He got halfway through telling people to stand in specific places before giving me my position, standing in the hallway just past the front door we rarely used, near the small bathroom and shower. It dawned on me just why he was positioning us. Well, part of it.

Put Kenzie far away from her tech. Put the least tech-savvy people, Damsel and Sveta, closer to the computer terminals. Take the leaders, me and Tristan, and put Tristan in the corner where the whiteboard made him hard to see, put me in the hallway.

Separating the kids. He did put Aiden and Candy on either side of Rain, though. Not what I would’ve done, and he did put Darlene near the computers, probably to put her further from Tattletale, who was between Tristan and Kenzie, far from the consoles.

When everyone was separated, he began talking to Tristan. I couldn’t overhear.

From what I could see of the others, they were getting themselves sorted. They stretched, they looked around, and they looked more alert. Candy had messy hair from where she’d slept on it, and was combing it with her fingers. She stopped as Rain set about dabbing at the cut on her forehead with a handkerchief. The contact elicited a warning sound from Defiant, who relaxed once he investigated.

My mind was a storm of recent events, which did not feel like a dream, and the twenty-five different things I’d seen that could have each been things I sat down and thought about for an hour. The individual glimpses of triggers and their effects on these people I knew. The implications of the quirkier rooms or dream-version triggers, like Ashley being in Damsel’s.

And the implications and nuances of the different parts of the dream landscape. The scholar in me wanted to think on that, discuss with Tattletale, who might have insights, and even take notes.

And Dean. Who had lied to me. I could revisit old conversations I’d had with him. He’d told me once he’d had a trigger event, had closed up without saying exactly what it was, and I’d taken it as a betrayal. Leaving me reeling now as I remembered those feelings I’d had and how he’d let me think I’d been in the wrong for pushing too hard. And then he’d caved, he’d told me a story about a home invasion, which had actually happened, but he had lied to me, made it into a trigger event.

Him sharing that with me had made me feel close to him, and I’d tried to initiate a make-out session with him, only for him to pull away. He hadn’t wanted to do anything with me that night, and I’d respected it… but it had still played a part in me being willing and wanting to sleep with him, just a little while later.