[Tataru had said that Tim would appreciate some of those nails he'd been holding onto, and it's not like Brian has any immediate use for them, aside from maybe sprinkling them around his hut like a Home Alone style burglar trap.
So here he is, sneaking into Tim's place when he's certain no one is home, (no Tim, no pesky, threatening kids) and emptying half his box of nails into the corner. He'd leave them in the box, but... he needs that. Sorry Tim.]
[Brian there was literally no reason to sneak your way into the house you could have knocked on the door you could have left a message on the Communal Rock you could have done LITERALLY ANYTHING but potentially put a pair of kids ill at ease with the concept of strange men slinking into THEIR HOME.]
[He's lucky Tim gets home before they do. And also lucky that he can take a little guess as to who "X" on the rock might be.]
[Chara is usually up early, so their movements at the crack of dawn are hardly surprising. Sometimes Tim joins them- sometimes not. This morning, they're up and out the door before he can consider it, if he's conscious.
But if he isn't, he probably will be by the time they deposit something big and plush on top of him, leaving the man to figure out what he's supposed to do with a jacket in this weather for himself.
[Look!!! She's confused, but not mad after his birthtrayel because surely everyone will forget by 'May'. She's gotta check up on this boy after all the shenans that have gone down.]
[Sorry, Ren. It's not looking likely. But at least this is confirmation that she's not mad at him, which is...apparently something he was concerned over.]
Uh, yeah. [He did just make that whole rock post, but he wasn't really expecting her to phone him over it. Unless that's not why she's calling.]
[A coconut shell bowl of strawberries is left outside whatever counts as a door at shack 3 of Islet four. It is covered with a leaf and there is a note underneath the bowl. The paper has been torn from a notebook and is quite thin, as if words have been rubbed out many times in the making of this letter, which is in pencil]
Tim
I wanted to apologise for running from you at the meeting. You were right. I wasn't thinking about the consequences of what I was saying. But I shouldn't have left. Sorry if I upset you or confused you or whatever... I'm a nutjob sometimes.
Hope you like strawberries
Shion
cw: reference to hospitalization and attempted suicide
[He kicked back handfuls of pills in the burned-out shell of a hospital room, the very same one in which he huddled and cried and had to wipe his face with the sleeves of the shirts his mom made him pack, because they hadn't given him any tissues. He choked on the lump sum of them until his heart stuttered and he fell back against the soot-stained asphalt and watched the ceiling blur to black.]
[I'm a nutjob sometimes.]
[Slow push. Slow push.] [Padded straps, because he kept trying to claw at cold-reddened arms, and then at the forest of white coats, and then at himself, as if that might shut up the clanging in his head, the kick-drum of his own fucking broken brain burning a hole in his skull, and then he was convulsing as the synapses in his brain stopped firing the way they were supposed to so they had to up it, up the cool chemical slide into his veins.] [Slow push. Slow push.]
[I'm a nutjob sometimes.]
[Three weeks he's off the map, doesn't call in, doesn't check in, doesn't say a damn thing to anybody. Just up and disappears, and he wakes in the back of his car with blood in his hair and a leg that feels shattered down to the fucking bone and he can't stand, much less drive himself to work, and he learns that it doesn't matter anyway, because when he calls in they had to fire him for vanishing for three straight weeks without a word. And the question of what the hell was he doing in those three weeks never comes up, though it burns like a cigarette stub to the arm, aches in his throat and lingers in the background noise of a clipped conversation over the phone with people whose names he can no longer recall because, like so many fucking other instances in his life, his memory has decided it's not worth retaining. Because everything from the nights he considered the best in his life to the months he spent chafing under Alex Kralie's scathing commentary to the iron thud of rebar to the back of his head has been scraped out from wherever it is that brains keep memories with no hope of recovery.]
[I'm a nutjob sometimes.]
[He lets Frisk have the strawberries. Chara's...with the elves, last he checked, and the hike through the mana pools to that isolated location can be made another time, under other circumstances.]
[Instead he leaves a note stuck against the door of the shack he and Aster share, and it's really very simple.]
They wouldn't have known about it if Ren hadn't told them, so hey. Thanks for telling her. It takes a few simple favors to arrange what they want to, quietly leaving their gifts at his bedside, but otherwise willing to allow the day to continue as per normal, if that's what he wishes.
The first thing he'll notice, of course, is the small chocolate cake courtesy of Muffet. They won't say no if he wants to share but it is, actually, for him. They like chocolate. Hopefully, so does he.
The second?
A locket.
The design should be more than recognizable. Inside, a single word has been carefully scratched into the gold paint:
[The thing about birthdays is that Tim's never been one to celebrate them. Not in his memory, anyway. If he had any association with them growing up, it was quickly rubbed away under the pressure of the daily crawl from one day to the next. Birthdays, and most holidays for that matter, went uncelebrated but for a phone call or a postcard in the mail, if that.]
[So when he wakes up to a cake and a locket, it might be the first real birthday present he's ever received in his life.]
[It might be - no, it is, without question - the nicest thing that anyone's done for him.]
[The chain is cool around his neck, the pendant fitting neatly into the groove of his palm.]
[For several minutes, all he can do is press the base of one hand up against his shut lids, biting back the leaking warmth at the corners of them. He's never been one for this, to indulge this kind of instinct in a way that isn't just - hoarse, guttural sobs, loud and ragged and tearing at the edges. He cries, he knows he does, but he doesn't cry like this, quietly, because the absence of something no longer sits heavy in his chest.]
[He's never had a birthday cake before. Not that he can remember.]
[At some point early in the freaking morning, this horrible heathen child is outside his shack with a handful of stuff. He might catch her in the act or find it piled up later, but either way he'll have:
-His own SPECIAL birthday stick. Literally a freaking stick with a bunch of music notes doodled in chalk on it.
-A flower crown because that's how life is now. Wear it.
-At the center of it all is a terrible drawing of a dabbing Tim wearing a crown surrounded by gold stars and the words 'tim song'-
Because directly underneath the photo is a slew of music notes put together to form a song based on all the things he's taught her so far. There are no lyrics, but there's some kind of melody it follows. The point is, she did her best and made him his own song to play someday.]
[It's obvious enough who these particular gifts came from - especially since Ren's one of the few people he remembers telling his birthday to directly, in the spirit of an even exchange.]
[He's never really gotten presents before. Not for holidays, not for his birthday. Nothing he can recall in earnest.]
[They're the presents a child would come up with, but they're still some of the first and only he's ever gotten.]
[Look, she had been asleep for the last few hours, having nice dreams about cats and stuff, when she was jostled awake by-
A thought. An idea. And she slowly rolls herself out of the comfy tent with the full intent of sharing that thought right now, even though it's in the middle of the gd night. Sorry, Tim. She's got a q for u.]
[Tim is, indeed, very awake. It's hard to sleep on Umui - no harder than usual, to be fair. But the frozen lumps of the passive, still automatons sitting couched in flowers feels a little bit too much like being watched.]
Wide awake. [There's almost no hesitation. He was staring at the star-speckled sky when Ren's voice pipes up from his stone, and his response comes just as easily:]
[On the morning of the 10th, Chara is gone. Their backpack is also gone. And perhaps this wouldn't be anything alarming, for a child who consistently leaves at all hours of the night and morning to do what they please, except this time, they've left a note. Torn out of their notebook, the hasty scribble rips through the page more than once.]
Oh, look. [He sounds almost...lazy as he says it. Commenting with that wry, empty deadpan acquired after too many hours on the road, too many days spent staring dully ahead, too many nights lost to a dim monitor glare.]
They told you not to follow them.
[Ignore it.]
Chara. [His grip on the stone is tight, sweat-slippery.] Chara, just...know that what you're seeing isn't real. It isn't real. It can't hurt you.
I thought so too. [Jay's looking down morosely at his shirt, as though it were some kind of rip in the clothing and not the evidence, the fucking physical, tangible proof of Tim's failure to be at the right place at the right time.]
Chara. Please, just - just don't listen to it. It isn't real.
[Jay's tone is sour arsenic; bitterness poured over something scalding.]
[Bouncing back from dealing with the darkness in everyone's heart had been a slow, painful process eased by the lights appearing to soothe it over only days later.
But there's one person-where it went from bad to worse and she hadn't tried contacting him since, despite the strong urges she had to call him about stars, plants, bugs in the middle of the night. Like she used to.
For once she can't shake off the feeling that something changed-couldn't turn away from the words, reactions and confessions brought on by one, two, three of them. It's why she hesitates when she spots him during her evening ambling around the island, choosing to twiddle with the seashells in her hand instead of yelling Hey, hey to grab his attention.
He probably already knows she's there and it's not like she wants to run away, but she doesn't want to Deal With This either. So-
She extends a hand towards him, her palm covered with shiny shells for him to take, though she knows he probably won't. It's kind of a peace offering?? She's not sure-it's just the first thing she thought to do and a way to gauge what might happen before she opens her mouth.]
[He's alone, smoking, trying to smooth away the worst of his nerves, still shot from the experiences of the past few week or so. It's not really helping. He should quit, probably. This kind of habit is only going to get in the way here - the damage he's doing to an already fucked respiratory system, the nicotine dependency, and everything else besides.]
[He can't seem to help it. Or - no, he just doesn't want to help it.]
[Gradually, movement in his periphery arrests him. He looks up, glimpses a hand full of shells, and then...notes the head of silvery hair it's attached to.]
[His stomach lurches quietly. He swallows past the lump in his throat. His voice, when he speaks, is scratchy - like he's been shouting, or maybe like he hasn't spoken in a few days.]
[Look, this isn't really Lup's first choice of who to call. She's at the point in the proceedings where she's pleaded with an unresponsive Stone for about the fiftieth time this afternoon, and she's-- She just needs somebody to fucking answer, for once. She needs to know.]
Hey Tim? You there? Is-- [Be cool, fuck.] Have you seen Chara? [She was not cool.]
[It has not been a good couple of days, is the thing. Keeping track of everyone has proved problematic, and the success rates are basically fucking nonexistent.]
[There's the sound of fumbling with the Stone for half a second before Tim answers, sounding harried. At least he can helpfully skip right on past the are you really you? conversations. He's pretty sure any Shadowy byproduct wouldn't be asking.]
Not since this all started. I've been looking, but it's not...there's a lot going on.
[It takes her a while to say Tim's name into the Stone of Farspeech, and even when she does, her hands are shaking. Stay calm, she tries to tell herself. Stay calm.
But how can she be, when her children could be...?]
Tim? Are you there?
[A pause. She tries to keep her tone level and even.] I have not found Chara nor Frisk. They are not among those who were in the mountain. No one has seen them.
[The ash is scraping his throat raw. It's drifted until it's begun to settle even on Ensō, and he doesn't know, yet, the full effects of this. He only knows that he's reduced to coughing into his fist for several minutes before he can muster a response, his head cottony and thick with a headache he knows is only going to get worse.]
[This does nothing to alleviate the jolt of panic that knots itself underneath the wad of tissue of his heart.]
[Even if it is diminished, vaguely, by the knowledge that some part of him expected this.]
[The words are scratchy and low when he answers, though muffled, as though he's speaking through his hands.]
[It’s late morning. Frisk can tell by the sharp angle of sunlight across the floor, bright and intrusive, scattering across the palm leaves they lay their boots out onto every night. Sighing at the indication of another blistering day, Frisk pulls at their now mid-length hair, looping it into a large bun and securing it with a frayed black ribbon.]
[With their hair under control, Frisk rolls onto their side and slips their hand underneath a cushion. When they draw it out, there’s a slip of paper between their fingers, neatly folded into fourths. They unfold it, carefully, smoothing out the creases and rumples they’d accidentally inflicted on it while sleeping.]
[Absently, they reach for the purple pen - almost dried up - sitting at the edge of the cot. Then they pause, eyes flickering over the paper’s contents, and change their mind with a soft shake of their head.]
[Rather, they fold the paper in half again. Pinch the fold between their thumb and forefinger and swipe it down the fold’s length decisively, turning their head towards the other occupant of the room.]
He should be gone by now. Do you want to make any changes today?
[They’ve been sleeping more, lately. Purposefully keeping to bed for the extra few hours it takes for Tim to exit the shack had eventually led to a change in patterns- Frisk, warm and slumbering at their side, helped.
Dreams are still dreams. They happen often. But when they open their eyes from them these days, they simply...wait. Look at Frisk. At Tim, across the room.
Go back to sleep.
As Frisk fusses over their note with the same intent hesitation they have every morning, Chara attacks their own hair, still cropped short against the stifling heat of the archipelago. As their Partner sets the folds of paper, already pressed thin from folding and refolding, they get their shoes, check their knives. Everything where it should be, again.]
No. [A brisk enough answer, but they move over to the hammock in short order, pushing aside the culmination of blue jacket, red, knitted jumper, and galaxy hoody to fish out two more pages, folded with that same decisiveness. They’re unchanged from when they were first written, for the most part.
Part of them wonders what they’d do if they went to change anything. Scrap it all and start again. Or refuse to write anything at all.]
[A normal, well-adjusted person probably would have done this a while ago. A long while ago. Like... almost a year ago.
But going to Tim, even to apologize, didn't seem like an option at the time, or for months and months afterward. It barely feels like one now - but he might as well try.
He stops by the Denny in the evening, a letter painted onto a piece of fabric and tucked into his back pocket - just in case Tim isn't there. He doesn't know whether to be relieved or not that he is. So much for taking the indirect approach.]
[If Tim remembers their last conversation, it doesn't really show. He glances at Ginko with the same weary neutrality that colors his interactions with everybody else and nods to him in greeting.]
[More likely he's forgotten the exact tenor of that exchange amidst everything else.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
backdated to the 6th
So here he is, sneaking into Tim's place when he's certain no one is home, (no Tim, no pesky, threatening kids) and emptying half his box of nails into the corner. He'd leave them in the box, but... he needs that. Sorry Tim.]
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[He's lucky Tim gets home before they do. And also lucky that he can take a little guess as to who "X" on the rock might be.]
[Good god, man.]
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Uhhh let's say the 10th?
But if he isn't, he probably will be by the time they deposit something big and plush on top of him, leaving the man to figure out what he's supposed to do with a jacket in this weather for himself.
You're welcome.]
3/30 irock
[Look!!! She's confused, but not mad after his birthtrayel because surely everyone will forget by 'May'. She's gotta check up on this boy after all the shenans that have gone down.]
BOY
Uh, yeah. [He did just make that whole rock post, but he wasn't really expecting her to phone him over it. Unless that's not why she's calling.]
What's up?
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15th probably
Tim
I wanted to apologise for running from you at the meeting. You were right. I wasn't thinking about the consequences of what I was saying. But I shouldn't have left. Sorry if I upset you or confused you or whatever... I'm a nutjob sometimes.
Hope you like strawberries
Shion
cw: reference to hospitalization and attempted suicide
[He kicked back handfuls of pills in the burned-out shell of a hospital room, the very same one in which he huddled and cried and had to wipe his face with the sleeves of the shirts his mom made him pack, because they hadn't given him any tissues. He choked on the lump sum of them until his heart stuttered and he fell back against the soot-stained asphalt and watched the ceiling blur to black.]
[I'm a nutjob sometimes.]
[Slow push. Slow push.]
[Padded straps, because he kept trying to claw at cold-reddened arms, and then at the forest of white coats, and then at himself, as if that might shut up the clanging in his head, the kick-drum of his own fucking broken brain burning a hole in his skull, and then he was convulsing as the synapses in his brain stopped firing the way they were supposed to so they had to up it, up the cool chemical slide into his veins.]
[Slow push. Slow push.]
[I'm a nutjob sometimes.]
[Three weeks he's off the map, doesn't call in, doesn't check in, doesn't say a damn thing to anybody. Just up and disappears, and he wakes in the back of his car with blood in his hair and a leg that feels shattered down to the fucking bone and he can't stand, much less drive himself to work, and he learns that it doesn't matter anyway, because when he calls in they had to fire him for vanishing for three straight weeks without a word. And the question of what the hell was he doing in those three weeks never comes up, though it burns like a cigarette stub to the arm, aches in his throat and lingers in the background noise of a clipped conversation over the phone with people whose names he can no longer recall because, like so many fucking other instances in his life, his memory has decided it's not worth retaining. Because everything from the nights he considered the best in his life to the months he spent chafing under Alex Kralie's scathing commentary to the iron thud of rebar to the back of his head has been scraped out from wherever it is that brains keep memories with no hope of recovery.]
[I'm a nutjob sometimes.]
[He lets Frisk have the strawberries. Chara's...with the elves, last he checked, and the hike through the mana pools to that isolated location can be made another time, under other circumstances.]
[Instead he leaves a note stuck against the door of the shack he and Aster share, and it's really very simple.]
no youre not
[It's up to Shion to interpret that as he likes.]
19th
They wouldn't have known about it if Ren hadn't told them, so hey. Thanks for telling her. It takes a few simple favors to arrange what they want to, quietly leaving their gifts at his bedside, but otherwise willing to allow the day to continue as per normal, if that's what he wishes.
The first thing he'll notice, of course, is the small chocolate cake courtesy of Muffet. They won't say no if he wants to share but it is, actually, for him. They like chocolate. Hopefully, so does he.
The second?
A locket.
The design should be more than recognizable. Inside, a single word has been carefully scratched into the gold paint:
Friends.Try not to read too hard into it.]
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[The thing about birthdays is that Tim's never been one to celebrate them. Not in his memory, anyway. If he had any association with them growing up, it was quickly rubbed away under the pressure of the daily crawl from one day to the next. Birthdays, and most holidays for that matter, went uncelebrated but for a phone call or a postcard in the mail, if that.]
[So when he wakes up to a cake and a locket, it might be the first real birthday present he's ever received in his life.]
[It might be - no, it is, without question - the nicest thing that anyone's done for him.]
[The chain is cool around his neck, the pendant fitting neatly into the groove of his palm.]
[For several minutes, all he can do is press the base of one hand up against his shut lids, biting back the leaking warmth at the corners of them. He's never been one for this, to indulge this kind of instinct in a way that isn't just - hoarse, guttural sobs, loud and ragged and tearing at the edges. He cries, he knows he does, but he doesn't cry like this, quietly, because the absence of something no longer sits heavy in his chest.]
[He's never had a birthday cake before. Not that he can remember.]
[But he thinks it would taste better shared.]
19th
-His own SPECIAL birthday stick. Literally a freaking stick with a bunch of music notes doodled in chalk on it.
-A flower crown because that's how life is now. Wear it.
-At the center of it all is a terrible drawing of a dabbing Tim wearing a crown surrounded by gold stars and the words 'tim song'-
Because directly underneath the photo is a slew of music notes put together to form a song based on all the things he's taught her so far. There are no lyrics, but there's some kind of melody it follows. The point is, she did her best and made him his own song to play someday.]
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[He's never really gotten presents before. Not for holidays, not for his birthday. Nothing he can recall in earnest.]
[They're the presents a child would come up with, but they're still some of the first and only he's ever gotten.]
[They'll be treasured.]
mid july
A thought. An idea. And she slowly rolls herself out of the comfy tent with the full intent of sharing that thought right now, even though it's in the middle of the gd night. Sorry, Tim. She's got a q for u.]
Are you awake? Are your eyes tired?
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Wide awake. [There's almost no hesitation. He was staring at the star-speckled sky when Ren's voice pipes up from his stone, and his response comes just as easily:]
Are you?
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10th :')
stone of farspeech ;
They told you not to follow them.
[Ignore it.]
Chara. [His grip on the stone is tight, sweat-slippery.] Chara, just...know that what you're seeing isn't real. It isn't real. It can't hurt you.
I thought so too. [Jay's looking down morosely at his shirt, as though it were some kind of rip in the clothing and not the evidence, the fucking physical, tangible proof of Tim's failure to be at the right place at the right time.]
Chara. Please, just - just don't listen to it. It isn't real.
[Jay's tone is sour arsenic; bitterness poured over something scalding.]
That's what they all say.
=')
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cw: self-harm
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feb 2
But there's one person-where it went from bad to worse and she hadn't tried contacting him since, despite the strong urges she had to call him about stars, plants, bugs in the middle of the night. Like she used to.
For once she can't shake off the feeling that something changed-couldn't turn away from the words, reactions and confessions brought on by one, two, three of them. It's why she hesitates when she spots him during her evening ambling around the island, choosing to twiddle with the seashells in her hand instead of yelling Hey, hey to grab his attention.
He probably already knows she's there and it's not like she wants to run away, but she doesn't want to Deal With This either. So-
She extends a hand towards him, her palm covered with shiny shells for him to take, though she knows he probably won't. It's kind of a peace offering?? She's not sure-it's just the first thing she thought to do and a way to gauge what might happen before she opens her mouth.]
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[He can't seem to help it. Or - no, he just doesn't want to help it.]
[Gradually, movement in his periphery arrests him. He looks up, glimpses a hand full of shells, and then...notes the head of silvery hair it's attached to.]
[His stomach lurches quietly. He swallows past the lump in his throat. His voice, when he speaks, is scratchy - like he's been shouting, or maybe like he hasn't spoken in a few days.]
[Or maybe like he's been crying. On and off.]
Hey.
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Jan 23
Hey Tim? You there? Is-- [Be cool, fuck.] Have you seen Chara? [She was not cool.]
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[There's the sound of fumbling with the Stone for half a second before Tim answers, sounding harried. At least he can helpfully skip right on past the are you really you? conversations. He's pretty sure any Shadowy byproduct wouldn't be asking.]
Not since this all started. I've been looking, but it's not...there's a lot going on.
April 14th
But how can she be, when her children could be...?]
Tim? Are you there?
[A pause. She tries to keep her tone level and even.] I have not found Chara nor Frisk. They are not among those who were in the mountain. No one has seen them.
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[This does nothing to alleviate the jolt of panic that knots itself underneath the wad of tissue of his heart.]
[Even if it is diminished, vaguely, by the knowledge that some part of him expected this.]
[The words are scratchy and low when he answers, though muffled, as though he's speaking through his hands.]
That doesn't mean they're gone.
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August 12th
[With their hair under control, Frisk rolls onto their side and slips their hand underneath a cushion. When they draw it out, there’s a slip of paper between their fingers, neatly folded into fourths. They unfold it, carefully, smoothing out the creases and rumples they’d accidentally inflicted on it while sleeping.]
[Absently, they reach for the purple pen - almost dried up - sitting at the edge of the cot. Then they pause, eyes flickering over the paper’s contents, and change their mind with a soft shake of their head.]
[Rather, they fold the paper in half again. Pinch the fold between their thumb and forefinger and swipe it down the fold’s length decisively, turning their head towards the other occupant of the room.]
He should be gone by now. Do you want to make any changes today?
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Dreams are still dreams. They happen often. But when they open their eyes from them these days, they simply...wait. Look at Frisk. At Tim, across the room.
Go back to sleep.
As Frisk fusses over their note with the same intent hesitation they have every morning, Chara attacks their own hair, still cropped short against the stifling heat of the archipelago. As their Partner sets the folds of paper, already pressed thin from folding and refolding, they get their shoes, check their knives. Everything where it should be, again.]
No. [A brisk enough answer, but they move over to the hammock in short order, pushing aside the culmination of blue jacket, red, knitted jumper, and galaxy hoody to fish out two more pages, folded with that same decisiveness. They’re unchanged from when they were first written, for the most part.
Part of them wonders what they’d do if they went to change anything. Scrap it all and start again. Or refuse to write anything at all.]
Ready to go, Partner?
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For Lup
early may
But going to Tim, even to apologize, didn't seem like an option at the time, or for months and months afterward. It barely feels like one now - but he might as well try.
He stops by the Denny in the evening, a letter painted onto a piece of fabric and tucked into his back pocket - just in case Tim isn't there. He doesn't know whether to be relieved or not that he is. So much for taking the indirect approach.]
...Hey.
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[More likely he's forgotten the exact tenor of that exchange amidst everything else.]
Hey. Need something?
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