Chapter Text
Gerry had always slept in the fetal position. Knees curled protectively to his chest, arms tucked in close, crumpled into the tiniest ball possible, so that maybe, just maybe, the monsters wouldn't see him. Even now, at eighteen and a half, he was scared of monsters in the dark.
When he'd gone to sleep, he'd been curled up under the scratchy blankets in his dingy bedroom above the bookshop, listening to his mother shuffle around and mutter to herself, as she so often did these days. He'd idly been tracing patterns on the sagging pillow, no pillowcase in sight, as his eyes drooped bit by bit. His last coherent thought before drifting off was that he hoped he wouldn't be woken up by Mary screaming bloody murder about something or other. Blaming him for her losing books, citing that he was hiding them while she was out, or demanding he get up right now and help her, or whatever it was he'd done wrong that evening that she felt absolutely had to be discussed at half past three in the morning.
His dreams were, as ever, violent and terrifying. He'd been having nightmares since he could remember, and he doubted they'd go away any time soon. But he was used to them and so they didn't wake him.
And, miracles never cease, he didn't wake to his mother's voice screeching at him to get up right now. He woke to a beam of strong morning sunlight over his eyes. He stirred, but made no noise as he did so, because Gerard Keay was many things, but a fool wasn't one of them. The sensation of the blanket over his body made him frown as his eyes fluttered open, because it was heavier than he remembered. For a second, a spike of panic went through him and he sat up quickly, just to make sure he still could. The blanket pooled in his lap, and he stared down at it, utterly bewildered.
The blanket he’d gone to sleep under was scratchy and gray, never quite thick enough to be warm in the winter but too thick to be cool in the summer. This one was thick and warm, emerald green and made of soft cotton. He couldn’t get his head around it.
It wasn’t like Mary would have been the one to put it over him. They didn’t own anything like this and there was no way in hell she’d spend money on something for him that he didn’t need. Especially not something so luxurious as this. The room was brighter than he was expecting, too, since he always kept the curtains in his room closed at night, and his side of the building didn’t get sunlight until four or five in the afternoon. The moment he lifted his eyes from the blanket, he went as still as he physically could.
This was not his bedroom.
This wasn’t any room in the flat. It wasn’t anywhere he recognised.
He wouldn’t put it past Mary to drug him and drop him off somewhere for a ‘lesson’, but this…
It wasn’t so opulent as to belong to the Lukases or Bouchard, but it was too nice to belong to anyone of the Flesh or the Corruption, and the colors were all in the right places, so that ruled out the Spiral. The brightness of the light spilling through the windows also ruled out the Dark, and the lack of cobwebs in the corners of the room meant it probably wasn’t the Web. He doubted anyone deep enough into the Hunt to get his mother’s attention would have a place as nice as this. The tree he could just about glimpse through the window also meant they weren’t high enough off the ground for it to be the Vast and not deep enough in the earth for the Buried. Gerry’s eyes darted around rapidly, trying to think. Not the Desolation, Gerry was already marked deep enough by that. Anyone marked by the End deeply enough wouldn’t care enough to do anything for Mary, and the Stranger’s kind didn’t have enough wherewithal to own a room like this. So that left the Slaughter and the Eye.
Trying to calm himself, Gerry pulled his knees to his chest and bit down on the skin of his knuckles as he thought intently. He couldn’t smell any blood, but that didn’t mean anything. There wasn’t the prickly, ice-cold feeling of being Watched, either, but, again, that didn’t mean anything.
Nothing for it. Luckily, he was still in his jeans and hoodie from yesterday, since he made sure to sleep in his clothes after he’d been dragged out of the house in his underwear when he was fourteen to meet with a man who had clumps of mud in his hair and who smiled at Gerry with teeth that were stained brown with soil. Slowly, he slipped his legs off the edge of the bed and stood. The carpet was soft enough that Gerry was confident he’d be able to move over it without a sound, glad he’d not bothered taking his socks off before he went to bed. Part of him wished he’d been wearing shoes, but there was no point dwelling on that right now.
He moved slowly, carefully, over the floor, making sure to keep his steps light, not wanting to make a floorboard creak, in case he alerted anything that might be waiting for him to wake up.
As he moved, he inspected the room he’d found himself in. A few posters on the wall, some photographs that were too far away for him to bother inspecting properly, clothes on the floor and spilling out of the laundry basket. It didn’t look like any sort of kill room, but Gerry’s hopes weren’t terribly high. He hadn’t seen the rest of this place yet.
After making one hundred percent sure that the door he was about to go through was entirely ordinary wood and didn’t make his head throb and his ears ring, he opened it as slowly as he could. The hinges didn’t so much as whisper.
The smell of food hit his nose immediately, and he tensed. It smelled like… Pancakes. For the second time since he’d woken up, Gerry felt his brain short-circuit. Pancakes. It didn’t make any sense. Whatever was here was making pancakes. Or at least wanted Gerry to think it was making pancakes, but he’d already ruled out the Spiral and there weren’t any others that could fuck his perceptions up like that.
It took him a good few seconds to shake off the strangeness of the situation and start creeping towards where the smell was strongest.
The carpet in the hallway was a similar shade of beige to the one in the bedroom, and the walls were painted a pleasant shade of sage green. There were photographs hanging on those walls, and these Gerry did take a moment to look at.
What he saw made his heart stop in his chest.
It was him.
In the picture, he had to be maybe six or seven, blonde hair cropped short, a grin that was missing a canine tooth beaming out at the camera. Except Gerry was sure he’d never smiled like that once in his entire life. The kid in the picture was round-cheeked and healthy, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and sandals. What made him take a full step back, though, was the presence of the other person in the photograph.
He’d never seen his father before, not even in pictures, but he recognised the jawline and brows from the mirror. He had his arm around the boy in the photo, and was squinting towards the camera with a smile on his face. They both looked happier than Gerry had ever been.
Swallowing down the threatening nausea, Gerry re-evaluated his previous idea that this wasn’t the Stranger’s work. The problem was, he didn’t understand why. It made no sense as to why the Stranger would want him to believe his father was there, and he didn’t believe they could have recreated his face so perfectly. Then again, Gerry had never actually seen the man, so there was a chance that the picture wasn’t what he looked like and the Stranger was responsible. Still, such a thing would take a lot of planning, and the Stranger wasn’t one for plans, particularly. Especially not one woven so well. If he didn’t know any better, he’d suspect the Web, but this was beyond the Spider’s remit. Maybe they were working together? The Web and the Stranger had very little in common, and, if he was remembering rightly, the last avatar that served the Web anywhere near London had been Raymond Fielding, who’d died a while ago. Presuming he was still in London.
This wasn’t helping. Gerry shook his head, turned back towards what he presumed was a kitchen and started down the hall towards the sound of clattering and sizzling. Pancakes. Right.
The man standing in the kitchen couldn’t be anyone but Eric Delano. It was impossible, he’d been dead for sixteen years, but there he was, halfway through putting a pancake on a plate, turned towards Gerry. “Morning, sleepyhead,” Said the man who was his father, glancing up. His eyes widened in surprise. “Woah,” He said, smiling broadly. “That’s a bit drastic, Ger. When’d you have time to do that?”
Gerry blinked. Blinked again. On the island between them, there was a chopping board and most of a banana cut up, with a knife set slightly to the side. Gerry was closer to it than- than Eric, and he was faster than most people assumed. He was careful not to look at the knife straight-on, in case that gave Eric some idea as to what his plan was.
“Gerry?” Eric prompted, which startled him a little. He’d never actually asked anyone to call him Gerry, but he hated being called Gerard. He always heard it in his mother’s voice, demanding, ordering, hateful. “Gerry, are you-”
Before he could finish the sentence, Gerry lunged forward and grabbed the knife. The blade end was pointing towards him but he didn’t care, just wrapped his right hand around it, ignoring the cuts it opened on his skin, and transferred it to his left as he backed up to the wall. The blood that trickled off his fingertips and pattered to the ground gave the air a familiar metallic smell, one that made all the hair on the back of Gerry’s neck stand up. “Don’t,” He rasped, hoarse because he’d spent a few days in their tiny basement last week, screaming until his throat was raw. “Don’t.”
Eric raised his hands immediately, his brow furrowed in concern. Or Gerry assumed it was concern. “Alright. Alright, it’s alright. I won’t.”
With a deep, shuddering breath, Gerry started moving sideways, keeping his back to the wall the entire time, until he was closer to the door than Eric was. “Take it off.”
“Take- Take what off, Ger?”
Gerry grit his teeth. “His face. Take it off.”
Eric’s face crumpled into genuine confusion. There was no hint of a self-satisfied smile on his mouth, no tinge of amusement in his eyes, nothing. “I’m not wearing anyone’s face but mine, Gerry.”
Somehow, for some reason, Gerry believed him. But- “You’re dead. ” He hissed, gripping the knife tighter, feeling the line across his palm starting to sting. “You- You died. When I was two. How the fuck are you standing here? Where is this? Where’s mum?”
He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want her to be here. If this was real and not just some sort of fever dream, he didn’t want her here.
“Gerry, I think you should-”
“Don’t you
dare
tell me to sit down,”
Eric’s hands remained raised in the universal position of surrender. “Alright. Okay. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you, Gerry, I promise. Why don’t you put the knife down and let me bandage your hand and then we can talk about this?”
Slowly, haltingly, Gerry lowered the knife. “Okay.” He said, because he really did want to know what was going on and he didn’t think Eric was going to hurt him, but he wasn’t one hundred percent sure and until he was, the knife wasn’t going anywhere. If Eric was some sort of avatar or monster it wouldn’t do much, but it would slow him down enough for Gerry to bolt, and that was really what mattered.
“Alright. Let me get the first aid kit.”
-
Picking at the edges of the bandage, Gerry stared into the middle distance as he tried to process what he’d been told.
Apparently, the world he’d woken up in was a different one to his own. Different in one key aspect. Eric Delano hadn’t quit the Magnus Institute. He’d been let go. Elias Bouchard had offered him a generous severance package in return for not mentioning the way he’d discovered he could quit to any of his coworkers. He’d agreed, and that had been that. He’d gained full custody over Gerry soon after that, when he caught Mary attempting to lock him in the basement so that he could ‘learn his lessons’, they’d moved to Oxford, and that was that.
“She’s still alive, then?” He asked, dully, after some time. He didn’t know exactly how long, but the cup of tea he’d been given was stone cold when he finally drew himself from his thoughts. “Mum, I mean.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her since the divorce. I assume so, since I haven’t heard anything about it.”
The idea that Gerry’s entire life could have been so much better if one man had chosen benevolence instead was making his head spin. Another thing to hate Elias Bouchard for, he supposed.
“You- You grew up with your mum, then?” The question was hesitant, careful, and Gerry jerked his head in what could charitably have been called a nod. “What was that like?”
A bark of hoarse, unhappy laughter escaped Gerry without his say-so. “How do you think it was? In my world, you weren’t there to stop her from locking me in the basement. And that was hardly the end of it. If I didn’t know any better I’d have said she was training me up to hand me over to Bouchard the moment I was old enough to withstand the Rite of the Watcher’s Crown.”
She hadn’t been, though. Mary was possessive, and she didn’t share her things. And, no matter how much Gerry hated the fact, he was a possession. A thing. An object.
“Gerry… I’m so, so-”
“Sorry, yeah. Me too.” He hadn’t looked up through their entire talk. “Just feel bad for the other me. If we traded places… Probably won’t last a week with her.”
Eric looked stricken, at that, and Gerry felt a stab of fierce satisfaction that was quickly washed away by shame.
“She wouldn’t.”
Gerry smiled a smile that was all teeth. “Oh, she would. She tried. Dropped me in an endless maze with a hunting thing. She just didn’t expect me to be the better hunter. I had to walk home.”
It seemed to dawn on Eric, then, exactly what sort of child Mary would have raised. That the Gerry he knew and the Gerry sat in front of him were worlds apart. Gerry could see it on his face, the sudden shock of fear and distress.
Fighting the urge to double down, to share more, to spit out his childhood in shards of broken glass, Gerry tucked his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them.
He was still holding the knife in one hand.