entrancelogs | openish } but nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight

[Silence.]

[Just a snipped out question that all but confirms the identity of the body beneath the sheet. Only one person could render her in that silence, and the quiet confirmation shuts his eyes. Just for a moment. Don't feel anything. Maybe she doesn't either. Breathe in through his nose, and out again.]

Wanted to make sure you were okay, I guess.

[But that was never really on the table. Was it?]

I'm okay.

[And she's supposed to be the one that never lies. It's not exactly a lie, though. She's uninjured. She's dealing with this a lot better than she could be, honestly. Mostly because she knows he's coming back. It's all she can cling to, but she's clinging to it as hard as she can.

Shaun's coming back. And she'll be here and alive for him when he does.]

I always knew this would happen someday. Except then I fucked it all up by dying first. We didn't plan for that.

[Everything is fine.]

[It's what you say. You're fine, and you're okay. It's all right if it's a lie; no one wants to hear the truth anyway. She's just keeping silent sentry until the moment when he wakes up again. However long that's going to be. Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight?]

What happened?

I think it was the armor. A lot of people were acting weird. We took it off him.

[In two days the event might be over. But if it's not, Shaun won't still be under the effect of magic armor. She hopes. She will fucking sit on him if it keeps him from going out there again. She can't do this.]

...yeah.

[He can't say it for sure, because he hasn't witnessed its full power just yet. Hasn't felt it himself. And wearing armor, preparing for battle - that's just bad news, as far as someone like him would've felt.]

[...]

It doesn't get easy.

[An ungraceful segue, but he's never been graceful.]

It never really gets easier.

[She sort of wants to laugh. Another part of her feels like she's about to burst into tears. Mostly she just wants to scream until the world makes sense.

Never really gets easier. Like she hasn't known that since she was a fifteen and first realized Shaun would almost certainly die before her. Like she hadn't already contemplated life without Shaun and come to the conclusion that it wouldn't be worth it. She'd had a plan: make sure Shaun didn't reanimate. Bury him. Write a stirring eulogy. Then go lock herself in the bathroom where she won't hurt anyone when she reanimates but will drive her parents' insurance costs through the roof. One final fuck you to them.

It hadn't gone that way. She was the one who had left Shaun an only child, not the other way around. He had stayed alive, trying to hunt down a conspiracy that went deeper than she had thought. And now she's back. And now he's dead. But he won't stay that way, so she won't join him. She'll just sit here and wait.

Her voice doesn't shake when she responds, even if it's quieter and less confident than she'd prefer. It's not shaking.]

Sure it will. In 42 hours and-- [she glances at her watch] 41 hours and 50 minutes. It'll get a lot easier.

['Cause he's already died once, right? He and her both, back when everything was flooded. After she'd gone to such lengths to make sure he didn't just give up - something bitterly ironic in that, isn't there?]

[Wrong time to bring it up. So he doesn't.]

[Can't help but be - ]
[Can't help but envy her. That she knows he'll come back.]
[No.]
[She knows he'll come back and he never did.]
[Don't go there.]

And in the meantime?

I wait.

[She settles, turning back towards Shaun, and props her elbows on her knees. She's not leaving him alone. Not now, not ever.]

[...]

[Would he do any different, in her place?]

[No.]

[He already knows he wouldn't.]

You, uh... [Don't fuck this up, Tim. Don't make this worse for her than it already is.] You smoke?

No.

[Her tone is dull. He probably doesn't care about her reasons, but she keeps going anyway.]

Lung cancer isn't an issue anymore, but emphysema's still a thing, and I run away from the undead regularly enough that I've never wanted to risk it. I like breathing. Besides, it smells bad and can interfere with some of our equipment. Not worth it.

[The words are rote enough and monotone enough that it's clear it's practically a script, an explanation she's given before. She's not putting in any effort to making it sound like anything else.]

Edited 2017-08-28 23:09 (UTC)

[That's a fair reason anyway. Smoking'll kill you. That's the first thing they tell you when you pick it up. Never seems to cross their mind that said caveat is the main reason you're picking it up in the first damn place.]

Makes sense.

[He doesn't look at the sheet, the clean drape over the abnormally still shape beneath.]

I know you've already...you probably already know, but you should hear it anyway.

You don't have to do this.

[She tugs off her sunglasses, turning to look at Tim. Her eyes are still puffy from crying, and worse, there's no hope in them. Shaun's coming back. She's clinging to that. But it's hard to remember when he's lying there so still.]

And what exactly would you have me do instead?

Get some sleep, for one.

[He told Jay the same. Take a break.]

[It's hard to look at her, for that moment - the moment when she takes off her glasses and looks at him, and he knows full well the telltale signs of red-rimmed eyes that indicate she's been crying on and off since it happened.]

[She isn't quite broken enough to start giggling hysterically but a corner of her mouth does twitch. Get some sleep. Yeah, right.]

I couldn't, even if I wanted to.

[She learned how to sleep without Shaun when she was in the CDC, but it was one of the first things she unlearned back in Wonderland. Her entire life, he's never been more than a room away, and here, they've been sharing a bed every night. She's not exactly snuggly, but she likes that he's in arm's reach. She likes being able to hear him breathe and know he's still alive and with her.

Kind of defeats the purpose if he's not alive. She shoves her sunglasses back on. They won't stop the tears she can feel welling up, but maybe if she blinks enough they won't leak out onto the rest of her face. Fuck, she misses being incapable of crying.]

Take a break, George.

[The words are firm, but his tone is - quiet. Almost gentle. What a joke, right? That's all it takes to torque Tim right around from ungrateful, callous, moronic asshole to someone who gives a damn.]

[Maybe he always gave a damn, and never cared to admit it.]

You deserve that much, okay?

[Why can't she stop her fucking eyes from leaking like this? It wasn't worth the debilitating headaches. The last event reminded her far too keenly of that. But times like this she still kind of misses her old eyes. She hated that she couldn't cry. But she hates it even more now that she can.]

I don't want a break. I don't want to leave him. I can't, I--

[She breaks off, scrubbing roughly at her eyes under her sunglasses.]

I need to be here.

He's still gonna be here.

[The words are low, and as soft and easy as they get, with Tim. Maybe not enough, but fuck, what the hell else is he supposed to do? She's holding it together, but barely. More frayed and at the end of her rope than he's ever seen her. He's been vulnerable, left trembling and hollow at the end of someone else's camera, too often for that to rankle like it would have once.]

[But she's not had to adjust, the way he has, to having your private turmoil broadcasted on all channels.]

Just...an hour. Two hours. Something.

[She shakes her head, pressing her knuckles against her mouth. He means well. A lot of people mean well when they gently suggest that maybe, just maybe, this isn't the healthiest way to cope. Like she doesn't know. Like she cares. She died and Shaun started talking to her ghost. Shaun dies and she loses the will to carry on.

Codependent is such an ugly word. She's always hated the way people throw it at them, like it's something she should be ashamed of. Like it was anything but inevitable, growing up the way they had, tangled up and loving each other enough to make up for all the ways their parents didn't.

It might not be healthy, but it's so much better than any of the other alternatives.]

It wouldn't help. It would be worse not being here.

[How do you process grief?]

[Not like he's got any right way of knowing. People die, and then you're left not knowing what to do with yourself in compensation. Bereft. What the hell are you supposed to do when you lose someone and know they'll come back? He doesn't even know what you're meant to do when you don't know if they'll be coming back.]

It's gonna take hours. Days.

I know. [Her voice breaks a little. She's all too aware of how long it'll take. She's been counting down the minutes.] I know. I'll rest then. Please stop asking.

[Don't. Don't do this to her, goddamn you. Not when she's so close to breaking.]

I'm -

[I'm sorry.]

I just - I'm gonna worry. You know that, right?

Edited 2017-08-30 03:31 (UTC)

[She didn't really know that, but she supposes it's reasonable. She'd probably worry about her too.

She gives herself a precious few seconds to compose herself, breathing in and rubbing her face, before looking up at him.]

I'll be okay. [Her voice is steady again. With her eyes covered, she could almost pass for fine.] I'm not going to let him come back to a world I'm not in. He's already had to live through that once.

He won't.

[Maybe it's a stupid consolation. A promise no one can exactly keep. But he owes it to her - for her to know that. Because he can deny it all he likes, tearing open the words like an itching scab and salting them and burning them, insisting they don't mean a damn thing because he knows how "friends" end up, when he lets them near.]
[Knowing that no amount of denial will make what they already are go away.]
You know there's no chance of that. [Next to no chance. But maybe he should - ]

[Maybe he should check.]

...

Is there?

There isn't.

[It's a reasonable fear, honestly, but unfounded. Though it's a reasonable conclusion to make that Georgia might be made suicidal by losing Shaun, it wasn't going to be an impulsive choice. She might be having trouble holding herself together but she remained desperately sane and heart-breakingly rational.

Shaun had been able to hallucinate her ghost to keep him company. Georgia can't lie to herself that well. But she also can't lose herself entirely in her grief. She knows Shaun is coming back. She can keep herself alive alone for that long. If he's not back by then for some reason all bets are off, but he will be back. He has to be.

Of course there are all the frost giants and stuff and she should probably be more worried about that since she's not really in a good place to defend herself, but she can't bring herself to worry that much. Besides, it's not like Tim would be able to do anything about them either.]

I'd die for Shaun if I had to. I'd even lie for him. But I'm not doing either today.

[Maybe it should surprise him, that she gets what he's asking without him having to spell it out. Maybe it should, but - given her world, given the way conversations between the two of them have gone, it doesn't. Given everything, it really...doesn't.]

[Maybe that should disturb him too.]

[Like so many things, it doesn't.]

[...]

[He believes that. Can't think of anything else to say, but he believes that she's not planning on anything. Can't think of anything else to say, so - ]

You want company?

openish } but nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight

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cw suicidal ideation

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