middleofsomewhere | Memory Cave

Peter didn't like the first memory. He may be a super hero but he rarely actually sees anyone dead because he's usually there before that happens. Worse, the man in the first memory had been shot and it had stirred up some unpleasant emotions-sure he'd recognized some of the people in the memory but he'd rather keep to himself on that pretend that it didn't happen.

The second one sends him on a roller coaster of emotions and he comes out of it feeling like he's just had a bout of emotional whiplash. He recognized the boy in the memory-he's sure that's what it was even if it wasn't his.

He shakes his head as he comes back to his own mind and notices he's in some kind of cave. With no exit. "Uh..." He glances around again, maybe there's somewhere he can make an exit? He glances over at Ran and offers a small, uncertain smile.

"Yeah. Hey." He offers not at all helpful. "Uh.. Funny meeting you here."

Ran is considerably less relaxed than he is, on her feet and already running her hands along the wall. There can't not be an exit.

. . . Right?

"I'm sure there's a way out of here . . . We got in here somehow, right?"

Though how, she doesn't know, and that's what's disconcerting. She's trying to sound reassuring to him (while trying to reassure herself in the process) but this is definitely anxiety-inducing, and he can probably catch the tremor in her voice.

Peter's no stranger to anxiety but maybe because he so used to being anxious he's much better at hiding it. He gets up though, because he can tell she's nervous and moves over to the wall to inspect it a little more.

"I could try and make an exit but uh..." He glances up towards the ceiling, not too keen on the idea of it falling.

"Well, they had to have put in here for a reason right? Maybe we just have to figure that out-like uh.. one of those escape room things?"

"Escape room things?" she echoes, glancing up at him. In the back of her mind, she notes that it's possible to see in the first place, and that in itself is strange. After all, who would bother to light a cave?

It does seem to indicate that there should be something of importance here. Or something done.

"Maybe a secret exit, too?" Her fingers are continuing to feel along the rock, searching for any possible irregularities.

"yeah, maybe." Peter agrees, running his own hand along the wall. "But maybe there's something we're supposed to do before the exit opens? I mean there's not really a whole lot here so maybe not." He looks up, briefly wondering if he might find something if he climbs the walls but if this is a thing aimed at team work then Probably not.

"So uh, what were you doing before you were... ya know, here?"

Ran would fully support him going up to look. Maybe teamwork is involved, but maybe there's something up there that would help?

There's certainly not much down here, anyway. So far her fingers have yielded nothing. It feels like one solid rock face. Otherwise there's just the empty room, the light, and Peter himself. Not encouraging. Her brows knit as she tries not to let worry rise any further. Again, there has to be a way out.

Right?

"Maybe . . ." she replies to Peter, and tries to focus in on his words. That might help. "I was in one of the hot springs . . . I'd tried to convince Conan-kun to come too -- that's normal for kids at home -- but he squirmed off somewhere. Where were you?"

Yeah, he could see why Conan might be uncomfortable about that and thinks back to the memory he'd just witnessed. If it was hers, then it stood to reason that maybe the memory is why they're here? If that's it, then this is gonna be uncomfortable because he knows the truth about Conan and he promised not to tell anyone.

"No where exciting. I was hanging out with Mr Stark and playing video games in his hotel room. He was complaining about it-me not the hot springs. But uh... right before I was here I had this kinda uh... thing-I uh... actually I think it was like something that happened in your life because-uh before we actually got to the island there was this moment that felt kinda like a flash back and Conan was there-and Sera and I think I saw Ai? Anyways, it was on a train but someone had gotten um-had gotten shot."

Oh.

Oh.

Ran flushes -- though why is anyone's guess. It's not like Peter has really seen anything embarrassing or personal.

. . . Though to be fair, it had been in her head, and now somehow it's in his. It's like someone has dipped into her mind, taken without permission.

Her mind flicks back to the images she'd seen before -- the man with the blades, the other man advancing on her, annoyed and irritated.

The images just a few minutes ago, before she'd awoken here.

"That's . . . maybe before I came here?" Maybe, anyway. She does see a lot of murders. If Sera was involved, though, it seems like it would have been more recent. "Just before I came here -- within the last few hours. Someone killed him and made it look like a suicide when it wasn't."

She's . . . weirdly calm about that. Less calm about all the things that came after it. Murder is still shocking and unpleasant, but it doesn't generally provoke the same reactions that it did before Shinichi left.

If he received her memory, though, does that mean--?

"I think . . . maybe I saw something for you, too." She's paused now, one hand still resting on the wall. "A man floating in the air with blades pointed at him. Someone had control of the blades somehow and was threatening him. Another man advanced on me. He was angry that I was there; I had to placate him to let me stay and help."

. . . And now that she thinks about it, there were those words: "There can't be a friendly neighborhood Spiderman without a neighborhood."

It was Peter. Now she's sure of it.

Maybe before she came? That kinda implies she'd seen this kinda thing more than just the once. Damn. Now's not the time to be impolite though ans he just listens to what she'd seen.

"Oh, yeah. That's definitely where I was right before I turned up on the train- and that guy that was upset? That's Mr Stark. He tired to send me home once before we were in space and then well, that didn't really happen so I had to help him save Doctor Strange-the guy that was being tortured. He was a wizard and the people from space came to steal his necklace. And Mr Stark told me to save the wizard, so that's what I was doing."

Edited 2020-08-17 02:35 (UTC)

Waitwaitwait, Peter -- you're losing her. That's plain on her face; she's staring at him. There are at least three different literary genres crashing together here, for one thing; wizards don't usually go in the same sentence with "space," let alone with superheroes.

". . . What?" she manages. She has so many questions with what he's just said, she's not even sure where to begin. "Maybe . . . slow down and start from the beginning?"

"Oh." It's okay, he's kinda used to that reaction. But when she says the beginning does she mean like the day or what led to the invasion in the first place?

"Uh... okay. So on my world there's these uh.. stones? They're called infinity stones and they all have these different powers and this guy-uh Thanos-I guess decided that he wanted save the universe by destroying half of it? I'm a little fuzzy on the details but why wouldn't you just double universes resources? Anyways-so uh Doctor Strange-the Wizard-had the um the Time Stone and Thanos sent his lackys to go get it. They abducted Doctor Strange so I followed and Mr Stark tried to send me home but then I got stuck to the side of the ship."

This is probably a decent starting point, really. Just for a girl from a universe where there's no magic, superheroes/supervillains, and humans in space haven't gone farther than the moon, it's all a bit mind-boggling that this exists for someone else. Within the same world. At the same time.

Just when she thought she'd started getting used to mind-bending.

Okay. Going to try to deal with things as they stand. Deal with the details as they are and not get too lost in the headiness of everything that doesn't exist in her own plane of reality. There are some stones that have magic powers. Someone wants them who has very bad intentions, and he lives . . . in space? He goes after one of the stones, which is owned by a wizard. (Or rather, sends others to do it.) They kidnapped the wizard and tried to take him back to space with them. Peter followed because he's Spiderman, but Mr. Stark tried to send him home, and--

Her eyebrows quirk a little. "You 'got stuck'?"

Look, she doesn't know Peter very well yet, but the words in his memory indicate a lot more intentionality than a passive "I got stuck."

"Just 'got stuck'?"

"Yeah, stuck." Peter nods as though it were a perfectly normal occurrence. "It's part of my powers-I can stick to any surface-'cause you-part Spider-sorta. My DNA just got kinda messed up when I got bit by a radioactive spider and now I have spider powers." Hence the name Spider-Man.

"Anyways, I can usually control it but to do that I have to relax and like-if you're on the outside of a spaceship that's leaving Earth's atmosphere it's a little hard to do that."

Edited 2020-08-17 12:57 (UTC)

"And not at all because you wanted to stay." Ran's not sure he's being honest with that -- or maybe not honest with himself. It sounds more like a Shinichi excuse -- evasion, deflection . . . so honestly, she's amused.

Peter opens his mouth at that, hesitating on how exactly he wants to answer that. "Well... I mean... who would pass up the chance to go to space?" He shrugs in a 'no big deal' sorta way. "From what I understand though-Thanos does end up with all six stones and uh... destroys half the population of the universe and Mr Stark uh... he kinda-well he does um... Sacrifice himself to-to save the universe." He admits before trying to just shrug that off.

"Um... what about about you-what exactly were you doing before you ended up on the train? I mean other than uh... you know. The murder."

Her eyes widen a little, and her hands wave. "E-Eh -- you can't just change the subject like that!"

She's not always good about talking about herself anyway, but it's true -- tossing off detail like that like it's casual when it absolutely isn't can't be permitted. It's like blurting the ending and slamming the book shut before the story is really done -- disconcerting and awkward at best, and almost cruel when the ending cuts like a knife slash and you know it's real.

"What happened?"

Murder can wait.

He blinks a little in surprise and then just shakes his head. "I don't know exactly-Mr Stark is like five years ahead of me but from what I understand is that Thanos gets all the infinity stones and because he has them all he has to do is snap-" He snaps his fingers.

"And it wipes out half the population of the universe so like five years later the Avengers hatch a plan to get the stones back and bring everyone back but in order to keep him-uh Thanos from getting the stones Mr Stark had to-to snap Thanos out of existence which uh... that much power was too much for him. But now that I know that... I wonder if I could do the snap..."

Admittedly Ran had expected more of the lead up to this ending, not the ending itself, and it's pretty grim. She stares back at him, wordless for long moments. How . . . does anyone live in a world like that? Where people can come from space, make entire swaths of people disappear with a snap?

But aside from that . . .

The image of a little boy, rescued by a man in an iron suit, flickers through her mind. The man then and the man in the first vision . . . they have to -- can only be -- the same. It's intuition; after all, in the second vision, she can't see the man's face. But she's absolutely certain of it.

Softly, very softly, "Learning what happened . . . I can't imagine how that must have been for you." Blue eyes graze his. "You look up to him so much. . . . You love him. Don't you?"

"Love" feels like an inexact word. It's correct, but it isn't. There isn't a word she knows, that feels right for that intense admiration, hero worship, need.

Peter hesitates a moment, trying to think exactly how to answer that before he nods. Because he does-He loves Tony Stark like family-He is family and that scares Peter because he knows what happens to Family.

"Yeah. Uh. After my uh.. my-my uncle... um... passed away Mr Stark just kinda... filled the role and uh knowing that it's just gonna happen again isn't uh... isn't really surprising it's more uh... more a feeling of resignment-I guess. Although I don't thinks that's actually a word-more like 'I should have known' but I didn't because Mr Stark is Iron Man-his whole brand is that he's made himself invincible and... he's not. Because no one is." He shrugs.

Ran's eyes sting, and she shakes her head, looking away. "I didn't mention it yet, but I saw something else before we woke up here -- him saving you when you were little. You've looked up to him all your life, and to learn that . . . I'm so sorry."

"It's... nothing I'm not used to." Peter looks off to another part of the cave to keep himself from crying and can't help the small laugh at the mention of Tony saving him when he was little. "Yeah-at the Stark Expo. That was probably the best night of my life." he says fondly, wiping the corner of his eye.

"I uh.. I saw something else from you, too. I-I think it was in London? I don't know for sure sure I think they're the only ones with red telephone booths."

Give Ran just a minute. The tears definitely come at that point, because at that point she absolutely feels for him. Loving someone, admiring them so intensely, and now knowing that you're going to lose them . . . that squeezes her heart hard, and a couple of tears slide down, patter down on the rock.

Maybe it speaks to her own fear too in some ways, even though it isn't the same -- the ever-present fear that she'll lose Shinichi in the end.

She lives with uncertainty. He lives with certainty. She can't imagine what she'd do in the same situation.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "It must be so hard." Blinking up at him, tears still clinging to her lashes: "I'm glad you've gotten to spend so much time with him here."

Her breath intakes a little more sharply at his mention of the second memory. "O-Oh?"

London. Her mind flashes through possibilities.

She really is starting to cry and it's making it very, very hard for Peter not to cry. There's uncomfortable lump in the back of his throat and he just tries to breathe passed it.

"Hey-Hey don't cry." He moves a little closer to a put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "It's okay-I'm okay. It sucks and I'm not looking forward to it but I have him now, right? And I learned a long time ago when something bad happens you just have to keep going. So, I'll get through it. I'm really, really good at getting back up again, okay? I'll be okay." He says gently, though feeling a little weird about it all since he's trying to assure her that he's going to be okay.

He's definitely not telling her about the fact both his parents died when was little or the fact he made a bad call that inadvertently caused his uncle's death. He takes the chance for a subject change though the moment it's offered and just smiles, lowering his arm.

"Yeah, uh yeah-I think his name was Shinichi? Told you that he liked you and mentioned something about zero-which he was right about, by the way-about it being where everything starts from, I mean-I mean you probably already knew that. Uh-He-he seems nice."

Edited 2020-08-23 03:04 (UTC)

He shouldn't have to be comforting her, and that makes Ran feel worse. He's the one facing this, after all, and now, however inadvertently, she's adding to it. "I-I'm okay. Really." She reaches up to brush at her eyes again, because once tears start, they're always hard to control. "This . . ." She tries to laugh, a little self-deprecating. "I feel for people, so I do this. Shinichi always told me I cried a lot. I guess I do. But this was supposed to be about you, not me. I just hope . . . when you need to talk about it, when you need to feel something, you do. That's important."

She's quiet for a moment at the revelation of what exactly he must have seen . . . and slowly blooms red.

Peter frowns a little because it sounds little to him like she's learned that crying for other people is embarrassing-while he's not quite that empathetic he does still feel for other people. "Honestly, sometimes, I wish I could feel a little less but it is what it is, I guess. But I don't think that crying so easily is a bad thing-it just means you feel things more deeply and you should be proud of that level of empathy." He tries to reassure her and then watches as her face turns a very interesting shade of red. He can't help but think it's kinda cute.

"You don't have to talk about it, if you don't want-I mean, I'd tell you about my first date but it kinda ended in her dad dropping a warehouse on me because I was against him selling high tech weapons to criminals."

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singlefaith - 2020-08-29 23:07 (UTC) - Expand