DEAD SERIOUS

CT pays very close attention, throughout the presentation. She always would have, even before the change—it's that sort of hunger for information that got her here, after all—but it feels different, now. And sometimes, to someone with the eye for it, there's a golden gleam to her dark eyes that's not quite natural.

Once there's chance, she comes up to catch him on his own. "You're... we're connected to the same one of these things now, right?"

(She's not completely unaware of who he is to a certain redhead in their lives, given how nosy she's always been even before now, but she's got very little intention of going near that tripwire.)

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Gerry nods sharply. "Yep. You, me, Sims, and the television makes four. The Eye's popular, I guess. Which makes sense, it's definitely one that has some obvious benefits comparatively." He offers a handshake. "Nice to meet you. M'sure we'll be talking shop a lot."

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CT shakes the hand, with the hand of her own with the scar across the palm (she's been having odd nightmares about it opening up into a eyeball ever since... everything).

"I'm sure we will. I— yeah, I can't deny that how... useful, it sounded, led me here." She laughs, dryly. "Sims made one hell of a sales pitch."

She doesn't sound angry. More like she's still wrapping her head around it.

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"Oh, it's handy, for sure. Here." He hands her a written list of the Fears, and their descriptions. Along with something else.

...Lonely marks tend to be fainter and harder to see, looking like wisps of smoke that create striations across the body. They can often look like other things...

...Eye marks are very distinctive. You'll now 'em when you see 'em.

...often found over the face. The Stranger likes to leave marks that look like masks that can sometimes be difficult to see the person's actual face through if strong enough...

"Figured you could use a translation."

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Her eyebrows go up in recognition. "Oh, yeah, definitely. I'd been noticing these, obviously, but—"

Even with all the new knowledge starting to flow in, it's not like the Eye has ever been one to give its people comprehensive knowledge without effort and so learning about the Fears as a whole is an... ongoing process.

"I already recognise the Lonely, at least, my uh— someone I care about was stuck there most of the two weeks, so, I've been seeing a lot of that." The rest she'll have to read through fully and commit to memory, start categorising in her head. What already felt, to her, like a filing system of memories and information now feels even more so, like the Eye took her twisted self-perception and ran with it. "Did everyone in town have these before the Fears actually came here, or is what I'm seeing now just from that?"

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(My uh, someone I care about--- Yeah, okay, CT, Gerry doesn't need the Eye to translate that one for him. But it does, of course. The word you're looking for is "girlfriend," bestie. Or maybe "situationship" since you haven't put a label on the damn thing.)

"No, loads of people come here with marks even if they aren't from a place with the actual Dread Powers. Turns out those instinctual, primal fears don't really need any supervision from a special entity in order to leave someone with a scar. The Fears, capital F, are just that--- fear. The only thing special about them is that they're conscious enough to want more. Otherwise they're just the same as the mundane versions. Lotta marks got deeper, though, over those two weeks. That much is true."

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"That makes sense. I think maybe a part of me already figured as much, but— it's a little hard to sort out the assumptions from the actual knowledge, still. And it's a little unsettling, to think that these things leave such a mark on us even without a supernatural force behind them."

Not surprising, really, trauma's a mark enough, but something that can be so clearly read... even if only with the right Eyes. That's something.

"So you've been able to see these things the whole time. I guess you've had chance to get used to the visual noise."

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Edgar doesn't take a chair during Gerry's speech; he stands, near the back of the room, leaning one shoulder against the wall. Less like he's here for the support group and more like he's here with someone else who is.

(He's here alone.)

After the speech is over, when the general discussion starts, he snags a few more of the offered snacks and starts moving in the direction of slipping out of the room.

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Nope.

If Edgar was paying attention, he should expect Gerry to spot him. All eyes, after all. And Edgar has a mark Gerry's never seen before.

"Not thinking of cutting out early, are ya, mate?"

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"Uh --"

He comes to an awkward stop, shifting back and forth uneasily.

"Thought it was mostly over."

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"Mostly, yeah. But not all the way." Gerry waves him back into the room. "C'mon. Let's have a quick chat. Promise I'll only bother you for just a tiny bit longer than is welcome."

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"Oh well if that's all then," says Edgar, a touch over-brightly, and approaches.

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Gerry snorts, commenting sarcastically: "Don't sound so eager."

They step aside to a more secluded part of the room. "You have marks I don't recognize. That's new for me."

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"Marks," he says. "Like, from one of these ... Fears."

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"No, like a stamp from the post office," Gerry quips back, with a smirk. But he doesn't bother continuing the bit.

"Part of my whole Eye business is that I can 'see' the psychological scars left behind by interacting with the Fears, or relevant terrors from worlds without them directly present. Some fears are inherent, you know? Anyway. You've got a few obvious ones, but I wasn't exactly giving you a full fuckin' physical. I was mostly looking at the big giant Avatar mark you've got that I've never seen before. What did you agree to back there?"

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"I didn't," he starts angrily, then falls to a more subdued tone almost immediately. "Din't know I was agreeing to anything. Except driving the fuckin train up to Crane's Ridge and back, so people could get somewhere safe."

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At the anger, Gerry holds up his palms defensively and pulls back a bit.

"Yeah, they do that," he says with a sigh. "That damn train. I heard a little bit about it. Do you want to tell me what happened?"

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Edgar breathes out slowly.

"So when everything went all nightmares, there was me and like four other people right at the train station, and a few others straggling in, and there was the train. And we ... I dunno how we knew, but seemed like it would take us somewhere better. Except it wouldn't start, no matter what anyone did. Till I tried. I don't think I did anything different, it just ..."

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"It chose you," Gerry finishes for him. "Used your fear as fuel for the engine, and without realizing it, you acclimated until it felt like the machine was part of you. Sound about right?"

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He considers that, chewing on his lower lip, and nods. "Something like. It sort of ... stopped being terrible, all the shite going on outside, the world ending and that. Like I knew it was terrible but it didn't scare me. Like I was used to the idea."

His shoulders shift, like he's trying to shake something off. "Seems like that should have been worse."

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"Yeah, no, avatarhood can look like that, too. Getting comfortable with horror. Sometimes that scares you more, in my experience."

Often times that's true. Gerry sometimes looks at the things he's grown comfortable with and is mortified by it. It's never been more true than those two weeks in October. He hates how he saw so much, saw so far across the island, more than he's ever seen at once, and it was all so steeped in gore and horror that should have frayed the mind of anyone who beheld it with a sane mind, and all he could think to do was let out an impressed whistle and start having a look around the clock tower to see if he could track down Jon.

"The first thing you have to do is accept that it isn't a statement on your character. It's gonna feel like it is. It's gonna feel like you're a monster and the worst piece of shit on the planet. But you need to at least rationally know that you personally did not do anything wrong."

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not_a_traitor

Like puberty, but worse. Gaeta almost chokes on a piece of cheese.

But once he coughs his way through that intro, he's locked in for the whole presentation, as intent as if he were sitting in a Fleet Academy lecture hall learning about nonlinear jump calculations. He even takes notes! Whether anybody glancing over his shoulder can make sense of them, though... well.

They're certainly more complex than his usually straightforward, tidily arranged notebooks. Concepts scatter across entire pages with lines, arrows, and nesting phrases linking them to earlier words. He flips back and forth between pages to add more scribbles. Sometimes it's a whole sentence. Other times it's barely more than a letter or two. He seems to have no trouble deciphering the tangle he's creating, as his occasional questions make it clear he's following along just fine.

Once the floor formally opens for further discussion, though, he keeps quiet. The idea of speaking up about the more personal aspects of this whole affair makes him feel... not great. Downright queasy, actually, in a way that goes beyond his usual reticence, or his desire to maintain Mulcahy's privacy as well.

Which probably means he needs to push through it and talk to Gerry in private. Ugh.

(He'll avail himself of some more snacks before he finds Gerry, though, if anyone else wants to talk to him first.)

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Gerry already gets the impression he won't need to push Gaeta to talk to him directly, so he doesn't, honing in on more closed off parties like Edgar (who has a mark he's never seen before, that's very interesting) and Kris (a teenager. Christ. The Dark is shameless). When Gaeta's gotten his fill of snacks, Gerry is waiting for him.

"Wasn't really expecting Web," he remarks before Gaeta can even begin. "The Mother of Puppets is picky. Didn't think she'd have a reason to bite for anyone here. But here you are."

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not_a_traitor

"Here I am," says Gaeta, wryly. He spreads one hand a little in lieu of a shrug, not even surprised Gerry skipped the pleasantries. "Guess I should be honored."

Or, more likely, reconsidering all his life choices that frakked him up enough for the Web to go, Yes. That one.

He hesitates; his mouth twists in faint distaste. "I do actually want to talk. I'm just not sure... how, with the Eye looking right at me."

It's not the most graceful way to put it, but he's still fumbling his way through describing the new senses that tangle around his old ones. And it is really, really disconcerting for something that wants to operate in secrecy to stand right in front of an Eye Avatar and have an intimate chat.

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