as_damaged | ☎ voicemail

"I've asked myself that any number of times," Cameron says, looking down the street before them in a slightly unfocused fashion, her mind somewhere else. "I can't get past the impossibility of it to decide what I'd prefer."

The downside of her pursuit of rationality. There are pros and cons to forgetting and remembering alike, anyway, and the question of whether the good memories would outweigh the bad ones is too philosophical for her to sort out one way or another. Decisiveness has never been Cameron's forte. "Besides," she adds, a wry little smile tugging at her lips, "If I woke up at home tomorrow remembering all of this, I'd be forced to come to the conclusion that I'd had some kind of psychotic break." Reality remaining inviolate is an essential prerequisite for the assumption that the City is, in some fashion, real.

Ah. The way he moves his gaze forward again is not distancing so much as understanding, remembering how different it is for most people because other worlds didn't exist before this for them. Right. He feels almost foolish for having lost that particular defining trait for the norm, but he has been in this place long enough to grow comfortable as much as one can, to say he appreciates it. Possibly his stance is too skewed regardless of what points of comparison he holds onto and Peter has always been more about duty and loyalty than philosophy himself. If he decides that to remember the things that happen here is part of that duty then there is no question about it; he will because to do less is not in him. But that does not make people who would choose otherwise less because everyone's situations vary too greatly. It remains hard to draw parallel lines because the A's and B's are never the same anyway.

"Well," he pauses, musing. "I wouldn't want that for you," he smiles again, something of his actual age somewhere there, like he has worried about his own sanity before trying to figure out the math for two realities; he has, after all. "Do turn me in the right direction if necessary," he adds, glancing back as they pass another corner. "I seldom eat out." Which is to say: not at all and he has the self-awareness to sound sheepish about it, if unapologetic.

"Well, on the bright side I expect Dr. House would find a physiological cause for it," she half murmurs. "Or he'd corroborate my experience. Though it won't be an issue." There's a certainty to that, which is alternately comforting and desolate. She won't remember all the awful things, but she won't know how to steer the real world in a better direction.

"It's liberating, though, in a sense. Ultimately the City doesn't have consequences beyond its boundaries, so we're not bound by the expectations and mores of our respective realities, unless we decide to remain so." Which most do, which she does as well, by and large. But she appreciates the food for contemplation. "A left up ahead," she adds with a little nod.

Making that directed left, Peter sighs and steps a couple feet apart from Cameron as another pair of people walk right on through. Funny how some of the general public seems to think you will always get out of their way. Peter would rather not but in the City of all places it's better to just go with the path of least resistance in these things. Use that pride for a day when an army camps outside his door or something. Stepping to her side again he pauses only a moment before speaking.

"What sorts of expectations do you mean?" he asks and then adds, a bit apologetic, "You don't have to answer that, if you'd prefer not to." He's curious but he doesn't mean to pry. Peter is generally not the type to do so unless it concerns Lucy or Susan and the word 'date', but Cameron is an exception in several departments. He'd rather not intrude on thoughts she wants to keep mostly to herself.

"I'm not sure I had anything specific in mind," she admits, verging a little on embarrassed because really, it's an indulgent thought to begin with. "But... look at it this way." She slows to glance at him, head tilted to one side, slightly. "To some extent we choose who we are, what we say and do, based on what other people think. We keep doing the things that 'fit' that persona. But here there are no expectations-- no reason a quiet person can't shout, no reason a criminal can't reform, a kind person turn cruel. Nothing except what we bring with us." She looks down. "Not so easy in practice, of course, or even desirable."

He takes his time with her words, not just because it's polite - though there will always be that vague kind of added layer to things, well almost always - but because they both resonate and pick at him in a way he can't entirely figure. Part of him understands it inside the scope of change and how this place presents the kinds of situations that will shape a person differently than home.

"I suppose change is somewhat...relative," he says after a moment wherever on the street they have paused. It is calm outside, quiet with snow and cold that pushes like a heaviness without proper form. "And what expectations we take with us or find here, being different or the same can be either freeing or alienating, depending." He takes a breath, another pause. "It's not one of my strengths, back home, however - change. I find it easier here because the expectations are quite a bit broader, more open in what they entail." Here he smiles a little and finally just gives in to his natural inclination, which is to offer his arm to Allison Cameron and in the same motion start them headed the short remainder of the way to their lunch.

She takes his arm easily, seeing it for the polite gesture it is. Cameron is one of the rare few who's simply pleased to see that chivalry isn't dead, though of course that's a complicated assertion. Chivalry might well be dead at home. Still, she's not inclined to stand on contemporary informality.
"I think it would be impossible not to change here. Everyone is a product of their surroundings, to a certain extent. It's the impermanence of that change, here, that fascinates me."

☎ voicemail

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞

❝ do you believe in what you see? there doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me ❞