Chapter Text
It's been 25 years since the Magnus Institute burned down and Gerry couldn't be happier. Sure, he doesn't remember much of what happened, just blurry rooms filled with questionnaires and people asking him about what books he preferred to read, but he knows that something else was buried under the surface. It's just vague, and he has to rely on others’ accounts of the horrors, scrambled by age and Leitners and technicolor lies.
Gerry isn't stupid. Even days after the Institute burned down, he knew he was missing something. Ge-Ge showed up out of the smoldering ruins and told him that she was his grandmother, related on his father's side of the family, in spirit, she said. He took that at face value. He was raised by his mother before she left him at the Institute at their gifted children's program. She was a… book collector? He doesn't exactly remember what she did or what she looked like, just an icy glare and vague impression of disapproval.
No matter, he was quite literally picked up by Gertrude when the institute was on fire. They left before anyone came to question them and he moved into her apartment. It was was so normal that it seemed bizarre. He went to school (he was able to go to school!!). He was allowed to paint, and create, and explore who he was and wanted to be. Soon even the vague feeling of wrongness felt right. He's able to grow up with a normal childhood, raised by a single grandmother.
However, something is wrong. Something is right. Something… is different and he's not quite sure what it could even be. He gets to have a normal childhood and he's grateful for that, but something feels off. Maybe it's just him. After the years filled with tests and books and things that he can't even remember, maybe he doesn't know what normal is supposed to look like.
So he tries to fill in the gaps in his memory with new ones. He excels at school and struggles to make friends but nothing is sticking. He listens to music and tries to create himself anew. Out of the ashes of Gerard Keay comes Gerry Delano. Now to figure out who that is.
Gerard Keay was fear and the fight to survive. He was angst and terror and the the ferocity that comes with that, but he was also kindness for kindness's sake. Gerry thinks that he wants to keep Gerard's kindness but lose the terror. He has no need for that right now. So, Gerry has a foundation to start with. Progress!!
Next, Gerry needs to figure out how Gerry looks. Gerard was mousy ginger roots and scavenged black box dye on stringy straight hair (to distance him from his mother, he finds out later). Gerry however, doesn't remember his mother so he takes the time to undo the damage to his hair. He end up with vibrant ginger waves, and while he dyes them himself over the years, he dyes them with love not loathing. His hair is a patchy rainbow of time, with shades ranging from neon pink to sky blue to black with his natural ginger shining through. What Gerry looks like also changes. He's tried emo, punk, metal, pastel punk, whimsigoth, bubble goth, goth, and every flavor of alt that struck his interest. He still dresses every type of alt under the sun because why stick with one when he can explore many different subcultures with their own aesthetic, each vibrant and with ideologies to match.
Gerry still doesn't know who he is but he figures out that the grey areas of not knowing are the places where you can have the most fun with your identity. He paints, and draws, and is filled with so much kindness that it is overwhelming. Does he need more that that?
(His smile may be slightly too wide and his skin a little too smooth, but no matter. He quickly disarms the instinctive disease surrounding him with his personality, that he tailored himself. Even though he discovered parts of what makes Gerry Gerry, he's still working on how others see him and not just how he sees himself, but that's far easier to shape. No matter how uncanny the smile, a smile and an upbeat tone puts people at ease, and general niceties generally do the trick.
He's still learning how to be a person, not a legacy or an experiment. You can't expect him to know how to simply be quite yet.)