dualislogs | Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

WHO: All residents of Dualis + special guest stars
WHAT: Strap in, kiddos, it’s a ~memshare~
WHERE: In your head. Or, you know. Everywhere you go to escape that.
WHEN: August 15-24
WARNINGS: Don’t forget these if they’re applicable!

It’s been a few months, Dualis, how are you settling in? New arrivals, we know it’s sudden, but we hope you’re making new friends already and settling in well! You’re all gonna fit in juuuust fine around here.

Things have calmed down after the supposed terrorist attacks during the Dualis Days celebration, and there’s still no news about that strange network broadcast. But maybe that’s for the best, right? See, the Head really does have everything under control.

But speaking of heads…

Over the course of these next few days, yours might be feeling a little funny. Maybe you just aren’t quite feeling like yourself. Or there’s an ache that just won’t quite go away. Or maybe you’re perfectly fine! Which is completely optimal, honestly.

Except--that memory you suddenly have. Is that really yours? And what about those fainting spells that seem to come with premonitions...or are you perhaps remembering something you repressed long ago? You’d probably remember something like this, though, wouldn’t you?

It’s perfectly natural to be concerned. However, if you approach your friendly neighborhood MedBot or clinician, they’re going to be pretty stumped. It appears there's nothing really wrong with you, but hey, here's some mild painkillers if you want them. And if you try and consult the Head, all it’ll be able to do is give you it’s most sincere condolences. It seems that there may have been some complications with the transfer process, but these should definitely wear off soon! In the meantime, why not visit your local clinic for a sedative and some painkillers?

Good luck, denizens. Looks like you’re in for a bumpy week or two...

[[As a reminder, these memory shares can happen at any point in time during the span of the event, not just when your characters are sleeping! You're also welcome to have them experience no side effects at all, all the way up to fainting spells and headaches a la Cordelia circa season 2 of Angel. Feel free to reach out to your friendly neighborhood mods if you have any questions!]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[5:39 - 11:10]

You’ve walked the nothingness for so long. There’s no way to keep track of time, no change in scenery to tell you you’ve gone anywhere. Not until you make it to an edge and turn around to find the vast wasteland you’ve been traveling to be little more than a tiny island. You can see the edges from here. What had you been walking on?

Where else are you supposed to go?

You slump to the ground. That last glimmer of hope fading along with your strength.

Believe in your friends' existence! And they'll also believe in yours.

You tried to hold on to the thoughts of your friends, to Rinoa. But it wasn’t enough. All those years of keeping everyone at arm’s length has led you here. You wanted their friendship too late. Now there’s no way home. You’re lost in time forever.

The white feather that drifts down is the most vibrant thing you’ve seen in a while. It looks like one of the feathers from Rinoa’s angel wings. You’re too exhausted to hope but you catch it anyway. You’re standing in a field of flowers. The same place you made your promise to her. The colors are all wrong but Rinoa is standing right there. Her back to you. You call but your voice is wrong too. It doesn’t want to reach. You feel a quiet surge of hope when she turns around.

You can’t see her face. Your head hurts. It feels like something reached inside and is tearing it apart, spilling your memories into the void. A familiar music is playing but the melody is twisted. You’re in the ballroom. She’s inviting you to dance. You can’t see her face. No matter how many times the moment loops, she stays out of reach. What did she look like? Why can’t you remember?

The moment is looped and cut and filtered like someone toying with a piece of film, removing objects, blurring them, and adding them back in. A screeching noise threatens to drown everything out until she goes missing in the final loop. No! You have to find her. She must be in other memories. All you have to do is look. The scenes flicker before your eyes, ripped away from your mind as quickly as they appear. Smiling faces who should mean something to you fading just as rapidly. There are moments that look like they belong but don’t. It doesn’t matter. They slip away so fast. Your mind is being emptied. You barely feel the pain anymore.

You find her.

You try to hold on this time but she slips away. Every impression of her across time and space turning to dust until, finally, you remember she died. You never saved her. You failed.

Your distress only lasts a moment. The nothingness that replaces it almost a comfort. You’re empty. A puppet with broken strings.

Time shall compress... All existence denied.

You stop.

There are times in life that absolutely call for alcohol. This? This memory right here that wakes Nida from a nap that is supposed to be sheltering him from other memories? It's almost an excuse to find a bottle. The terror, the shattering doubt, the emptiness. Hyne above, there is nothing so painful as all of this.

Of course the last thing he wants to do is intentionally bother the source of the memory. Or go outside where he might have to deal with how things have been going out in public the last days. So instead he does the only thing to distract his brain that he can come up with.

He takes his triple triad cards out from their hiding place under his mattress, sits cross-legged on the thing, and starts sorting them into piles. If nothing else, he can let himself consider the age old problem he'd had in the village. How does one create their own TT cards to try and make a game popular in a new world? What rules would be the best to maintain? What results and win structure? Yeah, there's a lot to think about that is pointedly not the horrors of Time Compression that he'd been lucky enough not to personally live through.

Squall has been a near-constant presence in their room, usually doing nothing in bed. Trying not to think. To block out everything by burrowing under the covers of the pillow. It doesn't work because nothing can be that easy, can it?

He can't remember if he slept at all but he wakes up with a quiet sharp inhale. Another series of dream. In another place he recognizes. It's a good thing his face is half-hidden under the covers as he wipes at the wetness in his eyes. Even with a new future, nothing's changed. SeeD is still SeeD. His resolve continues to crumple and he finally moves enough to see what Nida is doing.

...

He sits up straighter and quietly stares at the cards. He hasn't played in a while. What did he do to his deck anyway? He looks lost but he yearns for the distraction. He just can't bring himself to voice the question after what he's seen. The pain still fresh in his mind.

It's the motion that draws Nida's attention up from his sorting and plotting. Was... no, he's seeing things, there's no way that Squall's eyes are a little red. And if they are, it's probably the sleeplessness they're both dealing with. Nida's definitely been living on caffeine lately. This room? Between the two of them, they might be getting a normal person volume of sleep. If Squall's actually sleeping.

None of which matters compared to the intense stare in Squall's eyes. Nida scoops the cards up and before shuffling, thumbs open the second compartment of the leather case he kept them in. Pulls out tokens and raises an eyebrow in offer.

"Elemental or no? I've got tokens for randomizing them. Been trying to teach my boyfriend to play, but we've avoided elemental squares while he's learning. Oh, and no level ten cards. The sets that the captors at my last nexus world sent me didn't have anything and I don't have cards that can stand up."

If Squall says yes they can negotiate rules. Hopefully something that won't cause him to lose his Siren. She's the only card he has a deep emotional attachment to.

The days have been stretching too long. He scrubs at his face again and starts to move around to look for his deck. It's usually in his pocket. He eventually finds it fallen between the bed and the wall. It's a black leather case he bought in Dualis. Just the right size to fit the cards he arrived with.

He sits cross-legged as he pulls out the cards.

"My cards only go up to level 7." Because of course he couldn't come with the rare cards he's spent time collecting. "Elemental, same, and one?" He wants a distraction, not wipe all of Nida's cards.

"The highest I have is Siren. I'm just... going to set her aside. She was my closest GF bond," Nida explains, flipping his deck over to sort through it and pull her out. And, as a fairness thing, he pulls out the MiniMog that he didn't have an explanation for having either. Once those were set aside he shuffles, just to keep his hands busy.

He does consider the offered rules, though. So far as he knows, there are a grand total of four sets of Triple Triad cards in the world. There's no new cards coming in, decks can't be replenished if there is a serious run of victories by one person.

"Elemental and same," he agrees as he stops shuffling. "I'm considering random, but we can stay off of that for a while. That being said, there's a bit of issue here. So far as I know, there isn't a place in the city to get more cards. There could be. But until we can get more, I'd like to forgo trade rules. Otherwise you're going to have literally all the cards I own. In a day."

What? Squall's really good at Triple Triad. Nida will admit that part of his SeeD earnings had gone to buying TT booster packs just so he'd have more cards for whenever the Commander would just give him that look.

Squall nods at the explanation. Favoring a GF isn't all that unusual. The mention of 'random' gets him to wrinkle his nose. He welcomes the challenge but it's not his favorite rule.

The rest of that about trading? Gets Squall to huff in amusement for the first time in a while.

"Fine... No trading." The idea of a game is perking him up significantly however, so he's not going to kick up a fuss about not getting to trade. He starts to pick out his cards. A mix of high and lower levels.

Listen, he'll look around town and see what he can find for card replacement potential. Then they can talk about trading rules. With the agreement made Nida lays out elemental spaces at random before he starts to sort through his own cards for a spread of things to play.

"I want to talk about something. A memory I saw of yours."

Squall's shoulders twitch at the mention of a memory. He keeps his eyes on his cards though, setting the remainder away while the chosen cards are lined on the left side. He's quiet for a little too long but he has to give Nida an answer eventually. He doesn't look at him.

"Which one?"

"After you defeated Ultimecia," Nida answers, his voice a bit of a whisper. He knows that Squall probably won't appreciate him remembering it, but he has to be honest. He hadn't realized how bad it had been for Squall. Sure, he'd heard others talk about it in the past, but it was only the going too that was weird. Everything else was easy. And it made him sick to know what Squall had gone through.

That no one probably even knew. He hoped that wasn't true, though. Hoped that Squall talked to people.

With the words out there Nida selects his own cards and sets them aside, thinking about the situation of the board.

"You're welcome to take the first move."

Why does he get the feeling it's not the part where he goes too far back to the past? It hasn't been that long since he recovered from that but he hasn't even told Rinoa what happened so...

"I'm fine. I made it out." He's trying to be dismissive. He's halfway to placing down a card when it occurs to him that these memories come with sensation. Nida must have felt everything. He shoots Nida an alarmed and wary look. "... are you okay?"

Never mind what happened to himself. He never wanted anyone else to feel that.

Is he okay? Does Squall really care about the answer to that question. But he should answer anyway. Squall's... trying.

"No, I'm not. It was... a lot worse than what I experienced. But I was only very distantly experiencing it."

And his own trauma was a bit of a mess.

He really does because it's not an experience he ever wants to share.

"It's..." He goes quiet and places his card down instead. Time Compression froze out the rest of the world. He hasn't really processed how it must have felt for everyone else either. It hasn't been that long since he recovered from the Void.

"I don't know how to talk about it." How do you put something like that into words? It's better to bury it.

"We don't have to talk about it," Nida assures Squall. He is more than willing to pull back the offer of conversation. Cards are enough. They can survive on cards. Conversation sucks anyway, and it can lead to questions, and questions...

Sometimes they need answers.

Instead of offering any other options he puts down a card away from Squall's, better to try and not flip first turn he'd learned.

Squall nods. He eyes the card, easily coming up with a strategy. Cards have been a good idea. It keeps him thinking and distracted from the current topic. He lays down another card on an element this time, next to his own.

"I went back too far in time before I got lost. I told matron... Edea everything. She created SeeD and Garden because of me." He doesn't know if Nida knows. He gave his report, omitted the details of what actually happened in the Void, and that was that. Another bookmark in his life.

"Fucking stable time-loops," Nida curses. Because he always curses it. Maybe it hadn't gotten back into the reports but rumors had spread anyway. Mostly because of a word or two from a tipsy Matron.

Nida had done his best to make sure they hadn't spread too far. It would have been killer for morale.

"And you wonder why I wouldn't tell you about what happens in the future? I've learned enough from worlds like this to say there's no guarantee that I'm from the same timeline or version of our world as you will make. Telling you would either be pointless, or trap you once again. And I can't do that."

Not to anyone. Not when there is a chance that there is a version of their world where Elijah truly loved him and would never betray them. Not when... not when there might be a Nida out there who never suffered that pain.

It's possible the others blabbed too. Squall hasn't told them yet before he was brought here but after their time together, he would have told them part of it.

Squall frowns when Nida continues, genuinely bothered now as a thought that hasn't occurred to him before settled in. He tries not to think about those memories that flashed before him in the Void but now... Some of those had been of incidents he never witnessed. Memories that should not be. He thought it was part of the Void's effects but what if it wasn't?

"Are you sure? We could be from different timelines?" There's a hint of urgency in his tone and expression, seeking confirmation.

Is he absolutely certain? No. Are they possibly? Maybe.

"There's a possibility. But without knowing your future, I can't tell."

He considers a few more possible card placements before placing one in position to flip Squall's elemental spot one.

He's silent, distracted from the game.

"I don't... remember clearly but the things I saw in the Void. Some of them never happened but it felt like they did." Garden exploding. Rinoa's death.

Yeah, those things Nida had noticed too. And it just made him nervous, and uncomfortable. He sighs and shakes his head.

"I can say, at the very least, that by the point I'm from, Rinoa's still alive and safe."

Hyne, he hasn't even considered that possibility. He flinches at the thought before slowly nodding.

"Maybe I saw another timeline. A different version of our world." It made about as much sense as everything else. He tries to focus on the game again, taking his time to decide and place a card before speaking again. "... I saw your memories too. You had to..."

He can't bring himself to say it. He wouldn't have been able to raise his blade against Rinoa. The fact that Nida managed to go through with it...

Maybe there is another version of their world where Squall failed and Rinoa was evil because of Ultimecia. That made sense, right? Right. Better than thinking about the horror of another war. Nida is so Hyne damned done with war.

He studies the card carefully, considering his hand when Squall speaks again. The way he trails off really doesn’t tell Nida anything, but he knows his own history. And how SeeDs not trained in his specialty might react to things.

“Wear something weird? Seduce a disgusting old General? Climb a building in the middle of Esthar?”

All weird things he had done that might give someone like Squall pause.

Then again... there was what people saw in the last place.

“Watch my parents’ execution?”

Edited 2019-09-03 16:08 (UTC)

He blinks and looks increasingly bothered as Nida starts to list things. His parents's execution? What the hell...

"No." His frown is leaving deep grooves between his brows now. He shakes his head. He's not going to ask about those. Not now. "The mission with Elijah... And what happened after. In your room."

This is what he gets for hesitating. Make things more awkward than it already is.

Oh. Exactly the reasons he wasn’t telling Squall about the future. Nida looks sick, and he’s almost shaking as he pushes to his feet.

“How much of my room after Kadowaki released me?”

He already knows the answer. Remembers the moment. And if Squall is up on the signs of mental distress in teammates, the warning signs of an approaching panic attack are there.

He's not trained to recognize PTSD or even know what to do with trauma. All he can tell is Nida is understandably upset and his response is enough to infer from that he went through with the act.

"... enough," he says, carefully setting his cards down on the bed. Game forgotten. "Did you survive?" Hyne, he hopes so. But is that really the best outcome for Nida?

Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

Lost in the void (CW: Mind fuck, mental trauma, death-like state)

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BACK!! Sorry for the delay!

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