entrancelogs | + The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to You +

Entry tags:

+ The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to You +

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: Saturday, May 19th - Wednesday, May 23rd.
Rating: PG-13, warn if you're gonna go higher!
Summary: A catch-all for the Kyln / Sierra Madre event!
The Story:

For the duration of this event, the entire mansion will be part space jail, part apocalyptic wasteland desert with an abandoned hotel/casino. On the third day an escape route not previously discovered in the Kyln appears and breakouts can be planned...

...Only for everyone to find themselves walking through a large glass prison toward the toxic gas filled wasteland of a desert, the Sierra Madre. Does the prison look better than the toxic cloud outside? If you're stuck in the prison after dark beyond day 3, you'll be forced into and locked in your cell for the night. But at least locked away, nothing from the outside can hurt you. If you try to brave the actual elements in the desert it might be a little hard to breathe. The air has pockets of toxic gas and even a few seconds of exposure could prove deadly. And watch out for the Ghost People.

Inside the abandoned hotel/casino you'll find shelter from the gas and ghosts, but beware the holograms that are 50/50 with their attitude. Prison beatings, a beating from the holograms, which one Would You Rather? And whatever you do, don't try on the collars lying around unless you like to explode. Literally.

[ This is a catch-all for all your prison/desert needs! Please mark your threads clearly in the subject line with your character's name and either a cell number or just a location if you didn't feel like randomizing it or you're making a top level for a public place (like the dining hall or wandering the hotel/casino). Here's the plot post if you need it!

Have fun! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, maybe now's not the time to mention that his conversation with her during that event turned into a prolonged discussion regarding the finer points of Jay's failings as an investigator. The time he was caught in a lie about documentaries being filmed in hotels. The time he failed to account for the fact that his findings being put up on the internet would mean that literally anyone could access them. Both times, in fact, because once wasn't enough.

"She's not as scary as she lets on," says Tim, which is saying something considering Georgia has about as much dirt on him as Jay did, and could probably phrase it a far more inflammatory way. Granted, he can at least be grateful she hasn't thrown that up on a YouTube channel for the world to see, devoid of any moral commentary and leaving viewers up to substitute the narrative with their own where they saw fit.

But she also sat back while he teased her mercilessly about loving her friends.

So she's all right.

"Sure she'd be happy to hear you say that." Jay raises his eyebrows, the barest threads of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

George may not be as scary as she lets on--may--but she's damn good at hiding it. It's a good thing she seems to be on their side.

Well, she's on the truth's side, at least, and he can't argue with that.

"Seeing what her world's like...makes sense she'd be...y'know, like that." Jay watches, wary, as another camera dips over their heads. He doesn't speak again until it's out of range. "You know if she's worked out any plans to, uh..."

He tips his head meaningfully, hoping that's enough to indicate plans to get the hell out of here.

You know, she said the same thing to me once she met you.

That'd be an unwarranted snipe in a conversation that started in disaster and has ended up more in the realm of almost cautiously optimistic. Against all fucking odds. But then, they've both learned a thing or two about odds during this discussion. Luck.

"We're still figuring it out," he mutters, meaning they don't have anything of substance yet. "George thinks this might be something from Rocket's world, so he might have an idea."

"Wait, Rocket, the, uh--" He gestures. "Little raccoon guy?"

On the one hand, he's a raccoon. Raccoons don't belong in space.

On the other hand, he just hacked together that training simulation Jay's not planning to go anywhere near. Maybe space raccoon's not too far-fetched.

"I mean, I haven't exactly met him in person, but he seems like an, uh...Like, the prison part's less of a surprise than the space part, I guess."

"Yeah, don't call him that in person." Just as a warning. He doesn't know Rocket all that well, really - though he knows him entirely too well in some deeply uncomfortable respects, some horrifying parallels he honestly didn't need to know existed - but he has at least caught onto the fact that he is not exactly fond of being referred to as a raccoon.

George is on far better terms with him than Tim is, and for now, that serves Tim just fine. It's probably less awkward for all of them.

"But apparently he's broken out of a lot of them."

"Then...then, yeah." Jay's brow is still furrowed, but it's smoothing out. He's still mostly convinced. The raccoon-who-doesn't-want-to-be-called-a-raccoon probably knows the way out. Cool. Makes sense. "Especially if he knows, like, this prison."

He drums with the fork on the edge of his tray while he thinks, the fingers of his free hand tapping out a separate rhythm that doesn't quite line up.

"So we either talk to him somehow, without the, uh..." His voice gets quieter. It's not much of a change. "...Without the guards getting suspicious, or we just keep an eye on him and try to, uh. Raccoon see, ra--no, more like monkey see, raccoon...never mind."

Remind him to never try to talk like he's in a heist movie again.

"Assuming his plan doesn't, like, hinge on screwing the rest of us over."

He's not sure what kind of a guy Rocket is, but nice doesn't seem like it fits.

"I don't think so. He likes George." That...he thinks he likes George. She definitely likes him, and she's not someone who generally goes around admitting that she likes people, but Rocket got a mention in her song about the people she's come to view as close in some way or another, so that definitely counts for something.

He hasn't really talked to Rocket. Not since their, uh, forced honesty session on the roof.

He's pretty sure they both prefer it that way.

Sunburst's a pony, and Shepard's a deep space commander
To call Rocket a Raccoon counts as the deepest of slander...

Oh.

Good thing she's taking a stand with those Unflinching Journalist Morals on the whole raccoon thing. Granted, Wonderland's got, like, a hundred or so people, tops. When there aren't any events going on, you probably run out of real news pretty fast.

(Not that he'd know, right?)

"You think she'll be able to get anything out of him?"

He's still having trouble picturing how that conversation would go. He's still stuck back on how they get along in the first place.

"If anyone would, it'd probably be her. They seem...close?" He's guessing, and it probably shows, but there's no point in pretending otherwise. "I dunno. I won't pretend I like it here, but it's not really the worst event I can think of, personally."

Considering the way the last one went, the change is perfectly fucking reasonable, in his honest opinion. He'll take the claustrophobic, downright dangerous prison environment over a technological mind virus that crawls into people's collective subconsciousnesses and eviscerates them from the fucking inside out.

He'll take that any day.

Jay's forehead wrinkles at close. Like, how close is Tim talking, here?

Sounds like Tim's guess is as good as Jay's.

But, then, Tim eases it back. A breakout isn't guaranteed. Sure, they can try, or they can keep their heads down and ignore the way they can't keep still without a weight in their hand and keep going the way they've been going, and nothing's gonna happen. Unless something happens, then nothing's gonna happen. They'll just be marched back into their cells every night and marched back out to eat this slop every day for a weekend or so, and then it'll be over.

Nothing's actively trying to kill them. (Yet.)

Nothing's burrowing into their heads. (Yet.)

If this weren't a regular event, if an end weren't guaranteed, he'd be more inclined to fight Tim on it. But after the Reapers, it's a little easier to quell the instinct to keep moving. When keep moving nearly got his thoughts carved out of his head, it's a little easier to hit the brakes completely.

"Honestly...yeah." He snorts. It's not much of a joke. "Guess you and I know better."

If he sees an opportunity to get his camera back, though, he's taking it. Probably.

Now that his blood isn't boiling in his veins, now that he has the chance to look Jay in the eye and not quail beneath it, now that he's in his right mind - or as right as his mind gets, abstracted and fragmented and split apart along the seams as it always, constantly is - he can actually respond in some significant, genuine manner.

He glances away. Back again.

"...sorry, by the way." Sorry never sits right on his tongue. It feels like a cop-out, like a drape drawn over the hurt. It'll never be enough to actually smooth away the hurt he's done. The fact that he tried to set on fire the man he once bled and burned to protect.

The man he tried to murder his best friend over.

"For...trying to kill you. I know that doesn't make it easier, or better, but - I wish I hadn't done it, so."

Oh.

Jay's not used to this. It goes against what he's picked up, over the years; admitting you're wrong--like, fully, sincerely--just gives them a new place to drive the knife in. It gives the viewers--gives the internet a new way to mock you. If you can justify it, you're just as right as the next guy, so you're not stupid. If you apologize, you're just admitting it. You're giving up.

But they're not on camera--not in the old way. This conversation isn't getting broadcast to an audience of thousands.

(And didn't he apologize? That day he forgot, that day that Tim played back in his own voice. He was sorry. He understood.)

Tim's sorry. He wishes he didn't do it.

Honestly, the only thing Jay wanted to hear more than that was that he'd never do it again.

"Wish you hadn't either, so..." His field of view twitches away from Tim, toward the corner of the table.

No. It's wrong. Incomplete. He can't let Tim take full responsibility for this. He can't let Tim 'What if it's all my fault?' Wright take another thing wholly onto his shoulders, just because it's simpler.

"I--I mean, I shouldn't...I shouldn't've tried...shouldn't've gone in there. I'm the one--I got too close, and they got in, so it's--I mean, I get why you..."

Fuck.

"Sorry."

He should leave it there. He should stop.

But he keeps going.

"Feels like it's...like, when something happens, you have to do something. You have to keep--keep moving, keep making progress, or you're--or you're just dead, and you don't even know why. Like people are gonna say...you let it happen. But then this shit happens, and it's--like, just trying to do something almost got...it didn't accomplish anything. Just made things worse. Made you think you had to...y'know."

Jay apologized.

He remembers it, was able to issue said apology, word for word, because he'd replayed the footage enough for every sentence to be carved into his fucking soul from the sheer force and presence of it.

"Shepard told everyone to stay away," he says slowly, because if they're talking about accountability here, they may as well go the whole hog. Maybe Tim should've double-checked before setting shit on fire, and maybe he should've checked to ensure that Jay was actually losing it before trying to murder him, because if there was one thing he endeavored to be in his life, it was not being Alex Kralie.

But Jay should've never put himself in the crosshairs.

"Did you?"

"No."

It's forceful, edging toward petulant, and Jay hates how it sounds. No, he didn't follow instructions. No, he didn't make the smart fucking choice, Tim. He was curious. He thought he could get away with being curious, at least. He thought he was being careful enough to get by.

But near the end, there, when the Mansion was being devoured by twisted metal, when people started to turn against each other, when he had to stop carrying the camera--When did he stop carrying the camera?--Jay wasn't alone. It wasn't just him and the infected in the Mansion. Somebody else showed up with a book of matches, instead of hiding in the woods or in the tunnels or otherwise staying away.

"Did you?"

"Yes." It's said with an almost palpable incredulity - landing somewhere between what did you expect and I'm a paranoid freak with issues regarding being taken over by memetic mind viruses, of fucking course I did.

And yet, Jay didn't listen to a word of it. Or he listened too well, and took away the exact wrong lesson, which was, naturally, to go check out the crashed alien ship despite Shepard's threat of decapitation regarding anyone who approached it. Presumably he avoided being straight-up kneecapped.

Presumably.

"Yes, I - I ditched my phone and everything right after she covered all the basics."

"But you still went back to the Mansion," Jay insists, "just like I did."

The woods were safe. The tunnels were safe. Once they ditched their electronics, they could've gone into hiding and kept their heads down. They might've come out of it okay.

(But once the camera was gone, that awful itch set in, the conviction that anything he didn't record would be lost. If he stopped moving, things would only get worse. If he stopped moving, other people could get hurt, and it would be his fault.

Was that what sent Tim back there, too?)

"I went back to make sure that Shepard wasn't fighting those things all on her own. And I wasn't exactly unarmed."

Neither was Jay, to be fair, but he was acting - erratic. Skittish. Like he was talking to things that weren't there, like he was about to go springing at Tim over nothing. And then he did charge him over nothing, and Tim wasn't willing to take the risk that he was clean.

Paranoid to the point of self-destruction. That's him.

He turns away in his seat, trying to shrug away the memory as it slaps him like a gust of cold air: Shepard, screaming, dying, the stench of ozone mixing with smoke, how it was like seeing her burn -

"Not that it helped."

Jay's voice catches in his throat, caught between Tim, she's a goddamn space marine and I get it.

"I--I went back for the same--I mean, I was trying to help, same as you, sounds like, but the whole place was--"

His head's pulled in two different directions, caught between wanting to figure out what went wrong--what exactly meant he got a head full of Reapers and Tim just got a lousy day--and what happened to Tim and Shepard and the rest after he took that long walk into the woods.

The second wins out, for now.

"What happened, after I...left?"

Edited 2018-06-04 00:05 (UTC)

He swallows. He didn't see it happen, but he heard it, heard the way she screamed like someone being ripped apart on a molecular level, the way it was cut short by the sounds of someone opening fire and the sickening jolt in his chest when her murderer saved his life.

Only it wasn't really her anymore.

"She...they got her," says Tim. The words are flat. "They got her on the last day."

Jay hisses through his teeth.

(He's not sure what to think about the tiny flicker of relief mixed in with the horror. Tim made it to the last day.)

"I saw the...Afterwards, I saw the network post."

He shakes his head, drawing in a thin breath. That wasn't her. Worse, it was, her own mannerisms twisted up, edited, played back in the wrong order.

"Were they able to...I mean, did somebody...?"

Did they stop her, before it ended?

Edited 2018-06-05 04:32 (UTC)

"Yeah."

He has to close his eyes, because he sees it. He sees it when he sees her and when he shuts his eyes and even when he doesn't, he can still hear it. That sound of someone screaming as she dies, only it wasn't really her but it sounded like her, it drilled into the core of his head as she wailed like a woman set on fire.

He has to swallow it back. The bile. The lump calcifying in his throat.

"Yeah. They stopped her."

"That's..."

Good, he planned to say. The situation's straightforward enough. It's good that they stopped her. The Reaper got into her head, made her dangerous. She had to be put down, before she could hurt anybody.

But he's too busy thinking about the woods, him with a split knee and Tim smeared with ash. He could have asked for it. Before he could hurt anybody.

He's too busy thinking about Benedict Hall.

Before he could hurt anybody.

One shaking hand flutters up to his face, and he leans into it.

"Fuck."

What does he say to that?

Does he mention his hand in it? The fact that he soaked the forest in gasoline and she shot his improvised molotovs out of the fucking air, that she put two bullets in his kidneys and he bled out in the dirt, gasping, choking on the smoke of his own making? Or how about this: the sound of Rick Sanchez barreling into the firefight with the firepower to take her apart? Or this: the sound she made when she was sheared apart by something he didn't see, and is bitterly grateful for the fact?

The fact that he helped Rick kill her, obliquely, by thickening the smoke so her cloaking tech wouldn't hide her from him?

The fact that Rick is the only reason he lived until the very end?

"Yeah," says Tim heavily. "I guess...she asked someone to make sure. It's what she wanted."

She asked somebody ahead of time. She had a plan worked out for the worst-case scenario, so when she went into the thick of it, guns blazing, she could help as much as she could and do as little damage as possible.

"Hey." It's wary. "You think we should...figure something out? In case it..."

In case there's another event that screws with their heads. In case they're not as lucky the next time a horde of zombies comes shambling through. In case something else starts broadcasting, and the pills aren't enough.

~~In case that thing gets to him again.~~

Maybe, if they scrape together enough brain cells between the two of them, it'll go differently next time.

"So it doesn't happen again."

Edited 2018-06-05 06:01 (UTC)

"Like what? Hide in the woods? 'Cause that worked out real great for me by the end." Maybe if he wasn't so determined to play hero, to take advantage of the fact that his neurochemistry was just the right amount of fucked for his medication to actually offer some protection against the electrostatic trying to worm its way into his skull, then he would've lasted without needing to put himself in the line of fire.

Maybe Shepard wouldn't have ended up in a position where Rick could take her out, and he wouldn't have gotten his gut shot full of lead.

"What kind of plan could we possibly - " He has to stop. Stop, and release his grip on the fork so his knuckles stop blanching, and instead slide them beneath the table and clench his jaw. "...I just don't know how to come up with something for every scenario out there. Not when we don't know what's coming."

+ The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to You +

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cw: brief suicide ideation

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cw: that's not how mental health works, jay

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