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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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?"

Great. He didn't want to get into it, but Tim's asking, and it's not like he can just say, "No, that's none of your business," and walk away. Not at this point. He still doesn't really get what happened, even after watching the video back again, even after feeling the same way as before when he'd transcribed the exchange in a spiral notebook he'd gotten from the closet.

(Even when he'd transcribed the Mirror's words a few more times on the following pages, scribbling replies in the margins.)

"I mean I started...talking back." That's not enough. "The same way. Or...similar. And at the moment, it made sense, I guess."

"Like...code?" No. No, that's not right. That's not what Jay's been saying, but what he's been saying doesn't make any damn sense no matter how he slices it. "But it was you doing the talking, right? Not, not someone..."

Someone else. Something else, because this is how it started with Tim, and Jay never really got the help he needed to prevent it. He was someone else, someone far more familiar, before It got to him in Rosswood. He was apologetic, and then - not.

Does he remember leaving that message? Would it just be simpler, better, if he lets it fade into a selective memory?

"No, yeah." He knows what Tim's trying to say, and he knows that can't be it. He's not like that. He loses time, but he doesn't...the camera would have shown if he'd started running around with a mask on. He's not like Tim. "It was me. I remember doing it."

"And it wasn't code. It was--" Jay cuts himself off before he can say 'poetry'. That's not...he shouldn't say that. "--different. Like I just said whatever came to mind. And like everything he said made sense. And I didn't realize it was...weird until later."

Like maybe he's tapping into something similar. Something that could eventually swell into a masked thing, running around while Jay's mind remains shrouded in static, the divide between the inquisitive, apologetic man on the phone and the man who came armed with zipties and a knife and snarled for his camera deepening to a gulf.

Did his Mirror know? Was he trying to...what? Lure that out of him?

Something beneath the skin of his arms crawls.

"What do you think that means?"

And that's the real question, isn't it? The one Jay doesn't want to answer.

But Tim's asking, and trying not to think about it just makes Jay think about it more. He can't just ignore this. If he were living on the road again, traveling by himself, maybe he could put it off a little longer, but the persistent drumming in his skull says, "not by much."

"It could mean...a few things." Jay looks down at the camcorder screen, watches Tim that way. "Maybe your Mirror knows how to...say stuff that targets your subconscious. There was this book I read back in high school where people did that, but it wasn't...real. Obviously." Off to a great start. "Maybe that thing was...around after all." He mutters that last part quietly enough that Tim might not even hear it. "Maybe I'm just tired."

Jay knows there's another option. He also knows that if he doesn't at least acknowledge it, Tim will bring it up himself, and that's somehow worse.

"Maybe it's something...left over. From before."

Maybe he's just susceptible to being strung along, carrot-and-stick, by whoever offers answers. But he doesn't say it. That would just be salt in the wound, and that's something neither of them particularly need.

More than anything he wants to wrest the camera away from him, fling it as far away as possible, watch it scatter into pieces on the impact. His fingers jerk into a fist and out again as he muzzles the impulse, instead settling for taking another drag that fuzzes in his lungs.

"He's...smart." He doesn't confirm or deny what Jay's saying, exactly, but he deserves to have the whole story, here. Every piece of every puzzle. "He gets under your skin. And I've - "

He swallows thickly, quite suddenly unable to meet either Jay's gaze or his third eye in the form of the camera lens.

"I've seen It. Just...not regularly. It's always been an event or something."

It's here. Now two people have confirmed it.

Or, at least, it's been here. It might still be here. If it's gone, it could easily come back.

Jay forces himself to breathe a little slower, tries to calm the tremors he can feel building in his arms. Keep the camera steady. This is normal. This is normal, now. It would be stranger if it hadn't followed them here.

"How long?" Jay tries to keep his voice even. "Before the next event?"

A while back, Jay heard someone, a guy with bandages on his face, talking about an event where the Mirrors crossed over to their side. "He's smart," Tim had said. Smart enough to say just the right things in just the right way to take control. You can't do that, you can't speak that convincingly unless you know enough to make it plausible.

That's why, Jay suspects, he's never been any good at lying. That's why he'll need to talk to the Mirror again at some point. He just needs to figure out how to pry the truth out of him.

He's not helping. He's really not, is he? Feeding the paranoia that had Jay pinning him to the ground within moments of seeing him again. The Mirror can play off that if he likes, and he will, he knows he will. And Jay will keep talking to him, like it doesn't matter. Like he's reliable.

"Well, the last one was before you arrived, so..." His internal clock has never been the most reliable either, it turns out. And the answer he has is far, he knows, from reassuring. "Soon. I think."

By the of this week or the start of the next one.

Soon.

Jay addresses the viewfinder screen, watching Tim filtered through glass and pixels. "At least it sounds like it follows...some kind of schedule."

Patterns are good. Predictability is good. He hadn't had nearly enough of either in the past few years.

"Anything I should know?" Not that Tim would tell him, a quiet part of him whispers. "Before my, uh...first one?"

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cw internalized ableism, mentions of gaslighting

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