entrancelogs | merry christmas; i could care less [ open ]

"Because this is the only place where I don't risk knocking shit over," Tim grunts. It's admittedly interesting to see the plight from another point of view - it's a bit like watching a tree grow in fast forward, feathers spurting up from the hollow-boned appendages protruding awkwardly from his back - but there's something more than a little awkward about that, and he quickly looks away.

The wings do a fantastic job of scalloping around him, as though to hide him partially from view, which is stupid because the wings are easily the most recognizable thing about him and practically dominate the radius of something like five feet around him, cupped as they are.

"Angels on top of the tree," Jay mutters under his breath. Sounds like something Alex came up with. He may be starting to get used to Wonderland pulling stuff like this, but it doesn't mean he has to like it. Clearly Tim doesn't, if the way he's hiding behind his own massive wings is any indication. No wonder he was knocking stuff over; those things are huge.

He didn't think it was possible for the mess behind him to get any itchier, but Wonderland proves him wrong yet again. He tries reaching behind him, and in an alien sequence of muscle contractions, he can feel his scrawny wings reach out in turn. Jay grabs onto a handful of pin feathers and furiously starts prying them out of their casings. It's like picking at a scab; maybe he shouldn't do it, but it feels like it's helping somehow.

He's gonna have to ask Tim's help, isn't he? That, or he'll have to find some corner to rub up against to get all this stuff off. He's not sure which would be more humiliating.

"Hey. Hey." He's gotten bolder, with every event. He does something he would never have even attempted prior to Jay's arrival in Wonderland, and snags at Jay's wrist with one hand to yank it away. "Cut it out. It'll settle, okay? Just give it time, and don't - don't try and pull it out or anything."

Did he attempt something like that? Maybe. Maybe he did. But maybe it doesn't fucking matter, because all it ended up doing was hurting about as much as it would to try and pry your arm from its own socket.

Jay struggles against Tim's grip for a second, but then he forces himself to hold still. It'll settle. It'll work itself out on his own, and he doesn't need to pick at it.

it itches it hurts it itches it hurts like a hundred thousand little injections

He doesn't need to pick at it. Instead, he shuffles through the thin powder-coating of snow across the roof to retrieve his jacket, and he pulls it over his arms like the world's most ineffectual snuggie.

It's getting better, he can feel it. Either that or his wings are just going numb from the cold. Either way, he feels a little warmer, and when he glances back it does actually seem like those godforsaken pin feathers are losing their coating.

He tries stretching them. The sensation's unreal, like nothing he's felt since that shapeshifting event.

"How long d'you think we'll keep these?"

"Couple hours, if we're lucky. Couple days, if we aren't." They're not liable to last through all of Christmas, he's hoping, but he can't really know that for sure. He can't, because that was one event out of many, and it was the only one that lasted that long.

He has no idea if it's necessarily healthy to go ripping feathers up like he's about to go up in a molt, but it sure as hell can't feel pleasant. Sprouting a whole pair of new limbs is never an easy thing, to no one's surprise.

"I ever tell you about how Christmas here is kind of an ordeal?"

Jay winces. An ordeal. Between the Mirrors and the spiked cookies and the infighting between the queens and the party that nobody wants to take credit for, "ordeal" sounds about right.

"Every year? I mean, is it always like this?"

He gestures to the mansion below them, to the gumdrop forest and the apparently edible birds, and one of his own wings helpfully stretches out as well, as if for emphasis. It's looking a little less patchy, but hell if he recognizes what kind of wings they're supposed to be. Probably nothing interesting.

"Not always like this, no. The mansion doesn't always turn to candy and we don't always have cookies that turn us into little fucking birds." Jay's are brown. Can't say for certain what species they might belong to. Can't say anything at all, as a matter of fact, seeing as Tim has no idea what species his wings belong to either. He's not what you'd call a birdwatcher.

"But last year, we kinda had these...dreams. For weeks. Real vivid. Felt like we weren't sleeping at all."

So not a terribly huge shift from the norm in that respect.

Great. So they're just lucky. Even as he resists the urge to reach back and keep picking at the feathers that are just coming in, he can't keep himself from fidgeting with the wings themselves. He keeps readjusting them, stretching them, feeling the weird scrape of a pair of new limbs against his back.

Vivid dreams for weeks. They must've been significant enough for Tim to point out, but Jay can't resist the urge to ask the obvious: "How's that any different from...y'know. 'Normal?'"

He is definitely not thinking about the sound of Alex Kralie screaming inches from his ear, dripping blood and pus from a pair of hollow eye sockets. He is in no way thinking about the feeling of Tim's hands crushing his windpipe, the flat-blank look in his eye, played nightly in high definition. And he's absolutely not thinking about Jessica.

"I mean, they were...it wasn't dreams of just anything. It was dreams of Wonderland. Like, another Wonderland. One where the White Queen ruled over everything. And everyone seemed to really love her. Like, even the Mirrors."

His tone has sharpened from idle and thoughtful to concentrated anew. With the Red Queen's return, with the idea that the Queen of Hearts didn't issue the invite and neither did her sister, his theory that the White Queen is still around has only swelled to prominence in the back of his mind.

It takes his mind off the humiliating situation, at least. His wings flick idly, as though possessed by a mind of their own, as Tim scowls at nothing at all, lost in the hot-bright routes of memory.

"But no one remembered anything about home. I mean, anything. They all thought they'd always lived there."

This is something. This is something. Last Christmas, more about the White Queen, and as soon as this Christmas rolls around, those invitations show up. He remembers back to what the Queen of Hearts told Georgia: "She blends right into the snow."

He doesn't realize he said it out loud until it's too late.

"I mean--" His wings twitch, hiking up along with his shoulders. "It's not really a pattern, but it's a little weird to be a coincidence."

There's so much about what Tim said that Jay wants to dissect. The memory loss, the dreams, the fact that everyone loved her. Who is the White Queen, really?

"There were these jars, see. Locked room, full stop. These...I think they were memories of who we were. People who got them out could open them up and return one memory to someone else."

Something he had to put together from hearsay and mutterings after the fact; he didn't have anyone worth sacrificing for, at that point. He didn't have much of anything but the vague, unsettled itch of perpetual displacement across every inch of his lungs and the vague hope that this would be one temporary stop on a longer road that would take him back to where he had to be, so he could finish what he'd started.

But it hadn't, and he hasn't.

And so here he is.

"Alright." He's looking down at the tracks in the snow, but his eyes are unfocused. "Alright, so I guess we should count this as a possibility if she comes back. The White Queen, I mean."

He ruffles his wings, longer now, and it blows the snow into strange arcs.

"Normally I'd say her being alive is a good thing, but..." He looks up at Tim, cringing briefly in place of an actual answer. "You think we'll forget that thing about the jars? If we get...wiped?"

"I have no idea." He has no idea if her being gone is a good thing. Sure, people seemed happier, but they were only really happier because every memory of their lives at home had been scraped away. No events, no calamitous fits of despair, no Mirrors trying to self-sabotage. Just people being absurdly content with their lives in Wonderland, having had their memories of everything else, of anywhere else, hollowed out and displaced.

He yanks a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and sets one alight with a grumble.

"We're always five steps behind with anything Wonderland throws at us."

That answer's about as unsatisfying as they come. He'd like to say he's used to that by now, though.

Back to another thing that caught his interest.

"Winter...and, I mean, snow in particular. You think that's important?" He pans the camera, awkwardly held in one hand that emerges from his backwards jacket. "Given that your dream thing was the same time last year, and the invitations showed up this year, and the whole...thing with the Queen of Hearts making that snow joke. Could just be a coincidence, but maybe, I dunno. Could be worth looking into."

"See, that's the thing." His tone lowers, fierce and intent. "You saw the way those two were fighting over on Mirrorside, right? Neither of them sent out those invites. We've got no clue who."

He has his theory, naturally. It's a hell of a theory, considering everyone he's talked to has insisted that the White Queen isn't coming back. But the nature of the dreams from the year prior - the fact that the felt atypically vivid, even for him, and the fact that they may as well were some parallel reality while it lasted - has him not-so-privately thinking otherwise.

This is new. Jay doesn't think he's seen Tim get this invested in solving something since...honestly, Jay doesn't think he's seen this before. Even when they were sprawled across neighboring hotel beds, picking carefully through numbers and letters for patterns, Tim still gave off this sense of quiet apathy. Like, they could solve the mystery, or they could just go to sleep or something. Didn't really care either way. The closest thing Jay can think of is the time Tim insisted they go to Rosswood, back before he learned just how bad things could get.

But here he is, gathering evidence and discussing it with an intensity that's downright contagious.

Maybe it's easier when the mystery's not so close to home.

"Yeah--yeah, I saw it. There's definitely something going on there." He drums his fingers across the top of his camcorder. "And whoever made those invitations seems like they were trying to mimic the Queen of Hearts. I mean, there's one major suspect we both know, but...but what would she stand to gain from that? Is there anybody who'd get something from that?"

“Maybe someone who wants us to think she’s gone, but isn’t.” Is that paranoia? Reasonable suspicion? He lost the ability to delineate between the two a long time ago. Maybe this is something he can finally do on someone’s behalf that won’t be completely doomed from the outset - help the Mirrors, whether they’re expecting it or asking for it or not.

They’re victims.

“Maybe someone who expected the two of them to blame each other instead of looking for who’s really responsible.”

"And maybe someone who'd benefit from having the two of them at each other's necks."

Jay's wings fluff up for a moment as he paces.

An idea strikes him, and he stumbles to a stop before turning towards Tim. "And someone who'd benefit from having all of us in one place."

"Yeah." The absurdity of the image is probably enough to make any outside observer split a rib laughing at the pair of them - speculating aloud with their giant fucking wings fanning out behind them, parodies of angels, except the idea of either of them counting as something heavenly is nothing short of utterly tasteless.

"Look." He lowers his tone, as if anyone might be listening. Not that anyone is, but this kind of paranoia has historically been well-founded. "I think we should meet. With George, Shaun, Alphys - everyone from the last time. There's...stuff I think I found out."

Jay nods.

"Yeah, same." He shifts, wings ruffling as he attempts to roll up one sleeve. He's got a somewhat uncharacteristic red bracelet around one wrist. "Not sure what exactly this does, but the Red Queen's got it on loan to me until after Christmas. Might be worth checking out."

Unless it's a bug. He hopes it's not a bug. Is it a bug?

He looks down at the bracelet, and then to Tim. Jay taps the bracelet twice and silently mouths: She could be listening.

"She...wow." He blinks. That's new. She just handed it to him? Free of charge?

She's about as opposite to her sister as it's possible to be. But then, as Jay makes a not-so-subtle point of indicating with a finger to the round band around one sticklike wrist, it might not be so free of charge after all.

"Right," says Tim. "So I dunno about you, but I vote that we wait until after these things wear off before we do."

He twitches his wings with as much frustrated resignation as he can muster.

Jay pulls his own wings in close to his back.

"Yeah, that'd be the ideal."

He stands still for a bit, knees locked, huddling beneath his jacket.

"...Now what? Do we just stand up here 'til they wear off?"

Because the roof is cold, and the roof is boring, and the realization that that's enough to be pissed off about is enough to cause Jay to take a second to think about his relatively cushy new Mansion lifestyle. Free food, free roof over his head, and the only drawback is temporary memory loss and sometimes having to deal with a pair of stupid wings strapped to his back? Not a bad deal, all things considered.

"Unless you feel like finding out what happens if you take a long walk off a short rooftop with these things on." The thought seems to ruffle his feathers, quite literally, and Tim scowls. How's he supposed to be standoffish and resolute with these things telegraphing his actual mood? Bullshit. Bullshit.

Not that he's gonna share the fact that he was wondering the same thing, until Jay showed up.

Wondering if they would break his fall.

"I mean, they're wings, but...yeah, I hear you."

Not a chance he's diving off a rooftop without a guaranteed safe landing, and from the way Tim's puffed up like a pinecone, seems like he agrees.

It doesn't stop him thinking about it, though, and he stretches out his own wings, tries to see if they catch the breeze. Not to take off or anything. Just to see if they maybe, possibly could. Under different circumstances. After a minute or so, they catch a gust of wind, and the uneven force is almost enough to knock him over.

He pulls them in tight, rights himself, and shoots Tim a preemptive glare, arms crossed.

"And people aren't hollow-boned," says Tim. People just aren't the right shape and weight for wings to be slapped on willy-nilly with the expectation that they'll just work like they're meant to. They're whole new appendages here. He's not about to go throwing himself off buildings with the expectation that it'll go over well.

He's not that stupid.

"Though I guess you could try gliding down, see how that works for you."

merry christmas; i could care less [ open ]

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