entrancelogs | you are what you love [ open ]

When an Event happens, Clementine does everything she can to learn the details behind it (the dangers, the ways to keep safe, the areas that they might be weak to). She learns what she can about this Event, remaining on guard throughout it. Is she ever not on guard? At first, it seems like it's just breaking out into song, which is weird, but it's not a big deal.

But then people start to change.

She can feel it too (the darkness, the fears). She is not insecure, but she has her own fears. They start to creep in on her, but she doesn't succumb to them, because she's already accepted this is the way she is. It's not a fear. It's not insecurity. It simply is.

But if she doesn't want to be that person- if she doesn't want to be the darkness whispering in her head, she has to be better. She has to try, and she cares about people here more than she cares about anyone back in her own world. Clementine has to try to be sure they're okay. When she doesn't get a hold of Tim, she's afraid.

She's worried. He's one of the people she's closest to here. He's the only one who knows the entire story of the worst of what she has done and what happened with AJ. He listened, and he helped her, and she doesn't want anything to happen to him.

So she's out in the hallway (weapons in hand) as they always are, bag around her shoulder with what she think she might need, but then she sees- Her throat locks up. She sees him, but he doesn't seem okay (it's gotten him).

Is that- "...Tim?"

There's a distant awareness of someone else in the vicinity, which means he should probably do something about it. The shield of utter emptiness mantled over his features conceals the worst of it, but the occasional gap in the white noise allows a window to brows drawn tight, cheeks streaked and wet, shoulders trembling with the strain of suppressing something loud and heaving.

The words trickle out numbly, the movement of his jaw tired and mechanical.

"They could all be living normal lives, if it wasn't for me..."

It's his fault, he knows. He knows, he knows, he knows.

Why didn't he take the out when Alex offered it to him?

Clementine closes the gap as soon as she can. God, what does she do? What can she do? She has weapons, but he is just- he's taken by something. It's the same fears that threaten to take her own mind, drowning it in the static that has its grips on him. She hates that it does. She's scared for him- for how it's taken over him.

She moves closer until she stands in front of him, not knowing how to meet his gaze- not knowing how to make him see who it is.

Maybe she can't.

"Tim, it's Clementine." She speaks louder. Her voice sounds more certain than she feels. "It's not your fault."

The Lost Soul seems like it's struggling to answer in earnest, like maybe it really wants to.

"I'm a liar," he says. The word trembles, like it's on the verge of breaking. Maybe it would, if everything wasn't so numbed and drained and dead as he must be, as he is. "Alex could be living a normal life. So could Jessica. So could everyone else if it wasn't for me."

What was once an impassioned scream in the burnt-out room in an abandoned hospital has been reduced to a listless mumble - a tired acceptance of what he is.

A curse on everyone's lives.

Clementine shakes her head. It's a situation she has only heard bits and pieces about. Jagged pieces of a puzzle, she doesn't know how to put together, because she doesn't think she has all the pieces.

Her heart beats rapidly in her chest. She only knows she wants to help him. She wants to free him from this static that's taken hold of him, and she's worried she won't be able to.

"It's okay to lie, Tim. People lie sometimes. I lied before. Sometimes it's important to lie," she says, as she reaches out a hand slow, uncertain how aware he is of her, uncertain of how dangerous anyone is when they're under the influence of this static.

She's ready for anything. Her muscles tense even as her eyes are- They're kind (it's not many people who can bring that kindness out in her, not anymore). "Why did you lie?"

There's a question being leveled at him, one without an answer - or maybe one with an answer that he simply can't find in himself. He's not supposed to issue answers that people can understand, is he? He's no good at burying them in obscurity, at couching them in codes between lines of binary.

"It'll never be okay."

Maybe he should be lashing out. The urge is there, undeniably, but he lacks the resolve to implement it. What's the point? Why even try?

"I thought I could pretend, and they all paid for it."

"No," Clementine says quickly with an intensity to her voice that she can't shake out of it. "Listen, bad shit just happens sometimes. We try our best. You were trying your best to pretend. You weren't trying to hurt anyone, and sometimes even when we do our best, bad shit still happens, okay? We can't be responsible for what happens to other people all the time."

Sometimes they are responsible for it. It's a truth-

They talked about that together. Tim shared with her about a time he was responsible for killing someone he cared about accidentally, and she shared with him a time that she shot someone to prove a point. But not always.

They can't know how every choice they make will affect other people.

"It's inside me." His hands have worked up to the screen of white, gripping at the sides of his face - or whatever he has that passes for it, behind the fuzz of static shivering across his vision. "It's me, it's always been me, and I brought it into their lives. I should've done the brave thing and burned to death."

The words distort, as though being spoken through the rumble of digital corruption, his voice breaking as they pitch upwards.

"I should've burned."

"You shouldn't have. You shouldn't-" Clementine's too accustomed to loss- to terrified of it to allow the thought of it to even cross her mind, despite the fact Wonderland operates differently. She wouldn't necessarily lose him if something happened. People who have died end up here. He's referencing something that happened somewhere else, but she just- she doesn't like to think- that he could be gone at all.

Her eyes burn as she swallows past her own initial reaction- her initial outburst. Her voice shakes, but she wants to tell him the truth. She needs to. Her hand finally reaches out to rest against her hand as it grips on to the static as if that- as if that can help at all.

She feels desperate, afraid the static's getting worse (like it's hurting him worse).

"It's not, Tim. It's not inside of you." A tear slips down her face, and she makes an instinctive move to wipe it away even if she's afraid she can feel more coming. "How- How could you have helped me so much if it's inside of you? If it's you? You're really important to me. I care about you so much, and you have never done anything to hurt me. You just took care of me and talked to me and made me feel better. You've made me better. It's not you."

You've made me better.

There's something in her voice that sounds like it's breaking too, like it's perilously close to tears, and he's always been a stupid - he's always cried so damn easily, curling up in the corner and sobbing into his knees until his sleeves are crusted with snot because he didn't want to ask anyone for a hankerchief, because he's not supposed to be acting like a baby anymore.

"You can cry, you can...it's okay if you..." The static freezes, spits, flickers. It's brief, but it's there - a window in which his expression is stark and cleanly visible, before the veil snaps back over the utter desolation lingering there.

"Why can't I just stop?"

Clementine cries harder when he gives her permission, because it's familiar- because it's Tim for a moment, and she reaches out for his hands once he hears his voice beyond the static, but then- then it's gone again as if it was never there. Her hands still wrapped around his own hands as she does so. His expression crumples.

"Because of people-" Her voice wobbles. "Because I want you here. Please don't- Please don't stop."

Her hands tighten over his own hands.

It's a selfishness she does not allow of herself but here it is with her hands grasping hold of his own.

Hands clutching his own, fingers threading around his in a way that no one has ever -

People don't need him. People don't want him. He's tolerable at best. He's just some broken-up thing that shouldn't have been given the number of chances it did, who watched everyone die because he was too cowardly to do what he should have always done. He could have always just disappeared, walked out of the narrative, and no one would be the wiser. They would all be better for it, wouldn't they?

Wouldn't they?

Because I want you here.

The Lost Soul's voice is shaking.

It just can't understand.

"Why - why?"

Clementine's hands tighten over his own despite the urge to wipe her face from the tears, from her expression that nearly crumples as she holds tight to him. She doesn't let herself wipe them away. This is not a plea- She's used it before. She has used her being a child. She's used her vulnerability before to get what she needs to survive, but this- this is not that.

Not at all.

"Because- because you're my friend."

She slides her arms across her chest.

"Family. I think. You're family to me. I've told you things I haven't told anybody else cause you make me feel safe and like I don't have to be better. You make me feel like I just have to be me- like that's enough, and I- I'm selfish, I guess. I don't want to lose you. I get people lose people. You lose everyone eventually, but if I can fight for you, I will."

You're my friend, says Brian, all drunken smiles and grinning eyes, clapping him once across the shoulder and squeezing in that stereotypical college fratboy display of macho camaraderie he's witnessed a hundred times but never, not ever, once been a part of. He says it a dozen other times in a dozen different ways - in a late night detour to Tim's dorm after a one-word text message, in early morning hours spent staring disconsolate at infomercials playing silently on the television screen, in his gentle urging to get Tim to step out of his shell, even slightly, and his elated grin when those tiny efforts would succeed.

His first friend - splayed out on the ground, sallow and thin beneath rumpled folds of an unwashed hoodie, skull cracked open on the concrete.

Other people have used that word, fleetingly, and nearly pitched him into a panic. George snaps it over a video feed while the hallway outside fills with water. A dark copy of Jay rasps it out, dying among spirals of steam and flimsy wooden walls.

You're my friend, pleads Clem.

You're family to me.

The static flakes away like melting snow in the same moment Tim drops to his knees.

Clementine drops too when he does. Her hands are still on his hands. Her fingers still clasped around his own in the spaces between. Her expression crumples as the static fades away. She never thought she could- This is not what-

Her knees hit the floor. Tears slip down her face.

"Tim?"

She can't remember the last time she felt so young- so vulnerable, the last time she sounded this way without intent. She hates the sound of her own voice, but she can't focus on this hate when she just desperately needs to know that he's okay.

That's more important.

He's always cried too easily, too loudly, for too long. It overflows and leaves him a wreck on the floor, unable to stand the sound of his own shuddering, disgusting sobs. Don't be difficult, Tim. Throwing a tantrum won't make things any easier. Little boys aren't supposed to cry.

Making a mess, making a scene. A camera lens trained on him, and Jay's fumbling, fiddling inability to know what to do or how to go about comforting a grown man sobbing, nigh-hysterical, on a burnt, abandoned hospital floor.

Jay. He can remember him now, fully, in earnest, those ghosting shreds of nothingness burning away like mist in sunlight.

Suddenly, the memories are flooding back.

"Clem," he chokes, feebly, head still half-bowed. "I'm s-sor...I'm sorry, I'm, I'm sor - "

His grip around her hands tightens, as if he frantically needs to reassure to himself that she's real. Or that he himself is.

Clementine tightens her hold on his hands too when she feels the way he grips on. She shakes her head several times, recognizing his voice- recognizing him. It's difficult to work her way through these emotions. There are so many of them, and she's not used to feeling the emotions so openly.

Hell, she's not used to that- that being what's needed to help someone else.

She's hardly been used to helping anyone these last two years (and she never would have believed she could do so unless violence was involved- that's kind of been her worth lately). She's survived. That's all there was, and now- now she tells him the truth about how she feels and she can help free him from whatever the hell had gripped hold of him.

"It's okay. It's okay," she promises, letting herself fall into the intensity of that relief. "You don't have anything to be sorry about. It's just good to see you free of- of that shit."

Even if she knows it's still in the air, it's still in him. It's not drowning him in static like before.

He's sorry. He's sorry. He is. He never means to do this - to draw people close, to open a door that someone else could walk through. His efforts to ensure that no one feels alone the way he did, by nature, requires that he leave that avenue available to be traversed at a whim.

He's sorry.

He's done something terrible, and he did it to a child of all people, because the worst part of all of this is that he knows that she means it, and that she meant every word.

"You, uh." The words rasp - with disuse, with emotion he can't or doesn't want to name. Fuck, he's shaking. His eyes are too wet and his fingers can't seem to hold still, flitting up to grip her shoulder and then pushing up through his hair and then scrubbing at the heat on his cheeks. "Guess I - I owe you again, huh?"

Clementine rests a hand against his shoulder too as if sensing he needs the touch to feel like this is real- It's real like she's real. She can see how much he is shaking, and she's grateful she didn't- she's grateful the static didn't get her like that, because it seems terrifying.

She smirks a little despite the emotion still in her eyes. Her hand grips tighter to him at the shoulder.

"Pretty sure it doesn't work like that with people you care about."

It's how it would work where she's from. People tally up what they're owed.

"You need anything like water or- I don't know."

He can't summon an argument to that. He doesn't have - he feels like he's just run some hundred-yard sprint, his lungs heavy and his chest aching. Like he was missing something from inside himself, and it's just settled into the still-raw ache, skin growing fresh over a bleeding scab.

"I just need a...I need a minute." To laugh or maybe stop sobbing, and either way it's going to border on hysterical. He has no idea. He has no fucking clue.

The world's gradually coming back into itself, snapping into place.

His memory's still hazy, and that raises a cruel thought that sends a fresh jolt of panic into the center of his chest, stiffening his spine and sharpening his gaze into focus.

"I didn't - didn't hurt you or, or anything, right?"

"Okay," Clementine says, and while she keeps a hand on him, she does try to give him some privacy too by looking around to be sure there isn't anyone else static-like nearby. Some of them could be pretty violent from what- what she saw on her way to find him. She didn't recognize them so she didn't stop- she didn't stop until she found him.

She's glad she did. She doesn't know how much worse it could get.

She only turns back to him at the question, shaking her head quickly, wanting to reassure him. She knows how- Well, they both know what it is like to hurt someone they care about. She doesn't want him to think for a second that he has to worry about that, and even if he had, it's not like he- that static just took over.

"No. You didn't even try. Not for a second. Most everyone else who gets all static, they've been attacking people but you didn't. ...you don't remember what happened?"

Did the Event take that? They've talked about memory loss before too, and she doesn't want him to forget anything he doesn't want to.

"It's just kinda...blurry. Like, I dunno, a dream, maybe." The memories are there, he knows - it's not like the last few however many hours were carved clean from his skull and left an utter blankness there. If he strains, he can remember pieces, fragments. And then immediately wishes he hadn't. There's no protection against the utter desolation that lingers there still, the memory of being...

Lost, he guesses.

"Guess I'm pretty miserable at actually - actually trying to hurt people," he says, weakly, with the air of someone telling a joke. But he can't even lend a false huff of laughter to the attempt at levity. "It's always gotta be on accident."

Clementine nods. The static looked- looked unlike anything she's ever seen before, but he definitely didn't seem like himself- not wholly, not fully. Like the darkness had come over the rest, she breathes out, shaking her head at his attempt at a joke.

"Not a bad thing to be miserable at," she says softly even if it's shitty to hurt people accidentally. In some ways, it may be even worse, because it's not something that you can take ownership of. It just... happened.

She can feel her own awkwardness creep up again briefly even if her words are so genuine. "But you help too. I know it's all blurry but you've helped me so I wanted you to... remember that part at least."

"No, I - I do." It's not the remembering that's the hard bit, there. It's the admitting it to himself, the accepting of what she's just said. Not just friends, but - something that not even his mother was eager to impart, like the moment she knew her child was some broken thing, she was already preparing herself to sever those ties, drawing back.

He can't remember that word ever being used before. At him, for him. If she ever said it, it was when he was too young to recall it in earnest.

"You, you, uh...you c-called me..."

He can't say it. He can't fucking say it, even now.

"Family."

She fills it in without any hesitation at all once he brings it up himself. Despite her inexperience in general with expressing emotions, it's how she feels. It's what she would want him to know too. The words aren't words she gives easily.

She can't remember the last time she did. They're not words she feels towards- towards hardly anyone, but she feels that way about him. It's why she moved right into trying, trying at something she's never done before in the hopes it might bring him back- that it might be enough (and even more miraculously, it was).

"You're family to me."

you are what you love [ open ]

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cw: suicide ideation

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