1 — I'm guilty of this.

She didn’t quite fall in love with him, but she thought that maybe, maybe, if she could have? She really really would have.

That was that time back when he was all data in the town she’d drawn by hand (And she’d thought it such a pretty place, too, all the maps and building-tops and even the twilight-always theme had emerged in the perfect shade of sky when she’d mixed her paints) and then it had been coded, so carefully because they couldn’t afford mistakes. So it had been made—not real, but close enough to hurt.

And, oh, did it hurt.

She saw him on-screen in the room she’d made for him—she’d done friends for him, but no family.

She’d stayed with what she understood: people who care about you, even if you’re not entirely sure how to care back. Enemies, because hate is the easiest emotion to learn. Mysteries, darkness and myths, because every real place is full of them.

And, at the last minute, when nobody was there to see, she made the girl at the candy-stand: the girl who watched and loved him from afar, but she couldn’t say a word.

She wasn’t supposed to have gone into the data-world.

She’d only wanted him to know.

She wanted him to know the truth behind his so-called life; the truth behind the people behind the lies. She was ready to say, We all want to pick a dream world over a real world, don’t we? I made this place for you and I know you don’t want to leave it but don’t you see we need to go back and lose ourselves to gain ourselves I know this makes no sense but it’s the only way. It’s the only way.

But, of course, she was taken away.

She did all the photographs, drawn first as just ideas, so he’d know what it was like to belong. And she had them all taken away, brought back without him ever there—just so he’d know the truth of fading away.

He was always meant to, after all.

—

Originally posted at requiempathic at livejournal; 12-01-07.