maskormenace | one ✩ video

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[ ID reads Karen Starr.

As for Karen, she's seated on her bed in her shared housing complex. Next to her bedside, on the small dresser, is a tall iced cappuccino that's already a quarter finished. Most of her hair is tied up and she's dressed in a camisole and three quarter pants, but interesting there's a light sweater laying near the edge of the bed.

It's much too warm for long sleeves. ]

Probably a bit weird to ask, but how many of you are going to the jobs they set up for us? I can't exactly complain about doing work I know how to do and being able to earn money ASAP, but it still feels a bit like a demotion. I liked the view from my office window.

[ She sighs and scratches above the digital tattoo on her wrist. ]

Ugh... and I don't suppose someone's found a way to get rid of this?

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[ kanaya's face tenses a moment at the name, eyes widening, lips pursing, like a catch in her breath, r a skip of her heart. the moment passes and her expression falls as it relaxes. the pause tells the story all by itself. ]

...Knew.

[ Her throat closes up while almost shoots out of the bed. Her own eyes grow wide with horror and disbelief. ]

No...

[ It explains the missing name on this network. ]

What happened?

The end of the world happened.

[ her jaw sets as her brows strain together, but she leans her head against a hand to cover her eyes. ]

She didn't make it to the other side.

[ kanaya still remembers the sensation, feeling nepeta's limp body in her arms only to be empty-handed a moment later. the camera swerves to the ceiling as she puts the comm down, then clicks off to audio only. ]

Kanaya.

[ Her voice is quiet and soft, forehead creases prominent as she continues to frown.

Damn it all. ]

I'm sorry, Kanaya.

Not as sorry as I am.

[ and it's the guilt that hurts the most, that she and nepeta had lost their friendship to so much pettiness and pride, and when the time came, it was too late to fix it. she'd botched the whole thing. ]

But being sorry doesn't change a damn thing.

I know.

[ She knows it all too well, it's part of why she'll never forgive Barbara; it's so much easier to blame her for everything rather than to stay feeling sorry for herself. ]

I'm only sorry I didn't get to know her too well. She was sweet.

Thinking of her only as sweet does her a disservice. She was many things, and harmless not among them.

[ because that was a lot of their problem. nepeta wanting to be stronger than kanaya treated her, kanaya not wanting her to have to be. ]

She went bravely, at least. But she always had.

What do you mean "always had"?

[ she takes a deep breath. ]

Suffice to say...she didn't have much time left in our native universe.

What?

[ There is only confusion. ]

Nepeta didn't survive back home either?

[ It's disturbing to wonder if it's her inescapable fate. ]

What happened there? She'd told me that her home was a more dangerous place than the City.

[ that it was inescapable was kanaya's fear, a fact she took for granted. but nepeta wasn't about to accept that, she was so sure that she could change it. ]

The world from which we originate certainly had its dangers, but we were the part that truly made it so.

Twelve of us survived Alternia's end. It took us ten hours to bring that number to four.

Your world is gone.

[ She can't escape this subject ever, can she? It always finds its way back to her. ]

... Did it explode or was it erased from existence?

[ How specific. ]

I don't think it did much of either. Everyone was wiped out in our own sort of apocalypse. [ not unlike the one they recently escaped, but also entirely different. ] But the universe itself collapsed not long after. That doesn't mean it never existed.

[ "not long after" is terribly subjective. it was a month from her perspective, but hundreds of years had passed on the world itself. not that she knows it. ]

And it doesn't tamper with anyone's memories?

I wonder if that's what happened to the City. It's gone, but not completely gone.

Memories don't die with the people who made them, even when those people are universes instead. Even when the ones who bear them die, there's still a chance for those memories to outlast them. That's how stories are born.

[ mostly she doesn't get why that would even be a question. ]

I'd say it's no different for the City. Even dead, it will still haunt us.

I meant something else, but I guess it's different in each universe.

[ She hates feeling so lost and vulnerable, but being shifted from one universe to another, losing Helena all over... ]

I'm sorry, by the way. About your home.

It's hardly the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Sometimes I'm not even sure how much I miss it.

[ though she can't deny that life was much simpler then, and she can't help missing that. missing her hive and her mother. even if she knew it was coming, the end of alternia was the beginning of her life becoming far more complicated. ]

Were you happy in the City?

[ Helena had been. It only left her conflicted over finding a way to bring Helena over to her adopted home when Helena had family and a girlfriend she didn't want to abandon. ]

Sometimes?

Granted, I think that may have been more a fault of mine than the City's. It didn't always help, of course, but I'm sure I could find a way to be miserable anywhere.

Hey, it happens. We gotta roll with the punches and find ways to keep ourselves happy.

Oh, believe me, I'm well aware. You don't live with it this long without determining some method of management. Not if you intend to continue living.

[ A quiet laugh with a rare touch of melancholy. It's been a long half a year for her. ]

Takes some people a while to realize.

I like you, Kanaya.

[ kanaya hums quietly at that. it was a lesson she hoped nepeta would come to learn, but she hadn't exactly been very good at teaching it, either. by the time she really understood it herself, that bridge had already been burned. ]

I wasn't sure what to make of you at first, Karen, but I can say with more certainty that you're a good person to be liked by.

But I think the problem is that we grow too accustomed to it. One some point the pan becomes so normal that we fail to notice it's become self-inflicted. If we're lucky, we may be woken up to that fact.

[ It's unfortunate she never knew about Nepeta's ongoing troubles with friends. ]

We really do. I've seen it happen to a lot of friends and the end result can be ugly if they aren't made aware.

But see... this is why I think it would be good to try and stay in touch here. Just... if you ever need to talk, Kanaya.

[ well, alternian trolls have always been better at burning bridges than living under them. ]

Needs and wants. Always constant conflict there. But rest assured, if I don't talk with you, it's likely I will be with someone else. That isn't a mark against you, they've simply had to crash their head against the wall longer.

[ she pauses a moment, something had been bugging her earlier, but she hadn't been sure how to ask about it before. ] Why did you ask if anyone's memories of our universe had been tampered?

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