#aka throwing the braincell back and forth until oops! an au has happened!

[autisticlalna]

at a certain point, it's hard to tell where one ends and one begins. the more Viking breaks, the more Navigator starts to fill in the gaps. it stops being a matter of needing to keep watching and starts being a matter of holding him together.

he's pretty sure Sapphire knows exactly what's happening. she'd hold it over him if he gave her the space to. "Any other universe, I'd say go for it." he's such a hypocrite. too late to turn back now, though. he's not his sister. the only direction he has to go is forward.

meanwhile, the more he falls apart, the more Viking starts putting the pieces together.

Hey so you know how during the clock tower stream Nav’s voice came through while Viking and Ruby were reading the book? What if that starts happening more often? What if his eyes seem to flash green for a second and he starts having moments where he just forgets what he was doing? What if Viking just starts to break and no one knows why?

AAAAA AMBERRRRRRR

ohhh my god. time to put viking in the torment nexus.

the thing with Nav and Saph, right-- Saph's already shown to be good at slipping in and out of control, what with the conversations she has with Ruby in their journal. Nav's quieter, trying to keep hidden. he waits until the coast is completely clear, until there's no chance of any evidence being left behind, and even then it's brief moments until he has to back off again. the only time he drops the secrecy and starts speaking is when it's with someone who already knows everything about him anyway. Nav's supposed to be the guy behind the scenes, keeping everything in place, trying to stop everything from falling apart.

and, y'know, back when this started, i had this headcanon-slash-theory that maybe tViking is just really receptive to this? like, it's easy to nudge him out of the way and take over. it's happened to him before, and he doesn't really think about it because it benefits him most of the time.

Nav's not trying to wrestle him for control, it just... happens. he gets a little too close and there's an overlap. he's already having to monitor this iteration anyway, and the more stressed he gets about the Situation the more he steps in when he didn't mean to.

it's always for a brief moment. an echo to his voice, a flicker of light, a weird expression or a strange reaction. then Nav recoils and Viking's left standing there with a blip in his memory and uneasy looks on the people around him.