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Jay Merrick ([personal profile] burntvideocassette) wrote in [community profile] entrancelogs2017-06-18 03:45 pm

[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.
postictal: (no more secrets)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-20 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
postictal: (that boy needs therapy)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-21 05:57 am (UTC)(link)
Follow a schedule it does, albeit a fluxing one. But if it means Jay has a slightly higher chance of survival, it helps in the long run.

Tim breathes in, slow and deep. Bracing. If it helps Jay through it -

He owes him.

He owes him.

"It...they vary." Oh right. Very helpful, Tim. thanks for that. "Sometimes they make you...forget yourself, kind of. Like, there's a world that you have to fit into, so it makes you feel like you've always fit into it."
postictal: (dirty dirty unwashed hair)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-21 08:19 am (UTC)(link)
He's gonna be fine. It'll be fine. He knows how things work here by now, and he can walk him through it. He owes him this, owes him an explanation for something in his life, even if it's not any of the dozens of things from home that he never got around to explaining.

"If it is ours, we'll know." He tries to sound more certain of it as he says it - more certain than he has any right to. "Most of the time it's...someone else's world. Someone else's memories that we get stuck with for a little while. Usually something like two or three days."

It's far from the sort of orientation Jay deserves. But since when has he had a cause to trust anything Tim's said?
postictal: (rethink that move son | smoking)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-21 05:54 pm (UTC)(link)
"You still...I mean, you won't always be able to keep filming everything." Jay probably requires fair warning, if he's still going to be wandering around with a camera. Again the urge to tear the thing out from his hands and watch it fragment on the ground itches at his fingers, but he settles instead for a bracing inhalation of nicotine, letting it fill his lungs and burn at his throat.

"Sometimes supplies are kind of...limited." And sometimes the time period simply doesn't allow for cameras.
postictal: (a chronic condition.)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-21 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
"Sometimes."

Can't make any promises, because Wonderland loves its illogical twists and turns. Loves throwing them for new loops when it can. Can never assume that things will simply act in a way that's recognizable, or even familiar.

"It...kinda depends on where we end up. Or, uh, when." Because time is pretty non-linear here, and anachronisms just seem to be part of the general trade deal. "Sometimes we don't get anything."

One corner of his mouth twists at that, his reluctance visible. And then he slides a familiar little orange bottle from his pocket with a rattle of white capsules, rolling it between his fingers.

Up to and including the necessities.
postictal: (u like eating so much??? eat shit)

cw internalized ableism again lol

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-22 06:24 am (UTC)(link)
Try to organize, maybe. Cooperate? Because Tim's just so agreeable when he's off his fucking meds, right? That's gone really well for the both of them, whenever that's happened.

He suppresses, barely, a huff of frustration at that. Now's far from teh time.

"Hard to know if we're gonna still be in Wonderland when events can pretty much take us wherever." So where do they meet? "It'd be nice if we could form a better plan than trying to figure out where each other is, seeing as we don't always even get a network, but..."

He trails off with a reluctant, meaningful shrug. Yeah. That's where they are.
postictal: (cool the sass boy)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-22 07:08 am (UTC)(link)
Assuming they're allowed to exist in the same place, and not - not fucking stuck in separate rooms, the way certain events have played out. The room where white cubes bobbed gently up and down, and Zacharie tried to act as though he wasn't falling apart at the seams. The room with the tape that Max hadn't wanted to see. The room where he and George had worked together with visible distaste and reluctance, not conceptualizing where they'd end up months down the line.

"I don't think we really can form a plan," he mutters, and shit does that sound like the most hypocritical thing possible, coming from him. "Not for this, anyway. Just...you know."

Try to stay together. Try to work together.

And for the love of god, try not to die.
postictal: (bullshit detecting meter)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-22 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Still recording every minute of every day. Still losing huge swathes of his life to winding things back, starting and stopping, on the off chance that something might have happened that he didn't see. Or, even if he did see it, completely neglect its existence in favor of denying the vague possibility that something might be wrong with him.

"You're not..." A sigh. He didn't particularly want to have to ask this, but he might as well. "You aren't still gonna be making entries, are you?"

Because Tim got enough of his personal life being broadcasted back home.
postictal: (what a sad fucking panda)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-23 02:08 am (UTC)(link)
The network has its archive, but the further back you go, the harder it seems to track anything that needs tracking. It archives absolutely everything, not allowing for more selective searches. Scrolling through each post looks like the sole, inefficient method of tracking what's been said.

No wonder Jay's disgruntled.

"You have the original tapes?" The words tug at the corners of his mouth, furrowing his brow. A flash of trepidation, briefly pulling at his attention with a sharp yank.
postictal: (hold yourself together)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-23 06:34 am (UTC)(link)
And they've officially lapsed back into the conversation regarding things Tim definitely doesn't want to talk about. His jaw tightens as he glances away, laterally. Should've held onto things for longer than he did. But he hadn't - there hadn't been a body when Jay disappeared to wherever he disappeared to. He was still, lifeless, as he lay there, but even if his image was snared on the camera, fingers crusted with red, was there ever any guarantee that it was real? Any of it?

He'd had nothing else to bury. He'd had nothing else to signify the passage of a man that no one else would remember to mourn.

Maybe he never should've bothered. Letting him go wasn't any easier the second time around.

A muscle in Tim's jaw flexes once, twice, but he nods.

"Yeah," he says, at last. "It's still there. For all the good that does."
postictal: (.hea'ds poudning.)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-23 07:20 am (UTC)(link)
He's thanking him for what, exactly? For letting him persist digitally, because he never could in any other way? What the hell kind of memoriam is that?

He deserved more of a funeral, more of a send off, than just being a fixture on a silent YouTube channel, something to accrue pointless views for people who should never have to glimpse that level of horror.

"Dunno why you're thanking me." He still fucking got him killed, didn't he?
postictal: (troy's cinematography is godlike)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-23 07:33 am (UTC)(link)
"Didn't exactly have anything else to..."

Remember him? Commemorate him? How the hell are you meant to talk to someone about the nature of their own death after the fact, after you watched it happen, led to it happening, because you left him tied up and screaming in your own damn house and expected that to be enough.

They're touching on that which he never thinks about, that which he tries not to think about, and more than anything, he needs to run. Needs to get as far out and away from this conversation as possible.

His fingers squeeze into fists. It's difficult, as always, to meet Jay's eyes.
postictal: (you're the source)

[personal profile] postictal 2017-06-23 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
He's waiting for him to keep talking. Like an explanation will do anything but make every inch of this worse, hammering home just how useless he was, how much of an abject failure Tim was, up until the end. A failure as a friend or an ally or whatever the hell Jay wants to call them, a failure as someone who just wanted things to go right, a failure as someone who offered a way out. Falling short on every conceivable level. Lying, hiding, shuttering things away, right up until the end. The source. The problem.

Jay's looking at him, expectant. Like that will fix anything, like an explanation will make any of this go away. Like that'll make any of what happened to Jay better, easier, more palatable.
I didn't want to believe you were gone.
He doesn't talk about this, just as a rule. Who would he have talked about it with? And now he's up against the person he failed to help, failed to save, failed in every possible way, and whatever needs saying is dissolving into nothing beneath the unrelenting pressure of his own thoughts.
I kept waiting for you to come back.
"I never...you never showed up again." Well, no. That's a lie. "I mean, I saw on the camera what happened, and, and I remember seeing you - seeing your body, but it was gone when I checked, so it was like you were never..."
I should have tried harder.
He was alive.
I'm sorry.
He was alive when It took him, and he spent his final moments in pain, afraid, and who knows how fucking long it took for him to finally -



Why the hell did he bring this up?

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DAMN DANIEL

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1/3

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2/4 actually i LIED :^]

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4/4 done

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