How about some head cannons for blue berry academy students befriending a new student reader who turns out to be a faller? The reader is from our world and does have at least some memory loss.
And so I might have turned it into a fic and not a list of HCs... lemme know if you want me to rewrite it lol -- it was getting kinda long so this might just be a part one of two if people actually like it. If not I'll just move onto other things :p
With the multi-billion dollar project underway to extend Blueberry Academy's underwater campus, there's been an influx of new students lining up to attend the recently founded institution!
As for you who may or may not have crash-landed in Unova not long ago -you with no credentials- there's no way you could have applied to join the wave of incoming students... had it not been for a string of improbable events that tied you up in some top secret plot.
An unpredicted meteor ripped through the planet's atmosphere in the late hours of night. A burst of unusual green-blue energy had not only been visible to the naked eye, but it set off all the satellite radars in the region.
And what stumbled out of the impact zone was the most unlikely part of the story.
...
Where... were you?
Did you... fall asleep again?
Opening your eyes, the cold midnight wilderness flashed alight with an eerie aurora floating close to the ground.
The dust was settling, but instead of dispersing into the dirt, it'd been floating up back toward the clear starflecked sky.
The surrounding field stood littered with broken shards of... something. They'd been decaying into twinkling flakes light enough to float off the ground — and being that it was pitch black, the only light you had to see was quickly dispersing from the stripped soil and clumps of torn up grass.
Once they'd burnt the last of their light, it had left you nothing but one last gentle light source. Registering the mysterious shimmering crystal not far from your face, you sat up, with no proper sense of how you'd got there or what it had been doing on top of you.
You must've walked for miles with it in your arms before passing out from exhaustion.
...
You're really asleep again.
You tried to cry out, open your eyes.
Nothing happened.
You tried to feel your fingertips, your breath in and out of your nose. Where is your body?
Nothing... happened.
The shell forming around you kept out the melded together white silhouettes, but it also kept you in.
But a woman burst through the doors, and you couldn't make out here face as she yelled at them to stop. No, all you could make out was the familiar pattern of her earrings.
"Can't you see that you can't drill through this?!" She pushed them out of the way, standing between you and their stainless steel tools. "You'll do nothing but hurt the both of them!"
.
There's some illegible message displayed on the device you hold in your hands. You look down at it, not remembering what you were doing before.
You can't make out any of the details anymore, but you're unable to look away as you hear the sound effect from pressing the A-button. The symbols warp into familiar letters.
You suddenly feel a slightly overshadowing presence behind you.
At last, comprehensible text materializes.
"And so you have returned with some pretense of self awareness. Not as you were before, however."
You press the A-button again.
"More a shell of what you once were... Something I lament to say likely cannot be reversed."
A-button.
"Nay, you are not the you that I once knew."
You... press it again.
"..."
It does not speak, so you press it again.
And again.
"I am at a loss as to whether I should mourn a past that has faded into obscurity or feel at peace knowing that you are as ever-changing as the world you left in my charge."
You press the button one more time, but the voice seems to hesitate for a moment, thinking of what next to say.
". . . "
"Regardless, I have been awaiting your return for a very long time."
.
.
.
Better to get up and put on your tacky school uniform now than fall back asleep and wait to be dragged out from your boring old dorm room by the scruff.
Being taken as a test subject in the most remote middle-of-the-ocean facility felt more like being held prisoner than enrolling in school.
Your homeroom teacher, Ms. Briar, had served as a reminder that the muddy flashes of memories you had of being encased in a living crystal were, in fact, real. She seems to know a lot about the creature you woke up holding, but next to nothing about you. While still mildly annoyed by her poking and prodding, you've warily come to accept that her endless curiosity is not out of cruelty. She is... respectful toward you. Not of your boundaries, but she's fascinated with you in a mild manner that does not immediately endanger your safety.
Speaking of, as you sat down and slung your bag over the desk chair, Terapagos came tumbling out, clinking clumsily against the floor.
"Aaa-" It cried, stuck on its back. Or, well, not it. He. You quickly scooped him up and set him back on his legs.
He's looking up at you, nudging your shoe with his head. His unusually large eyes sparkle as he stares with unmatched innocence, waiting for you to bend over and pick him up.
Which you do, knowing the pink haired girl that sits a few rows behind you is vibrating in her seat. "Cute... so cute..." She's mumbling under her breath. Ever since you 'enrolled' she'd done nothing but stare at your companion, which he seemed to find uncomfortable if the pulling at your shoelace wasn't enough to convey that fact.
"Alright, little guy, alright. I'm on it." You huff, gently plucking him off the ground with two hands. He cries out in joy and she suddenly clutches her heart, falling backward out of her seat.
...
Nobody here talks to you. Not because they haven't tried, but because every attempt has been met with you either pretending you hadn't heard them or getting up and walking out the classroom. All Briar had to do was take the attendance. They couldn't necessarily threaten you into forced bonding with others. No, your real confinement was having to go into the terrarium and complete menial tasks for the equivalent of money just so you could buy food and school supplies.
You didn't even want to be here, you just didn't have anywhere better to go. Apparently they just wanted to protect you for the time being, but there's no way in hell you'd believe that's why they sent you into glorified solitary confinement in the middle of the ocean. Everyone else had permission to come and go whensoever they pleased.
No, your only equals here were your few Pokemon friends. The researchers might've claimed to be keeping your friends in the terrarium for the sake of their health and the preservation of the outside world it mimicked, but you'd never believe in their so called pure intentions. No, this was a pretty little garden for outsiders looking in, and a cage too small for ornate living decorations like you.
Terapagos had been your only one constant since day one, and he was wary of most other people. You trusted his judgement the most.
Most other people. The lunch ladies were apparently the saints of the Pokemon world. The food staff are genuinely kind, and Terapagos is a fiend for all types of Pokemon confections you're quickly learning. They've told you that most Pokemon have a taste preference, but not your special little pal, though the poor thing had such a tiny stomach that does not match his monstrous appetite at all.
There's one other person Terapagos had once been intent on pestering in at the cafeteria, but was quickly distracted by another helping of berries and whipped cream.
Compliments to the hardworking Alcremie in the kitchen, they were the only ones who could truly keep his menace at bay... You were endlessly thankful for the distraction, anyway. You wouldn't have known what to do if he'd marched right on up to the four of them chatting amongst themselves over lunch.
Red haired dude. Pink haired girl. Scary four eyes. Annoying dragon jerk. Everyone knew who they were. Those were the most problematic trainers in all the Academy.
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There’s No Saying Goodbye To Me
Chapter Eight: Parallel Lives
In which you finally find out who’s been sleeping in your bed.
Chapter 7 here
“Sweetheart-”
“Doll-”
“Both of you! Shut the hell up!” You scrabbled backward, awkwardly, looking a bit like a drunken crab as they tried to follow you. “I don’t care if you kill me anymore. Just have the common fucking decency-” to your fury, your voice broke. It was hard to know which emotion battling it out would land on top, but there was horror, betrayal, heartbreak, and a kind of nausea that you had no fucking idea who - or what - these two were. Were they really human? Were they just a more pleasingly formed version of the smoke entity? Did you just say that out loud?
“No! Sweetheart, no, we’re not like… that. We’re human, like you,” Steve said urgently, his hand hovering but not quite touching you.
Yes, you did say that out loud.
Bucky was sitting a few feet away, legs and arms lax and still, like he’d just fallen on his ass from where he stood.
Putting a hand up, you took a few deep breaths, “Okay. Let’s start again. Ever since that sick fuck Thanos and the Infinity Stones, there’s been a fair amount of intelligence about time travel. Based on what I’ve seen from you and the others, there’s para…”
What the hell am I saying? This is insane, you thought, but the remains of that smoke thing are currently rotting on the beach.
“There’s parallel worlds, aren’t there?” Your face was burning hot but you were shaking, your skin chilly and your arms and legs didn’t feel attached to your body. “Parallel universes? Where everything is just slightly off from the next version?”
Bucky stood up stiffly, walking like an old man into the house and returning with a glass of water for you. “Tell her,” he said, not looking over at Steve.
“There’s a parallel universe,” he finally admitted, “at least one we know of, ours.”
You felt like a fist had seized your insides and was twisting them. “How many of you are here?”
Steve balanced on the balls of his feet, trying to angle closer to you without sending you into another crab-like scuttle. “We knew about your Earth for decades, but we could never figure out how to travel here. But The Snap… decimated your people, I know, but when the Avengers here were able to defeat Thanos and reverse The Snap, thousands- tens of thousands of your people had died in the resultant shockwave. It was then we found a parallel fold in space we could use to come here, using the Tesseract. Our Tesseract. But only for the people whose parallel selves had died here. We were able to slip in nearly half our planet’s population to replace those who perished.”
“But…” You mindlessly combed your tangled hair with shaky fingers, “but Steve survived, right? My Steve? He went back in time with the stones.”
This Steve’s face turned cold and furious at the mention of his twin, but he held his temper. “He did. He’s playing house with Peggy right now.”
This time, it felt like that fist had yanked your heart out of your chest. You looked down, trying to hide your humiliation, your heartbreak. It was true. Your Steve, your fiance, the man you’d given your virginity and your heart - he didn’t want them. He’d thrown you away for another shot with Peggy. He was really gone, without a single look back at you.
“But…” he inched closer, “I didn’t run away. I came here for you.”
Rubbing at your wet cheeks with the back of your hand, you asked, “Why did it take so long with you if everyone else just… you know, slipped into place?”
“We had to make sure that this world’s Steve couldn’t return from the past.”
“How many of the other Avengers are your people? Dr. Banner, I’m certain of.”
The men exchanged a long glance. It was Bucky who spoke this time. “Nearly all of them. Peter, Wanda, Hawkeye, Sam… but our Natasha and Tony will be in the next parallel transfer. One of the last. They wanted to wait to make sure they could get as many of our people out as possible.”
“Wait,” you were trying to make your brain work again, to follow the patterns and equations here. “Why do you keep making this sound so final? And how could half of your population be able to transfer when we only lost - what did you say? Tens of thousands?”
Steve sighed, putting out his hand, and you stared at it. It looked like your Steve’s hand; square, strong, calloused with long artist’s fingers. “Will you come and sit down? I promise we’ll tell you anything you want to know. But you look incredibly uncomfortable crouched in the corner like that.”
You were sitting in one of the nicely cushioned deck chairs, a cup of peppermint tea cooling in your slack grasp. Bucky and Steve were still streaked with soot and filth and whatever… that thing was. They’d finished half a bottle of vodka between them- “Because someone here used all my Scotch to firebomb the entity,” Steve just had to get the little jab in.
“Start with that… that thing.” You pointed at the ashy remains of the smoke monster.
“That,” Steve said flatly, “is why there are so few of us left to come here. Our Thanos event - for lack of a better phrase - was something one of our space flights picked up as an organic sample from our moon about twenty years ago. It… regenerated?” He looked to Bucky for help, who nodded. “The entire team was torn apart by the time the ship re-entered the atmosphere. It crash landed in a remote section of the Atlantic Ocean and they managed to grow in numbers and size before they attacked.”
Bucky slowly ran both hands through his hair, as if attempting to comfort himself. “They killed nearly twenty million people before we could even launch a defense.” He chuckled humorlessly, “What you saw? That was a baby.”
You put your head on your knees, suddenly light-headed. “Have any of these things gotten through before?”
“No,” Steve looked shaken. You’d never seen your boyfriend look all shaken up, but- oh, wait. This wasn’t your Steve. Of course, this Steve actually stuck around while your Steve scampered back in time without so much as a goodbye, so…
“I bought this island specifically for the vortex - it doesn’t lead to our world, but there’s something in the polarity that can let unwanted visitors in, not just the smoke entities.”
“Another point of weakness that appeared Post-Snap,” Bucky added. “But we can close it. We just have to hold the line until the last of our people make it through.”
Were you crazy? Had these two finally made your sanity snap like a biscotti? Because it somehow made sense. You were a scientist, not a physicist or an expert in space and time travel, but you’d read enough classified documents under Fury’s regime to know that what they were saying was not out of the realm of possibility. That it was definitely within the range of probable.
“Wait,” you took a shaky gulp of tea. “You said the last of your people who could come through. What happens to the rest of your people? The ones who have a double here, so they can’t come?”
Steve and Bucky looked at each other. “They stay,” Steve said, his expression bleak. “We’re losing our world, it’s only a matter of time. There’s no defense left against the entities, even if we had millions more to fight. This was our chance to save as many people as we could from our Earth.”
“But- what about the kids? The babies? The…” Your protest died off. “There’s nothing? They can’t be saved?”
Bucky crouched by your chair, taking your hands in his. ‘We all knew what it meant when we found the way to fold space into a parallel. We knew. Most parents are staying with their kids who can't come over, even if there’s a place for the adults here, but…”
“This is fucking horrible.” There were tears streaming down your face but you didn’t notice until your hand swiped your cheek. “There’s no way? It can’t be-”
Steve chuckled bitterly. “Sure. We bring them all here. We crush the standards of the singularity that allowed parallel travel. Everyone here dies.” He gave you a twisted little smile. “It’ll please you to know that our Nick Fury will be staying behind.”
You smiled despite yourself. “I’ll bet he’s even crabbier than our Director Fury.”
“You have no idea,” Bucky chuckled.
You grip his hands tighter. “How can you laugh, knowing what’s happening?”
“Because this has been our reality for most of our lives, our modern-day lives, I mean, Steve's and mine,” he was serious again. “Everyone in our world knew what was happening, the tide turned about ten years ago in favor of the entities. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time. The Post-Snap singularity… it was a miracle for us.”
“But…” you felt the chill spreading over you, even in the evening sun. “That entity, the one you called a baby? If it got here, what’s to stop more? If they can get into the ocean here, they can start the same saltwater breeding colony, right?”
“That’s one of the reasons we’re here.” Bucky gave you a pointedly salacious grin, letting you know the other reason they were here on this island.
“You know we’re talking about life and death and you’re making this all dirty?” Incredulous. You were incredulous that this shameless bastard was pulling this right now. Also, that it was working, just a little bit.
“We’ve been dealing with death and the end of our Earth for decades, sweetheart,” Steve answered you. “We take our good moments where we can get them.”
“That makes sense,” you admit with a sigh. “This is… just a lot. It’s a lot.” It was true. When you thought being held captive here was the worst thing that could happen, you were so completely wrong. Parallel worlds? Smoke monsters? A vortex? These two men were not even from here. You put your head down on the table, nearly knocking over your tea.
“I think you could probably use a shot of vodka more than the tea,” You could tell Steve was trying to hold back a laugh. “But I think food is going to be more important.”
“I’m going to contact Tony and Natasha,” Bucky murmurs, “I think they need to parallel here instead of at the Compound.”
There’s blissful silence on the stone deck for a minute. Just you, the seagulls, and the waves crashing onshore. But when your head comes up off the table, the sun is setting and the shadows from the trees grow longer, stretching over the house that is suddenly your only safe haven.
“You’re wearing the expression of someone expecting the worst.” Steve is back, with a tray of sandwiches and slices of mango, pineapple, and kiwi. Putting the food down, he easily lifts you and puts you on his lap, facing the ocean and holding up a chunk of fruit. “Open up.”
You stare at the fruit, the juice dripping on his fingers. “I’m not really hungry, that… the smoke thing kind of killed my appetite.”
“I know,” he said.
Was that a kind, understanding tone? You wondered, Actual, real emotions?
“Bucky and I learned fast how to eat when there was food, and sleep when there was enough safety to allow it,” he mused, “which is why I’m suggesting the same to you.”
Giving in, you leaned over, taking the mango from his fingers into your mouth, aware that he was watching every movement. The taste exploded on your tongue, so vivid that you felt like you were tasting the very color of the mango.
“It’s funny,” you laughed, “I remember you telling me the same thing about you and Bucky growing up poor in Brooklyn, and how you’d-” His body stiffened under yours, but his expression was impassive. “I’m so sorry, truly. That was thoughtless.”
Steve shook his head. “I’m not mad that you’re combining our history, so much of it is the same. I’m fucking furious that the weak bastard left you. But if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.” He made a helpless kind of shrug.”I remember watching the monitor, seeing the timeline shift, knowing it meant I could come here, but knowing he’d just broken your heart.”
Absently, you picked up a couple of sandwiches, handing one to him. “What am I like in your world? I’m guessing a lot tougher if she can handle you.” It was the most disorienting thing, imagining another you.
“There isn’t.” Steve took a bite and chewed, “Another you, I mean. Everything our research showed was that everyone there had a parallel here. Except for you. When we studied you and how close you were to the…” his mouth tightened, “the Steve here, I tried to search for your parallel in our world. There’s no record of you ever having been born. The more Bucky and I searched for you on our planet, the more we felt connected to you. That you were precious.”
You pulled away from his warm chest. “You haven’t treated me that way. You’ve treated me like an object.”
He’s silent for a long time, and you wondered if this was the end of your fragile truce.
His brow was furrowed, and for once, Steve didn’t look completely confident, or condescending, or scary. He looked… human? “For a long time, there wasn’t ever room to be soft,” he said slowly, “even before I went into the ice. There was never time. For anything but survival. All you had was what you took. I’ve been watching you - Bucky and I have been watching you for two years. In my mind, we were already together.” Steve chuckled, “Bucky sucker-punched me in my kidneys this afternoon. I’m sure he’d have tried to do worse to me for locking you up, if we hadn’t had the entity break through the vortex.”
Just Steve mentioning the hellish two weeks you’d spent in isolation made you stiffen and get off his lap. He didn’t move to stop you, but he put out his hand.
“I don’t know how to do… this,” he finally said. “But I want to learn. I can tell you I love you, and I do. But that’s not what I’ve shown you, is it?”
It takes a couple of tries to get a single word out. “No,” you finally manage.
His hand dropped, and Steve nodded. “This is a dangerous time. The risk of the entities breaking through, and the last of the parallel space folds. We have to destroy the corridor between our world and find a way to close the vortex. I’ll…” he stands up, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll message the compound to send a pickup for you. They’ll take you back to Washington. My only condition is that you hold off from telling Fury what’s going on. I know we’ll have to tell him everything after the last transport is through and we close any connection between the two worlds.”
“But if you close it…” you watched his face go slack with grief. It was just like your- this earth’s Steve, you meant - that Steve’s face whenever anyone raged at him or wept after the Snap. When you knew he was torturing himself for all the lives he thought he should have saved.
Before he became a heartless prick, your spiteful voice added.
“If you close it,” you pushed on, “that means no one else can come here. They’re trapped with the entities? Forever?”
“Yes.”
It was Bucky, leaning against the terrace wall.
“But…” you floundered, “our scientists here, our weapons, surely there’s something you haven’t tried that-”
“Doll,“ Bucky said, “we had our own Tony Stark. He stayed behind for months longer than he needed to, trying to find an answer we’d missed. Banner’s been pulling weapons data and schematics from here. We… there’s nothing else.”
There’s dead silence between the three of you, and then you remembered something. “That may not be the case,” you pondered. “I’ve seen something that I’m pretty sure Dr. Banner hasn’t.” There was a cautious hope blooming in your chest. It could be nothing, but…
It was still hope.
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