OPEN

[newphew]

WHO: Hunter and you!
WHAT: Memshare!!!
WHERE: Vegas/dreamscape/etc
WHEN: Event time!
WARNINGS: CW for child abuse, child soldiering, brainwashing, ptsd, genocide mentions! also Owl House spoilers will be in here.....

Just a note that I'm going to be doing two separate top level headers! One will be to tag in to receive a memshare from Hunter, and one will be one where you can put your character's memory! Please give me a memory in return if you are taking one of Hunter's ♥

Comments

[busternaut]

[Maybe Hunter's just passing by when it happens. Dearka, recovering from the worm debacle same as everyone else, finds himself suddenly slipping into one of those uncontrollable waking reveries... Though this one isn't really pleasant enough to deserve that term.

He's been thinking a lot about Nicol, for obvious reasons. Not just his death, but the revenge the remaining members of the Le Creuset team tried to take for him afterwards. Him, Dearka... Then Yzak of course. And finally Athrun, all doggedly chasing down the legged ship known as Archangel, determined to sink both it and the mobile suit pilot that protected it.

As their occular implants both glitch and sync up, Hunter will be pulled into a memory seen in the first person. He's seated in the cockpit of the GAT-X103 Buster Gundam, surrounded by controls and blinking displays that all SHOULD feel completely alien to Hunter... Synced with Dearka though, the cockpit feels like a second home, the mobile suit itself almost like another skin, for how at-ease he is piloting it.

All is not well though. Familiarity of the machine is an afterthought when you're locked in a desperate fight, and a potent cocktail of emotions reverberates throughout this memory. Grief, fury, fear... Annoyance at this one persistent little fighter jet that keeps dogging him and his efforts to exact the revenge he and his squadmates all crave. There's a flash of red light from the jet, and a loud explosion that rocks the right side of the mobile suit.

Everything that happens next, happens in a matter of seconds... A complete blur of actions and reactions. The hands at the controls-- Dearka's, but also Hunter's, they're one in the same in the way this memory is being shared-- scramble to try and maintain control in flight, but it's no use. A massive impact shudders through the cockpit as the mobile suit plows into the earth back-first, coming to a stop a fair distance away from the initial point of impact, where it lays prone and immobilized. With key systems all utterly unresponsive, and the main display indicating that the Archangel is moments away from firing on him, the pilot realizes there are only two options available to him now: surrender, or die.

...He chooses to surrender. The cockpit hisses open and he steps out into the pouring rain with both hands in the air, scowling. Enemy soldiers are sent out to meet him. He's brought aboard the very ship he was just attempting to sink and stripped of his belongings before being escorted to the medical bay to have his wounds tended to, limping the whole way. Recollecting this, Dearka feels the echoes of the fury, the humiliation, the shame of that experience... Not to mention fear, although he wouldn't permit himself to show it.

He distinctly remembers his cocksure, idiotic brain deciding then and there that the ONLY reasonable way of coping with all of this, was to be as loud and obnoxious as reasonably possible as he was walked through the halls at gunpoint. Complaining, leering at the local girls... What was the logic here? Maybe he was just trying to convey to the Naturals that even though he'd surrendered, that didn't mean they'd broken his spirit. But in the process, he'd refused to accept that the people around him were soldiers just like him... People who had just experienced their own losses.

It brings him shame now to look back upon. In particular, the memory lingers for a long while on the face of the crying girl who he'd antagonized. There's a blackout, a disconnect between the visual and sound, Dearka's own words coming back to haunt him. Are you afraid of me? Find me unusual? ...What I want to know is, why are you crying again? Did a foolish good-for-nothing Natural boyfriend of yours die or something?

The image returns just as abruptly, only now, one half of the vision is stained red. The sting of a fresh wound across the forehead provides context as to why. This whole memory has continued to play out in the first person point of view, and when the "camera" looks into the shiny surface of an upended medical tray that's propped up nearby, it's not Hunter's reflection there, but of course, Dearka's. He looks about four years younger, there's a gash on his forehead and blood running down his face, and he's laying on his side on the floor with his hands still tied behind his back. Various medical supplies are strewn across the floor in front of him. He looks up and finds that same girl from before, grappling with another young man around his own age. He's trying to both hold her back and wrench a large medical knife out of her hands, as she writhes and shrieks, her face contorted in fury, her eyes full of tears.

Tolle... Tolle is nowhere to be found! But this guy gets to live!? WHY!?

At this point, Dearka-- The real one here, in the present, sitting around in some gathered common space in Las Vegas-- manages to wrench himself out of the memory, he grits his teeth and rubs his forehead, trying to abate the sharp pain between his eyes. He seems to be completely unaware that anyone else was just watching that.]

[newphew]

[ it is so very jarring. the themes, the feelings -- they aren't so different from what hunter's gone through. acting tough and snarky even if he's afraid? but everything else is just so foreign, that hunter is motionless throughout as this plays out, as his brain struggles to grasp the imagery and what's happening. giant metal ships? pilots? ]

[ as far as hunter can even tell, this is a struggle between two different armies of humans. but maybe it's more complicated than that. this is just a snapshot into someone else's life -- dearka's, actually -- and there's so much he doesn't understand. ]

[ and yet, some parts he understands perfectly, even if the context doesn't make any sense. the bravado. scoffing and puffing himself up to look tougher. acting like a fool. ]

[ still, after the memory fades hunter is silent for a good few beats, still trying to process everything he just saw. after that, he.... clears his throat, uncharacteristically contrite. but characteristically awkward. ]

.... That was your memory, right? I. Uh. Saw it. Sorry, man.

[ this has the energy of 'that's rough, buddy' ]

[busternaut]

[Dearka startles slightly; evidently, he really didn't realize that Hunter was even nearby. As a result his expression goes through a couple of very quick shifts as he grapples with the sudden knowledge that someone else actually saw all of that... In the end his reaction lands firmly on "unbothered", and he gives Hunter a sort of lightly exasperated smirk in reply.]

...You did, huh? Jeez. Feels like I should be the one apologizing to you for you having to watch all that. [He shrugs. Airy, dismissive... But there's also the sense that he's maybe trying to convince himself a bit, that it's not that big of a deal.] Not exactly my finest hour... Anyway, don't worry about it. Not like any of it is a secret.

[He pauses a beat, then glances away.]

...And I did apologize to her. Eventually. Just so you know.