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

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."

"It's bullshit," Jay parrots back. It's not mocking; he says it just as sincerely as Tim does.

He's built to observe, but not for her.

"Wouldn't want to be something else." He's being honest, and Tim's being nice. It's a Christmas miracle. "I'm fine."

He bets Tim will get a laugh out of that one. His own would.

"I just want to be me, as far away from her as possible."

"Well, maybe we can make that work someday." He means that, too, despite the hiccups and stumbling blocks. He has no idea where to start, but - but they've got to start. They've got to start with figuring out how to decouple the Queen from the Mirrors she's claimed as her own, and let them live their own damn lives.

It's what any living thing would deserve.

"Maybe."

They've got no plan, just information, which in itself may not be reliable. Sounds familiar.

"Until then..." He scrubs again at the stinging skin below his eyes. Salt is an irritant, and the cold air's just making it worse. "Priority is to keep from getting killed."

And he means killed. Unmade sounds terrifying in and of itself, but killed is more visceral. He's not going to die again. He's not going to die for the first time for real, and he's not going to allow himself to be Remade into something lesser.

"Yeah." They can agree on that much, at least. Keep from getting killed, or Unmade, or otherwise incapacitated. It's miraculous that any of them have lasted as long as they have, but Wonderland lends itself to that sort of thing.

Impossibility. Miracles. For better or worse.

"You, uh...I don't wanna keep you," he says, gaze dropping to regard his feet. "I mean, I don't wanna make my Mirror...suspicious, I guess. If he's looking for your or something."

Jay grimaces, rolling his eyes in the direction of the Mansion.

"He probably is." He cups a hand beside his mouth, conspiratorially. "He gets antsy when I'm not where he expects."

His fellow Mirror might only 'care' in the sense that he 'cares' about whether or not all the pieces are still in position, but Jay can work with that. He can even benefit from that.

And if he can make his own moves while his Tim's attention is elsewhere, all the better.

"Keep in touch?"

"Yeah." It's not much of a smile, the twitch at the corner of his mouth, but maybe the Mirror knows that it's about as close as Tim gets, on a day like this. It's faint and it's barely present at all, hardly counting as much of a smile, let alone a display of genuine amusement.

Antsy. His Mirror. Guy's maybe a bit of a control freak, when it comes to lining his plans up? Who knows.

"Yeah. I will."

That's a relief, and the fact that it's a relief isn't something Jay wants to think about too closely. He's got his hook into the apostate, and he's got a new source of information. Might be more reliable than his own Tim.

That's all it is.

He nods at Tim, turns, and starts toward the Mansion with his Real's camcorder in hand.

A few paces away, he stops.

~~He's no good at goodbyes.~~

He turns back, and in a motion he's never practiced before and isn't sure he's doing correctly now, he waves.

No Tim knows is any good at goodbyes. Whether you expect them or not, they always come suddenly, and they always leave you bereft.

The Mirror waves. One of Tim's hands slips from where it's been buried in his pocket, without hesitation, as he waves back.

It's not much, in the way of goodbyes. But it's something.

merry christmas; i could care less [ open ]

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