slightlyoffchilt | - IC CONTACT POST FOR MASKORMENACE -

Of course.

[ The damn doesn't open in an instant; Ruka tilts her head to stare towards the ceiling, sighing, as if pushing out air enough will dislodge words from somewhere deep in her chest. It does not. She'll have to draw each one out with force. ]

You've been around long enough to know, that when some people exPort, and Port back in, they're not always the same person. Older, younger, different history—different memories. Sometimes personalities stick around, but not always.

I'm sure you've had your share of that, but... well, there aren't many ImPorts who have stuck around for as long as I have, and the ones who have aren't exactly people I would call friends.

Because of that, I know a great deal about people who have never spoken to me. Good and bad.

A victim of chronological lapse.

[Intoned Chilton, as he made a quick note upon his legal pad. While this condition wasn't unique to her alone, it was true that those who spent longer years away from their natural universe suffered a sort of survivor's syndrome; dear ones came and went. Chilton himself had seen the passage of three ex-girlfriends, and Abel Gideon, and Hannibal Lecter, and Alana Bloom -- but those absences had served to benefit a scoundrel like Frederick Chilton. He was opportunistic, not empathetic.]

Do you feel that you're made into an invasive variable? Given how much you'd know about an imPort who had been, as you said, exPorted previously.

Something like that, certainly. When I was younger, so, before it was a very common phenomenon, there were a couple instances that made, mmm... trying to reforge those bonds into something traumatic, for the other person. After that, I've done my best to avoid contact with different "iterations" of the same "identity," but sometimes circumstance won't allow that.

At least you have the self-awareness of your prior behavior. [Chilton made a quick note, before moving on.] And you've avoided the pattern if it's within your power to do so, as you've noted. I might suggest that the enduring cycle of loss and hollow return -- in the sense that these other iterations of the people you've grown attached to as not the same, and thus the would-be bond is inauthentic -- well, that would be difficult for anyone.

How do you manage your anger?

Anger?

[ The word has the lilt of surprise, but not much. ]

I don't usually have to, for anger; it's pretty rare that I feel my own, anyway.

You're saying you've become more of a cipher than anything else? Using the excuse of your empathy prowess to repress your own original emotions?

I wouldn't say I'm "using the excuse," or anything like that. I've never been a person that gets angry easily, or even very often, so most of the anger I experience is not... mine.

[ Which isn't to say he's wrong on the concept. ]

Your dodge is noted.

[Chilton lacked Alana Bloom's more diplomatic language, but that didn't mean he wasn't sensitive to the needs and progress of his patients.]

You seem rather analytical, observant. Are there emotions you harbor that you can pinpoint belonging to certain individuals?

Yes.

[ Without even the barest pretense of consideration, or hesitation. If only all her answers could be so easy. ]

Describe them to me.

[He said, patiently, his attention presently devoted to her.]

[ Her mouth pulls to one side, though it would be hard to call it a smile. ]

I think all of them would take more than a day to list, but... the longing sort of joyous... melancholic devotion... of a person who lost the love of their life, but holds on more to the good things that love brought rather than the fact she's dead. And there's the furious hatred of the wrongly killed, and the intellectual heartlessness of self-seen justified... I suppose "grim reaper," though less 'grim' and more... deceptively pleasant, I guess.

[ Her hands attempt gesture through this, though the meaning is vague at best: rolls of the wrist, a shifting of weight from one shoulder into the other, a tilt of the head to one side. It's the most animated she's been since she entered, and probably the most physically expressive anyone has seen in months. ]

The sense of infatuation, that self-perpetuates regardless of circumstance; miserable platonic longing, the euphoric joy of causing suffering--that one's always pretty hard to overcome when it surfaces. The, uh, hopeless anxiety—the powerlessness as your life dwindles to nothing—

[ Her hand does another sort of roll, almost like she's trying to pull off a scarf. ]

—is that what you mean?

Existential emotions tend to dominate? At least -- according to the individuals you engage. Passion would be a given, whether that be dedicated to the justice indicated, or some more possessed target.

[Chilton had been jotting down the descriptions she drew forth, his notes accompanied by the occasional twitch of his mouth. Such was the only concession of his personal feelings of those emotions discussed -- he wasn't here to judge them, but only Ruka's extension to these unnamed individuals.]

And what about your own identity, in relation to these foreign feelings? Did they warp your sense of self, or did these waves seem altogether alien? [A beat, and he looked up to meet her eyes.] Could you guess on how much of you remains the true you?

In the moment I experience them for the first time, my body renders them as if they were "my" emotions. Once that method of input is removed, or what is there has expended itself, I can sever it; after that, emotions like that can resonate with sensations I feel after it, but they don't feel like me. So... for instance, in self-loathing, it's very easy for me to tell which part is me, and which is the existential crisis of an old friend bleeding in.

[ Her visible eye narrows for focus, but she's not looking at Chilton as she explains. ]

It's sort of... both, I suppose? If the sensation is very strong in that first moment, then "I" may not even be present... but once it passes, I'm me again. I'm sure I would have been a much different person without these powers at all, but it's hard to say by how much. I was still a child when they became like this.

So your identity -- at least, how you perceive your identity -- it had always been fragmented by other personalities.

[He paused, glancing down at his notes.]

Perhaps not fragmented in a manner of separation. Perhaps these emotions of others, emotions wrought from their personal experiences, perhaps those create a sort of mosaic where a void might have been. Ruka -- have you considered? What if you're a physical manifestation of the Jungian collective conscious?

I... I can't say I've considered that, no.

[ In part because she doesn't fully understand what he's getting at—part of it clearly went over her head. ]

Your experiences, convoluted and chaotic as they are, had provoked a unique environment that could have -- possibly -- evolved your neural capabilities into something that had previously only been a theory.

[Chilton maintains the soft sway of his therapeutic tone -- but make no mistake, he is excited by the prospect.]

Something that you have adapted to, in part because of your abilities.

[ She considers this, looking at Chilton now rather than the ceiling above him. ]

My powers have been like this since I was first ImPorted, more than six years ago now. It's not something I was born with, not in the way it's manifested in these two worlds. My heart was always my own in my hometown.

After I—

[ She starts to say, but she cuts herself off, focus turning elsewhere with a furrow in her brow, a hand rising without urgency to block her mouth. Weighing whether she wants to finish that thought. ]

After you... What?

[As if Chilton was going to allow that lapsed implication a quiet grave. He nearly leered at his patient, daring her to finish that thought.]

It might be a crucial piece of information, Ruka. It is astounding how self-realization is amplified when speaking of oneself to another, even if you've already suffered these thought processes.

[ There's a bow to her head, a slight inclination to indicate she's heard, but there's still a lengthy silence that follows.

From syllable one that follows, it's clear it's not something she wants to say; it is, in the end, nothing she's ever talked about before. ]

... After I lost that eye, and everything else, it was... it felt difficult to feel like myself all the time. It didn't even seem like a good idea at the time, but that's when I started utilizing static inputs. I could use that... sort of... familiar, unchanging emotional state, to ground myself.

Trauma is often the most appropriate catalyst. While some are understandably shattered by loss, whether that loss is so intimately physical or not, others manipulate the momentum for... Survival.

[He inclined his head, indicating that he considered Ruka to be associated with the second grouping.]

Bad things happen. Those bad things that happen to you reassert your authentic, original emotions. That must be incredibly frustrating.

I don't suppose it's very surprising, but it's much easier to work through foreign-borne emotions, than it is my own. They're finite. Even if they start very strong, that single input can't get any stronger. Regular human emotions, though, they can fluctuate from minute to minute, at the slightest provocation. Associations and reminders can unearth the dead long after they've been buried.

... I know that's what ordinary people have to deal with, their whole lives, but when you have two different senses of emotion, it's hard not to prefer the less painful one.

It's logical, if anything. I think most people in your position would opt for the less painful option -- if we're under the assumption that most people are rationally minded.

[Chilton's opinion on that matter was left obscured.]

Have you tried forgetting them? Relieving yourself of that baggage. There are a few psychic imPorts around here, Ruka, I have little doubt their moral qualms aren't up to starch.

[The suggestion in of itself wasn't advice -- he anticipated that she had already considered that, and was very likely against the proposal. But he wanted to observe her reaction, that was the whole point of the matter.]

[ There's a visible flinch in her expression: a recoil in the tensing muscles, a momentary baring of the very edges of her teeth. ]

The only thing permanent in my life is myself. If I wanted to erase that, I would have done it five years ago.

[Open acknowledgement of suicidal consideration. Ultimately rejected by Ruka, of course, but it was interesting that she pursued self-infliction rather than the alternative. An erasure of the memories of others that one had accumulated could be a type of violence, and she understood that.

What an empath, indeed.]

Quite the statement, given our casual propensity to not always die. Erasure in this context could indicate identity more than literal life.

[Which was more horrifying, and more titillating, in Chilton's opinion.]

Then moving onto the next solution -- compartmentalizing. You've already been doing that somewhat, by my observation, but what about creating psychological separations with greater purpose?

Psychological separations? [ She eases back from the more defensive posture of the last query--that sort of extreme tactic is one she's had to reject more times than this--a genuine curiosity in her tone. ] How do you mean that?

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