two that mean a lot to him and that when thinking back to them, leave him with a happy or content feeling. The first is the one where his mom and Dori, surprised him for his birthday when he was still a young lad. It was when his mom was pregnant with Ori. In a way it’s the only birthday he ever had with the ‘four’ of them. That day his mother took him to the market where he got to pick out his ‘first coming of age bead’, baked him a cake and Dori gave him his first knife set. --- [H]is second happiest childhood memory is one of him and his brothers. Where they are together for Ori’s birthday celebration. It was one of those days where there was no fighting, just the three of them happy together. And at the end of the evening when Ori was long in bed, Dori had taken him aside, and told him despite everything that had been and would be; they would always be brothers. It’s something that he carries along with him to this day, which is why he’ll always make sure to leave his brothers out of his troubles and dealings as much as possible. 

[hepromisedmejustice]

☠

Send “☠” for my muse to tell your’s a bad memory.

“I was once dating this guy. I nicknamed him Chimes. His name was Kurt Belle. Bells chime. Or they ring, but Rings didn’t have as much of a ring to it. It was a really short time after some really bad shit happened to me. I feel bad because I wasn’t the best to him. I was crazy. I had.. personality switches all over the place. When we weren’t in bed, we were fighting and yelling. I think the neighbors called for noise once.”

He was a little lost, he only remembered random details about it all on his own. He had to find journals and other things to have more put together memories of him beyond his looks.

“But he was the first person I opened up to since…whenever. He didn’t believe me. And his disbelief fucked me up really bad in a really weird way. Telling him was a bad decision. He basically had me go to a shrink who prescribed me pills for things that couldn’t be fixed that way. I loved him, but I couldn’t stay with him because all he saw after that was crazy. Not like things were going well for us, anyway.”

[hepromisedmejustice]

☠ 8)

Send “☠” for my muse to tell your’s a bad memory.

“I... worked for these people. Not nice people, to say the least. The boss was especially hellish. I mean his brother was terrible, but the boss was scary. Legitimately scary. Because he put up this almost convincing front that he cared about things that weren’t money, and power. He even favored those things over his brother by a smidge.” he held up them and his index finger, gesturing the small space between them.

“For the most part I listened to him because I wasn’t mentally in the game, I was nearly always sick. Malnourished because of it. People who were fit like him, and prepared for things, it was easy for them to over power me in some sense, believe it or not.” Somehow confiding in someone once, made it easier to confide in them again.

“I didn’t always listen to him though. I had stronger days. Days where I wasn’t so sick I may as well have been pretty dead. I mouthed off to him one of those times. He was telling me to do something I didn’t want to do, and I basically told him to fuck off and that he was worse than my mother.” He touched a spot on his side.

“He didn’t appreciate my sass. At all.” He closed his eyes. “I remember he smelled very intensely of cinnamon. Always did. When he got close to anyone, a lot of times they’d feel crowded. It added to the feeling of being powerless because he had all the power. Hate that smell now.” He shook his head. “But um, yeah. Not a fan of the disobedience. He’d warned me multiple times before, and with all the times he hadn’t done much against my rebelling, I didn’t think he’d do anything. But... he stabbed me. No warning, hadn’t even noticed the knife.” Nick lifted up his shirt a bit, and there it was, a jagged scar on his lower left abdomen. 

“Have you ever been stabbed? You don’t immediately scream. It’s like a sudden shock, makes you lose your breath trying to figure out what just happened. And then it’s just hard to breathe because it hurts. After a minute, he just... left. He had to wipe the blood off his hands and his knife because it’d made a mess. Basically left me for dead, he didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t useful to him if I was gonna mouth off so he might as well let me make my decision on whether to do something or not. Whether to live or not. And I would have died had someone else who worked for him not been there to take me to a hospital.”

[hepromisedmejustice]

☠

Send “☠” for my muse to tell yours a bad memory.

“I’ll have you know that your brother gave me a lot of bad memories to dwell on. Or at least some fucking terrible nightmares.” He paused. “I don’t remember a lot of what happened with him. The pain and trauma of the experience with him is blocked a lot of the time because my mind doesn’t want me to consciously experience it again.”

His mouth was open for a few seconds trying to figure out what he was going to say. “But I remember sometimes. Sudden temperature drops will hit me. Anything smelling like too much blood. Too much of the color red. Frost on windows and such. It’ll just bring me back in some form sometimes. It causes me to switch personalities if it’s bad enough. And it used to do that a lot more. Now it will usually just cause me to panic because it reminds me of when he kept me awake while he was still using me. He made me see what he was doing to people and it felt like I was the one doing it. But I had no choice in the matter anymore.” 

His hand went to rub at the back of his neck. “The most vivid memory it brings me back to though, is, without fail, waking up in Detroit in that place he dropped me. Quite a while after. Maybe some hours. I woke up to my body not having physically slept for a year, sores all over, still burning on the inside. I remember being fucking freezing. I was malnourished in terms of literally not eating anything except demon blood for so long. I was dehydrated, and basically dead aside from my heart still managing to beat. It was the closest to hell I’ve ever felt in my life.” On bad days it felt like he could still feel all of that.

“When I was finally able to get up for a second I was immediately back on the ground puking up the blood. I remember a few moments of a complete overload of sensations, all of them awful. And I was terrified and crying and I basically begged for something. Not sure if it was death or survival. But there was a bright, high-pitched light and I remember managing to stumble through the doors of an ER before falling to the ground and being out completely. I woke up from it I think a week later in that hospital. Apparently I almost died nearly ten times that whole week I was asleep. I was a fighter though. Sometimes I hate that.”

[hepromisedmejustice]

☼

send “☼” for my muse to tell yours a good memory!

“a good memory? Well I can think of this one time with an ex of mine, his name was Kurt. He was a dentist. Made a lot of dirty puns at him about drills and oral exams.” Nick liked to sometimes mention that from time to time. Because he didn’t feel like the type who would date someone so mundane as a dentist at any point in his life. A doctor? Yeah, his family was a bunch of nurses and doctors, so why not. An orthodontist? Maybe. But a dentist? Pfft, weird.

“But that’s not the point. The point is that we had a lot of good days and bad days, I’m honestly surprised we lasted as long as we did. Because we had a lot of break ups and make ups. But there were good times where I thought I would marry the guy. And I think at one point maybe he thought so, too.” Nick shrugged. 

“I was getting a tad better mentally. He was having me see a therapist for the personalities because I told him that I’d never seen anyone about the disorder. And this was before I told him my secrets, and before the moment I realized, that no, we absolutely weren’t going to last. Because unlike the other things, him not believing me was something we couldn’t work through. But anyway this was in the middle of being with him.”

A smile came to his face. “We were having a good period of time. He’d broken his couch. Or, well, we’d broken his couch. And so he needed a new one. We were messing around in the IKEA store like idiots. I started it. We got very close to playing house because, as I said, good period of time. Happy moment. We actually had a lot of fun. It’d been months since I saw him enjoying himself that much. The smile he had on his face never ceases to make me smile when I think about it.”