entrancelogs | + It's good that we can't see what isn't there +

Entry tags:

+ It's good that we can't see what isn't there +

Who: EVERYONE
Where: Wonderland and adjacent dimensions!
When: Friday, April 21st to Monday, April 24th
Rating: PG-13, warn if higher!
Summary: A place to list your tears throughout the event, and describe the worlds that can be seen or accessed through them. Event Post.
The Story:

While invisible zombies ravage Wonderland, tears are popping up everywhere! Through them characters can see versions of themselves from alternate universes. Some of them show a different version of Wonderland, some a different version of their home. Some are as benign as a character drinking coffee instead of tea, others are as drastic as somebody's entire personality changed completely.

On day one tears are so small as to barely even be recognisable. Faint voices and melodies can be heard through the tiny cracks if you step really close, but these brief and indistinct glimpses are barely even worth describing.

On day two tears have opened up wide enough to recognise them for what they really are. Yesterday's melodies will sound clearer, and the voices will become decidedly familiar, belonging to people characters know, sounding perhaps even like the characters themselves. Look through the tears and they may catch sight of home, or something that merely looks like another part of Wonderland. The tears are yet narrow and instable though, and the field of vision is correspondingly poor.

On day three the tears have grown a great deal. The worlds beyond them can be seen and heard, though most cannot be interacted with at all. Only the biggest ones are already stable enough for characters to stick their hand inside, and pulls through any objects within reach.

On the fourth and last day some tears have finally become large and stable enough for characters to pass through whole. Not all tears will reach this stage, but those who have can be visited, and the world beyond them explored... at each character's own peril.

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"... Yeah." Even that seems a little foreign to her. Friendship is a weird word; it's something she gives out easily, but simultaneously so few people have it. Or maybe it's just not a feeling she's good at holding.Friends implies a two way street; not someone looking out for the other, but... he came when she needed it too, right? When she stood over him on the kitchen floor vs weeks later in her tank.

"I guess so. It feels so far off now." Only knew him for a few months. Only lost him a few months ago. Maybe she just has too much trauma around losing people at all. But to her, that's the first known law in the universe- bad things happen to everyone. Not just good people, not just bad people, but because being bad is subjective. Bad things will always happen, to everyone. You just learn to roll with them as they come.

She's quiet another few seconds as one more question haunts her, until she can breathe in and ask. "Even if this isn't what happened... I can't imagine he made it out back home, did he?"

"No one did." No one but the guy who deserved it the least, in the end. The way she asks it implies that she's just...figured that was the case, long before he showed up to confirm it. Maybe Alex simply went out in such a way that guaranteed it, that solidified him for what he was in her eyes: someone so fucking intent and beyond devoted to a singular goal that he'd strip everything away, burn himself bare, just for a shot at what he felt was the right goddamn thing.

Even if it was a thousand miles off the mark.

He can't look at her. It's a lie in its own right, and he should've mustered something better than that. A comforting story that no one could have confirmed or denied, except possibly Jay.

He should have. Always should have, but never does.

It takes a conscious effort to make her breathing steady, not to let her sigh hold weight, the air trapping itself in her lungs as she forces it out smooth. The feeling of burning yourself out for a cause is something she knows well. She wondered, so many times since he left, if she looked like that back home. Reaching and grasping for something that was so true, but it really was nothing but a lie.

There's always, always the possibility she's wrong. But she can't entertain that when thousands of lives are on the line.

Maybe he felt the same.

"I'm sorry." It never matters if there was something she could've done. Still sorry. Still means it. "You don't have to talk about this with me, if you don't want to. Wonderland drags this stuff up, but... it's still your life they're messing with. You don't have to justify what happened to me. I can't judge you on your decisions. I wasn't there."

He's pretty sure that, if she knew everything he was capable of, everything he did, right up to the end - she wouldn't be standing here apologizing to him. She'd be ensuring he was nothing more than a bloodied smear on the ground, and he'd be standing there and letting it happened.

He's earned that. He's earned every inch of suffering he's dealt out to the world by virtue of his simple existence, and he deserves it dealt back to him a thousandfold.

If he'd had half a conscience, he'd admit to it here and now. So she knows. So she'd see him for what he is.

He should. He should, and all he does is stand there, staring at her, wordless but for the most worthless sentence imaginable:

"You probably knew him better than I did."

"I dunno how much I knew him. I guess it depends how you think of knowing someone." She didn't know his favorite movie, or color, or hobby. She didn't know a lot of fine details that people who would know each other would know. And yet...

"I knew I did him a favor, and he repaid it. I knew I helped him once and he found me when I reached out. In my line of work, that's all I have to know." Fellow soldiers. Fellow fighters. Fellow hands reaching out in the dark. How could she have not looked at him, seen the hope in his eyes when she talked about space and the universe and getting out and not seen herself at sixteen, desperate for a change? How could she not have seen the chance to do something, and then to lose it?

"I know I can't save everyone. He wasn't even from my world- I only had the time he was here. But I know if I stop trying, I won't be able to help anyone." There's no saving worlds, universes, hunks of rock. What she has to remember is the glint of thankfulness in the eyes of one ship she could greenlight into the refugee bay. One child who could find the location of their parents. One person who could get past a group of assholes skimming money that she could take care of.

It can't matter to everyone. It won't. But it will to someone.

It's not like he really knew him before it all went to hell. He knew he was a bit of a pompous ass, had absolutely no writing or directing talent, and that he knew Brian. And he knew Brian because everyone knew Brian. And after then...after everything started going wrong, there's no way of knowing how much Alex was still Alex.

She did him a favor, and he did her a solid in return. His heart squeezes in his chest, a painful constriction he can't swallow back into nothing. A man who called them to warn them, because he was watching, because he must have known, because he could have simply taken them both out then and there, but he chose not to. Because maybe, impossibly, there was something of Alex still left. Because maybe he felt that he owed them that much.

There's no way to know now.

"You couldn't have kept him from..." He doesn't complete the thought, but he doesn't need to. She's figured it out already. "That wasn't on you."

He knows exactly whose fault that was.

He might not've been the one to pull a trigger in his version of the world, but he might as well have.

He speaks, and she feels it heavy in her chest. Couldn't. She's been told that a lot in her life. When you build your life accomplishing impossible tasks, It's hard to separate when you can't do something from when you really can't. When you spend your life busting through barriers, defying the odds, losing to something, even something impossible, is shattering. A loss you should have been able to prevent. A wound you should recover from.

Maybe that's why it's so hard to let go every time she makes that misstep.

"I know." Haha, of course she does. She just doesn't believe it. "It's not like I could go back with him and fight his demons. Not like I could take him with me back to my world, either. Not that it'd have been much safer." Wouldn't have been her place to interfere like that, either. Can't control everyone's lives. Can barely control her own, if you could call her tire fire 'controlled'.

"I doubt it's wholly yours though, either, from the sound of it." That much, she can tell. "There's always a lot of forces at work. It sounds like you're carrying all the guilt where you shouldn't, either."

"You don't know what happened." There's a lift in his tone that might've indicated a sharpening, a weaponized edge, if he'd had the wherewithal. If he wasn't feeling anything but tired and drained from the tableau of watching himself kill the man who deserved - better than he had to give. Listening to the slow, sickening drip of someone's blood across the dust-strewn floor, and trying not to be sick.

She doesn't know what it means to know him. What kind of death warrant that means she'd be signing, if she got any closer. If anyone got any closer.

Maybe this is, in and of itself, enough.

Her head tilts, just a bit, towards him, questioning. She knows that tone, because she uses it. Always easier to recognize in other people.

Out of everyone in the Mansion, she knows what it means for your existence to be someone else's death warrant.

"I just said I knew enough to trust him. So I think I know enough to trust you." It's a simple statement, but she knows there's power to it. "I've lead a lot of people into hell. Not all of 'em have come back out. I know what mistakes you can't take back feel like."

"It wasn't his fault." The implication beneath being that - it is Tim's, most assuredly. He may not have literally pulled the trigger the way his quantum twin did just now, but he may as well have, because he did this, he did all of this. And worse.

All that blood's on his hands, and there's nothing he can say that will fix it.

It's more complicated than making mistakes. But he's said enough as it is. He can let her - let her draw whatever conclusions she may. Let that sit, and not pursue it any further.

It's safest that way.

"...never mind," he mutters. "Sorry. 'M sorry."

"You don't have to apologize. It's alright. I didn't want to turn this into an attack or anything." She should leave, she thinks, or diffuse this somehow. He's nervous, and her nerves are starting to fray. "I meant what I said, though. I trust you that you're not lying to me now. Don't think I'd be in any place to punish you even if you were."

She lets her own arms drop from where they're crossed, finally looks more in his direction. "You gonna be alright?"

"Yeah." No. He's not. And he's pretty sure that's real damn obvious, but what else is he gonna do? He could press back and insist that it's all going to hell from here on out, but that would be a lie in and of itself too, wouldn't it? Things have been bad for a long time, and there's not a thing he can do to fix it. There's not a thing she can do to make any of it better.

And telling her about it, he's pretty sure, would just make her feel like she owes him, weighing her with a completely unnecessary burden of guilt.

So he's already turning away, shifting back.

"I'm fine."

Nothing worse than what he's already been through.

There's plenty of things Shepard feels she should feel guilty for. Mercenaries that stood in her way, bureaucracy she's shattered to do her job, the fact that a lot of the people who've faced her probably didn't need to die for the crime they were committing. But it's moments like these that hit her the worst- when someone is in pain, when she's talking to them, and she can't find the words. Like they're on opposite sides of a brick wall, a thousand miles away.

It makes her think of the woman on the docks, crouched behind a shipping container with a pistol, who hadn't known a kind word since she was a child. The juxtaposition of her and Shepard, with the backdrop of the Normandy, a palpable symbol of strength. But all she had were her words, and careful steps, and whispered promises. That's all she ever has.

In the end, she holds out her hand towards him.

"You don't have to take this now, but I wanna make this clear, alright? You need something, you reach out. I'll be there. Here's the hand... uh, literally." This is cheesy, and she knows it, but she can't think of a better way to get the point across. "I don't have a lot of people from home either. It'd be easy not to let anyone in because they don't know. But if you need help, I wanna give it. Alright?"

Maybe it's cheesy. Disarmingly literal. If he were predisposed to smile at that, maybe he would have. It's...he'd hesitate to call it something Kralie-esque, in how completely devoid of subtlety it is, as that'd be nothing short of the meanest insult. Maybe that was intentional on her part, mimicking his flair for the dramatic.

But for all the presentation that reminds him, blazingly, of someone long gone, the naked sincerity brings another face to mind. Jay only ever wanted to help. He only ever wanted to fix things for people, even if the man was a wreck himself.

One corner of his mouth twitches, in something that was going to be a smile, or perhaps a grimace.

"Fixing other people's problems isn't your job," he says slowly. "You...know that, right?"

She doesn't even know how much it mirrors for him. Sure, Alex was forward, didn't have much of a filter, but most of the people she's been around have been the same. But she's willing to do what she has to if it helps, if it does something. It will have been worth it, if it does.

"Doesn't have to be. I just figure if I can, I should. And I thought I might be able to." She shrugs, as if she's pretending to keep it light in a situation that is anything but. "I know I would have appreciated it, when I needed it. So maybe you would, too."

"You can't." Maybe it's said a bit roughly, but the sentiment is sincere. She can't fix this, or help him, or anything. There's nothing to help. No matter how she might want to, there's no escaping the elongated shadows stretched across his life in a great, deepening scar.

That's harsh. Too harsh. Why be such a fucking pain to the only people who've ever been kind to him, huh? Tim winces, one hand going to the back of his neck as he glances away.

"Guess it - means something, though," he adds in a low mumble. "That you'd try."

Her facial expression doesn't change when he speaks, but she can feel the wheels in her head turning, the familiar feeling she gets in her heart when someone says what she's reaching for is impossible. It's part anticipation, like a fluttering feeling of testing her own boundaries, but it mostly feels like a subtle ache in her muscles, like a call to action left on pause.

There are plenty of things she probably can't do. But very few she won't. And even less she won't try.

"I hope so. Nobody should have to be alone around here. If you need to talk, or I can help, I want to." She still probably shouldn't stick around here. Neither of them should. "Take care of yourself, alright? I'm here for you."

It's not a laugh; he's not cut out for that. It's a huff through his nose, a low exhalation. He can't quite look at her, the sincerity of the claim, the fact that she means it. She shouldn't. She shouldn't be bothering. But despite everything he's done and is capable of doing, despite everything Alex has done to her and to Max and to whoever else got in the line of his fire - here she is, offering a stupidly literal hand.

"Yeah," says Tim, but the vagueness of his tone, the way he can't meet her eyes, is as solemn an indicator as any that he doesn't quite believe her. Or at least, he knows better than to inflict himself on someone who genuinely wants to make things better. There's no fixing him, or anything wrong with him.

There's just learning to live with the weight on his shoulders.

One last glance in the direction of the tear, where Alex Kralie still lies motionless, his stare open and glassy, and Tim turns aside.

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+ It's good that we can't see what isn't there +

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