bakerstreet | I lost myself somewhere along the way

I lost myself somewhere along the way

THE AMNESIA MEME

Ah, amnesia. The old standby for soap operas, it usually involves a good knock on the head and a complete loss of memory. Ever wanted to do that to your character? Well, now's your chance.

1. Comment with your characters!
2. Others comment. Optionally, go to RNG and roll the scenario. (As to who gets knocked on the head, well, that's up to you!)
3. ???
4. PROFIT.

1. HEAD-ON COLLISION - ...whoops. It was an honest mistake, really! You didn't see that car/tree/post/person/whatever coming, but now you're stumbling out of the wreckage sans memory. Better ask for help.

2. WAIT, WHO ARE YOU? - Okay, so a while ago, you got into...something that caused you to lose your memory. Fortunately, you managed to get by and create a new identity for yourself. Unfortunately, someone new has just entered your life. Or should I say, someone who's a little too familiar...

3. RINSE AND REPEAT - Sigh. Really, this is just so inconvenient. You wake up everyday with no memory of who you are, and have to figure it out over the course of the day, only to fall asleep and have to do it all over again the next day. Good thing someone's there to help you out, right? And what's with all those post-its and notes?

4. THIS ROOM'S TOO WHITE - Welcome to the hospital. You've got an "Unknown" tag on your wrist, a healthy diet of bland hospital food, a steady trickle of doctors coming in to check up on you, and a TV, and nothing else. Looks like someone's coming to help you today, though! Here's to hoping they knew you before you lost your memory.

5. I'M SUPPOSED TO DO WHAT?! - Oh, crap. There's something only you can do right now--that is, the you who didn't lose your memory, anyway. Better figure out a way out of this mess and how to control your strange abilities before it's too late.

6. FIGHTING FOR THE WRONG SIDE - Uh, oh. Looks like your enemies decided to take advantage of your confused state and convinced you that you're on their side. Here's to hoping your allies can get you back to yourself before you cause some serious damage.

7. JUST TOO TRAUMATIC - You just saw something that's so traumatic you lost your memory because of it. Unfortunately, right now, you have to remember it, or else something really bad happens. Hope you don't regret remembering this!

8. I DON'T WANT THIS - You've been living a peaceful, ordinary life, for a while. And you'd rather it stay that way, because you're not sure if you'd want to remember what went before. Unfortunately, something's coming, and the key to stopping it lies in your memories.

9. NO SUCH THING - Maybe you were a wizard, or a werewolf, or an angel, or a demon, or something else entirely before, or maybe you just knew about the masquerade. Sadly, you've been knocked on the head and now believe yourself to be a perfectly ordinary person. Magic? That doesn't exist, right? Anything can be explained with science, after all! Right?

10. I'M WHO?! - And who the hell are you? Basically, this is the wild card option! Combine one of the above or make up a new one or whatever you want! Go wild!

SOURCE

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[ He is not getting that nod towards his rank. ]

Stacker Pentecost is Marshal.

[ She catches them out of the air faster than any human ever could, and dresses in perfunctory fashion. As far as Gipsy is aware, he is a human that has had her in his quarters with minimal clothing for likely unsavory reasons.

Once dressed, she turns on her heel and makes to leave. ]

[He dresses almost as quickly as she does, keeping his eyes down on the ground because otherwise he might not be able to do this.

He follows her to the door and lets her out before she breaks it down, his jaw resolutely clenched against the emotion he's trying too hard to keep under wraps. Goddammit. He should fucking know better.]

Stacker Pentecost is dead.

[He can't look at her as he marches down the hall, fully expecting her to follow him.]

[ Oh, she follows him, but she’s so damn mad at him right now it’s all she can do to keep from bodily picking him up and tossing him like a sack of potatoes.

However, instead of earning herself a good and thorough offlining by other Rangers and the personnel of the Dome, Gipsy follows after him at attention, jaw set. ]

Your words are ill timed. [ She’s still rebooting and she cannot process that at the moment. She’s already incredibly confused, angry, and uncertain. There’d been something in his eyes when she’d spoken so coldly to him – something that had flickered, then gone out. Who was he? ]

What is your name?

[Herc is trying very hard to make this look as normal as possible; the last thing he wants is the whole 'dome to erupt in speculation about what's going on between the two of them. It's going to happen anyway, but efforts can be made to at least slow the spread of gossip.

His back is ramrod straight, his eyes straight ahead, but she's right, there's something missing.]

Hercules Hansen. Ranger ID: 832.84-G. Now Marshal of the Hong Kong Shatterdome.

[God she doesn't even know him. There's something splintering inside his chest — has to be, otherwise why is it so hard to breathe? — but he doesn't let it show. Hercules has had lots of practice losing everyone he loves. He's pretty good at it now.]

Edited 2013-07-23 17:26 (UTC)

One moment.

[ She plugs the Ranger ID that he gives into her internal memory banks and pulls up a file, surprised that he’s there after all. Facial recognition hadn’t registered during the initial scan she’d done, but he isn’t lying to her. The picture she sees flashing in her internal HUD is definitely him, but…younger. Could be why the scan didn’t pull his file.

…Still. It should have pulled something – were her files out of date? Something akin to dread filters through her systems, and she quickly shuts off several more of her emotion receptors in order to isolate and try to kill the feeling. ]

Hercules Hansen. Transferred into the Jaeger program in 2015. Currently pilots Striker Eureka with son Chuck Hansen. Is this you?

[His step falters a little when she brings up Chuck but otherwise he manages to maintain a stoic outward demeanor.

It takes him a minute to reply though, a minute spent wrestling with the phantom feeling of intense heat, of armor melting against his skin, of searing hot air sucked into his lungs before sweet oblivion takes over. He hadn't been in the cockpit with Chuck, but he and his son had Drifted together often enough that the bond was never fully broken. He felt it when Striker Eureka detonated his missile.

He'll never forget how that feels.]

Chuck is dead too.

[ Despite all of Gipsy’s attempts to kill her emotions, she can’t seem to be able to do it. Panic is beginning to flare and spread through her pathways to her limbs and core, but she manages to keep it under a calm exterior. ]

I’m…I’m sorry.

[ That is, at least, genuine.

Also – terrifying. What had she missed? What was going on? ]

I…think we should hurry. [ Because Gipsy Danger’s systems are starting to short, the panic starting to take over. What the hell was happening? ]

We're here.

[He pushes open the door to the medical-cum-science labs, immediately shouting for Newt to show his goddamn face.

He still can't make himself look at her, though.]

[ She goes in immediately, surprised by the anger that seems to leak through in the Marshal’s voice. Newt appears almost immediately; for all of his cocky science boy attitude, he fucking listens to the Marshal and when the Marshal is shouting his name at the top of his lungs, Newt’s dropping whatever the hell it is that he’s doing and running.

Gipsy sits down on one of the medical tables and filters through her emotions again while Newt and Hercules what promises to be an incredibly epic shouting match, trying her damndest to pinpoint what’s wrong, why things don’t seem right, and why her insides feel like they’re aching. ]

[Hercules' yelling had been somewhat kept under control in deference to the image of the Marshal, but the instant Newt dismissively refers to Gipsy's current predicament as factory settings...

Well. Herc kind of loses it.

Stacker Pentecost as Marshal of the 'dome had been very straight-laced, by the book, aloof and authoritative. Hercules Hansen as Marshal of the 'dome was a bit more gruffly affectionate, a stickler for the rules but willing to look the other way every now and then, genuinely interested in what's going on, in the lives of the people around him.

So to see him this incensed... That's new. It should be gratifying to see Newt cower before him, but it's not. He just feels...

Hollow.]

[ Gipsy tolerates the fight for a while, because she’s absorbed in her own research and processing. While they fight, she slides off the table and wanders to one of the terminals and keys in a code and access the basic mainframe of the database. A quick search tells her that she has reset recently; because this is not the start of the Jaeger program.

No, it’s after the whole goddamn war.

That makes her pull away like the terminal had bit her, whirling around to level a stony look at the two men. The room has cleared out save for the three of them and Newt looks a little as if he’d like to join the others in their flight. ]

. . .

Stop.

[ Gipsy is getting up and to her feet now, moving fluidly to position herself between the two of them. The yelling doesn’t faze her; she’s heard worse . What is upsetting her is the way Newt is talking about her like she’s just a basic computer, unintelligent and not aware of her surroundings. It’s the way that Herc screams at the man, his voice telling her there is a lot more going on here than she’s aware of.

It’s the way they’re both arguing about her as if she’s not in the room.

One hand is on Newt’s chest and the other on Hercules, and she shoves both of them back and away from each others faces, her own neck and cheeks blossoming in a flushed and angry red. ]

This stops now.

[ Before she starts to smack the both of you around, Marshal or not. ]

What the hell is going on?

Edited 2013-07-23 18:18 (UTC)

[He's not even really sure what he's saying when he yells at Newt anymore, just that words are coming out of his mouth, and it's not until Gipsy puts herself between them and shoves them apart that he realizes he's been advancing on the diminutive scientist.

Unfortunately, her shove sends him careening backwards to bang his arm against a piece of equipment, pain shooting down his hand when he aggravates the bruise (or worse, he didn't check) she left this morning.

Bile rising in his throat, he turns away, swallowing reflexively to try and keep himself together.]

Newt...

[He's breathing hard, and he can feel the look on his face and he doesn't like it. But he can't help himself.]

Fix her, please. [He turns wounded eyes to Gipsy, before closing them and forcing himself to turn around and head out of the room.] Fix this.

[ Hercules isn’t the only one sent careening, though Newt manages to just barely catch himself before he smashes into a computer monitor. Gipsy Danger apparently isn’t entirely aware of her own strength – or her surroundings. The noise Hercules makes when he hits the equipment has her whirling around, blue eyes wide in shock – she hadn’t meant to do that. She hadn’t meant to hurt him.

I’ll never hurt you again, Hercules Hansen. I swear.

Wisps of a memory shoot through her mind and she clamps her hands on either side of her head, palms pressing against her ears. She misses any further exchange between Newt and Hercules as her eyes squeeze shut, though not before she sees the look of pain cross the Marshal’s face. ]

I’ll fix it – I can fix it, I can fix her—

[ Newt is babbling as Hercules leaves, though he doesn’t look entirely convinced, nor does he looked to be comfortable left alone with a glitching Gipsy Danger. Gipsy only lowers her hands when she feels a hand tentatively touching her arm, and when the clang of metal on metal overrides her hands on her ears when the door shuts.

‘Fixing’ her is going to take a while – Newt has to find the backups, the backups of the backups, and there’s a lot of arguing between himself and Dr. Gottlieb, and Hercules is banned from the medical labs until they can figure out what caused it, how it happened, and what they have to do in order to prevent it from happening again. God knows that if it does, it’s Newt’s ass that’s on the line – screw his job, Hercules will kill him himself if this shit happens one more time. So this time, there’s no room for error.

In about three months, Hercules will get a summons to the labs. She’s ready, they said. And she’s afraid. Don’t yell at her. ]

[It feels like he's dying a little, like Gipsy really did die all over again, and he's left mourning a phantasm, an idea, someone who was never really real.

At least, that's how it looks on the outside.

Gipsy isn't dead, and she isn't human, so her sudden loss of memory functions isn't treated as anything more than a mild inconvenience. Hercules isn't afforded the same leniency he got when his son died, and so he has to soldier on and pretend that nothing is wrong, that he is perfectly competent and able to do his job.

Even if going home to an empty bed at night feels like a knife between the ribs.

He's lost everyone, you think he'd be better at dealing with it by now. But no, Hercules is still woefully under prepared for this kind of thing, still left reeling by the sudden absence of someone he loved.

They won't let him into the labs anymore, not that he really wanted to go back in there and look at her all pale and vacant, and slowly, one week turns into two, turns into a month, turns into three. He's not really doing better, but he's coping well enough to fool everyone around him, which is all he can really ask for these days.

He's in his office when he gets the summons. Newt looks nervous, strung-out, jittery. Herc doesn't have it in him to try and make him feel better. I would never, he protests, already pushing past the scientist and heading down to the labs.

Once he's there, though...he's somewhat at a loss.]

Gipsy?

[ It’s three months of hell for Gipsy, too. Her memory comes back in flashes and pieces and she’s laid open bare for examination and scrutiny only this time, she’s aware of it. The backups are found and reinstalled (after more backups are made Newt is not going through this shit again – especially the fear he’d felt when they couldn’t find the flash drives), and Gipsy gets to relieve every second of her life up until this point again. Old wounds are ripped back open and left raw and bleeding in her mind and she spends a lot of time staring at the wall, trapped within the confines of her own mind and unable to cry.

Newton does his best these days to treat her more like a person and less like his own personal science experiment after a particular argument with Gipsy that left him nursing a broken nose. Slowly, the process does get better. Not great, but better.

It’s a rough span of time, though, and there are some times when all of her systems go haywire because despite it all, this is still technology they aren’t entirely familiar with.

Sometimes she dreams, too – sometimes she’s in the Drift with Hercules, sometimes it’s Raleigh. Sometimes Mako and Yancy are there too, but the recurring theme is always, always Hercules.

It’s a long and stressful three months for everyone. She’s picked at, taken apart and put back together, upgraded, reinforced, and sedated. When Hercules comes in, the toll it’s taken on her is obvious in her eyes despite the calm demeanor she displays. It’s in her voice when she speaks, too – a distinct tremble that betrays her terror that he will reject her. ]

Hello, Hercules Hansen.

[Hercules spares a moment of gratitude that the labs are deserted — though he knows there are cameras everywhere recording them, at least this gives them the semblance of privacy — but whatever he's thinking about quickly flies out of his head the instant he sees Gipsy sitting on her perch, looking actually afraid.

No, not afraid, terrified.

Once minute he's by the doors to the labs, the next he's in front of her, his hands reaching out for her.]

Oh, Gipsy.

[ Gipsy should really know better by now than to think Hercules will do anything but accept her. He’s never let her down – no matter what has happened, what they have gone through – and he always has his arms open for her.

She really should give him more credit, because he is, in fact, the embodiment of what Gipsy perceives as human perfection. She might be a little skewed (and she realizes this), but she doesn’t care. To her, he is everything – light, dark, sun and rain. He is a violent tempest that makes grown men cower, yet a place of peace and serenity for Gipsy.

When he comes to her with his hands outstretched, Gipsy’s fear dissolves and she’s on her feet, crashing into him as she meets him halfway.

She doesn’t apologize – not yet. He already knows how she feels inside, she is sure of it. ]

Edited 2013-07-23 19:44 (UTC)

[Hercules is so far from perfect it's not even funny, but it's sweet of Gipsy to think so.

She crashes into his arms and his snap closed around her immediately, pulling her into his embrace and holding her close against his chest, where she'll be safe, where she doesn't have to worry about anything. He tucks his head down against hers and breathes out a shaky sigh of relief into her hair, squeezing her tightly. He turns his head a little and presses a kiss to her shoulder, then another, then just tucks his face in against her and breathes her in, trying to stop himself from shaking.]

Christ, love, I've missed you.

[His voice is gruff and a little shaky, but still strong enough.]

[ She has to remind herself not to hold him as tightly as she would like – if she did, she’d likely crush him and that would pretty much defeat the purpose of her entire existence.

Still, her hold is fairly tight – as if she’s afraid to let go, afraid to stop touching him. ]

I’m so sorry.

[ It’s a phrase she’s uttered far too many times to him, and one that she truly feels is beginning to turn into an unfortunate staple of their relationship.

Before she’d seen him, before he’d walked in that door, she’d had a sort of preconceived ridiculous idea to tell him that he was better off without her, and that he should leave before she hurts him again. Now, though, with him in her arms and his warmth pressing against her body and his breath ruffling her hair?

She’s far too selfish to even entertain that notion anymore. It might be the honorable thing to do – but, really? Damn the honorable thing to do, because she is not giving him up. Not ever.

Not for anyone, or anything. Never. ]

I know, sweetheart.

[He knows she's sorry. He knows she didn't mean to hurt him (emotionally and physically). He knows she never meant for this to happen. He doesn't blame her for any of it. She's a brand-new piece of technology and people aren't sure how she works yet, there's bound to be a few slip-ups. It's not her fault.

If she had tried to tell him to break up with her he would have laughed in her face and flat-out refused. No fucking way is he giving her up again, not if he can help it.]

I'm the one who's sorry. You should never have had to go through that. It must have been awful.

[ She rests her head on his shoulder and just relaxes there, allowing herself a moment of reprieve from...everything, really. Arms locked around him, she's able to reassure herself that things are alright now, that she hadn't dealt another devastating blow to him -- even if it was entirely on accident. ]

It wasn't your fault. [ It wasn't anyone's, really. It was all an accident. It was taking a while to allow herself to fully believe that, but...

It seemed important that she start, or at least try. ]

[He strokes her back slowly, trying to keep her calm and reassure her that it'll all be okay, trying to reassure himself that she's really back and that it'll all be okay.

It takes a moment, but eventually his heart beat slowly down, evens out a little, and he can pull back just enough to smooth his hand over her hair and kiss her forehead.]

I'm still sorry anyway.

[ Him and her both. Now that her heart isn't slamming in her chest (or at least, not as much, she can take a few breathes and simply be. ]

So am I.

[ The gesture makes her smile; it's one she's very, very familiar with by now. It's nice. Calming. Theirs. ]

[He smiles at her and knocks their foreheads together lightly.]

Well, as long as we're both sorry, then I guess it's okay.

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I lost myself somewhere along the way

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