Jay Merrick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
burntvideocassette) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
entrancelogs2017-06-18 03:45 pm
burntvideocassette) wrote in entrancelogs2017-06-18 03:45 pm
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.
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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Sluggishly, something like normal thought patterns start to reassert themselves. He's in Wonderland. He's on a bench in the gardens in Wonderland, and it's summer, and he's still got a sweatshirt on because he had a chill this morning he couldn't shake off.
He called Tim out to talk about--
He doesn't want to think about that.
He's in Wonderland. It's okay.
There's an event coming soon, and Wonderland itself might be an alien intelligence, and there are people who watch from behind the mirrors and scrawl messages on the glass, but not right now.
It's okay.
The shame starts to sink in, and Jay reaches up to rub at his eyes, to cover them.
"Sorry. I'm...I'm good."
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"You sure?" He doesn't look okay. Then again, Jay always looks like he's at the very end of his rope, plagued by sleepless nights and worn to a thready skeletal frame. "You look kinda..."
He doesn't complete the thought.
"Should've gotten you help back home. I should've - " He trails off again, jaw setting. He'd tried. He'd tried but it hadn't resolved itself, largely because Jay couldn't go in for mental health treatment if he was dead.
cw for internalized ableism and ten tons of denial
He hears himself, and he doesn't like how strained his voice sounds.
He's not sick. He's not hallucinating, he's not blacking out and running around with a mask on at night, and he's not hurting people.
(That excuse doesn't work so well anymore, does it? Not after the knife--but really, that must have been for intimidation, because he couldn't have been planning to use it--and not after his first night here. Not after Jay's grip on Tim's throat and Tim's blood on his hands.)
But that isn't what this is about. This is about him being upset--and yeah, he's upset, he can't deny that--about remembering getting hurt. Remembering something awful. That happens all the time. It makes sense. It's normal.
Tim's projecting his own issues, as if what worked for him would work for everybody, but Jay's not like that.
"Look, I've just...seen things I maybe shouldn't have. That's all."
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"We have time here. Resources." Yeah, okay, he's apparently given up all pretense of stepping around the topic. Go for the throat. 'Cause that always goes well where Jay is concerned. "Jay, you've been dealing with stuff like this for years. Only difference is you finally had someone around to point out that it was a problem."
cw: same as before
Everything he does--everything--is in response to a very real, tangible threat. Several tangible threats, really, and if Tim won't acknowledge that, then yeah, he is the one that's crazy.
Jay rises from the bench, shoulders hiked, hands out.
"Remembering the place where I died, that's a problem? Or--or seeing that thing, when you said it wasn't there, but then it shows up on the tape--!" The words rip from him. "Is that a problem? The coughing fits, the--the blackouts...Tim, we know what's causing them, so it's not...It's not in our heads, so why are you still treating it like it is?"
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At least it's familiar. Easier, in its own way. And how fucked up is that?
"The fact that you're still carrying around that - " And he jabs a finger at the camera, glowering at it like it's personally offended him, " - just about proves it. Are you sleeping at all? Do you have to keep rewinding the tape to make sure that what you just saw was actually there?"
cw: back at it again
"And...and sure, I've been having some trouble sleeping, but that's because your Mirror... did something to me!"
The way those words just made sense, the way they made him want to read more, to write back to the Mirror the same way--it's not him. It can't just be in his head; those ideas can't be his.
DAMN DANIEL
Goddamn it. Goddamn that little prick and his morbid fascination with reawakening the things that are finally, finally vaguely dormant in their lives. Only it's not, really, is It?
Maybe It never will be.
He blows out a low, frustrated breath, shutting his eyes. Just...start again. "What do you have to lose from trying?"
BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH THE CAMERA AND THE OVERWHELMING DENIAL
"What if...the doctors don't understand what's going on?" He starts to pace. "Which they won't, because we can't exactly explain what we saw without...what happened to you. So we're gonna end up giving them only part of the story, one way or another, so they might wind up with the wrong diagnosis, so they might wind up giving me the wrong treatment, which could be, y'know, bad."
He doesn't want anyone else messing around in his head. Never again.
cw discussion of forced institutionalization, nonconsensual drugging
"Right, except this isn't home anymore." He shakes the bottle in hand with the rattle of capsules snapping against plastic. "And this helped you, don't forget."
It's not as if Jay could have consented to it, but given what few resources they had on hand, what other choice did he have?
cw: more nonconsensual drugging talk
There's a void in his head where there should be memories of Tim forcing the pills down his throat while he was unconscious, or worse, convincing him to take them himself while he was too out of it to know better.
"How do you know those pills did anything for me? How do you know I didn't just snap out of it on my own?"
Tim couldn't have known what they would do. Tim could have poisoned him.
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It's not as if Jay could verify for himself.
Fuck.
"Maybe you're right," says Tim, in a tone that very clearly implies the opposite. "Maybe you're fine now, I don't know. But if you're not, are you really willing to risk it?"
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The last question, though, that bothers him. If anything, going to the doctor is the risk. Changing the pattern is risky, since the pattern kept him alive for almost five years. Everything he does is for a reason. If he changes it--stops filming, stops watching the shadows, stops checking the locks--what's to keep things from getting worse?
"Risk what, Tim?"
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That's a low blow, undoubtedly. Cruel, to dangle that over his head. But if Jay won't bother to consider the impact his own actions have (always in a vacuum, always acting as if he existed on his own level, maybe because it never occurred to him that anything else could be true), maybe he'll bother to do something about it if he remembers that this kind of thing affects other people too.
"First thing you did when you got here was try to strangle me." Great, and now Tim's trotting out a list of Jay's personal sins. This is where they're at now. "Do you even remember that voice message you tried to leave? Or what happened after?"
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He'd gone to find Jessica. He'd gone to Rosswood, and then--and then what? A gap, and then the rest of the days blurred together. Take the knife. Take the camera. Take the answers, any way you can. Find Tim, find Alex, find Jessica.
It doesn't line up. Something must have happened. Something must have been done to him.
He's shaking, he realizes.
"I didn't do that before." His voice is dull. "Before...whatever was on that message, I didn't used to do that, did I?
He locks eyes with Tim, unblinking. Don't lie to me about this.
1/3
He doesn't -
He shuts his eyes, throat taut. Of course he doesn't, know. That thing took him, warped him, twisted him into someone too much like Alex Kralie and not enough like the slightly shy, mumbling guy who waited outside a mental health clinic for days on end simply because he didn't have anything better to do. Took him and changed him - from apologetic to violent.
Tim has to breathe in through his nose, slowly.
"You..."
Fuck. Okay.
Start from the beginning.
2/4 actually i LIED :^]
How many times had he watched, rewatched that footage? Too many, apparently. Because now he's speaking, loosely, simply, and the words are bleeding out in stereo; his tone coupled with that of Jay's replaying in his head.
"I watched the tape I took from you. And now I'm at Rosswood, trying to retrace Alex and Jessica's steps. I crossed..." He trails off, and picks up immediately after, leaving the pause in Jay's stuttered speech, "...through that tunnel, but now I'm at that shack that we woke up at before."
Then comes the rising pitch and tone, verging on the hysterical. "But that layout is wrong, it's completely wrong. We've never been to the other side of that tunnel, and when we left here, I know we didn't cross back through it. Rosswood has either shifted around...or I'm starting to lose it. I dunno. Maybe both."
Stop. Start. Rewind?
No.
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Press play.
The pressure in his windpipe makes the next few words almost impossible to squeeze out. His heart rattles in his ribcage, a machine-gun rhythm that refuses to halt, even for a moment. He's reciting the words he knows. Verbatim.
Not one of them's a lie.
"I'm sorry."
Immediately, the vice around his throat tightens. Heat beads at the corners of his vision, threatening to spill. He has to force his jaw open, even if the words grow halting, unsteady.
But then, even when Jay had spoken them, they'd frayed.
"I know why you kept that tape from me," says Tim, says Jay, months ago, in another lifetime, in another mindset, in another person who wasn't the man who threatened him at knifepoint, who planned on tying him down and questioning him about Jessica's whereabouts, addled by sickness and his own thready paranoia. "And we're not gonna get anywhere like this, working solo. So I'm gonna come over at some point tomorrow, and we're gonna figure out what to do next."
He'd begun to cough. The static rasped across the field of the camera's vision, tinting his words in a distorted spray. Multicolored flashes across the lens, and a stripe of black tipped in white that he'd only seen once.
"I gotta get outta here." He remembered. Every word. "I'm starting to see things that I know aren't there. And it's starting to make me feel really sick."
Of course he remembered.
"Call me back if you can."
4/4 done
He scrubs at his face, angrily, with the sleeve of his shirt, as if that will be enough to carve away the humiliation of Jay having to watch him break down and break down and break down until there was precious little left to salvage. Little left worth salvaging.
"That's..." He swallows, stiffly. Fucking finish what's on your plate, Tim. You don't get to just leave things like that. "That was what the footage - you had it on your laptop. And then that...thing. It found you. And..."
He trails off. He has no choice in the matter.
The back of his throat has closed.
no subject
As the monologue continues, it sounds more and more familiar. Not the words, but the cadence. The way the words halt and stutter. It's familiar.
It's like watching the tapes from the seven-month gap. That's him. He's the one talking, filtered through Tim's voice, Tim's entire stance. It's fascinating, and it's horrifying, and Jay can't look away. He reaches numbly for the camera, training it on Tim.
And then he apologizes.
And then he apologizes.
He understands, he says. He understands why Tim lied to him. He wants to work together again.
He's terrified. Jay Merrick, the one hunched over and coughing, the one frantically leaving the message on his phone, is terrified. He's seeing things he knows aren't there. He's found something worse than working with a liar, and he's begging for help from the one person left who can give it.
(He's coming back. He's coming back soon. This is his house. He's coming back.)
And then he's gone, leaving only Tim, swiping at his eyes and trying to explain. 'It found you,' he says.
That's how he died. The Jay from the seven-month gap died trying to save Jessica. This one died at the end of a desperate phone call.
Jay's not sure how to mourn him. Didn't know how to before, either.
Tim's here, though. Tim's back, in a way, but he looks...shell-shocked, like he did on the floor of the hospital.
"Are you...?" No, he's not okay. Jay doesn't need to ask.
He's never been any good at comforting people. He trips over his words, or he can't think of anything to say, and it seems like no matter what he says, it sounds wrong. Like an insult. Like he's being sarcastic. Still, he steps a little closer, holds the camera down at his side rather than over his face.
"You're...you're alright." It comes out on an numb, stilted monotone, like he knew it would. He can't...he can't force an inflection into his voice. He's being sincere--he knows he's being sincere--and this is how it sounds. Maybe that's okay.
no subject
He's never had a handle on it. Never really capable of biting things down and bearing it like he should. Big kids don't cry, Timothy, and you should know that. You think your mother would be very happy to hear you like this, see you like this?
(As if anyone could love him with his nose reddened and his eyes hot, streaming with snot and tears as he sniffles like some kind of rejected puppy in the corner of a room.)
You're all right, says Jay. Maybe it's wishful thinking on his part. Trying to get Tim to stop sounding, looking, acting so weird, because it's uncomfortable and it probably shows up even worse on the camera, god fucking forbid. And he's not all right, not really. When they said he was getting back to normal, that felt like a lie in and of itself - because he was never truly at normal. That simply wasn't his baseline, and never would be. All right is just as alien a concept in its own right. He's not all right. He's never been all right. And if he wasn't before, he sure as hell isn't anymore. Not after seeing and glimpsing what it is he's seen and caused.
"Yeah." He has to breathe, but it's irregular, a ragged in-and-out that catches as the sides of his throat and causes him to screw his eyes shut and rub at his face with heels of his palm, as though that will make him less unclean for having vomited Jay's own words all over the floor.
"It's fine. I'm fine."
Everything is fine.
no subject
But the wheezing, the near-hyperventilating, the way Tim's breath strains against his constricted throat, all of it reads to Jay like danger. Jay's felt this, he thinks--not necessarily what's going on inside Tim's head, but what's going on inside his lungs.
He's several fathoms out of his depth, and he knows it. Even when he's the one who's dealing with it, he hasn't figured out how to stop it, so what the hell's he going to do for Tim?
But he wants to help.
"You're in Wonderland," he mimics, trying to match the way Tim's voice coasted along, even but not blunt. "It's okay."
The words helped him earlier, but then again, what happened to him was different. For all he knows, this'll just make things worse.
no subject
It's like a bad joke. Only - hell if he knows this punchline.
"Yeah," says Tim, breathing the word out slowly, sucking the air into his lungs like a drowning man. He's not coughing. There's no heat spidering up his veins and snapping across his nerves. There's no iron-ping of synapses bursting and scattering in a fireworks display of a sympathetic nervous system gone horribly off the rails.
"Just...I..."
What's he say?
I missed you?
Yeah. Fucking right. Jay's bound to believe that, between the shouting match in the gardens and the right hook he can't remember Tim dealing across his jaw the first time they met in Wonderland, between his Mirror's snide commentary and the ache down Tim's middle.
"I didn't know what to do." It's less of a vulnerability, like this. He's always floundered. It's just that Jay was always just as bad, if not worse off, and they would struggle in the realm of not knowing together. Are you drowning. "After you...I didn't know what else to do."
no subject
Jay's not the kind of person other people look to for advice. He's not any good at telling people what to do.
So why would his death mean...anything in this context?
"Well..." he starts, hesitant. "What did you end up doing? Besides...what happened with Alex."
no subject
Screwed up, mostly. Left a trail of corpses behind him. Jay, crumpled against the counter with pages stained with red beneath him. Brian, crooked and cracked from a fall that was too far to be painless and too short to be immediately fatal, splayed awkwardly with that hated hood still fallen across his features.
Alex, bleeding sluggishly across the floor, denying himself, denying Tim, denying everything with his dying breath.
He missed him. There's no question, is there?
But this is what missing people gets him; this is what being Tim's friend is.
"Tried to keep going the way you did, I guess." The words are as faded and tired as the rest of him feels. Drained to his core. "Finish what you started. Even if maybe I shouldn't've - I dunno."
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