Memories of Sessions Past
You weren't excited, when the session started. You were dreading leaving your moirail, dreading not being able to pile or hug her any time one of you wanted to. But you had no choice, you knew that. So you bundled her through the door, delayed as long as you could afterwards, waiting - hoping - to hear word from your kismesis, assurance that he was alright. But you could only delay so long; there were only so many times you could afford to loop back through the session. The stars started to show, and then it was time to leave. The second session was hard. You knew your Aspect - how could you not, you had played it once already, had heard nothing but ticking since before you walked through the Door. So strange, to hear it stop once you went through the door, to hear silence. Worse than silence, that odd, humming, ringing not-sound that came and went during the week you waited for your co-players. But the silence was not what made it hard. Nor was it re-rolling your Aspect so soon after - as difficult an Aspect as yours was/is/always has been/always will be, you love it like a lusus. How can you not? No, what made it difficult was your co-players. You never did/never will/never do find out why they start to shun you, why none of them make the effort to learn how to communicate with you when you are meeting in-person, why they suddenly shun you. You cannot hear them whispering behind your back during the session meetings, you do not know of the poisonous rumors that one of them spreads. Your Whispers were concerned with progression, with linearity, with choices - not with communication. Your Aspect explains nothing; you will learn or you will fall - it has always been a particularly unforgiving master. This has not/will not/cannot ever change. Your Class requires you to fall into despair. It is an inevitable, encoded, part of your ARC that cannot be avoided. Normally, one of your co-players would be there to drag you out of it, return you to rescuing the damsel in distress that is the timeline. But none of them notice, when you stop talking to them, because they had all stopped talking to you weeks ago (months ago) (years ago) (so long ago you cannot truly believe they ever did talk to you - surely this is just a delusion, a fantasy dreamed up to comfort yourself with). You do not hear the footsteps of your distant-future self walking up to you. You startle, badly, when her hand grips your shoulder. The argument is silent, but furious, and you play both parts in a scene meant for at least two. You know already how it ends; you drag yourself to your feet and force yourself to do one of the quests that has been waiting. And then another. And another. And you keep going, until you're doing things on your own again (just like you always did). And your co-players never know how close they came to causing you to BT. Your Seer bitches in a session meeting once about something making travel times lag when going through portals to your land - but the cause is never tracked down. Just a weird glitch, they assume. Harmless as long as you're prepared for it. You attempt to make up the deficit your co-players have created by spending time with yourself. Hugs, hand-holding; even curling up, exhausted, in a pile of plush toys with yourselves. You distract yourself with quests, with talking to Ananke (she is gone so soon, too soon, your craving for someone - anyone - to talk to, even your Denizen, may not truly have spelled her doom but it was/is/will be one more weight on the mountain of guilt you collapse under). When, at long last, the Black King falls, your headset informs you that your co-players have broken into cheers. The Genesis Frog is planted and a new universe is born. And you feel something within you snap. Your duty - your Duty - here within this session is done. No longer do you need to protect these people. You don't even need to try and tolerate them. What follows is a rant, a furious tirade against the abuse they have put you through for the past two and a half sweeps of your life. Every act of neglect, every timeline where their shunning led to their doom, every wound they caused - you hold back nothing. And you give them no time to respond before you flip them a still-irate-middle-finger and storm out through the Door, into the world for your third session. You do not know if you will ever see any of them again. You cannot find it in yourself to even pretend that you care, either way. Finally, blessedly, able to connect to the IRC and the forums, you start trying to pick things up where you left off. Pretending that you're fine. Really you are. Nothing wrong at all. And only she hears you whisper, in the dark of Paradox Space, "I mIss yOu sO mUch."