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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That gets Jay's attention.

"Wait, you mean this place can just...?"

It makes them forget. It makes them forget and won't let him keep the camera. Just like before, zip-tied on the floor of Tim's living room, telling him to please, just leave him this one thing--

He can't think about that right now.

"Well, if it can take that, what else can it take? We--we keep these, right?" Fumbling, Jay pulls the communicator out of his pocket with his free hand.

"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.

He sees the bottle, and the realization sets in.

"That's not--" Right? Fair?

They spent nearly five years figuring out how to protect themselves from the inevitable, how to minimize the damage from a situation neither of them fully understood, and now they have to deal with the possibility of it all being taken away. No warning, just a vague schedule. Just "soon".

Wonderland wants them to forget.

"Alright, if we can't--" He forces a breath through his constricted throat. "If we don't have...supplies, we can at least meet up. Try to..."

Jay shakes his head. Try to what? Keep an eye on each other? Since when have either of them been any good at that?

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.

That's where they are.

Stuck with the world's most stressful game of Marco Polo, unless they can come up with a better plan.

Jay rocks his head back, frustrated, and stares up at the sky. Too bad he's not any good with constellations. That and, depending on the limits of "wherever", the constellations might not even be consistent.

"I don't really want to say, 'Let's wing it,' for something like this, but..." He guesses it's worth mentioning, stupid or not. "Best idea I have so far is figuring out what's north and walking 'til we hit a wall."

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.

Just do what they've always done.

With a weary sigh, Jay settles onto the nearest bench. He allows himself to close his eyes, since he knows the camera's still running on the seat beside him.

If he keeps quiet for long enough, he knows the broken-record loop will start up again. He'll reach for the camcorder, rewind, play back what he just heard. Block out the things the Mirror told him and the things he remembered on his own.

But for now, at least, things are familiar. Not good, and not safe by any stretch of the imagination, but familiar.

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.

"No, not anymore." The annoyance is clear in his voice. "Network doesn't really have anywhere decent for archiving video."

He'd been examining the structure of the Network since the night he arrived, poking and prodding and looking for anything beyond just a place for discussions. So far, nothing.

"'M thinking about setting up a server or something where I can back up the footage. We've got the closets, so it's not like I'm gonna run out of disk space." He stares blankly at the ground as he speaks, focused on the plans drawn up in his head. "The originals might go in one of those...cash boxes or a safe or whatever, but I'd have to make sure nothing happened to the combination."

There's a sarcastic twist to the last few words, as Jay thinks back to his last night with Jessica.

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.

"Just what I've recorded since I got here."

A sigh hisses through his teeth. Tim got rid of the originals back home, if he'd been telling the truth a couple weeks ago. The idea he could even...think to do that rattles Jay to his core.

Jay's still dead, so it doesn't affect him personally, but...but no, it really does. The tapes from the shoot were the only remnants he had--the only remnants anyone had--of Alex before things went wrong. Without those tapes, Alex Kralie could have easily become a nonentity. Without Jay, nobody would have known or cared or remembered some no-name film student who went missing, who wandered into the woods and never came back.

And now Jay's own footage, the raw record of his own existence, is gone.

"Look, back home, you didn't...the channel's still up, right?"

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."

Letting out an audible sigh of relief, Jay leans forward bonelessly, nearly doubled over on the bench seat. He screws his eyes shut, waiting until he no longer feels a prickling at the corners.

It's still there. It's still there, even though he's gone. The one worthwhile thing he's ever done in his sorry life, and it's actually managed to outlive him. The viewers will remember him, even if nobody else does.

"Thanks," he manages hoarsely.

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?

"I mean, you had the password." He isn't looking at Tim. "You could've deleted it. But you didn't."

Unconsciously, he places a hand on the camera. He still doesn't look up.

"So, thanks."

"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.

He didn't have anything else to...do? To what?

Jay looks over, and he can see the tautness in Tim's shoulders, down his arms to his fists. He's seen him like this before, and he wonders if prying any further will net him another black eye, or maybe another breakdown like the one in the hospital.

'Maybe this is all my fault!'

But Jay went to 79 Creek Street. Alex shot him. That thing took him.

If the hooded man slit his throat with that knife on the floor of Tim's house, then it would be a different story. If that thing found him while he was still trapped, zipties biting into his wrists, then it would be a different story. All Tim did was string him along.

He knew the truth about Jessica--at least part of it--when he died. If he didn't, if Tim had still been using him to get to Alex, it would be a different story.

Still, what's Tim thinking?

Jay cocks his head in Tim's direction. Go on.

Edited 2017-06-23 15:46 (UTC)

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?

Tim kept the channel because he was gone.

He was gone because that thing--

Something in his head skips back through the haze of static, stitching together memories in fragmented pieces. Concrete split by gnarled roots, branches silhouetted against an orange sky. Where's the camera? Feeling himself sink, clutching his side as the water fills his lungs. A moment of quiet, somewhere familiar, dripping lakewater onto the carpet. He'd come back. He'd come back soon, the filthy liar, and he'd help him to his feet, and they'd run.

"I was there. I was back. I remember, I--"

But that wasn't really Tim's house, was it? Not with the way it slipped at the edges of his vision, not with the way the trees grew right up to the window.

He doesn't remember anything after that.

"You remember?" His head jerks up at that, eyebrows lifting in something that isn't quite hope, but perhaps approximates it. He remembers what, exactly? Does he even want to know what it is Jay is remember? Does he want to know how much of him was conscious for the rest of it? How long he lingered, alone and in pain and afraid and without the camera he'd screamed for, screamed for?

Perhaps, like Jay, he should learn to put his impulse aside, the desire for answers aside, in favor of what's comfortable.

(But what's comfortable in this state of perpetual unknowing?)

"What...how much do you...?"

(You're making another mistake, Tim.)

Jay digs his nails into the fabric of his jeans, balls his hands into fists. It stings, but it's solid. It's not moving.

"I think I was...where you were. Before. There was water."
are you drowning
He can barely manage a monotone. His head's cocked at an odd angle, and he can feel the ache start to set in, but he doesn't want to move. He's safe like this, and he doesn't want to move.
do you know me? i will always know you.
"I was in...I knew..." He grits his teeth. "It looked like your house, but it wasn't. It was...wrong."

He spits the last word, remembering too clearly the creeping horror of the place, the way the colors split and crackled at the edges of his vision, the way it felt like it stopped existing when it wasn't observed.

It was wrong.

His house, but at his feet was the bright crinkle of pages, the scrawled words splayed out like dead lives. Words scribbled on a mirror, an indictment he didn't to see to know, right down to his bones.

Was he...

Was he awake for that? Did he hear Tim, see him materialize, his fists clenching over rumpled paper? Did he hear him call his name, a nervous, whispering prayer?

His throat contracts in a painful swallow. Water. A world warped around him, the same as the one he remembers but different, refracted in subtle ways he couldn't define. Wrong. Wrong.

"You remember that?"

"Pieces," Jay manages.

It hurts to remember. There's a crushing weight on his chest, wrapped around his throat, and he can feel the muscles in his neck pull taut. But he needs to think through it, needs to bring it back. He didn't have the camera then, so this is all he has.

He remembers exhaustion. He remembers the way his eyelids slid shut as his vision warped and blurred, as his head buzzed with dizziness. He remembers fighting it, trying to scream for help and move, at least, but nothing responded. Not now, not yet--!

And then it stopped. He couldn't move, could barely think, but he was there. Trapped on the edge of death. Paused.

Because he couldn't sleep, he waited.

Sounds filtered through, once or twice.

"I remember...noise." His inflection's off, he can hear it, but he can't bring himself to speak naturally. "Hard to..."

Hard to hear through the static, through the sluggish thrumming of his own blood in his ears.

Pieces. The longer he strains to remember, the less of a good idea it sounds like. He starts to look unmoored, like he's utterly adrift. One step forward, and Tim falters. Recalls the uncontrolled way Jay had scrambled off from on top of him, paranoid and fearful. Something as simple and bracing as a hand on the shoulder might end up doing more harm than good.

Tim would know, wouldn't he?

Figures. Figures it wouldn't be this simple. Asking at all, pushing and prying like this - didn't he learn anything from Jay? It's a fucking mistake is what it is, and now he's getting burned for it.

Even worse, Jay is the one getting burned.

"Jay?" He draws the word out several syllables past its termination, weighted and wary. "Jay."

Shoulders hiked up, he turns to face the source of the noise--Tim, that's Tim. The cold prickles at his arms, even under the sweatshirt, and he crosses them over his chest.

He thinks he made some kind of noise of acknowledgement, a hum and a tilt of the head, but he's still not sure, not with the fizzing in his skull as loud as it is. His thoughts are jumbled; something interrupted something and now everything's out of order.

It's sunny outside. He's in the garden. Still in the garden.

The camera--? He reaches for it, and his hand hits familiar plastic. It's here. It's not gone. He didn't take it. It's still here.

Tim, also. Jay thinks he was here before, but something--he's coming back, he's coming back--makes it unsure.

"You're...still here?" He's not sure if it makes sense. It should make sense.

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cw internalized ableism again lol

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