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Who: Jay Merrick and You
What: Jay fell unconscious in Rosswood Park and woke up on a magic island. He's not yet sure if this is a good thing.
When: January 29th, morning
Where: The Storyteller's Temple
Warnings: Language, Jay being an anxious wreck; will update as things come up!

This is wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. He's either still dreaming, or he's still hallucinating, or he's dead, because the only remaining option doesn't just happen.

Sure, maybe the supernatural exists, but it doesn't talk to you in your dreams, and it doesn't spare you from getting your memories scraped out of your head by ~~that thing,~~ and it doesn't drop you off in...okay, maybe it does drop you off in an overgrown, abandoned building, but not one that looks like this.

He leans up against something that definitely isn't a mana pool, because mana pools don't exist. His phone is gone. His camera--shit, his camera's dripping, and the viewfinder screen won't light up, and it won't even turn on, it just keeps making this thin, whining noise before fizzling out again, and come on come on COME ON this can't happen

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"Uh...yeah, that's not...a thing here." Maybe an awkward way of putting it, but in his defense, how else is he supposed to? "Around here, civilization kinda consists of like...maybe fifty people all working together so that we don't all die. Pretty much anything electronic dies once you show up."

His camera had been the same. But then, he hadn't really needed it at that point. He took the hit. He accepted it, all in all willingly.

"This place is basically a bunch of deserted islands."

Jay stops dead, worn sneakers cutting a divot into the dirt.

"Wait, so we're all just stuck here?"

Assuming it's real. Assuming Tim's real, assuming anything he says is real, assuming these deserted goddamn islands are anything more than the product of his brain trickling out his ears after--

He's not thinking about that.

He's not.

"Pretty much," says Tim, listless, because this kinda thing has long since stopped being all that surprising to him. Then he realizes Jay isn't following anymore, and he stops, sighs, and turns to face him.

He forgets, sometimes. Not everyone just takes shit in stride like Tim does, because Tim has a limited capacity to give a fuck on a good day, and none of his days, really, have been good recently.

"Look, it's an adjustment, but that's...just how it is here. Not a whole lot we can do to change it."

So they're stuck.

The talking dream rabbit says they don't know why he's here. Tim says he doesn't know how to get home.

The only civilization's fifty people and whatever they can fish or farm or throw together, and his camera won't turn on.

He just walked through the tunnel, but Tim says it's been two years. Tim's acting like it's been two years.

What's Jay missing?

What doesn't he remember?

"Tim?" One word. He gets one word out, and he can feel the rest gathering at the back of his throat. The camera's not rolling. The only one around to be an asshole about it is Tim, and it's not like Jay hasn't had practice dealing with that. "How d'you...?"

There's a thought, there are words, but he can't figure out which are the right ones.

"D'you know how to...tell?" Nobody's listening--nobody should be listening, but his voice drops low anyway. Maybe he's gotten too used to having an audience. "I mean--"

Jay swears under his breath.

"You...know. Like, you..." He hisses out a frustrated sigh. "You probably figured it out before I did. Or, you at least...Like, I knew, but I didn't..."

Think. Breathe, and think before you open your mouth again.

"In your records, there was...stuff. And I know the meds, they help you with...stuff, so I guess I was wondering if you knew how to...tell. When something's not..." He nearly swallows the next word. "...real."

Derail him. Derail him now, before he gets going.

He can try to talk him down from this, but he's pretty sure that won't work. Historically, trying to get Jay to not do something only makes him more determined to do it. Talking over him and dodging the question provokes suspicion, sometimes violently. Treating him like he's someone with a plethora of undiagnosed and unacknowledged mental health issues just makes him pissed and more likely to deny it.

There's only one real answer to this, and unfortunately, it's not the easy one.

"It's...hard," says Tim, finally.

He's pretty terrible at being honest, he thinks.

"Even without..." He breathes out hard through his nose, has to regroup. "Look, I can say you're not alone here. These islands, they do things that - mess with your head sometimes. And it sucks. It'll make some things worse. But everyone else is living with it too, and we all just...learn to deal with it. Together."

Together.

There's a hissing noise at the back of Jay's throat, almost a laugh. Days ago--hell, hours ago, probably, it would have been mocking. Together, like this is the kind of story where the power of friendship is enough to kill--no, defeat a monster. Now, though, it's something else. It's--god, he's not even sure what it is.

Alone, you see things you shouldn't. Alone, you go places you shouldn't.

Alone, if it finds you, it doesn't just watch.

Tim says the islands can mess with your head. Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that the islands are real, then together is probably worth something.

Not if he doesn't use it, though.

Stiffly, still holding the camera, Jay forces himself to take a few steps forward.

"So, the..." Jay coughs, continuing at a mumble. "Big dream rabbit. Not real, right?"

"No, they were pretty real," says Tim, tiredly. "They're...I mean, you can visit them. You woke up in their temple. They usually show up if you ask for them."

He doesn't really bother, generally. That's not his priority, and he has no interest in talking up the local god. Or gods. Other people can chat up gods all they want. Tim got his fill of that back in the Castle.

God. How's he gonna bring that up?

"What?"

Probably could've kept that to himself, but eh.

"Okay. Sure." If that thing can exist, then why not a giant dream rabbit, right? Why not literally anything? "So you've been here more'n two years, and I...was I here for...any of that?"

Memory loss he knows. Memory loss he can handle.

"No," says Tim. He shoves his hands in his pockets as he walks, scowling at the ground. Not physically. Not really. He just saw him a couple times, and knew he wasn't real. Just like how he thought - thought he wasn't real just now.

Well, that's gone to shit by now.

"Didn't see a lotta people from home."

Should he even mention Brian?

Tim doesn't exactly look thrilled with the answer, but the wording of it immediately catches Jay's attention.

He quits lagging behind, picking up the pace to walk alongside Tim.

"Wait, who else did you see?"

Deep breath. If he's from...he wouldn't know about Brian. He wouldn't know. He never found out about Brian and Tim is fully aware that it makes him unbelievably selfish to want to withhold that, to not be the person to drop that bombshell, but he can't just outright refuse and evade because that's prone to making Jay more determined.

Instead he takes a deep breath.

"Can we...not get into that right now?" He's aware of how it sounds. "I can - if you wanna get into it later, fine, but now's just...not a good time."

How is he supposed to get Jay up to speed while spilling the truth about Brian, of all people?

And how is he supposed to talk about the time he saw It - stark and black against the white of Monsun?

He still doesn't know whether or not It was real.

"Really?" he spits. After everything, after all the secrets and the lies and the doublespeak and the tape, after Jessica, Tim's seriously going to tell him not right now?

God, Jay wants to--to do something, to grab a fistful of Tim's shirt, yank him up to eye level, to press the bones of his arm into his windpipe, to make him talk, to--

Fuck.

No, no, no, come on.

Think.

He's not lying, he's evading. It's not even really a lie by omission; he's clearly, obviously pointing out the omission. He's telling Jay what he's not telling him. That's something.

Tim didn't tell him about the tape for a reason.

This, right here? This is it.

So he's not gonna freak out. He's not.

~~He's not gonna be alone again.~~

Jay takes a long breath, kneading at his forehead. "Later." Again, he forces himself to breathe, forces his voice to even out. "Fine. Okay."

Later isn't 'no.' He looks up at Tim, and he hopes the I'm holding you to that is visible enough that he doesn't have to say it.

Edited 2020-02-08 08:01 (UTC)

Well, he's pretty sure that's gonna get followed up on. Jay makes a commendable attempt to rein it in, though, so...good on him, or whatever. It's almost impressive.

Tim resists the urge to roll his eyes at that and keeps walking. They could technically take the mana pools to Denny, but Jay has all the looks of someone who's still adjusting to the circumstances, and adding magical teleportation to those circumstances is liable to make things worse.

Besides. They're both used to long treks through the woods. Even if these ones are considerably more tropical than your average kudzu-riddled Alabaman hiking trail.

"A lot can happen in two years, all right?" he says. "Look. You said you called and left a voicemail. I, uh...I never got that message."

The humidity is indeed getting to him, but beyond rolling up his sleeves, he tries not to visibly acknowledge it. He can't say he's experienced worse, but he's experienced similar; Rosswood could get to be a real armpit during the summer.

And then Tim brings up the voicemail.

He didn't get it.

"Oh."

He's going to have to say it, then; if he wants Tim to know any of it, he's going to have to say it again.

"I guess I, uh. I watched the tape." Jay lets that hang in the air. "I saw the trail you and, uh...I saw Jessica ended up in Rosswood, so I..." He coughs. "I went to try and see if there was anything...I dunno, anything that'd give some idea what happened after the tape ran out."

His nails dig into the cracks in the camera, into the meat of his other hand.

"It went...bad." His voice creaks higher, strained and sarcastic. "But I guess you or anybody could've told me that."

"Yeah," he says, a little tightly. How the hell does he talk about that? What happened after - and after even that?

He has to tell him. He has to tell him before these islands figure out a way to tell Jay for him, because this is a very real possibility, as Tim has learned.

"I'm, uh." He has to do this too. He has to do this now. "I'm sorry too. For - hiding all that from you. I didn't know how you'd take it, or if you'd just go off on your own, or..."

Kinda like he ended up doing.

Tim apologized.

Holy...He needs to take a second. Needs to process this. Tim's sorry, too. Tim didn't want any of this bullshit to happen, either.

He was trying to keep something like this from happening, the same way Jay was trying to keep the investigation on track. They didn't want the same thing, not exactly, but neither of them wanted this.

We're not gonna get anywhere like this, working solo.

"Sorry." His voice cracks, the same way he remembers. He just did this. Even without the ground shifting under him, the trees changing their configuration every time he looks away, that thing staring down at him from between the branches, he can do it again. Right now, he can make himself do it again. "Sorry, I--I shouldn't've flipped out on you. I was just--"

Scared. Scared Tim was planning to stab him in the back, just like Alex. Scared Tim knew something that would get him killed--get Jessica killed, and he wouldn't say a thing.

He can't be sure that's not true.

He still can't trust him. Not before, not now.

But there are bigger things out there to be scared of than Tim Wright.

"I get why you...yeah. I get why you didn't say anything."

"And I get why you were mad." He shoves his hands into his pockets. Wishes, not for the first time, that he could light up a cigarette. He's several months clean, now. He's not sure he'll ever really get used to it.

The kids he did it for aren't here anymore. He can't bring them back.

Maybe it makes it better, easier, because then he doesn't have to explain anything to Jay that way, but he'd take those complications even if it meant having to sit down and painstakingly go through years of living with them and living with their souls nestled up against his.

"That's...why I got so pissed at you, anyway. Hiding shit from me. Turned around and did the same thing to you, so...yeah. 'Course you'd be mad."

God, what a pair they make.

One with a black eye, the other wrestled to the ground. Both liars, in their own stupid goddamn way.

Jay snorts, rocking his head back to watch the treetops. On instinct, he tips the dead camera to match.

There's a lot--a lot Jay still doesn't know, but this, right now? This is closer to clarity than he's felt in months. Years, maybe.

If he can ignore the island, the magic, the talking rabbit, the massive gap in time, if for a second he squints hard enough that the leaves above him look like oaks, like pines, then he can pretend the pieces sliding into place are important. Significant.

They feel that way, even if he doesn't.

He's not sure what that means. Probably nothing, if he's honest. This hasn't gotten him any closer to tracking down Jessica, to figuring out Alex's motives for coming after them.

But maybe, after this, Tim Wright makes a little more sense. That's something.

"Yeah," he mumbles back, parroting Tim. "'Course you'd be mad."

"Well, what can I say?" He shrugs a little, crunching through the jungles of Ensō. Jay at his back, following him. Feels like moving through Rosswood in some respects, but...it's the furthest thing from it. The climate's wrong, the camera's busted, and they're actually talking to each other instead of making snippy commentary about what they do and don't remember.

"I've had...a lotta time to think about it. This. All of it."

With the shit that this place throws at him, he's had almost no time to do anything but think about it. No choice in the matter. When the specter of the man you failed repeatedly tells you in no uncertain terms that it's your fault that what happened, happened - well, he knew that already, didn't he?

He'd accepted that he'd never see Jay again. He'd accepted a lot of shit that's now come to pass.

He's learned to take it in stride.

Two years. Right. Makes sense he wouldn't be as wound up about it as Jay was.

Maybe Jay didn't even have to apologize.

...No, he probably had to. Great. At least he can take solace in that tonight, lying awake beating himself up for being a fucking coward.

At least he's out of Rosswood.

Breathe in, breathe out.

"Yeah, and I've had..." He moves to check his phone, but--right. Not here. Just a rock. "A couple hours, tops?" He shoots Tim a sideways look, eyebrows raised.

Time is weird, even without outside forces screwing around with it.

(Wait, is Tim older than him now?)

"Yeah, I..." What does he say to that? It's completely correct. It's not as if Jay's had ample time to process this. And, god, what happens when he has to tell him what happened to him? He should probably do it sooner rather than later - do it under his own terms and under his own power, before the islands pick an inopportune time for him.

He's just not sure how one goes about opening that conversation. You'd think that after years of awkward conversations like, hey, so I shared souls with a quantum clone of you and now I know your entire history, he'd be a lot better at this, but no. No, it turns out there's just not a manual for that kind of thing.

"I can't fix what I fucked up," he says, finally. "I can't...undo that. But I can say that I'm sorry about it. And I wish to god that I'd...gotten that voicemail."

"I mean, I...it's not like I can either."

Jay watches his shoes. It's easier to look at than Tim's face, than what Jay's pretty sure is complete, honest sincerity. Feels like cold hands on the back of his neck. Feels like he's doing something wrong.

"And, I mean, at least..." He runs a hand through his hair, eyes still locked on the ground. Tim should've gotten the voicemail. Tim wishes he got the voicemail. Maybe then, they could've worked this out back home. Maybe Tim could've called back. Hell, maybe he could've picked up. Maybe he could've driven out there, yanked Jay out of Rosswood before that thing found him. Maybe they could've stumbled back through the tunnel, back through the parking lot, back to their cars, back to some cheap motel. Maybe things could've gone back to normal--well, not normal. Familiar.

Maybe Jay's wasting his time thinking about bullshit that didn't happen.

"At least I got out of there somehow." With a broken camera, no phone, and no way to get home. "And we...we met back up, even it it wasn't...yeah."

He doesn't know how to do this. Doesn't know how to talk about this. Doesn't know how to think about this.

Tim's throat closes.

"Yeah," he says. The word's a little rough, a little rasping. Meeting like this is better than...better than what actually comes of it. Is he just delaying the inevitable? God, he is, isn't he? He has to say something, he should say something now, but -

But he doesn't know how to broach the subject, and Jay's...he just got here. For fuck's sake, he just got here.

"So," he says, regrouping, "the place is called Denny. And it's...I mean, it looks like it was built here, 'cause it was. So it's not like an Arby's or anything. But there's food and water there and pretty much everyone here is a little weird so nobody really stands out."

"That's real reassuring; thanks." Jay feels a muscle twitch at the edge of his mouth, a half-formed smirk. So Tim thinks Jay won't stand out in a crowd of weirdos. He can't say he's surprised.

"Didn't think anybody'd miss home enough to build a whole Denny's from scratch, but, uh."

He spots the mural. There's rabbits, some other stuff and...

WE GOT FRE SHA VACA DO

"Who, uh...who painted that sign?" He can hear it in his voice, the exact same tone he's heard people take with Alex. He hopes to god that mural wasn't Tim.

"That was Connor," he says, deadpan. "I dunno what any of it means, but I've learned not to ask."

He's long since accepted that he will not understand a good seventy to eighty percent of what Connor says, and he is okay with this. They come from different points in time. There's just no avoiding it.

The interior is..."rustic" is probably the nicest possible word for it. It looks like it was built out here, mostly because it was. The chairs and tables were put together by hand, the cutlery has been alternatively transmuted or carved by hand, and so on.

Tim navigates the place with an easy familiarity. Hopefully the question won't arise of how he knows this place back to front.

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