( What.... What is this? Peter's confusion hasn't relented through this entire interaction, but now it resurfaces in a fresh new wave, one that's bigger, swallowing him whole. His eyes are back to forming saucers, wide and round, and horrified. Through all of the strange words the kid is saying, things Peter doesn't understand, parts of it continue to be so relevant, and he's just— completely stunned.

And that horror is beginning to press against some deeper place in him. Against Peter's worst fears; this child has stated them right out in the open. That concept that someday he'll be hollowed out by the demon's impossible presence. Peter's glimpsed that future for himself, back in Deerington, in the form of a Waste — body and voice and face his, but the eyes something else's entirely. No Peter left. And some part of him that he's never voiced aloud thinks that it's the fate that's inescapable for him someday, the thing that's waiting for him at the end of... everything.

Could this child... know that? Could they have seen his future, somehow? Some warped version of it? Peter's horror stays there in his features, eyes swimming with it, mouth parting softly. )

I don't understand. ( He answers, not just the question, but.... to everything. He's going to have to tell them his truth, he realises. )

But— Paimon's not— ( He swallows, shuddering quietly, and then slowly presses his fingertips to his chest. )

Paimon's inside me. But I'm not... My name's Peter. I'm not Charles. ( ...Though it's that name, too, that he's feared becoming: for a long time now. Feared that he'll follow in his uncle's footsteps. It's all too real, too familiar, too believable. Peter's shuddering. )

And I'm not gone. ( ...Not yet. ) We're both still here. He just... lives inside me.