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]

[Nice, light conversation for a couple of guys like them to be having, isn't it? Tim huffs through his nose, glancing away, across the tabletop.]

Me neither.

[Not really used to the thought that he has one. But here, in Wonderland, with any hope of a back door having been cut and polished and cornered away, it looks like he'll have to accept that, like it or not, one exists.

In the loose sense.]

I dunno. Never really put a lot of stock in memories, anyway.

[punful]

[It's been almost two years, but even so--the idea of time continuing to be linear like this is just...baffling. It's not as utterly terrifying as it once was, but it's still weird. Discomfiting.]

no? heh. i'm kinda the opposite.

[Memories are all he really has.]

[postictal]

Too bad Wonderland kinda runs off taking stuff like that away.

[At least Tim's used to it; routinely amnestic, used to waking up without any knowledge of what he'd done the days, maybe weeks, prior. Used to stumping home through the woods with blood in his hair because his car is still parked outside his apartment building, and he doesn't have anyone to call to ask if they can pick him up - not that he would, even if he did.]

[punful]

yeah. heh. too bad.

[No point in being upset about it, right? No point in complaining. It is what it is, and it's not like Sans has ever had any real control over his own life, or over what he remembers and what he doesn't. Sooner or later the Reset will come, and all of this will be a moot point. Like everything else.]

[He's finished with his fries, so he gets to his feet.]

know the feeling's a complicated one, but uh. hey. happy birthday, yeah?

[He's gonna refrain from saying something corny like how he's kind of selfishly glad that Tim is here. Because Tim really is good to talk to, and talking is--weird. It's weird, and he's still new at it, but Tim is good at it, because he doesn't demand anything. There's no pressure or obligation. It's...nice.]

[He's not gonna say that, though. He grins instead.]

don't worry, though, won't try to surprise you with a pity gift or nothin'. at least so long as you don't go trying to figure out when mine is. then i might hafta do it just outta spite.

[postictal]

["Complicated" doesn't even begin to cover it. Tim pokes at the sweating tub of ice cream, the pools of cold water that have begun to form on the table's surface. Yeah. He's probably not going to end up eating this at all.

That almost gets a laugh out of him, though. Almost.]

Your secret's safe with me.

[He's got no reason to try and snoop around for a thing like that. Who is he - Jay?]

[punful]

[He chuckles a bit. He's fairly sure that no one in Wonderland knows when his birthday is, and he'd rather keep it that way.]

it's a deal, then. see you around, tim.

[He gives a vague wave and saunters out, leaving his empty fry carton on the counter. Because of course he does.]

[postictal]

[Tim grunts his farewell, head ducking in a nod. After a moment's contemplation, he drags the ice cream back across the table, slips the lid back on top of it, and slides it back into the freezer.

Let someone else enjoy the day.]