you can call me a liar and that would be true [open]

[postictal]

Who: Tim, and also you, if you so choose
Where: Around Wonderland
When: 6/19
Rating: PG-13 for suicide ideation, allusions self-harm, recollections of past trauma
Summary: It's June 19th - Tim's birthday. The day before he posted the final entry.
The Story:

gardens; does the blank stare scare you more than the frown?

He wakes with the muted realization as to the day. It's June 19th. He knows full well what the day is, even if the day following this one strikes him as subtly more important, unbeknownst to anyone else here. Jay would have no clue. None whatsoever. Tim's throat contracts in a hard swallow as his eyes drift across the contours of the room. Does Jay remember the significance of the day, back from those pilfered medical records?

He never mentioned the day. Never brought any undue attention to it. What reason would there be for it, and what cause for celebration would there be? It's hard to be grateful for the day of your birth when you've spent every other day bitterly wishing it simply never occurred.

The morning's routine plays out by tired rote. Coffee and a cigarette to rouse himself a little more completely, a weary surveying of the pieces of himself that have made it this far. Considering the merits of shaving before deciding that he doesn't very well trust himself with a razor today. The rough partial beard darkening the lines of his jaw will simply have to persist until he's feeling a little less likely to peel the skin from himself like an orange. Give way to the fleshy insides that were opened crossways, diagonally, a long, carving slash. He can move a little easier now, as the days have crawled by.

By noon, the clamor in his head has refused to cease, clanging sickeningly around his skull in a desperate plea he can no longer ignore. Again the urge bristles at his fingers, a frustrated inability of knowing what to do with his hands. He sinks to the only impulse he can think of to stay his own hand. Concentrating on his closet with a furrowed brow until finally he opens it, and his hand closes around the bridge of a ukulele.

With Tim attachment, drifts a half-remembered voice across the ridges of poorly suppressed memory. There's a scant handful of songs he can still recall, but muscle memory turns out to be far more adept than anything else.

The sun rises high as Tim folds himself onto a bench in the gardens. It's easier than the wooded areas surrounding. His fingers dance across the strings in aimless tones, noodling a tune out idly with as little direction as the man who plays.

It's not much at all. It doesn't count for a celebration. It's just music.

But it's been months, years even, since he's allowed to think about something as mundane as a song.

kitchen; watch my actions, or lack thereof, negate the person i said i was

[There's a candle stuck in a pint of vanilla ice cream. It's unlit, at the moment, largely because the man who put it there is finishing off a pack of cigarettes, hissing smoke out between his teeth, regardless of who might want or not want the smell of nicotine clouding the vicinity. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter much at all, the memory of a hospital in which a nurse would give him ice cream after the third week in a row that his mother said she would be visiting, she promised she would, and then had simply never showed. It was like a consolation present. As if that would make it better, or numb it entirely.

A fitting celebration, then, to acknowledge the turning of an invisible clock that doesn't hold any damn weight here. Can't you try a little harder, Timothy? Try for me, okay? You must not want to get better at all, if this is still weighing you down.

Tim snorts to himself. Watches the ice cream soften in its cheap cardboard cylinder, watching it sweat onto the table. Stares at the candle that perches at the top of that stupid mound of white, quietly mocking him.

His shoulders hunch. What a stupid idea.]

woods; you can call me a coward and you'd be correct

What a stupid idea.

It's late, now. The last of the sunset has died on the horizon, threads of milk-white fading with the last fingertips of sunlight, giving way to the purpling of dusk. The imprint of the trees is still stark and black against the fading blue, and through the woods he stumps, as if that will mean anything.

There's nowhere else for any of it to go, is the thing. It boils out in rising and falling pieces, in the ragged quality of his breath, in the tautness in his lungs. Prickling at his fingertips. Stiffening his shoulders. Clinging to the back of his throat, slick and hot as bile. He shouldn't be out here, particularly after the last conversation he and Jay had, but what, then, is the point? If It's here, then It's here, and It should damn well have Its way with him. Get rid of him for fucking good. Just fucking finish it. It should have been him. It should have been, and it was simply the cruelest fucking twist of fate possible that it wasn't.

His breath rasps out like a snarl as he halts in the middle of the tangle of black trunks, turning on the spot in a slow, continuous revolution. Sweeping frantically about for any sight of the thing, the blot of faceless white that will surely rise, leering at him. There's nothing shielding him now; no synthetic safety in his pocket, no lens of a camera in his hand or strapped to his chest.

Tim's head jerks back as he glowers into the uniform dark.

"Come on!" he bellows. Waits for an answering stab of pain to his temples, but none comes. "What are you waiting for?"

If It wants him so bad, maybe now, at long last, It can fucking well take him.

wildcard; distant but rational, bringer of rage to get to a level where i will engage

[Want a specific starter? PM me or hit me over at arrpee! It's going to be a Day for old Timothy here. I will match prose or brackets!]

Comments

[postictal]

[God, what's he doing. Dumping on Sans's shoulders, when the angle and bent of his stance would have to indicate that he's already got more than enough to carry on his own. The offer to talk was there, sure, but it was only ever an offer. One of those things you put out there to be polite, maybe. And this is nothing like what they talked about before, either, about what it is to be sick in all the ways that aren't fixable.

Sans sits, and Tim smokes. There's an invisible tension clamping around the muscles in his chest, and he can't quite -

He's never had a cause to talk about it. Always felt like inviting some form of pity, but he knows that, from Sans at least, that's not nearly as likely. It's not a cry for help, or whatever people like to think it is. Sans, he thinks, might understand that.

It's not quite a snort or a laugh, but it's a sound, a formless drag of noise across his throat as he exhales.]

That's...how they'd celebrate it. When I was growing up in that, in a hospital. Mom never showed, so they'd - the nurses, they would let me have a thing of vanilla ice cream. Like a consolation gift or something.

[His tone has swelled, too high and too bitter, and he coughs to dispel it. It does nothing of the sort.]

...stupid.

[punful]

[Tim smokes like a chimney and doesn't speak for awhile. He's gotta be as weirded out about this as Sans is. You get so used to not talking, that suddenly when you can, the words just don't come. Or you think better of it, because no one wants to hear about your bullshit. People want jokes from you, or lines from the script, or whatever they're expecting. No one likes listening to someone complain.]

[And why even do it when most everyone you know is worse off than you are?]

[But he's always patient. Tim might not say another word, and that's fine too. This offer of "talking" has to work both ways, and Sans wants to...at least be here. Because most of talking involves listening.]

[Plus he's got this whole plate of nice hot fries.]

[Eventually Tim does speak again. Mom never showed, huh. Consolation gifts. People feeling sorry for you.]

[It's one of the worst feelings in the world.]

yeah, that sorta...people meanin' well, but what it ends up being is just a pity party. heh. literally.

[He gives a half-hearted chuckle at that.]

it's nice of people. but it also...sucks. you, uh. you ever had like a big, actual party? balloons, cake and all?

[He kinda doesn't think Tim would go in for that sort of thing, but on the other hand, there's something nice about knowing even one person gives a damn. Even if it gets wrapped up in all the self-hate.]

[postictal]

[Tim snorts at that, softly. That in and of itself should be all the answer Sans needs. He never really offers information up like this for general consumption. Who'd care?

Does Sans, even? Maybe he's just making polite conversation. Maybe he just feels obligated. Like a pity thing.

But then, Sans would be the least likely, he should think, to engage in something like that. He knows full well what pity does to you. How pointless it is.]

Don't think they really went for that sort of thing in the hospital.

[punful]

[Yeah, he thought so. A hospital probably isn't the sort of environment for celebrating or making enough friends to warrant a party.]

kinda figured. but then again i don't know much about human hospitals.

[The ones underground aren't even technically hospitals. There's just clinics and such, people with a good handle on healing magic, there to tell you you should probably do this or that to feel better. Monsters just don't get sick. Not like humans.]

don't strike me as the kinda guy who'd want something like that, anyway.

[Nothing loud, no bright colors. Maybe a quiet movie night with close friends and some cupcakes, at best. At least that's the sort of thing Sans wouldn't mind.]

[postictal]

[Well, Sans isn't exactly wrong. Tim huffs his affirmation of the assumption, hissing smoke out between his teeth. Too many crowds. Too many people. And, well, you have to have friends for it to count as a party. More than just one or two, anyway. Does Jay even count at this juncture?

Did he ever?]

Monsters don't really need hospitals, huh?

[punful]

[He shrugs.]

monsters don't get sick. no germs. no diseases, no illness. there's healers and clinics and stuff, for when people get some HP knocked out and it don't come back all the way, or something like that. we can get injured and heal slow or not enough. and there's people whose job it is to look after older monsters on the verge of falling down, if they don't have family to look after 'em.

[Family or friends. People usually have at least someone. After a monster has Fallen Down, though. Well, then it's just a matter of waiting. You might as well already be dead.]

we're not used to that sorta thing. we don't have medicine. most things can be cured with a positive outlook or a healing spell or some good food.

[postictal]

[Sounds like a goddamn video game when he puts it that way. Sounds convenient, too. As simple as just refilling a valve or a bar and being okay again.

Which, of course, means that those whose problems fall outside the boundaries of the ordinary are more or less fucked from the get-go. Tim shakes his head at that, one side of his mouth twitching. A positive outlook. Some good food. Sounds like every generic piece of self-help advice he's ever received. You're just not trying hard enough, Timothy. Can't you try a little harder? For your mother?

Well? Can't you?]

Most things.

[Not everything.]

you could have five or six HPs...or just *one*

[punful]

[He nods, though it's more a sort of downward tilt of his skull than anything.]

most things.

[He toys with a fry for a moment, dragging it needlessly through excess ketchup. People don't understand things like HP here. Half the time he mentions things like HP and ATK to people in Wonderland and they just look at him funny.]

[It's not really his job to explain, or to get into this, especially when the subject was supposed to be how stupid birthdays are. But...]

monsters, uh. or everyone in my world, technically, we got this thing called HP. like a way of putting a number to your health. you got your max HP, which is where most people are most the time. healthy and hale. and then you lose some when you get injured or what have you.

[This fry is thoroughly soaked through with ketchup now, so he finally eats it.]

your base number don't usually change. but there's ways to raise it. plenty ways. tends to increase as monsters get older. the more you have, the stronger you are. the more hits you can take. that sorta thing. can get into the dozens, or even the hundreds.

[And...well. The point here--the point here isn't something he wants to say out loud. He doesn't usually need to, and when he does, he doesn't really bother. You don't broadcast this sort of thing. And he really doesn't know all that much about Tim. Maybe he's the sort who could start killing people on a whim.]

[Knowing about HP doesn't change that, though. Nor does it make it any harder or easier. And Sans--well, that's always been his responsibility, the only one he ever took seriously. It's his job to stay alive. Not other people's job to always be keeping an eye on him. He wouldn't want it that way.]

[He leans back in his chair a little.]

me, though? heh. i only got the one.

honey you've got a big storm coming

[postictal]

[It...sounds kinda like a video game, yeah. A number to your health, to your wellness. Kinda makes Tim wonder what his number would be, except - nah. No. He's not gonna go there. Not when it's obvious enough that he wouldn't score very many points in that regard anyway.

It's an easy mechanic, or it sounds easy. It sounds nice and simple. You've got a number, and you can keep track of it to tell how far you have to go, or how to make yourself better. It'd be a hell of a lot simpler than the shrugs and hopeless jerks of the head that followed him throughout most of those early hospital days, mutters of not quite knowing what's wrong with him, because it's not really an exact science but eventually they'll get it right.

Medicine. It's not magic, but it's all they have.

And Sans only has one.

So there's something "wrong" with him too, based on the rules of his world. He doesn't function the way people might assume he should.]

And there's no curing it, right? [Tim huffs, weary.] Just living with it.

People don't always get that.

i don't need friends, they disappoint me

[punful]

[He doesn't think about it too much. Hasn't had to think about it at all since Zacharie left. Which is all well and good. He's got enough existential crises in his life.]

nope. tried raising it before. had healers and such try to raise it. conventional ways. unconventional ways. nothing changed.

[There's only one surefire way to raise his HP, and he won't. Never.]

[He shrugs.]

but nah. people don't...always get it. [He pauses for a moment.] shouldn't have to, i guess. ain't...ain't really their job.

i feel like a deer in the headlights of love

[postictal]

[It's not their job. They've got nothing to gain by trying to understand what it's like, so why bother explaining it? What's to be gained from that? Unless some unfortunate soul happens to uncover your medical records, and needs help deciphering them to his satisfaction.]

Guess not.

[So where does that leave them?]

Doesn't make it easier, though.

i can't stand it when she touches me

[punful]

[It's just not really fair to other people, right? Making yourself a burden on them, making them have to tiptoe around you. Making them look at you with that guilt and that pity, and that sort of vague suspicion, like maybe you're making it up for attention, or maybe it's not as bad as you say, or maybe you just weren't trying hard enough.]

nah. guess it doesn't. and, uh, i'm a big fan of things bein' easy. but on the other hand...i, uh. i dunno. always just...seemed better to spare people all that. when...heh.

[God, this is hard to talk about. He's not used to this at all. He's usually so slick with his words, but he just...doesn't know how to phrase things, how to sum things up. He doesn't talk about this stuff. He doesn't talk about anything.]

when you're, uh, already that much a burden on folk, just--just always seemed easier to not even bother. just let 'em come to their own conclusions. if they don't know, then they don't--you don't catch 'em looking at you the way you do. if that makes sense.

B)

[postictal]

[He lets him talk. It's nice to hear it from someone else, for once. Like validation that it's not just all in his own damn head, that he's not just fundamentally incapable of dealing with what someone else manages without even thinking.

But you're already a burden. What're you gonna say or do that'll change your mind? You seize on the floor, you have a coughing fit, you choke down a handful of white capsules and let them realign all the synaptic bursts in your head and you get a handful of glances. You get people who pretend you don't exist, walking past, unthinking.]

Yeah, except when you don't tell them and it comes up anyway, they act like you just lied to them.

but it's okay because time heals...all wounds...

[punful]

[They're both just digging this depression deeper and deeper, aren't they? Haha. Just trading the shovel back and forth.]

[He gives a vague hum of agreement, and is about to say something--but then he grins suddenly. Because sometimes there's something to laugh about. Sometimes here has to be.]

heh, you know i uh, i lied on a job application one time. was about a year before my boss found out. he was pissed. but by then i'd dug in so much he couldn't just fire me. probably wanted to, though.

[He chuckles a bit and shrugs.]

you got all this stuff stacked against you, can't do much but--cheat. game the system. find the loopholes.

[It's called survival.]

[postictal]

[Tim snorts at that one. It almost sounds genuinely amused, even if it's not much of a smile at all. Yeah, sounds familiar.]

I used to work in construction, back home. They didn't really need applications or a resume or anything official. [Which was great, 'cause he never finished college. No scholarships, an unreliable income, on his own in terms of housing and groceries - the only element he could afford to cut out of his life and ease the pressure on his wallet were those classes he was never very good at to begin with.]

Pretty sure that's the only way I got the job, 'cause no one else is gonna hire someone with a medical file longer than his goddamn resume.

[punful]

we have a place kinda like that.

[The Core was always hiring people for menial tasks like recalibrating the more basic puzzles, or patrolling for humans and such. Good for part-time jobs when you were desperate.]

so they uh, they check for that sorta thing on the surface too, huh? monsters hafta put their HP and such on all kindsa forms.

[postictal]

People hire commodities. You're an investment.

[Doesn't do for that investment to break down, does it? You're not getting your money's worth. Your livelihood is at risk. You're a liability, and they're not paying for you to be a liability.]

[punful]

[What a way to put it. But he's right, isn't he?]

yeah...and, heh. not much point in putting any investment in someone who can't do the job right. or good enough.

[postictal]

If your investment stops working, you don't get your money's worth.

[Or even worse, it sues you for something it already knew was a risk. Do monsters even have a system of law? Should he know this? They apparently have a king and a monarchy, but does that...matter, when it comes to a justice system?]

[punful]

if a part's faulty, you replace it. can risk the whole machine over one faulty part.

[They don't need something that's already broken. No one does.]

[postictal]

Yeah.

[He gets it. A little too well, it sounds like. And there's that tearing in the pit of his gut again, that simultaneous frustration that someone, anyone, could relate to that, paired with the relief that he's not - alone.

No one deserves to be alone in this.]

Guess monsters and humans aren't all that different there.

[punful]

[He gives a slow, languid shrug.] well...everything i've heard and put together, past year and a half...think monsters are a bit. i dunno. nicer about it. but yeah. more and more, i'm seein' the similarities. we're not saints. we're regular people.

[He toys with a fry for a minute, then gives Tim a wry grin, propping his chin on a hand.]

not so good at being aggressive, but we can be pretty damn passive-aggressive. being anywhere on a sorta non-violent spectrum gives...gives you a lotta moral high ground to lord over people.

[And Sans himself might as well be perched right on top of fucking Mt. Ebott itself.]

they say monster souls are made of compassion and such. it's just not always genuine.

[postictal]

[Monster souls. 'Cause they have...right, yeah. Souls in their world. Tim's hand rests atop his chest for a moment, remembering with unpleasant clarity the peculiar, wrenching feeling of that cartoon-like heart blossoming into existence, inches from his chest, in pulsing scarlet.]

Do souls have...colors?

[He should've asked Asgore this before, but - to be honest, a lot of the particulars of that conversation elude him in retrospect. Probably because he'd just gotten through with panicking, drowning, and then panicking about drowning. And then having to relive the same moment multiple times over, finishing off with him decking a giant goat thing that could probably skewer him on the spot in the face.

It wasn't a real great time.]

[punful]

[He looks up and gives Tim a mildly curious look. Right...he'd know something about how souls are in the Underground, wouldn't he? Sans never found out the particulars, but he remembers Tim and Zacharie had a sort of--encounter with the DTE, back in the lab.]

well, monster souls are white. pretty uniformly so. guess there might be souls that lean more toward sorta off-white, but that's about as much range as we get.

[Sans's soul is unique enough that he's not sure that even bore mentioning. But oh well.]

human souls come in all kindsa colors. each color represents a trait that dominates that soul. things like patience, perseverance, kindness. determination. but a human's not usually gonna see their soul, unless they're in a fight with a monster.

[postictal]

[Right. Yeah. Tim glances down at his chest, the swell of his gut beneath, and folds his arms. As if that'll be enough to hide it.]

I mean, I...I met your...your king? [Christ, it sounds weird to even say it like that.] Asgore? He, uh...he kinda saved my life, but it was when the mansion was all flooded and stuff. And we were kinda caught in this loop, and...

[He's. Doing a really shit job of explaining this. Take a breath, Tim, and just say it.]

So I - I hit him. He told me to break the loop and I hit him, and I think he might've - he did something. There was this heart shape, just for a second, and then it...went back to normal.

He said it was...

[His throat constricts as he grimaces. It feels goofy to say. Like he's spitting on the idea of what a soul is. The thought that he even has one at all is fucking laughable, is the thing.]

He said it was my soul. I guess.