Archive of Our Own

Lee really needs to stop picking at her nails.

She spent ages growing them out and keeping herself from biting on them, spent far too much money on a half-dozen pack of fancy, glittery polish when her paycheck doesn't come in for a whole five days, and spent two entire hours failing to paint her pinkies without smudging it before having to call in reinforcements. She's put too much into these damn nails for her to ruin it by scraping it all off.

She keeps scraping at the edges anyway. The pink clumps under her nails as she scratches, and she goes to try and peel more paint off in a single clean ribbon.

Riley punches her on the arm. "Lee, you called me to your apartment at one in the morning to help you paint those. If you wreck them, I'm throwing you off the bus."

Suzie, hanging over the back of Lee's seat, budges between the two of them. "Riley, don't throw Lee out the bus."

Zoey, who is taking advantage of Riley having left their seat to sit next to Lee, leaving her the entire bench to herself, sprawls out across the bench, staring at her phone. "No, they should totally do it."

Lee leans past Riley to glare, puffing out her chest in fake bravado. "Seriously, Zoe? That's transphobic." She presses one hand to her forehead, bats her eyelashes, fake swooning. "This is a hate crime." Zoey is unplussed, continuing to scroll through whatever app she was on.

"You denying Riley the chance to throw you out the bus is transphobic."

Riley grins, lazily pumping a fist in the air. "Fuck yeah it is."

She sputters as Riley and Zoey reach across the bus isle to high five. Suzie's head thumps against Lee's headrest. "Why are you all like this?"

Abigail, from the seat in front of them, gets on her knees on her seat to lean over the back and look at them. "Can you keep it down?" She waves her phone in the air. "I'm trying to watch a movie with Grant." Grant, next to her, waves behind him.

Suzie perks up. "OOH, what movie?"

Grant fidgets with his glasses as he thinks. "That one that Ri and Zoey recommended - the, uh, weird spooky anime thing?"

Lee moves forward to see Abigail's screen, but Riley manages to lean over first, pushing Lee towards the window and an angle where she can't see shit. She tries to play it off like she didn't want to look and keeps picking at her ring finger instead, staring out the window, letting the other's idle chatter just wash over her.

"Wait, you're finally watching Paprika? Nice."

Zoey grins. "I told you I had good taste."

"What's Paprika?"

Zoey practically shoots out of her seat to sit next to Suzie instead. "Suz, I'm gonna blow your mind."

Lee keeps picking at her nails and tries to count the cows outside the window. There's a little one, maybe a baby, that they just passed, and she wishes she charged her phone last night so she could take a photo. Someone taps her on the shoulder, and she jolts.

"Hey," Riley shifts in their seat as Lee turns towards them. "I meant it about you wrecking your nails."

"I just… I don't like the color?"

Riley gives her a look, and she feels herself shrink, just a little bit. "You cried when we finished painting them last night."

"I was just, um, tired."

"Come on. I know when you're bullshitting me."

Lee glares, pulling away from the window and sitting normally, eyes fixed on her lap, on the little bumps on her tights from where leg hair peeks out. "It's the name thing."

"Holy shit, did you pick one-"

"No, and that's the problem!" Lee leans backwards, rests her head on headrest in a way that will wreck the bun she spent thirty minutes painstakingly doing in the mirror this morning. "I don't-" She slams her head again into the uncomfortable bus upholstery. "-am I even a real girl?"

"Of course you are. You want to be one, right?"

"Yes, but-"

But she doesn't like how her new long hair feels against the back of her neck, and that sucks be she spent far too long growing it to cut it now. But she only used the nice makeup kit that Abby gave her once, because she didn't like how the brushes felt and she kept poking herself in the eye with the eyeliner, and she doesn't plan on ever using it again. But she's always too tired to shave daily and too tired to figure out how to fix her acne and she tried to do the voice training from youtube and it was too hard so she stopped. But she likes having padded bras but they make her chest hurt so half the time she still just wears hoodies. But she still hasn't gone on estrogen, and even if Riley offers to figure out how to help her with DIY, she's kind of nervous and keeps putting it off.

She wants to be a girl, so bad it hurts, but she doesn't want to change, because what if it's worse? What if she's wrong? What if it's something she doesn't actually want, and it makes everthing go back to how it was? Everything is so permenant now. She has a life now. She can't risk that.

She can't even pick a name.

"- I don't know. It's a lot right now."

"Well, the good thing is," Riley very carefully took Lee's hands and moved them towards her sides, to keep her from picking at her nails again. She didn't even notice she was doing it again until now. "You realized, what, two weeks ago?"

"A week and five days," she mumbles, almost without thinking.

"A week and five days," Riley says, so casual it almost hurts. "You've got time to figure all this out, you know? You don't need to know it right away. You can be whatever kinda girl you want to be, and whatever that girl is, you'll still be okay."

"But-" She shakes her head. "You know what? Never mind."

Riley side eyes her. "You good?"

"Just fantastic." She gives them a thumbs up, puts on a smile, tries to not think about it.

This is supposed to be fun, after all. She's with her friends. She's supposed to be having a good time, and not worrying so much about her bun coming undone and touching her neck, or if she looks too much of a sterotype since she forgot to shave her upper lip this week, or how she keeps scrolling through baby naming blogs every night and still can't settle on a goddamn name. She's supposed to be having fun.

So, to stop fucking thinking about it, she instead decides to lean deep into Riley's personal space and try to steal their earbuds.

"What are you- stop that!"

"I wanna listen to music - it's an hour before we even get to where we're going!"

"Stop, get off my lap!"

"Ri, come on, just-"

"Okay, fine! Fine, you can share one earbud. I'm choosing the album, and get off."

"That's what she said!"

"Lee!"

Lee just shrugs, grabs an earbud, smiles in a way she hopes looks casual, tries very very hard not to think too hard at all. She refuses to ruin this with her bullshit. "Ooh, is this dubstep?"

"It's breakcore, you uncultured swine, and no talking."

"Okay, okay, sheesh!" She waves them off before turning to look out the window.

A hour and a half later, when the bus pulls in, when she's trying to rib Riley about their music choices, Zoey jumping in the debate on Riley's side as Suzie both tries to engage in the conversation while trying to google what a 'femtanyl' is when she thinks they aren't looking, Abigail and Grant trying to herd them all off the bus like cats, she realizes that all the polish on her ring finger is gone.

Guess she just didn't notice.

"This sucks."

She didn't even mean to say it, it just kinda slipped out, she already feels bad just looking at Abby's face fall slightly. But, she just-

Look, abandoned buildings are gross, okay? Especially corporate ones - those are never built for longevity. She's been in enough of them to know how nasty they are. And this one specifically has something dripping from the ceiling panels and carpet that smells like death. It reminds her of a lot of things she doesn't want to remember, yeah, but mostly? It just reeked.

Abigail glares. "Come on! I thought you wanted to try urban exploring?"

"Abs, I said that your videos are cool, I did NOT say I wanted to, like, smell nasty geriatric carpet germs. I think I'm getting popcorn lung."

Suzie looks vaguely ill, going slightly green. "C-can we get popcorn lung from this?"

"We won't get popcorn lung!" Grant places a hand on her shoulder, then hesitates slightly. "I think. Probably?"

Suzie grabs a fistful of her curls in each hand and yanks, a nervous tic that none of them could really wean her off of despite effort (all of them except Lee - she really didn't like feeling like a hypocrite). "Probably? What do you mean, probably?"

"You won't get popcorn lung, I'm just exaggerating," she yells over her shoulder at Suzie and watches as her friend practically deflates in relief. "Might be some creepy crawlies though!"

Suzie shudders. "Lee!"

"There won't be any centipedes, promise!" Abby says, chest puffed out. "Don't worry, I've gone here before - I just wanna see if there's anything else cool around here. I never ended up going through the whole place, and I said I'd do a follow up vid." She snaps her fingers, and everyone looks towards her. "Everyone remember the rules?"

Riley raises their hand. "If there's an animal, stay chill and don't let it give you rabies?"

Zoey pops up from behind them, where she was looking through the drawers of the office's front desk. "If there's stagnant water, we leave?"

"Keep an eye up in case something could fall!" Grant adds, peering over Zoey's shoulder to see whatever she uncovered from the desk. Suzie, next to him, was also attempting to peek.

"Uh, watch where you put your feet?" She gives Abby a shaky thumbs up, and Abby nods. Suzie visibly relaxes, and there's a pause as they all look to Lee. She makes a show of looking at her now chipped nails.

"And?" Abby points at her.

Lee groans. "Buddy system."

"The rules are important, Lee. I don't want to have to be the one to tell people that you fell through the stairs and broke your neck and died."

"Ugh, but you ran us through this for AGES! Like, three straight days!"

"And, like I said, I'd rather inconvenience you than kill you. You're welcome." She walks towards her and punches her in the arm. Lee punches back.

"OKAY, everyone! Buddy up!" Abigail heads towards Grant immediately - Lee knew it was bound to happen. They had been talking the whole time about how Grant used to work in this building, about thirty years ago, and some of the rooms he remembered that Abby hadn't seen when she took her first video here, and the two of them were slowly drifting off into a new room.

Lee moved towards Riley, seeing Suzie head towards Zoey, and then both watched as the couple kissed and started talking. Riley broke it first, and turned towards Lee.

"Hey, sorry, can-"

"Don't worry about it! You can hang with your girlfriend!" Lee, just to press Riley's buttons, made multiple obscene sex gestures with her hands.

"Gross, Lee." Riley rolled their eyes. "I was going to ask if we could all go together."

"OH!" Suzie perked up. "That sounds great!"

Lee realized, belatedly, that either she's going to be by herself or she's going to fourth wheel. "Sure. Us four, hell yeah."

"Come on, Lee, I think I saw a second floor!" Suzie grabbed Lee's wrist, and the four of them were off.

They poked around for a fair bit - the second floor was pretty much all cubicles, and while most desks were empty, there were some trinkets and random oddities - enough to be interesting through idle chatter, anyway. Suzie was fiddling with some old computer, Riley was trying to figure out what species a very dead desk plant might have been, and Zoey was slowly forming a collection of abandoned pens. Lee was just watching over Suzie's shoulder, half sitting and half leaning on the desk.

"Do you even know how to work that thing? It's ancient."

"I've used this model a couple times - my mo- uh, I used to work for an older real estate company, so I've at least seen these before." Suzie shrugs, brushes red curls over her shoulder, continuing to poke around the operating systems. "It's kind of cool, even if I probably can't really access any files or anything. It's just awesome that it turns on!"

Lee raises a fist, and Suzie bumps it without even looking up. "You look like some kinda cool hacker from a movie or something. I have no idea what you're doing."

"The - it's just the OS though?"

"Look, to me, that's practically just magic."

"I'm just amazed this place has power." Riley says, meandering over, still holding the plant pot in one hand. "Like, I know half the light switches don't work, but half of them do. That shit is insane."

Lee tries to poke at the plant, but Riley jerks it away before she can touch it and, presumably, make the decrepit thing vaporize to dust with touch alone. "Did you figure out what it is?"

"A pothos, maybe? I have no idea, it's way too dead for me to tell."

"The pot is cool, though? Abstract shit."

She means it - it's nifty. All squiggly and colorful, pink wiggly lines on yellow, speckled with purple and blue and green blobby shapes. It's super ugly, and she thinks it's awesome. Riley doesn't seem to share the same enthusiasm. "Really?"

"Fuck yeah. You should put it in the bar."

"Do bars usually have houseplants?"

"They should if they come in pots that cool."

Riley shrugs. "Maybe-"

"GUYS!" Zoey races towards them from where she was rooting around the desk across the room. Her hoodie pockets are absolutely stuffed full of pens. It's almost impressive - Lee's pretty sure she's hit a dozen at this point. "Check out what I found!" She holds up her prize above her head with both hands.

It's a headset.

Lee feels a vague sense of familarity, before brushing it off. Maybe she saw it in a movie, back then. She doesn't remember a lot of that time, anyway. All those memories really blurred together, looking back, like rain and condensation coating a mirror.

"Sick," Riley says, poking at it. "I think I got my hands on one of these a couple years ago? They're supposed to be kinda rare - the one I got didn't work, I think I ended up reselling it to someone for parts."

Zoey turns the thing around in her hands. "I dunno, it kinda looks like that knockoff I got, remember?"

Riley and Suzie laugh, and Lee suddenly feels akward discomfort wash over her. "Wait, what knockoff?"

"Oh," Suzie turns around, fully shutting off the old computer, "Zoey was trying to buy an Occulus a while back and ended up getting this- this brickof a thing, like an entire modem strapped with a headset."

Zoey's face goes hot. "I can't believe I spent money on it - it didn't even turn on."

"You know," Suzie moves in to get a closer look at the headset, taking it from Zoey. "I think I remember seeing this before - it was at a site we were trying to sell. I don't remember what it was for - it didn't do anything."

"Well, if it didn't do anything then, it's definitely not gonna do anything now." Riley shrugs before turning to Lee. "You have any weird headset encounters?"

She was running, back when she was a he and Leeroy still and 19 and so so fucking stupid, and she fell asleep in some shitty office, and put on an old headset, and it didn't work because nothing fucking worked, why won't anything fucking work, she went there for one god damn thing , for the tallest building she could get into, and she couldn't bring herself to do it because nothing fucking works for her

Lee shrugs. "None that I really remember." She makes her way to the headset. "Yo, should I try it on?"

"You have no idea what germs are on that thing," Suzie says. "But, to be fair, we have no idea what germs are on this whole building, and we're fine right now? So it might be fine."

Riley grins. "You should totally do it."

"I'll take a photo, if you want?" Zoey holds up her phone. "I can dm it to you when we get signal."

She takes the headset from Suzie, gives Zoey a thumbs up, and her vision is swallowed in darkness as she puts the headset on. "Ugh, it doesn't do anything!"

"It's been sitting in an office for decades, of course it doesn't do anything!" Suzie says, half laughing, somewhere vaguely to Lee's left. She can vaguely hear Zoey's flash go off, and she decides to do a goofy zombie pose, arms fully extended. Zoey and Riley's laughs mix, and Suzie laughs harder. She does a sudden turn towards where she thinks Suzie's voice is comming from to see if she can make her jump, and hears quick movement and a clattering.

Riley's voice cut in. "Lee, careful, you almost broke the planter!"

Lee takes off the headset, holding it partly off her eyes, at that. "Oh shit, I didn't realize how close I was to the desk."

"Don't worry about it, it's cool." Riley shrugs. "I figured you'd want to keep the pot anyway - you seemed more interested in it's vibes."

Lee puts the headset on the desk, snatching the pot. "It has good vibes - but I thought you said you were gonna put it in the bar?"

"Eh, you were way more into it than me." Riley shoulder checks her lightly, in jest, before walking past her and getting snatched up by Zoey.

"Ri, come on, we gotta check out the next room!"

Lee, still looking at the pot, gets nudged by Suzie. "You wanna keep going?"

"Sure - I wanna see you do more computer magic."

"It's not magic!"

The two of them walk behind Riley and Zoey, chattering about nothing, about nonsense, really. Despite the smell and the dinge and the general atmosphere, Lee almost likes it here. It's almost not terrible at all. Maybe it's just the company - or maybe the mold spores. Probably the mold spores.

The headset, abandoned on the table, lights up it's display, just for a moment, a small flash of red and blue.

No one is there to see it.

A year ago-

Suzie's voice is tinny and abrasive through Leeroy's shitty gas station earbuds. "Aw, Zoe, that's so cute!"

It had become sort of a tradition, once Riley had finally let Leeroy have their mystery artist friend's contact info and Zoey had been comfortable enough with him to introduce him to her irl friend Suzie, who was looking for more people to talk to. They were all busy, most days, but they'd all hop on a call on Friday nights, just to idly chat and do whatever. Suzie would be going through her email or reading an e-book as Leeroy and Zoey attempted to guide her through internet slang and whatever inane drama was blowing up social media, Zoey would work on her webcomic or commissions or just doodle as Suzie and Leeroy would give terrible advice, and he'd either boot up a game or do homework for his community college classes while trying (and failing) to convince the others to help him cheat.

It was almost nice. Calming, at least.

He tabbed out of Blackboard and into Discord to see whatever Zoey was sharing. A mouse - no, too long for that. A ferret? Weasel? He wasn't sure. Whatever it was, it was cute, but Suzie was there to be nice. Leeroy was there to take the piss.

"What is that? Is that your fucking fursona? That's cringe." Zoey is muted, but spams laughing emojis in their chat as Suzie talks.

"Leeroy, that's so mean!"

"No, no," Zoey manages to unmute herself. "It's a reference, I'll send the comic to you. Also, Leeroy, you're cringe."

Leeroy knows his camera is off, but he fakes despair anyway, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead and gasping like a scandelized victorian noble. "Augh! My poor heart! I may never recover from such a parry!"

Zoey's laughing so hard she's peaking her mike, and Suzie, despite having no context, is giggling too. Leeroy is laughing too then, but tries his best to sober up. "Seriously though, is that your fursona?"

She hesitates for a moment. "… Yeah. I made it before I transitioned, you know? First time I really explored girl stuff - way back in middle school, I think?" He can hear her typing something for a bit, sees the three little dots bob up and down at the bottom of his screen, and then they vanish. "Hey, you don't think it's weird, right?"

"No!" He blurts out. "It's uh, cute. Fluffy or, uh, whatever. Nice- nice-" Shit, he still doesn't know what animal that is- "Nice ferret?"

"It's a stoat, actually!"

"What's a stoat?"

Zoey huffs, barely audible through her mic. "I'm not google, Leeroy, look it up."

Suzie hops in as Leeroy mutes himself to google 'stoat'. "Wait, what's a fursona?"

"Its like an animal you pick to represent yourself! Most people's walk on two legs and do human stuff. Some people think they're weird, though. Or like a sex thing." She seems to realize what she's saying, because suddenly her voice raises an octave and a half. "IT'S NOT A SEX THING THOUGH! For me! At least! I don't- I'm not into that- like- uh-"

He decides to jump in. "Hey, these stoat things are fucked up - Zoey, are you holding out on us? Because if you're a secret badass or something, you gotta tell us about it."

"Hey! They're not fucked up!" She sputters, but he and Suzie can hear her smile through her voice.

"They kill, like, cats and shit! There's pics of them dragging around animals, like, double their size - that's hardcore. Zoey, are you hardcore, or-"

"I'm, uh-"

Suzie butts in. "She's a red belt in taekwondo!"

"Suzie!"

"Holy shit, isn't that, like, the one below black belt? You're ACTUALLY a badass, Zoey, holy shit, oh my god! Zoey, you gotta tell us more - can you flip a person? Like, over your shoulder? Can you do, like, movie stuff?"

She keeps painting the fur on her stoat's muzzle. "You don't throw people in taekwondo, Leeroy. And I haven't done it since the accident - I don't know if I could do it now."

"Oh." Shit, he put his foot in his mouth, didn't he? He desperately fumbles for a way to pivot the conversation. "Uh-" God, he needs to fix this. Come on, Leeroy you dumb fuck, think of a subject change-

"Can you make me a fursona?"

He can hear an edge of laughter in Zoey's voice. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, uh, sure? It's- it's cute."

Suzie chimes in. "OOH, what animal do you want?"

"Any suggestions?" He relaxes slightly. "And by the way, Suzie, I'm not going to be a horse."

"Aw, really? But they're so cool!"

Zoey backs him up. "And they're hard to draw, Suz, I'm trying to go easy on myself when I'm doodling!"

"Ugh, fine." There's a soft thump on her end, as if she's sitting down. "Leeroy - he's kinda goose-like, right?"

He makes a face. "Seriously? A GOOSE?"

"Yeah, kinda loud, talks big game, weaker than the broad stereotype presents them as, but also cares a lot about their flock and stuff. Goose behavior." By the end, Suzie is laughing so hard she can barely work out the words.

"Wait, no," Zoey chimes in, and Leeroy hopes maybe she's going to save him from this. "No, that totally sounds like a chiwawa. Assertive and loud but very, very puntable."

"I am NOT puntable, Zoey!" He's so glad his camera is off, he knows his cheeks are burning red right now.

"Okay, okay, you won't be a chiwawa. Or a goose. What do you want?" He watches her save the file for her fursona drawing with a keysmash title and open a new file, and he stares at the blank, white void of her canvas, in the hopes it'll tell him what to say.

He blurts out the first thing on his mind. "Can I have a bunny?"

Immediately, the other two on the call laugh, and he immediately panics. "I'm just joking! It's not-"

"Sorry for laughing! I just got surprised by that. Suits you!" He can't see her, but he can feel Suzie's cheezy thumbs up through the screen. "Really, bunnies are hardcore - anyone who says they aren't hasn't read Watership Down."

"Yeah, I wasn't expecting that." Zoey says. "Hell yeah, you can be a bunny. You'll be the cutest, coolest bunny in the world, dude. What color? Lemme guess, black?"

"Yellow."

The silence lingers for a bit as Zoey starts drawing, just long enough for him to start regretting his request, to starting thinking about it to hard, before Suzie, thank god for her, saves him. "Oh my god, I just found the video - Leeroy, you wanna see Zoey break a brick with one hand?"

Zoey draws a harsh accidental line across her canvas as she launches back to discord. "Suzie, wait-"

Leeroy grins ear-to-ear. "Of COURSE I want to see that - send it, send the link-"

"Don't you DARE send that Suzie- I lost that tournament! I don't want people to see me losing!"

"Zoey, I don't care if you lost, you broke a brick! Suzie PLEASE, I need to see it-"

"Sent!"

"Suzie!"

A few days later, Leeroy gets an image file from Zoey. It's a golden yellow bunny with cream white paws and ears and stomach, so fuzzy and round that it looks kind of like a toasted marshmallow. It's ears are flopped down, wearing a purple flower upside down like a little hat and sitting in a big field of multicolored tulips. His heart is pounding in his ears when he reads the message.

'I named them Lee - I wasn't sure if you wanted it to have your name, so I split the difference. Told you you'd make a cute bunny!'

He doesn't really know why the image sends butterflies through his stomach and makes his head feel all fuzzy, or why thinking of that as 'me' makes him so excited, but he thumbs up the message and makes it his private discord pfp. Suzie and Zoey would get a kick out of it, anyway, and there's nothing wrong with a cis guy just a guy, a normal, average, definitely a guy liking something cute.

It's not until a year later, when she's changing her instagram to say she/her, that she decides to make it her profile on the rest of her socials. It feels more like her than her shitty old selfies, anyway.

She blinks, and she's on a couch in a white room. There's a projector sheet in front of her, but there's nothing being projected. She calls out, hoping her friends might check in. "Hey, guys? What the-"

"Hello!" She jumps, whipping behind her to see a - teeth? Teeth. Lotsa teeth hovering on a suit. There are eyes in the teeth. Why the fuck are there teeth.

It takes her a second to register that the teeth are, in fact, the one talking to her. "I'm Caine, Welcome to the Circus!" The teeth - Caine, apparently - seem to say the words 'welcome' and 'circus' in a way that makes it clear the first letters are capitalized.

"Uh-" She goes to touch her face, take the headset off, and immediately pokes herself in the eye. She jerks her hand back and-

Her hand is a paw.

Her hand is a paw.

Her hand is a soft, white, fuzzy paw, attached to a soft, gold-yellow, fuzzy arm, attached to her soft, fuzzy body sitting on the couch and- oh my god this can't be happening.

Caine's teeth seem to bend in a way that make it's eyes look - well, sympathetic isn't quite the right word, but worried doesn't feel right either. Something approximate to that. "Please don't worry, you're perfectly fine right now. I have a presentation ready to explain a bit more about what's going on-"

"How do I leave?" She bolts off the couch, backing away from Caine slowly.

Caine takes off it's hat and fixes her with that same, sort-of-sorry sort of look. "Right, well, you can't?"

Her head feels like she's underwater, the words around her muffled and echoing-

"The headset you put on takes a scan of your brain, so the good news is that your current self is very much alive and well!"

Caine is still talking but she can't even hear it anymore. She keeps wanting to tug on her hair, run her fingers through it, or pick at her nails, but she doesn't have fingers or nails and she doesn't have hair anymore, she has big long ears that drape down her back and they're weird and hot and heavy and wrong-

"You are currently a digital copy of yourself, and that version of you is here-"

She can't breathe. Does she need to breathe? Does it even matter? She's gasping for air anyway.

"I know this might be mildly distressing news, but the good part is that-"

Still backing up, she crashes into the projector sheet before she gets to hear whatever the fuck the 'good part' is. Caine moves forward towards her, one arm extended, and she screams. "Get away from me!"

It hesitates, and she wrenches open the door, the one she didn't notice until she crashed into the projector sheet and felt the knob behind her. She stumbles blindly forward, the space too bright and spacious and primary colored. The sound of Caine calling behind her for her to stop running only half-registers, and so does what's in front of her, until she crashes into someone. The person (?) crashes to the floor, limbs flying everywhere and pink triangle head dislodging from their neck and flying into her lap as she pulls herself to her knees

"You're the new person, right? You- you okay?" The head says as she holds it up, and the sound makes her scream again and throw the head as far as possible. A small part of her, behind the animal fear, thinks it knows the triangle's voice. It gets caught by some sort of chess piece looking thing.

"You all right?" The chess piece asks the triangle. His voice is familiar too, why is it familiar?

Pink Triangle mumbles back to Chess Guy, "I'm good," before turning back to her. "You okay?"

She can't speak. She can't stop staring at the ground. Her tongue feels swollen and useless in her mouth. "I- uh- I-"

More people are here, she can see their shadows and heard their footsteps but she can't bring herself to stop looking at the floor, at the checkered patterns and her wrong, fuzzy, paw hands.

"Hey there-"

"Let's not crowd them too much guys-"

"I know it's a lot, but-"

She knows all these voices. She knows all these voices, and they're all wrong. She knows these voices, but they're too young, just different enough from what she knows to unsettle but just close enough to make it hurt.

Grant's old coworker trying to test some new tech that never panned out. Suzie trying on a headset when cleaning out Grant's old office to sell the building. Zoey's shitty Occulus knock off and Riley's old tech collection and the first vlog Abby made of that building had her wearing that headset and-

She knows all these voices.

The teeth said the headset takes brain scans.

She remembers, vaguely, putting on a headset a couple years ago. She wonders if that version of her, of him, would be here.

She fucking hopes he isn't.

"Hey, you're gonna be okay!"

"Do you need help breathing right now-"

"Holy shit-"

"Um, do you need to-"

"Just try and calm down-

She crumples in on herself, places her head on the floor, and fucking screams.