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

You want to help me?

[Stop and think. There's no time. There's no fucking time. In a matter of months, Jay can get all sorts of word out across the Internet because he's a dumbass who doesn't know any better, and even if there aren't thousands upon thousands of eager followers, waiting to happily pass around his shitty, choppy camera job for cheap views, there's still people here that It could still get to.]

[Stopping and waiting, even for a few minutes, isn't acceptable. He needs to act. He needs to act quickly if this much time has already passed. He looks at her with his eyes wild.]

You still have that gun I gave you?

No.

[It's one part answer to his question and one part to the thing left unspoken. Come on, Alex. Don't make her do this. She's had so much of the universe twisting her arm into doing something horrible, into the eradication of entire species, of the blood that follows her footsteps. Don't take the thing she's championed here-- just once. Just once.]

I disappeared for a bit too. All my stuff's gone. Just clothes.

[Wonderland didn't see fit to take her back with her armor this time, and with her belongings out of the way, there's no contingencies or doubles to go back on.]

[Alex swears under his breath, turning away. Disappeared for a bit. She doesn't want to help. Of course she doesn't - but he's already fucked her over, hasn't he? He has, or someone so close to his bullshit that it wouldn't make a damn difference.]

[His teeth grind together, hard enough to make his molars ache. Feels like his skull should split from the pressure of it.]

There's only one way that anyone helps.

Alex, fucking listen to me.

[Actually, fuck this. She walks forward, purpose in her steps, and grabs him by the shoulders with both hands.]

I'm not fucking doing this again, alright? I'm not gonna stand around while you go on a goddamn murder spree and think it's gonna fix anything. And before you say a word, I'm a soldier, I know more about killing people than you.

[She doesn't actually know if she's ever been this rough with him, but she's getting desperate, and sometimes you just gotta slam that renegade button and Go.]

Just because killing someone is the fastest solution doesn't mean it's the only one. I need you to goddamn get that right now. Okay?

What're you gonna do? [She could kill him quicker and more efficiently than anyone here has tried to, and maybe that'd be a mercy. Better than a knife in the guts, twice. Better than a shard of glass ripping his organs to shreds from the inside out. More grace than that. What would be better? A bullet to the head, dropping him silently into the snow?]

[Wouldn't that be better?]

Kill me?

[Please, he almost says.]

[Do me the goddamn favor.]

What did I just fucking say, Alex.

[It's probably pointless to ask if he's even listening, because chances are the answer is no.]

I'm trying to talk to you. I'm trying to make you listen to me, because it's fucking important. Dying is the easy way out and I'm not gonna be responsible for that. In fact, I'm sitting here doing the really difficult thing of trying to goddamn reason with you while you're trying to speedrun your own death.

[She still hasn't let him go, intent on trying to make him listen.]

Can you just trust me? For once in your life stop running into things with your fists up?

You have no idea what I'm dealing with. None.

[No - no, she does now. God damn it, Jay.]

If you do know, then you know I can't let It spread. I can't let It spread. I can't just sit down and do nothing while It gets Its fingers in everyone else. The last time I took my eyes off things, someone stuck every little thing on the Internet!

[Not that he didn't manage to do some of that too, while he was stuck here.]

I need to fix this - while there's still time.

Will you hear me out for one goddamn minute?

[Her voice sounds strained, a painful edge she can no longer control.]

You have no fucking idea the shit I've dealt with. I've handled a hundred thousand of these mind control motherfuckers across a hundred planets with a bounty on my head. They killed me, Alex, and I had to get back up. They murdered everyone I dared to love, I got fucking possessed and shot the man I considered my goddamn father!

[She jabs a finger into his chest, breathing heavier than she means to be.]

I get it, alright! And now I've been fried by your goddamn whatever the hell at least once and I'm still, still here to tell you you need to slow the hell down before you martyr yourself without a goddamn cause. Stop, alright? For a few minutes just stop.

[It's a struggle not to grab him by the collar and she only catches herself just before she does, hand fisted in front of his collar.]

[Possession.]

[It's not mind control it's not possession it's not that simple it is not that fucking simple because he's never been possessed it's always been him and he's always been the one in control and doing everything he could to keep it under control. That's who he is. That's who he is, and he's trying not to panic and swallows back the taste of his own terror in the back of his throat but it's hard.]

[He's felt this way before, like he has to track the presence of another person in the room so that he's aware of her presence like he's aware of a loaded gun.]

It's not like that. It's not mind control, or possession, It's - It's worse. There's only one way that any of it stops, and you have to let me do this.

[If he dies trying, what the hell else is new?]

Death doesn't last here anyway. So we'll die and keep getting the fuck back up - what's it matter?

[Have you, Alex? Have you not succumbed to losing time, to a thought that wasn't yours, to the tense of a body you feel foreign in just for a second? That's all it took- the force of an unseen arm on her hand, one flex to the squeeze of a trigger. That's all it ever takes.]

Yeah, your suit dude threw me in a pan and baked me like a fish fry, it hurt like fucking hell.

[The anger is simmering back to something, the way she tries to keep it as a determined push forward, somewhere crystallizing in her chest.]

It matters because dying fucking matters, Alex. It changes you. Dying and thinking it's over and thinking you've finally done what you can and you can rest fucks you up. You have to recognize this is hurting you. If you keep doing this, it won't stop, you-- you have to let me help you. We can make a better plan. We can do better.

I know how this ends. The only way it ends is if everyone who knows about It is dead. Everyone.

[He fists a hand at the front of his shirt, tight around the wad of material until he can feel the panicked throb of his heart rabbiting against his ribs, swarmed by adrenaline and making his head spin. Everyone, he says, and he means it.]

[Everyone.]

[He was never going to come back out of this alive. Who do you think he is?]

There is no other plan.

This is a different world, Alex. There are different endings here. There's a new story and we write it.

[She wants to take his hand but she thinks she'd squeeze too tightly, cling to what destroys her over and over again like a mantra and a purpose. She sees too much of herself in him, the person she was when she came to Wonderland, alive only because the job was not done.]

All I'm asking is that we can talk about it. That's all I want, for you to slow down enough for one real conversation. Can you not just-- just talk to me for the last time we might ever see each other?

Not for me!

[The words are wrenching, violent, raw - feel like nerves scraped and shot, like adrenaline boiled out through his eyeballs, like a fucking static-sick scream. He can't think about what she's saying, about the fact that this might be the last time (Good, he thinks savagely, and then, wait, and then his thoughts divert into something he doesn't want to examine, the roots of dread and a sensation that he ignored innumerable times before, that doesn't have a name but if it did it would be Amy) because if he thinks about it, it'll start seeding itself into his soul and he can't let something else start subletting there.]

[His brain's crowded, a fizz of TV snow and burned-out veins. Can't, no room for anything else.]

If this is the last time we ever - if this -

You don't know that. You don't know anything.

I know what desperation feels like. I know what it feels like to have accepted your own death and thought since you've already taken that step you have to.

[And in her stupid, desperate, illogical decisions, she holds out a hand.]

Let me help. Maybe we can figure something out. Maybe I can...

[save you fix everything be the hero again and again and again, because she will bear that for the world. It's just worse when it's someone she cares for.]

Don't run. Just let me help you.

You can't. No one -

[Don't you get it?]

[No one can, no one should, because if someone can save him, fix any of what was caused (~~what he caused~~ what Jay caused), it means that all of what he did, all of what Alex poured himself into, every crushed windpipe and caved-in skull and fired bullet would be for nothing and he can't live with himself as it is but he especially, especially can't live with that.]

[Even if "living" was never on the table. Not really.]

I won't let it all be for nothing.

Everyone's told me I can't, and I always do. Alex, this is the last warning, either you come with me peacefully or I'm taking you so we can talk about this.

[Fine, alright, she'll just-- she can fix this, and while resorting to violence isn't great she's confident in her ability to not kill him in one shot.]

This doesn't have to be hard.

Taking me?

[There's a hysterical note that cracks the edge of his voice, sharpening it into something almost like a laugh. Close. Not quite.]

You gonna kill me too? Everyone's getting a turn these days - or they did, because it's been years since I died last, is what I'm hearing!

No, damnit, I'm not gonna kill you, but if you think I'm not gonna wrestle you to the floor until you have a damn conversation with me you've got another thing coming.

[But she is walking towards him, with intent, shoulders squared.]

Just talk to me, Alex. You got one more chance.

[As she continues to give him chance, and chance, and chance...]

You keep saying that. What have I ever done that has you keep giving me the same chance, over and over?

[A talk in a tank. A haze of panic in a kitchen. A gun that changed hands. Memories sliding one way and then another and he can't keep them straight anymore. Maybe he never could. He stopped filming himself and that's when he stopped being able to keep a stable timeline but in some ways that was just easier because it meant he wouldn't need to worry.]

[What's he ever done that made him worth any of this - to her, to anyone?]

Because you helped me.

[It's simple and plain, frank and rough like almost every part of her. It's the only way she can express things, say anything at all.]

Because when I ran off and went to do something stupid and lonely and you showed up without me even asking. Because I know that kid who asked me about my space guns and joked about santa as a raccoon and put a rock with fucking googly eyes in a tank is in there and I'm not letting him go.

[It hurts to know she's going to forget all of this, that she already did, that she went back to her old life none the wiser. It's not fair. All the more reason she needs to make a difference now.]

Because I know you've got good in you, Alex. You have a choice, and so do I, and I'm choosing you.

Why's that matter?

[It doesn't matter what good he has in him - he knows he doesn't. Good people don't do what he did. Good people don't point their guns at people who got involved through no fault of their own. Good people don't murder their friends, kill whoever gets in their way, cave someone's fucking face in until they're just a dark indentation on the floor of a tunnel, a dark smear of crimson across the cement.]

[You can't be a killer and a good person. It doesn't work that way.]

That kid, [he scrapes the word out painfully, like tearing a nail from the edge of his thumb, raw and red and animal:] is never coming back.

It matters because I still care about you, dumbass.

[Is she good for killing anyone who gets in her way, does she get to be a hero for wiping an entire race off the map, does she get to be a good person anymore?]

I don't give a shit if you're a good person. You think I am? You don't have to be a good person to have some good in you. You don't have to be a good person to be worth saving. I'm not saying you have to believe-- that about you, or whatever, just... believe in me. For one goddamn minute so we can sit down and not fucking do this, alright?

I don't even know what this is. Why's it matter? Why's any of it matter if none of this is gonna stay the way it is?

[If they're only here for another hour, another day, another agonizing minute, if Wonderland rips them both away again and eviscerates their memories and drops them back where they started - why does any of it matter now.]

[Does it matter if he doesn't remember how it hurts?]

[It's the nature of psychic injury to have no insight into itself.]

Because I wanna spend one more day with a person I miss. And I'm not gonna let you run off and murder yourself twelve more times while I'm standing here. So either you agree to chill out, right now, and we can enjoy the time we do have, or I knock you out and I spend the rest of my time here stopping you from knifing yourself.

[Her voice is still a little strained, but genuine, arms' reach between them.]

Now or never, Alex. That's it.

Fuck you.

[Because he's a murderous, inexcusably fucked son of a bitch and he knows how this story ends already, always did know how it's going to end and he'll be damned if he doesn't make sure everyone knows it, every goddamn step of the way. It'll hurt. It'll hurt like nothing else hurts but he'll bleed it all out slow, gasoline over an open wound, and it'll be god. damned. worth it.]

[He figures he'll have a ten second head start, if that.]

[He's going to take it, and make her fight for it, if it matters so much.]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: suicide ideation

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject