Do I Know You, Captain?

Chocolate Icecream

Sitting across from him felt so alien and so familiar. This was Mark, their Mark. They had an ache for him they had never felt before this moment. They wanted to touch him, wanted to fist bump or to shake his hand as he shouted oh hell yeah!

"That game did a number on me." Mark said with a sigh, watching Captain for their response.

They nodded in agreement, trying to find the words.

"The world doesn't feel real, does it?"

They nodded again, their throat growing tight. His eyes flickered over their face making them blush.

"The game had... Memories in it?"

"Memories?" Amy piped up.

"Like from before the game." Mark explained, tenting his hands like he was holding something with his fingertips and putting it down.

"Simulated memories that you're confusing for real ones?" Amy asked, crossing her legs.

"No and yes."Mark said slowly, turning his palms up and pushing his wrists together in a shrug of sorts,"It made me think I had finished engineering school and in game it doesn't feel like it was prompting me, it felt like I was just doing what needed done but then it also had-..." When he paused, Amy interrupted.

"That one part where you were at the warehouse with your best friend." Amy said, pointing at Captain,"The one with the red hair."

The Captain frowned, tilting their head. Who was Amy talking about?

"Red hair?" Mark asked. He was also frowning and confused.

"Yes. I watched your playthrough of that and you went to a warehouse with a redhead and that redhead had a cousin come by." She explained.

"And in the memory, that cousin brought me but when we finished the memory I realized that the game had put me IN your memory and that I wasn't really there." Mark said, resting an elbow on the table and his chin on his fist.

The Captain took out their phone again and flipped through Facebook to their images, finding the pictures from that night. The tragedy had almost made them want to give up everything, but they posted the pictures anyway.

None of them had a redhead, all of them had Damien.

"Izzy." Amy said, jarring Captain out of their thoughts.

Izzy. How had they forgotten izzy?

They turned their phone to show Amy who shook her head, looking more confused than they did.

"That guy looks a little like Mark but he wasn't there for any of that memory sequence. I've watched it a lot." Amy said, pulling out her own phone to pull up the video.

As she did, the room started to sway and Captain's head grew heavy. They shook it to try to calm down but that brought on a wave of nausea, and a familiar sound.

Everything around them was flashing and swirling as they were overcome with a falling sensation.

Mark whispered,"Captain?"

They opened their eyes, expecting to be on The Invincible but were shocked to see Amy and Mark sitting across from them at a restaurant outside.

"You don't feel good. We need to go inside for some air-conditioning. " He said but as he started to stand he looked at the Captain again, his thought process changing,"No, you don't want to go inside, you just want to figure this out. It didn't ever really matter to you, did it?"

The Captain frowned and shrugged, trying to shake the ick crawling through them.

"Your comfort was never a priority. " He stated,"Well, we need to figure a few things out. We need to first figure out what questions we have so we can find the answers, right?" Mark asked, not taking his eyes off of them.