one thing about surge and kit, something that i think is really important to understand them, is that surge is over seven times as brainwashed as kit is. this is probably because starline's inexperienced blunt-sledgehammer-esque mind control worked okay for “you live for this person now”, and not as well for “you hate this guy for no reason”.
kit also has actual real-life reinforcement of his commands. even with the partial memory wipes, his only memories are of being with surge and starline. kit can reason around his brainwashing, and he can justify his attachment to surge that way. they were both abused together, both victims. against the unreliability of their memories or reality, surge is always there.
but surge has no real reason to hate sonic. even after she learns she's been mind-controlled (and keeps those memories for once), her strongest logical condemnation of sonic is “why does batman not simply execute the joker, huh, fucker???”. the rest of it is all wrapped up in her mind control: that her entire existence is against sonic, that she can't rest without him gone, that she'll be endlessly psychically tormented unless she kills the guy.
surge is so aware that her obsession with sonic is artificial. but it's not like knowing that helps her! she can't turn it off; she can't decide not to be herself. she's constantly hallucinating starline telling her he made her, he owns her, that she can never get away from him because she's his. she isn't anything else outside that. she has no past self she can return to, or even learn about. even if she could bring that self back, “she” would die. (self-note: a bit like su in flower that bloomed nowhere)
and all of her experiences just reinforce that people want to use her and hurt her. that she can never feel safe anywhere. she knows kit's devotion to her was artificially induced, and i think it's likely that she'd underestimate how much real sentiment is there – but this also means he's one person who can't hurt her. she can't let herself really think about that, or face it, but
and kit also feels like everyone's trying to use them, but he's also the one that had being used brainwashed into him. he has more flexibility of thought around this though, because again, he's almost an order of magnitude less mind-controlled than surge. he can remap it onto sonic – “surge can't use me, but sonic still can” – which is obviously unhealthy, but shows he can still function if he's going against his programmed commands. he can also reason around them even with surge there, building a coherent idea and something he actually feels strongly about around this artificial core, and rejecting both the use he and surge were made for and anyone else's claims over them, too
and because surge is so much more constrained by her commands, and has so much more starline-trauma because of that...i'm sure he can defend his internal feelings that surge needs him, because she really does need him! they're all the other has!!
I’ve lost two aunts in twelve months and my mother raced god to be with her sister this time. Sharon’s so stubborn she’d outlive anyone if posited as a challenge. I’ll never know what she did, her job is protected ten times over, still now forty years out, and yet I only ever see her this way — shaking hands with diplomats and having a signed letter from heads of state.
She’s so small now, frailer than I remember, it’s not the same stain of her with a menthol laced betwixt fingers and spiralling smoke wafting away, that tart air hitting my nose, something I can still say is acrid and sweet, something that is mixed with channel and rohdan, something between hands moulding potatoes into cakes. The stagnant air of menthols filling my lungs as a pie plate comes down and echos through a house.
She’s not listening to her doctors, not losing her fight. Yet, in azure blue eyes I find fear within my mother, a fear she does not want to face, a fear I’ve been facing for years.
For @whumptober day 6, using the prompts "No grave can hold my body down," Caught in a Net, and Pinned to the Wall. (Ironically not Medical Restraints. Maybe I'll add those in there when I clean this up to post to AO3.)
3rd Life-ish; This is a part of my doomed space colonists AU, this place is a message, and follows directly after my day 4 piece, in which Grian used Ren's brain to back up a bunch of information about human civilization, history, and folklore. Features Ren, Grian, and a lot of quotes from a lot of different places.
Ren isn't sure where he is.
Ren isn't sure... who he is. (He's Ren. Of course. But beyond that. Apart from that.)
His head hurts. Feels heavy. He tries to move his arm, but his limbs are heavy too, in a different way.
"Oh. Are you awake?" It's a voice. Familiar. Arrogant. "Of course, you ought to have been awake the whole time," says the voice, "but I suppose it must be difficult, absorbing all of that."
His eyelids also feel heavy, but Ren manages to open them. He's in... A laundromat! his brain supplies -- rows and rows of identical square devices with doors in front. Also known as a laundrette, a coin laundry, a coin wash, a... No. There are bodies in there. Morgue. Before modern technology made it easy to clearly identify that a body was definitively dead, sometimes the recently deceased were taken to waiting mortuaries, so that they could be observed for a time.
Is Ren dead?
He does not think he is dead. But the fact remains that he knows a lot of things with great certainty -- the dates of ancient battles and maps of where they took place divorced from any context as to what was being fought over, how to appear to pull a coin out of a person's ear, the chemical structures of millions of polymers he can't even begin to pronounce -- but he doesn't know much about himself. It's here, somewhere, he's sure, but reaching for it feels like trying to swim through muslin, which is a type of cotton fabric, often sheer, probably named for the Iraqi city of Mosul, and has traditionally been used in cheese-, wine- and candle-making to separate liquids from solids. It's like he knows the knowledge is there -- can see it, even -- but can't quite grasp it through the sheer meshwork of other facts.
Ren looks around the laundromat... morgue... whatever. There is a small man here, watching him placidly. His eyes are bloodshot. Ren should know who he is, but his mind simply explains to him that the word gremlin may come from the Old English word gremian, "to vex." The man is wearing a blotchy red sweater, and it takes Ren a moment to realize that its uneven coloring is due to bloodstains. "How are you feeling?"
Ren opens his mouth, intending to say, perhaps, I don't know, but what comes out instead is "The public magician occupies a position of great influence, from which, if he is a prudent and able man, he may advance step by step to the rank of a chief or king."
"Not what I asked," says the man. He looks very sad for a moment. "I'm sorry, Ren, I know you didn't deserve all that. It's just that I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, right?"
Ren nods, vaguely. It would be embarrassing to acknowledge that he doesn't know what the other man is talking about. And he does know. He knows a lot of things. "The Hanged Man: Wisdom, circumspection, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy," he tells the man.
"Mm-hmm," says the gremlin. No, he's a man. His name is just -- Gremlin? No.
"Hangman is also a word guessing game," Ren adds.
"It sure is," says Gremlin... Gremian... Gr... no, he's lost it. "Let's get you back on your feet again, so Martyn can kill me."
"Small threads of the clothes or hair shirt of St. Martin often cured the sick when applied to them," says Ren.
"Oh, is that how he does it?" the other man asks as he's helping Ren to his feet. "News to me."
He knows it's true with more certainty than he knows his own name; it is engraved upon the inside of his skull. But that is not his Martyn. His Martyn he knows... somehow... to be his. To be Important.
He does not want Martyn to kill this man. His Martyn is not a killer, even if he can't cure the sick by giving them bits of thread.
He puts his hand absently to the side of his head, which is heavy.
"Don't touch that!" snaps the small man. "What, do you want an infection or something? Leave it alone."
Ren doesn't want an infection, so he lets his hand drop, and allows himself to be led through a strange place... familiar, but wrong. The lights flicker. Here and there long shadows walk by themselves with no men to cast them, tearing holes out of the surroundings. "Don't look at them," says his guide. "Keep your head down. Seems like they're happy to ignore us if we don't look at them."
"Various amulets were used to avert the influence of the evil eye," says Ren. The other man makes an encouraging noise, so Ren adds, "The most common of these appears to have been the phallus, called by the Romans fascinum, which was hung round the necks of children."
"I really don't think that's appropriate, Ren," says the other man.
Ren agrees. "Sometimes other objects were employed for this purpose," he concedes.
They make their way through the corridors. Ren thinks -- he is carefully easing this thought out of the surrounding layers of factoids -- that perhaps he is in space. He hasn't seen a single window, though. He might be underground. Or underwater. But, he thinks, space feels right. He knows a story about space, doesn't he?
He reaches for it, and finds countless stories, but none are his. Where did his one go? There was a captain -- a very brave one -- who Ren's just been thinking about, just been explaining to the other man... Ren couldn't decide on a name for him. But all these others have names. He decides to let it go for now. There are more important things, after all. There is their goal: Martyn, and, apparently, death.
At one point, the other man looks at one of the shadow creatures by accident, and scrambles into a low gap where a bit of wall has been clawed out of its place. The creature's maw opens as it tries to attack, but Ren grabs a long, thin rod of metal -- detritus from whatever made the hole in the wall -- and beats and slashes at the shadow creature until it dissolves into purple smoke. It sounds, he thinks, like if radio static was alive and could drown.
"Thanks," says the other man, though he doesn't look thankful at all. He looks... concerned. Worried. "You did fencing too, didn't you? I forgot about that."
"Of all Arms, the Sword is probably the most ancient: It is honorable and useful, and upon Occasion, causes a greater Acquisition of Glory than any other," Ren says.
"Right, yeah," says the man cautiously. "That's how you met Martyn."
It is how he met Martyn! He remembers it suddenly, and he smiles to himself. Martyn always cared so much about winning; Ren had just wanted a part in one of the university Shakespeare society's plays, and assumed fencing would help with that. (It hadn't.)
"You're not gonna start soliloquizing, are you?" says the other man. "I don't need any of that."
Ren laughs. He reaches, and sees that yes, he does have the complete works of Shakespeare in here, and that is... familiar, and surprisingly grounding. He does not, however, soliloquize, as the man -- Martyn's friend, his husband's friend, leads him back to his husband. But, in his own head, he also begins to find his way home. He is Ren. He tells... stories? Yes.
He thinks he's prepared to see Martyn again, but when they are nearly at their destination, the little bloodstained man stops him at the foot of a ladder. "You stay here," he says. "I just need to... to talk to him about something else, is all. A patient of ours."
Ren nods, not trusting himself to speak, and watches the other man ascend.
He follows, though -- he pauses halfway up to listen, because he can't wait to see Martyn again. Martyn will make it all make sense, he's sure of it.
Ren listens to the other man shout at Martyn -- something about jumping, and scars. Someone is dying, or will die, or has already died. It all washes over Ren, a sea of information that he cannot resist, that brings to mind new and completely irrelevant connections, and his mind spins until it lands... somewhere... and he almost doesn't know who he is anymore, until he hears Martyn's voice and he remembers.
"Grian, I really am sorry, but sometimes, sacrifices have to be made, and this was one of those times."
"And did you tell him? Or did you let him go on and kill himself knowing --"
"I didn't -- you're overreacting!"
"I'm really not," says the other man -- Grian. "I know you, Martyn, I know you lied to him. You let him think he was going to be fine, didn't you? He was afraid and you told him, 'Don't worry, mean old Grian's wrong, you're just fine to jump,' and he believed you."
"Look, where's Ren? Because you told me you had him, and I think if you're going to insist that I'm lying, I'd like to at least see some proof that you're not before I go on to explain why you're being an idiot."
And Ren clambers up the ladder. Martyn pulls him into an embrace immediately, clinging to him as if he's a life raft and not drowning in a swirling sea of confusion himself. "Ren, thank god, I was beginning to think you were --" Martyn stops, pulling away. He's staring at Ren -- no, he's staring at the side of Ren's head. "Ren. Are you all right, Ren?"
Ren is trying to put things into his own words, but his own words are gone, so all he can do is open his mouth, then close it before paragraphs of factual nonsense come out.
"Grian, what the hell did you do to him?" Martyn demands.
He rounds on Grian, who stands his ground. "Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, Martyn," he says. His tone is bitter and mocking.
"What did you do?" snarls Martyn. He grabs a fistful of Grian's bloodstained sweater and shoves him bodily against a wall. "What did you do to Ren?"
Ren doesn't want any violence, so he tries to explain. "The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a man to the foundation-stone --"
"Grian!" snarls Martyn. "What atrocity have you committed upon my husband?"
----
Ren's direct quotes are from:
The Golden Bough by James Frazer (On magicians, and sacrifices.)
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A. E. Waite (On the Hanged Man.)
The Lives of the Saints by Rev. Alban Butler (On St. Martin.)
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Ed. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin, Ed. (On the Evil Eye.)
The Art of Fencing; Or, The Use of the Small Sword, by Labat, maître d'armes, trans. Andrew Mahon (On fencing.)
(All his other weird tangents are paraphrased by me from parts of WIkipedia articles.)
I think that if Namae is anyone who we already know, she's Kuro.
I think Ultimate Madoka saw how much Homura cared about Kuro in the Magia Record timeline and tried to intervene to save her, but since the Magia Record is so delicate and Kuro hid so much about herself, Madoka wasn't able to retain Kuro's memories when she did that.
I’ll preface this by saying that this is an AU and not something I would see as a possibility for the characters in canon.
Recently, I was thinking about Artemis’ amnesia in TLG after he’s reborn.
In this AU, more time has passed since Artemis died, and things do not get lighter with more distance from the closing of the Gate. When Artemis is brought back, the process of being shunted into his cloned body after haunting the grounds for more than a year takes its toll. He falls asleep for almost a full day, and when he wakes, he doesn’t recall the blur of his revival day — when Holly and Foaly took turns going over the highlights of their past with Artemis.
In fact, Artemis still doesn’t remember much of anything at all. It’s as if he’s waking up on the hill covered in orange roses again.
Thankfully, after more rest, Artemis is stable and is able to assimilate new experiences into his memories.
The past two years have been difficult.
It’s awful. They know it’s awful. But Tim, Angeline, and Butler (perhaps especially Butler) do not tell Artemis about the day of his revival. They do not tell Artemis about anything related to the People, in fact. While Artemis is missing his memories, he doesn’t seem to have the same urge to throw himself into danger.
And that is enough to make betraying Artemis in this way feel impossible to resist.
does anyone else forget like. very baseline details about their partner(s) and start panicing bc you feel like youre going to somehow forget your partner's entire existence. or am i having an ocd spiral moment
👒 Thank you to @oh-no-another-idea for the tag here! 👒
Gently Tagging: @sarahlizziewrites @tabswrites @rhikasa @chauceryfairytales @dyrewrites and an open tag for anyone else who would like to join!
Your words to find will be: Slam, Slight, Wind, and Trail 🔍
These first two come from Until Then. The second two come from PQ/Rain Summoner.
Content Warnings for Memory Loss and References to War under the cut.
Remark
Another thing, less hazardous but more disquieting, was the consensus Niall had once been someone else. Those who had known him when he was younger remarked on the change with what could only be called dissatisfaction.
"You're altogether serious, now," they would say with a mystified twist to their features.
Fierce
There he was. Lugovalos, the warrior who shared his name with a legend. Twice as tall as many around him and draped in the pelt of a bear, he was unmistakable. He came towards Niall with a fiery gaze and a grin on his face. His appearance was as fierce as his reputation suggested.
"Are you Ghost-Hand?"
Alarm
The dagger pulsed as if a heart beat within it. The sound of waves crashing filled his ears when he took the hilt in his hand. He felt the sand under his feet, heard distant cries echoing through a great city and the tearful desperation of Sadira ordering him not to die.
The shock of experiencing someone else's memories was so alarming that he nearly let the dagger drop from his hand.
Only
Rather than appear moved by any sense of conviction, Niall seemed resigned to her questioning. His flat gaze held only exhaustion. "What is it you would have me tell you?"
Perhaps that was as good a response as Sadira could hope for, coming from him.
He didn't know how, why or when he had appeared, wandering around the streets with nothing to whatever name he was supposed to have. Not even clothes upon his back.
Luckily, someone sympathetic had found him and taken pity. Giving him some clothes and food. Unfortunately, they couldn't keep him under their roof or give him any medical aid for his apparent lack of memory and so took him to a homeless shelter.
He had been living there for some time on and off, sometimes on the streets. Now he was sat on the side of a mostly empty street. Hair unkempt and a short beard upon his jaw. All hope of remembering anything about his past or who he was had left him and he was spending his day as he come to the past week or so.
Staring off into empty space as the world passed him by.
He was so lost in the emptiness that he didn't realised he was being watched.
