Chapter Text
A pair of arms sway slightly in the pale light of the room.
Hands clutching the pristine white sheets that hung over the bed. This was my bed, my belonging. Each thread, tactile proof of my existence. The cloth bit back against my fingers, textured enough to prick, to irritate, to remind me I was real.
So why didn’t the thing in front of me feel like it?
The copy stood there, wearing the same yellow raincoat, the same boots, the same everything that should have been mine. The outline was right; the silhouette fit a memory’s mold. But something was off. Small wrongs stacked until the whole thing tilted - this was what I should have been, Collin.
I am Collin.
A name strung from my spine, mine alone, yet they dared speak over it, chatter over it, insist otherwise like a broken record scratching my nerves raw. The sound of it was in my teeth.
Names are anchors, they keep a body from floating off into nonsense and someone else repeating mine felt like someone else shaking that anchor until the rope frayed.
Undeniable rage flooded, each beat of their voice feeling like a trespass.
It was slow, building pressure behind my ribs until my chest was a drum.
Each small insistence from him, each curt line in the chat, pressed like a thumb into that drumhead.
I chopped this wood. I held the tool, my axe.
My work, my sweat, my memory carved into every grain.
This, this house was built from me.
Those sentences were not rhetorical. They were facts I could feel.
Memory should have been a fortress, but tonight my fortress looked a house of cards.
Collinlock16: Goddammit
Collinlock16: Can you just get your own home or smth
Collinlock16: I can't have u keep showing up on my property
Are you serious right now.
No.
No no no.
No no no no no…
This identity was never yours, collinlock16.
Collinlock19: n o
Collinlock16: Fuck you
Collinlock16: there's really no need for you to copy me
...
Excuse me???? Copy... I'm a...
Copycat. That was what I was...wasn't it? A childish word with teeth.
This was a phrase that shouldn’t have hit so deep. Shouldn’t have rattled the cage of my ribs. It stung because it reduced me to imitation, to a lesser echo. It made my hands small and cheap inside my sleeves.
I stepped toward him before I knew I had moved.
Movement that felt like a reflex, like a twitch in a limb now owned by someone else. It wasn't thought-out; it was a reaction, an animal’s forward lunge at any given threat.
It stumbled back, boots scuffing the stone floor that rustled. My fingers twitched, reaching for…something. Something to prove to myself that the contour of my palms belonged to my life.
Instinct, that’s what I blamed it on.
Instinct is easy to point at when you want to pretend you didn't choose.
It raised its arm, not in defense, but in disbelief.
Collinlock16: What the hell is wrong with you?
I didn’t mean to lunge.
My body simply moved, shadow following shadow.
~
This ability was not something considered…normal.
Pressure crushed the air around me, and my boots hit mud. Cold rain shattered across my shoulders, it was better to leave before I caused harm.
Leaving felt like losing, and I did both. I left and lost.
I filled my empty pockets with my hands, pretending they might find coins tucked into the lining. Looking for warmth in this weather was a ridiculous hope, but the motion steadied me. I shifted to my left. The pool of lava barely illuminating my surroundings, but one thing was clear: Entity OM, caught red handed? Oh ho.
They didn’t look surprised to see me. They didn’t look confused, or alarmed. They simply… acknowledged me, with a small tilt of the head.
“Collin,” they said, as flat as it can get.
Something warm bloomed in my chest, foreign and dizzying. Someone recognized me. Someone saw me. The bloom was small and absurd, a small hand on the rope of that anchor.
“I- I’m—”
The name jammed in my throat like a misfired note. I swallowed it, glitched garbles following me.
“...Ge tthat the fuck of f myp roperty.”
Entity OM paused mid-placement, obsidian block hovering in their grip.
“…Your property?”
Their tone was…unimpressed…offended, even, in their own alien way. They tapped the block against their palm. “Fascinating claim,” they muttered. “Incorrect. But fascinating.”
“Is aid get it off.”
Entity OM planted the block down harder than necessary, an intentional slight, and turned their head just enough for me to see the faintest curl of disdain crease their face. If you can even call it that.
“No,” they said simply.
“wHatd o you mean, n o?”
“I mean,” they pressed another obsidian piece into the mud, the sound muffled by rain, “your emotional attachment to this location does not override my work.”
They set another block.
Thunk.
“Coordinates are optimal.”
Thunk.
“Convergence line holds.”
Thunk.
Each thunk was a punctuation to my chest’s argument. The repetition was irritating, the ticking of a clock that didn't care whether anyone lived or died under it. I stepped back on instinct, boots sinking deeper into wet dirt. The mud tried to claim my steps and nearly succeeded in making me look small.
“Dot buil dthat here. This is- Il ive here.”
Entity OM exhaled, sharp and bored. “You wander here. That is different-” The rain swallowed the rest, or maybe they never finished the thought.
Maybe the sentence was a kindness, withheld. You aren’t meant to hear it.
The unfinished line floated away like smoke and I let it go because the rain was loud and my head was loud and the cold was telling me to move.
Step by step I trudged, each footfall an effort against the sucking mud and the heaviness of being contested. I needed to figure something out for myself.
I kept going, because stopping did not feel like something Collin would do.
Collin moved, he did not stick around a problem.
Collin made decisions even when they are of bitter regret.
And, I don't remember what I regret.
But I kept forward, because…
I am Collin, I know I am.
I just need time.
Good night