@brutalmachine: i’m not really anything like a person. ( bruce @ whoever! )
vanya shrugs. what is a person, anyways, she thinks, and does not say, because she does not feel equipped to answer a question like that — she doesn't feel much like a person herself, most days.
(it used to be, she was unpersoned by her isolation — childhood into young adulthood into real, full-fledged adulthood, and in every era sitting in an empty bedroom, the only sounds being those she made herself. she'd faked being a person, sometimes, at orchestra practice or book signings that attracted less and less people as the months wore on, but never successfully for very long. she was never that good an actress; she leaves that skill to allison.
now, she is not-a-person in the same way her siblings are, the same way bruce is, set apart by a birds-eye-view of the city and the echo of its ever-present noise in her ribcage, her heart, her gut. people don't feel the honking of taxis as if it is going to claw its way out of their skin. they certainly don't pull buildings down around them when that clawing sound forces its way through.
at least, she's fairly sure they don't.)
" i'm not, either. if that makes it any better. " she's not sure it does, but she's pretty sure half of being a person is about being around other people — strength in numbers — so maybe the same logic applies to whatever it is they are instead.
she'd longed to feel like a person, at one point. ached with the weight of it. the yearning is still there, but it feels less present, now, less pressing. she pushes it down to the pit of her stomach.
" it's probably overrated, anyways, " she says, without much conviction. " being a person, i mean. it, uh. seems like more effort than it's worth, probably? " another shrug. she knows extraordinarily little about being a person, and it shows.
