COLLAPSE THE WAVE MEME

[rampantfantasy]

Collapse the Waveform Meme

A meme for characters CRAU'd to heck and back.



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How many times now have you used that journal? How many places have you played that character?

How many friends, lovers, families have they found?

Well, here's some headache-inducing news: Ultimately, they're all the same person.

And now, the wave form has collapsed, and they actually are the same person. All of those memories, plus any new abilities and scars, smashing down into a single soul, a single incarnation.

On the bright side, at least whatever universe this is, you're not alone in it. On the less bright side, good luck navigating your relationships now.

Any CRAU character can respond to this meme, though of course, it's more interesting for characters who have been to at least two games. Meet your old friends, your new friends... Your friends' friends? Whatever. Consider noting down not only what games your characters have been to, but if you're open to three-people threads, for extra juggling-of-memories fun!

Comments

[andthenyoudie]

[...Oh. Well, isn't this an interesting state of events.

People's lives, you see, are a little bit like threads. Well...sort of. They're actually nothing like threads at all, to be honest, but human conception doesn't really have a good analogy to allow them to perceive the state of life as we know it the way that Life does, so sometimes you just have to take what you can get. One life, one thread, with a definite beginning and an ultimate end. Life, a little bit like a sunbeam, with a point of origin and then a ray moving ever forward, mostly in a straight line, but sometimes being bent and refracted and diffused and stratified into rainbows when put through a prism. Life, like a trickle of water, with an origin and a downhill cascade, seeking out the path of least resistance and weaving its way around obstacles as it goes, never quite in a straight line, but always in approximately the same direction.

This...is not the way that life is supposed to be. This is a fifty-car pileup of forward motion-s, a Gordian knot of threads. This is a snarl of choices, conflicts, decisions, all smashed together into an impossible tangle, and the sight of it makes her feel uneasy. It also makes her want to reach out and pull it apart, somehow, which theoretically she could do, but —

Well. Maybe she should. The obvious pain he's in is breaking her heart, and so she wanders over carefully, crouching down with her knees together and her balance perched on the tips of her toes, and reaches out to touch his forehead with her fingertips.

It's not quite to the point of pulling all his timelines apart. But she can impose order on him, a little — give one a little bit more primacy than most. It's less comfort than she could offer, maybe, but of course, nobody ever said that Life was kind.]

You're all right.

[It's not soothing, and not really a question. It simply is.]

Hello. Hi. You're all right, now.

[photoshooter]

[Oh, thank Shiva, she picked one where he's from Eos, where his story's easy to follow. He blinks, shivering at the reduction of pain and confusion, and then looks up with his blue-glowing eyes, less dark and roiling but still somehow not quite substantial.

He's all right. That feels right, that it's a statement. Statements are even better than commands, they're just facts. Like photos. Photographic evidence can be doctored or misinterpreted, but it's not usually wrong.

Prompto waits a moment for her name to slide into his forebrain, but it doesn't come. It's not like she's someone he's met and forgotten, but rather... she's familiar the way warmth is familiar, something that doesn't always have a name.

Weird.]

Um, thanks. [He tries pushing himself up and finds that it's a thing he can do without too much struggle, so he sits up.] Hi. Hello. ...I don't... know you, do I?

[andthenyoudie]

You do. You don't recognize me, but you know me.

[She could elaborate on that little half-riddling turn of phrase, but she doesn't. She just keeps her hand on his forehead a little longer, until she's certain that he's anchored in the one timeline she's sifted out enough that the others are more just whispers and echoes than warring competing memories, and then she draws her hand back and folds her arms over her knees.]

I haven't always been very nice to you. And I think you knew that, too. I can't say I'm sorry, exactly — but it wasn't personal, at least. It just is what it is.

[She watches him carefully, through green eyes that shift and glimmer with flashes of gold — through irises whose colors somehow don't seem to hold still, always shifting minutely like tricks of the light.]

I'll tell you who I am, if you do something for me in return.

[photoshooter]

Huh?

[He wasn't quite paying full attention, watching those eyes. They're so pretty, and the gold isn't dead like other golds he's seen, doesn't make him think of wolves or daemons but rather sunlight. Sunlight through high, thick leaves, like the Lucian forests outside Insomnia's walls.]

Oh, it's okay. I'm used to girls not being nice to me, so it's not a big deal. ...Uhhhh, that sounded a lot worse when I said it out loud.

[Maybe he does know her. He's always stupid around girls, but that--it's almost like he does know her, or knows she knows him--like she already knows how stupid he is, so he doesn't have to wind himself up so tightly to try not to be.]

What do you want me to do?

[He doesn't even need a reward.]

[andthenyoudie]

[It's funny, really, because in a way he's doing it already. It's cute how he seems to find her distracting; that's a thought that makes her smile, too, because it means that deep down, there's a part of him that's resonating with her, reacting to her presence.

It means there's a part of Prompto Argentum that loves life. That's always a nice thing to see in people. Especially in the people who've had it as hard as he has.]

You just have to be yourself, that's all. I don't mean "be yourself", like what people say when they really mean "be yourself, but only the best parts, and still try to be sort of what the other person wants anyway". I mean yourself, completely, and don't worry about who I am, or what it means.

[She thinks a minute, and then adds: ]

That means you can get mad at me or hate me, if that's what you really feel. When you find out what I am.

["What". Not "who". That's curious, isn't it.]