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(no subject)

Who: Ben and Open OOC: Feel free to recognize him from daily life or support group!
What: Day In The Life + Memory shit.
When: This week (roughly)
Where: Out and about in the city -his sports arena, coffee shop, jogging, restaurants, museums, antique stores, and a pet store.
Warnings: Probably some cursing at some point, otherwise none.

The first new memory he got - the one shared with Anakin at the arena - had been fairly innocuous. It was also the first of many, and they arrived quickly. The memories themselves were....

Some of the memories were fairly benign, still. Others were less pleasant. A few were truly painful. They still lacked some context, but nowhere near as much. There was enough there now to make him more uncertain in his own sanity and enough there to disrupt his life.

If he'd let them.

He stubbornly refused to do that. He went jogging and got coffee at his favorite shop every single morning. He went to work out on the rink inside the sports arena every day, and three times during the week (MWF) he went into the gym there and worked out. At noon and after he finished teaching he ate at an assortment of small restaurants before going back to the arena to prep for his next exhibition skate.

When he finally made it home to his apartment and cat he passed out almost immediately, though of course he still had repetitive dreams of various memories.

When the weekend rolled around he still went jogging, got his coffee, taught his morning class, and did his private coaching in the afternoon. After all that he went to a small museum, an antique store to browse, and a Pet shop to buy cat food and litter in the evenings.

Then ended up on ice again at the end of it.

He kept living his life at absolute full capacity because he was. not. going. to. stop just because of some stupid memories that didn't even make sense - space travel? aliens? laser swords?.

He just - he wasn't.

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Anakin had noticed that Ben had been absent from chess all week, and he didn't like how that made him worried. Before this whole memory thing started, they might go a week without seeing each other. It just depended on their schedules. And Anakin hadn't cared much then.

But now...

Was it him keeping Ben away?

Why did it matter?

The truth was, Anakin wanted to talk about his memories with someone. And he didn't feel he could just unload them on just anyone. And for some reason, it was hard to separate what he felt in the memories with... well, who he outside the memories.

By Sunday this all came to a head and Anakin's better nature lost to his need to see if Ben was okay.

He sent a text, you at the rink? which was followed by can i come down? and i could try skating again?.

And then he flopped on his couch and checked his phone obsessively until he got a response.

He was avoiding Anakin, but he wasn't quite conscious that he was doing it.

Until he saw the text from Anakin on his phone and was hit with a sharp pang of guilt that was... as much about emotional carry-over from memories as the here and now, he thought.

I am, he sent back, Come join me.

He sat up in an instance when his phone text sound chimed.

He sent a quick: okay!

And he grabbed his things and ordered an Uber.

One car ride later, Anakin was at the rink and checking out a pair of skates.

When he was in the locker room, he texted Obi-Wan that he was here and asked him to help him with the laces. Then he set about trying to get the skates on his feet with one and a half hands.

At least they'd worked past this part of awkwardness - even if the asking was awkward for Anakin (he didn't know) or doing was for Obi-Wan, that the help was going to be needed had been established.

He was already in skates (as well as a pair of old, faded, jeans and a slightly ratty, cream sweater over his t-shirt) but had the blade guards when he came in. He was also carrying a spare skate (they'd talked about looking at blades), and wrist brace with him.

The spare brace got set beside Anakin on the bench and he knelt down to tie those laces.

"I guess you decided to take your therapist's advice?" Seemed obvious, but-

Anakin started working on pulling on the wrist brace and stretched out his be-skated feet in turn for Obi-Wan to help him. He would probably never reach a level of skill with his robotic hand where he could get his skates tight enough on his own. He just didn't have that same kind of tugging power and coordinating gripping strength.

"Of course, I always listen to them." And he said it with a grin that suggested he didn't always listen to them. But he mostly listened to them.

"What's with the other skate- do people lose skates the same way you just randomly see a shoe on the side of the rode? Seems hard to do given how tight they are." He'd completely forgotten that Obi-Wan had said he would show him the blade.

He glanced up as he finished tying the first skate and nodded toward it. "Pick it up and get a good look at the blades." Well, technically one but also two. "You're not going to cut yourself with them, unless there's a lot of force. You should also probably figure out inside and outside edges, since we're going to do this more."

Was he being excessively... professional? Maybe a little. He didn't want to mess up again. Was nervous as hell, and then there was the memory stuff.....

Which made him really not want to mess up again.

Anakin's demeanor was far cheerier than it had been their first attempt at this. He was much less awkward, he felt much less awkward.

He picked up the skate and looked at it.

"I think you underestimate my ability to fuck up in an epic way. You don't even know yet how I lost my right hand."

"I'm going to go ahead and assume you didn't run over your own hand while wearing skates." Which was not meant to be flippant - well maybe a little, but he was finishing up tying the other skate before standing up and stepping back. He held out his hand for Anakin's. "That's beyond fucking up, that's fucking up with a level of flexibility that defies anatomy."

"No," Anakin admitted. "But it did involve explosions, so you should be prepared for those at all times around me."

He grabbed ahold of Ben's offered hand and leveraged himself to his feet.

"Okay, let's try this again."

He looked momentarily alarmed - and skeptical, somehow, at the same time - but then remembered where Anakin worked.

"All right, well, at least we'll be on ice." Should cool things down, or - he didn't know what to do with that, but it amused him as much as concerned him.

At least he had a little more information about Anakin and hadn't stepped on a landmine doing it - and they weren't tripping over memories yet.

Yet.

He headed out in front of Anakin and opened both the door and gate for him, but quickly skated himself out of the way. "How much do you remember from last time?"

"I know what chemicals explode when you mix them with water," Anakin said. Which was probably not comforting. He wouldn't ever purposely vandalize a building.

He followed Ben to the ice and paused just to remember how to step out. But he did take that step and though he stayed close to the wall, he looked more sure of himself this time.

"You're not going to make me do the marching thing again, are you?"

"Not if you can show me you remember how to push off to move," he said, with a quick flash of a smile. He was pretty careful, a little awkward - he just didn't want to mess it up again. "I'd much rather teach you to turn and introduce you to your inside and outside blades."

Anakin tried to move forward the way he remembered Obi-Wan showing him last time. He was really not much better than his first attempt, but he was still trying.

"Haven't you already introduced me to my skates? I am wearing them?"

He stayed in front of Anakin, facing him and skating backward, far enough away to be out of the way, but close enough to reach out and grab if he had to.

"Skates, yeah, but remember how the blades have a furrow between them. Those mean each blade has two edges and using those are how you turn. You aren't prone to ankle sprains are you?"

Edited 2020-04-08 19:57 (UTC)

"Well, I need to get better about going straight before I add new tricks." Yes, 'turning' was a trick.

He tried for longer strides and the best part of his attempt was that he didn't fall down.

"So... new memories..."

Anakin needed to get more confident on skates, period, and turning was a better way to do that than trying to build going straight without confidence, but he wasn't going to argue right now.

"Yeah. I got... a large chunk of them. They started before I met you, and carried through. Looks like that memory of us training together is about the end of them."

Anakin was getting better at going forward, marginally.

"Is that why you've been avoiding the park?"

He went backward, out of Anakin's way but not too far away. "It's why I've been avoiding anything that leaves me room to think, but yeah some of it's the memories of you and all those complicated emotions that aren't mine."

"Maybe..." Anakin said, but then he paused because he was concentrating on skating.

"Maybe think about it like... when you have a normal dream, and in it someone does something that, like... makes you mad. And then you wake up mad. That feeling is the dream's feeling. What do you think?"

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