#also an excuse to write joe with the convex more would be fantastic because they're a SUPER underrated dynamic

[theminecraftbee]

Joe wakes up in his bed inside of his pinball storage and he blinks. For one, “wakes up” is not quite the right words; he certainly comes to awareness, and he’s certainly on his bed, but he doesn’t feel like he’d been asleep so much as simply on his bed. For another, he certainly doesn’t remember getting to sleep, or getting to the pinball, or really how he’d gotten in this position in the first place. Strange; Joe’s pretty good at forgetting what he’d been doing, but he doesn’t normally forget how he’d gotten somewhere, just why he’d been going there in the first place.

He sits up and looks at his chests. Well, he had to be here for a reason. If he tries to think through everything he can figure out that he was doing before this, he can probably figure out how (and why) he got here? That’s somewhat similar to what he does when he forgets what he was meant to be doing, at least. Similar enough principle.

Okay. Think.

He’d been...

Scar and Cub had come to kill him, because they were feeling murderous, and Joe was easy to find and awake. Alright. Now, that’s easy enough; Scar and Cub come to mess with Joe fairly regularly. Joe doesn’t make himself an easy enough target as to be boring, see, but also doesn’t tend to retaliate too much and rather likes going along with chaos, which is probably something akin to catnip to vexes, or at least, something akin to catnip to those two. Of course, Joe hadn’t felt much like being murdered, so he’d dived into his hidden skeleton farm to heal up, flown up to find them, and masterfully distracted them by distracting himself with a long conversation.

Right. So that was all normal. Scar and Cub had left, presumably to either find someone else to randomly murder or to eat their respective sweets (which they were fighting about) or to generally cause problems. And Joe... Joe had...

He shakes his head, as though to remove dust from it. Well now. No spacing out on what he’d done next; that’s the whole point of this exercise! He’d...

Oh, right. He’d gone back to work on preparing for that water sweeper he was going to figure out how to build from Doc. It required placing a lot of sand and draining a lot of water, and it was that second bit, the water bit, that was urgent, because Gem had a queue of people waiting to rent sponges from her, and Joe was only the first in line. So he’d gone back to that; best to get whatever he could done while the day was still such that Joe could act. So Joe had been doing that, and it was usual.

Then he’d heard rockets, which meant someone else was coming by to visit. He remembers thinking that maybe he’d lost track of time even worse than he’d thought, and somehow it was the next day, and Cleo had come to check on him and force him to eat, since she always seemed to know when he forgot to take care of himself. But then he’d looked up, and the sky had still been light! So it hadn’t been that. It had been Scar! And Joe remembers...

He...

He shakes his head again. No, he can remember this. He remembers thinking that Scar had looked... strange? But he can’t quite pick out what was weird about Scar. It wasn’t weird in a spooky way, yet. (Yet? Oh, that’s a bad sign, Joe thinks. That’s a real bad sign.) It was more in a, oh, that’s not an expression Joe sees on Scar too often, sorta way. Not one he’d never seen yet (and yet again, a yet), but still unusual. And Scar had...

Had...

Scar had...

Asked about audio books?

Joe has to think about that one for a while, but he’s pretty sure that’s why Scar had come over. To ask about audio books, since Joe had mentioned wanting to make one. Scar mentioned that he wanted to know... about... uh... companies... that record them? And Joe had said he hadn’t finished looking into it, but he’d wanted to make a bogus self-help book, and Scar had made an even stranger face, and Joe had asked if Scar was okay, and...

And... oh, this is the important part, Joe realizes. He digs his fingers into the covers. His head is all fuzzy, but he’s a stubborn sort. He can remember this. He can.

Scar had started to say something important, Joe thinks. He knows Scar did. It can’t just be nothing in Joe’s head, because Joe may be good at forgetting important things, but not those kinds of important things, the ones that made Scar look so tired, slumped forward in his chair, and worried in a way he didn’t let too many people see. That was something that Joe had to keep safe. He didn’t like letting people down. But try as Joe might, he can’t...

He...

Well, what had Scar done after that? It might help Joe remember. Scar had...

Scar had asked if Joe wanted to hear his audio book. The one Scar had done. the “Landscaping Your Mind” one. Yeah. That’s -

And then Joe doesn’t... he can’t remember anything else.

And now he’s here. In his bed in the marble. And all he can think is:

Scar had leaned back in his chair when he’d asked about the audio book, and the expression on his face, it was almost like when Scar wants to cause trouble. Except, Joe had seen the expression Scar normally wears when he wants to cause trouble. This expression - it had been entirely new.

And something between Scar’s teeth had been purple.

And Joe thinks: oh. I’m not supposed to remember that, am I?

He sits in the marble for a long time on the bed, and tries and tries and tries to remember more things he’s not supposed to, but he can’t. He just feels a sinking dread about things he’s probably not qualified to handle, and about the idea of forgetting more than he already does, and if anyone else has things they’ve forgotten, but don’t know the signs as well as Joe does, given that Joe forgets things all the time, and most people don’t. He doesn’t know what to do about any of it, is the thing. He doesn’t even still quite know what’s happened. He’s terrified of what might have, in the several hours he can’t remember. He’s...

...”Landscaping Your Mind”, huh?

Well, maybe he can just buy a book...?