lifeaftr | open

Entry tags:

open

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

"Oh."

He's never squatted in an abandoned building before. They don't sound abandoned, exactly, from the way Tim's described them. They sound livable, even if there's no furniture. With a blanket, maybe a pillow, it'll probably be more comfortable than the back of his car.

He can work with this. Maybe. He thinks he can work with this.

"Uh." He's not sure how to ask this without sounding weird. Probably because it's weird, and he's weird, and this whole situation's goddamn weird. "Where's...like, where do you...live, I guess."

He coughs.

"I mean 'cause you're...like, I dunno what the availability's like, but if I'm within some kinda decent distance of where you are, that'd probably be...safer? I dunno."

He stares at the ground. Preferable to watching Tim's reaction.

"I can show you, if you want." Maybe a few years ago, he would've balked at the suggestion. But at this point, there wouldn't be much point in trying to hide it. His location's obvious to just about anyone here. A few days of dedicated observation would strip away that smokescreen in a second. "I dunno if there's any empty places left on the islet I'm on, but there probably are. People come and go all the time."

If they're gonna visit the islets, it occurs to him that Jay might have to contend with the fact that Tim lives with a tigerlily. But he's gonna cross that bridge when he gets to it, and not before.

He's not at the point where he's ready to offer that Jay stay with him. Not yet.

God knows if he'll ever reach that point.

"Yeah." Jay nods a little too hard, a little too quickly. "Yeah, that'd be good."

He needs to find his way around this place as soon as he can. Last thing he needs is to get lost in an even more isolated wooded area.

They won't be sharing a room, won't be sharing a car, won't be sharing a wall, if Jay's mental picture of the area's anywhere near right, but ideally he'll be nearby. Within screaming distance, maybe. That thing might not be here, but if the talking rabbit's to be believed, this place isn't exactly the safest.

Better the devil he knows, right?

~~Liar.~~

He squints out the window.

"Which way?"

"You can get to them by mana pool. There's one near the Storyteller's temple, where you woke up, but we had one put down near here too." It's not really a surprise that Jay wants to get right to it. Tim shrugs and heads for the door. There's not really anyone else here, and most everybody knows him well enough for him not to do anything fucking stupid while he's out. For the most part.

He's had years to get used to mana pool travel. He's not expecting Jay to take it as well in stride.

"They're how most people get where they need to go around here."

Jay hisses through his teeth. Yeah, he saw somebody travel by mana pool, back at the temple. Looked...wrong. Sure, he's seen teleportation in movies and whatever, but that all looked fake. This wasn't.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. If he can deal with a talking rabbit and Tim wearing a tie-dye shirt, he can deal with this.

"Nice of 'em to do that, I guess." Public transportation, straight to the closest thing to actual civilization Jay's seen. Jay follows Tim to the pool, peering down at it warily. "So you just...chuck a flower in there, and it...?"

"Yep." And because he knows that there's a good reason for there to be hang-ups about this sort of thing for them, for people like them, he adds wearily: "I've been using these things for three years and so far I'm not any more or less fucked up than usual."

At least, not thanks to the mana pools. There were times when using that system of travel dropped him somewhere he didn't mean to go, but that was more an island-wide thing than his own fault.

Now doesn't seem like a good time to mention that.

Jay snorts. Not any more or less fucked up than usual. It's honestly more reassuring than if Tim had just insisted it was safe or whatever.

He's had space torn apart under his feet before, right? So it should be fine, right?

Still, Jay doesn't bend down to pick up a flower. His knees are locked in place.

He's walked into danger before. He went to Brian's house three times. It's the middle of the day (not that that ever fixed anything), and Tim's been doing this for three years without any ill effects (as far as he can tell).

He should pick up a flower.

He should pick up a flower.

He should pick up a flower.

Goddammit.

"So, this is...like, those are them?" He gestures at the flowers growing at the base of the mana pool.

Coward.

Tim watches for a minute as Jay stands there, seemingly caught in a mental trap of what to do next. He doesn't push it until Jay says it aloud. Tim reaches down and grabs one of the flowers, spins it between his fingertips with the same flat expression as usual.

"Yep. Just gotta focus on where you wanna go. I can show you how it goes, if you want."

The offer for help is just as likely to go over badly as it is...well, he's not gonna say well. He's pretty sure it could go over all rightand nigh catastrophic with a whole lotta in between, but they're not gonna get anywhere by standing here and talking about it. So.

That'd be nice. It's been a long day.

God, no. Never mind. He can pick a flower. He can throw a flower into a weird magic pool. It's fine. He's fine.

"I'm fine." He didn't mean to say it out loud, but he's already talking, and he's already bending down, yanking a flower up out of the ground so hard the petals nearly rip. "I mean, like, it's--"

He tosses it into the pool.

Not so hard.

"Fuck, wait, I don't know what the islet looks like."

He turns to Tim, for once making no effort to disguise his panic. "What do I do?"

"Just concentrate on the...uh, the idea of an islet, I guess? There aren't really any other islets around here. If we end up somewhere else, it's fine. We'll just head back. There's just the one mana pool for all the islets. No big."

Jay's definitely overthinking it. Now that he's brought it up, Tim's got no clue how to derail him from that other than to assure him that, most likely, they won't end up anywhere bad. Unless they somehow end up on Monsun.

Okay, okay, not thinking about that. That's a low probability.

He's fine. This is fine. He is definitely not visibly shaking like a leaf, and he is fine.

"That's, it's, uh--" Hell, even his voice is shaking. Get a hold of yourself. "That's just a--a small island, right? So just think of small islands?"

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

tim misses his KIDS ARGH

of course he does!!!!

they are his children!!!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject