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[hauntedking]

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[eyesite]

( these could be considered two different Fears, though as dimitri continues, he paints himself most vividly for one in particular.

fear of control is the domain of the Spider — of the Web, of the Mother of Puppets. this is the Dread Power that marked john first, when reading a children's book marked as an artefact of the Web at age eight had nearly led him to an early grave.

but, no, if any of the Fears were to pose the greatest threat to what dimitri feared most for himself, it would not be the Spider. )

...In my world, there are individuals like what you describe. Avatars of the Hunt, or "Hunters"... they exist only for the thrill of the chase. They weaken when they're denied it.

( ironically, he had been appointed a Hunter as someone to help keep him safe from threats outside of the Institute — the selfsame Hunter that had once nearly taken him into the woods and executed him, certain of the threat he posed. his relationship with daisy is very complicated. she had marked him deeply for fear of the Hunt, but he had since gotten to know her — gotten to feel responsible for her getting entangled in the Institute's business. he had willingly walked into the heart of the Buried, into Choke, into the Crushing Dark itself to pull her out... and then he had had to watch her wither away as she tried to deny the Hunt's hold over her.

it's the same fate he would have faced if he had refused to feed the Eye, as he does now. )

...It's a cruel existence. For them, and their victims.

Dimitri. I know it's difficult — dredging up fear always is. But if you were to tell to story about what led you to this point, where you stood upon the precipice of losing yourself to your anger... What is the scene that you would set? Where were you, and why — who were you with, and how did it all seem to you? How did you feel?

As... ghoulish as it is — this is what I need. A moment of fear, frozen in time.

[hauntedking]

I... it was nothing like that. It just... I was so caught up in my own despair and hurt and anger and guilt that I felt that the best way I could resolve the vengeance I felt was to hurt the people I thought responsible.

[ Sharing this hurts, too. It's a vulnerable sensation - but that's the point isn't it? He shifts his weight a little in his seat as he considers. How does he describe it? How does he really convey how it felt and what happened to him? ]

...we were in the tomb beneath the Academy. We - my classmates and I, the professor - we were trying to prevent what we believed were unknown assailants from making off with powerful artifacts that could be misused.

[ His gaze goes a little distant. ]

They arrived. We fought. There was one called the Flame Emperor who I believed, at the time, to be responsible for so many ills. And... during this fight they were unmasked to reveal the face of Edelgard. A... girl I had known once from my childhood, but who did not then seem to remember me. And the idea that she was responsible for so much suffering, for the death of my own family... it made me laugh. Now, of course, it seems foolish. She was a child as I was. She couldn't have been responsible. But at the time...

[ He trails off with a frown. ]

[eyesite]

( he can sense the pain inherent in admitting to it, and he mirrors it — not just out of a reflexive sense of sympathy, or at least not only because of it. john has felt similarly despite not really being a man predisposed to violence (and certainly not one really capable of it, or at least not usually). it is a natural response in grief and hurt, he thinks, to lash out; a sort of animal instinct residual in them, despite what sense would otherwise dictate. some even do so blindly, so the fact that dimitri had at least focused his attention on those that had initially done the harm to him was already at least one step in the... "right" direction?

he listens, passive, receptive. both Communion and the power of the Eye leech information from dimitri that he doesn't even necessarily give outright, painting a picture of the scene that he describes; the dark and quiet of a grave, sharp apprehensive and anticipation of the situation they had been responding to. the shock of betrayal that such a sudden revelation might elicit is certainly something that would impact someone deeply, which might even push them to such a vicious response as dimitri had committed — which he to this day is concerned about repeating. )

There is little room for logic in times such as that.

( he has certainly had his share of blind emotional responses to high-intensity situations — ironic enough for someone so aligned with sight.

he considers what dimitri has told him for a moment, what he has shared — though he doesn't doubt that it's true that he fears most what he had become, what he very well might become again... he can't help but think that the underlying factor is what is written more deeply into his psyche. it is, after all, what he has to assume is the reason why such a thing had occurred. )

Though... the primary reason you reacted so strongly was because of this - tragedy that occurred, which resulted in the death of your family. This memory is the threshold to what you fear most, yes... but do you think it's correct to say that what happened when you lost them has shaped your life more as a result?

[hauntedking]

...I would say so. It all... stems from the Tragedy of Duscur, of which I wsa the only survivor. My father, my step-mother, people I had known my whole life - all were slaughtered and I somehow lived through it.

[ Survivor's guilt is a hell of a drug. ]

It's why I felt I needed to find justice for them. Even if what I ended up doing was merely feeding my own bloodlust.

[ He tried to keep control. It didn't work. Eventually the pent-up anger and resentment and sorrow and guilt had all come pouring out of him. Nearly being killed, the sense of betrayal - it had all led him to spiral and to do nothing more than hunt and kill and become little better than a wild beast. ]

[eyesite]

( he has a picture of it now, and it intersects in several places with his understanding of the Fears. but john knows better than most that it's a mistake to think of them as wholly separate entities — it is more accurate to think of them as different facets cut from the same gem, each reflecting a slightly different archetypal understanding of terror. the Hunt, whose psychological Mark is something that still haunts him now in the echoed memory of perfect helplessness he had felt when daisy tonner had taken him out in the woods to execute him, single-minded in its fixation on the satisfaction of the pursuit. the Slaughter, which is Marked on him as a small, nasty scar on his shoulder left by a scalpel, representative of wild and senseless violence. in dimitri and the experiences that he recounts to john now, they exist in a tangle, each feeding into the other.

the fear there is genuine, and it presents a unique enough picture of such an interaction. with these fears written with their reverberations onto john, the Eye can feed, and they are both sated.

though even if that psychological pressure lifts from his mind and his vision "clears" (so to speak), it brings him little happiness in this moment. he can sense the pain, fear, and reproach seething within the young man because they're reflected back onto him, temporarily linked as they are. he wishes he can offer some sort of help, but... that's not what he's intended to do. the Archivist is not meant to help those with their fears, but rather to help himself to them.

he is no more able to help dimitri than he had been able to help daisy. yes, he had pulled her out of the Buried, and they had starved themselves of fear together as avatars of the Eye and the Hunt both, but it was a useless defiance. john had eventually served his purpose to jonah magnus and the Eye, and daisy... what was it she had said? "can't outrun it forever." she had used it to allow them time to escape, but she had still given herself back to the Hunt all the same.

leaving basira behind with the promise to deliver her judgment later. for a moment john's throat constricts, and then he speaks. )

When you feel as though you can't trust yourself to make the decisions you should make... you have to entrust it to those you have faith in. You equip them with what they need in order to handle you in that eventuality.

( it sounds very much like he speaks from experience. )

[hauntedking]

[ To be fair, Dimitri had come here with the intent to help John. Even if it cost him some peace of mind. Maybe he hadn't understood - or underestimated what it would take. For the moment, he's still in a bit of turmoil. Trying not to relive those horrible days and the fallout that had come with it and left him as he is - brittle, but trying to be better. Strong, but fragile in some of the worst ways. There's nothing else for it at this point.

And at least he takes a bit of comfort from John's words. ]

...I had people like that back home. And I have a few here. But I miss all of the ones who are apparently gone.

[ This is close to the divide between them; the gulf between restoration or creation. ]

I want to bring them back.

[eyesite]

( even still. he is most accustomed to reading the statements of those who have already come and gone from the Institute — some of them so old that when his assistants tried to reach out to the original statement-giver, they can't seem to find them. when he had been Head Archivist of the Institute, he had ruminated often on the survivor's bias that reading these statements had given him, but that wasn't always the case; sometimes they were given in a narrow window between a Dread Power's fixation on them and when they were finally claimed by it. helen was one of those, among many. he'd just had the misfortune of seeing her claimed by the Distortion right in front of him.

when someone is presenting their fear and their pain to him in person... it's harder. he knows logically there's nothing he can do to help, that there's not really anything anyone can do (least of all an avatar of a god of bloody fear), but still... the yoke of an Archivist is a heavy one, especially upon a soul as generally sympathetic as john's is. )

Good. That's good.

( he doesn't speak on those that had been left behind. how can he? it's not that they are completely at odds here; there are those that he is serving Zenith in order to retrieve. one, he already has, but he hopes yima will continue to fetch the souls of those he feels most responsible for. there are four left... even if he can't go to the world he creates, he wants them to be able to. with martin.

john stands. he feels that their time is coming to an end — he needs to get back to highstorm, and... typically those that give statements to him don't really want to hang around him for too much longer afterward. but he does pause there a moment before looking back to dimitri, sidelong. )

I'm not without a heart. If it were so easy for me... I would want to do the same.

( the obvious indication here is that it's not. but he doesn't want to discuss that now. that's a conversation they have later. )

Thank you very much for your time, Dimitri.

( and for your fear. even looking at him now, one could see that john already looks much haler; he stands up straighter, and there's less of a nervous jitter to his movements. )

[hauntedking]

...you're quite welcome.

[ It's been... what? Harrowing? But he thins he would do it again. He's helped someone and that's important. Even if he has had to dredge up memories he would almost rather leave buried. He cannot turn away from this. He never can. ]

I hope you stay well.