entrancelogs | [Closed] Some things can never be spoken. Some things cannot be pronounced.

Entry tags:

[Closed] Some things can never be spoken. Some things cannot be pronounced.

Who: Jay and Tim
Where: The gardens
When: 6/18
Rating: PG - PG-13
Summary: Jay attempts to explain what he learned without explaining how he learned it
The Story:

It's supposed to be summer. That's what the people on the network said. Jay hoped he'd be able to step outside and warm up, at least a bit, but he just can't shake the chill. He tried to get the closet to replace his old hoodie--brown and worn thin from years of use--and to its credit, it did a decent job. It's the right color, and roughly the right size, but it's new and stiff and still needs to be broken in. It's not familiar, but at least it's warm.

Jay zips it up to his neck as he approaches the garden, eyes darting to the short shadows cast by the hedges. He tries to think about literally anything but the word that's been looping in his head since his conversation with the Mirror several days prior, but consciously trying just makes it worse. He remembers the conversation, and what he remembers is supported by the footage he's been watching and rewatching since he woke up the morning after. It reminds him of when he first found the tapes, that first massive shift in perspective.

He has to talk through it. Tim's the only one he knows who might immediately benefit from the knowledge. Tim's the only one who might understand.

Jay scans the benches, looking for him.

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Sure enough, Tim's out there in something like five minutes. He's already lit up the smoke in his hands, breathing out a long trail of gray. He figures he'll need the stress relief before the conversation has even started, because his last discussion of Jay went so well. At least he's healing over. He still has to move a tad gingerly, but he no longer needs as many bandages, and stairs no longer prove to be a problem - provided he isn't scaling them multiple times a day.

The garden's in full bloom, as befitting the season. It's hard to see so many shadows in a place so verdurous and multicolored, but he still catches himself flicking eyes across, around, over his shoulder. There's no shelf for that shiftless anxiety, and so it boils to the surface.

The likelihood that they're the only ones out here is minimal, but Jay is unmistakable, wearing his hoodie like it's colder than it is, like maybe that's his one great shield up against the rest of the world. He always did have a look to him, like he was waiting to be attacked at any moment. Or maybe that was just the effect Tim had on people.

Either way, Jay doesn't have to wait long. Tim crosses into his line of sight and lifts his chin in a brief nod of weary greeting.

"Hey."

Jay jumps when Tim passes into his field of vision, instinctively clutching the camera close to his chest. He's tried several closet-made camcorders over the past couple weeks; this one's smaller than the one he used to carry, and it writes to an SD card. He misses the familiarity of tapes (a bit) but appreciates the increased storage (a bit more).

"H-hey." He tilts his wrist so the lens is facing Tim. "You made it."

Tim looks better, and from the glance he gave the mirror before he left, Jay knows he looks worse. Between the persistent chill and the broken-record repetition of his thoughts, he's had an even rougher time getting sleep than usual. His headaches are back full-force (though numbed slightly by a bottle of ibuprofen), and he suspects he's coming down with a cold on top of everything else.

He doesn't want Tim's pity. He's here to give him information.

"Okay." He takes a deep breath, checks for anyone else within earshot, checks for reflective surfaces. "Tim, that thing is here."

Still filming everything. He shouldn't be surprised at all, really, though he has to get used to eyeing the camera lens like it's its own person. The thing stares at him impassively, but the sensation of being watched is still inescapable. Then again, that was never really new.

He doesn't look so good, but when does he ever? He looks marginally better than he did when he was little more than a pale corpse, stained with red, sprawled on Tim's kitchen floor. And then - gone again, with not even a body to bury.

The effect on Tim is instantaneous. His hand drops and his gaze locks onto Jay's with a fresh intensity.

"What?" Then - "where?"

Jay flinches away from the eye contact, but he keeps talking.

"I haven't seen it, but your Mirror has."

He's wound tight, and he can feel himself starting to shake. He paces instead, as if just redirecting the energy will be enough to help him even out.

"And look, this isn't exactly empirical evidence, but I feel like something's...happened. To me, I mean. Since I got here."

He's thinking about the way the Mirror's words seemed to mean something to him beyond what they said literally, the way they sliced through his conscious mind and plugged in somewhere else. The way they make no sense when he says them out loud but make perfect sense when he writes them down.

They will be baptized in water.

Fuck.

He's been talking to his Mirror, has he? Either the guy's gotten smarter about how he uses people or he knew enough to lead Jay on into whatever merry dance he wanted him to -

His Mirror knows what Jay knows, and what Jay doesn't know, and he can dispense that information whenever he likes, and Tim's fists open and close in an abrupt jerk of tension. It could be psychosomatic, but - but he doesn't have any clue what his Mirror knows, how different he might be. What if he does have some sort of control? Over It?

Start from the beginning. Start with what he knows.

Tim's tone is low, quiet, but no less intent when he speaks:

"You've been talking to him?"

What, is he not allowed to?

Jay catches himself before he says it out loud, tamps down the indignation. Tim's interested--he looks genuinely interested, and Jay can't afford to throw them off-topic.

"More like he's been talking to me, but...yeah." Jay checks again: nobody listening, no reflective surfaces. "He knows--I know he knows more than he's letting on, but he's been answering my questions, and the answers...make sense."

That they "make sense" in some sort of Ineffable Truth way rather than an explainable, logical way isn't something he likes. Not one bit.

Tim hisses between his teeth in rifting annoyance, glancing away. Great. Fucking great. George, at least, could call him out on his bullshit immediately. Has he been getting far too used to her being capable of critiquing the people who offer her answers? Or maybe she was just luckier from the start; she was never alone the way Jay was, in the beginning. For most of it.

"He's a liar," Tim hisses, and realizes, in a fleeting moment of hideous self-awareness, just how ridiculous that sounds, coming from him. He flinches, grimacing, cigarette twisting, pinched between two fingers.

"I just mean," he amends, eyes blinking shut, "he's worse than I am."

It's the sleep deprivation. It must be the sleep deprivation and the stress that wore his inhibitions down to this point, because when when Tim spits, "He's a liar," a quiet, choked laugh escapes his throat. It gets even harder to stifle it when Tim catches himself.

He's gotten just a small glimpse what Tim's Mirror knows, he's seen the effect it had on him, captured and watched and rewatched and transcribed, and now Tim--Tim Wright--is calling him a liar.

"Got any evidence to back that up?"

For a moment, he shoots Jay a look laden with something approaching disgust, sheer frustration mingled with something else he doesn't want to name. Hurt, maybe, though what fucking right does he have to that? Jay knows what he's done. What he's capable of. He's earned everything that's come his way. If Jay's been suspicious, he's had good reason; if Jay suspects him of withholding information, it's because he's had his fears of such vindicated; if Jay still finds him untrustworthy, it's because Tim's yet to prove him wrong.

It's still heavy in his chest, a lump of corrugated lead wrapped around his heart.

"It's what he does," he mutters, tersely. "He just...I dunno what he's doing. He tries to get in your head. Tried to make me believe that you, the first you - were never here. Like I was just seeing things."

Given Tim's tenuous grasp of reality on the best of days, it hadn't taken much effort to plant that seed of doubt.

He tries to get into your head.

Now that comes...unsettlingly close to what Jay's seen. He wrote exactly the right combination of words to set Jay's head buzzing, and now it's been five nights in a row of that name. Baptism by gasoline and an old dial tone.

The question blurts out before Jay can think too hard about why he's asking it.

"Did you believe him?"

"I - "

What's he say to that? He'd tried not to, to start with. He'd closed his eyes and tried to shatter the damn thing, except then he'd be left with a powdering of glittering shards at his feet, and the last thing he needed in that point in time was a dozen sharp objects at his disposal. Tried to cover it up, but it was timed so well. Did anyone else really see him, Timothy? Did anyone else talk to him at any length?

"It shouldn't have worked as well as it did," he admits, at last. One hand rubs at his arm. The cigarette burns at his side, seemingly forgotten. "He's good at making himself sound like he's - I dunno, reliable. Like maybe it's your fault things aren't right."

Jay kneads at his forehead with the heel of his hand. Unless he's forgotten something important, Tim's lies are typically lies of omission; you don't go looking for information if you don't know something's missing. This feels more like the hospital. This feels sincere, and it lines up too well with the things about the Mirror that rubbed Jay the wrong way.

"And then he makes like he's helping you out, right? Like--like he's talking you down."

Like you're just paranoid. Like you just need to breathe, Jay, and everything will make sense again.

Tim nods, grimly. He'd known, too. He'd known exactly what would work, because it's the same thing that planted the first kernels of doubt in his mind. It's not real, Timothy. It's not real, we've told you before: tall, invisible men without faces don't exist. No one was here wearing a suit, Timothy. Why are you running from him, anyway? That doesn't make any sense, Timothy. I thought you said he was your friend. Why are you frightened of him?

He'd known exactly what to say, because it worked before. Because you're just fucking crazy, Tim. You're so fucking unreliable, always screaming about stuff that isn't there and never was. Even the camera never caught it, and you know that now, even now, your mind has been through so much. Anyone would have snapped under the strain.

He finally remembers the cigarette smoldering between his fingers, and manages a bracing inhale despite the subtle tremor in his wrist.

"Guess he's not my opposite after all." A bitter declaration, but - he's a liar, isn't he? Just taken up to the next level. But where the hell else would he have learned it from?

"Yeah, well, at least you don't call me 'sport.'"

It's a bitter joke to cover up a real worry. The Mirror had been condescending, like Jay was a child who just needed to be taught the right way to think. Jay started off asking the questions, but "Mr. Wrong" would wrest control of the conversation from him, diverting it, diverting Jay's own thoughts. Jay grips the camera tighter.

Assuming the Mirror was trying to manipulate him--assuming he is a liar--that doesn't mean the whole conversation was a waste. The bluster and the "caring" talk might have been false, but it's harder to think that about the "poetry", for lack of a better word. Beyond that, Jay's positive (well, almost positive now) that that thing has been stalking him, too. Jay might be able to help.

(He'd failed Jessica. He'd failed Alex. He'd dragged Tim back into the fray when he'd just started getting better. Maybe fourth time's a charm.)

"I don't think we should discount everything he says." Jay won't meet Tim's eyes. "Maybe most of it's worthless, but I think there's...some of the stuff he said, I..."

Jay takes a breath, trying to force his thoughts into something coherent.

"Some of what he said about the way that thing works...felt...right."

Great, that sounds perfectly rational. Jay swipes a hand across his face, covering his eyes.

Sport. Tim snorts at that, though it's a shaky thing at best. Maybe that mistrust in himself turns out to have a function, in the end. Maybe it's a good thing he doesn't trust himself worth a damn. It'd be nice if, for once, that sort of thing could hold a genuine purpose.

There's no reason to believe anything he says. There's no reason to believe that even the more plausible remarks are anything more than carefully cultivated lines of bullshit, fed to a guy who maybe felt like he didn't have anywhere else to turn.

Tim eyes Jay warily, one corner of his mouth twisting in a grimace.

"Yeah?" The word emerges as far more of a challenge than is intentional, but there's no biting back the harsh tone now. "Like what?"

"Like..."

He needs to find a way to explain it. Something concrete. Something more than those words Mean something, because that sounds one step away from a tinfoil hat.

"I don't know if it's what he said that's important. Or wrote, I guess, because when I tried saying it out loud, it didn't--" Stop. Reel it back in. Start somewhere else. "Alright. Look."

He has to know if what he's planning to say makes sense. He has to get an outside opinion. Before he speaks again, he glances back over his shoulder, checks the camcorder screen for static. His voice drops to a harsh whisper.

"Does it have a name?"

Tim can't help but flinch slightly, at that. Does It - what?

"I mean..." It never really needed a name, did It? It was always just that thing, or that person, or any number of things. Naming It had felt like - like some form of mental surrender, in some ways. Like being able to call It something made it more real, solidified Its presence in their heads, in their lives. Like an admission of their own guilt.

"I thought that...the totheark person, didn't they call it...?"

He knows the word they used. But even that had felt like a step too far.

They did, with a close-up of the key on a telephone, and so did Alex, scrawled across one of his papers. When the name slotted comfortably into his head, it felt like remembering. Maybe it was.

"Yeah--yeah, they did." Jay can feel his gestures swinging a little wider, his voice gaining a manic edge he can't quite suppress. "So your Mirror told me I--I had to name it, because if you're not afraid of the name, you're not afraid of...of it, so maybe it won't..." He trails off, grasping at the air. "And I wasn't even thinking about it, but that--that's the name that came to mind. And maybe...maybe I was just remembering when totheark said it or when Alex said it, or maybe it's just a coincidence. But I wasn't...I don't remember why I even...got that far."

He's not making sense. He knows he's not making sense.

"I don't mean I forgot the conversation. I remember it...perfectly." He spits out the last word. "I just don't know why I...played along, I dunno."

But he does know, doesn't he? He remembers the words. He remembers what they meant.

The longer he talks, the less Tim wants to hear of it. Sounds like the two of them are really joined at the hip already. The Real Tim was just too much of a bother, but the Mirror was chatty, and he supplied more answers than his Real ever did, so why not? Sounds about right, doesn't it?

"And you believed him?" Coming from Tim, that's probably the most goddamned hilarious thing Jay's heard all day. "Maybe you only remembered it because It," he says, placing a hissed-out emphasis on the word, "wasn't actually there to make you forget."

"Tim, listen!" His voice cracks. "It's not like I was--was consciously thinking, 'Yeah, wow, this condescending stranger two separate people warned me about? He's definitely the authority here.'"

Tim needs to understand. He needs to understand.

"Look, I was just gathering information. I wanted to see what he said."

That's not true, is it? He remembers drowning, hissing desperately through his teeth: Tell me what you know! Not what you think you know. What you know.

"But when he started talking about, y'know, that? Something--something went..." It wasn't all in his head. It couldn't have been. "I just went along with it. It was like I didn't get a choice. People--can't--do that."

Of course he did. Of course he just wanted to see what he had to say. That was what Tim thought at first too, and then, hey, as it turns out even that's not as harmless as you'd think! But that rift in Jay's voice is all too familiar, and Tim falls obediently, reluctantly, silent, his free hand flexing into a fist and out again.

"You're saying he...what? Made you?" Surely he couldn't have. That's not possible, no matter how good he is at making listening to him sound appealing. To the right audience, anyway. Figures that Tim's polar opposite would be a charismatic son of a bitch.

"How's that possible? I mean, he's - he's still me."

"It wasn't that he...made me, exactly."

Jay rubs at his eyes. He doesn't remember consciously resisting. The mirror hadn't piloted him, and it wasn't like hypnosis--or at least what Jay imagined hypnosis would be like after reading one too many articles about it.

"It's just...remember the way totheark used to...?" He doesn't have the language for it, even after nearly five years. And he knows--he knows now why he never tried. "With the water references and the codes and the weird threats?"

He glances down at his hands. The camera's still rolling.

Jay forces himself to make eye contact.

"Imagine someone talking like that, but when you hear it, it makes perfect sense."

His brow scrunches into a frown, bordering on a glower. The water references. The coded messages. Trying to pick the numbers and letters apart into something that makes sense, sleepless night after sleepless night in ratty hotel rooms with mattresses that creaked, kneading at his brows until the digitized still frames swam and he sighed his frustration. Vague clues couched in binary values, retroactively both frustrating and only mildly illuminating.

Tempting as it is to just - shut this down here and now, up to and including breaking the goddamn mirror in question, Tim forces himself, forces himself to breathe, shut his eyes. Pinching at the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb, and training his gaze on Jay anew.

"Just...look." Listen to him. Listen to him. "Walk me through it."

"Alright."

He's still listening. Jay's not making any goddamn sense, but he's still listening.

"We were talking. Well, I was talking, and he was writing. It was normal--well, as normal as stuff like this gets, I guess. Still getting used to it. But then I--" He forces the words out. "Then I asked him...whether or not...he'd seen it here. And he said yes."

Jay hunches his shoulders, pulling the camera closer to his chest.

"But then he kept...going." Jay doesn't want to repeat what the Mirror wrote. It only feels right written down, but he doesn't want to risk it. "It was almost gibberish, like--like the stuff totheark says when it's not actual codes. Or the stuff the codes translate to. And I don't know if this was some...Pavlov's dog kinda thing or what, but I felt...really sick. Like...y'know."

He glances up at Tim briefly. If anyone would know what "y'know" meant here, it would be him.

"But alright. People cough sometimes. Not that unusual." He fidgets with the camera. "At the time, it felt really important, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was nothing."

"He tried the same stunt again later, and when I w--" No, wait. If it's possible, he doesn't want Tim knowing about the footage, not now. He needs to keep it, because it's important, but he doesn't want anyone watching it unless he can confirm it's safe. "Anyway, yeah, he did it again. But the second time was...weirder. I remember what I said, but I don't...really get why I said it."

He'd seen It. Well, it makes...sense. Wouldn't it? It's showed up before, in fleeting moments. No doubt because Tim's here, and it's like how Alex said. He was right. He's the source, and there's no escaping that. It showed up in the white room with the hovering blocks, and Zacharie had tried not to panic. It appeared in the slice of another world, Its silhouette torn with the visual static that cut across every one of those "tears," Its gaze unrelenting.

Tim's here, so it has to be here too. It's like It's this...part of him. Inescapably.

His fist clenches in and out again, his jaw tightening. He made him sick, did he. As if Jay doesn't have enough shit to worry about, now his Mirror's got a whole new fun toy to fucking play with.

That's the last thing they need.

"What do you mean by weirder?"

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cw internalized ableism, mentions of gaslighting

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