sixthiterationlogs | let it slip away into the stream

Entry tags:

let it slip away into the stream

WHO: Steve Trevor
WHERE: Inn - Main Room
WHEN: November 18
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Language, memory loss

For days, Steve's had a piercing headache that's invading his head, making him feel terrible. At first, he'd written it off as bad weather causing headaches or maybe he's just getting sick. Then, though, things start to happen that make him worry. He's always been insightful and able to pick up and retain information sharply. These last few days, it's all gone down the drain. By lunch, he can't remember what he had for breakfast, he's forgetting key landmarks on the maps, and there are people he sees that he knows, but it takes him at least a minute to put their name down.

It continues like, but it seems like it's getting much worse. Today, he wakes up and sees the woman sharing his bed and for five whole minutes, he lies in panic and worry, with no idea about who she is. Diana, it clicks, it's Diana, but that it took him so long to remember that is terrifying. Maybe heading out isn't the smartest thing, but he bundles into his coat with a map in pocket and begins to head into the center of town to make his rounds.

At least, he thinks he'd been doing that.

He's by the fountain when the memory of what he's doing slips away, panic encroaching on him slow and steady. He spins a little, trying to place himself, but his mind refuses to place him. Belgium, he tells himself. He should be in Belgium or France, but it hasn't been this cold since the winter snap ended. He turns again, sighting buildings the likes of which he hasn't seen since his childhood. "Where am I?" he repeats, asking it again and again. "Where am I, where am I, where..." He says it like it'll jog something of his memory.

He heads for the largest of the buildings and stands at the door, closing his eyes tightly, trying to force himself into remembering what's going on, what's happening, but it's like chasing after a sliver of light as it fades away. It keeps getting darker and darker, blotting out Steve's memories of what he's supposed to be doing, where he is.

"Fuck," is all that slips past his lips feeling like a useless soldier who's just joined training and hasn't got any idea what to do. This isn't supposed to be him. What's more terrifying, though, is the fear that this is only going to get worse? What if he keeps losing? What if he starts to forget not just this place, not just the people, but himself and all the skills that make him above-average?

Problem for another day, he decides, pushing into the large building to try and figure out where he'd been meaning to go.

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Once again, Finnick has stopped at the Inn to deliver a share of his catch of fish directly to the kitchen instead of leaving it on the step. He's grown to like pausing in the main room there long enough to warm up by the fire after the damp work of hauling his catch out of its traps.

He's there when the man walks in, looking around the room with the gaze of someone who isn't quite sure what he's there for. Finnick's seen the guy about, but he hasn't ever met him, and he doesn't know his name. But he does know something about assessing a person, and this man moves in a way Finnick knows, controlled and careful. He recognizes it because it's a reflection of how Finnick himself sometimes moves.

"You all right?" he asks, turning away from the fireplace.

Steve is trying to place his thoughts, but they're starting to get hazy. It's like he's trying to follow a line, but somewhere along the line, a fog creeps in that looks suspiciously yellow, mustardy, filled with death and chlorine. It only suffocates away his thoughts and memories, leaving him squinting at the man and trying to remember if he knows him.

Familiarity has been slipping away from him and Steve is starting to suspect that it's not just a bad night's sleep or too much to drink. Something's definitely happening to him. "I don't think so," he admits, creeping his way to the nearest chair so he can sit in it, staring forward into the middle distance, trying to subdue his panic. "It's been a strange few days."

Finnick doesn't reply immediately. There's something in the man's face, a distance and unease that makes him pause, study him, wait until he's come into the room and sat in the chair nearest the door, no closer to Finnick than necessary.

"Lot of days here are strange," Finnick replies, turning a little further away from the fire, his clear green gaze bright on the other man. His voice is light, even glib, but his eyes are more sincere.

"Something strange in particular about the last few?" he asks, quietly.

"You ever wake up and you feel like you're missing something?" Steve asks, because he already knows the answer to his own question, but he still feels like he needs to ask it, because maybe someone's going to know what's going on. He doubts it, but no one ever solved a problem with a group by keeping the issue to themselves. "I keep losing things. People, place, facts about here. I just, I'm not sure about them anymore," he admits, breathing out slowly.

"It feels a little like I'm losing my mind," he says, with a false levity to his words, because it's terrifying, but he can't accept it as being a frightening thing or else it will feel worse.

It's a ... striking question, and it unsettles Finnick's carefully poised casual cool. He glances away, down towards the floor. He has had times when that's happened, but he suspects it's not the same as what this guy's talking about. Finnick's thinking of times when whole days, even weeks, seem to disappear, slipping past with barely any time actually seeming to pass, with nothing done but sleep or staring into the distance, or outo to sea.

"A little," he admits. "Not quite like that."

He's seen people it's happened to, though, people who spent so much of their time chasing the artificial relief of morphling that the world around them disappeared.

"This place can play tricks on people," Finnick offers, his weight shifting as he looks back at the guy. Never quite like this, that he's heard, but there have been enough other things that this wouldn't be out of place.

Assuming the guy's not actually suffering from something that makes him lose his memory.

"Whatever tricks it wants to play on me, avoiding touching my memory would be better." He keeps reaching for things that aren't here, like his father's watch or the weapons he'd been carrying at the front, but they're not here. He keeps looking around and seeing a completely foreign landscape.

It's not something that Steve's ever come into contact with before and it leaves him struggling to find a response to the deliberate assault against his memories. "What kind of tricks? Like this? Have other people lost their memories too?" Maybe if there's a pattern, he can trace it back to the source and solve it.

"Are you alright?" Moana had been getting ready to leave when she spotted Steve. Normally, she would have left him be but something seemed wrong. Like he was looking for something but forgot what it was.

She was wearing her island dress but also a sturdy pair of boots, a cloak and a small bag that she had just tossed over her shoulder. She was wearing a winter hat which made her hair puff out a bit around the rim and a pair of worn gloves that she had borrowed from the inn. She didn't plan to be gone long but she looked like she was ready for winter.

"Looking for something?" She asked, as if that might elaborate on why Steve was standing at the entrance to the inn with that blank expression on his face.

It takes him a long moment to bring himself out of his haze, turning to look at the girl who's addressed him. He stares at her for a long moment, trying to figure out what's happening, because he's definitely in a strange old fashioned village that looks out of place with Europe, but she looks even more out of place.

If anything's a red flag, this is a big one. Staring at her for a long minute, he's not sure what to say, because no matter how much he squints, nothing registers. "Just trying to make sense of things," he admits, feeling like putting the truth out there is the best move right now, while he's trying to make sense of things.

Moana didn't understand what was going on. She had met Steve before and his expression was very similar to that meeting at the mill. "What isn't making sense? Are you lost? You know you're at the Inn right?" She looked behind him as if expecting someone to be with him. When it looked like he was alone she looked up at him.

"What doesn't make sense?"

His confusion was confusing her.

He knows he's at some major structure given the architecture, but he doesn't know what or where it is, completely. She says it's an Inn, which makes about as much sense as any of this does. Breathing out slowly, Steve looks around to try and place it, but still struggles with familiarity with it.

"This is going to sound bad," he starts, blunt and honest, "but I'm having trouble holding onto things." He gets them, eventually, for the most part and then they slip away. "Like, I know you," he admits, because the recognition is faint, but there, "but I can't remember your name or how we met."

At first, Moana thought that Steve was literally having trouble holding onto things. She looked down at his hands before realizing what he meant and feeling absolutely ridiculous. "Oh. OH." The weight of what he was saying hit Moana and she let her bag slide from her shoulder to the floor. "I'm Moana. We met at the mill when you first arrived. I was fixing it up with Itiiti."

She paused and looked around. "How about you sit down? I'll bring you some water. I've never heard of people forgetting things. you didn't hit your head did you?" It was worth asking.

That's a lot of words for him to remember, but the scarier part is when none of them ring a bell for Steve. "The mill? Is that another one of the buildings?" He rummages through his pockets to unearth a map that he can tell is self-made, since he recognizes his own handwriting. Unfortunately, he hadn't thought to add notes about the people.

Settling into a chair, he spreads out the paper and taps on a place that says 'mill'. "I don't remember seeing any smoke or operations. Are you sure it's a mill?" He feels like he's chasing this in circles, unable to nail it down, but when she asks about his head, he shakes it. "Don't remember smacking it anywhere."

"Yeah. It's near the lake. Just outside of the village. We were fixing it up to try and get power. It doesn't work yet." That's what she had been told. Moana didn't think they needed power but no one shared her opinion and she had wanted to help. She looked down at his map, twisting her neck to see the building that she recognized as the mill. "It's right there. Near the boat house."

Dark eyes looked back up at Steve. "You really don't remember." She sounded a little deflated.

Moana placed her bag in one of the free chairs before slipping behind the counter and disappearing into the back kitchen. She was only gone for a few seconds before reappearing with a glass of water and some small pieces of dried meat. "Here. I brought you something to eat too." She didn't know if that would help at all.

He can tell from the map and his own orienteering skills that she's right, but everything else is something that he feels like he's hearing for the first time, even though he knows it's not. Frowning, he turns the map around and squints at it. "I don't see a lake on this one," he says, which means that either he has the wrong map or they're discussing something (or somewhere) different.

"I don't remember," he admits. "It feels like it's there, but it keeps slipping out of my grasp, like something you're supposed to know..." He trails off, scratching the side of his head before giving her a quiet 'thank you' for the food. "So, we've met before, then?"

"Sorry. River. The lake or ocean is on the other side of the breach." It was a slip of the tongue. Moana had been worried about the boat after the storm and had been planning to head there before running into Steve. It was still firmly at the forefront of her thoughts. "There are two maps. Once you go through the breach there is another village but I don't remember if you've been there." She hadn't seen him there.

Moana nodded her head. "We have. You asked me some about my island." She exhaled and placed her hands on the counter. "Could someone take away someone's memory? Is that possible?" Her dark eyes were wide and earnest in their question. Moana had absolutely no idea and it worried her.

"I only have one map," Steve says, which is the one he's been using to orient himself around this place, which means that now he's got a second town to worry about? It's more than he really wants to think about right now, all of it hurting his head. He closes his eyes tightly, trying to give himself a moment to calm his mind.

When he opens his eyes, though, nothing is any clearer and he has the bad feeling that he's not going to find some magic remedy for this. "It's like it's all there behind a locked door, but I don't have the key."

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cw: depression, substance abuse

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Inn Entrance

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Inn

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