entrancelogs | and in the end if i don't make it on the list [ open ]

Who: Tim Wright and YOU! ...and guest
Where: It's a Wonderful Wonderlandland
When: January 19th - January 23rd
Rating: PG-13 probable
Summary: Tim's ideal world is simple. Incredibly simple. Except for the part where it's impossible.
The Story:

19th - 20th ; fantasy ; give me a boost over heaven's gate

Once he gets over how he has to shade his eyes against the diamond reflection of a too-bright sun, of the pumping lights and blinding colors of what looks like what might've been the end result if Lisa Frank took a couple tabs of acid and decided to start her very own apocalypse, he figures, correctly, that there's probably more to it than this. He prowls the edges of the bubble of increasingly absurd imagery, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It does.

He turns a corner, and there they are.

Sarah's hair falls back in a dark curtain as she laughs at something Seth just said. A little further - he can swear that's Jay there too, squirrely as ever, and the broad shoulders of a silhouette that couldn't belong to anyone but Brian.

But most startling, terrifying, unnatural than anything else, than the fact that they're there at all, is the way they all laugh and grin and joke freely and without abandon.

It's in the way they all look happy.

He doesn't breach that perfect world just yet. If this is his chance to watch what the world might have been without him, then why would he spoil it a second time? He can see them all like this, like they were meant to be, and no matter how thickly the nostalgia might build in his chest, how blindingly the ache of longing might tighten its stranglehold around his throat, he doesn't draw any nearer.

He simply settles down on the grass, draws his knees up beneath his chin, folds his arms around them and...watches.

21st - 23rd ; but i'm a missile that's guided to you;

Of course it wasn't real.

Apparently music is how you're supposed to destroy the things, but he's kind of lacking the instrumentation and an additional pair of willing voices for the sake of the three-part harmony that's supposed to be the kicker here. And, frankly, in his adrenaline-soaked, survivalist state, he doesn't have much of an instinct for memorization of lyrics from the Top Ten Hits From the Nineties listings in an off-brand version of a world not unlike his own.

It's kind of hard to be scared of zombies at this point, though. He'll give Wonderland that much; it sure knows how to desensitize.

He's not doing too badly, all things considered. You'll find him perched just alongside a sluggish river of viscous, rainbow-tinted water, having deftly dug a trench out from the sparkling earth and filled the bottom of the ditch with knitting needles, points up, to catch any one of the slavering horde that decides he looks interesting enough.

It's not a permanent measure by any means, but it's only until he can figure out how to get the busted karaoke machine he's been tinkering worth to start working again.

wildcard ; you're the one habit i just can't kick

[If you want a closed prompt with either Frisk or Tim, let me know here or at arrpee! Just because this is initially a Tim log doesn't mean I can't toss Frisk in if you wanna do something with them! I will match prose or brackets!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Can you fucking listen to yourself for two seconds? If I was the one saying that shit, you wouldn't just let that slide, Jesus." Is it really so fucking different when she does it? Is she really such a big fucking exception to the rule? Everyone here is an exception to too many rules.

He swipes a hand up through his hair with a low growl of frustration, trying to look at her, failing, because the defeated slope to her shoulders is too fucking close and too fucking familiar for him to weather it just now.

"If you gave even half the amount of shit you give about other people to yourself, we wouldn't be having this conversation - but you don't, and at this point, I'm not convinced there's a way to make you."

He's still trying. It's... not what she expected, honestly. All she's ever done is try to worm into his problems and make them worse. Then again, seems like that's the story of most of her crew. Just a bunch of disasters rocketing through space, saving the world.

"It's easier to care about other people. They don't live in my head all the time, you know?" But this is chipping down at her heart, his words affixing themselves in her mind. Can't be around to help if you're dead. But she's got to die eventually, right? Can't let them get so dependent. She can't carry the universe forever. "It's just... complicated. I don't have a lot of time to think about myself. Too many people need me, here and back home. Universe falls apart if I stop. And I mean that literally."

“It isn’t falling apart now. And if it is, it’s not on you to fix it.” Responsibly, accountability - he knows what that’s like, how it feels for that to sit heavy and flat across your guts. But even he stopped driving himself to a standstill after a certain point. Even he managed to scrape put a happy medium that straddled fixing everything you’ve broken and not sticking around to make things worse.

It’s bullshit. He has no right to be somehow more well-adjusted or self-aware than a fucking space marine.

“Just give yourself a fucking chance to not be whatever you think everyone else wants you to be. Maybe you’ll fucking learn something.”

Her instinct is to push back, to come back with some snappy something that proves her right. But she's not sure she has one for that. Is there anything she has that isn't built off someone else's opinion? She's an icon. A hero. Not a... person, really.

It's probably not the best to be continuing like that. But where do you build that identity she feels like she hasn't had in fifteen years?

"... Well, I. Guess there's always something to work on." She relents, quietly, an admission of something she doesn't really know how to quantify. "Don't know how much of me there is to that."

“Has anyone ever asked you? Has anyone just said, you know...what’s your favorite color? What’s your hobbies? What do you do when you’re not saving everyone else, and solving their problems so you don’t have to worry about your own?”

There’s probably no small amount of hypocrisy at work here, but fuck it, he’s done. He’s done letting this be the reason she thinks she can fix him, or help him in some intangible, impossible way when she can’t even help herself.

If you somehow think one conversation will shake her, Tim, this certainly isn't going to be the thing that makes her stop entirely. But that doesn't change the fact he's right-- completely so. People don't ask her things like that. Something so... mundane. There are so few facets of herself outside of her role, the conversations she has with even the ones closest to her being much deeper, much more vital.

"I've been a career soldier since I was 18. I haven't had a hobby since I was a kid." And that person sounds so far from her, so much like a girl she isn't and has never been. "I mean, I... I collect model ships. From back home. Have a bunch of 'em here, too. They're model kits. But I don't know if that's anything."

It's more than he was expecting, honestly. It's something, some shred of someone that she was...what? Fucking allowed to be, outside of the war, outside of combat, outside of the scent of fire and cordite and lechatelierite dust.

"Maybe you should start. Start...being something that isn't just what you think you should be to people who aren't even here."

Because she couldn't save Alex. She could never save Alex, and that's the crux of it. Tim saw to that, and Wonderland, and entropy; they were all conspiring against that baseless, hopelessly hopeful idea that she could somehow pull him back from the edge he was always teetering toward.

"People like Alex."

People that aren't even here. People like Alex. More ghosts, dug up from the graves she put them in. She remembers the panic in her throat when Legion appeared first; the dawning realization that there was a chance to see them all again, that the hope would always be there to have a little more time. It's not like she finds herself completely in stasis- her relationship with Toriel isn't a waiting game, isn't a fling. But does she know that outside of Thane? How long has her breath been held for Mordin's songs, Kadian's laughter? Even the reactions of those not dead, just not here; Wrex's open palmed slap to her back, Liara's smile, the calming feeling of Chakwas' hand on her cheek. There's so many people to miss. So many people she's wishing to see.

Shepard lets out another exhale of a half laugh, but manages to smile at him anyway.

"Guess so." She doesn't even know where to start with it, where you begin in scrapping together identity. But she... should. She probably should.

Shepard looks back towards Tim, giving a little two fingered salute, finally noticing their shared dream has receeded, for now.

"I should probably get out of your hair, lest I rez any more old trauma. See you around?"

He blows out a breath between his cheeks and lets his gaze skate away. Hikes his shoulders in an infinitesimal shrug. The likelihood that any of this will stick with her is failing the longer he goes on, and the ghost pressure of Alex’s specter in the corners of his vision, in the edges of his mind, still hasn’t faded away.

“Yeah,” says Tim at last, heavily. “Yeah. I’ll see you.”

He may not believe he's done anything, but there was something in there. Maybe he just tends to stick with her. It's hard to say.

"You gonna be alright?" Of course, she has to ask. She isn't expecting either of them to be honest, right now, but it's worth saying. "Catch up with me if you need it, okay?"

"I'll live," says Tim, which is closest to all right that he ever gets. He's not stupid enough to start going about asking for anything more than that. He knows better than to tempt fate, because when he does, that's when shit like this starts to happen.

He'd ask something like what about you?

But he already knows the answer to that.

So he simply takes his leave.

and in the end if i don't make it on the list [ open ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject