85th Tracker - Catherine Spark [D3]

"Oh, I—"

Funny, Dy thinks as they lace their hands together to keep them from shaking, how similar survival mechanism looks to paranoia. They've been off the streets for longer than they lived on them, now, but they never quite picked up the skill for charming Peacekeepers into looking the other way; they learned early and well that the best way to avoid unwanted attention while working was to avoid the uniform entirely, and the habits that keep a person safe die hard. A Peacekeeper looking for them, pulling them out of work—the alarm bells in their head might be rusty, but they don't ring any quieter.

Work. Hell, they're going to have to stay late to make up the productivity hit, aren't they?

That thought reminds them that they have people who would notice their absence now, and that, more than any knowledge that these audits are routine, settles them. A quick statement, that's all this is. They can handle that.

It's too much and not enough, at once, to say that Catherine Spark talked about grief on a stage and Dy felt seen, and that if life in Three is still hard five years later, it's not because she's ever betrayed what she said on that stage—too much, because this stranger hasn't earned the parts of Dy's life that explaining that comment would require, and not enough, because feelings don't make a good candidate. But even if Dy trusted themself to talk policy coherently, they certainly aren't about to do so with a Peacekeeper, so all they can think to say is, "Mayor Spark cares about people. I trust her."