bigapplesauce | fou nd you forever [open to multiple]

Current Location: Central Park
Current Music: Evening of September 17th/Morning of September 18th

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fou nd you forever [open to multiple]

[tw: weird formatting, dissociation]

When did they last - ?

They cannot remember. This body has not been theirs in so long.

w e w i ll wait for you no more

It is theirs again. They have slid the familiar pale disc of their face to shroud the one belonging to the skin they wear, wrapped in their old, familiar mantle. There was a window, and they climbed out of it. They are awake for the first time in -

control is being ta ke n away from y o u

No matter.

They do not exist in that limbo of chemical suppression, not any longer. They could not have been muzzled by that chemical impulse forever. He should have known that. Their skin. The liar. Scared little boy. He is quiet now, and they are awake in his head. They flex fingers. They move silently but for the scrape of their leg dragging behind them in dead weight. They pull in breath, crisp and cold. The mechanics of existence are difficult. Half-remembered. Familiar again.

f ro m the sta rt it's been a game for us

Quiet. Ahead, the woods. It is to them they creep. Tall things, slender trees, trunks stark and reaching to a sky fuzzy with stars. Wind stirs leaves, sending the curled husks of those dead things whispering over carpeted grass and sticks. They trace the skeleton claws of branches scratching the sky, and wonder if it is waiting for them. It always is.

Always watches. No eyes.

not anym o r e

I'm coming for you

Noise. Snap-twigs and rustled underbrush. They still, fall silent, scanning the place to which they've come. Something nearer? Something close? Something moving. Something here. Something they can find. Something they will find.

There's a trickle of code in their head.

and you will l e ad me

They remember. It is where they go. It is where everyone goes.

to t h e a r k

[ooc: so just after the fallout of the Rebel Base debacle, Tim ran out of medication and has masked out. The masked man is an alternate persona entirely - they don't have any of Tim's memories and are a very underdeveloped, generally aggressive consciousness. They don't talk, and basically look like this. Their instinct upon coming across anyone is mostly going to fall in the 'tackle and abduct' category, though reactions can and will vary. If you want to read more about their deal I've put info here and here. They'll be roaming Central Park all evening/night until the sun comes up again, at which point Tim will wake up and proceed to remember nothing of it.]

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He hears the rising beat of uneven footsteps just a moment too late, only once they're practically on top of him, he wastes precious seconds slipping his phone back into his pocket and turning with his arms raised for a fight, and he is utterly unprepared for Tim shooting out of the darkness and tackling him to the fucking ground.

He lands hard, head narrowly missing a root, striking softer earth by some lucky chance. He only sees flashes of his assailant - it's got to be Tim, the build is right, he sees a glimpse of familiar hair sideburns, but he's masked, holy shit, like a fucking serial killer, like something out of a slasher movie. He lets out a breathless little shriek that barely qualifies as a noise, not enough air to make it, and struggles instinctively, trying to squirm backwards out of his hold, hands going to grip the arms around his waist for leverage. This is not Tim, he refuses to believe Tim was hiding this from him that whole time they were in a hotel room together, when anything could have happened and no one would have cared. There is something really, really wrong right now, but he can't think clearly about it, all he can do is try to escape.

The thing writhes against them, small and struggling and wiry, and their hands twist from where they have locked around its waist to pin one of its wrists over its head. It will not stop thrashing. It kicks, struggles, like many of the wriggling things they tried, tried to subdue.

The patterns in its head are not patterns they have ever seen before, abstract and unraveling in great shuddering designs, and they do not want to look at them. It is unnatural. Like Jay. Like the skin they wear.

This is what they do to things that are unnatural.

They wrap their free hand around its throat and begin to squeeze.

He grunts and writhes like an animal, twisting, struggling as Tim pins one of his wrists into the dirt, holding him down with weight and surprising, seemingly unnatural strength.

And then his other hand fits around Johnny's throat. Johnny's head snaps back reflexively, trying to wrench free, but the grip is solid, unbreakable. His free hand seizes Tim's wrist, pulling, digging his nails into his skin, but nothing makes a difference, the pressure just increases, pressing down against his throat, oh god, fuck, fuck.

"Tim-!" he rasps out, panicked, desperate. He keeps fighting, trying to get enough leverage to break free; his hand goes from Tim's wrist to his shoulder, fisting in the fabric of his jacket, pushing back as hard as he can, but he's starting to weaken, he needs to do something or he's going to die, Tim is going to kill him in the fucking woods, just like that.

His hand loosens and moves, scrabbling ineffectively, until it reaches the edge of the mask.

He pushes it off, slides it right over Tim's head, and hurls it away.

The little struggling thing starts fading. Good. They watch it, satisfied as its ineffectual thrashing and twisting dims to the frantic jerk of limbs they recognize. The strength from it is draining. Their grip tightens. Little weak fluttering thing. Scrub away the stains in its head. In all their heads.

They jolt back when fingers slip beneath its face again, again! - and send it hurtling into the carpeted shadows. They untangle themself from the weakening thing immediately, scrambling in search of the bright roundness lying atop the leaves. It is here somewhere. It must be. Where is it. Where is it.

Their fingers skitter across dead leaves, frenzied, panicked. Their face. Where is it. They need it. What did it do to it.

Tim's face lends no clarity to the situation, what Johnny can see of it - he's completely blank, dead-eyed, slack-jawed even as he scrambles away, searching frantically for the mask. None of that urgency is reflected in his expression, or rather the lack thereof. It's creepy as shit.

No time to figure it out. Johnny scrambles back himself, kicking dirt and twigs as he struggles to get to his feet, coughing and gasping for breath. Whatever's wrong with Tim isn't something he can fix, especially not here in the woods when he's trying to kill him. He has to get help, or just get away, maybe lead Tim somewhere, out of isolation.

He starts running.

Finally the backs of their fingers graze their face's smooth edge so they may retrieve it and slip it on again. The scurrying thing has taken to its feet and run, and they must hurtle after with their uneven gait, ducking the spray of moss and leaves thrown by the scuttling of limbs.

The heft of their leg is difficult to ignore, but they are far from slow and unwieldy. When they shed the deadened fragments buried in their mind, those relying on the one who wears their body when they do not, it is then, now, that they are - they are so much -

Better.

They whip after it. It cannot run forever, and it cannot hold its speed for very long. Its skin is weak and flimsy, not as they are. It will flag, and when it does they will be waiting.

The woods are thick, it's dark, he's panicked and has lost all sense of direction. This was a shitty plan. It becomes expressly clear just how shitty when he slams head-on into a tree, falls back, swearing and clapping a hand over his face. Nothing's broken, he's maybe a little scraped up, but he's disoriented and he's on the ground and Tim is still coming.

Its movements are tainted with a familiar scrabbling, coupled with the escalating terror and the rapidity of breath, the hammer of footsteps over earth and dead leaves. They tear after it, their body's limp made peripheral. The body they wear is human; they are not. They are faster.

It is a clumsy thing, blundering into the great tall streaks that are trunks jutting from the ground. They glimpse it floundering on the floor, kicking up leaves and clods of dirt in its tiny, hopeless struggle.

It allows them time to gather themselves before launching forward in an elongated arc, throwing the entirety of their weight upon the thing in a tangle of bodies and little flawed heads.

He's almost up, almost moving, when Tim catches him again, throwing him right back down onto his front, knocking the wind out of him. He scrambles desperately to turn himself over, he's useless pressed into the earth like this; if he can get a good shot at Tim's neck or something, weak spots, maybe that would slow him down, maybe - well, if all else fails he can make another grab at the mask.

He grunts and almost growls with the effort of fighting back, wild animal sounds, and he is like an animal, struggling in the dirt. "Get off!" he snaps in frustration, twisting to get onto his back, trying to leverage himself out from under Tim's weight with his foot.

It does not look very much like Jay, though it snarls and snaps and fights like him, small and ineffectual. The feel of it - something discordant and chaotic mired deep, deep within - bleeds against them, aching and dark. They know a threat when they sense the nudge of its being against theirs.

It fights to turn itself over and they let it. It hooks one foot beneath theirs in a motion that brings a new pulse of pain to the ribs that have been struck again and again and again. They hear a noise edge from their throat, low and unformed, and when its mouth opens in protest they snap one hand over to muzzle it. Quiet, thing.

The warning does not need to be spoken. Their hand may creep up to cover its nose just as well, and they know enough of these fragile little bodies to know what happens when they sever the passage between air and lungs.

Mechanical failure. Catastrophe. Surely it knows that.

Johnny lets out an angry muffled scream when Tim covers his mouth, both hands wrapping around his wrist, struggling to wrench himself free. What the fuck is happening here? What is wrong with him, what does he want?

He knows it would be too easy for Tim to strangle him here, like this, but he can't stop fighting, there's that part of him, the beast that never stops, can't, won't, refuses to surrender, and that's probably the only thing that's kept him alive so long.

They raise one finger to press it to frozen lips. Be silent, little monster. But it does not still. It is incensed, thrashing, power coiled deep in those wiry little limbs. They press against its mouth roughly, forcing its skull deeper into the leaves and the dirt.

How much like Jay. Too much, and they will need to do what their friend always said. They aren't here to tell them, but they know. They know what they must do.

Johnny's eyes are open, terror wide, to see Tim make his mocking little shushing gesture, and it scares him more than any of it, really, that calculated motion, ruthless and knowing. He doesn't stop fighting even as Tim pushes him into the earth, wriggling with everything he has, furious little beast, railing and screaming under his muzzle. This was an end Raymond could have predicted, isn't it. Out here, scrabbling in the dirt, in the woods at night. It's all he deserves.

His hands buzzing, he can feel the taut strain in his throat as he tries to scream, roots and brush shoving into his back as he writhes beneath Tim's oppressive weight. One of his hands flails out, wraps around the first thing he can, which is a long, sturdy, severed branch.

He doesn't even think. Tim is going to kill him if he wastes time thinking. He hoists it up and thrusts it hard into Tim's side.

Beneath the smooth shield of their face they shriek, long and terrible.

It does not sound human.

It does not sound like a noise that should ever be made.

They roll off and away from it, one hand clamped over the hot spurt of red spattering over the brightness of the skin they have always worn. Their limbs scramble over soft and dampened dirt. They retreat desperately, the air a shuddering chorus of low, keening cries made by something wounded and confused, rasping through a throat unused to engaging in the subtle manipulation of vocal cords or tongues or teeth.

They slide over leaves, skidding against a great mass of bark and tree trunk and clinging to it.

They did what they were told. They did what they were supposed to do. This thing, this thing that fights like Jay but isn't and can't be because it is more like the furious man whose eyes flashed behind glass panes, the one that cast a stone over their leg and shattered it with a clatter of rock and an agonized howl.

But they did what they were supposed to do. They don't understand.

Oh shit. Shit. He pulls himself up, coughing, struggling to breathe right, ears ringing from that inhuman shriek. Oh god, he stabbed Tim, he stabbed Tim, this was not supposed to happen.

"Tim?" he says frantically, crawling forward. "Tim?!"

He reaches out, reaching for the mask. Tim has to still be in there somewhere, this is not Tim, and Tim can't die because of him, because he was stupid and he panicked, he can't.

Their skin is shaking, pressed against the roughness of the bark, driving a borrowed palm fiercely into the injury. They can feel themselves leaking out, the soaking warmth suffusing their side in a flowing, steady crawl.

This skin is so fragile. Fragile and breakable and insufficient.

The thing dares to creep close, fingers outstretched like a terrible spider. Another noise escapes them, something low and harsh, and they swing free from the tree's support to crack a tightened fist across its face.

"Ah-!" Johnny's head snaps to the side with the punch, unbalancing him so he sprawls, open and vulnerable. He scrambles back, immediately seeing that this was a bad idea. "Tim," he tries again, holding his hand out defensively now. "Come on, it's me. I don't wanna hurt you, please."

Too late.

"Let me help you," he begs, knowing it won't work.

They fix it with a long stare, still and silent while scattered droplets drool through clenching fingers.

One leg drags behind them but the other is all they require. The tree is their fixed anchor as they swing the leg that does not weigh with the phantom ache of shattered bone, drive it directly into the center of the squirming thing's mass.

The remaining momentum pulls them to lurch back, withdrawing into the trees. Cannot wait. Cannot remain. Not while their skin leaches itself empty with thick-smelling scarlet spilling out from the sting in their side. Not as they - as everything, they -

ble
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mo
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