hadriel_logs | Event Log: Memories Past

Event Log: Memories Past

Who: Everyone
What: Memory Share Event!
Where: All around the city
When: November 14th-20th
Warnings: Please remember to tag all warnings for memory shares!

Have you ever looked through someone else's eyes? Heard through their ears, spoken with their tongue? The gods have tried to teach some of you empathy, but it's time you learned the hard way, exactly what the others here have been through. For a week, every time you brush skin to skin with someone, you'll experience a memory of theirs: happy, sad, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that it feels real to you.

The first touch may come as a surprise- it lasts only for a split second but may feel like an eternity, where you're trapped in someone else's memory. After that, it could be more expected, and some may even figure out how to control it and share specific scenes from their past with others. Or, you might wear gloves and long sleeve shirts for awhile, nobody's judging.

Maybe curtail the handholding for awhile- or go right ahead, if that's your thing. After all, you never really know somebody unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, right?

► This log covers November 14th-20th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you die in a memory, you don't die in real life, but if you do die in real life please let us know here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kaiba can be found in most of his usual haunts. He's most often at his workspace in the lab. He's also often found in the game room making sure Atem hasn't taken his top spots in the leaderboards again. Knowing that they'll be moving again soon, he can also be found in the shops preparing for if they end up on the ice planet.

Pick a memory and I’ll respond with it when your character touches him. I’m flexible with the memories, so let me know if you’d rather I not include certain content. Contact me by PM, plurk

junabi, discord IonizedThread#6948, or on the OOC thread if you want to plot.

Home-schooling with adoptive father (CW: Child Abuse)

What I call the death/abandonment montage. Select one or all: Mom, Dad, Aunt, Step-Father, Atem (CW: Family Death, Suicide)

Death T. Aka the time that Kaiba built an amusement park of death including mercenaries and serial killers because he lost a card game. Choose T1 – T5 or let me surprise you. (CW: Violence, death, attempted murder)

Penalty Games – Kaiba’s experienced a few. Options: being murdered by every monster in his deck, piecing together a shattered heart (literally), soul stuck in a trading card.

Wildcard – I’ll surprise you.

With Hope's announcement, it was obvious that getting geared was the most important thing lately. Atem roams the stores more often, getting his little hands on anything he can, not only clothes, however. Little artifacts or other tools. This time he's trying to see if this coat fits him, but it's way too big for him, it's awfully noticeable, it also is heavy... How does Kaiba manage? It's not like Atem goes around half naked but he cannot bear the thought of wearing more than two or three layers; his winters at Domino would not compare to whatever subzero temperatures a planet covered in ice would bring.

Maybe he had chosen wrong.

Kaiba had been to several stores already had a small selection under his arms. The shops always had something, but it was always time consuming to find exactly what you were looking for. For someone who only wore long sleeves and high collars, it could take a day to find something his size and plain enough for his taste.

Kaiba enters the next store and pauses when he sees Atem. The clinic had taken care of the broken nose from their last fight. He was almost impressed that Atem had actually been able to do it. Guess those muscles aren't just for show. Retreat wasn't an option, and he had a lot of ground to make up after his last defeat. He put on his most superior expression, and walked past Atem. It might have looked like he didn't even see him, except for the taunt, "Dead people shop now?"

As usual, it is rather easy to spot kaiba from even the corner of his eyes. Atem doesn't immediately turn to look at him, he had actually been avoiding him ever since that day, it was probably easy to see that he didn't even make any effort to keep his score at the arcade. He knows it's not something he can avoid forever, nor he wants to.

The comment was more hurtful than Atem wished to accept, he had lost it (again, not that he remembered the first time) and had hurt his friend. But when he looks up at him there is no sign whatsoever of what he had done. Surely he went to the clinic to have it fixed. Good.

He still feels terrible about it.

"Kaiba— wait." It is him who attempts to stop him now and he goes for his hand.

Kaiba stops when Atem calls out to him. Atem manages to grab his hand before he cross his arms.

Five-year-old Seto heard the front door open before he was entirely awake. He’d fallen asleep in his parent’s bed. Mom had been in bed non-stop for weeks, and he’d been sleeping there to keep her company while dad was at work. Last night she woke up in the middle of the night and she and dad had rushed to the hospital. He’d asked if he could go too when mom was still in bed. She’d just kissed his forehead and told him he was better waiting for his new brother at home. He threatened not to fall asleep until they got home if they didn’t take him with, but it didn’t work.

It was day now, so he must have slept anyway. If they were home, that meant that they must have the brother they promised him with them! He jumped out of the bed and ran down the stairs to the front door in excitement. He was stopped from running up to hug his dad by his aunt. He didn’t remember her showing up. They must have called her to watch him the night before. She looked tired and angry. Dad looked…Seto didn’t know what dad looked like. He had never seen that expression on his face before. He didn’t even seem to notice that Seto was there.

A five year old can’t be ignored for long, and one as curious as Seto. “Is that him?” he gestured towards the bundle in his Dad’s arms. He smiled at his dad, not sure what was wrong but trying to cheer him up. That’s what you were supposed to do right? It’s what mom always did for him.

His dad snapped out of it for a moment, and almost smiled. “Yes,” he said. “This is your brother. Would you like to meet him?”

Seto smiled wider and took the baby from his dad, listening to and following all instructions about how to hold him while his aunt protested in the background that he was too young. He holds on to him perfectly just to prove her wrong. He’s amazed by the new baby and smiles with his dad for one perfect moment. “He looks like mom, but really tiny.” he says happily. “Where is mom? Is she getting breakfast?”

The perfect moment breaks, and all expression leaves his dad’s face. He walks out of the room silently. Seto’s aunt takes the baby out of his arms and follows after him chiding him for not saying anything. Seto stands alone in the hall wondering what he did wrong.

Unaware of that passed between them, he shakes the hand off, crossing his arms and looks at him expectantly. They'd had one conversation through text where they both pretended nothing happened. He was curious to see if Atem going to try that face-to-face as well.

Atem's grip is mild, his fingers barely clasping around Kaiba's when he can see it. It's so easy to recognize the small child, it's the spitting image of his olver self, just, very, very much smaller. The older man, it is not hard to say who it is either, he looks awfully a lot like Kaiba, except for his eyes.

His brother? Is that baby Mokuba? That expression on his father when Kaiba wonders about his mother... Atem has seen it before in his own father whenever he was reminded of his queen. So, that's what happened? Why is he witnessing this?

At last, it is over, and Atem can only look up at Kaiba without really looking at him.

"What was that...?" Did Kaiba see it too?

"What was what?" he asks, eyes narrowing. "You stopped me."

He didn't see it. Any other day Atem would probably ignore it but, after what happened that day, maybe he should just be a bit more honest with what is going on.

"I saw you." Atem takes a look at his own fingers as he speaks. "You were but a child and someone else was there, I think it was your father. There was a woman too, and... your brother was but a baby." Atem swallows, allowing a small pause before going on. "Your mother... She didn't come back, did she?"

Kaiba was used to a lot of weird things from Atem, but this was new. Why would he be talking about his mother? No one had asked about her since the orphanage. After he'd taken Kaiba's name, no one had cared about any parent except for Gozaburo.

He's shocked enough to move before thinking. He takes several steps back, one arm bent in front of him, the other to the side; to fight or protect even he didn't know. "Wha..Why...Why would you ask that out of nowhere?!" The shock was already being replaced by his protective anger.

"Told you, I just saw it." It's rare to see Kaiba lose his cool like this, he's seen it happen before but it is too sudden, there was no way it wouldn't happen.

"I didn't meant to, but... I guess keeping it from you wouldn't be fair either." He's probably not only talking about what he just saw, not that it might be easy to tell at the moment. "I'm sorry."

Nothing Atem was saying made sense to him. There's no way he could see anything like that. What, was he supposed to believe the 'gods' now had home movies lying around? Was this payback? Repeating rumors he'd learned from Yugi? That made much more sense.

"I don't know what kind of game you're trying to play," he growls. "but it ends now."

He heads towards the exit behind Atem, purposefully bumping into him instead of going around.

It is just as he expected. He doesn't want this to end like that, while he doesn't attempt to stop him again, he does try to get in his way.

"It is not a--"

It's but glimpses of images mashed all together without much sense, infinite like broken mirrors facing each other. But most of them show the same thing: an immense maze of sandstone, stairs and doors, gloomy and cold, but over all, lonely, there is no one there, not a single soul but Atem's.

It's easy to lose track of time, there is nothing out there that can make it feel like day pass by, hours, days, years.

There is Atem, or it looks like him, even if he's wearing but a simple shendyt, or wearing Yugi's clothes, or sometimes nothing at all. He walks aimlessly, checking every door only to face an overwhelming emptiness, over and over again; he checks ever corner, he climbs every gravity defying stair, but there is nothing to find. There is Atem, sitting at a mockery of a throne, made of cold, dampened stone inside a room that looks more like a forgotten tomb than anything else.

Some more glimpses flash at times, the face of an horrifying god is what can be seen, it speaks in a language that only very few know now, there is another flash and Atem is screaming in pain, tortured by that demon in ways that a mortal body would not be able to stand.

But then, there he is again, alone, his face in his hands unable to face the void any longer. And again, him just chuckling at himself because what it might be better than screaming and letting himself go crazy. But maybe he already is.

He doesn't sleep, he doesn't eat, he's not there, and no one knows he's there either way. He screams into the void, his hands on his head curled around his crazy mane, who am I?, again in that forgotten language, where am I... please...

And at last, there he is again, silently sitting at the end of some of those many stairs, waiting. Simply waiting. And everything fades.

"--game, Kaiba! When will you, after all this time, start trusting me!?" He attempts to follow him wherever he goes this time. It's enough.

Edited 2018-11-18 02:07 (UTC)

It's rare to see Kaiba surprised, especially twice in a row. Even more rare, is it not being immediately masked in some way. The memory only took a second to transmit, but Kaiba had felt the sense of eons. It reminded him of the second penalty game. Existing outside of time until he was able to put his heart back together. Except, his time had been peaceful, that memory was anything but.

He doesn't even make it out of the shop. He turns around to stare at Atem, wide-eyed and lost. "What was..." he trails off.

A hallucination? Like during Battle City? Parts of it had seemed vaguely familiar. The demon, and it's language.

"What did you do?" he accuses.

Atem can see the change in Kaiba's demeanor, it's a little unnerving, but it does remind him of the terrified look he had when they both shared that vision from the past. It's the only time he's seen him so alarmed.

"I didn't..." He trails off, it suddenly starts making sense, if only because of what Atem had witnessed before. "Did you see something?" Was it something different to what he had seen before?

Kaiba takes a step back and shakes his head, as if that will get the memory out. The scenes themselves were fine. Even those of torture. (He'd been ripped to shreds by his own monsters night after night for months, he could handle being shown torture.) It was the endlessness that he couldn't shake.

"You..." it's said somewhere between an answer and an accusation.

Atem's brow furrows at the answer, but more at Kaiba's reaction. What is that supposed to mean? He keeps staring at the other for a moment, unsure of what to do but also trying to give him a moment—if he presses further Kaiba will just close down and leave. He'd do the same.

"What did I do now?" He finally says after that moment of silence, he doesn't sound too demanding. At least he's aware that a lot of weird tends to happen around him.

A few more deep breaths and Kaiba returns to his normal stance and glare. The only evidence that he is still shaken is that his eyes are slightly wider than usual, and his breathing just a little faster. One of the clothing displays must have been fascinating, because Kaiba looks at it instead of Atem.

"Before Domino," his voice is low and even. "Yugi claimed you lived in the puzzle."

Two could play at non sequiturs.

Even if Kaiba is not looking at him, he might notice the small flinch that shakes Atem's body.

"I don't know if you'd call that living but, yeah. Is... Is that what you saw?" He tries to keep his tone even, but he's clearly a little more than surprised. Yugi had been inside the puzzle, but he's never seen him react as Kaiba did. What did he see?

He notices, but he doesn't outwardly react. He doesn't know how he knows that's the puzzle. He tells himself it's the logical assumption based on what schools teach about pyramids, and what he knows about Atem.

"I didn't say that I saw anything," he retorts. He needs more time to think it through. He's not sure he accepts that he saw anything at all. Especially if that means Atem might have also seen something.

There he goes again, denying everything that does not align with his perfect little world. For someone so brilliant, to be this unaccepting... Why?

He lets out a small sigh.

"For how long will you dance to this tune, Kaiba?"

Edited 2018-11-18 04:00 (UTC)

"I don't know what you're talking about." He replies automatically. This is one of their oldest's arguments. One they'll probably never stop fighting.

It did get him to stop ignoring Atem in favor of trying to stare him down. "I got distracted for a moment. I'm over it now."

"Don't lie to me. You know and you keep doing this. What I told you on your birthday was true, I respect you, I actually, admire you. Your duelist abilities, those amazing skills you have, how you keep me on my toes and how you always force me to try better. Without you, I wouldn't be the same. I trust you. But... I just... Why do you even want me back at Domino, Kaiba? What's the point of it if he's going to just be like this all the time? Weird things happen around me and yet you keep coming back while you're ready to deny everything that comes out of my mouth?"

Despite of the obvious reproach that is the whole speech, Atem's tone doesn't really reflect it, he's just confused, he just wants to understand.

Edited 2018-11-18 04:19 (UTC)

Kaiba swallowed hard several times during Atem's speech. It wasn't any easier to hear the second time. It was actually harder to hear. The first time it could be ignored as they were both drinking. This time they were sober, it was said deliberately and Kaiba was already thrown. He could't trust this praise. Nothing was given freely, there was always a catch. Was it supposed to be payment to answer his questions? It's not enough, and Atem gave him the perfect out to ignore them.

"All I heard is you admit that you are trying to do something," he says. He doesn't wait for the response. He just scoffs and tries to leave again. It doesn't count as a retreat if he has the last word.

"Stop running away, Kaiba!" Atem tries to stop him again, he grabs his arm, yanking him as hard as he can, effectively making the taller man turn slightly, but just to secure him from attempting to leave again Atem reaches for his other hand yet again.

"Just tell me."

When Atem's hand touches Kaiba, he's treated to several memories all at once. The flow from one to another as though they were one, with only the difference in ages and location showing that they are actually separate.

Death makes much more sense at 8. Seto sits on the mat next to his father’s casket, next to a 3 year old Mokuba. Seto holds onto his younger brother’s hand and gentle consoles him. “It’s okay,” he says quietly so he can’t be heard by anyone else.

Mokuba looks at him through tears and a thumb in his mouth. Seto thought he’d outgrown that habit, but his brother was upset so he wasn’t going to stop him. They sat quietly until their aunt came around to take her position as bereaved family. She took Mokuba’s thumb out of his mouth and told them to sit properly before everyone came in. Mokuba looked like he might protest, but Seto looked at him and shook his head while doing what their aunt had asked. She’d had to put this together, and his dad had explained the importance of the ceremony when he’d put it together for his mother.

“What’s gonna happen now?” Mokuba asked with a three-year-old’s lisp.

“Don’t worry,” Seto told him, risking his aunt’s ire to hold his hand again. “We’ve still got family. We’ll be okay.”

- - -

The door slammed behind them and the car took off. The bitch couldn’t even be bothered to walk them into the building.

“I hope you crash,” Seto cursed at her under his breath.

“What?” Mokuba asked looking up at him. His eyes had been wide and scared ever since their aunt had told them they were no longer welcome. Seto’s life had turned into trying to keep him crying, when that’s all he wanted to do as well.

“Nothing,” he said putting on a brave face, and staring down their new home. Just them and every other unwanted child they could fit into a single building. He re-adjusted his back-back and smiled when Mokuba mimicked him. He squeezed the tiny hand in reassurance. A smiling woman came out to greet them, and looked around like she expected an adult to talk to as well. Seto just stared at her expressionless until she invited them in.

- - -

Seto, faced down his father across the long boardroom table. He’d won. 51 shares, and the entire board literally standing behind him. He’d stolen the company from the once great man he’d been forced to call father. No more words needed to be said. If he tried, he knew he would just start laughing and wouldn’t be able to stop.

“Watch carefully Seto!” Gozaburo Kaiba shouted as the reality sank in. The crazed look on his face seemed to take on a life of its own with his last words. “This is what a loser deserves!”

Gozaburo threw himself at the floor to ceiling windows. Whether a design flaw, or purposeful mechanic, they broke under his weight and he fell the 30 floors to the ground.

Kaiba stood up calmly and walked over to the broken window. He could see what used to be his father on the ground. The screams of the nearby pedestrians were too quiet to be heard that far up, but he knew they must be the way they were running away.

“To lose is to die,” Kaiba smiled cruelly as the blood splatter grew around the broken man far below. “Thank you for the lesson, father.”

He didn't move from that spot until the police arrived for statements. The sight below was too glorious.

- - -

Kaiba walked to the open door of the mansion and dismissed Isono silently. It was just Yugi and his friends; there was no need for him. He hadn’t seen the group since Battle City. He’d gone off to America to start Kaiba Land, and had only recently returned. He could tell something was wrong, at least by their standards. Whether Kaiba actually cared remained to be seen.

“What do you want?” he asked shortly, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed. He may be willing to talk to them, but he wasn’t about to invite them in.

They all shifted nervously. Anzu and the tall one (Honda?) looked sad. Even the mutt looked apologetic. As always, Yugi was the one he focused on. It only took one look to realize it wasn’t the right Yugi. That got his attention, and he tensed. He rarely dealt with this Yugi.

“Kaiba…” Yugi said, and then trailed off. He swallowed as though gathering his courage and then looked him in the face with the some of the same confidence of the other Yugi. “Atem…the pharaoh is gone.”

Kaiba stared at him. He made no secret that he didn’t believe any of the magical bullshit they always tried to push, but he knew who they were talking about. He’d seen the pharaoh during the hallucinations in their duel. He saw the difference in this Yugi. And the name: he recognized it somehow.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he snapped. The mutt looked for a moment like he was going to tell him to back off, but caught himself and just looked sad instead.

“We got his memories back,” Yugi continued as though Kaiba hadn’t yelled. “His name’s Atem. We had to duel as part of a ceremony. And he lost. He couldn’t stay. He had to go back, Kaiba. It’s where he belongs.”

Kaiba couldn’t hear the tone that suggested Yugi was trying to convince himself as well as him. Anzu did and put her hand on Yugi's shoulder to comfort him. Kaiba stared at all of them trying to not let his confusion show. It must not have worked because the entire loser squad looked at him sadly. No one had looked him like that since his father’s (his real father’s) funeral. They were… they were pitying him! How dare they!

He drew in a breath at that understanding, standing tall and glaring at all of them. They thought this was a noble death? An accident? Something unavoidable? No, he knew what this was. If there was a duel and he lost, he must have wanted to lose. This was a suicide, he knew it.

“Whatever,” he said sounding as wooden and uncaring as he could. He slammed the door in their pitying faces, and ignored any continued knocking. One look from him sent a nearby maid scrambling to find something dust on the other side of the manor. There was a moment of stillness, and then he grabbed a nearby vase and threw it at a wall. The resulting crash was satisfying, but not nearly enough.

“To lose is to die.” He scoffs and storms off to somewhere else in the mansion, leaving the broken vase and dying flowers in his wake.

"Going to try to punch me again?" he asks cruelly. He didn't blame Atem for it the last time, but guilt was a weakness and he'd use it to his advantage.

Event Log: Memories Past

Seto Kaiba | OTA

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