[ It's a story she's only had to tell a couple times. Had to, the details wrenched from her like pulling teeth, a protracted misery offered in recompense for a wrong she'd done, a mistake she'd made. It's not the kind of thing she offers, nothing she tells strangers, friends. What good can pity do her now?
... But... Jaime keeps parts of himself closed off, too. There are hurts of his she doesn't know — some she sees in flickers behind his eyes at unusual moments, reacting to unseen blows, and she's never known how to ask about those kinds of things. She wants to know him.
Maybe he wants to know her, too. ]
... He didn't do it out of malice. I think... he thought he was clever enough, he'd be able to pull it off. [ She's nearly the age he was, now; those years seemed so much wider, so much more impressive, when she was still a child. ] But, um... this guy, he ported in only a day or two after a different him ported out. We didn't have the auto-refresh on the Network, or anything like that, so... when he left, nobody realized it. The second guy, he arrived in a strange place, and found he already had a life in progress. He had a job. A house. A— ... Uh, commitments.
So he. Um. Picked it up, as if it'd been him the whole time. That kind of thing, the switching histories, it wasn't common at all back then yet. It's not like we knew how to look for it. Just, he seemed off. We chalked it up to stress, at first, but... just because you know somebody is supposed to be your friend, it doesn't mean you know how to treat them. Even if you can see what's happened before, if you don't know what the feelings are supposed to be, it's not going to be genuine.
... Maybe he thought, if he faked it long enough, the feelings would come later. But we were just obligations to be minded. Contracts to fulfill. Nothing more.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-11-11 10:00 am (UTC)... But... Jaime keeps parts of himself closed off, too. There are hurts of his she doesn't know — some she sees in flickers behind his eyes at unusual moments, reacting to unseen blows, and she's never known how to ask about those kinds of things. She wants to know him.
Maybe he wants to know her, too. ]
... He didn't do it out of malice. I think... he thought he was clever enough, he'd be able to pull it off. [ She's nearly the age he was, now; those years seemed so much wider, so much more impressive, when she was still a child. ] But, um... this guy, he ported in only a day or two after a different him ported out. We didn't have the auto-refresh on the Network, or anything like that, so... when he left, nobody realized it. The second guy, he arrived in a strange place, and found he already had a life in progress. He had a job. A house. A— ... Uh, commitments.
So he. Um. Picked it up, as if it'd been him the whole time. That kind of thing, the switching histories, it wasn't common at all back then yet. It's not like we knew how to look for it. Just, he seemed off. We chalked it up to stress, at first, but... just because you know somebody is supposed to be your friend, it doesn't mean you know how to treat them. Even if you can see what's happened before, if you don't know what the feelings are supposed to be, it's not going to be genuine.
... Maybe he thought, if he faked it long enough, the feelings would come later. But we were just obligations to be minded. Contracts to fulfill. Nothing more.