postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

So it's probably about time that we talked about shit. [Her voice has a sharp edge to it.]

[Well, this is a hell of a thing to come back to. Between all the Wonderland shit and the minds he traversed earlier, he genuinely can't say what it is that "shit" might be. Tim's voice, by contrast, is Tired.]

Okay, so what shit were you thinking about in particular?

[She pauses, taking in his tone. When she speaks again, her voice is more neutral.]

...You don't know?

Look, it's been a...weird couple of days, okay?

[He participated in the revival of the Red Queen, lost a memory opening the door to the Core, regained said memory a second later, got a whole mess of friends he didn't want to admit he had, and has a red chess piece that might be able to summon said Queen down the road.]

[And that's not even getting into the rift bullshit.]

Uh. Yeah. Right. [Still, you'd think he'd remember something like... hmm.

Unless that wasn't actually him there.]

You know when everyone was going around each others' heads? And looking at all the memories?

[Pause.]

[Goddamnit. This can't mean anything good. Tim blows out a lengthy sigh of a breath, running fingers through his hair, unseen. When he speaks, the word is laden with nervous trepidation he'd all but forgotten existed.]

...yeah... [Drawing it out several syllables past its termination, with the lifting, anxious pitch of someone who has no idea what's coming - but is more than reasonably certain that it can't be anything good.]

...Yeah. [She responds in kind, her tone subdued and sullen.] There was this thing, like... uh.

[She gulps. He's probably gonna be pissed at her. And there's going to be a whole avalanche of bad news after she says this. Horrible implications. Painful revelations and predictions of a dismal future...

Like some overblown, badly written comic about the end of the world or something. It'd be amusing except that it's real. Except that water was coming down her throat, and there was a persistent sharp pain her her skull, and she thought she was dying.

And the fear is creeping through her body, making her mouth dry and her heart beat faster. She spends a few quiet moments wishing Chloe was here to hold her hand- and coming to terms with that being wishful thinking. Like always. Whatever happens next, it'd be just Max.]

...That thing that Alex always used to... avoid mentioning. Memetic thing. [She mumbles, her voice trailing away. Resigned to this; one more carriage hitched to this train wreck.]

Edited 2017-09-29 17:52 (UTC)

[Oh.]

[Oh, shit.]

[The second she says this thing, his heart drops out from his stomach. That thing. That thing Alex always used to avoid mentioning.]

[She's been his head.]

[She's been in his head. There's a sharp intake of breath on the other end, the clatter of the phone being set atop the desk while Tim has to brace elbows across its surface, bury his face in his hands. God. Goddamnit.]

[She spent so long being free of it, too.]

[He has to endeavor to keep his voice calm.]

What did you see?

[The brief clatter of the phone gives Max the moment she needs to sigh. She can't help but feel that she's at fault for this.]

I saw... you, in a tunnel, and. You know. Standing over you, but it was like... everywhere.

[It's a bad description, but she's pretty sure he knows what she means. The way Its presence washes over you...]

...Then all kinds of shit. I swear, it's like I was drowning, Tim. Sometimes we were underwater, sometimes in a forest, and you... looked the way I felt.

Edited 2017-10-01 03:27 (UTC)

[Oh god.]

[She saw a memory. A memory of what things were like, investigating with Jay. The haphazard nature of it. How he told Jay to run, and how everything crumbled. Watching the footage later was like looking through the eyes of someone long-dead. None of the memories stirred any recollection. And after the battery died, there's no way of knowing how long things were...like that.]

[That memory was just...floating around in there. And she saw it.]

How'd it...

You remember how it end? [There's no denying it now; there's a tremor to those words.]

[She takes a moment to organize her thoughts. It was one hell of a ride... and even just remembering it sends shivers down her spine and tightens her throat.]

...I blacked out. But I remember you like... being dragged away. Into the forest. [Not exactly the best of things to describe.] I swear, I tried to help, but... [The shrug can be heard in her pained tone.] How did it end?

[And this she doesn't mind prying into, because she's fairly certain she's part of it now. Whatever it even is. She still doesn't really understand the implications.]

The same way it always ends.

[The words sink into something dull-pitched, almost rote. There's just no escaping how it ends, is there? Not now that they've come as far as they have. Both of them.]

You wake up.

You don't remember anything.

You're missing...most of what happened.

[You still throb with the echoes of it and you still struggle to fill that negative space with something, but in the end...what else can you hope to do but just keep your head down and walk quietly away?]

You try not to let it bother you.

[There's silence on her end as she tries to let that sink in. Having things happen to you that you don't even remember. The agony of suffering through... whatever the hell it did to her and Tim.]

...And that's been happening a lot? Here?

[Another pregnant pause on his end. A moment, where his voice is muffled because he put his face in his hands and had to rub them across his mouth and try not to sigh aloud. Because how the hell do you explain something like that?]

[How do you explain that that's what you feel, every time the pills skitter away from your fingertips and your mind open fires and your back arches? How do you explain that it's just something you learn to live with - every time?]

Max. I need to know...if you've seen It.

[The weight and emphasis he lends the word is dark, and heavy. And profound enough that he doubts it'll need clarification.]

Since then.

[The way he dodges the question, and his tone... Max wants to protest, say that he should stop being cryptic and give her straight answers for once. But she can imagine that he's asking this for a very specific and important reason.]

...No.

[She hesitates.]

I had a nightmare about it. Just once. [But that's what happens when you almost die, isn't it? And it felt like a normal dream. Nothing to worry about...]

Are you positive. Anything like...coughing. Chills. Feeling like you're being watched. Anything like that?

[The tone of his voice is frantic, assessing. He needs to know. If It's here, then they're all fucked. If there's the slightest chance that It bled through his head and into Wonderland somehow - that's got to be how. That's got to be what It does.]

[He's the source. He's the source. It's on him.]

[It's on him, if It does.]

[Coughing? Chills?] No, no-... cut it out already, Tim!

[It's always like this, with Tim, Alex- always scarping the surface, a snippet of the dangers here and there, but never the whole picture. Until you end up with a terrifying collage that you don't understand, pieces pasted in all the wrong places and your imagination starts to run wild.

Until you end up like Alex. Remember how he was?

She takes a sharp breath, trying to block out that voice in the back of her head.]

Just-... tell me, okay? I'm... already screwed over, right, so... you can tell me.

[If there's the slightest chance she could get out of this - doesn't he owe her that? Doesn't he owe her the sanctity of a life untainted by the things swarming in the corners of his vision, the things that creep and claw and swallow you whole? She's lasted so long - so much longer than he would've expected.]

[Is this how all that ends now?]

Look, it's - it's hard to explain. It's...

I'm the source, all right?

[Don't cry. Don't - make this worse than it already is.]

It's my fault. It came from me. I bring It to people, and then there's...you can't get rid of It.

[It takes conscious effort to shove down the anxiety and listen to what Tim's telling her. Even then it takes her a moment to digest it.]

So now It'll... follow me around, or whatever. [She's pretty sure she understood that already. Kind of like... like the more you know about It, the more vulnerable you are. The more likely it will show up at your window. And having seen it is definitely a step up.]

But how are you "the source"? Did you make it, or, or like, did it come out of you?

I've been seeing It - long as I can remember. Since I was a kid.

[Maybe if he'd just let himself stay shut inside, away from everything else, then that wouldn't have been a risk. If he hadn't selfishly longed for the life he didn't deserve, didn't take the requisite effort to really carve out in earnest - maybe the entire story never would have happened.]

[He has no way of knowing that for sure.]

It never would've gone after anyone else if I hadn't brought It to them.

[She's quiet for a while. The whole thing is so strange and alien that she doesn't know what to say. What to feel, even, except for the anxiety.]

...You were a kid.

[He was a kid.]

[Maybe he was too young to understand what was happening. Too stupid to truly grasp it. Too distraught, too uncertain about the nature of reality, too fragmented and torn in every direction by doctors that only wanted best for him, to know what It was and why It chose him. To understand any of it.]

[That wasn't his crime.]

[His crime was in thinking he could try to insert himself into the lives of regular people, normal people, and assume there wouldn't be consequences.]

It's always been there.

[Since the very beginning.]

[Because some people are just born wrong.]

[After the awkward times they've spent together, Max likes to think she has a feel for Tim's mood. And while he's always been hard to read, she can make out the powerful current of emotions underneath his tone.

She doesn't know what to say. Is there even anything she can say, knowing now what he's had to deal with for his whole life? For, what, twenty years?Max has had a shitty two years. Just two. And it's already too much.

When she finally speaks, it's soft, her voice having lost all of the annoyance and anger.]

...I'm so sorry, Tim.

[So what's that do about it?]

[What's that fix? What's that do, for someone like him? Hearing something like that - what's he supposed to say in response? His mouth opens and closes again, silently, and he can't - he doesn't - ]
[Because no one has ever told him so before.]
[A long silence elapses before he can finally speak again, with a faint, trembling edge.]

You shouldn't be. I spread It to you.

[She lets out a huff. Almost amused. Almost.] I should probably just learn to... stop walking through every effing door. [But life's kinda shit sometimes, most of the time, and... shit happens. She has no idea how to deal with this new thing. And it fucking scares her. But what can either of them do?] You couldn't have done anything about it. Everyone was up in everyone else's mind palaces.

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