Cloudless climes and sunny beams

Gun's scared her? Jude raised an eyebrow slightly, wondering if that was going to be a sticking point between them. Jude liked guns. For him, they were very much a normal part of life. His house had several concealed guns located around the house, and his father had made very sure that Jude knew where they were and how to use each and every one, just in case.

Not that it had helped.

"Most guns," Jude explained, "have safeties against that. Like, you could toss a glock around and it'd never go off, because it has a two-switch system. You have to press a button down and then pull the trigger, and only an idiot wouldn't have the safety on anyway."

Any of those idiots who walked around with their trigger on the finger earned Jude's intense disdain.

"When I get that, I can take you up to a range and show you what I mean. They're really not scary or anything."

"Honestly, it's kind of weird the island even regulates them," Jude admitted, scratching at the back of his neck. "Most of my classmates are way more dangerous than a gun. And not letting...."

Jude trailed off. It wasn't a topic he wanted to get into, not right then, and he glanced away.

"It's fine. Most people don't like guns, even back in Halcyon. The only reason I was good with them was because my dad insisted. It was... a family thing, I guess?"

"I mean," Jude started to point out, "you have seemingly infinite number of family things. Just not with you." Assuming he was even understanding right.

"It was just me and my dad, mostly. My mom was... not in the picture. My grandparents were around, but generally unpleasant, and we basically only saw them on holidays."

He barely thought of them, if he was being honest.

"Experiences make a person," Jude said. On this? This was something he could actually talk about. "Officer Genovese--the guy I live with--is also me. He's the me from this world. But no one would ever try and say we're the same. He's had totally different experiences, and in the end he's a different person. We have a lot in common, and we get along pretty well, but we aren't the same. Our experiences shape us. They make us who we are."

There was a certainty in his voice that you didn't generally get from thought experiments, because for him, it was a very real thing: Something he'd thought about more than he'd ever care to admit to anyone.