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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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"Well, they're kinda...bad-tempered, I guess? Like, they don't really tell us shit that we should maybe know. Say they don't know but I'm not sure how much I believe them."

That's maybe a little too familiar for comfort, huh? Not trusting someone because you're certain they're not telling you the whole truth. Yeah, how about we skate on past that?

Unfortunately, there's no way to really avoid it.

"We dunno how much they know, we dunno what brought us here, and everyone's pretty sure they're not telling us everything but we dunno what they're not telling us."

Jay's eyebrows slowly raise, eyes still half-lidded.

He looks at Tim.

Tim's not tearing up the corner of a notebook, not clicking the lid of his pill bottle open and shut, but there's something in the way he pauses that gets Jay's attention. Jay's got a feeling Tim's hearing the same thing he did. He's got a feeling he doesn't have to say anything, even if the desire to construct some kind of snide remark, to twist the knife just a little, just enough is itching under his skin. ~~(Oh, just enough?)~~

Instead, he takes a long, slow bite out of the last remaining hard-boiled egg. "Huh."

It's a useful tip, he'll grant. It's all been too much, too quickly, for Jay to be as diligent as he'd like to be. Not as easy to check for deviations from normal if he's got no idea what "normal" means here.

"Have they, like...slipped up, ever?" The sarcasm has dropped from his voice. He's not asking because he doubts what Tim's saying. He's asking because he wants to know what to look out for, maybe see if there's a way to get them to slip up again. Tim's been here two years. He knows his way around.

~~And Jay's sick of being two steps behind.~~

"I don't really talk to them. You'd be better off talking to...y'know, someone who does." Tim looks away, his expression twisting slightly as he scowls at the wall. Maybe he should've made more of an effort to bother to connect, but that was never his priority. Too many other things that needed him way, way more than some storytelling rabbit god with an anxiety problem.

Granted, he can at least point Jay in the direction of people who do chat with them. Kravitz, probably. He can offer a more impartial and all-around helpful viewpoint than, say, Ren, the only other person he knows who chats them up semi-regularly. Or did.

"Look, they do...keep us safe, I guess. They bring us back when we die," he says, rolling right on past that without really touching on it at length, "they trade us stuff if we tell them stories, shit like that. It's not all bad."

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

Jay nearly spits out a mouthful of hard-boiled egg, two different questions colliding in his head. He manages to swallow first.

He also manages to sort out which question is higher priority.

"Wait, what kind of stuff? Like--?" He lifts the broken camera.

Oh, boy. He should've figured. Tim grimaces slightly, but he knows better than to dodge the question at this point. He kneads at his brow and sighs.

"Yeah. I mean, they can...repair stuff and get it to work again. They get me my meds, too." He digs the bottle out of his pocket and sets it on the counter with a quiet rattle. "Refills automatically, so I don't have to worry about running out, or whatever."

Maybe you should try asking for those instead, Jay.

~~Maybe he will Not, Actually.~~

It takes a second to process, but when the relief hits, it hits hard.

He doesn't have to forget.

He can wind the tape back. He can check to make sure. He can go over what people said, take notes, compare the details against each other.

He doesn't have to depend on his own ~~unreliable~~ memory. He can't be tampered with. He'll have a copy of the truth on hand.

And Tim's got his meds, set up to infinitely refill. They don't have to depend on the insurance from Tim's job, the savings they've scrounged together between them. He won't have to watch Tim's movements carefully for the signs of an impending seizure.

He may have to watch for something else, though.

Tim said it wouldn't happen again.

Jay's learned how well he can trust Tim's word.

Still, they can get back to baseline. Camera, medicine, isolation from the rest of the world. Almost like home, if he squints.

Edited 2020-03-02 07:52 (UTC)

Yeah, that's not a good silence.

"You don't have to...repair it, you know." He nods at the camera and, sure, he knows that this isn't about to go over well, but he has to say something, all right? "I mean...look, no one really has a ton of tech here. There's not a lotta use in carrying around a thing like that."

Hell, he did the same thing to the camera he showed up with.

"I had a camera when I showed up here too. Didn't even last the first week."

Jay grips the camera a little tighter.

He doesn't clutch it in both hands, doesn't yank it away, doesn't freak out. He's just holding it. Just making sure he's got a hand on it.

"So...what, you just--?" He cuts himself off. Don't make stupid assumptions. Nothing here makes any sense. He can't just guess, or he'll risk being wrong. Tim's been talking. No reason why he'll stop here.

Jay just has to reword it.

"I mean, what do you do when...you know?" When you forget? When it makes you forget?

What's he say to that that'll calm Jay down? Hell if he knows. It doesn't matter. Yeah, like that'll go over well. I got used to it. Jay would never take that well. I've got people I trust to fill me in. As if that's not a sore point for Jay as it is.

I don't care anymore.

Like Jay would relate to that. This isn't a guy who cares about things by half measures. Not Marble Hornets, not finding Jessica, not unraveling a mystery, not Alex Kralie.

"I deal with it," he says. "I...live with it, I guess."

That's probably not a very satisfying answer.

Jay almost laughs. The sound he makes, a low hiss through his nose, a choked sound at the back of his throat, is almost a laugh.

Tim just deals with it. Tim's been dealing with it his whole life, dealing with it since he was a kid. He's used to this. This is normal for him, so of course he'd be able to keep going.

Tim shouldn't have to just deal with it. This shouldn't be normal, not for either of them.

Jay's free hand wraps across his chest, fingers digging into his other arm. When he speaks, it comes out low, bitter.

"I'm not sure I can really do that."

Edited 2020-03-07 08:00 (UTC)

"Maybe...not yet." How the fuck does he do this? He'd accepted that he'd never be seen any of these people again. Big fucking mistake that turned out to be - how was he supposed to handle the fact that Brian showed up, and then...

He's not here anymore. Does that really matter, at this point?

Tim feels his expression twist a little into something pained, something he doesn't mean to show.

"Maybe someday you will."

Tim looks awfully choked up about this. Memory loss is awful, yeah, but Tim's looking at him like somebody just died.

Jay looks at the floor instead.

"I'd rather hold off 'til I can be sure nothing's...y'know, giving me a reason to keep track of this stuff, if it's all the same to you."

"It's not here, Jay."

He hasn't dared say it. Not aloud.

He hasn't dared say it for fear that it might make It spring into being. He's seen It before, he knows he has. Felt It on Maati. Saw It on Monsun. But in both occasions, It dissipated as soon as he was off of those islands. It didn't persist. The only stalking It's done has been in the texture of his own thoughts, his own clouded anxieties.

He's never wanted to say it aloud, because what if he's wrong?

A light breath of something cups around his chest. Something he doesn't want to study too closely, because it mimics the familiar taste of panic a little too much.

It's not here.

He's been away from home for something like three years, now.

It hasn't followed him. It's sprang into other people's thoughts through no fault of his own, and It still hasn't shown up. How many years did it take for It to manifest the first time? It - it didn't take years. They all just forgot how quickly it happened before.

It's not here.

He's finally said it.

It's not here.

It's not here.

Jay's head jerks up, back ramrod straight. He can feel the blood rushing in his ears, feel the prickle of adrenaline across his skin.

"What?" He's looking right at Tim. He has to watch him--has to see. "How do you--how do you know?"

Tim's a good liar, Jay knows. But the look on his face--the look in his eyes--the fucking...almost-panic he can hear in his voice, it sounds real. Tim's a good liar, but his lies are quiet. They're lies of omission. They're 'I don't know,' they're 'Don't think about that.' They're redirections--and this, sure, fine, this could be a redirection. This could be Tim pulling the strings, could be Tim trying to keep the camera off, could be Tim trying to pull Jay down with him, to get him to forget again.

But it doesn't look like that.

It looks like the hospital, like Tim's insistence that there was something Jay still needed to see.

And, god, when he thinks about it, it makes sense. They're nowhere near Rosswood. Hell, they might not even be on Earth. They might not even be in the same dimension, and what was it that guy said?

"But if your concern is something from your home world... you are far from that now. Only individuals find their way here, so you needn't be concerned if you were worried about... well, something like that. It's very unlikely they're also here."

It's not here.

It's not here.

"Because I've been away from home for something like three years, and I've never seen It for real."

Not for real. In dreams, in memories, in hallucinations, in fears made manifest. There's a reckless, ruthless sort of giddiness that creeps up in his chest like flurrying snow when he says it. It's not here. It's not here. It's never been here.

It took being torn from his world and displaced into not one but two different worlds, but for the first time in his life, he's...

Free.

He's free.

Three years. Three years, and he hasn't seen the real thing once.

And Jay can't think of a single reason good enough for Tim to lie about something this big.

Tim has lied about...major things, kept secrets that could've changed the whole trajectory of the investigation, but there was always a reason. It was always about covering his own ass, keeping himself safe, trying to keep people--keep specific people--from turning on him.

~~I know why you kept that tape from me.~~

Nothing about this would keep Tim any safer. If that thing were here, Tim would be safer with somebody watching his back. As far as Jay can tell, that's the whole reason he lied in the first place--to keep people around.

So Tim might believe what he's saying.

Tim probably believes what he's saying.

But what if he just forgot, like the rest of them back in 2006? Alex tried to kill them, and as soon as that thing swept through, they just kept on going like nothing happened.

This isn't really the same, though. This time, they know. This time, they know what to look for.

"And nobody's--" Jay can hear his voice picking up speed. "Nobody's showing...showing symptoms, anything like that?"

Edited 2020-03-09 06:20 (UTC)

"People'd notice," he says, a little dryly. "I'd've noticed. But...if anything's happened, it hasn't stuck around. It hasn't stayed long-term. I don't know anybody who's...seen anything."

Anything they don't see usually, anyway. This place fucks with your head. Shows you things. Hell, it's the primary reason he assumed that Jay wasn't really here when he first showed up. He just assumed that this was some fabrication the islands spun up for his sake, or even more likely, Tim himself having some kind of mental break. Again. He's probably lost his mind enough times for it to be warranted by now, right?

But now that he has to think about it - aside from the moments when he's forgotten to medicate and that thing's slipped through, what symptoms has he seen? Even when that thing in his skull rears it head, it's never left any lingering...anything. Nothing aside from the bruises and awkward explanations Tim always has to cycle out for that shit anyway.

All this time, and he never wanted to think about it. Didn't wanna believe it. Didn't wanna jinx it.

Now that he's said it aloud, he can almost believe it.

Jay takes a long, slow, shaky breath.

He's only been here a few hours, but if he sits and thinks about it, sits and tries to breathe and take stock of how he's feeling, he can't exactly deny he's feeling...better. Better than he was. He hasn't needed to pop an ibuprofen since he got here. He could feel the sun through his sleeves, feel it on his face, and it's actually done something to ease the chill seizing up the muscles in his back. The weight in his lungs is a little lighter.

Could be down to having his first decent meal in a while.

With some effort, he manages to think: Probably not.

He looks up at Tim. Jay knows it's plain on his face--the worry, the hesitant thread of something approximating hope. He couldn't tamp it down fast enough.

Jay meets his eyes.

"So now what?"

That's the question, isn't it?

Tim almost wants to laugh at that. Wants to. The impulse is there, spooling up in his chest like a water balloon ready to burst. He seizes the impulse, bundles it tight, crams it down somewhere it won't come to light. That's not you. The point of this is to ease Jay into things, not freak him out even more than he is already. Save that conversation for later. Save conversations about souls and the kids who carry them for some other time.

"Good question," he says quietly. "I mean, I just...take it day to day. Anything else gets pretty exhausting."

It's so succinct. Looking one day ahead and seven years back, balancing all the variables in his head, constructing a Rube Goldberg machine where every possibility within every day branches off into a thousand others, trying to trace a line from yesterday to tomorrow that doesn't leave him bleeding out in his hotel bed or hunched over the wheel of his car or lying in the woods or coughing his lungs out in an abandoned hospital--it's pretty fucking exhausting.

Jay exhales, pressing his face into his hands.

He doesn't know this machine, doesn't know how the system changes when you switch out this many variables.

He knows Tim--well, he knew the Tim from years ago, barely, through scraps of paper and the occasional conversation over hotel coffee. He knew that Tim was a liar. He knew that Tim was the only thing keeping him alive.

He knows this Tim brought him back to civilization, offered him food and water.

He knows his camera, for all the good it'll do him here.

He knows he's got a tension headache crawling up the back of his neck. He knows it's not half as bad as the ones he remembers from back home.

He knows the eggs were more filling than anything he's eaten in weeks.

He knows he's exhausted.

"I...think I can do that."

He doesn't know if he's lying.

I think I can do that.

Tim can't tell if he's lying to himself or lying to them both or if he genuinely believes it. It's honestly hard to say. There's a good chance that it's up in the air. This is a new situation for one of them.

It'd be a new situation for Tim, but years ago (has it really been years?), it was Brian showing up on these shores (along with Tim murdering a sentient monkey on his behalf) and then them having to stumble through whatever came after that together. There was no hope of easing into it. Not with the way things were then.

They've been afforded a rare luxury here. And like hell Tim's not gonna take advantage of that.

He doesn't say any of that. What he says instead is far simpler.

"You need a place to stay?"

Jay looks up from his hands, still feeling the heat from the marks pressed into his face. Might bruise, might not. "I mean..."

Given what Jay's seen of the island, given the way Denny looks like something hammered together by hand by some kind of frontiersman, and given everything Tim and the rabbit told him, it seems like having a roof over your head here isn't necessarily a given. Jay's got more experience with that then the average person, he'll admit, but he always had his car when things got rough.

"Guessing I can't really go with my usual strategy."

And it's his first instinct to leave it at that, to shrug it off with a half-joke, but something tugs at his chest when he does. It's not enough.

"Thanks," he mumbles. "By the way. For the food."

Somehow, being nice to the guy is harder than being defensive and cagey, in part because he's not sure how sincere it'll seem, for him to be anything but an insufferable asshole. He shrugs, silent for a moment in the absence of anything else he can think of to say.

"It's not a problem," he says. "Anybody who comes through here's welcome to stick around. I don't think people really sleep here, but there's these houses all over. The islets off the coast, or the ones in the compound."

Bringing up that the compound used to belong to sentient monkeys who kidnapped people and wielded coconut guns feels harder to get into. In part because it was while storming that compound that he saw Brian here, of all people.

Jay squints, not fully processing what Tim's suggesting.

"What, just, like for rent, or...?"

What kind of rent would a grown-over survival island with a trade-based economy even have? Is he gonna have to grow, like, tomatoes or something? Probably more than tomatoes.

"No, just to...stay in. I mean, they're not furnished or anything but they don't belong to anybody and it's not like there's an economy here anyway." The house he shared, until recently, had been pretty barebones. And then they'd gotten him a bed.

It retrospect, it should have been obvious that they'd disappear, after that.

He's getting off-topic.

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cw: mention of a suicide attempt

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