Book of Memories
[Synopsis: After a massive decluttering of her quarters, Dum comes across one of her old photo albums; one specifically full of pictures of her and her brother when they were younger! Her first instinct? Show everyone the heaping pile of adorableness!]
[Location: The Skeld]
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"Phew...Almost done," Dum huffed, satisfied with her work so far. Nearly everything in her room was sorted out properly, and with not nearly as many things piled up on the desk and shelves as there'd been before.
"Only thing left to do is reorganize the bookshelf," she said to herself, nodding confidently as she started clearing the shelf off, piling the books up onto her bed. There were a lot of things there that she immediately knew she wouldn't ever need; boring novels, an essential handguide to troubleshooting systems on the Skeld(Engineer might want that one, really,) a book of pranks bought a few years ago that she never found the chance to use...
The last book she had to pull out was a large one with a hard, maroon cover, jutting out further than all of the other books on the shelf. It immediately caught Dum's attention, and she took a peek at it as she pulled it out...There in the center of the front cover was an old photo of her and Player. She couldn't have been any older than seven in the picture, and her brother not any older than two or three.
"Oh my gosh~! This is that old photo album of when we were kids!" she gushed, hugging the album ecstatically. She forgot all about cleaning her bookshelf out and plopped down on her bed, opening the cover and immersing herself in the memories.
"Oh, I almost forgot I had this! I should look at this more often!"
"What's goin' on in here, Dum?"
A familiar lime head peeked in through the open doorway; it was Dum's best friend, Gnome, and she had a curious look on her face.
"Oh, hey Gnome! I found my old photo album of Player and me when we were little! You wanna see?"
Gnome gasped excitedly.
"That sounds so cute! I gotta see this!"
She sat down beside her friend as she flipped back to the first page again.
"See this one right there?" Dum said, pointing at the first photo in the album. "That's from the hospital the day Player was born. I was, uh...four? I think? Yeah, that's right."
"That's Player?" Gnome replied, looking at the tiny red bean swaddled up in the blanket, sleeping in his big sister's hold. "N'ohhh, he was so small...!"
"Hee hee, yeah. He was real tiny."
"Pffft, look at your face. You look so confused."
"Yeah, I wasn't sure what to really make of him at the time, but he grew on me REEAALLY fast!"
"What's goin' on in here?"
The familiar, gruff voice of Player's best friend came from outside the door, and sure enough, Veteran's head was visible in the doorway, leaning in from the side.
"Oh, hey Veteran!" Dum greeted, motioning for him to come in.
"'Sup, lady dudes? What's shakin'?"
"Dum found a photo album of her and Player as kids," Gnome smiled. "Care to look?"
"Well, I don't have anything better to do," he shrugged as he parked himself beside Player's sister. "Sure, I'll have a looksee..."
As soon as he saw Player's baby picture, he threw his hands up to his face and let out a suppressed snort.
"Dude. Is that supposed to be you and him?"
"Yep. Cute, ain't he?"
"Wow. He wasn't any bigger than, like, a potato or something like that."
"Well, he was probably a little bigger than that. But even for a baby, he was kinda small. Our parents were a little worried about him at first, but he turned out okay!"
"Well, that's for sure..."
They continued skimming through the photos; the first handful of pages were essentially full of Dum doing something with her baby brother; playing with him, feeding him, watching him while he took a nap...There was even one of him on his first birthday; he was seated right beside his sister, shoving cake into his mouth, and she was just giving him an unamused look. Everybody thought it was hysterical, and were splitting their sides and making jokes about it for almost a solid minute.
The howls of laughter drew the attention of someone else.
"Now, what are you three up to in here?"
Mother walked into the room, Timmy at her side and Franklin seated atop her head.
"Oh, hey Mother!" Gnome chirped. "Hey, you might really like this; It's a whole album of Player and Dum when they were little!"
"Oh my goodness, really!?"
"You wanna take a seat? There's room for more!"
The cyan crewmate sat beside Gnome, Timmy hopping up into her lap and Franklin repositioning himself on her head to get a better look at the pictures.
"Here, look at this one," Dum pointed out. "That's me helping Player take his first steps!"
Mother gasped loudly and rose her hands up to her mouth.
"That's Player!? Ohh, he was so adorable...!" she exclaimed, starting to giggle. "Look at how sweet his little face is...! And look at you helping him along, you're such a good sister."
"Weeeell, I try..."
"Say, dearie? I'm just curious...What was his first word?"
Dum snorted and held back another outburst of laughter.
"Ohh, Mother, I'm SO glad you asked..." she smirked. "...It was 'Ew!'"
"EW??"
The cyan crewmate did everything she could to not double over as she started to laugh, and everyone else followed soon afterward.
"I'm serious!" Dum said through her fit of giggles. "Y-you know the puree stuff you feed babies? We went to feed him some of that one day, and he pushed it away, and that's what he said...!"
The whole lot of them could barely breathe at that point...By then, the volume of their laughter had reached out to another couple of their crewmembers.
"I say, what's all the ruckus about?"
"Yeah, you dorks are laughin' up a storm in here."
TheGentleman and MrCheese had come over to see what was going on.
"Oh, hey there guys," Veteran greeted them. "We're lookin' through this old photo album of Player and his sister when they were really young. You guys wanna join us?"
"Old family photos? Well, I must say, I'm intrigued," TheGentleman nodded, heading over to see for himself with MrCheese right behind him. Once they'd sat down on the bed behind Dum, each peering over her shoulder to see the photos, she continued.
"Oh my gosh! It's that time Player put his food bowl on his head and said it was a hat!"
MrCheese emitted a long wheeze, doubling over and turning so that he wouldn't collapse on top of Dum and the others while he laughed.
"Good heavens! He didn't have the best sense of fashion, did he?" TheGentleman giggled.
"Hee hee, nope. Hey, it did get better, I'll give him that!" Dum remarked before turning over to the next page.
Everything past Player's first birthday was a bit more spaced out; it didn't seem to take much longer for them to get to a picture of Player on his first day of preschool, and there were even fewer pages between then and the day he lost his first tooth.
"And here's us at the park teaching Jet how to fetch. He was such a great dog..." Dum continued. "...Ooh, this is me at cheerleading practice! Look at how embarrassed he looks...!"
"Dum, is that you on the ground!?" Gnome exclaimed.
"Yep! Turned out I was, uh, a little too clumsy to be a good cheerleader."
"I'll say, heh heh..." MrCheese chortled as they turned the page again.
"Ohh, look at this one of me and Player in one of our old blanket forts! Man, we used to have living room campouts all the time in those!"
"What's goin' on in here, gang?"
The familiar white figure headed in next and tipped his cap.
"Oh, hey Captain! You wanna look at these old photos of me and Player here?"
"Old photos of you two? Man, would I!"
Captain immediately hopped on over and parked himself between TheGentleman and MrCheese, resting his head atop Dum's as he peered down at the pages.
"What's that one there?" he asked her, pointing to a photo of Player holding up a Nerf gun in his hands, a pile of shredded wrapping paper in his lap.
"Oh, this was Christmas! Oh, he loved that Nerf pistol...A little too much, really. He loved using me as a target for some reason."
"Welp, good thing the bullets for those things are foam," Veteran giggled.
"Yeah...Mom and Dad had to take it from him eventually; one day after he got in trouble for something, he made the mistake of loading it up and shooting Mom in the butt with it...Twice."
"Oh my heavens!" TheGentleman exclaimed. "Did you see this unfold with your own eyes, Ms. Dum?"
"Yeah, I did. And it didn't end well for Player...Or the Nerf gun."
"Dang," MrCheese commented as Dum turned the page again.
"OOH, this is when Player started taking karate lessons!" Dum exclaimed, showing off a photo of Player in his brand new white belt. "I think he was, like, twelve or something when he started? Man, I was so proud of him!"
"Man. What kinda belt does he have now?" Captain asked curiously.
"He's got a green belt. I think that's smack in the middle of the ranks, so that's pretty good so far."
"Are you guys talking about me?"
They all looked up towards the doorway again...It was none other than Player himself who'd come along.
"Oh, hey, little bro!" Dum greeted chipperly. "We're looking at my photo album full of pictures of you and me as kids!"
"You still have that album?" Player asked. "Huh...I was wondering where it'd gone."
"Why don'tcha sit down with us? We're only halfway through it!"
"Wait...You're showing everyone the pictures in there?"
"Yep!"
"Oh, Player, you were such an adorable baby," Mother told him. Player flushed even redder than he already was and shrunk back a little in embarrassment.
"Dum, you had to show them my baby pictures? I look like an overcooked kidney bean in those..."
Veteran and Captain burst into giggles at what he said, and TheGentleman snorted as he held back his own laughter. While he didn't agree with Player's claim, the way he'd put it was amusing, to say the least.
"Oh come on, Player, no you don't," Dum assured him. "They loved them! Come on, join us! Besides, we're passed the baby stuff already!"
"Ah, well...Okay."
He headed over and stood beside his sister(as all of the spots around her on the bed were already taken,) and motioned for her to turn over to the next page. There were a few more pictures of the two of them across the next few pages doing things together, and Dum continued to give everyone context.
"Here's Dad teaching us how to play Monopoly, this is one of us cooking with Mom, there's us in one of our school plays...I think we fell asleep together on the couch watching a movie here...Ooh, here's us playing Wii Tennis! You know, I think I still have that game somewhere, Player!"
"Hey, do you remember that time I accidentally hit you in the face with my remote?" he reminisced.
"Oh, ho ho, yeah. You swung it right into my visor!"
"Pfft, yeah. I remember Dad was worried I broke your nose by accident, since I was already so good at breaking boards."
They all chuckled as they turned over to the next page...Dum's smile seemed to fall as soon as she saw the next picture.
"...You remember this one, Player?"
"Oh...Yeah," he nodded, looking down at the photo of the two of them sitting in their yard with only half-genuine smiles, an aging black Lab lying between them. "...This was taken before we went to the vet to put Jet down. I was upset about that for a long time...Man, Dum, if you weren't around to try to help cheer me up, I...I don't know how I'd have gotten along."
She reached out and patted her brother's head.
"I was upset too, Player...But just seeing you happy helped out a bit. That's part of why I did so much of what I did after that, because...Well, it reminded me that I still had you."
He looked back up at Dum, and his visor started to glimmer as it glossed over with tears. He stepped closer to her from where he stood and let her bring him into a soft, one-handed hug, nuzzling up to her a little.
"...Love ya, sis."
"You too, Player. You'll always be my baby brother."
She playfully peppered his cheek with kisses, to which he was taken by surprise.
"Agh! Ew, gross, stop, sis!"
Dum let him go and giggled again, turning to the rest of the crew.
"He always hated it when I did that."
"Looks like some things never change!" Captain chuckled, everyone else laughing a bit, too. Player wiped his cheek off and flushed red with embarrassment again, pouting a little.
"Blegh...J-just turn over to the next page, Dum."
She nodded at him, then continued. At that point in the photo album, they looked more like how they did now, so they had to have been taken within the past few years. There was one of Player with his new yellow belt in karate, the two of them with a science fair project, yet another photo of them playing Wii Tennis...
"Hey, look!" Player piped up. "It's your graduation picture!"
"Oh, yeah! Hey, when we went out to eat that night, didn't you laugh so hard at a story I told you about one of my friends that you snorted your soda right out of your nose!?"
"You still remember that!?"
The two siblings burst out laughing at the memory, and the other crewmates were quick to follow. When they finally died down again, Dum flipped over to the next page, and they both smiled again.
"That's the day you left for college," Player remarked, smiling fondly at the photo of the two of them standing side by side, Dum's packed luggage on either side of her and the student bus waiting behind them...Player's eyes looked a bit moist in the picture.
"Yeah...We played one more round of Wii Tennis before I had to go, remember that?"
"Sure do," Player smiled. "Man...It was kinda tough seein' the bus carry you off the first time, knowing you weren't gonna be around so much anymore."
"Yeah. Looks like you got a little teary-eyed," Veteran noted as he examined the photo.
"More than a little..." Player admitted. "But, hey. First time's the worst time, you know? Besides, when I found out she'd be coming back for summer vacation and the holidays, that got me excited!"
"Say, Dum?" Gnome asked. "When are you going back to college to start the next semester?"
"Uhhh, well, it's just the beginning of August, so...A little over a month? We still have plenty of time to hang out!"
"Oh, phew. That's a relief...What kinds of courses are you taking?"
"Communications and sociology. I'm gonna be a flight attendant!"
"A flight attendant!?" Captain exclaimed, smiling from ear to ear. "Aw, Dum! It's like we were destined to be together! I can't wait to fly around the world with you..."
"Neither can I, Captain."
She turned and planted a peck against her precious marshmallow's cheek, to which he smiled warmly and blushed; a stark contrast to how Player reacted to her affection.
"Say, are there any more empty pages in this thing?" the red-clad crewmate asked, her, to which she flipped more toward the back to see...There was still another quarter of the album that was empty.
"Yeah, there are! How about we keep filling this thing up?"
"That sounds like a fantastic idea!" TheGentleman remarked.
"How 'bout we take one now?" Gnome suggested, pulling her phone out and raising it up to take a picture of all of them. "Everybody smile!"
She snapped the picture another few seconds later...And it wasn't too long afterward that a developed photo of it was tucked into the sheath of one of the pages, the moment in time that it had captured immortalized.
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Welp, there ya have it! Hope you fellas enjoyed! :D
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