Everneath Memory and the Past Quotes

Cole tells Nikki that she wasn't supposed to remember her life on the Surface after the Feed. In theory, this would've made it easier for him to convince her to become an Everliving with him, since she wouldn't have any memories tempting her to Return to the Surface. But that's not how things went, since Nikki's memory of Jack's face stayed with her the whole time.

Jules fills Nikki in on what had happened while she was gone, including Jack's obsessive downward spiral about her disappearance. To Jules, this is a painful memory, but to Nikki, it's a sign of hope. Despite the bad stuff that went down between Nikki and Jack right before the Feed, maybe there's a chance that he still cares for her.

This moment happens right when Nikki admits to Jack that she does remember him, and they have a conversation about what she remembers. She plans to file it away under happy memories, unlike all the other bad memories she has. And when Nikki inevitably goes to the Tunnels, she can recall this memory and draw joy from it. Don't we all do this to some degree?

Nikki and Will have a conversation about memory at the post-Feed Christmas Dance while dancing together. Will claims that remembering is easy but forgetting is hard, and Nikki says it's the opposite for her. But when Will says that he and Jack share the Caputo good memory trait, it makes Nikki wonder what he's getting at. Just what does Jack remember about Nikki? And what's he going to do about it?

After Nikki comes clean to Jack about the Everneath and what she went through, he asks whether she completely forgot him while there. Duh—no, of course not. But this might be the point where Nikki realizes that her memories may be obvious to her, but this doesn't mean other people can tell what she remembers and what she doesn't. It's called relationship communication, people, and Nikki and Jack clearly need more of it.

Mrs. Jenkins has a strange relationship with memory and the past. She's all like, "Yeah, I totally forgot my daughter as soon as she set foot in the Everneath. Totes cool." Er, right. What kind of weird upbringing do you have to have in order to feel good about saying that kind of thing? The Daughters of Persephone apparently encourage it, as weird as it might seem to us normal folks.

Nikki's body remembers what it was like to fit perfectly with Cole's, even if her brain is screaming no about it. Rationally, she knows it's a bad idea for her to get close to him again—her emotions and memories are totally against it—but her body seems to hold a different set of memories, ones that enjoy Cole's embrace and want more of it.

Nikki could only do so much to cling to her memories in the Everneath, since Cole was emotionally strip-mining her of everything he could get his hands on… but she managed to remember Jack. And even though by the end she only remembered his face, she clung to that memory like a baby monkey to its mom, never letting go.

During the Feed, Nikki's memories replay before her eyes, with the most recent events stripped away. But then those memories begin to vanish, one by one, and she's only left with Jack's face. How weird it must be to watch your memories float away, losing context and meaning.

By now we get the sense that Nikki is clinging to her memories, since she doesn't want to forget her life any more than she has to after the Feed. But for a few moments, kissing Jack makes her forget the bad stuff going on… and in contrast to the way Cole took away Nikki's pain earlier, this is based on a real connection; it's not an illusion. Kissing Jack makes her forget the bad stuff because their love is real.