january catch-all

[ushiri]

Who: "Kyle" and folks
When: January
Where: Thorne, Horizon, Borrel for the quest later
What: Pre-planned threads and a few open starts tbd
Warnings: General warnings for this character. Will add anything specific as becomes necessary!

Comments

[ushiri]

[ It takes a wise person to understand and accept that some people never change. ]

I'd want to know. [ He says this decisively after a brief pause. ]

Not only because I'd want to know where I came from - but I think it'd also make me wonder if I had siblings out there, somewhere. [ It'd make him sad, he thinks. What if he and Rousma had been separated at an age where they were too young to remember each other? He shakes his head again, and a grin slowly spreads across his lips. ]

It also seemed like a very important topic on the talks shows in the morning.

[princessvegas]

[ A wise person, sure, or someone who's been burned enough times to understand that when people tell you who they are, you should believe them. She's never known anyone who felt better off for meeting their father when said father had willingly walked away in the first place.

She arches her eyebrows. ] Oh, it's real important to the mom that she proves who the father is. Can't get blood from a stone, and you can't get child support payments from a man without proof it's his kid. But people who go on Maury and Springer and whatever else, their kids are almost always babies. Maybe toddlers. When you fast-forward fifteen years, will those kids still want to meet their dad? Knowin' that he fought so hard to not be their dad? I don't know that I'd feel inclined to push for a relationship.

[ With a sigh, she tilts her head to one side. ] I suppose there's some value in like, knowin' about diseases or whatever, that they may have passed on. But I don't know about siblings. I never had any, at least not unless my daddy was real good at hidin' 'em. I had lots of cousins, but no brothers or sisters. In this case, though... I mean, what would you do if you do go hunt down your birth mothers, and you find out that you do have siblings, but they've spent their whole lives poor and miserable, while you've been livin' it up in the lap of luxury? Wouldn't you feel shitty for somethin' that ain't your fault and you can't change?

[ There's nothing that ruins relationships faster than jealousy, and when there's no relationship there to start with, well. Julie can't say how she would feel if she were suddenly to find that she had a sibling who grew up with the life she'd always wanted. She thinks she'd be angry. Resentful. ]

[ushiri]

[ He thinks about that for a second, then shakes his head again, unable to agree with her argument in the end. ]

You can't change the past - but if I were so rich, I would offer what support I could to them.

[ That much he could change, instead of wallowing in his own guilt. And then if they still wanted nothing to do with him, well - the door would remain open. He sighs. This is all hypothetical and he can only half remember how they even got from point A to point B here in this conversation. But then there's a pause, and he lowers his voice slightly, his brow pinched. ]

I had a sister. We were separated when she was still very young. But... my life would have been very different if I never had her in it at all. Much harder.

[ That is why he seems so sure of his position.

And also, he realizes, because he hadn't known about her at all for a time. He'd forgotten her completely in those two years.

Thinking about it now makes him grimace again. ]

[princessvegas]

[ She can think of dozens of reasons it would never go that smoothly in real life. The truth of the matter is that trauma isn't undone by simple kindness, especially childhood trauma. And losing your entire youth to poverty isn't fixed by having money as an adult. Resentment and pain fester underneath the bandage of surface fixes, and missing time is the only thing money can't buy. Bonds made at young ages are different from those made as adults. Dysfunction is the natural state of things.

But she doesn't say any of that. It wouldn't do any good, and anyway, she doubts that either Kyle or herself will suddenly be discovering hidden siblings any time soon.

She tilts her head a bit, considering. ] I think I'm glad I never had any brothers or sisters. My life woulda been a lot harder if there was someone else I had to take care of. I'm from a tiny town and I had a lotta family, but I still kinda raised myself up. My parents worked a lot. I don't think anyone else shoulda gone through it with me.

[ And a sibling would have been just another person to lose to Captain Trips. Few, if any, of the immune were related to each other; from what everyone could tell, immunity wasn't a guaranteed genetic trait. People lost their children, their parents, their grandparents. Entire family trees felled to a single branch in just weeks. And Julie doesn't know whether any babies had been born after the superflu. There were pregnant survivors, but who knew what would happen when the babies took their first breaths? It was probably a 99% chance of death just like everyone else born before. ]