Have you ever worried which version of you is actually real?

Because you're never one hundred percent unfiltered around [i]anyone,[/i] right? Pure you is raw, unfiltered, chaotic, dangerous. The kind of brain that spits out the wrong thought in the wrong way at the wrong time to the wrong person, and suddenly the entire room is staring.

Faces, that's the ticket. You put on different faces around different people, carefully crafting each mask to mirror those around you. Oh, these people don't get why anger is--

Well, not good, not really, but also not purely negative?

Anyway, that group can't handle Angry Dyssia, so you shave the anger off, tuck it away for when it's needed.

And it works in reverse! Yeah, Dyssia loves some close personal contact--hugging, squeezing, biting. And [i]wow,[/i] this group is [i]really[/i] accepting of that!

Bad example, really, hard to find people who like that, but follow the metaphor please.

And it's just such a relief to be able to express that bit of herself that Dyssia finds herself embodying that face even more than she normally would? Like, to the point that sometimes she finds it more exhausting to be true to herself than it would be suppressing it?

It's like.

All the time. Literally, [i]all the time.[/i]

Every second, there's a little Dyssia sitting behind the eyes, watching the world. Assessing, watching, stressing, deciding which version of herself gets let out.

Do other people do this? Is there a little Merilt, watching out at the little Dyssia, and privately just as terrified of getting it wrong?

Do other people feel the relief when they get home and can take the mask off? When the door shuts, and they're alone--or as alone as you get when apparently your support staff numbers in the double digits and includes emotional support spies--do they also heave a mental sigh when they get to take off the weight of managing other peoples' emotions?

The point [i]is[/i], Dyssia is lying all the time. She is pathologically good at it.

Which would be less frustrating if she were confident in being [i]deliberately[/i] good at it? It's nerve wracking, sends her heart into palpitations, like there's a voice screaming [i]they know[/i] two inches from her ears. 

But she's always best at doing something when she is afraid or when someone is in danger. When it's lie or suffer, oh, how the lies flow.

Like melted butter, or perhaps chocolate. Some liquid substance that tastes good. 

Sweat?

Don't say sweat. People look at you weird if you say sweat tastes good. Could have said other stuff, but sweat's bad enough.

[i]A-ny-hoo.[/i]

She's been smart about this, she hopes. Avoided proselytizing to the mimetic spies, which she really should have considered when she started propagating a mutiny. If nobody knows she's the source of the rumors, it's gonna be child's play to insert herself into Yaji's inner circle.

Well. Not.

Not child's play, not exactly. 

Or maybe yes, child's play, but only for the right kind of child? The playground bully kind of child. The kind of child who can relish in emotional suffering, in bullying, in ensuring that she's on the top of her own private empire--you know, the kind that doesn't actually threaten the status quo, like a playground bully doesn't threaten the school, but lets the bully hold court over anybody smaller than her?

The point is, it's exactly the kind of child's play that is anathema to Dyssia. It's taking all the normal masks--how to notice emotions, how to care for others, how to avoid causing harm, how to celebrate and cultivate the weird--and decapitating them, inverting them, wearing their skin as a trophy.

Suck up to Yaji. Tell herself that the harm she's causing is less than the harm of genocide. Ignore the looks of confusion and pain--[i]ignore[/i] them, damn you! 

Cultivate that acquaintance. Yes-girl the shit out of her. Laugh at her jokes, goon for her. Ignore the creeping, gnawing panic of how long this is taking, how long it's taking for her to let her guard down in a species that does not let their guard down. Be the perfect mirror, plus one. Collapse in your bed at the end of every day emotionally drained and aching because tomorrow is gonna happen.

It'll all be worth it once you claim her crown, once you steal her badge, once you recruit her cronies and move against her at that big event.

Don't think about what happens next, once you sit atop the new power vacuum, become the new mean girl.

Whatever you do, don't think about which version of Dyssia is real.