He’s quiet, he’s not saying anything at all. That’s... it’s not a bad reaction? It could be worse, it could be a lot worse. Still, it feels like she’s holding her breath, waiting for the silence to break, and then it does
“Anna. Right. Of course you are”
She expected that, she reminds herself. She knew it was coming. It’s the only logical response to what she’s doing to him right now, screwing with his head and she gets it, she does. She tries to come up with something to say, something she can say that’s going to prove who she is, that she’s who she says she is. She can’t think of anything; they had so many inside jokes and private conversations and history, and there’s nothing she can think of to use to prove her identity.
He’s smiling, but it doesn’t even take a second to realize it’s not a smile, not really. It’s not Aaron - or, it’s not the Aaron she remembers from before... and that feels like someone filled her insides with ice cubs; she thinks that’s probably some kind of huge, epic guilt. It’s her fault this is going the way it’s going.
“Mind telling me how you know that name?”
“It’s my name,” she responds, sulky, petulant tone coming out against her will, because she isn’t going to go the immature route with this, isn’t going to pout or do any of that, but that’s her first instinct because she’s never done well with feeling guilty for something. Not that she’s ever felt guilty for something this ginormous before, though; she sort of thought it would be different. She fidgets in place, fights it back, “Look, okay, I know this... probably seems really crazy and hard to believe and everything, but it’s me, really. I’m not dead. And - and I’m not undead, either.”
Okay, really, she doesn’t want to explain this, doesn’t want to have to explain this.
“I never was dead. I just, I had to make you guys think I was. Well, not had to - I mean, I thought I had to. I thought it’d be safer that way.” She’s avoiding, not saying what she knows is coming out because she doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to come out with I left, “I don’t know what proof I can give, though, I mean...”
She tries to think of something, anything that only she would know. It’s not that she’s forgotten anything, or she doesn’t think she has, but she just. She doesn’t know what vampires would know from their past lives (she’s never been one), and whatever else is out there that could look like her might know, and ...and, yeah. Plus, she totally doesn’t want to use something he might have forgotten, so it has to be memorable.
“Fido!” she blurts, and then she flails her hands around a little, excited that maybe she can actually prove that she is who she says she is, “There was a cat, and I asked what we should name it and I guess you were joking but you said to name it Fido, and I did, and I brought it back and you didn’t think I seriously was going to. And it curled up on your desk and scared the crap out of Jenny, and she tried to shoot it and said it was a shifter but it wasn’t, because you did something with, like, silver, and it was fine...” It feels good to get words out again, not to be stuck in short sentences and choppy explanations. Babbling is good.