And things have taken a sharp nosedive into the painfully and acutely personal.

Tim shifts, rocking his weight on his heels, wiping ash-streaked and sweat-stained palms on his already soot-grimed jeans. He really can't gauge if Jay was always like this; if this was a deviation from the norm for him, or if this was just plain and fucking typical. Everything fell so far out of the boundaries of normal so fast that it no longer became possible to discern an easy baseline for anyone.

"You have to," he says at last, tearing apart the silence as it hovers in thick steamclouds around them. "So you're not - normal. Big fucking deal. Is anyone who lives in Wonderland normal, Jay?"

Is it really so bad to be a freak like the rest of them?