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

[burntvideocassette]

He knew it already, but the fact that Tim's bothering to tell him--that Tim knows about it at all--throws him off guard.

"She--how well? Like, were they...friends, or...?"

Was this really why Tim suggested he meet her? Is he actually just handing him a lead? That...doesn't seem like Tim at all.

[postictal]

"I guess." How Alex managed to make a friend that much more well-adjusted than him is kind of up in the air, but then, Tim wouldn't really know. The network only archived so much, and he didn't feel comfortable scrolling through a dead man's history. He got all the knowledge he needed from that room, where Max watched him wail on Alex's prone form and made all the judgments she needed to.

"Seemed like she's maybe one of the people who miss him."

The other one being, incredibly, Commander Shepard.

And hell if he knows how he's going to explain that.

[burntvideocassette]

"People?" he asks, incredulous, as if he's not one of them. "Like, plural?"

Really, though, he's not sure if he misses Alex, exactly. He disappeared, one of the few people that'd ever given Jay the time of day, and Jay went looking. It wasn't long before his life had basically become Alex Kralie. He knew Alex--at least, the Alex from 2006--better than he'd known anyone in his life. More than parents, siblings, anyone.

When Alex dropped off camera, though, that changed.

He doesn't know the Alex who shot him. He knows why, logically, because Tim told him, but he doesn't know what he was like, what happened to him between spitting out insults that almost sounded rehearsed while the gun shook in his hand and just firing point-blank like it was nothing.

He wants to know.

Maybe that's sort of like missing him.

[postictal]

"Believe it or not, yeah." It feels like some kind of open disrespect, frankly, that they could laugh at Alex, mock him for being a damn near impossible person to work with. Only he hadn't been, really. Not at the start. Fresh-faced, clean-shaven, eager, baseball cap perched atop his head and a stack of untouched scripts, desperate for someone to enter the room and audition.

Pretentious, a little fumbling. Laden with sarcasm and smart remarks for every occasion. Blindingly oblivious to the faults in his own work where he could shamelessly critique every other film and artwork he encountered.

At least, that's the story the tapes told.

He didn't deserve what happened to him.

He didn't deserve to know Tim.

"There's this...Commander Shepard. She's like, kind of this space marine person?" He's not honestly sure he could explain her job in any detail, so he'll leave that to her, provided Jay shows up at her doorstep with a camcorder and a hunger for answers anew. "She knew him pretty well too, I guess."

[burntvideocassette]

A photographer he gets, but an actual, honest-to-god space marine? He's picturing Master Chief, but he's probably way off.

"Sounds like he, uh. Made some friends here." He's picturing the hollow-eyed man who raised the gun, trying to reconcile him with grinning, floppy-haired Alex Kralie from his lecture hall. He can imagine the latter having friends. "Do you know...what he was like when he was here? I mean, did anyone say anything to you about...when he was from?"

[postictal]

"I guess he was from...I dunno. Earlier? He didn't seem like he was the same guy as from - when it was near the end."

Before he died, a pointless end to a pointless crusade. Maybe that's what It wanted all along; for Its puppet to perish at the hands of Its favorite little toy. The mere thought clenches his fingers into fists and stiffens the muscles in his jaw, but he bites into the wall of his cheek and breathes.

"I never..." He blows out a slow exhale, shaking his head. "I dunno how much of him was really him, by the end."

[burntvideocassette]

That's...reassuring. It might not be true, but it does something to help reconcile the Alex Kralies stored in his head and on the tapes. Maybe the guy who shot him wasn't Alex, not really. Maybe if he'd found the real Alex, the before-Alex, the one from his lectures and a couple nights in the dorms and the first few weeks of summer, then maybe he could have helped. Maybe they could have followed each other in the car, checked into a hotel on their way to anywhere-but-Rosswood. Maybe they could have talked about old movies.

"D'you think there's any chance he'd...show up here again?"

It's a deeply stupid thing to ask, he knows. He shouldn't be hoping to see the guy who gut-shot him and left him for dead.

But maybe that wasn't Alex.

[postictal]

"Maybe. I dunno." It's only ever been him here, and then Jay. And then Jay again, and...fuck, what would Alex appearing here even mean for the pair of them? Alex wouldn't know that she, that Jessica - no. He wouldn't.

Regardless of whether Jay wants to see him or not, is nervous or afraid that Alex will spontaneously manifest in Wonderland or if he's still holding out some absurd hope that maybe Alex won't try to kill him this time around, the likelihood that any of it's about to happen is...

There'd not be much point in hoping.

"If he does, are you...you're gonna be careful. Right?" With Jay, he can never fully be sure.

[burntvideocassette]

"Well, yeah, I mean--" He'd be careful, right? Of course he would. "Especially if he's, y'know, like he has been."

Jay would have to watch him for a while. Gauge where and when he's coming from. Try to figure out whether or not he's got a gun (on him, at least). He could manage that.

It's easier to believe Alex is capable of murder now that he's been on the receiving end of it.

Well, an Alex.

[postictal]

Tim grunts, wordless. He's not exactly optimistic that Jay's going to make good on that promise, but they can burn that bridge when they come to it. If they ever come to it.

That means not running over to where he is with nothing but a knife, Jay.

But he doesn't say it.

"Good. 'Cause there's no way to know when he'd be coming from either."

[burntvideocassette]

"Great."

His head tilts down, focusing on the ground while he thinks. The camera stays steady.

"People don't remember being here when they leave, right? So even if an Alex from, y'know, before came around, we wouldn't exactly be able to change things."

Jay tries very hard not to think about what this means for himself. He doesn't imagine how it would feel to have his memories roughly excised, nor does he take any time to consider orange skies and twisted trees and trails and familiar rooms that melt into each other until you've forgotten what the original house was supposed to look like.

He probably should get a hobby, shouldn't he?

[postictal]

"Guess not. Well, unless..."

He's probably talking out of his ass here. He doesn't know the extent of how Wonderland works. That dream world in which everyone's minds went dim and cloudy and they had no home to dwell upon other than the mansion in Wonderland - is that a kinder end to the man that Alex Kralie was than the way he would inevitably go?

They could have fought it together. They could have - or he could have tried harder. Not lost it at the last possible second, fighting hard to preserve what was left of Alex Kralie, the first person Jay set out to save.

He left the sentence dangling, and now has no choice but to finish it. And so he does. Reluctantly.

"I mean, unless he just ended up staying here. Forever."

[burntvideocassette]

He's not sure if that would be better or much worse. The longer you stay here, the more you forget, after all. It's a choice between letting him go free to kill and die and letting him stay here to have pieces of himself chipped away.

"I'm not saying this is a good idea, but...what would happen if he stayed?"

From where he's standing, it looks like a choice between two deaths. Jay's not sure he's talking about Alex Kralie anymore.

[postictal]

"I dunno. This place kinda..." He trails off with a vague wave of one hand, breathing out a sigh. "I mean, it seems like it's just sort of eating away at us. Our memories, or something."

So would the Alex they know be effectively dead by then? Everyone in those dreams had been...scarily content with their lives, for the most part. Even Georgia, as much as she encouraged him to pursue his paranoia, his fits of nervous uncertainty, had seemed happy. Happier than he'd ever seen her.

"So I guess it's a question of what's worse."

[burntvideocassette]

What's worse, dying or forgetting?

Jay kneads at his forehead. This is...their lives now. This is what their lives have been since 2006, what Tim's has been since he was a kid.

How did they get here from trying to play the ukulele?

"D'you think there's a way to...get out without...?" Without going back there, he's thinking, but he's not sure if it's clear enough.

[postictal]

Tim can only shake his head wearily.

"I dunno. If there is, no one's found it yet." And some people have been here for years, so what chance does one painfully average guy from Alabama have? And Tim - well, he never really bothered to start looking in the first place. If this is his hell, his purgatory, whatever, it's about as much as he deserves.

"I don't think we...I mean, it's a pretty big what if."

[burntvideocassette]

"Yeah," Jay concedes. "Guess it's best to just...deal with what we have now, for now."

It doesn't mean he won't be thinking about it, but maybe he won't expend quite as much thought as he would've otherwise.

"Which I guess brings us back to, uh." Back to ukuleles and the overwhelming desire to block out certain intrusive thoughts.

"Look, if I were...wanting to learn how to..." This is a terrible idea. "If I wanted to start reading sheet music, where do you even--even start with that?"

Great coping mechanism. Try to distract yourself with something so boring that you just go back to reviewing footage anyway.

[postictal]

Not content with one awkward exchange for the day, Jay elects to swing right back around to their jumping-off point (poor choice of words, Tim), just to dig the stupidity of that initial idea in a little deeper.

"I mean, there's...probably people who can teach you." He's assuming there are, seeing as there's - there seems to be a high proportion of people who know how to read music.

He should probably learn himself, if he plans on making it anything more than a passive hobby. But learning would require more effort than he feels capable of exerting.

[burntvideocassette]

Asking requires finding someone who can teach him, which requires going on the network and announcing to the world that he needs lessons, which requires a lot more self-confidence than Jay's got at the moment.

The library should have some decent reference material.

He gestures to the ukulele. "Least if I ever wanna learn that, I've got you."

It takes Jay a moment to realize what he's just said. From there, it takes a microsecond to regret it completely.

1/2

[postictal]

[postictal]

He, uh.

He's not entirely sure what it is he should be saying to that. It sounds fucking cheesy, and he could make a joke about Alex Kralie there, but that's definitely a too soon kind of thing.

The most Tim can do is clear his throat, pretend like the awkward weight of what Jay's just said isn't choking him like a goddamn noose, and nod, straight-faced.

"Can't promise I'd be..." Fuck. No. Why'd he go there? "Probably be better off learning from someone who can actually play."

[burntvideocassette]

Oh god, he actually considered it for a second, didn't he? Great. Nice job, Jay. Nice job even putting the idea in his head.

He shrugs, trying to play it off. "Good thing we've got such a...great selection of music teachers here." He rolls his eyes. "Might check the library. They're...supposed to have everything, if the pamphlet I looked at was right."

This assumes he's even going to make an attempt at learning bass again, which is a pretty big leap for someone who hasn't even pulled one out of the closet yet.

But it's better than being alone with his thoughts again. It's being alone with his thoughts and a useless instrument he's never going to actually play. Definitely a step up.

[postictal]

"Could always ask around." But after Tim ragged on him so violently for daring to voice a handful of names to a public network, can he really blame Jay for wanting to steer clear from that in an interactive sense for a spell? Not exactly, no.

"But...yeah. I guess library would be the - that'd be the place to start." Assuming he finds books that are written in a language he can understand. "Just make sure no one's torching the place when you go there."

...isn't there a story and a half behind that little comment.

[burntvideocassette]

Just make sure--what?

Jay picks his words slowly and carefully. "Do people...burn...books here?"

If he's just stepped into a copy of Fahrenheit 451, then that means there are people here who want to destroy information. That doesn't sit well with Jay at all.

[postictal]

"Just the one time," says Tim, maybe a shade too casually. "New arrival was pretty skittish, and thought he was someplace else. Molotoved the place." And brained Tim with a shotgun, which was a fun thing to happen.

Also apparently killed a man. He's...not really sure how he's meant to process Joel, even now. Whatever the hell their relationship is, it's still uneasy, even if he doesn't hold the whole near death experience thing against him.