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

Condescend to him again, and you'll be eating shit, Jay. There's only so much he can tolerate, and that's one of his personal lines.

"If this is you quizzing me," says Tim calmly, opening his hand and dropping it back to his side. "Then you can take that somewhere else. Got it?"

Wrong move.

"Got it." His shoulders hike a little higher, his neck curving to make himself smaller. Don't hurt him, Tim. He's helpless. Just look at him.

"But I think it matters." His voice drops even lower somehow. "To our chances of making it through all this. If all this actually takes off."

That gets a lift of the eyebrows. The shift in body language is too abrupt and too deliberate. That won't fucking play here, Jay. Try as you might, you're no Alex Kralie.

And Tim isn't willing to be strung along for months on the promise of answers.

"Nothing's taking off," he says, sharp. "I'm giving you some answers. That's what Jays want, isn't it?"

Jay snorts.

"Yes." He'll grant him that much, because he's beginning to suspect that if he doesn't give up some more ground, Tim's usefulness will fizzle out even more quickly than it appeared. "Thank you."

He takes a moment of silence to think. Regroup.

"Are there any answers you want, Tim?"

None from you.

He shakes his head. He's finding answers, and he's finding them independent of any nudges from Mirrors. From Queens, yes, but - they're the ones in charge. They're bound to be a shade more reliable in places. A shade more unreliable in others.

"Answers are in pretty low supply around here," he says. "They're currency."

"Yeah?" He cocks his head. "I can help. Have to take what I say with a grain of salt, because you're a reasonable person, but here, now, off the record, I can help."

He shuffles, listening to the snow crunch underfoot. Tim says answers are currency, and for once, he's not lying. "You already gave me things to think about. Answered my questions. I can answer yours. Within reason."

A loud voice behind them catches his attention, and he turns. Nothing. Just people enjoying the sunlight. "Camera's off now. Doubt it will be again soon."

"I'm not helping because of an exchange rate," he says flatly. "I don't need anything back."

Especially if it's conditional, coming in with strings attached. He has people working with him, willingly, who aren't about to mince words for his benefit or cut corners to preserve loyalties.

It's the damnedest thing.

Like he said. He has his sources.

No. No, come on. It looked like they were gonna have a breakthrough, and then...this. This closing off. Liar. Apostate.

He says he doesn't need anything back. Another lie. He doesn't want anything back.

What does Tim want? Control. He wants to feel like he's in control of his life. Like his decisions matter.

Fine then.

"Okay. You don't need anything back." He says it as sincerely as he can manage.

Edited 2017-12-27 08:00 (UTC)

It might have sounded more sincere if it wasn't parroted back to him, like a parent trying to soothe a toddler's tantrum. Again, he has to fight back the flaring spark in his chest, the heat clenching his fists at his sides. The guy's not exactly had to make do in ideal circumstances. He's gonna be a little fucked.

There's only one thing he can really do for him, and that's about as basic as you can get.

"Just stay alive." That would be enough.

Then all is not lost.

The tension in his shoulders releases, just a bit. He's not smiling, but that's what comes more naturally.

If there's one thing this event has proven, it's that the rules separating the Mirrors and the Reals are flimsy at best. Arbitrary. And if what this Tim says is true, there's a chance they can all coexist, none more Real than the other, all beloved. All protected.

"And you stay safe, alright?"

A dead Tim is one step closer to a Tim under Her Majesty's control, and he can't allow that. Not after what he's learned. (What he thinks he's learned.)

Is that sincere? Is that just a pity offering, a peace gesture? Fuck if he knows. He's drawn this out enough. There are people still moving around and about the pair of them, and it's doubtful that any of them will be taking this up the chain, so to speak - but that's no reason to invite misfortune.

He's been pushing his luck as it is.

"You know me," says Tim, dryly. He almost asks if he knows where the Real Jay is before thinking better of it. He doesn't need to know that for certain.

That he does.

"I should..." He ejects the card from the camera and slides a blank one inside. "...probably set this back where I found it."

The other Jay won't miss the footage. Well, of course he will, but that's his problem.

"You know how to contact me." It's light, almost a suggestion. No use lurking over his Tim's shoulder the next time he talks to a Real. (Granted, that requires him to make the trek all the way from his room to whichever mirror the Reals decide to tap on, but maybe the sacrifice will be worth the information.)

"How'm I gonna know I'm talking to the right one?" he says, half-wry and half-sincere. It's not like the Mirror can just sign off with a familiar symbol, when Tim's own other half tends to favor that particular stance.

He can't be sure where the guy's loyalties even lie. He can't be sure of much of anything, besides the fact that he's probably screwed because of Tim. Because of the Mirror and the Real - because of everything they're capable of.

He owes it to him. Doesn't he?

A solid question. It would have to be something unique, difficult to guess from context clues, and not immediately noticeable if someone went through the footage.

"A..." He winces preemptively. "A code word. Maybe. Using code outright would draw attention."

The longer he stays here, the more code words he's accruing. Eventually, he's gonna need a way to keep track of them all. Eventually, but not yet.

"Probably," he says, in reluctant agreement. "And I'm guessing we should stay away from references to things like 'arks' if we don't wanna attract unwanted attention."

Jay's nose wrinkles. Arks would be less than subtle.

"Maybe...something along the lines..." He kneads at his forehead as he thinks. "Maybe the last letter of each sentence will spell out something. First message only. Hard to maintain over time, and easier to notice with repetition. The word has to be short. Fly. Ego. Fog. God. Shy. "

"The more complicated it is, the easier it'll be to notice," he says shortly. "If someone starts writing random, esoteric shit on mirrors, I know at least one person who's gonna be interested in working out what they're saying." A pause, and he adds, for good measure, "way more than one, actually."

Mirrors and Reals alike would have something to gain from that.

"Just - mention cookies in your first message or something. I dunno."

Jay winces. That was him trying to be subtle.

(Is that harder now? Now that spotting patterns comes easily as breathing, now that ~~Brian's~~ words make perfect sense, now that he can speak that way as well?)

(He'll have to be careful.)

"Once all this--" He gestures back at the mansion. "Clears up, it will be harder to work that word in subtly. I can try."

"Well, it doesn't have to be cookies. It can be...asking me about a word you forgot, or anything like that. I just need to know it's you, and I need to know that it's not someone else mimicking a code that's really easy to break."

This is gonna get them nowhere. Tim rubs a hand over his face, passing it up and over his head and through his hair, and sighs.

"Just bring up something about our conversation, okay? My memory's pretty bad, but it's not so bad that I won't remember."

"That..." He stares at the patterns in the snow as he thinks.

(There's a crowd talking to the left of them. There's someone walking behind them. The Mansion door opens and closes. There are circular tracks from where Jay dragged his foot while talking. Tim has an uneven patch of footprints where he shifted while speaking.)

If they keep referencing the same point in the conversation, it will make things difficult, because as soon as a pattern shows up on video, someone else will be able to mimic it. If they spread out their references, through, it could be their safest bet.

"That should work."

This is the point where they say goodbye, isn't it? It's a shame, given that they just met, but there's always the ball. Jay's not used to crowds, but they can't be too difficult to manage. It's like one person, but more.

"Pleasure meeting you in person." He forces a crooked half-smile out of politeness, but he doesn't hold out his hand. He doubts Tim would be any more fond of a handshake than Jay himself.

It really was a pleasure to meet him, though. Just watching could only teach him so much.

Pleasure meeting you in person.

Despite the hiccups, despite the differences, despite the way he's managed to trip-stumble right over one of Tim's own personal boundaries and dragging himself through the best and worst of him, it almost sounds sincere. Maybe it is.

He's a Mirror. He was created because Jay exists in Wonderland. Technically, he's existed...what? Two, three times over, now? He probably doesn't remember. He probably doesn't remember, but maybe he knows enough about it to deal with the crushing existential terror of it all.

He's a Mirror.

A victim, like any other Mirror.

"You're not...alone in all this." He said as much to the Real, and it's not like Jay took it well at the time, but it doesn't mean he doesn't mean it. "You know that. Right?"

He remembers hearing something similar, before. They're not his memories, he knows, but they're all he has. They're the only thing that makes it feel like he's been around longer than seven months, and they're the only life he has outside the Mansion.

Back then, he remembers bristling at it. It felt condescending, like Tim thought he knew what was going on in Jay's head better than he did. Like he wanted control. Like he was pretending Jay was sick just to make himself feel better.

Now, though? Outside the false memories sewn into his head?

These are the nicest words anyone has said to him in his whole life.

He's not sure how to process it.

He didn't expect to have to process it.

They're just words. They're vague enough to mean anything, really. They're platitudes. They're senseless. They're not going to keep him from being Unmade when the Queen's standing over him. They're not going to keep him from being Marked. They're not going to bring him back ~~home.~~ They're not going to help him in any tangible way.

The skin around his eyes is stinging. He swipes at it, and his hand comes back wet.

Meaningless.

Malfunctioning.

He grits his teeth, and (The wind is rustling through the leaves but the sound is wrong. He knows the sound is wrong. The Mansion door opens and shuts. He can hear noise from inside; someone opened a window, despite the chill. The air is sickly-sweet. There is birdsong.) breathes.

He needs a minute.

Has he never...

No. Of course he hasn't. He's willing to bet that the Mirror's never heard anything remotely nice or affirming in the least, even if it's as neutral and simple as you're not completely alone. The Mirrors don't generally deal in compassion, and the Queen of Hearts? Well, it doesn't serve her agenda to encourage that sort of thing.

Of course it's gonna hit him where it hurts.

The Mirror scrubs at his face, at his eye. Like it hurts.

"It's bullshit. That she has the Mirrors going at each other, just to keep them in line."

He makes a quiet hissing noise through his teeth, speaking before he remembers the right word.

(Someone's close enough for him to make out snatches of conversation. '--freezing out--' '--really thought--' '--don't do--')

"Prisoner's dilemma." That's it. That's the answer. "Rational to cooperate, but if you don't know what the other will decide..."

His voice is even scratchier than usual. He hates it.

"I'm not saying that there's not a reason for it. I get it. You do what you have to, to survive." He'd understand that, right? Jay would know that he does. This Jay, and the Real one, they've both seen him scrabbling to do something poorly advised, something neither of them agree with in full, for the sake of getting himself and Jay both through all of it.

Not that it meant anything. Not that any of it ever meant a single damn thing.

"It's just - it's bullshit, all right? That she's not letting you be anything else."

merry christmas; i could care less [ open ]

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