entrancelogs | Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore

Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore | OPEN

Who: E V E R Y O N E (Including our 4th wall guests!)
Where: Everywhere, one both Mirror and Real Side!
When: December 12th - December 18th (WEEK ONE)
Rating: PG-13, warn if going higher
Summary: This year's Ewaymas celebration rolls out the way it usually does, with intense decorating, a sudden snowfall and...far more arrivals than usual! New faces and old fill the mansion - but why would Wonderland bring so many people at once? And why do some of them remember Wonderland?
The Story:

On the evening before December 12th, the captives of Wonderland might be awoken by a loud commotion. Some of it is typical Ewaymas noise, likely familiar to anyone who has been in Wonderland for more than a year – construction sounds and jingle bells as Wonderland decks its own halls quite literally. Garland and lights race down the walls and down the stairs, and stockings appear on the walls for each and every person in Wonderland, embroidered with their names. There are decorative candles everywhere, and all sorts of decorations for every conceivable winter holiday, even if it does not align perfectly to the dates of Ewaymas. Time isn't real, so there will be menorahs and dreidels and Star of Davids even though Hanukkah ended two days prior. And of course, in the front hall, growing straight out of the floor, is a large decorated tree full of ornaments for everyone. And as always, it will have snowed heavily overnight, bringing all of the snow Wonderland will have between now and spring.

There is a second source of commotion in the night though – the sound of a crowd.

Over the course of the night, dozens of new arrivals will appear in Wonderland. Some for the first time. Some wondering how they managed to return with their memories. Others stumbling in with no recollection of ever having been here. Some might be friends from other timelines, other possibilities, and some might even be doubles of people who are already in Wonderland. It's strange for Wonderland to drag so many people into the mansion at once, but everything seems to indicate that they are supposed to be there. They have their own network devices and even have their own stockings on the wall and their own ornaments on the tree – by all accounts, it seems Wonderland expects that they'll be staying, and is treating them like any other new arrivals. Please, make them feel at home and help them settle in nicely.

The first few days will be for catching up with old friends and enjoying the decorations and settling into Wonderland. However, within a couple of days the decorations will start to glitch, much the way corrupted computer graphics might. Lights might change abruptly from multi-color to blue or white, entire décor styles will abruptly change, candle flames will flicker on and off like broken fluorescent lights, and any singing decorations might loop on a beat or two over and over putting you into an eternal hell. Wonderland doesn't seem to be able to stick to one motif, and it can't stop changing. These glitches are occurring on both the Real Side of Wonderland and the Mirror Side.

By the 15th, these glitches will include entire rooms changing into different holiday scenes. These scenes will all be of characters at various winter holidays in the past, the present (in their world), or a possible future. At this point in the event, characters will still be able to navigate the basic mansion and be able to exit these moments easily. These scenes cannot be interacted with – Wonderland seems to consider them another form of decorating. Unlike previous events of this type, these scenes will not loop at first. They will play once, and then Wonderland will glitch and correct itself to be the room it is supposed to be. The scene might play again, but it will be in a different location if it does.

By this point, Wonderland is having an increasingly difficult time holding itself together in a way that makes geographical sense. You might exit one room, even a room that was not previously playing a scene, and find yourself in the kitchen or on the roof instead of in the hallway. You might open a door that you were sure led to your room only to see a ten foot drop to the grounds outside.

This is the mingle log for WEEK ONE! For more information on this part of the event or any questions, please head over to the plot post, or check out our Fourth Wall Master Post for your other Fourth Wall event needs! Prose or [action brackets] are welcome. Please clearly indicate whether your character is on the Real Side or Mirror Side in your top levels. And of course, have fun! ♥

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Tim shrugs.]

You can play atheist all you like. Doesn't make them any less capable of holding a conversation.

[Another thing he has going for him. Another thing he doesn't mention, because it doesn't deserve mentioning: growing up with the southern ostentation of evangelical bullshit as he had, there'd been the unspoken assumption that whatever he was, however he came to be this way, it landed outside the bonds of any god, if there was one.]

[People like him aren't beholden to gods.]

[He didn't assume that a demon would fit the bill either, but the trajectory his life took since then changed things. It changed a lot of things.]

Alright.

[Jay raises his hands and ducks his head, defensive.]

Just used to the one, is all.

[He winces as he hears the words, really processes what he just said. A childhood of Sunday services sure did a number on him, huh?]

Or the...the none, I dunno. But sure, gods. That actually talk to you.

[He bites back the question gnawing at the back of his head: They do actually talk to you, right?]

You have to talk to them first.

[Which Tim doesn't. But the question wasn't asked, so he doesn't answer it.]

[And anyway - it's his turn now. This whole deal of asking questions faded vaguely, when Jay learned how to ask them without really asking them. Or maybe just took a chance that Tim would be feeling generous.]

You do anything interesting in your spare time?

[The short, sputtering noise Jay makes could easily qualify as a genuine laugh. It's over in a second, but it's sincere.]

Alright. [He's still reeling. Jay is not sure he has ever, in his life, been asked this question. Maybe by some aunt at a family reunion when he was a kid, or something, but never a time he can remember.] I mean, interesting's debatable but...

I mean, I've been...wandering around, kinda. Trying to get out, or...or find somebody, or...

[He screws his eyes shut, kneads at his forehead. He's not thinking about it. He's going to stop. Right now, he's going to stop.]

But uh, not counting...back there, I've been doing a lot of, like, organizing the footage I got and stuff, but besides that, I, uh.

[Not much, if he's honest.]

Started...watching stuff again. Like, fil-- [Calm down, Alex Kralie.] Movies. Movies I missed, while I was. Y'know.

[Otherwise occupied.]

Read a couple...books.

[Some biographies. Some theory, which just reminded him how humiliatingly out of practice he is at reading dense, college-type material. It's only been, what, five years?]

Oh! [He sits up straighter, brightens as much as Jay Merrick's really capable of brightening.] Yeah, right, I got a cat. Archie. He's got...six toes on each paw, polydactyl.

[His voice gets softer.]

Still, uh. Still looking for him, now I'm back.

[It's hard to say what prompted a question like that - fleeting, vague, almost conversational. Almost like some sort of introductory, icebreaking bullshit. He's never been much good at that, even now.]

[He rocks his weight back, slightly, and takes it in. Organizing footage. Watching movies. Reading books - caring for a cat.]

[Unwinding, even if vaguely, is a good sign. It's more than he would have hoped for. Maybe it's something that a place like this a - mansion, expansive and sweeping and resource-rich - can foster of its own accord.]

...good.

That's good.

[There's almost something like warmth when he says it.]

[That's good.]

[No snide remarks about the time he spent on the footage, nothing about the hours (days by now, probably) wasted alone in the theater, nothing about how he should get his ass up and do something productive for a change. Not that Tim really did any of that to begin with, but it's hard not to expect it.]

[After so many calls from an old, familiar number, after a constant stream of notifications pestering him for the next update, after a monster and a murderer breathing down his neck for four years, it's hard not to expect it.]

[Archie seemed to like Tim, the few times they met in person.]

[That's good.]

[Jay clears his throat. Doesn't look up for a bit.]

You?

It's hard to have hobbies on a deserted island.

[Not entirely the truth there, considering he's taken up woodcarving to such an extent that it is, apparently, one of his skillsets. Arson probably doesn't count as much of a hobby, and he wouldn't admit it even if it were.]

Took to patching up old buildings. Trying to make a dedicated storage area. Stuff like that.

[So he's in construction. Back in construction, maybe. Jay's not sure how long he held onto that delivery job before...before Jay showed up.]

[Jay snorts.] Now you're here, maybe you can pick up needlepoint or something.

[He pauses.]

Alright, this is...weird, I guess, but the...'other you' or whatever, he, uh, actually played banjo. So...guess you can...like, you've got a lot of options open, is what I'm saying.

[Shouldn't have said anything.]

[But at least now he knows it's not just an island. It's a deserted island, one with old, presumably abandoned buildings. Maybe that's not a safe assumption to make, that they're abandoned, but at least it's a familiar one.]

He liked music.

[That's the strangest way to put it. He liked music. Like it's not something that Tim remembers, that Tim himself, this iteration of Tim, doesn't...]

[It's just not something in the cards. It's not something he can devote his life and spare time to, because his spare time has everything to do with reinforcement, with storage, with construction and reconstruction.]

He probably had the time for it.

[Jay watches him, silent. He liked music. He's drawing the line between the scruffy, weathered man in front of him and the incrementally paler, softer-edged one Jay spent the past year and a half pestering with questions, panicked nocturnal visits, and the rare moment of half-decent company. The one who liked music, the one who'd saved his ass more times than Jay liked to admit, the one who lit the Mansion up and nearly brought Jay down with it--this isn't that one. This one didn't live with the long stretches of boredom, the blank periods, the stir-crazy times when you had to do something with your hands or they'd wind up around somebody else's throat.]

[This one just didn't have time. It's hard to have hobbies on a deserted island.]

Yeah. He did.

[His gaze is down at the camera, digging his finger into the velcro closure holding the padding onto the grip. He'll write this all down later. It's fine. It's fine.]

Guess this could be some time off, assuming we can get you back. [His voice is flat. He thinks of something somebody said to him one of the first times he was laid off--maybe Brian, maybe even Alex, maybe someone he's forgotten.] Enforced vacation.

Vacation is supposed to relax you.

[Too many parts of him are wound up in worry. Even if time is stalled out while he's here, the way things are back home - is there any guarantee of that? There are too many people he needs to return to. People who aren't dead. People who he can still help.]

[That doesn't mean he can't spare whatever time he has.]

I'm not sure it counts as time off, when there's too much you need to return to.

[It isn't wrong, but it's uncanny. Tim must've really put down roots on that desert island. This is the same guy who worked extra shifts so he could quit his job, so he could spend months sleeping in grimy hotel rooms and the backseat of his car. Now he's got too much he needs to return to.]

[Then again, Tim was always the one who thought there was going to be an after all this. Always kept one foot in--not the real world, exactly, but the world other people lived in, the ones he passed on the sidewalk or on the freeway.]

[He's thinking of the right thing to say. Something like you must really care about them, huh? or we'll get you back. Something some jacked bodybuilder-turned-actor in an action movie would say to his buddy, before clapping the other guy on the back.]

[Instead, what comes out is a rueful snort and:]

I haven't got shit to go back to.

[No. Fix it, you self-flagellating, guilt-tripping asshole. He's found stability, and you're just gonna undercut that? You're gonna try and make him feel sorry because you got yourself shot?]

I mean--no, I've got--It's not. It's okay. We'll get you-- [Too late for that. The whole tone of the scene's thrown off.] You'll go back. You should go back. And it's not--for me, back--back there, it's better. Than it was. Like, I'm not...it's better. I've got--

[He's got a whole ████ to learn, to map out, even with his head buzzing like he's got wires buried in his brain. He's got people to find, blood-soaked and caved-in like him. He's got cracks to press his ear to, places where the walls fracture, where one day he might be able to slip something through.]

[There are questions left unanswered.]

[His voice softens as the realization sets in.]

I...do have something. To get back to.

[His eyes narrow slightly, but he blinks, and it passes. There's not much else to say to that - to Jay's verbal backpedal, the way his regret is both immediate and wholly palpable.]

There's no reason you couldn't show up, [he says mildly.]

[It's not that simple, he knows. There's no real means to control that, historically. People come and go and there's no predicting it, no mitigating it, just letting it happen in waves and praying, for once, that it doesn't happen to the people you know you'd miss the most.]

[Or the people who might miss you, for all the wrong reasons.]

[The locket is a warm lump against his chest.]

[Jay sits silently, considering it. At last, he shrugs, the barest shadow of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.]

After all this, what's...what's one more..."parallel dimension", right?

[He mimes the quotes.]

[He's been unstuck from central Alabama--his central Alabama--for ████, now. Even "home", as Wonderland defines it, isn't home. If he's honest, Alabama was never precisely "home", either.]

[Maybe this is just how it'll be, from now on. Maybe that's what happens when you start living out of hotel rooms, when your apartment and everything you left behind burns down behind you. Maybe you just keep wandering.]

[Maybe you just get to keep wandering.]

That's the idea.

[This place - this would make it his third. Fourth, if you count home. He doesn't, though, because it doesn't feel so much like "home," these days. He was as unmoored there was he was in Sol, as he feels here.]

[A set of islands where shit is always going wrong isn't much for a home, either.]

[But it has the most people who he can call friends than he can ever remember having in his life.]

Eventually, you find a place that sticks.

[Somehow, this Tim's found it. A place where he's got friends. A place that he actively wants to return to, enough so that even Jay's picked up on it. Getting him back there is right, written in red and underlined. Nobody belongs in Wonderland, but Jay's not sure he's ever seen somebody so clearly belong somewhere else.]

[Jay's not sure what that would even look like, for himself.]

[Maybe somewhere quiet, like the theater can get when he's by himself. Somewhere with real internet, ideally, and a place to back up his footage so it won't fizzle out the second he leaves. A place where he can be useful, where he can keep himself busy, where the dull times when he sinks into the mattress and forgets to eat are fewer and farther between.]

[Somewhere with people who get it, like Tim and Shepard and sometimes the Masons and Sans and Clem (though he wishes she didn't). Somewhere with cats, also; that's a given.]

[It's contradictory, what he wants. Quiet and company don't typically go together. Being safe and being useful don't go together, either.]

Or you don't, I guess, and maybe... [He digs a crescent into the tabletop.] ...I dunno, keep wandering around.

Some people do that too.

[It's the kind of thing he'd been resigned to, after the end of it all. After Sol, too. A set of anonymous islands, leaving him stranded and wandering post-mortem, seemed perfect for exactly that purpose. The expectation was never to find a home, or anything resembling stability.]

[It's not clear whether it's really stability that calls him, or something else. Something more akin to settling for what's good enough.]

[At this point, he no longer wonders.]

[This Tim seems like he's really been around. Jay didn't realize how much he needed--well, wanted, at least--the advice until there was somebody there to hand it out. Not like this stuff comes with an instruction manual.]

Sounds kinda like home, to be honest.

[The infinite multiverse probably doesn't have much in the way of cheap motels, but--wait, no, if it's really infinite, then it should have everything. Cheap motels, grimy rest stops, empty campgrounds a mile or two off the freeway--all the comforts of running for your life.]

But if that's how it...works out, I guess, for me, then...maybe I can see if I can stop by.

Good luck.

[He says good luck because it comes down to luck. Luck or circumstance or fate, if that's something you believe in. Whether or he thinks such a thing actually exists is essentially irrelevant. It's never mattered before now.]

It's not perfect, but it's... [Interesting, maybe? That doesn't usually mean good.] Well, things are always happening.

That's... [Not much to go on.] ...something, at least.

[It's a deserted island, where things are always happening. A little incongruous, but it still sounds more straightforward than the Mansion ever tried to be.]

[Jay mumbles, sarcasm more audible than the words themselves. Gallows humor, from a guy who's long past breathing.]

'S a step up from where It...where I was before.

Yeah, well. I imagine most things are.

[Speak dryly, as though that must not have been hell. As though that must - ]

[What is he doing? He swallows, a convulsion of his throat that sticks something just at the back of it. If this is the last chance he gets, if this is goodbye for good, isn't he squandering it by just...watching it go by?]

Do you wanna talk about it?

[He poses the question casually, calmly, offhand. Allowing him the out, if he wants it.]

[Jay grimaces, eyes rolling. Do you wanna talk about it? Tim asks, like he thinks he's some kind of therapist. Like Jay's gonna talk about his feelings, and then he'll come to some grand realization, and then maybe he'll skip off into the sunset instead of stumbling backwards into hell.]

[But 'no' sticks in his throat.]

[Tim's been there. Jay's seen it.]

[He doesn't want to go back there without--without what? Validation? Solidarity?]

[God, is he seriously considering this? Does he seriously want to talk about his feelings?]

[For once he's glad the camera's not rolling.]

[He doesn't say "no" at all. He's not sure how to say the other thing. So he just shoots Tim a meaningful look, brief eye contact, and shrugs. It's an invitation. Sure. You start.]

[~~'Cause I sure as hell don't know how.~~]

Edited 2019-01-09 07:03 (UTC)

You don't have to, if you don't want to.

[He shrugs, rolling his shoulders and looking away. Reluctance. That's something he recognizes. He himself elected to die rather than choke on any words of doomed honesty.]

[But then, that was his choice. His choice, and his burden to bear. He wasn't about to risk what might happen if he let honesty flood into the world around him, and taint the people who he hadn't yet bled his sickness into.]

But we don't know how long this gonna last. If you have something to get off your chest, it might as well be someone who might not even remember it, right?

[It's like saying it into the pillow pressed against your face. Like scrubbing it out of the footage. Like typing it into a document before erasing every word.]

[Not really.]

[He's still got an audience.]

[Jay digs his fingers into the cloth and foam of the camera's grip, listening as the velcro fastening tears apart, sticks, tears apart again.]

[He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know how to condense it. He needs visuals, needs to cut raw footage down into something comprehensible, something that communicates what's in his head without cutting away the rough edges to fit into words.]

There's nobody.

[It's almost inaudible, the tension in his throat throttling it down to a whisper.]

I've been there since...since then, and it's always just been me.

[He rips at the velcro, feeling the hooks dig in under his nails.]

Thought I saw a--a body once, but it...It was gone before I could see if...what it was. Maybe it wasn't.

I remember.

[He murmurs it quietly, trying not to dwell on the memories he's repressed. Flipping a body onto its back, and being created by the wet crater that was once a human face. The way it glistened, the way the skin was cool to the touch, as if it only just happened - ]

[He remembers, even if he tries not to.]

It's like everything there stays the way it was.

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cw: jay being weird about religion and also mental illness

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