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Nathaniel woke up somewhere both horribly unknown and uncomfortable familiar. Right— Fox tower. He took his customary two minutes to relearn how to breathe, to settle into his body and become, whoever he was once more. One thing bugged him however, he couldn’t seem to recall the name of who he was supposed to be. It had happened before, there was no way to keep every identity he’d ever worn separate— but he’d always had his mother to remind him who he was with scolding words and nails digging into his shoulder when he hesitated introducing himself to anyone. Now— he didn’t have a mother to fall back on, so he had to figure it out for himself.
Getting up from his bed, he swiftly got dressed. What was the easiest way to cross off most of the identities he could be? Stepping out of the dorm room, he made his way over to the kitchen on autopilot. In said kitchen stood Aaron, but he didn’t look Nathaniel’s way— at least not until he started making black tea. Aaron raised an eyebrow, “I thought you hated black tea?”
Nathaniel continued making the tea, not paying Aaron any mind as he sifted though every identity he could remember to see which ones did or didn’t like black tea. Nathaniel liked black tea, so a lot of his identities did too, just because it was easier to fake everything if the little things stayed the same. Only if his father had gotten close or something happened would he have taken on an identity with so many differences, which was harder to find— but also harder to keep up. He’d already guessed so, because of his mothers death— but it was nice to have confirmation.
“I wanted to try something new,” Nathaniel answered coolly, praying that it was the correct move. Looking at Aaron’s frowning face, Nathaniel internally winced— all right, not the correct move. So he couldn’t be Percy or Lucas.
“What crawled up your ass this morning,” Aaron snipped.
Nathaniel didn’t grace him with an answer, too lost in thought to even think of it. He was clearly a dude— so he couldn’t be Mara, Elodie, Freya or Quinn. Julian, Tobias, Stephan and Felix liked black tea, so they were out as well… Percy and Lucas were cold, which the identity he was playing was not so they were out as well— so that left either Peter, Matt, Aiden, Daniel, Neil, Danyal, Tom, Henry, Herman, Leonardo, Lorenzo, Noah or Arthur. No one had mentioned his accent being either off or gone, so that disqualified Lorenzo— who had a pretty big Italian accent, Arthur— who had a thick French accent and Danyal, who had quite the recognisable Arabic accent. He caught sight of himself in the water of the tea, brown eyes, brown hair…. so that meant it couldn't be Aiden, Matt, Tom, Herman or Noah.
“How old am I again?” Nathaniel asked Aaron, who raised an eyebrow at the question. “19, don’t tell me you forgot your own age, Josten?”
Josten, Josten— Right— Neil Josten, that was who he was. He was supposed to be Neil Josten. “Thanks Aaron,” he muttered quietly, ignoring the weirded-out look he got as he poured the black tea into the sink and made his way out of the kitchen.