postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

[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.

It doesn't make any of it better. It's not like anyone walked in there knowing -

[Fuck. And anyone could have walked in there at any point, huh? Any point at all.]

...shit. [The word escapes in a breathless, horrified burst of air.]

Wha-? [She trails off, confused by the sudden shift in sentence... and then she reaches the same conclusion. Anyone could have seen that.]

...You need to find out who else saw it. Can we even find out?

I didn't even know you saw It until you said something.

[Goddamnit. He had no idea how to gauge that sort of thing. And if It's rife through Wonderland - the more people who know about It, what It can do...]

[They're fucked.]

[She spends a few moments thinking about it, but comes up with basically nothing.]

What do we do? You could go on the network and ask if anyone's been in your head, but...

[But that would be excruciating. Putting it out there that there's something wrong with your own brain or memories, actually asking around to know who's invaded your innermost privacy... Painful.]

With the questions people have been asking lately? People're gonna think I'm hiding something.

[Which he is, but it's for a good reason - not that he expects anyone to believe that. So, yeah, no way in hell is he venturing even the remotest possibility that there's something wrong with him with the crowd that there is lurking around here. He's already been quarantined by the contents of his own head when he was still in the single digits, and he's in no way eager to repeat the process.]

[The irony is not lost on Max]

But- But you are!

[There's exasperation in her voice, but it's more directed at the whole situation than at Tim... though he might not realize that. She sort of gets it. It's a lose-lose. They might not agree on which is the bigger lose, though.]

People could actually die if we don't find out. Maybe it doesn't have to be obvious. You can just... I dunno, ask if someone was in your head.

Yeah, and the last thing we need is this getting out even further. He told you how it spreads, right?

[The words are sharp, clipped, tense - because Alex was right, in the end. He was always goddamn right about all of it. And Tim really should have taken matters into his own hands before he ended up here, and trapped everyone in his personal hell with him.]

[He...?

Alex.

If Max knew that Tim was thinking along the same lines that Alex thought... that would scare her. Friends with Alex or not, the man had crazy tendencies, and she knows it.

And as much as she hates to admit it... Tim might have a point. He's the expert here, and she can't think of any resolution to their situation. She lets out an exasperated and resigned huff as her only response.]

[All he gets is a frustrated sigh, and he knows there's no options here. No options but equally shitty ones that'll get them nowhere but the same place he always ends up.]

[When Tim speaks again, it's tired. It's achingly, endlessly tired, and it sounds slightly muffled; his face is planted firmly in his hands.]

If I knew a way out - don't you think I would have taken it?

I do-... [Max replies quickly, keenly aware that her own frustration is pointed at the situation and not the victim. She tries to make her empathy apparent in her tone, reigning in her more negative emotions for now. Or trying to, anyway.] Believe me, I do. And I wish I was more help. If you need anything...

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