some days I think I'm dying but I'm really only trying to get through [closed]

[postictal]

[tw: grief, depression, and internalized self-loathing, lots of mentions of death]

Days pass. It's what they do.

Time crawls along with agonizing, sludgelike uncertainty, and Tim will never scrub himself clean of the sensation of the fragile, trembling man dying beneath his hands as he faded away to nothing. Gone again, like he was never here. He told him, he kept telling him he would stop it, he'd haul Jay back from the brink like he always had and like he failed to, but ignoring the inescapable never made it go away. It was a logical progression. It's been -

He doesn't know how long it's been. He's stopped keeping track. He's let himself crumble, and he knows it. It was easy. Work has been put on hold. He hasn't called in sick. He hasn't eaten, or slept, or done much of anything. Just existed in his shell of self-imposed apathy, because slamming up walls is easier than looking his own failures square in their looming, faceless faces.

And Tim waits.

And Tim waits.

And Tim waits.

Eventually it occurs to him that Jay's stuff is still just - sitting there, pasta box and all those sets of keys and everything, and he's been putting that inevitability off because he doesn't want to look at it (childish), he doesn't want to address it (deluded), he doesn't want to shroud himself in grief again (pathetic), because he already did this. It isn't fair.

When has his life ever cared about fair. Really, now.

So morning finds Tim unlocking the door to Jay's apartment with a hollow feeling constricting his chest, steadily loading the dead man's meager belongings into cardboard boxes. He compartmentalizes everything with manufactured indifference, squeezing it down the smallest possible denominator. Maybe he'll throw the boxes over the bridge. Maybe he'll burn every last one of them. Except - Tim doesn't burn things. That's not him.

'You don't even like me.'

Tim grimaces. He piles the boxes into the hallway with utter disregard for anyone who might be passing through, a miniature cairn of discarded items and cardboard.

Fuck you, Jay, he thinks with vehement, abrupt outrage, feeling a sick surge of satisfaction with snapping the door shut behind him. Fuck him, fuck him, for leaving, again. Fuck him for leaving Tim to clean up his goddamn mess, again.

Fuck him for thinking he could just die and Tim wouldn't grieve over him, even a little bit.

Comments

[postictal]

"The - what?" He blinks at her, taken entirely off-guard. Pink rollerblades? What the hell?

"I don't, uh," he says, shaking his head in complete befuddlement, "I don't - I have no idea what you're - Jay was where?"

There's really only one thing about what she's saying that he knows matters, without question. Maybe if it was one of those group dreams - though fuck knows when he's had time to sleep since Jay vanished, dragged out of his life again. He frantically scours his memory for anything that pings as familiar, but there's nothing, nothing, and he feels like he would remember, he knows he'd remember if Jay was there.

[apidae]

"Uh..." Well, it makes sense he wouldn't remember that, and it's probably a good thing. He was... very odd. His patterns had felt limited, too, like he was no more than a caricature. Strange that she hadn't noticed that at the time, but then, she'd thought being tiny and able to fly was normal, too.

"It doesn't matter; it was a very strange dream," she says. "But it was definitely a group dream, and it was definitely Jay there with us. You kept calling him Troy, I think. He seemed very... unsettled, and... like he almost didn't belong there." She looks at him, searching him for any sign that this helps, rings familiar, provides hope. "I think he was trying to reach you, but you - neither of us were really ourselves in that dream. Tim... he did die, the Rift may have taken him, but I think it's still holding him here."

[postictal]

Most of her explanation is utterly incomprehensible, eliciting only a puzzled frown. But at least she isn't crying anymore.

Then Tim's shoulders stiffen in alarm.

"You think he's - " he begins hoarsely, his hands becoming fists at his sides. He won't give himself false hope. Not again. Never again. But it's the Rift, it fucks with them like this and it's -

It's Jay.

He owes him. He owes him. For being an idiot, for pulling Tim out of every mess Jay got them into, for trying to drag him away from the source of their nightmares, for coming after him even with the knowledge that he might not walk away from it and doing it twice over on top of it, for defending him, sneering at him, cowering beneath his glare, for facilitating the destruction of an entire goddamn underground base at Tim's expense, and for fucking apologizing a thousand times over, both for when it was his fault and even when it wasn't.

For just wanting - to help.

Tim dashes a wrist angrily under one eye.

"You think Jay's - you think he really could still be alive?" he asks, and he doesn't dare to hope that she's implying what could be, what, a glorified third chance to not completely fuck things up with the one guy who actually kind of gets it?

Fat chance.

[apidae]

"I'm pretty certain," she says, frowning thoughtfully. Finally feeling a bit energized - now that she has a problem to solve, a problem that can be solved - she picks herself up and goes to his kitchen to splash water in her face. "I remember the feeling very distinctly, even if it didn't stand out at the time. He'd died... and died again... and he was still there. Death doesn't mean anything to the Rift, really, especially if it's the Rift that caused it. It can bring us back as much as it wants."

Not comforting, she knows. She fills herself a glass of tap water and takes it back over to him, sitting down on the floor and sipping it contemplatively.

"Maybe there's some way to contact him," she says. "Or maybe someone's seen him. I can text the network and ask, if you like."

[postictal]

Is this some weird fucked-up purgatory? This would make the second time Jay's died but not really, but even at this point, Tim doesn't think he has it in him to complain. Not even to the Rift.

Please. If there's even the remotest chance - fuck. He doubted he'd ever truly be friends with the man but Jay was just another victim who deserved to make it out of Tim's mess alive. He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve it then and he doesn't deserve it now.

"Well. Uh." He looks away, chewing his lower lip as he gets to his feet more slowly. "I guess it's - this is my - " Mess probably isn't the best word for it. " - problem," he edits himself mid-sentence. "I should probably - I mean, that way Jay would know. You know?"

Like he's being all that coherent right now anyway. But Bee did say she doesn't really need words to get a picture.

"You, um, you want some coffee or something?" he says, unable to shake away the immediate association with Jay's awkward, half-assed attempts to patch everything he touched.

[apidae]

"Sure," she says softly. She's not a coffee drinker really, but it'll be helpful for him to make some and offer it. She gets up with him and resettles herself gingerly on the edge of his dismal little couch. "I know you want to fix this, and I think you can, and you should. But it can't hurt to ask other people, and I don't mind doing it. I can ask casually. What do you think?"

She holds up her phone, showing it to him as a gentle, open offer.

[postictal]

He dumps grounds into the coffeemaker - he supposes he could use Jay's, seeing as he's not using it, and even that bitter internal stab of humor falls painfully flat - and switches the machine on with a quiet whir as he mentally wavers over an answer. He leans against the countertop, eyes fixed on the steady trickle of dark liquid, gnawing on the inside of his cheek.

He always gives - gave - Jay shit for never cleaning up his own messes, let alone the ones he made out of everyone else's lives. And now here's Tim, forking their collective muddled chaos of a life onto this other person. But she's here, she's offering, and maybe people are more likely to be receptive to someone who exudes friendliness than some scowling nobody on the Internet.

"Yeah," he says finally, but he still doesn't look at her. "Yeah. Okay."

[apidae]

She smiles faintly, relieved that he's allowing her to help, and focuses a few moments on composing and sending the text. Within just a few moments she has replies, and good ones - from a woman she doesn't know, and the Balladeer.

"People have seen him," she says, reading and replying as the responses come in. "Two people, they both met him in dreams and both are telling me he said he was dead. It's him. He's still out there." She looks up at Tim, smiling, a little weak and sad, but relieved, too. "We can find him. We can bring him back. There has to be a way."

[postictal]

"Wait, so - he's dead but he's not?" So it is a kind of limbo. The coffeemaker squeals and releases an angry hiss of steam, and Tim hastily switches it off, depositing its contents into two mugs, one of which he pushes in Bee's direction.

"How do we even - he disappeared." He opens a hand and stares at his own palm, trying to tug himself out of the umpteenth replay of the scene in his head and utterly failing. "His body just, it was like it wasn't even there. How does anyone get back from that?"

[apidae]

"I don't know," she says, blowing gently across the surface of her coffee. "But there are a lot of powerful people here, people who could help us and would want to. There must be a way." She pauses to continue typing at the Balladeer, who seems to have picked up on the more unsavory aspects of Tim and Jay's lives; then she sets the phone aside and looks back up at Tim.

"The first thing is probably to see if you can find him in the dreaming again," she says. "Maybe he knows what's happening to him."

[postictal]

"Great," says Tim without any real enthusiasm, and scowls at his coffee. Too bad sleep is near-impossible for him and always has been. Too bad he'll probably just end up trapped in one of his old nightmares, or another rehash of Jay's sudden, horrific death - and now his subconscious has two scenarios to pull from. Too bad he's just as likely to get launched into one of the dreams that seem to serve as the Rift's idea of fun, or share a head with some other rifty, or be trapped in literally a million other possibilities besides actually finding the one person that he, for once, wants to find.

Too bad.

"Any idea how I even do that?" he asks dully. "I mean, sleep's never exactly been easy. Even when I do sleep, I'm pretty sure I'd've remembered if the real Jay ever showed up."

He scrubs a hand through his hair and tries to shove down the memory of half a dozen simulacra of the man himself as they paraded through whatever sporadic snatches of sleep he stole this week.

[apidae]

"I don't know," she says again, taking a sip of the coffee, managing not to make a face, and picking her phone back up. "But people know to keep an eye out for him now. I just heard from one person who says he's very familiar with the dreaming, and he says he hasn't seen him but he'll be on the lookout. And one of the people who has seen him is friend of mine who has powers kind of like mine. I'm sure they can help. At the very least they can keep us informed."

She smiles, a little strained, just trying to look optimistic for him. "I know you're sort of fresh out of hope. But I have nothing but. I can hope enough for the both of us, okay? We'll do everything we can. If Jay's out there, and he's looking for you, I'm sure he'll find you. He seems... well, just from what I can pick up from you - he seems very stubborn." Her smile takes on a little more humor at that.

[postictal]

"Yeah," Tim mutters, and something twists painfully in his chest. "Yeah, he was." Stubborn enough to latch his teeth into a mystery and never let go, even when it nearly got him killed a dozen times, even when it actually got him killed.

"I guess," he says, chancing a look up at her, "I guess now I know to keep an eye out. If it's even possible, uh." Immediately, he has to look away again, shoulders hunching. "I owe him."

[apidae]

"I understand," she says, because she really does. She reaches out, not quite touching, just offering a hand if he wants it. She doubts he'll take it but it feels wrong not to at least offer.

"Thank you," she says, "for hearing me out, and... for letting me come in here. And for the coffee. I'm sorry I was so... Well. I'm sorry." She looks down at her coffee for a moment. "If you ever need to talk to anyone about anything you can always talk to me. I'm right upstairs. Okay?"

[postictal]

Well, she's - she's not lying, he supposes. She would understand if she can see everything. The latent discomfort of that revelation still prickles under his skin, but there's no point in trying to hide it, or anything.

He drains his mug and sets it down, the click of cheap ceramic against tile punctuating the silence of Tim - not knowing how to respond to that. Talking about things with Jay usually translated to something shouting-match-related instead of actually parsing their issues like normal, well-adjusted people.

Normal. Well-adjusted. That's almost funny.

"Okay," he says with a short jerking nod. "Um - thanks. I guess."

He guesses. Wow, way to be tactful, Tim. Ungrateful bastard.

[apidae]

"Sure." She nods kindly and pulls her hand back to sip at her coffee. She doesn't mind his awkwardness. She used to be just as awkward.

"I wouldn't get rid of his stuff just yet, at any rate," she says lightly.

She knows he's not sure what else to say, so she gets up. "I'm gonna go up to my room now," she says. "Text me if you need anything. Food, company, distraction. Anything at all."

At his small nod, she turns and leaves him, feeling jostled from the whole of the interaction. She needs to meditate. She needs to be with her bees. And then, when she sleeps, she needs to help Tim look for Jay.