The Normal Meme

[eightlazylegs]

The Brought Down To Normal Meme

You are normal. Utterly normal. There are no superpowers in your life, no magic, no action movie fight scenes, no spaceships or dramatic battles between good and evil. The last exciting thing that happened to you was getting a free coffee with your tenth Starbucks purchase. And yet something seems a little...off.

Mental Status:
1. Taken In Completely: You've never been anything really special, you're sure of it. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is obviously a crazy person.
2. A Sense of Unease: You don't feel comfortable in your own life, but you can't figure out why. Maybe you just need to go on vacation and shake that wanderlust off your shoulders--it can't be anything more meaningful.
3. Strong Suspicions: You keep getting flashbacks to a life you once knew and memories you can't completely recover. The picture's not complete, not yet, but somehow you know things aren't how they should be.
4. WTF Is This?: You remember everything about your old life, but nobody around you will believe you. Will you break free of the illusion, or is a peaceful lie better than a harsh reality?

Normal-Inducer:
1. The Matrix Has You: You're locked in a dream machine that's created an alternate reality for you to live in. A boring one.
2. Reality-Warping: Someone's changed the universe to be more to their tastes, and you along with it.
3. Pulled a Brazil: Your real life is so horrific that your mind has retreated into something more banal. The best place to hide is in-sanity.
4. Please Wake Up: You've gotten yourself into a coma and for lack of anything better to do you've made up an entire world for yourself to live in.
5. Hypnosis: The world's the same, but your mind's been altered to make you think you're nothing but a mere dull mortal.
6. Wildcard

Post your name/canon, write out a brief scenario for your normal character, then RNG or pick an option to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. The other poster can be a part of the illusion, the cause of the illusion, or someone who's been sent in to yank you back out.

Comments

[bprd_fishman]

Scenario 1, Mental State 2, Normal Inducer 2

Abe is a university professor, specializing in folklore and pre-Christian religions. He's devoted himself to his work and his office is filled with masks and artifacts. The occult fascinates him in ways he can't clearly define. How amazing, that people should come up with such complex myths to explain the world around them.

He's not much of a socialite, but he loves to swim. It relaxes him, he feels more at home in the water than he does at some evening pub gathering with his fellow professors. Of course he's considered a bit odd, but professors are allowed to be odd. With his lanky, flexible frame he even looks a bit inhuman.

It's strange, though. Every time his head breaks the surface he expects to find himself somewhere different then a reeking, chlorinated pool.

Scenario 2, Mental State 4, Normal Inducer 1

He's going mad, he just knows it.

When Abe awakens from dreams of cold water and dank caves he immediately scribbles down what things that second set of eyes have seen--names, symbols, fragments of imagery that must be captured before they can be lost. Something is wrong, something he can't grasp with his bony fingertips, but something that must be resolved.

He is not as he should be. Maintaining his syllabus becomes difficult as he finds himself verging from what ancient peoples had believed to what he knows to be the solid truth. He comes into class underslept and overcaffinated, his large eyes wide with paranoia. When he discusses the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder he speaks as if it's a real text, including its odd properties of plants and its descriptions of griffins and manticores.

He knows, is the thing. He knows what's real even if the world says it's make-believe. He knows that his hands should be blue, not pink. Does it even matter if they think he's losing his mind? The world has lost its reality and that's a much bigger issue.

John "Pyro" Allerdyce | X-Men movieverse | 3 - 3

[ex_outofcontrol435]

Post-war, cured.

[He remembers and he doesn't. He knows that his parents disappeared from his childhood home when he was 12 years old that and he took to the streets, but he doesn't know why. Some faces he remembers, some he doesn't. It's natural that a time like that would be a blur.

But then there's the gap. Even though he's still on the streets, he feels like there was another time: a time with a large house full of children, and then a time with violence and massive loss. What did he lose? He can't say, but the very thought of it fills him with fury and unspeakable pain.

It's all too confusing, though, and there's the small matter of staying alive on which to focus out here. So he uncurls himself from the back of the burned out car in which he sleeps, shoving his sleeping bag under the seats, and crosses through the abandoned lot to disappear back into the city crowds. Waiting for change is useless in a city where even the wealthiest won't look each other in the eye; no, these automatons won't give, so he takes as freely as he likes. It's payback, but for what he doesn't know.]

[stlg13bomber]

[Andrew is referred to by his parents as an 'imaginative child', never mind the fact he's in his late twenties. He's a dreamer, nearly sleepwalking through his normal life with his head in a completely different time and place. He works for his uncle as a mechanic, though he's not very good at it, and spends his spare time off in his own little world. His family resignedly puts up with his rambling stories about spies and prison camps and heroic Nazi-fighting, they've long given up trying to break him from his obsession.

When John comes back he may find his spare lot occupied. Andrew, disinterested in anyone else's attention, is resolutely digging a hole next to a concrete wall. There's a set of metal boxes beside him. His parents have told him to get rid of his fireworks collection, they didn't say he couldn't come back for them later. He likes fireworks. They remind him of...of something. Of bigger things that seem brighter than the dull city around him.]

Loki | post-thor | ota

[god_of_badassery]

[ ooc: Mental Status: Strong Suspicions. ]

Starter Post:

[ This has been constant as of late; dreaming. Dreams of a past life, memories that come to him in small chunks. The more altering ones being of a man he supposes he should know but doesn't; long blond hair, an undeniable complexion of greatness, a truly beaming personality, a red cape flowing in the wind nothing really he can explain to anyone let alone himself and yet .. Therein lies the question of just who exactly is this mysterious man? Just who has he been dreaming of for the past month? It's not such a dream that keeps him up at night, infact it nearly well is comforting and every time he lays down to sleep, he is all too eager to see this man again within his mind. Loki feels warm everytime, protected even. But he is still so very much interested to know of whom he is having his thoughts of.

Nothing much is known to the raven haired man, mostly because the fall he took from the bifrost had done its damage; his memories of the past all but non-existant now, so all he is burdened to recollect is that his name is Loki and his confusing dreams. ]

Tim Drake/Robin || DCU || OTA

[birdversus]

Superboy (Conner Kent) [] DCU [] OTA [] 3.2

[clone_boy]

It's been like this for weeks. Conner Kent has been this nice, normal student, at a nice, normal high school, where he lives in the nice, normal town of Smallville, Kansas. Everything is great. He's on the football team. He's dating a cheerleader. His grandparents are awesome, when they're not goading him into chores on the farm, and his dad works at the Daily Planet as one of their star news reporters.

It's all great. It is. Really.

Except for the nightmares. Nightmares that make Conner think something is wrong. Whenever he has them, he sees images of himself flying, wearing a big S-Shield thing, sees his dad in a cape, his best friend in tights, his girlfriend with a magical lasso. And he can shoot lasers from his eyes.

It begins to effect him a month in. He starts to wonder if something isn't horribly, horribly wrong.

Here, have a teammate? Bart is pre-boot

[kid_flash_found]

Aunt Joan needed a quieter life, so Bart had found himself transferring to Smallville High mid-year. The look on his uncle's face as he watched her quiet decline hurt to watch, but they both threw everything they could into helping her stay active. She volunteered at the school library, the PTA, anything she could.

He had gotten into the track team, anchoring the relay and shocking everyone as the rare long-distance runner with a capacity for sprints. But he also found himself going to all the football games, watching the field when practices coincided. There was something familiar about the lead quarterback, but he never could put his finger on it.

Bart found himself almost following the guy, somehow managing to be where he could watch, even when he tried not to. It was like he was supposed to know Kent, but they didn't have anything in common. He'd never even met the guy before he'd transferred in three weeks ago. They weren't in any classes together, or any clubs. So why did he feel like they should be hanging out?

Kate Bishop | Marvel-verse | Open

[nothawkette]

[Scenario 2.2: Since one of her best friends has the ability to alter reality.]

Kate Bishop had a pretty good life. It was her senior year of high school, she had awesome friends, a hot boyfriend her parents didn't approve of on account of that stint he did in juvie. She was star of the archery team and first chair cello.

And, even with all that, she still had moments where things didn't seem quite right. She'd zone out during one of her friends' stories, trying to put her finger on it until Tommy poked her in the side and told her to snap out of it.

It bothered her. The not knowing why she felt things were so wrong.

Music Meister | Batman | 2/1

[hypnotic_patter]

Billy's dreams seem to come in two types. In the first he's on a stage, singing to a cheering crowd. In green and purple and it's always green and purple, that's very important, and his voice commands the mob. Those are the nice dreams.

In the second there are wires and cold metal restraints. Someone is holding him down and he's screaming but no sound comes out of his mouth and there's the feeling of something drilling right into the back of his head before he wakes up in a cold sweat. Those dreams he could do without.

Out in the real world he's a struggling singer/theater geek squeaking by with the occasional background part while he pays the bills waiting tables at a restaurant. He wants a little glory, sure, but he doesn't expect he'll be a star anytime soon. Billy struggles through life, aimless, chasing that shining carrot constantly dangled but never delivered. He designs costumes that he never sews, and composes songs that he never makes public. It's like something's dragging him down, killing his creativity moments after that first spark.

When his mind wanders on the city bus his hand draws double notes, again and again, stretching crudely across the sketchbook pages and melding together into the letters MM.

Arya Stark | Game of Thrones | Mental State 3, Normal Inducer 4

[saltywolf]

A dark place, deep within the forests. A stranger who could change his face. Her father's head rolling on a platform. A young man with strong hands and dark hair.

Needle.

"--stop!" Arya shouted, her back stiff, her eyes opening wide to stare at the cold stone ceiling above her. The nightmare was far too familiar, but so vastly different from her life. Her days were spent sewing, crafting, learning to cook -- never filled with the incredible battles in her sleep. She was taught to curtsy while she watched her brothers spar in the courtyard. Speaking up against her so-called education earned her a lashing from her caretakers.

In truth, Arya sometimes could not decide whether the dangerous, but thrilling nightmares were better than her safe, bur boring life. She frowned.

Arya jolted once more at the sound of a rapping on the door. Was it morning already?

"Who's there?"

barry allen | dc new 52

[locomotion]

SCENE A: mental state 1, normal-inducer 5.

Barry Allen is 26, and one of the best forensic scientists in the Central City Police Department. He's perpetually late for work, a fact that aggravates his director no small amount (especially since his track record before was spotless, apparently), but he gets his work done and with good results, and he's well-liked by his co-workers. He likes his job, likes his girlfriend, and he wouldn't change any of it for the world.

It's at a garage sale one Saturday morning that he finds it, half buried in the midst of a handful of ladies trinkets. He'd been looking for something for Patty, but the ring's large band and lightning bolt insignia was clearly meant for a man's hand. Curiosity causes him to pick it up and roll it around in his palm. The ring is oddly warm, and though he has no use whatsoever for jewelry of any sort (and certainly not jewelry this gaudy), he's overcome with a sudden urge to buy it.

Why, though, is a mystery.

SCENE B: mental state 5, normal-inducer 2 aka who wants to relive Flashpoint

Everything's wrong.

Barry remembers now, the events that came before and the way he fucked up everything with just a single, selfish action. The entirety of history, his own life and everyone else's, completely rewritten by a man who could circle the earth in less time than it took to blink and who could run through time and space as easily as he could open a can of Coke. But you weren't supposed to do that, the whole messing with time thing. Such things had long-term, wide-spread ramifications, like everything he was seeing now. Long-time couples no longer together, heroes who no longer existed, people once dead who are now living, breathing, smiling.

All these things happening because of him.

He needs help. But he doesn't know where to get it.

I'm gonna go with...Scene B just because I'm horrible.

[hypnoticsong]

[ooc: Only question I have is do we want to go with 'Citizen: Cold' flashpoint canon or just chuck it all out the window somehow. Also I'm debating how to bring the Anti-Life equation into this just for the sheer wtfuckery.]

Scenario B. Bart lost everything when he gave it to Barry?

[kid_flash_found]

Sometimes your life changes in an instant, one blinding flash and a new world presents itself. The kid had been hoping for that. To put it bluntly, he was hoping for anything. Because that was all he had. One blinding flash of light, and nothing made any sense. He couldn't remember anything before that, not even who he was.

He'd been unable to hold on to anything, as if he wasn't meant to remember. Basic book-knowledge, language, the things that went deep, that he remembered, but not a single name or face. A feeling, an impulse made him avoid the hospital, but he'd found himself standing outside a police station.

He wondered if his world would end again if he went in, or if it might just begin.

Captain Jack Harkness l Torchwood l OTA

[captainspain]

[1-4, because something is stuck in his brain and he can't finish healing.]

Jack lay on the grass looking up at the stars. He'd always liked the stars and at one point in his life he had thought about going into space. But when his parents died leaving him on his own with his little brother to raise that dream had turned into dust.

Now it was a steady job as a bartender mixed with raising Gray and keeping the house in order. But every once and a while he would lay in the back yard and dream of what could have been. Because really daydreams were all he had left.

Susan Sto Helit | Discworld | 1 or 2 - 6

[no_nonsense]

(OOC: My kingdom for castmates, but I've come to realize that it is very unlikely I'll find any. So, players from other canons, if there are any mystical creatures/celestial beings/witches/gods/horsemen/whatever who want to recognize Susan from that party/because they can see her aura/Death showed them baby photos/whatever, or Paranormal Investigators/Hunters/Wizardly P.I.'s/superheroes/ETC who want to hop on to investigate the situation, please, be my guest.

I'm also more than okay with it if you'd like to assume history of some kind between them, just to get things rolling.

Normal-Inducer can be anything, really. Susan wouldn't bother checking it out until something forced her to.)

Miss Susan Sto Helit was, quite possibly, the most normal person who ever lived. She was banal, generic, predictable, and altogether boring. If there was one thing that everyone in the tri-county area could agree on, without hesitation, it was that Miss Susan was the least unusual woman they'd ever met or known or could imagine knowing.

She lived in a plain townhouse, took public transportation, shopped at the corner store (where she bought the same groceries like clockwork), and almost every outfit she owned consisted of a white blouse, black or grey vest, and long black skirt. If it weren't for mild variation in cut and manufacture, it would be hard to tell that she ever changed clothes. No one had ever asked her why she dressed like this, though, or why her neatly kept hair was only mostly blonde, because it just seemed so inherently right. Besides, as a general rule, nobody talked to Miss Susan unless they had business with her. She was not particularly sociable.

She wasn't unkind, mind you, and she was the very picture of patience, but she didn't have any truck with small talk. Most of the people who'd had more than two sentences of conversation with her were her students (and thus younger than the age of ten) or their parents (who tried to make sure the conversation they had lasted no more than two sentences in any given instance). In fact, outside of the school, nobody really knew anything about her apart from the fact that she was utterly, unequivocally normal.

So, when strange incidents began happening, despite her being present at each and every one, no one had ever assumed she was involved. Even Susan, really, hadn't considered it a possibility. After all, how could she have had anything to do with the lounge singer who took an axe to the face, emerged almost entirely unscathed, and was suddenly (supposedly) possessed by his guitar and the sheer force of music? And that business with the mall Santas actually having magical bags or the rash of "bogeymen" break-ins? Just because she'd been passing by didn't mean she was involved.

Really, it wasn't until she'd hit snooze on her alarm-clock one morning and time halted within a mile radius of her house that she started to suspect something was awry. She wasn't certain what but, no matter how many explanations she heard, none of them seemed right. This morning the paper had another very vehement article on the subject, one with the next increasingly outlandish theory as to why it had happened (the current theory involved butterflies in Australia, for some reason), and Susan skimmed it as she sat on the bus.

ohi thar

[curatesecrets]

Meanwhile, the man sitting across from her was rifling quite agitatedly through a black doctor's bag in his lap and mumbling to himself.

"No -- no, that -- no. I don't need the inkwell, that's not the problem here, I need -- oy, don't tell me I didn't pack it. You've got to be kidding me."

Natasha Romanoff | Black Widow || MCU || OTA

[redrussian]

MENTAL STATE: 2 || NORMAL-INDUCER: 5

For you regime is everything. You wake up at five am. You crawl out of bed and escape for a shower, you'll take the six mile run before he's even out of bed, you'll fit in another shower to clean the sweat from your skin, you'll make breakfast and set the plates and when he's awake you'll greet him with a kiss and a whispered good morning.

Then it's off to work in your flat ironed blouse and pencil skirt with red waves pulled back into a messy bun. The kids always behave and you treat them with early recess so you can grade papers and listen to the birds out the window.

By the time you get home your feet are sore in your patent pumps and you're sure that person across the street was their yesterday, and the day before watching you. Probably some vagrant anyway.

It's only when you collapse onto the couch that your skin crawls and something inside of you is trying to claw it's way out of your body. Your skin ripples with the feeling of a thousand ants marching through your veins but the feeling will go and you'll be left thinking that you're coming down with something.

Why, when your life is so perfect, does it feel like something is missing?

Natasha didn't know three months ago and she still doesn't know now, so she fixes a pot of coffee and attempts to mark English papers in the peace and quiet.

R || WARM BODIES [Zombie R dreaming he's human] || OTA

[alonelyboy]

Mental Status: 2, leading to 3 – Normal Inducer: 3 or 4

He thinks he’s dead but he’s not sure.

It’s a really stupid thing to be hung up on. Ryan’s never told anyone that sometimes he reaches over and pinches his skin, feels for a pulse at his wrist and sighs in relief when he finds it. Luckily no one’s caught him checking. Yet.

Everything’s a mass of blah, this gray flat-line that Ryan swears is killing his brain cells one by one. Same old routine, every day, every week. Wake up. Shave (maybe not shave, if he’s lazy), comb his hair. Rush to work. Bastards are cutting hours, again. Rush back. Hate the fact that he blew four years on college and he’s still here, phoning it in and thousands of dollars in debt while he drowns himself in Netflix. Good times. It could be worse, he guesses.

Ryan checks for his pulse for the umpteenth time. Still there.

Sometimes he thinks it’s not just him, though, and that’s when Ryan is sure he’s going from paranoid to conspiracy nut: he walks in the mall and bumps shoulders with people he doesn’t know. He stares at them, they stare back, unblinking; if he’s feeling chatty, he’ll grunt a “sorry” and they’ll shrug and move on with their lives. Sometimes even that one word seems like it’s too much effort. Sometimes it feels like he forgets how to speak at all. The words fade and bleed away.

He realizes he’s checking for that pulse more and more these days. Eventually it builds up, this need to talk and do something and here he is, knocking on his neighbor’s door out of the blue. They’ve talked, kinda. They even kicked around the idea of seeing a movie together, but Ryan dragged his feet on that one and he still doesn’t know why.

Perry Kelvin | Warm Bodies | mental status 2-3

[justgaveup]

Today was a normal day, much like the normal day before, and the one before that. Sometimes it seemed too normal, didn't it? Just a little too normal? What was he kidding, there was no such thing as too normal. There was just today. And today, Perry had some things to do. Every day stuff; go get his books for the new semester coming up, go to his favorite Starbucks, maybe take some time and chill out between the rush of the day.

Spend time with Julie. He had to spend more time with Julie. He was thinking of asking her to move in with him, he just wasn't sure the best way to go about it. Every time he thought about it, he got nervous, and then a strange sense of calm. Like it would turn out okay, he just had to ask. Sharing space with someone meant a lot, though. Sure, he might be scared of her father, but he could get through that.

But when someone moves in with you, they know all of you. She'd been there when he woke after having a nightmare, but she hadn't been there for how he felt during the day. It just felt like something was off. Sometimes he felt weightless, like he wasn't anything solid. And sometimes, he felt like there were pieces of his body missing. His feet were always firmly on the ground, and everything was in it's place, but he had a sense. A small one.

Maybe he shouldn't be here at all. A man walking on expired time, is how he'd heard it phrased before, and he couldn't shake it. The knock on the door gets him out of those thoughts, just for a moment, and he shoves aside the backpack he was filling, going to the door. Looking through the peephole, he was surprised to see his... neighbor? They've talked. A little. Perry was a lot more used to seeing the back of his head then his face, and he opened the door.

"Hey, neighbor." And the face seemed familiar. There was that feeling of weightlessness again. "What's up?"

Artie Nielsen | Warehouse 13 | 2 and 2 | OTA

[curatesecrets]

[snag it, bag it, and tag it, right? that's how this always goes. Myka and Pete should have gone and taken care of this. but they're -

no really where the hell are they -

somewhere! they're somewhere, he's sure he sent them somewhere, he has to have. it'll come to him. his mind skirts around their absence like light around a mirror, and he walks down the street at relative ease, his black doctor's bag in hand.

the street itself is familiar as hell - the street in Philadelphia where he grew up. if he listens closely enough, he can almost hear his mother hollering at him to stop futzing around on the steps and come inside before he shrivels up like a raisin.

somewhere, around here, there's an artifact. but even more importantly, if he remembers right, somewhere around here, there's a deli. lunch would be good.]

Adrienne "Posta" Duvall | Matrix Online OC

[lithumed]

Mental State 3, Normal Inducer 6

[It's a routine. Every day blurs into the next into the next into the next. Adrienne Duvall wakes up in a tiny condo in the Camon Heights district. It's a little more than she can afford, but it feels right being so close to the slums. She can't say why. It just... fits.]

[Work is at one of the city's tiny little alternative papers. She formats the pages for layout. An ad here, a story there, a picture to the left or right side of the margin. As boring and stale as her life is, being able to decide even that much is enough.]

[There are neighbors to help move. Whiny reporters to deal with. Subway trains that mysteriously break down in the heart of the slums. Local politicians promising change and reform. A man in a worn brown coat standing on the roof across from hers, wearing sunglasses and looking so utterly melancholy.]

[She shuts the blinds. Tries to pretend that the world feels off-kilter at the edges. Sometimes, it works. It hasn't been lately.]

[She sits on the subway car, leaning against the door. Even the reflections look wrong.]

Tifa Lockheart/Final Fantasy VII/mental 2 - flexible on why

[more_than_words]

[It's the easiest thing in the world. Shoo the last tired construction worker home, close the bar, make sure no one's passed out in the bathroom, lock up and then clean up. She does it every night, rag in her hand polishing the bar top on automatic as she quietly sings the wrong words to the song on the radio. Not exactly what she'd intended to do with her life when she'd left for, and then subsequently dropped out of, college but it made her happy and fit her personality and late night hours well. So why, when she's standing outside locking the door and ready to head home does she - always - get such a feeling of longing? As if she's homesick somehow for some place she's never been.]

ooc: flexible on how things go so feel free to mess with the situation

[hypnotic_patter]

[Billy's been hovering outside the bar for a while, waiting for everyone else to leave. If she turns him down, or laughs him out of the place, he doesn't want witnesses. Venues are so hard to find and each rejection and empty house dims his spirits more. He almost wants to give up on his music entirely.

Almost. Every time he feels like a failure an odd spark drives him onwards. He finally knocks on the window, clutching a few flyers in one hand.]

3 | 2

[strengthened]

[This was the life of a normal student.

Days passing by as he attended school, meeting up with friends, and just generally living his life. This is a life that someone would wish for, right? Having lunch on the school roof, attending clubs after school...

... So why is it that he feels such a sense of... unease. A sense that this isn't right. Whenever he closes his eyes, his imagination wanders. To him being a magus, to him fighting for his life.

But that wasn't the life of Emiya Shirou, was it?

He can't help but shake the feeling, though. Of course, who would think that something like his imagination is real? It's vivid enough, but... maybe he just needed fresh air. So to the school roof he goes, to lay down on a bench and think.]

[tracings]

[This wasn't quite what Archer had been thinking - naturally he had aimed to steer Shirou away from his own mistakes, and in doing so, blot himself from existence.

But this solution was far too bizarre and, as far as he could tell, not one of his own making. For one, he had counted on complete oblivion, not--

Well, what had happened was completely incomprehensible, moreso than complete non-existence. He'd awoken to the sun streaming through the window of a small apartment. To a distantly familiar school uniform hanging in the closet. To enrollment papers on a desk and an empty living room filled with moving boxes.

Somehow, he ended up putting on the uniform and going to that school. An upperclassman? Even he felt too old for that title, but no one else around him seemed to object much. What they did notice was his name, and how he shared it with someone else here, and wasn't that such a mysterious coincidence?

It couldn't be, he thinks at first, but then he sees a familiar (disgustingly so) figure headed towards the roof, and he follows.

If only for answers.]

...clearing your head, Emiya Shirou?

bruce banner ☢ marvel cinematic

[hulk]

[ Bruce Banner is a middle-aged high school teacher in a small town, advising a few of the nerdier student groups after the final bell (i.e. A/V club, D&D, science club, etc.). Still can't cook, still fails at people in general. Can be bachelor or in established relationship depending on scenario you want to play out! Choice is totally up to tagger. ]

teddy altman ⚹ young avengers ⚹ m/m

[nothulk]

[ Just your average high school student, on a couple varsity sports teams - basketball, football, lacrosse - and doing middling to okay in terms of grades. Still gay but less green. Tagger's choice for scenario! ]

[tesselate]

[Things kept going wrong, and the more wrong they went, the more the desire grew. It wasn't conscious, but powers based on wishes didn't have to be. The desire became louder and louder and louder until it escaped. Until they were all powerless. Until they couldn't remember. After all, a life remembering powers but not having them would be cruel - a different reality where they never existed seemed safer.

Billy remembered, though, and he supposed somewhere his powers were still locked away, it seemed impossible that he could get rid of his own powers with a spell, because then it would fade, wouldn't it? And stop working. And maybe people remember, but he doesn't know. All he knows is that it's what he wanted, right? Even if he didn't mean to cast it, it's what he wanted.

Billy takes a couple extra steps to catch up with Teddy after school - they're still together, how could any reality he would wish for not have them be?]

You should come over to watch Game of Thrones this weekend.

["Come over" - it slips out like it's natural, like Teddy isn't living with him. That Teddy's mother is still alive, that he'd finally gotten that right somehow.]