Tim W█████ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
postictal) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bigapplesauce2015-08-05 10:39 pm
postictal) wrote in bigapplesauce2015-08-05 10:39 pm
take these broken wings and learn to fly [closed]
His head throbs, a single continuous pulse feathering into variations on the same painful theme.
Tim groans and feels his muscles clench as he tries to roll over. A familiar soreness suffuses his entire body, the kind of soreness that takes its sweet goddamn time fading out after -
After -
Well, shit.
All it takes is a cursory glance at his phone for Tim to groan again and slap the device down as he gets slowly, agonizingly, to his feet. He runs fingers over his clothes, through his hair. No twigs and leaves, no mat of mud and blood drying in stiff clumps. His skin remains unscuffed from the phantom tug of undergrowth, his clothing miraculously clean and whole.
And, most importantly - no mask.
Tim breathes out, long and slow, and tries to suppress the faint prickle of relief. Unless his less agreeable self has suddenly gotten way more meticulous about cleaning up after its habitual wrecking of shit, an eerie number-laden message on the network is all he's got to worry about. That'd be a first. He'd almost be grateful for the little bastard if it wasn't set on making his life fucking miserable every chance it got. Regardless, he'll count himself lucky when he can.
Everything still hurts by the time noon hits him square in the face with a bright burst of sunlight through the slats in the shades, and the hiss of crisp fall air. It's surreal that Tim has to remind himself that time is still a thing that exists; absurd as it is, the existence of anything outside his own problems always comes to him as a shock. Like, you know, the weather.
So Tim goes out and buys a Ouija board.
This is - so goddamn stupid, he doesn't think he has a word for it. It's stupidly optimistic. It's a stupid idea, period. But he's out of options, and he feels like an idiot buying something like this, some plastic board at the cheapest magical bullshit place he could find. It's this or ask Asmodia to play telephone every day, and he's about had it with dragging other people into his and Jay's collective shit. She's got better things to do - safer people to spend her time with, no doubt, who are less liable to catapult her life into a complete sanity-draining nightmare.
He enters the apartment, keys rattling over the door, and jiggles the wide, flat box with faux enthusiasm.
"Bought you something," he deadpans.
As usual, the apartment doesn't answer. He pauses in hopes for a gust of chill wind to stab at his shoulder, or for the roll of paper towels to dislodge themselves from the counter - anything that would confirm that he didn't just announce his stupid impulsive baseless purchase to an empty fucking apartment. Like a moron.
Tim groans and feels his muscles clench as he tries to roll over. A familiar soreness suffuses his entire body, the kind of soreness that takes its sweet goddamn time fading out after -
After -
Well, shit.
All it takes is a cursory glance at his phone for Tim to groan again and slap the device down as he gets slowly, agonizingly, to his feet. He runs fingers over his clothes, through his hair. No twigs and leaves, no mat of mud and blood drying in stiff clumps. His skin remains unscuffed from the phantom tug of undergrowth, his clothing miraculously clean and whole.
And, most importantly - no mask.
Tim breathes out, long and slow, and tries to suppress the faint prickle of relief. Unless his less agreeable self has suddenly gotten way more meticulous about cleaning up after its habitual wrecking of shit, an eerie number-laden message on the network is all he's got to worry about. That'd be a first. He'd almost be grateful for the little bastard if it wasn't set on making his life fucking miserable every chance it got. Regardless, he'll count himself lucky when he can.
Everything still hurts by the time noon hits him square in the face with a bright burst of sunlight through the slats in the shades, and the hiss of crisp fall air. It's surreal that Tim has to remind himself that time is still a thing that exists; absurd as it is, the existence of anything outside his own problems always comes to him as a shock. Like, you know, the weather.
So Tim goes out and buys a Ouija board.
This is - so goddamn stupid, he doesn't think he has a word for it. It's stupidly optimistic. It's a stupid idea, period. But he's out of options, and he feels like an idiot buying something like this, some plastic board at the cheapest magical bullshit place he could find. It's this or ask Asmodia to play telephone every day, and he's about had it with dragging other people into his and Jay's collective shit. She's got better things to do - safer people to spend her time with, no doubt, who are less liable to catapult her life into a complete sanity-draining nightmare.
He enters the apartment, keys rattling over the door, and jiggles the wide, flat box with faux enthusiasm.
"Bought you something," he deadpans.
As usual, the apartment doesn't answer. He pauses in hopes for a gust of chill wind to stab at his shoulder, or for the roll of paper towels to dislodge themselves from the counter - anything that would confirm that he didn't just announce his stupid impulsive baseless purchase to an empty fucking apartment. Like a moron.
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Tim faces it squarely, hands balling into fists, his voice low and dangerous.
"You're not taking him back." He grinds it out between clenched teeth. "I don't care what you wanna do with him. He's not yours."
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His head is pounding, the rush of adrenaline to his head dizzying. He has no authority here. He has no authority at all. This thing has no reason to listen to him, no reason to be intimidated by some scared, trembling, sick man and his ghost. The only part of him that might have any bearing on the events at hand is currently locked away, is always locked away unless -
Unless that's what they've always wanted.
That was the whole point of their questions the first time, wasn't it? They wanted to know about him. The other him.
Tim looks at the thing with the utmost disgust.
"What do you want?" he asks, lowering his voice, his eyes dark and watchful. He trusts it'll interpret his meaning, not so much an inquiry as an oblique offer, heavy and guarded and hard-edged.
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He doesn't need a response to know he's probably exactly right, and he suddenly snaps out of his limp state of surrender, struggling harder against the invisible hold, looking at the cat now with rage instead of fear. "Don't - get away from him! Leave us alone!"
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The choice here is simple. It's always been simple. They've been goddamn blind not to see it otherwise, that there had to be an agenda here. It was always the Rift, stringing them along, drawing out Jay's ordeal to make it abundantly clear what it was capable of, and now it's dangling the latent threat over Tim's head.
Wasn't it always going to end this way? Shouldn't it have? Jay always should have gotten out. He was the only one of them who ever deserved it. He has a shot at a brand new start this way. Away from Tim, isolated from all the freaks who ever made his life hell.
And Tim -
It's better this way.
It's better.
At least this way, what he chooses will mean something. It'll mean more than an empty YouTube channel and a string of vanished bodies.
"No," says Tim, the word breaking cleanly in the middle. He drops his stare to the ground, defeated. "Whatever it is I - "
The words fade in his throat.
"You turn him back," he says, fixing the cat with a hard stare, pleading and numb and desperate. He's not about to surrender every scrap of power he still has in this situation, not to this thing, not to its satisfied, authoritative air. He has conditions. He's going to make it a negotiation.
It was never a negotiation, but the fake decision makes him feel better about it.
"You turn him back. He's human again, and he's alive, and he's normal. You don't touch him again. And you can - " Tim grimaces, and doesn't look at Jay, and can't look at him. "You get me out of it, all right? That's the deal."
It's better this way.
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"Tim, no," he says raggedly, already weakened by the force of impact that he shouldn't even be able to feel. "Stop!"
This can't be happening. Not after everything they've been through and everything that's changed the past few days. He lets out a cough, startlingly - hasn't felt that in a while.
"Don't take him, you're not taking him." He draws himself up as much as he can, his limbs still pinned, immobilized and aching. He knows this is pointless. He has nothing to offer. Nothing left to give. He never did.
"Tim," he says finally, looking at him, pleading.
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The ginger cat will be relieved, it knows, to simplify the state of one of its playthings by placing Jay firmly back on the mortal coil. The ginger cat can also go suck a lemon as far as the siamese is concerned; it has its job and has no business complaining.
You've made the right choice, it purrs, letting Jay drop to the floor only to pin him there.
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He doesn't look at Jay, deaf to the protests that don't matter. They never mattered. Tim was the one the Rift wanted, the one that always interested it. Him and his little friend. They can have his 'little friend,' as far as he's concerned. They can have it, and him, and maybe then he won't have to worry about hurting anyone ever again. Stupid, selfish Tim - he should've known he's only useful if he's dead, or worse.
'Worse,' it looks like, is just about to happen to him.
It's better this way.
"He doesn't just come out whenever, you know." Tim looks at the cat, uncertainty flickering over his defiant glower for a moment. "How are you gonna - ?"
He doesn't know how to finish the question.
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It doesn't need to make the movement in a physical/visual sense but it does so anyway, paw outstretched and claws extended, hooked. There you are, it murmurs as something catches, and tugs, and out it comes!
tw: suicide ideation and mental distress
It's the strangest feeling.
Tim's gaze falls on Jay for a fraction of a second, wild and nervous and compliant and scared and ready, before everything caves and the lingering pull and resistance is cut away by curved claws as they scythe easily to his center, before something is torn from him and he's split in two and he's falling.
Tim never feels himself keel over.
He never even feels himself hit the ground.
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The thing it has caught fights against it, to the cat's mild consternation, but once it's got its claws hooked in, once it's exploited the opening given it, Tim's little friend has as much chance of staying hidden away as Jay does of escaping to the mortal coil under its own power. Speaking of which....
I'm finished here, it says lightly, releasing Jay without further ceremony as, unseen, it tucks away something that was once in Tim. It blinks and is gone, and Tim's friend with it.
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Tim is giving himself up, he's agreeing, no, no, fuck, no, what is it going to do to him, how is it going to - Jay twists his neck to look up, to see the cat reaching out, see Tim look him in the eye one last moment-
"Tim!" he screams, the cry erupting from him just as Tim's body jerks and collapses to the floor.
The cat releases him, just like that. The sensation of having a body again comes all at once, and it's dizzying, it's nauseating, he's hot and cold all at once and his heart is pounding and he feels hollowed out. The cat is cheerful in its departure. Jay stares up at it, ready to growl like an animal, scream out every empty threat he can think of, but then it's gone.
Jay scrambles forward, awkward, clumsy, until he's huddled over Tim, lifting him up. He's so heavy. He's so still.
"Tim," he whispers. God, no, no, no. "Tim, please, wake up. Tim." He moves one hand to Tim's forehead, his neck, feeling for a pulse. It's there, thready and slow. He's not dead, he's just - out.
Tim's body is either empty or in remission.
Jay feels himself trembling, his fingers tightening uselessly around Tim's arms, digging into his shirt.
"Tim, please," he says again, and again, and again. "Tim, come back, don't - don't leave me."
It's over.
They got what they wanted, got it by using him. Let him play the pawn in their hilarious little game.
Jay curls up, clinging to the nearly lifeless body, he doesn't know for how long.