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

"It's your job to stay alive." He can do that much for him, can he? The Real Jay isn't much for self-preservation, but he's been doing impressively better than Tim would've expected. He hasn't done the math, but it seems a whole hell of a lot like Alex kicked it at least once by now.

He's better off not thinking about Alex. For a multitude of reasons.

He believes it, too. Jay can see that, from every twitch, every inflection. He wants Jay to be safe. He wants him to get better. He thinks he can fix him, this imperfect creature, this filthy apostate--

"How much do you know?" He presses down on the cap, twists it until it slide-clicks open and the pills rattle against each other. He winces.

Listen.

Listen.

LISwTElotN.

He clicks the bottle shut.

"Do you know what happens when people like us die?"

"I know that she doesn't own you. The Queen." His tone is steady, his stare unblinking. The Mirror flinches with every noise, like existence is painful. Maybe, for him, it is. He has no idea what this guy's like. He just knows that he defaults to a whisper, like the rustle of paper over dead leaves.

"I know that she acts like she does, but she's just someone who put herself in that position. She only has control as long as she can keep you moving against each other."

Is this news to him?

It was news to Tim.

It's not new information, not entirely, but it's the first time he's heard anything like it spoken aloud, and his attention latches onto it. They can speak of death later.

Is this the safety being Real affords him? To mention these things so casually?

He observes. He archives. That is his Purpose. But this information is too sensitive to risk theft. He'll have to commit it to memory. ~~And if he forgets, let ̷i̴t̵ b͟e d̕oņe according to Its will.~~

He switches off the camera. Slowly, he reaches up to the folds of his borrowed hood, switches off the microphone hidden there. He looks Tim over carefully for any sign of a recording device. Nothing.

(Can he trust an apostate, a liar? In these things, yes. In these things they are br̼̙̻̥̞ot͚͉̟̤̠̟͘h̴͙e̛r̲̤̞̞̞̰s̥͎̺̖͖.)

He draws close, closer, closer, and when he speaks, his voice is nearly inaudible.

"They say she wove us, and she can unwind us. She made us, and she can Unmake us."

He pulls closer, his voice somehow even softer. He pulls a hand up to cover his mouth. No cameras. No eyes. He has to listen.

"She is not my Queen."

"She didn't make you." And he can say that freely now. Is he signing the Mirror's death warrant, speaking this aloud? Or is he initiating a revolution, if he can? "You would've existed with or without her. She just put herself in a position where you'd be too busy fighting each other to realize that."

There's a plea, an offer unspoken wound in around there. The promise that he, and none of the others on that side of the glass, would have to be alone if they chose to oppose her.

They don't deserve to have to be slaves to someone as capricious and cruel as that. No one does.

He’s saying too much, too loudly, too close to the mirrors. The Mirrorside cameras trained on the glass might be useless when it comes to audio, but he doesn’t want to hinge his safety on the chance nobody Mirrorside can read lips. The missing footage from his camcorder he can explain, but it would be a lot harder to account for missing security footage if someone comes asking.

Jay brings a hand up to cover his mouth again, feigning a cough, and whispers: “I’m going to attack you, and you’re going to get away, and you’re going to lead us both outside. Now.”

He doesn’t give Tim a chance to respond.

Instead, his face twists into a snarl as he lunges, aiming to shove Tim against the wall. “That’s treason!”

He barely gets time to react.

A whispered warning before Jay surges forward, slamming into Tim with the impact of a taller but much more wiry body against his own. He stumbles more than he should, maybe overselling it, but they both know that Tim's more than capable of overpowering Jay in a fair fight.

"It's true!" Are people really watching them, right now? Are people really...?

Doesn't matter. They're still selling it like pros, huh? Better actors than Alex figured them for.

"It's not treason, Jay!" He's squirming up against the wall, working his way up to try and telegraph his intent to make a break for the door.

Jay shoves a hand against his collarbone. From the right angle, it may look like it's around his throat. "You're a liar!"

(Isn't this fun? Getting to play back memories the old-fashioned way, actors on a stage?)

Jay sees the way Tim's attention twitches toward the door, and he catches his eye. He nods once, a tiny jerk of the chin.

Then, he allows the hand near Tim's throat to slip, like he tried to adjust his grip and miscalculated.

He shouldn't be surprised that the Mirror's a capable enough actor to pull it off. He could pull of Jay with no problems. What is he so afraid of? That someone might be listening? It's an old fear, old enough to prickle at Tim's instincts and allow him to play along with no arguments.

He sprints for the door. Down the stairs, out through the entrance hall. When they're outside, proper, he'll let the Mirror catch up, like his initial burst of adrenaline started to flag.

The little man can run fast. Jay barely to restrain himself as he follows behind.

(Granted, the fact that running is an entirely new experience for him--and that he finds himself stumbling on the staircase like a newborn deer--shouldn't necessarily be discounted.)

Once they're outside, a few yards from the Mansion and farther from the previous location of the Rabbit Hole, Jay allows himself to catch his breath. He checks over his shoulder; nobody's close enough to listen in.

It's cold, cold enough that he can see his breath fogging in the air. And it's colorful. The forest isn't right, but it's there, Real and thick and painted instead of a dull greyscale.

Finally, he tears his attention away, turning to Tim with a thin smile.

"Now, about the Queen--" He cuts himself off, still breathing heavily. "You say she didn't make us. Why?"

“Because I asked.” He’s breathing a little heavily, but now that they’re clear of...whatever the mirror thinks they’re clear of, they can both speak a little more frankly. Their breath chills in the air, white puffs curling out of adrenalized lungs. The Mirror is impressively, unnervingly uncoordinated. Does he never run, on his side of the glass?

“Who do you think is watching, anyway?”

Jay internally debates how he should word his answer for a moment, but the desire to preen wins out. His smile widens. “Me.”

After a pause for effect, he continues.

“But if the footage exists, then someone else might watch it.” He clears his throat, still worn from his offended-toy-soldier routine. “If it’s not on camera, then I won’t have to cut it. Making those cuts look seamless is harder than it looks.”

He refuses to let Tim drag him off-track, though, fun as it is to show off.

“Now, who did you ask?”

He makes a mental note of that - scour the Real side for cameras and bugs of any kind, once this is over. The effort and time it must have taken to plant them means it’ll have to be a significant setback to have that all dismantled - especially since crossing over is such a risky endeavor.

He plays the skepticism; eyebrows lifted, dry. “You.”

Tim folds his arms across his chest.

“If you’re always watching, wouldn’t you already know?”

He very nearly explains: The security cameras have weak microphones. They’re only on the Mirror side (for now), with the exception of the weatherproof bug planted near the former Rabbit Hole. Some unused rooms aren’t currently being monitored.

He catches himself, however. If none of the Reals know the limitations of his current surveillance system, he could be anywhere. Or, even better, they could assume he has blind spots that don’t exist and let something slip in full view of the cameras.

“Humor me.” And, in case he needs proof that Jay is watching at all, he adds a small aside. “Nice to see you using your birthday present, by the way. The Real me would be touched.”

“What kind of liar would I be if I showed my hand?” He’s aiming to keep Jay alive, as per usual, but that doesn’t mean he’s liable to trust him right out of the gate. Caring and trust seldom go hand in hand for people like them. They both know that full well.

He is a liar. Always has been.

“You know me better than that.”

Now, that’s just cruel, dangling information over his head like that just to tug it away. Then again, he’s a Tim.

“I do.”

He snorts, visibly frustrated. “So you believe the Queen of Hearts wasn’t the one who made us. Did your mystery informant tell you who did?”

He says they would have existed with or without her, but he has no parents but the Real Jay’s, and those memories are patchy as it is. He wasn’t born. So he must have been made.

Edited 2017-12-21 23:41 (UTC)

Sorry, Jay. Wanting to help doesn't mean a guarantee of trust and a surrendering of everything he knows. If it did, he'd be screwed a hell of a long time ago.

"We did."

He taps at the center of his chest, to indicate the whole of himself, and shrugs.

"You're...extensions of us. I guess that means that when we're here, you're here. You exist because we do."

No. No, that’s bullshit. The Reals are just—they’re just people, they can’t—

When a Real thing goes home, the Mirrors never stay. They disappear at precisely the same time.

When a man steps away from the mirror, he continues on with his life, but his reflection doesn’t go anywhere. It ceases to exist.

Maybe he’s taking the metaphor too far. Wonderland follows rules, but the rules are its own.

(But it fits. It fits.)

(~~He just wants to go home.~~)

“If Her Majesty just...stopped...would anything change?” It comes out flat, blank, barely a question.

"I dunno." That one's an honest answer, at least. "I just...you're a part of this world. Like, this representation of our connection to it. She makes you dependent on her, but it doesn't have to be that way."

It doesn't have to be like this.

Echoes of words he called out to another man, fleeing through the hallways of his childhood with a tiny flip-knife in hand, as if that would be enough against a gun.

Please, god.

Please.

Let him be capable of saving something.

Tim’s words are both fascinating and cloyingly sentimental. They don’t have to live like this. All they need to do is simultaneously agree to live another way that will satisfy everyone. Simple as that.

“You’re saying we could live like you.” Jay lifts an eyebrow. “Kowtowing to a different queen.”

Edited 2017-12-22 10:25 (UTC)

"Yeah, okay. If you wanna pretend those are the only two options, sure." He's being deliberately obstinate, he knows, but that's kinda what happens when you're told that your entire existence has been shaped by a set of standards that never needed to apply in the first place. Not a great feeling, huh?

Yeah. He'd know.

Fine. He's being petty, simplifying it to two options because it's easier to take potshots at the Reals that way. This is absolutely why he's doing it and not because the sheer number of paths branching out from the moment the Queen is deposed, spiraling and splitting like some vast fractal, is a terrifying thing to consider. Paralyzing.

He can't plan ahead for something like this. He can gather information, prepare for the worst, and hunker down in a corner to protect himself, but that's far from foolproof. He needs to keep himself safe. He needs to keep the footage safe. And, if it's not too much of an inconvenience, he'd prefer to keep dear Tim Wrong safe as well. The greater their numbers, the greater chance they have of being acknowledged, of being given further instructions, of hearing the static buzzing in the back of their skulls spike and whine and speak.

He needs to get out here when things aren't so...festive.

"It's easy for a thing like you to suggest revolution." Did he say thing? He meant person, clearly. "You've got no stakes in it. Could go a hundred thousand different ways, could end up with us half dead or three-quarters dead or more, but it won't touch you."

He fidgets with the camera, prodded by a latent urge to switch it back on.

"Not to say I'm not interested."

"Not sure if you know this," says Tim, dryly, "but the Queen of Hearts isn't real fond of us Reals, either. We're not invulnerable to her. She can still make our lives hell."

And she does, doesn't she? She sends the Mirrors out to do her dirty work and steal things like pills to the point where he has to convince a literal child that they really do belong to him before he'll give them the fuck back - but not before he's seized and made an ass of himself by running around with a mask on at night like an absolute lunatic.

"I'm not saying it'd be easy. I'm just saying that it's possible. I'm saying it doesn't have to be the way it is."

And that's not completely unreasonable.

(Assuming he's telling the truth, which...ha.)

Regardless, he appears to have someone on the Real side who wants him safe, which is definitely useful. He can leverage this.

"Whatever happens next, we'll have to keep it quiet."

"'Cause we're both so chatty?" He lifts his eyebrows, half a mild taunt and half a bite of amused commentary. Since when have either of them been anything but the obstinate victims of their own paranoia? Since when have they kept shit like this anywhere but off the books?

Though there is one small question. One small barrier he can't shrug aside.

"Does that include my, uh...better half over there?"

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