Made me promise I'd try to find my way back in this life

[billyrocks]

who: Billy and You
what: Open Catch-all + Memory Sharing
when: Remainder of the Memshare Event (Oct 17-23)
where: In the dreamscape
warnings: Death, blood, violence

i. Fleeing the Master

[Billy is a younger man with a long braid, no facial fair, and bruises around his throat as though someone tried to strangle him. He's panting harshly, eyes big and wild like he can't believe what he just did... yet at the same time he can. Maintaining a death grip on the bloody knife in his hand, he continues to look down at the body of the Master lying at his feet. The Master's fine clothes are filled with holes and tears, and the rug from India is starting to stain red. Eyes that had often looked down at him as though he didn't deserve to live here were now wide open in shock.

Billy should run, but it's as though he's making sure the Master is dead. Making sure he can't get up and hit him ever again. But no sooner does one of the Master's friends burst through the door, gasping in horror at the sight he's greeted with before he yells repeatedly that the Master has been killed.

Finally, Billy's feet move and he sprints out the room, shoving past other servants until he's out of the estate and running into the night, still clutching the knife.]

ii. Quick Draw Ring {CW: Death + an insult that's either racist or homophobic-or both-in the clip}

[Billy stands in a ring, hand resting on his pistol, ready to draw it out. His challenger is bigger than him, looking confident, but Billy isn't fazed. The referee fires his gun and both men fire at the tin cups placed on the fences behind them. Both bullets find their mark, causing the cups to clank loudly.

The challenger laughs and smirks at Billy, spreading his arms, until the referee declares Billy the winner. Now Billy was content with simply walking away, until the man challenges him again, saying they should do it for real.

If he was going to run his mouth like that and get the crowd to pay double for their bets, then Billy wasn't going to back away. He retakes his place in the ring, but this time he slowly removes his hat, revealing the silver pin in his hair, and drops it to the ground. His belt, which held his pistol and knives, follows suit. His challenger really looks sure of himself now, but Billy was going to prove that he didn't them for this.

There's an apprehensive moment of silence before the referee fires his gun again. Swiftly and flawlessly, Billy reaches back for the hair pin and throws it, hitting his opponent between the ribs and right into his heart before he even has time to fire a shot.

It doesn't show on his face, but Billy can't deny the satisfaction that comes with making someone who underestimated him eat their words.]

iii. Trying To Teach Goody Korean

[Billy and Goodnight are resting under the shade of a tree while their horses graze nearby. Billy is speaking different Korean phrases, pausing in between to allow Goody a chance to repeat them, but they end up being butchered by Goody's Southern drawl.]

Stop. [Billy laughs, shaking his head.] You're going to make my ears bleed.

[Goody laughs with him.] All right, Billy. If you feel so smug about it, why don't you try French?

[And Billy does, becoming the one who repeats after Goody. He stumbles over some words, but in his mind he doesn't sound as off as Goody did with the Korean. Eventually, the lesson devolves to a game where both men simply point at the things around them and call each one by name in their respective languages.]

iv. Billy's Death {CW: Death, some blood, and Faraday blowing himself up at the end of the clip.}

[It's hot, even in the shade of the church steeple, and Billy feels his sweaty shirt clinging to his back. Gunshots echo throughout the near-empty town, the dust clouds and dead bodies of townspeople and mercenaries alike its only company. Goody is next to him as they both fire at the men on horseback who are chasing Faraday as he gallops toward the Gatling gun.

"I got him!" Goody shouts once he lands a shot on the last man, just before Billy feels pain ripping through his body as the Gatling gun unleashes its fury on both of them. Their bodies jerk from the sheer force of the bullets, but some of them hit the bell just above them, making it chime like a sorrowful echo. Next thing Billy knows, he's falling on his ass and looking up just in time to see Goody topple out of the steeple, shouting on the way down. He can hear Goody rolling down the roof before a sickening thump signals that his body's landed, right into the graveyard below.

Breathing is suddenly excruciating and Billy tastes metal in his mouth from his own blood. His neck can no longer support his head, but that's when he catches a glimpse of Goody's black flask with the silver fleur-de-lis right next to him. If only he had the strength to reach for it, but he can't even do that anymore.]

Oh, Goody... [Are the last words on his lips before the breath finally leaves his lungs and his eyes lose their light.]

Comments

iii

[bunnyhopped]

[ ... Well, this is new.

Hana has simply resigned herself to the fact, now, that whenever she so much as nods off at her computer due to exhaustion she's going to end up in someone's dream of a memory. Or someone is going to end up in hers. But all the experiences she's had so far have been between herself and someone she'd already known. Usually the memories are on the alarming, tragic end of the spectrum.

This— two guys sitting under a tree with some horses off to the side, dressed in old-timey looking clothes that make them look like they're in some kind of cowboy movie, simply conversing with each other— this has been the mildest one she's seen so far. It's almost... peaceful. Almost more peaceful than being awake and worrying about getting more flashes of memories or trying not to fall asleep, even. She's standing off to the side by some wildflowers, looking on at the scene.

She's only further surprised when she realizes one of the men is speaking in her language, trying to teach the other. Trying to, because whenever the other man tries to say anything back it just sounds like nails on a chalkboard to Hana, and she grimaces. It's not until they switch into French that Hana looks around to try and find whoever's memory it is, and finds a man that she definitely has not met before and who looks like one of the men sitting under the tree. Tilting her head at him quizzically, she says in her native tongue: ]

Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude, but you probably know that none of us have control over this by now, right? What's your name?

[billyrocks]

[The fact that Billy had no defenses to keep strangers from viewing some of his most private moments was unnerving, but at this point he'd decided he would just roll with the punches. When he sees this memory amidst all the tragedy, though, his lips slowly form a sad smile.

The language game had been one of their favorites. Sometimes they would even try to trick each other with words that sounded alike and see if the other could translate it correctly. Though Goody could never get the pronunciation right to speak Korean for himself, he could eventually understand some of the words when Billy spoke them.

Seeing Goody laughing like that made Billy hope that he'd found peace, wherever he was.

He's not as startled when he catches another figure out of the corner of his eye, having learned to expect company in his dreams, until he hears the young woman speak in his mother tongue, fluently. It shouldn't be such a shock, but it is--just because he hasn't heard it spoken to him since he fled the Master.

There's some hesitance before he responds, also speaking in his native tongue:]

My name is Billy Rocks. [That's not his real name, but the Master had thought his real name sounded like Billy, and Rocks was something Billy added after he ran away ("rock" was one of the first English words he learned).] And yours?

[bunnyhopped]

[ She has to narrow her eyes and tilt her head, a bit, when he introduces himself as Billy Rocks. Because that's about as far from a Korean name as you can get; but people around the Quarantine, she's learned, come from so far-flung places and circumstances that she can't disbelieve him or question him. So instead she introduces herself, in turn. ]

Hana Song.

[ With her first name meaning the number one, and her last name meaning "to succeed." A pretty strong name and - as it turns out- apt name. ]

I think you might be the first person I've met here who can speak Korean, too. It looks more like you were in America, though.

[ She's referring to the scene around them. This definitely doesn't look like anywhere she'd know. ]

[billyrocks]

[Billy cracks a small smile.]

And you're the first I've met in years. But you're right, I was in America before arriving here. I came over from Korea when I was a child.

[How long has it been since he last had a conversation in Korean instead of English? Billy can't give an exact date, only an estimate of a very long time. Although America had given him a way out of the political turmoil of his own country and entry to a place with more food, it had also taken away much from him. Survival was made easier if one assimilated with American customs than fight against them, as Billy quickly learned, so he did just that. He dressed in their clothes, ate their food, spoke their language, and after he ran away, he cut his hair.]

I haven't been back to Korea since, but I managed well enough in an unfamiliar place and I got to travel all over the states and territories.

[Except travel might not be the correct word to use. It was more like he and Goody couldn't stay in one place for too long, especially if they had angry people tracking them, wanting their money back after losing it to Billy in a quick draw contest.]

[bunnyhopped]

[ Hana can't help but let her gaze wander about the surroundings - what she's seeing is so unlike anywhere she's been to that she can't help her curiosity. Billy's answer, though, tells her that he really is from a completely different time than she is. For one, no one really rides around on horses anymore where (and when) she's from, but the whole ambiance of all of this and the way that Billy is talking makes her feel like she traveled back in time for this memory or something. ]

Hmmm.

[ She turns to look back at him, tilting her head again. ]

What year is it, where you're from?

[ A strange question, she knows, but she's got to know. ]

[billyrocks]

[A strange question indeed. Though Billy remains skeptical, he's accepted the info he was given during orientation, that he was in another world. He never considered that the portal drew people from other times, though. He figured that despite the differences in technology, it was still the same year in the Quarantine.]

It was 1879 the last time I checked.

[It was easy to loose track of the days when traveling through the untamed wilderness, but he and Goody were pretty good about keeping track of the months at the very least. They had to be in order to know which places to watch out for heavy snowfall, or which places stayed relatively warm during the winter.

Billy hooks his thumbs in his belt, cocking his head to the side a bit.]

Why?

[bunnyhopped]

[ Hana often loses track of what the date is in the Quarantine - she's adamantly kept her phone showing the time and date at home. So her brows go up when she hears his answer, because compared to hers— ]

Oh. Where I'm from the year is 2076!

[ Which means she's almost two centuries ahead of him. Rather than bewildered, she looks more amused. ]

Crazy, huh?

IV

[dracolucmalfoy]

Draco has no idea what he'd stepped into. His understanding of muggle cultures is abysmal. He had a vague understanding that what he is seeing had a similarity in how own world, or he thinks so. Maybe it didn't? It is all happening so fast that Draco has barely any time to really think about it.

The shots startle him and Draco, standing on the little steeple platform, stumbles back, flinching as the bullets fly, killing the two men shooting. Death isn't something new to Draco, the way in which they perished was. An unforgiving, one-sided violence as one fell away and the other slumped down.

Draco stared at the lone dead man in the steeple for a moment before looking up, seeing his likeness nearby and realizing that this was one very intimate memory for a person. A memory of their own death.

What did one say in this situation?

"I'm... sorry." Draco then looked away from the body and the actual man.

[billyrocks]

[This is the first time he's actually dreamed of the memory of his death in very vivid detail. He's watching it happen all over again right in front of him, but it's also playing behind his eyes as his mind flies back to that point in time.

Really, they had all been aware that not everyone was going to make it out alive. Hell, there was the possibility that they'd fail and everyone would die. But facing death head on was an entirely different matter than thinking about it. It hadn't been Billy's first brush with death, but there was always a sign in the end that let him know he'd live to see another day if he did things right. That day in Rose Creek, however, even though he did everything he could, there came a point where he knew no matter what he did, he wouldn't be walking out of that mess.

Billy's so lost in his own trance that he doesn't snap out of it until he hears someone apologizing. He blinks and the show behind his eyelids ends, leaving him to stare at his own dead body. Oh right... people can see this. This fact that he has yet to fully come to terms with.

He tries to make his trembling less apparent by balling his hands into fists at his sides, but the slight sheen on his forehead gives away that he's sweating. He can feel his heart hammering against his ribs, so he closes his eyes and breathes in deep through his nose, holds it, then exhales it the way it came, opening his eyes. He turns his head away so that he's only looking at the cloudless blue sky spanning above the horizon; he wanted to look at anything but his body and the stranger, who also seemed to be trying not to look at anything.]

It's something that already happened, so there's no point in dwelling on it.

[Is all Billy says, because that was how he always dealt with troubling memories in the past. He just kept moving forward, hardly (if ever) looking back.]

[dracolucmalfoy]

"There are some things that should not be shared against ones will. Well, frankly, in an ideal world... universe, nothing would be. But certain fact, certain times of our lives... Ones death should not be something put out for just anyone to stumble on." Turning, Draco surveyed the town. The state of chaos it seemed to be in. "Are you at war? This town... all of you... It is very different from my own." That was an understatement. Draco then looked over toward the man whose memory he had just seen. "I am Draco Malfoy, by the way."

I just realized I forgot to match your prose, sorry about that!

[billyrocks]

Billy's eyes drift down to look at the fields below, remembering how he'd hidden in a trench with some of the men and detonated the explosives at the very beginning of the battle.

"Not exactly, myself and six other men were trying to help the townsfolk defend their home from a mining tycoon that wanted them out." Slowly, Billy turns his head to finally look at the other man, tipping his hat.

"Billy Rocks." This should be the part where Billy says "nice to meet you," but of course, it's really not. Not under their current circumstances. "And different you say? How so?"

Billy remembers what the people told him during his orientation in the hospital (while he was still hooked up to machines with blinking lights and there was a needle in his arm feeding some kind of medicine), that the portal pulled all types of beings from various worlds into the Quarantine, but he has yet to hear graphic details of those worlds. The existence of other worlds isn't entirely new to Billy, though, so he doesn't find it too farfetched. He vaguely remembers being told of the different realms according to Buddhism as a child in Korea.

Oh no, don't worry about matching. Action bracket is fine, I just mainly do prose myself.

[dracolucmalfoy]

"A battle then." Draco said with a slight nod of his head. Either way, people died. On the topic of what was different, Draco frowned and crossed his arms. It was hard to put to words, the differences. "For one, I'm a wizard. Magic filled my world, even fighting was done with magic. Though there were those without magic, we lived separately from them. The clothing was different as well, as well as structures. Modes of travel... Muggles don't even use horses for travel anymore."

[billyrocks]

Billy silently nods his head in confirmation, though in a way, the battle had been more like a death sentence. They all knew what they were getting themselves into by agreeing to follow Sam to Rose Creek.

Upon hearing that the other man is a wizard, he blinks his eyes and furrows his brows. It's the first time he's heard someone here claim to know sorcery, but it's not like he's never heard of it before. Goody had all sorts of stories surrounding voodoo that were based on rumors he'd heard while growing up in Louisiana.

"'Muggles?'" he repeats, testing the word on his tongue. "Is that what you sorcerers call people without magic? And what do you mean 'anymore?' Are you from one of those..." He pauses to try and remember the correct word. "Futuristic worlds too?" He's talked to a few people from time periods beyond 1879 by now.

I

[ragnarsson]

[Ivar stands there, the dreamworld the only place the shackles that are his legs don't affect him. He watches this memory with the interested fascination of someone quite used to violence. Despite only being sixteen, he's killed a lot of men himself. The scene plays out and there's a look in Ivar's eyes that's not quite sane at the sight of death. His eyes flick over to the older version of the man standing nearby. His accent sounds mostly Norwegian in origin, but it's a little more muddled with snatches of the different Northern European countries.]

That was a lot of holes you stabbed in that man. You must have really hated him.

[billyrocks]

[For a moment, Billy almost doesn't recognize his younger self at first. It's been so many years since he wore his hair long like that. It's also been many years since he saw the Master's estate and that Indian rug and the chandelier and...

No. Billy breathes in deep through his nose and balls his hands into fists at his sides. The Master was dead--has been dead for a long time. He couldn't allow a man like that to control him from beyond the grave. Still, when he hears someone speak to him, Billy whips his head in that direction and automatically responds:]

I was defending myself.

[His response is almost robotic in a way as he said it without thinking, like he's rehearsed it in his head many times. He's not being completely untruthful, but there was certainly more to his motivation than self-defense alone.]

[ragnarsson]

[The teenager smiles a little, that same type of sharp-toothed grin that all predators seem to possess. He comes from a people that embrace that fact that sometimes death is necessary. This in itself might be odd, but combine it with the fact Ivar liked killing, and it was a recipe for a psychopath.]

Doesn't really matter the motivation when the end result is a dead man.

[Ivar doesn't care what reasons this man had to kill the one lying there in fancy clothes in a pool of blood. Being a Viking, he's killed for far less reasons than defending himself against an abuser.]

[billyrocks]

[Billy's seen that look before, usually on the faces of older, grizzled men, but there were times when he got the occasional young blood. A pup who thought he could easily get the jump on him and Goody as they were sleeping under the stars. They always tucked their tails between their legs once Billy had a knife pressed against their throat, though. If they complied to never bother them again, Goody and Billy would usually let the wannabe bandits loose, with a cut or two from Billy's knives. But this youth didn't seem to be like the other troublemakers he's dealt with in the past.]

And because he is dead, I don't think about him anymore.

[Actually, that was a lie. He didn't have as many night terrors as Goody, but every once in a while, the Master would come back to haunt him in his sleep, holding the switch in his hands. Billy doesn't need to explain himself, though, especially not to someone who just happened to waltz into his dreams albeit unintentionally.]

There is only the present, nothing can be done about the past.

[ragnarsson]

[Though he was young, Ivar held some traits of a far older man. He was cunning, clever in a way that made him deadly on the battlefield. He worked things out in his mind, seeing ways to get what he wanted simply by moving people around like pieces on a chessboard. He cocks his head when Billy says he doesn't think about the Master anymore.]

Was he the first man you killed?

[One always remembered the first. Ivar still did, though he had been a young child at the time. One almost could have called it an accident, except for the fact that most children didn't instinctively bury an axe in someone else's head when they were frustrated. It had been very apparent to his mother even early on that something was wrong with her youngest child. Unfortunately, she hadn't checked his impulses, instead letting them grow. All these years later, she'd helped fashion a young monster.]

[billyrocks]

[Unblinking, Billy stares at Ivar. Although he's doing well to keep his face blank, deep down there's a hot curl of anger that's beginning to flare up. If there was anything he hated, it was strangers trying to poke into his past. His voice comes out tempered.]

Yes.

[He can't really say that he regrets it either. The others had begrudgingly accepted their low status, but not Billy. He'd become tired of being someone's manservant. America was said to be the land of the free, so Billy decided that he would get his freedom one way or another. Of course he'd thought of simply running away without any bloodshed, but the Master confronted him before that could happen. Wrapping those sinewy fingers around his throat and pushing him up against the wall, lifting him off the carpet, swearing that he would kill him this time; manservants were replaceable. Then Billy had remembered the knife he still had on him, the same one he used for gutting the game brought into the kitchen. He stabbed one of the Master's arms first to make him let go, then everything else that came after had been nothing but a flurry of movement.]

Do you remember your first?

[He tries redirecting a similar question to Ivar, ready to gauge his reaction.]

ii

[somnioergosum]

[Ronan would be quite happy to never step inside another person's mind again. Unfortunately, he has no choice in the matter, so he keeps watching a bunch of murders. At least this one is cleaner than the rest. and he can confirm for himself the guy was literally asking for it.

He looks at the real Billy.]

I'll get out of here soon so don't knife me.

[billyrocks]

[Billy turns away from looking at the corpse of his fallen opponent to meet the newcomer in his dreams. There's no hostility in his eyes as he shakes his head.]

I know it's not something we can control, so I don't have any hard feelings against you personally.

[Most of his anger and frustration was aimed at whatever, or whoever, was causing this "memory-sharing" to happen in the first place.]

[somnioergosum]

[Ronan nods once.]

Pretty chill for a cowboy from the Wild West. That's what this is, right? Cause if it's a re-enactment, shit really hit the fan here.

[Wait. Did they call it the Wild West back then? Oh, whatever. he'll figure it out at some point.]

[billyrocks]

[One of the dark eyebrows on Billy's face rises up.]

It definitely wasn't a re-enactment. We were shooting at each other for real.

[He casts another glance at the body a few feet away from them.]

Just like he wanted.

[somnioergosum]

Yeah, I thought you'd say that.

[Ronan doesn't sound thrilled about this. He avoids looking at the dead man. Memory. Dead memory. It's important to remind himself of that fact.]

Did you do this a lot?

[billyrocks]

[Billy nods his head, returning his gaze to Ronan.]

It kept the money flowing, but I usually didn't have to kill them. Most folks would be sour over their loss, but they would hand over their bets quietly.

[It helped that Goody's name carried weight to it. After all, no person in their right mind would want to anger the famous (or infamous, depending on which side of the war they'd been on) "Angel of Death."]