Immediately, Lup feels wrong in this memory. There's a faint buzzing bleeding from the undefined edges of it, something that's making her skin crawl, making her feel like she's being crowded out. She ignores it, of course, because fuck whatever's trying to get rid of her here. Though the scene hardly seems worth fighting for, it's bleak and bitter and lonely and she almost doesn't recognize it, if it weren't for the boy crouched resentfully by the campfire.

It sends a cold shiver down her spine. Her gaze shifts around almost fearfully, trying to spot the girl she knows was there too, but it's no use. There's no place for her here. Lup doesn't exist in this one. And this is all he had, for years. A whole past that was just this, colorless and hazy, half missing. Bare survival, nobody to share the work and the food and the laughs with, every meaningless blur of a person a threat with nobody at his back. A hollow void where a response to his words should be, so he has to laugh at his own joke. She's so horrified and so fucking angry all over again on his behalf. This isn't something anyone should have to live with, real or fake, and least of all Taako.

And it's still like this. This is still what his memories look like? She's been back for months, at his side every day, they've been reminiscing in the quiet hours of the night, maybe a little awkwardly at times but they've been working on it, dammit. What does she have to do, to earn her place here back? Something she shouldn't have to earn in the first place! She's real, and he knows, why isn't that fucking enough. It's not on him, she'll never blame him for it, but there are tears in her eyes anyway, for the lonely brother and the lost sister.

"That's, that's not what happened, Taako," she says and her voice is soft but she can't quite keep the hurt out of it. "I was there."