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)
applesaucedream2015-07-27 09:32 am
postictal) wrote in applesaucedream2015-07-27 09:32 am
Entry tags:
let them be buried (buried alive) in their suits, in their ties [closed]
It's Rosswood. It's always Rosswood.
The trees yawn ever skyward, jagged, sharp-toothed things with branches unguiculate, reaching toward him, past him, into him. The irregular chiaroscuro of the stretching branches turns them into knobbed, spiny things, like the bones of a joint laid bare, stripped of flesh, muscle and viscera peeled away. He can see his breath, frosted puffs of it leaching the warmth from his bones every time he exhales. The trees blot out the sky. The forest is black. Everything is black, cast in cold grayscale, with trunks painted ashen and leaves soaked in pitch.
This is where he belongs.
He can always feel it pressing over the posterior parts of his skull, clawing to be let out like the caged thing it is. He grits his teeth, as if that will hold it in while it tries to wrench its way out of an opened maw, scuttling free on spidery legs.
Spider.
Hey, that's a thought.
He's in a web. That makes sense. His life has been nothing but webs, puppet strings tangling him, tying him to the spindled thing that lurks in his head, in him. And that thing, always like a spider the way it reeled them all in, well, it just makes sense, doesn't it. He strains against the threads of the sprawling filigree, not silvery and dew-crested but inky, gelatinous and ectoplasmic, clinging to him, miring him, tethering him, holding him down. He tugs against the constraints, but it's nothing more than a cursory struggle. He's too goddamn tired for anything else.
He let Jay die. Let him slip away. Of course Tim's trapped. It makes perfect sense.
But then, Jay looked at him. He looked at him, not full of wild despair but dull acceptance and that, that, that had been the worst thing.
Tim clenches his jaw and pulls again. He pulls.
The webbing holding him down snaps free with the rending sound of tearing elastic. He's falling. He falls forever, until he hits the ground in a tumbling skid and lies there, panting, sucking in greedy gulps of breath despite the chill in his lungs and in his bones and worming into his heart, heartless little beast, little creature, little thing you are, he has to pick himself up and run because that's what he does, that's all he ever does is fucking run and never face anything.
Little. Fucking. Monster.
The trees yawn ever skyward, jagged, sharp-toothed things with branches unguiculate, reaching toward him, past him, into him. The irregular chiaroscuro of the stretching branches turns them into knobbed, spiny things, like the bones of a joint laid bare, stripped of flesh, muscle and viscera peeled away. He can see his breath, frosted puffs of it leaching the warmth from his bones every time he exhales. The trees blot out the sky. The forest is black. Everything is black, cast in cold grayscale, with trunks painted ashen and leaves soaked in pitch.
This is where he belongs.
He can always feel it pressing over the posterior parts of his skull, clawing to be let out like the caged thing it is. He grits his teeth, as if that will hold it in while it tries to wrench its way out of an opened maw, scuttling free on spidery legs.
Spider.
Hey, that's a thought.
He's in a web. That makes sense. His life has been nothing but webs, puppet strings tangling him, tying him to the spindled thing that lurks in his head, in him. And that thing, always like a spider the way it reeled them all in, well, it just makes sense, doesn't it. He strains against the threads of the sprawling filigree, not silvery and dew-crested but inky, gelatinous and ectoplasmic, clinging to him, miring him, tethering him, holding him down. He tugs against the constraints, but it's nothing more than a cursory struggle. He's too goddamn tired for anything else.
He let Jay die. Let him slip away. Of course Tim's trapped. It makes perfect sense.
But then, Jay looked at him. He looked at him, not full of wild despair but dull acceptance and that, that, that had been the worst thing.
Tim clenches his jaw and pulls again. He pulls.
The webbing holding him down snaps free with the rending sound of tearing elastic. He's falling. He falls forever, until he hits the ground in a tumbling skid and lies there, panting, sucking in greedy gulps of breath despite the chill in his lungs and in his bones and worming into his heart, heartless little beast, little creature, little thing you are, he has to pick himself up and run because that's what he does, that's all he ever does is fucking run and never face anything.
Little. Fucking. Monster.
no subject
"Tim," he says slowly, "it's not your fault. None of it - I mean, not what happened to me. I didn't have to watch those tapes. I didn't. You were right about - I shouldn't have put them on the fucking internet, I shouldn't have gone looking. I should have just... fucking trusted you. I got myself killed, Tim, not you."
He has no idea how helpful any of that is but it's something that seems like it needs to get said. He's been half-existing in metaspace for long enough now that certain thoughts have solidified. Maybe that, and this unreal landscape, makes them easier to voice.
"This isn't something you have to fix," he says. "You can just live your life, okay? It's - it's not here, it didn't follow us. I'm pretty sure, just based on what the cats are... I mean, it... it isn't keeping you tied down anymore, and neither am I. You can just let me go. It's okay."
Well, it is and it isn't. He's terrified, still, dreading going back to being indefinitely pinned under various paws, but maybe they'll get bored with him eventually. And seeing Tim now, somehow it's just so fucking apparent how torn up he is over this, how torn up he always was. And he doesn't want that. He wants to stop hurting and being afraid, but if only one of them can get that, maybe Tim has a better chance.
tw: more self-loathing
"You don't get it," he says flatly. "You think it would have mattered if you never went looking? Think it mattered for Seth or Sarah or Amy? It never matters."
He has no conception why this, of all things, is what's pissing him off so thoroughly. Why it makes him so angry to see Jay like this, wrung out and giving up and not fighting for answers like the tenacious little bastard he is. He doesn't give up. He keeps going, the dumb shit, and runs himself and everyone else into the fucking ground. The hell was done to him.
He wishes he'd kicked those fucking cats harder when he met them.
"You're coming back," he says, his tone fierce and his jaw set. "I'm the one who got you into this in the first place. It's me. It's what I am, I'm this - " His hand curls into a fist over his chest, shoulders hunching. "I'm fucking tainted, do you get that? I'm a virus. And you're just - I could have kept you out of it, the first time. I could have stopped it. I could have stopped Alex. I could have stopped this. I should have. And I'm going to."
no subject
He lets his hand slip down, looks away again, back at the water. Tired.
"You don't need me anymore," he says. "I'm just - I'm dead weight. I know it."
no subject
He stabs a finger at the other man's chest, his expression hard.
"I owe you that, if nothing else, so you can shut up and let me get you out, whether you like it or not. You did the same for me. You got me outta there, outta that place, even when it would've been safer for everybody if you'd just let me rot there." There's no denying that. Who knows how many people he may have hurt, or killed -
Whatever. That's the furthest thing from relevant right now. He just needs to get Jay out. It's what he does, right? Risks himself, risks everything. Like Jay has any fucking room to talk.
no subject
"Fine," he says. "Fine. Whatever you want." There's no bite to the words. He's simply out of energy to fight. He looks back up at Tim, hesitantly meeting his eyes. "How are you gonna do it?"
no subject
"I'm gonna wake up," he says slowly, decisive. Waking feels so easy, always has been. Always easier than falling asleep. "And you follow me. You follow me out. Okay?"
Maybe it's not that simple. It's not like Tim's qualified to know one kind of death from the other. But then, they never know anything. It's not their lives if they're not perpetually in the dark, left without light and without answers. They make their shit up as they go, and sometimes that's enough.
Sometimes.
no subject
"Okay," he says slowly. "I'll try."
He stands there for a moment, still hugging himself against the dreamed up wind. "Hey, Tim, uh." He shifts his weight, looking at his feet. "Thanks."
no subject
"Thank me when we get outta this," he says.
The sky blanches to engulf the water.
The surface beneath their feet is endless, and then it's nothing.
The brightness fades to night.
Tim's eyes open to the uniform darkness of his apartment ceiling.