entrancelogs | + Your imagination can't hurt you! +

Wouldn't be surprised, really.

[Wonderland seems to take a sadistic sort of pleasure in inflicting the precise things it knows they'll hate on them. He realizes his hands have flexed into fists, his shoulders taut, and he tries to breathe out, loosen the invisible grip he's assumed on the empty air.]

Never really done this before, so, uh...do we just...link arms? And try to...brace ourselves against each other?

I guess. I haven't done this before either.

[She sounds annoyed, which is about partly how she always sounds, partly how she's feeling. At Tim, at Wonderland, at the entire goddamn situation. If she gets out of this, she's adding rope to her field gear.]

Ugh, let's just--

[She grits her teeth and moves to link arms with him. Amazingly, she's actually more comfortable with physical contact with strangers than a lot of people of her generation, but there's accepting the need to stand in a crowd or shake hands without panicking as perils of her career, and then there's pressing your back against someone else's back and linking your arms and she has to not think about this too hard and just suck it up. Her intimacy issues can fuck right off until she has time to deal with them.]

Sooner we do it, the sooner it'll be over.

[She's right. Much as it chafes, as he knows it'll make his skin crawl, there's no alternative here, and it's the quickest way out of his hell-hole - or literal-hole, as it were - so they might as well buckle down and do it. He swallows hard and follows suit, ignoring the way the hairs on his neck prickle, his fingers curling into his palms until the nails are biting into the flesh there.]

All right. Just move - move steady, and we'll be outta here soon.

[It's mostly a mumbled reassurance for his own sake as he plants one foot against the wall of the hole, grimacing and trying not feel exceptionally foolish.]

Ready?

['Cause Tim sure isn't.]

Does it matter?

[They've got to do this whether they're ready or not. It feels so ridiculously stupid and... undignified, not that it should matter in a situation like this. She grits her teeth and puts a foot up against the wall herself, then leans back against him. She tries not to tense too much as her back makes full contact with his. She tries not to squirm as she puts her weight on him, trusting him not to step away and let her fall. Not that it would benefit him to do that in any way, but he could, and there wouldn't be a damn thing Georgia could do about it. Besides maybe punch him afterwards.]

Okay. I'm lifting my other foot now.

[All right. Yeah. She braces against him, and he braces back, evenly, trying not to press back with too much strength, not that he has much to go with. His lungs are gonna kill him by the end of this.

God but she could just lean back and send him crashing.]

All right. Go ahead.

[He'll put his up last, he's decided. He's probably sturdier, easier to bear the weight that way.]

[Putting her other leg up feels like the hardest thing ever, not in terms of the effort involved but because it very literally means putting all her weight on someone else, but she grits her teeth and forces herself to do it.

It's not comfortable, it's not pretty, and she's got more expression on her face than anyone but Shaun has seen in a very long time, but hell, Tim can't actually see her face. She braces herself as well as she can.]

Okay. Your turn.

[Don't you dare drop her.]

[He sucks in a breath before complying - she can probably hear him, feel him breathing, maybe even the way the blood is thudding in his veins in a way that's almost painful. Just - all right. Lift his foot and place all his weight on her, counterbalance the pressure they're both applying on each other, even if it screams against every instinct, and then he's -

He's done it. It'd be fantastic if he could feel any sort of triumph for the maneuver, but all he's got available is exhaustion and a grim realization that they've only just started to make progress.]

Okay. Step one.

[She pushes back, bracing with her abs, until he's up.]

Huh, I was pretty sure we were gonna immediately fall on our asses.

[There's a long way to go there, they still might. She carefully drags one foot up again. At least she's in great shape. Her upper body strength is lacking, but this depends more on legs, and knowing you're likely to be running for your life is great motivation for spending a few hours on a treadmill every day. She's got good endurance, too. Everything she needs to not die in the field. If one of them punks out, it won't be her.]

Keep going.

[Tim, physically, is something of the opposite. He's well-accustomed to running for his damn life, heavyset as he is, but his endurance only goes as far as his survival instinct. His lungs are already threatening to contract in a series of explosive, painful wheezes.

He swallows down the urge to cough, and complies. The further they get off the ground, the more it'll suck if he fucks this up.

He should probably not fuck this up.]

Yeah. Yeah, okay. [There's a rasp to the words, and goddamn but he hates his respiratory so much right now.]

[....she can hear that rasp. It doesn't stop her from moving, but it makes her frown, and glance backwards as much as she can under the circumstances.]

You doing all right back there? Cause if you need a break you should say something.

[The last thing she wants is to stop and be like this for longer than absolutely necessary. Well, that's the second to last thing she wants. Taking a break would be better than falling and having to start over again, assuming they didn't end up too injured to go on.]

[He almost shakes his head before realizing that'd be the most useless gesture possible when she's facing away from him, so he sucks in a deep breath before responding, painful as it is.]

No. No, it'll just - it'll make it harder to keep going if we stop.

[Forward momentum. Get it over with as quick as possible.]

Okay, but if you do need one, tell me. I don't want to fall because you couldn't get over your stupid pride or something.

[One step at a time. Don't think about how he's wheezing. Just focus on moving.]

'S not pride.

[It's just - it's strategy, isn't it? It's basic science. It's costs versus benefits. It's not gonna get better, he already knows it. It's not gonna get better. He's just gonna have to keep going and hope that he makes it to the top before anything worse happens.

Not that he'd call himself an optimist. But he can keep going, can't he? He can keep going, so he will. He'll keep going.]

I don't care what it is. I'm not fucking dying because you can't hack it and don't know how to pace yourself.

[At this height, she doubts they'd actually die, but she's also not risking it.]

You're not gonna die.

[He'd say we're not gonna die, but that'd be placing unfair expectations on both their shoulders.]

I got - bad lungs. It'll pass.

[Not that being a regular chain-smoker helps him any. But he was already born all wrong, so it's not like he can make it much worse than it already is.]

[She rolls her eyes, continuing to move upwards.] Just tell me you won't be stupid about this. That's all I want to hear.

Yeah, I'll try not to be stupid about my medical condition.

[He'd roll his eyes too, but seeing as she can't see his face, it'd be a pointless waste of energy. Just - focus on moving up. Yeah. Good. They're about halfway up, and this is hell, and he just wants this to be over.]

You have heard of zombies, right, Tim? Cause I'm betting my medical condition's the scary one. You know, the one where if I die, I get right back up again and start biting people.

[The bickering is honestly helping her, though considering he seems to be having enough trouble breathing without adding conversation to the mix, it might not be very thoughtful. But it lets her focus on something other than how far from the ground they are, or how uncomfortable she is with the whole touching thing or how her legs are burning from the uncomfortable position.

Something like the high potential of this being a disaster. But zombies are familiar ground, at least.]

Fall from this height probably wouldn't kill me, but it might make me bleed, and that would probably kill you. So forgive me for being overly fucking cautious.

[He'd laugh, but he wasn't born with a sense of humor. That sounds like absolute shit, he's sure, and it can't be easy - he knows better than to trivialize something like that. But it's hard to imagine that anything can be scarier than that thing and what it did to him. How it made him. How he was born.

How he can't claw it out of him. How it'll keep coming, and coming, and coming, and making him do things that he can't shake. Not even death's a courtesy for old Timothy Wright, no. And you can trust him on that one: he's tried it more than once, and It always finds a way to stop him, every time.

He keeps his mouth shut. If he says anything, she'll just latch onto it. He knows her type. He knows enough to know that's what she'd want - an admission of some kind. Something to dig into when this over.]

Sorry, [he has to hiss the word out between clenched teeth, but if a distraction is what she wants, a distraction is what she'll damn well get.] Didn't realize we were participating in an illness Olympics here. You wanna compare symptoms? Play a game of "pass the medication"? I'm sure there's a whole lotta hospital-themed activities out there.

[He's wrong, actually, though she's certainly gathered threads to dig into later if she chooses. But the truth, though normally what she focuses on above all else, can wait. Her concerns are a little more pressing than that.]

I'm not telling you because I want pity.

[She practically snarls out the word, annoyed that he'd even think that was what this was about. She's never wanted pity a day in her life, and if she did, she'd use her eyes, not the zombie disease everyone on the planet has.]

You panicked when I pulled out my gun. I can't trust you to shoot me if it becomes necessary. I don't think it will become an issue, but I'm willing to take the extra step to make sure.

[Well, at least they can agree there - on two points. The first, that pity is bullshit. It's complete and absolute bullshit. He'll wallow in it well enough on his own, sure, but that's his agenda. From anyone else, it's just nauseating.

The second, that he wouldn't trust himself with a gun either. It chafes to admit it, but yeah. She's gotta point.

He grits his teeth.]

We'll be fine. Just keep pushing. We'll make it.

[It's vague, but that's all he has. No evidence, nothing to summon up to throw back in her direction. He can keep some semblance of composure.]

[She also wasn't looking for empty reassurances, but he's trying to help, and she supposes that counts for something. And he seems to hopefully understand the gravity of the situation now. She grits her teeth and focuses on the climb. When she gets out, she can complain to Shaun about all this. It'll be soon enough. She just has to keep moving.]

[It's starting to ache with every step, but that's not new. He knows how to lock it down. He's had to do this before, do things a thousand times more terrifying than this. He doesn't look down (he can't look down) and he just puts one foot in front of the next. Don't visualize It standing in front of him, looming there with Its head to one side, the way every step had torn him apart and sent another stab of pain into his skull.

Just keep going.]

Almost there.

[It's not much in the way of encouragement, but they're a few feet from the top now - close to being over and done with this.]

Fucking. Great. [She wishes she were a better liar so she could believe Shaun would be waiting at the top. But if Shaun was anywhere nearby, she'd have heard him by now. He'd have brought rope. All she can tell herself is that once she's out of here, she can go try and find him.

Another step. Another step. Her legs burn, but intolerably. And now they're almost there and she realizes there's another piece to the puzzle she hasn't really considered.]

What the fuck do we do at the top? Fall over sideways?

[At least he's got that going for him, huh? A fantastic liar. About the only good thing about him, really. He's already turning the conundrum of what to do when they reach the top over and over in his head, and doing his damn best not to completely slip and make them both fall in the process.]

Working on it.

[And yeah, he's got no clue either.]

Might be we can push away from each other hard enough - but I kinda don't wanna risk that.

+ Your imagination can't hurt you! +

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cw suicide mentions

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