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eudemonics) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
oddsandends2017-12-25 09:11 pm
eudemonics) wrote in oddsandends2017-12-25 09:11 pm
43rd ♫ | one more time, one hundred more tries
THE MEMORY SHARE MEME
(i want every single person here to appreciate how hard it was to find a gif that adequately conveyed the idea of this meme)
- HOW IT WORKS:
⍟ Post your character's toplevel with their name, canon and anything you might need to warn for in their memories.
⍟ Post a handful of memories from your character's past -- you can write them up or just links to clips and scenes, DO IT HOWEVER YOU LIKE.
⍟ SURPRISE, EVERYONE CAN SEE EACH OTHER'S MEMORIES so tag around as you like
⍟ GET EMOTIONALLY TERRORIZED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Leonard Church | Red vs Blue
the end is the beginning of the end
Following Wash had been the only course of action he could take. The holographic storage units hummed, their lights gentle, and Epsilon...was the key. To bring down Freelancer, to remember everything that had happened--everything he had forgotten.
Everything the Alpha had ripped from itself in order to survive.
"All A.I. are based on a human mind. And the Director had a theory. He thought, if we can't copy it, we'll just have to do the next best thing."
"They...they split it?"
"Just like a human mind when it's broken; it fragments. It fractures itself to protect itself."
"They tortured it."
"Like reverse engineering a multiple personality disorder. They presented Alpha with scenario after scenario of stress and danger. When it started to fragment, they harvested those fragments."
The unit pulses, and his head pulses, flashes of light, sound, memories, memory is the key, pounding at his skull. (It's his but it's not his, it's a little bit of everything, it's him and it's Epsilon and it's Wash and make it stop.) They tortured it. They tortured a person, ripped its psyche apart for their little experiments. What does it have to do with the Meta? How do they stop--how do they make it all stop?
"Church, I need you to listen to me. Delta was the logic. He was able to figure out things before anyone else. It's why he left a message for you in a way that he knew only you could find, and in a way that let me see you getting it."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I know what you are. Even if you don't."
His body is robotic but he can apparently still simulate the feeling of a stomach in freefall just fine. Wash lines everything out, the body hopping, feeling nothing when Omega reached him, agreeing with Delta, being alive, being alive like this as a--as a ghost, obviously, him and Tex, even if nobody else--
"Church, there's no such thing as ghosts. You're one of them. You're an A.I. You...are the Alpha."
He hadn't believed Wash, of course. Couldn't. Can't. It sounds like bullshit, because he'd know, right? He'd know if he was an AI, even if he's lost the logic, the anger, the memories. (Alpha Beta Delta Gamma Eta Iota Sigma Omega Theta Epsilon) He's a ghost. Obviously. Whatever the Alpha is, it isn't him, because he's not. He can't be. He can't. He's not some tortured AI that tore itself into tiny fragments of concentrated emotion to survive the horrors, the simulated horrors that it--right? No. Not him. He's Church.
"You're not going to get all the answers you want."
Wash is a sanctimonious piece of self-righteous shit who'd banked on this whole thing, planned it out, ever since the words memory is the key had come out of Church's mouth. Like their fates had been sealed just because Delta was too smart for his own good. (Had he been that smart, that clever, once upon a time? No, because Wash is wrong.)
"Because of the trauma he's been through, he's not going to be able to access most of his functions. He may not even realize his full potential."
It's a blessing that nobody else believes, but it rankles him all the same. Talking about the trauma as if he wasn't there. And it's not even his trauma, it's a computer--it's some dumb computer who made all of this happen, even inadvertently. He didn't just get assigned to some nowhere backwater facility just to be kept safe even though...even though nothing ever happened unless Command or Freelancers were involved. They can't, they can't possibly trust Wash with his craziness from his crazy memory-filled AI, even if he knows, even if he knew everything because Epsilon is the memory and memory is the key and Wash knew all along what happened to Alpha but had to hide it.
He's just Church.
"It's your fight more than anyone else's!"
"I don't care what you say, no, it isn't."
"Church, you'll never get another shot at fixing all of this. I know you don't believe what I've told you, but you need to ask yourself: what if I'm right? If I am, or if you have any doubts, not finding out will haunt you for the rest of your life. Not just finding out about you, but finding out about everyone close to you as well. It's your choice. What's it going to be?"
He has to fix this. If he has any shot of fixing this, he has to take it. Right? He doesn't want to admit to the doubts, the not-there feeling of illness and rising bile that doesn't exist, because that would mean not being sure of himself. He's Church. He's Church. The Alpha is something, someone else. Tex didn't die because of him. Everyone isn't stuck here doing crazy bullshit because of him. Flowers didn't die because of him. The Meta hasn't killed because of him. He didn't spend over a year alone because he's, what, a dangerous piece of technology? Because he's evidence? Why not just store him away with Epsilon, huh, why not just rip the rest of him up, why--why--
He chooses doubt. He has to know. He has to find out. Because Wash hit the nail on the head--if there's a chance to find out what the hell's going on with him and everyone around him, and he doesn't take it? He'll never stop wondering. He'll never stop thinking about it, even when he tries not to. Every time something happens, the little thought is going to eat away at him, is this because of me?
Wash's head is a nightmare of trauma, attempts to organize skeletons back into closets alphabetically, to file shadows away numerically. He can feel the ley lines of Epsilon here before and does not follow them. It's different, this time, to be in someone's head. Because he knows. They both know, now, even if they won't admit it, that this is it, that this is a suicide mission. He tries to ignore the darkness of instability lurking around every one of Wash's corners, tries not to touch, but memories come unbidden at the Counselor's voice--at the Director's voice. He knows these voices, through Wash, and yet it's so...distant. He should know them. Right? He should know them, but he doesn't, because he's broken, because he couldn't live with his own memories and pried them off for someone else to deal with.
"How much time do you need?"
"Whatever you can get me. When the EMP goes off--"
"When it goes off, I'll be fine. It only affects computers, remember? And I? Am a motherfucking ghost."
It's his cue. He jumps from Washington's head to the Meta's, and at first it's a cacophony of noise that threatens to drown out his every thought before he has it. But the noise starts to settle into voices.
Alpha. He's here. We missed you.
Time slows to a crawl. These multicolored beings, these fragments, these AI, they embrace his presence with such fervent acceptance that he nearly jumps back out. Tex. (Beta.) Tex is here. He finally found her after all this time. They have time. They have seconds of time, but it stretches out by the power of AI, of thought faster than light. He knows them all, but he doesn't. He doesn't know them, but they fit against him, no matter how corrupted or hollowed out or twisted or flame-licked, they fit in the holes of him he never knew he had.
The Meta's mind buckles in the chaos of all these voices and all these AI, and they know what's coming, because the EMP has gone off, because they don't have any time left, so they might as well spend it together.
He's never felt so complete.
He never realized he hadn't been complete.]
and the middle is the...beginning again--wait, what?
Time travel is bullshit.
(The iterations go on and on and on and on and on and on and he can't even count them all, and none of them work, none of them work. He's not sure, he can't ever be sure, if it was ever really real or if Gary was just running his own simulation.)
He breaks himself out in the end. Because who even gives a fuck anymore.]
and the beginning is in the middle of season 14 I give up
yes i'm making you watch episodes get bent]
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I just didn't think about it after. That I'd never actually had a body to begin with, y'know? It... [He looks kind of pale.] I could've been any poor schmuck who got tricked into this shit. You can't use a dead body.
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