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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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?

No offense taken.

[ A measured pause. ]

Oh... something I've [ lived and ] seen before.

Does it happen often where you're from?

[ universes dying aren't something new to her, but memories or perceptions being altered always takes an outside influence. a shitty clown, for instance. ]

Not really, but I've never figured it out. [ She pauses, considering it for a second. ] The place I'm from is gone, but when it died, everyone forgot about it.

The universe in its entirety, I take it? I suppose it depends on the method of death, perhaps, whether it left a corpse or not.

[ which is much easier when universes are embodied in giant frogs where you come from. otherwise it just sounds like a nonsense metaphor. ]

Yeah.

It's gone. There were a couple of survivors, but they've passed on, too.

[ Lois couldn't hold on any longer. ]

There have been alternate universes like mine, but they were quite the same. Something was always different there, like certain people were missing, or the people were different.

[ she thinks about it a little more, maybe it isn't so unfamiliar after all. ]

Maybe more like a reset, though those typically happen within a single universe. No one remembers how things were before because they've experienced it very differently from the start. Circumstances develop differently due to the rearrangement of certain key players.

Gives me a headache to think about.

I was once friends with my girlfriend's mother from a version of her universe where the chronology led her to believe that it was she who is the daughter.

Headache is an understatement.

... That'll give anyone an identity crisis. I know the feeling.

You have my sympathy, then.

...How long ago was it? When you lost your universe, I mean.

[ internal screaming about comic timelines. ]

Years ago now. [ Sometimes it feels like only just yesterday. ] The universe tries to do that a lot back home... end.

Sounds like it was made under poor construction. [ it's what she blames the death of earth's universe where she comes from, anyway. but that's mostly because she's the one who made it. ]I suppose there's more...attachment, when you've had the opportunity to experience more of the universe you've lost, though. When you didn't know it was coming.

[ Awkward laughter. ]

I'm not so sure about that. Cosmic entities are never a walk in the park.

[ She hates to admit it, but she's dealt with all sorts too many times to underestimate their capabilities. ]

... Mm. [ She still doesn't know why she survived.

But she doesn't want to focus on this any longer. Still too many raw nerves. ] All I can do is carry on with the life I do have. I'm still here and that matters most to me.

You aren't wrong. Going back is never an option, and sometimes even the future is already decided for you. That was Nepeta's problem.

[ she pauses. ] But I'd say it's more of a pond than a park.

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