estoria | (no subject)

Who: Ankh & OPEN for event catch-all. Specific event end prompts for Cole, Hikari, and Eiji.
When: 7/19 - 7/23
Where: Various
What: Memory shenanigans, and then what happens when all the forgotten things come crashing back.
Rating/Warning: Ankh having a total breakdown? There will be a lot of unpleasant memories coming back, so talk of violence and death and things generally going wrong.
Notes: If you're tagging in for general event stuff, ability permissions here and also let me know if you have a preference for memories that are good, bad, or just ridiculous.

Open: 7/19-22 – Around

[Ankh is convinced that stupid little fox is taunting him. Even he can't see where it's hiding most of the time, and for some reason whenever he catches sight of the thing, it's almost always about to go run over someone's foot.]

Oi!

[Too late.]

Cole: 7/23, around noon – Streets, near the zoo

[Ankh hadn't been looking forward to being stuck in a public place that morning, what with the fox liking to cause problems. He manages to spend most of time in the company of just birds, though, which works out well enough. The fox isn't as present today, anyway, seeming fainter every time he catches sight of it.

As he leaves the zoo to get lunch at one of the restaurants nearby, the fox fades out of existence in the corner of his vision – and in the same instant, all the things he had forgotten over the past few days come back to him. Immediately in that moment, this day ceases to be pleasant. He knew he'd lost some things, maybe important things, even, but it had been more than he thought and oh, yes, those were important memories and yesterday was a lie. The things that come crashing back to him now are every reason he had to be wary, every mistake he ever made.

It hits him all at once, and all of a sudden, it's like he can't even keep himself standing. He's by an alley and he staggers around the corner, eyes wide as he slumps against a wall. The only plus side of this is that there weren't many people nearby, and he can at least pretend that no one saw that.]

Hikari: 7/23, after the above - Somewhere in town

[Right now, Ankh doesn't want to deal with people, especially people who happen to have previously talked to him about wiping memories and thinking it's a good thing. When he leaves, he flies, rather than walks; there will be fewer people to bother him in the air. It's only when he finds somewhere that seems presently unpopulated that he lands, collapsing to his knees and trying to force himself to breathe normally.

Unfortunately for him, he's still not as alone as he hopes.]

Eiji: 7/23, after the above – Their apartment

[Ankh wasn't supposed to be done with work this early, and Eiji knows it, but he doesn't care; he's going home. Clearly something happened, because he doesn't even say anything as he comes in, looks at Eiji with a complete mess of not-quite-readable emotions on his face, then climbs up to his bed before falling face first onto it.

No, he is not interested in talking. Leave him alone.]

Threaded | Flat

[It's hard to say whether Cole had forgotten anything. Maybe he had, but he was always forgetting anyway. It wouldn't have been any different, really. He couldn't remember, but that isn't all that odd for him. All in all, he'd come out of it relatively unscathed--or, at the least, no better or worse than he usually is.

Maybe things are calming down now, too. He still just listens, attempting to help where he can. They don't always let him, but he tries.

He tries to remember people, though, even if he forgets most other things. And he does remember this man. Perhaps that's part of why he appears next to him, seemingly out of nowhere, close enough to reach out a hand to steady him, but he doesn't touch. He knows better.

Then again, it's mostly because he looks, sounds, feels like he needs help, too.]

Stolen and silent, pain that pulses and pounds, plying for playing. They shouldn't play games. Are the shadows gone? Or did they come back?

[Eiji...well, in some ways, he feels like he's back at square one--and all the way back to the way he was when he returned from the war.

But other people have to come first, and it at least gets his own problems off his mind for about five minutes before Ankh wordlessly goes to bed.]

Do you need anything?

[No. He certainly wasn't.]

...are you okay?

[When Ankh looked up--if he chose to look up--he would see the eight year old girl standing nearby. Close enough for her words to reach him, but at a distance that respected personal space. She was alone. Or appeared to be. There was no sign of her usual feline companion.]

[What there were signs of, on the other hand, were those dark circles that had been shadowing her eyes for the past several days. A sure sign that, for whatever reason, Hikari still wasn't getting enough sleep, and that incident in the park where she'd passed out in the middle of her afternoon with Tailmon hadn't been an isolated incident.]

Cole: 7/23, around noon – Streets, near the zoo

Apartment

Hikari: 7/23