entrancelogs | The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist.

Entry tags:

The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist.

Who: Max Caulfield and Tim Wright
Where: Tim's room (6th floor, room 19)
When: Feb 3
Rating: Heck I dunno PG?
Summary: Chloe's gone.
The Story:

She woke up cold and-

The morning light poured in through the-

Chloe was gone.

The rest of the details don't really matter.

For a few days she didn't bother telling anyone. Who would she tell, anyway? Chloe's friends were hardly hers. And Chloe didn't even have very many friends.

But at some point, being alone in her room and doing nothing... just lost its appeal. She needed to do something, anything, if only to stop the deafening silence of her room and the insistent blankness of her thoughts, that threatened over and over to slip into darker places.

And the ability of her own mind to come up with distressing images and words scared her.

Like how she would think about the uselessness of it all, of Chloe coming and going, and leaving her alone again- that it wasn't even some malicious plot on Wonderland's part, but that life was just fucking random and terrifying.

That nobody was out to get her. There was no deeper destiny or fate to everything that had happened. That Chloe dying was just some meaningless accident, a blip in the grand scheme of things, and that nobody fucking cared about any of it, because why would they?

People come and go from Wonderland. Eventually everyone forgets.

She could rewind and rewind and rewind, and people would die, and it wouldn't matter. Who would remember by the time everyone went home? Or ended up like Alice?

Today is just another timeline, with no real permanence, and no real point.

A new reality is only a rewind away.

No, no, she can't think like that. That's the start of a bad habit, a dangerous routine, and this time there's no living Chloe to snap her back into this reality, and gratefulness for the things she has... Even if it's only by turning over in the middle of the night to wrap her arm around her best friend, and to know that she's alive.

Still, it's comforting to think that life might get worse and worse, and her pain might grow, but in the end none of it matters. And she doesn't have to care.

So to keep herself from going stir crazy in the emptiness of her room, in the emptiness of the room across the hall, where she'd hung an "occupied" sign like some dumb hopeful fucking child, she jerks herself out of bed and several floors up to Tim's room. Because she loathes Tim, and loathing seems like an appropriate emotion, and he seems like a fucking messed-up sort of guy.

She knocks on his door, looking worn and generally unkempt, eyes downcast and unfocused.

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Is he wrong? Maybe he was. The shock in her expression is unmistakable, and there's that familiar guilt that wells up in his chest, gnawing away at his composure as he regards her with a fraction more uncertainty than before. So that's - great, isn't it, that he just casually drops bombshells like that in conversation, in front of normal people who don't think about that kind of thing daily with a casual desolation, thinking idly, wondering what it'd be like to die with actual permanence.

She stares at him with her mouth hanging open, and he regrets every implication he just dropped in her lap. Is there even a remote chance of worming his way outta this one without explanation?

Hell no. She's going to want something. Or - maybe she'll just rewind her way back to the conversation's beginning until she gets what she wants. If she's feeling up to it, anyway. Who can say.

"Wouldn't blame you." And that's - that's definitely morbid as hell, way more than he has any right being in front of someone who's already lost someone. "I mean, you're already killing yourself, right?"

He gestures with the cigarette held between two fingers, at the smoke curling its way into her lungs.

Smoking's just a slower means to a more permanent end.

Max slowly looks away and down to the lightly glowing cigarette in her hand. After a moment she tucks her legs beneath herself and sits cross-legged on the roof, taking another drag off the cigarette as though answering his question.

The truth is that she never even thought about it. About... that, about following Chloe. But now that he's thrown the idea out there and it's floating around above everything... now she's too scared to think about it, wondering if he could have possibly seen some sort of... of tendency or potential in her.

Or if, given enough time, she would reach the same conclusion. Worse, if, somehow, without her knowledge, she already has- if some deep down part of her had convinced her to come up here, convinced her to smoke.

Chloe would be so pissed, a voice chides in her mind, as Max falls into a fit of coughs.

Following Chloe. That would be- no, it wouldn't be funny, but it would be kind of moronic and cringe-worthy. A bad reunion. But a reunion.

"That's... not why I do it," she eventually replies, but she sounds unsure. "Is that- I mean, you do it." She glances at him, curious now, as she wipes away the streaks of tears on her cheeks.

Edited 2017-02-06 17:43 (UTC)

You do it, she says, like he's not a death wish given sentience. Not everyone will appreciate or enjoy the fact that he's disarmingly blasé about how much he doesn't want to exist most days, or have existed at all. She lapses into a coughing fit, the sort that plagues any sort of elementary smoker.

Or the sort that plagues a guy like him, with preexisting respiratory issues and no means to improve them. Might as well crash and burn everything he is with spectacular efficiency, right?

"Yeah, except I'm a walking advertisement for bad choices," he says, just dry enough for it to be construed as humorous. As if to prove it, he takes another long drag, and the itch in his throat elicits a stutter of coughing almost immediately after.

She considers that for a moment, staring out at the sky. In her life, in Arcadia, she'd had so many things to choose- even with the power to rewind time, at some point you have to commit, to decide this is how you want things to go. Sometimes there's no get-out-of-jail-free card, no passing on choices to someone else, no little tick box marked abstain. And sometimes there's no right choice at all.

But that's not the scariest bit. The scariest is that some choices are made completely alone. No one to ask, no one to tell. No one to convince you that saving Chloe is the bad choice, and saving Arcadia is the good one.

You have to figure that one out on your own. You have to imagine where you'll end up, a year later- a cigarette in your hand.

"Do- do they help?" she asks, to help swallow down the rising lump in her throat. "The bad choices? Do they... help you with... wh- whatever it is you're going through?" She's not sure if it's a dumb question, halfway between prying and keeping your distance. But it feels right.

Do they help. Well, that's kind of a million dollar question. He doesn't look at her for a long time - distance is best achieved if there's no genuine eye contact made, and he doesn't make an effort to meet anybody's eyes if he can help it anyway.

Do the bad choices help?

"Make me feel like shit," he concedes at last, contemplating the cigarette as it burns slowly between his fingertips. "But I feel like shit anyway. So I get to decide how much I feel like shit and when. Or I can pretend to."

He lifts one shoulder in a partial shrug and sucks in another long drag.

"Don't be me." That'd be his cue to laugh, if he were the type for it. He's not. "That's about the worst choice you can make."

Max huffs. "I know you p-probably don't want to hear it, but... I'm pretty sure Alex was... was the same way."

This old hurt starts to rise now. The old feeling of being left behind by Alex, of being powerless to help him... watching him sort of... let go.

"I mean he... kinda didn't like himself. And things just got worse and worse. At some point he hardly even... talked to me. I c-couldn't help him, then... he was gone."

She looks up at Tim, kind of stupidly. Unsure. "He was a great friend. I wish I'd... done better."

Alex. Then Chloe. Supposedly Max's closest friends. And nothing Max ever did made a difference. Both of them went home to... whatever ending. Gone.

She pulls her knees up and rests her forehead against them, hiding her face.

She brings up Alex.

She does it hesitantly, and nervously, and his shoulders tighten accordingly, wishing he could drive a skewer through every remotely nice thing she has to say about him. But what kinda guy would that make him? Alex didn't start out the way he did. He only got to be more dangerous than a vaguely pretentious jerk of a director once he met Tim, once Tim's polluting influence burned anything pleasant and personalbe about of him.

For a long moment, he doesn't say anything.

He can't contest that. Alex was the same way. He told him, he told him - his last ragged, desperate words as he bled out on the school floor, were about he had to kill anyone left - and then himself.

He wasn't just dying. He was passing the torch. He always intended to die.

"It wasn't your fault," he says heavily, finally. He can't get into the details, of course he can't. Not when there still might be a chance that It won't trail her mind and burn a hole in her memories. "He ran into some...trouble back home. Trouble that changed him."

He'd offered to fix it. Offered to help. He could've shown him how. He could've made things better, just to have someone else there.

"I wish I'd..."

Wish I'd done better. Only he couldn't, huh? Literally incapable, in every way and shape and form.

"I wish things hadn't gone the way they did."

She watches as Tim seems to tense up, as she'd expected. They never got around to talking about... well, anything after he'd found her tied to that chair, and they'd watched that tape.

Tim's mention of things happening back home, of Alex changing, elicits a nod from Max as she tries the cigarette again. Her knowledge of their entire situation is blurry at best, but each conversation brings the picture into slightly sharper focus. She knows now that some sort of monster is involved. If monster is even the right word. But it's more than just an idea, a phantom. It actually... visits people.

And though Tim says it's not Max's fault, she really does believe she could have done something to help Alex. It's what friends do, right?

"Yeah," she says, her expression hardening. "Me too." She knows that Alex would be better off in Wonderland. Like Chloe.

Not dead from a gunshot.

Don't go there...

"What... Do you know what happens to him? Back home..? Does he... he doesn't come out okay, does he?"

Tim's eyes slip closed for a moment, like it hurts to look at anything. He should've braced himself for this - this sort of talk was coming, it was inevitable, and it's his own damn fault for not addressing this beforehand.

He doesn't come out okay, does he?

Because he thinks of Alex, he thinks of Seth, distorted screams rebounding off the walls of an abandoned warehouse. Of Sarah, and of Amy, who must have died not even knowing why he was killing them. Of Brian, gaunt and lifeless and splayed on the floor like a broken marionette. Of Jay desperately holding himself together with dribbles of scarlet drooling out between his fingers, his breath high and thin and terrified as he saw the thing that would kill him looming out from the shadows.

Of Alex, a point in his throat, blood gurgling on the floor in a fount of red.

He doesn't come out okay, does he?

Quiet words, ragged words, and even with the guilt coiled tightly around his gut, he knows, full well, what an error it would be to tell her the details of what transpired.

"None of us did."

She continues to look at him with an obvious intensity until he speaks, the cigarette smoking slightly between his fingers.

You have to imagine where you'll end up, a year later- a cigarette in your hand.

Her stare withers, giving way to a downcast, defeated glare. She puts her own cigarette to her mouth, and takes a drag before driving it into the ground, stamping out the glowing embers at the end.

She actually manages to exhale some smoke without coughing this time.

"Chloe too," she says. And, like Tim, she doesn't explain- doesn't tell him how that ending saves everyone else, saves Arcadia Bay. How it kills Max, deep down.

And for a moment- just one moment- she sees why he was worried about leaving her on the roof.

"I'm... sorry things turned out badly. I know it- it doesn't mean much. I don't even know what happened." She's sorry for his sake, but for Alex's too. She still misses him, sometimes. Still worries about him.

She stands up, dusting herself off. "And I know it'd be... so dumb if I just went around saying that- that things'll b- be okay." By the time she finishes talking, she's crying gently again, rubbing a sleeve against her eyes vigorously.

Fuck. She's crying again. He's got...no idea what to do about this, any of this, about the fact that Chloe's gone and that she's now missing two people that she, apparently, cared about a whole lot. Alex cared about her, all evidence claims he did - even if there's a blood trail to prove what happens to the people he cares about. Felt in control the whole time, didn't he?

That's a lie, and it tastes bitter in his throat. He swallows it back.

"It's not your fault," he begins, low, nervous, but she's scrubbing at her eyes again and - god, what's he say to that? This is usually the point where someone hugs somebody else, but he's not a guy for hugs and he's pretty sure Max wouldn't appreciate them coming from him, even if he was.

"None of this is your fault. Not Chloe. Not Alex." If it's anyone's - well, he knows whose fault this is. He knows he's the one that brought this hell into everyone's lives. But Wonderland has a way of spinning things out of control, and no one can help that.

Right?

One thing to be thankful for is that he doesn't try the hug- that would definitely elicit an uncomfortable and annoyed complaint, as well as a quick rewind. As it is, his words already draw a bitter huff from her, like a cynical laugh.

"Y-you don't know what- what you're talking about," she throws at him, her voice shaky and low. And as she speaks her self-control dissolves more and more, until she's fighting to hold down sobs and pace her breathing.

She could break down. She could sit on the ground here, wrap her arms around her legs, huddle together and cry, her whole body wracked in ugly, coarse sobs. Even if she's tired of crying, physically tired, drained. Even if he's standing right there watching her. Because she could just rewind it all away, anyway.

Or you could go. You could leave him here, go down to the nearest empty room and cry your eyes out. You don't have to-

Fuck it. Fuck what the voice in her head thinks, fuck what Tim sees, fuck holding back from the rewinds because of some- some godddamn moral dilemma that won't even matter in the long run. Who the hell cares- who the fuck will remember all this bullshit anyway?

Her defenses crash down as she sits heavily, hiding her face- but there's nothing she can do to hide the shake of her shoulders, the ragged unevenness of her sobbing breaths as she reaches for air, as she stains her sleeves with tears. She grips the fabric of her jeans, painfully, as though for support, as though in anger- her knuckles white with the forcefulness of the gesture. Strained, low moans from behind clenched teeth punctuate her crying, a desperate and furious sound.

Hey, it's... it's okay, a soft voice gently whispers from somewhere.

She doubts she'd even have made it to the stairs, anyway. She can't even bring herself to worry about Tim all that much- her thoughts are too caught up in an image of Chloe lying dead on a bathroom floor, in memories of their short-lived time in Wonderland and all the things neither of them will remember, in the promises they made to never leave each other. In the loneliness that followed. In the words your fault.

Edited 2017-02-09 16:21 (UTC)

Doesn't know what he's talking about. Well, fine, he can give her that much. He doesn't know. He doesn't know the finer points of her world, what she's capable of, what transpired between her and Chloe back home.

She breaks down utterly, sits where she is, and starts to sob. And he - god, he's starting to pick up on what Jay must've felt every time something like this happened, when Tim began to crack and crumble and shake and he was left standing there filming it all like an idiot, offering no comfort, no words, nothing.

He can do better than Jay, can't he?

He can do - slightly better, maybe. Drop into a crouch, slow and careful, across from her, the butt of his cigarette trailing wisps of gray into the cold.

"I don't know what happened," he says slowly, carefully, "not back home. But Alex - I can tell you that none of that was your fault. None of what he did, whatever it was - none of that was on you."

And how do you know that, huh?

Because it's all squarely on Tim.

He doesn't blame her, and it's a comfort, but a small one. She had just wanted to be the right kind of friend for Alex, to pull him around from whatever had messed him up- and she had failed that so blatantly.

But what really bothers her, crying on the roof, pulling her legs into a tighter hug- what really bothers her is Chloe.

Leaving Chloe for five years without a call or text. Spending a month at Blackwell without reaching out. Then only having one week, and hating, hating that it was so short... and thinking about all the things she could've done to make things better. Just, something, anything- Anyone else, if they'd had the power to rewind time- the things they could've done- And yet, in Wonderland, people do so much with less, with nothing but guts and brains and- And the failure of it stings so bad, burns, aches- With the loss on top of it all, the time they lost, they could've had- Time Max threw away- The morning that Chloe was just gone and Max never said goodbye, and they promised all the time but never did anything- The dates, the relationship they'd never have in the real world, the affection and love-

And she's just so lonely. Just so hurt.

The worst of the crying starts to pass a little after Tim's words of comfort. Eventually her shudders and sobs are reduced to a quiet sniffling, a slow inhale and exhale of breath. Calming down.

She stands shakily, stepping away from him.

"S-sorry, Tim, but... but I think I sh-should rewind that-" she says, lifting a hand. And no matter his reply time starts to bend back, the roaring of wind filling Max's ears, spiraling-

"Y-you don't know what- what you're talking about," she throws at him, her voice shaky and low.

But this time, she doesn't start to lose control. This time she looks at him apologeticaly, her eyes red and puffy, her sleeves stained.

"I'm- Th-thanks Tim. I know this is... is weird and, and you probably didn't want to come up here, b-but, thanks. I had... a good smoke."

Doesn't know what he's talking about. Well, fine, he can give her that much. He doesn't know. He doesn't know the finer points of her world, what she's capable of, what transpired between her and Chloe back home.

Her sleeves are stained with blood and her tears and she looks goddamn miserable, but hey -

Hey.

At least they had a good smoke.

"I know I'm not really your favorite guy in the world," he says, dryly, because ironic remarks lighten the mood for sure, right? Not like he's familiar with any other tactic. "But I don't...I don't hold that against you."

Why would he hold common fucking sense against anyone?

"Alright... thanks, I... I think," she says, hanging her head but glancing at him now and then.

Yeah. It was... good. In a way.

Didn't really resolve anything, but. But there wasn't any suffocating sympathy or anything like that.

She sighs heavily, then bends down to pick up the cigarette but she put out earlier. Yeah, she- she shouldn't litter that, right? She has no idea where to put it so she stuffs it back into the pack, to be thrown away later.

The truth is she's just trying to find something to do other than talk. Other than think about how ridiculous she must have looked in the alternate timeline. Embarrassed- though she knows he won't realize why.

"Okay, uhh... I should. I dunno. I should go." She turns to the door leading off the roof and pauses, her hand on the handle. But then she faces him again. "You heading down, too?"

She scoops up the cigarette, unfinished as it is, even if Wonderland's the sort of place that cleans up after itself anyway. He lets his own cigarette burn out, and pinches out the ember at its tip between thumb and forefinger.

Not all that surprising. For the best if she just heads off and does...whatever it is she does. If nothing else, this talk confirmed one thing - she can time travel, and she's not happy that he knows about it.

And he can't change that, much as he kinda wishes he could.

"Yeah," he says, only after a moment's contemplation. After the shit he gave her for wanting to stand alone on a roof, he'd be kind of a hypocrite to do the same for himself, right?

Never mind that "hypocrisy" might as well be second nature, for him.

"Yeah, I'll head down."

Max only nods silently as she opens the door and begins the walk downstairs. It occurs to her, after some thought, that she's not actually sure if she feels better. Nothing was really resolved- not that she expected anything to be. She's starting to learn how out of control life is.

But she certainly doesn't feel worse, either. If Tim had refused to smoke- if he had forced sympathy or pity on her- well, that would have made her miserable and drive home all the more how terrble things are.

In the end she decides that she feels like she just finished a tiring chore. Not quite upset, or rather not any more upset. But not particularly proud or fulfilled, either. Status quo.

It's sad to think that breaking down and multiple rewinds constitue "status quo."

Eventually she speaks. "Hey, Tim..." she starts, then realizes that she can't follow it up with you're actually not that bad, because she's still not sure.

She settles for something that's been nagging at her slightly instead. "I kinda had to... rewind a bit, just- just this past hour or so. I- uhh, I'm sorry. It... it got a little bad, sometimes. On my part."

And you better believe she'll rewind this too, if it goes wrong.

His jaw tightens, briefly. She rewound. Scrubbed the conversation clean, and he can't even know what it is he missed. Just another person playing pinball with his memories, picking and choosing what he remembers. Like he's not used to that.

Great, he almost mutters, low and resentful, but that'd probably just make things worse. Make her feel guilty, or whatever. So instead he jams his hands into his pockets as he follows, shoulders hiking up to his ears in a shrug.

"Can't really stop you, I guess." And the sooner he accepts that, the better. Why bother trying to wrest control back from a life that's never given him any such thing? It's nothing new.

It's the same problem he's always had, from the same perspective.

He sounds a little annoyed. Heck, Max would be, too- and she doesn't think he realizes how badly this conversation might've gone without the rewinds.

Or maybe he doesn't care.

Or maybe she's just downright wrong about all of it.

She nods in silence, more to herself than to him. Once they're at the sixth floor landing she stands aside to let him through into the hall.

"Uh," she mumbles, not sure how to end this... weird trip. Not sure if he still even wants to talk of if he'll just brush past toward his room.

Yeah, neither of them seem to be the best at talking things out. Just fine, really. Works out great, works out for the best for everyone. He tips his head vaguely in her direction in something that approximates a nod, and starts stumping down the stairs.

So he's had zero control on how the conversation went, this whole time. She might as well have been holding his hand through it, maybe trying all the different iterations until she figured out what combination of words worked best on someone like him. Bit too used to the feeling, and it's not like he'd be any wiser if it were true.

Still, though.

Can't help but wonder what else Max might've caused him to forget.

Still at a loss for anything else to say, she only dips her head in a responding nod, letting him go past her. She wonders if she should be guilty about the rewinds, especially given his reaction- she doesn't feel guilty. Though it's hard to feel anything other than tired and emptied out at this point.

She lets him pass her, without making any comment, willing to let the conversation end in an awkward silence.

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The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist.

cw continues lol

cw continues further!

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The comment didn't post sigh

lmao nice one dw

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