postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

theres no answer to this that won't give me a heart attack is there

probably better call the clinic then

she's talking to me RIGHT NOW

whats she saying
do i want to know

she wants to know if "we're on the same page"
whatever that's supposed to mean

in regards to WHAT jay
what kind of questions is she asking

in regards to THAT THING tim
she hasn't said anything else
she just locked the chat down and said something like "i'm assuming we're in the sam e page about the thing"
*on
trying to type and talk

[Oh.]

[Oh, god damn it.]

how much does she know
is there a way to find out without actually saying it

short of asking alex i don't know
FUCK
she mightve already figured stuff out without alex or you or me
i dont know whats out there
maybe she saw something in an event

im goin gto see what she says

oh

[Which event? he almost says. But he thinks he knows which one.]

if its the one im thinking it was
it might have been me

[Isn't it always.]

wait

[Please, god, please don't say the dream event.]

which one
?

[It looks too intense without the question mark, so he adds it later, trying to soften the blow. Not like Tim needs anything softened for him--he's handled shit Jay can barely wrap his head around--but Jay doesn't want to make things harder.]

[Especially if it's the dream event.]

just ask her

[He doesn't remember. There were dreams. There were moments where reality was eaten through and something leaked in through the points where the static created a gaping hole where It could peer through and see them - ]

the dreams maybe

[Or the tape. Entry #67.]

[Great. Perfect.]

maybe?

i mean i don't remember
*sent too soon sorryu
*sorry
i don't remember if anybody got into mine
do you know for sure she got into yours?

[Let's just sidestep the question of whether or not they were in each other's heads.]

[It was before the agreement, anyway.]

[Either way, it was fucked up. He was--look, it made sense at the time, back when the information in Tim's head was a greater guarantee of safety than Tim himself. Tim was unpredictable. Information's neutral. Information doesn't have an agenda.]

[No. No, come on. Focus.]

[We're not gonna get anywhere like this, working solo.]

[Wonderland's not home. Nothing Tim knows is gonna help here, and having Tim around has helped an awful goddamn lot, minus an attempted murder once or twice, so he's just got to focus on what's important right now.]

[Besides, knowing Tim, he probably wouldn't want anything to do with Jay's head, anyway. Then again, Jay didn't exactly get a choice where he ended up. What are the chances Wonderland decided to give Jay a break this time around?]

[Rhetorical question.]

[God, focus. Max. The weird things she said. Her connection with Alex. What she saw. Keeping her safe. Working with Tim to keep her safe.]

[He starts typing again.]

besides if it's the dream event then she could have gotten it from me the same way

i dont know who got into mine
thats the problem

[He never found out. Figured that, on the off-chance that someone did go venturing into his head, it would've been best to never bring it up. To trust that it would be enough to let any memories skimmed from his gray matter sink, emptying into the background radiation of whatever other horrors they doubtless encountered.]

[He remembers, vaguely, running into other people's heads. Maybe they were lucid dreamers.]

great so NEITHER of us know if she got into our heads

[And that's who's important right now.]

[~~A wave of guilt drowns out the relief.~~]

not going to suggest it to her unless there's a good reason
don't want to give her anything she can use

[That was more honest than he intended, but he's distracted. Two conversations at once, plus the notifications from the rest. This is what he gets for posting to the network.]

other ideas?

let's just see what she says first

[Admitting to it - to what he's done, to what he's allowed to persist without his consent and without any digging further into what might have bled across lines. Asking questions just makes it worse. Asking questions just gets people thinking about it, and he's not going to ask questions if there's even the vaguest chance that it will stir up a memory or two.]

[Some memories are better off buried.]

assuming she says anything

[He knows how this works. They contact you. They tell you they need help, but they have their own ideas about what help means, about what you need to know.]

[Or they don't know anything.]

[Or they know something, but it's not their fault they don't tell you. They're scared, and it's your fault anyway. You were too cagey, you dragged them into this, and now you have to--]

[What?]

[You have to find out what happened. If they're still breathing, you have to keep them safe, however you can.]

i'll keep you updated

thanks
i guess

[He guesses, because for once it's Jay doing damage control on what Tim is presuming is his mess. Doesn't remember anymore. Doesn't remember the full extent of it. She saw It on the tape, the one with Alex - or did she see It leaking through the rifts torn open in the fabric of Wonderland itself?]

[Does he still have that tape? Did his Mirror take it? The fuck does he do if he does?]

thanks also i guess

i mean i'd be way more lost if you hadn't told me she knows
probably say something i shouldn't
so

same

[It's not quite coming back from the park to a dingy hotel room for two. It's not quite swapping theories in a campsite parking lot as Tim dangles a cigarette out the passenger-side window. It's not quite peering into Alex's cupboards, straining to reach the top shelf of the closet, listening to the shuffling in the next room as Tim does the same.]

[They're not just duplicating the work. They're not both holding a camera, not both following the same trail, not both hunched over the same coded message, squinting beneath twin lights over twin beds.]

[What the fuck kind of circular conversation is this, honestly. He shouldn't be - he should be furious, right? Hello, another thing that Tim has been willingly hiding from him! Another thing Tim hasn't thought to mention, even if he definitely should have!]

[Maybe if you weren't so screwed up, if you weren't so fucking lost in your own head, you selfish, self-absorbed little - ]

probably should've mentioned this sooner

[Yeah, he probably should have. Would've saved Jay an awkward encounter with her in person. Tim fed him just enough to make him curious, but not enough to keep him from making an ass of himself when they finally met. If there was any kind of ulterior motive there, though, Jay's got no idea what it could be. Not like Tim would stand much to gain from Max being mildly weirded out.]

[Maybe he just said more than he intended, less than he should. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe not everything everybody does is calculated to screw Jay over personally, and god, it sounds dumb when he thinks about it that way.]

[Besides, Tim did tell him eventually, before Jay got a chance to screw things up further. Maybe it's too much to ask that he told Jay everything he knows, but it won't catch him off-guard this time. He knows Tim's a liar.]

[He also knows they've got an agreement.]

better than nothing
at least you told me before max did

if you're talking about the event it sounds like you have just as much idea what's going on there as i do

unless you're talking about something else

Edited 2018-09-20 02:24 (UTC)

i just
don't remember who knows what anymore

[Unreliable. Unreliable. Can't remember shit, can't remember shit, can't remember what's been told to you and what hasn't. The keystone to being a liar is that you're supposed to be able to keep your stories straight. Can't keep them straight, can you? Never could.]

[Rotten liar. Even the things you thought you were good at - rotten. Rotten to the core.]

[Huh.]

[Back home, right at the end, Tim seemed like the one who held all the cards. Alex, even more so, and often totheark, but Tim was another one. He had opinions on where they should be going, what they should investigate, what was worth their time and what wasn't, what Jay should know and what he shouldn't. He fed Jay pills, kept the camera running while Jay was unconscious. Jay was never exactly the driving force in this case, but right near the end, he felt like something was slipping, like he was losing the tiny scraps of control he still had while Tim was acting steadier and steadier.]

[It's not quite that anymore. Free food and a roof over their heads does wonders, seems like. Don't even need to visit the doctor to get a prescription; just get your ~~friend~~ to sacrifice a memory or two. Even if Tim's got some experience on him, Jay's getting there. He's getting used to it. He's got projects, now. He's using his crappy, closet-generated laptop for more than just editing footage.]

[But this might be the first time Jay's ever gotten the feeling Tim is as lost as he is.]

[Correction: This might be the first time he's ever had it spelled out so bluntly. Makes him seem a little more human. A little less of a concept.]

i mean

[A giddy sense of relief hits him. It's gone in an instant, but it enough to have him typing, before he can regret it:]

you're not the only one
if that helps

[You're not the only one.]

[Words he ventured once. A sort of olive branch, a peace offering. Frantically putting forth the only thing he could: the reassurance that he himself never got. The reassurance he desperately wishes he could have gotten, even once. To not hear that he was an anomaly, a strangeness, an unknowable variable.]

[You're not the only one.]

[You're not alone.]

[Does it help?]

it's not like anyone here ever knows whats going on really

[Deflect. Play it off.]

yeah

[Back into easier territory. Back to Wonderland, back to where you're not alone doesn't carry the same implications.]

[But it wasn't a denial. It wasn't an I'm not like you, wasn't a maybe Alex wasn't the problem - maybe you're the problem. He didn't do anything to reaffirm the natural goddamn order that Jay's always out of the loop, that Jay will always be out of the loop, and that everybody's better off that way.]

[They're not alone.]

[Does it help?]

this place doesn't exactly make it easy

[History of memory problems. Brain like a sieve, leaking like a sprung canteen. So you lose words here. You lose pieces of yourself, bit by bit, trickled out between clasped fingers. And it's not a big deal, because it's at a slower rate than he's used to.]

[It's impossible to care when so much of your memory has been ripped apart at the seams more times than you can count. (More times than you can remember.)]

its hard to keep track is all

[Hit a wall. Gray. Barrier. Panic's the only thing that can jolt him out of the mindless, empty-eyed daze he sits in most of the time, and even that feels like it stirs at him less and less.]

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