priorcommitment | in the east, the gray-green lines

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prince charming

in the east, the gray-green lines

When he sits at the edge of the dock and the tides have risen as much as they do now, the water manages to lap against Ishiah's ankles, the slope of his shoulders uncharacteristically hunched as he stares off into the distance. The bright chirping of birds has faded into the gentle buzz of insects in the distance, hopping from one blade of grass to the next, and Ishiah appreciates the scene just as he does everything else on the island, with an objective eye and an aching heart. It isn't enough to stop him, nor to throw off the tasks which he dutifully fulfills by the day. It isn't enough to drive him mad for the want of home.

But on the rare occasions that it crosses his mind to ask himself whether or not he's happy, the answer doesn't always seem to be so positive of one.

A pair of footsteps sound in the distance, and Ishiah, finding himself curious, glances over his shoulder to spot a young man headed in this direction, to the edge of the dock. He doesn't suspect that the young man is here for him, but instead likely just seeking the very same thing Ishiah is. A momentary period of solace.

He nods in greeting, a thin smile on his lips.

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"But, they don't seem to belong with the other memories," is what he admits, whispering that in case someone else happens to eavesdrop and come away with the conclusion that he's lost the little of his mind. "I remember this small town with a clock-tower and a clock with a minute hand that doesn't move," he says. "It's normal. It's calm. It's peaceful. But I know there's also dragons and men who turn to gold..."

"Either it's an elaborately fashioned world of your own imagination, or perhaps one set of these memories isn't quite as real as the other," Ishiah suggests, though he doesn't lower the volume of his voice. Nothing about the juxtaposition sounds strange to him; memories are often tampered with, especially by those with magic, but even as a function of one's regular health at times. "Unfortunately, I'm not the type of person who knows how to coax out the truth so easily with humans, but we have plenty of qualified doctors on the island who may be able to help."

"I've been thinking of visiting the psychiatric office for aid," he admits, still hushing his words. After all, it's a shameful thing to admit aloud, isn't it? He's a grown man, he shouldn't need the help of a doctor to reclaim his memories -- and yet, he's having no success without them. "Do you ever wonder just who you're meant to be? It's all I spent my days doing, now."

Ishiah shakes his head, the only certain answer that he can give out of all the queries that this man has made. "I have never wondered who it is that I'm meant to be. I was not born; I was made. And when one is made, every last detail planned as well as possible, the matter of who we're meant to be becomes infinitely clear. We are made for a purpose," Ishiah considers, brow furrowing.

"The greater question is who I want to be, something that I am still in the process of discovering, and I have little problem taking that road at my own pace. Perhaps that's what you should ask yourself, rather than assuming that you ought force yourself into whoever fate had intended you to be."

"I guess I just want to know where I can start," he admits. There's so much that he doesn't know and when he focuses on that lack of knowledge, it makes him feel powerless. Worse, it makes him feel like he's missing something obvious -- something right in front of his nose and bigger than he can even put words to. "I don't like thinking that whatever life I led was so empty that I can so easily walk away from it," he explains.

"Perhaps start with the woman that you've mentioned more than once already. People tend to leave a very deep impact on our memories, and chances are that this woman may have some clue as to what your previous life was like. Or perhaps simply talking to her will unearth some feelings driven by who you used to be," Ishiah suggests with a brief look, before then clarifying, "Mind, this is only what I have to suggest after hearing what you've told me. I have no way of knowing whether or not anything will come of it, but it does certainly sound like the greatest lead that you have thus far."

"Her name is Mary Margaret," he explains, his tone sliding into a genuine fondness that can't be mistaken the moment he starts to speak about her. "And she's the only thing that feels real here, like the only person I can remember, even if there are no concrete facts behind those memories. I recognize her, but things about her as well -- her ring, her smile, her hands."

He knows Mary Margaret. The two have only briefly spoken, of course, but in that amount of time, Ishiah already knew that she was the type so wholly sweet that he couldn't do anything short of looking after her welfare. Brows furrowing severely at the thought of her being involved in a matter as confusing as this, Ishiah hopes that the pull that this man feels isn't the result of some early imprinting on a man without memories. He hopes that he's drawn to her for reasons more than the physical alone, that perhaps the smile and ring are only noticeable for having been in all of the memories that they shared earlier in life.

"And what does she know about you?" he asks, trying to see if such is the case. "She does recognize you, yes?"

"She's the one who told me what my name is," he replies. There are other details, too, that he doesn't believe so readily -- and herein lies the problem. Should he believe her because she feels so real or should he believe in what he feels is right? "She knows me and she said that she --"

This is awkward, being that it's personal information and he doesn't know this man. "I'm not sure I should divulge. What she told me was between the two of us."

"That's a decision that only you can make," Ishiah replies with a slight shake of his head, not at all eager to try and push this man one way or the other. For all that he's proven himself a great confidante to any number of people, the last thing that he wants to do is to cause some man to throw the trust of another aside. "I'm capable of keeping secrets, but the choice of whether or not to trust me with that is only yours."

He turns to face forward again, keeping their pace relatively slow and measured.

"I won't press, either way."

He doesn't feel like it would be right if he talked about what Mary Margaret confided to him privately. It's something that he wants to do for her, even though she never asked. "I guess what it boils down to is that I only feel like one thing in this strange world is right and the memories that have been coming back make no sense at all."

"Write them down when you can. Whatever you remember, take notes as you're doing now, and then you'll be able to step back and look over everything with more care, find someone to help weed truth from confusion," Ishiah suggests, running his fingers briefly through his hair, which has grown out a bit too much for his liking over recent months. They reach a clearing in the path; Ishiah wonders if it wouldn't be a good idea for them to take a break. "There was another person with a situation not entirely unlike yours. She was able to find out more about her strange and conflicting memories, but it took a fair amount of time and therapy alike."

"Do you remember her name?" There's a great deal of inherent hope in his tone. If this has happened before, then he can find out who he truly is. He can find out who he's really meant to be instead of this David Nolan that he hears about, but doesn't really trust. "Do you think I could speak to her?"

"She's no longer on the island," Ishiah explains with a slight shake of his head. "But I believe the psychiatrist that she was turning to still is, although I don't know enough to tell you who that might be." He tries to call back further into his memory, but the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people on the island, and Ishiah never wants to pry too far into their private affairs.

Not without their consent, complicit or otherwise.

"I'm mainly telling you to remind you of the fact that working past this isn't an impossibility. Others have managed before."

He can't help the utter crushing defeat of that information, pressing his lips together as he bows his head. He knows that it was a long shot, but he had still hoped that he could have found some kind of solace by speaking to her. "I just want to remember whether what Mary Margaret tells me is true. Because some of the information feels like it's...made up, like a story, but other things feel so real. Like her and the ring she wears."

"I'm not sure that anyone will be able to verify that for you. As I said before, your best bet is to find someone who is an expert in this area, someone who is perhaps familiar with calling out repressed memories. There must at least be one person familiar with the procedure, so you're not without hope," Ishiah repeats, knowing that there's very little else that he has to offer. Even with Caliban's situation, all that he was able to do was to remain in the young man's general vicinity, but Ishiah's sure it was more his presence than anything in specific that he did which helped Caliban remember.

And with this young man, Ishiah doesn't have that advantage.

"I have to admit, I'm willing to do anything right now." With the map tucked into his pocket, David finds that he's resorting to whatever desperate hope he can in order to find answers that make sense instead of this muddled disaster running through his mind at any given waking moment. "I just want to understand whether there really is a wife waiting back home for me when I don't feel like that could possibly be true."

"If you're willing to do anything, then I highly advise you to be patient. I understand that it must be easier said than done, and no, I have never personally been caught in your situation before. I have always been on the other side, with memories slipping the minds of others, whether by means of curse or happenstance or time, but patience is always key." He glances over, arms crossing over his chest as they walk.

"You could miss a detail or two, trying to run over your thoughts as fervently as you seem to be now."

"Curse...?"

For some reason, that word sticks strangely in his mind, but he shakes it off dismissively. He lives in a town in Maine. He was in a coma for some reason, that isn't cursed -- that's just unlucky. "Sorry," he apologizes. "Like I said, the strangest things catch on, but Mary Margaret's explained where I come from. Curses and castles don't make sense."

"Keep your mind open," Ishiah says with a pointed look, shaking his head. It astounds him, sometimes, how far humans are able to fool themselves into thinking that something doesn't exist, usually whatever so happens to be the most difficult otherwise to fit into their everyday life and well-being. "Most humans where I live don't believe in the existence of curses either, and yet they most certainly exist."

"It just feels familiar. It's like with Mary Margaret. She tells me things that she knows and sees, but the truth is that none of it feels real. She does, some of the things other people tell me strike me as so real that I practically feel like I've never believed anything else. Then, a minute later, I remember that I'm just David Nolan from Storybrooke, Maine."

"David," Ishiah says, tone hard without being sharp, insistent without trying to shake the other man in the process. "Again, don't close your mind off to possibilities, nor try too hard to rationalize everything that you see, remember, or feel. There are plenty of potential explanations that might be capable of explaining what it is that you're going through, but I'm pretty sure all of them require that you don't assume truths or falsehoods with too much certainty yet, certainly when you have no one to verify one way or the other."

"So," he says, and this is the difficult part because it means that he might have to take someone he knows and not trust her at her word. "What Mary Margaret says, I shouldn't immediately count as true?" It sounds strange, especially when she's the one who told him everything. "What if I'm not even David Nolan, then?"

"What of it?" Ishiah asks, raising a brow. "It doesn't mean that she hasn't given you the most accurate identity that she knows. It doesn't mean that there might not be parts of that life that are true, or have been true. It only means that you should consider the fact that there may be more to your life, that these other memories that don't seem to fit may still be a part of what you've experienced, or are otherwise important enough to embed themselves deep into your mind." His brow furrows, not understanding where the difficulty is in understanding this fact.

Then again, he reminds himself, it's not everyone who deals with acquaintances who change identities so often, so wholly.

It's such a mindnumbing and strange concept. He doesn't know what to think of the notion that there's some sliver of hope that his memories -- all of them, no matter how confusing or insane they seem -- might be real. It's a balm for his sanity, if nothing else. "Now, it's just trying to find some kind of calm so they can come back naturally...?" It's as much a statement as it is a question.

in the east, the gray-green lines

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