#pan deceit

Deceit had kept hidden for a very long time. The others might think it was part of some masterful plot, but the truth, as much as Deceit could say, was much simpler. The reason Deceit stayed out of sight, was to keep from being seen. It’s a bit obvious, stated like that, but so far no one had caught on. And Deceit wanted to keep it that way. The reasons behind the hiding were… embarrassing, in a certain way. Not something that most would want known. If Deceit wanted to keep up the carefully-constructed facade of an apathetic liar, then this was the best way to do it. Of course, the truth is a tricky, slippery thing. No matter how hard one tries to keep it hidden, it finds its way into the light eventually.

Things hadn’t always been like this. For a long time, Deceit’s main companion had been Virgil, or Anxiety, as he was still known in those days. They were both starved for attention and care, and found those things in each other. They were together in the romantic sense for a while, but that wasn’t meant to be. And it was when they broke it off, as a friendly agreement, that Deceit began to notice things. Like how there hadn’t been that ‘spark’ that everything and everyone said should be there. Like how Deceit had felt desire, but not the right kind. Deceit loved Virgil, without a doubt, but was not in love with him. If Virgil had been amicable, Deceit would have gone to bed with him in an instant (he wasn’t, and they didn’t). But romantic gestures felt empty, and wrong in some way. This was when Deceit realized that feeling this way was wrong, and unacceptable. And so began the hiding. As much as it hurt to do so, Deceit pulled away, and holed up in the back of the mindspace. Virgil was left alone and confused, and Deceit was hurting and isolated.

Deceit wasn’t completely cut off during this time. There were still ways of obtaining information about both the outside world and what was happening in the rest of the mindspace. The internet was a wonderful place, where anyone could be anyone. Lying was, in some ways, encouraged, and in other ways, the truth could be more brazenly displayed. And it was through this medium that Deceit discovered the word ‘transgender’, and that she rather liked being called a girl. She had noticed a sense of wrongness before, a disconnect between her body, other’s assumptions, and her own image of herself, which she now knew was called dysphoria. But she also knew that this had to be hidden, like everything else unusual about her. Some intrinsic part of her balked at the idea of sharing this with anyone. And so she lied. So well, in fact, that she managed to convince herself. She must have been mistaken. She- no, he, was no different from any of the others. That was the way things had to be.

Okay, so perhaps attempting to convince Thomas to lie through taking on the guise of his moral center hadn’t been the best method of introduction. And sure, maybe s-he deserved the rather… frosty reception from the other Sides that came after. But Deceit couldn’t bring her-himself to regret it. It had been the perfect opportunity, and it wasn’t like any permanent harm had been done, right? The only problem had been her his moment of weakness. He(she) just couldn’t resist slipping that little hint in, with that little glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, someone would pick up on it. That dream had been firmly crushed in the following minutes. What Deceit had failed to notice was the gleam in Logan’s eyes indicating the presence of a puzzle to be solved.