entranceway | Entry #90

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Entry #90

action;

[Everything goes white.]

[It's slow, and it's immediate. It's an eruption of snowy white fur across his forearms, along his back, to contrast the black-brown of the hair on his head. It's not painful, but it blazes in a way nothing else can. The weight of stubby horns on his head, the white-hot torquing of the barbed wire of his nervous system as it rearranges itself, as his organs howl in accommodation of something a human body was never meant to endure. His shoulder blades prickle with an eruption of thorny growths, stark and black as the skeletal branches that always rake the sky in his dreams. A startled, agonized noise wrenches out from the back of his throat, sputtering into an abortive gagging when he discovers that his canines have abruptly sharpened into fangs.]

[That's when the memories begin.]

[He doubles over, hands snapping around his middle. He's taller than he was, larger than he was, and there's a bright sizzle of something in the palms of his hands.]

[Can't think. Can't do anything but - ]

[* ACT.]

[An eruption of white-hot flame bursts from his hands - his paws? It coils up and around, wreathing the Frost Giants in a fiery nimbus. They begin to shriek as the heat starts to melt their blueish skin into slurries of clear, watery runoff. It curls his lips upward into a snarl. His eyes are wet, blinding him with the heated prickle of his own inability to fucking cope. His nostrils are thick with dust. He's breathing in, sitting in, FIGHTing in Asgore's own fucking remains.]

[The interleaving of dualed memory digs into the posterior of his skull like a fingernail prizing away a scabbed over wound. Warm scents of butterscotch and cinnamon, of a crackling fire in a hearth, soft white fur smoothed beneath a large, heavy paw, the twining of horns in with tree branches and the musical chatter of a child's laughter at the sheer silliness of it. The bitterness that clenched in a Boss Monster's gut that left him bedridden for days, and the deep-voiced plea that begged the bedraggled, bleeding, sweating shape on the bed to * Stay determined.]

[Watching one child crumble to dust, so soon after the other stopped breathing.]

[He can no longer tell whose tears are burning in wet runnels down his cheeks.]

[...]

[He no longer cares.]

video;

[If Tim could have his way, he'd be issuing this announcement over text. But he can't - having learned, very far after the fact, that the new, clawlike shape of his hands makes inputting text commands rather impossible. It seems Asgardian technology doesn't account for impromptu goat-human hybrids. So instead, people get something different.]

[Something...very different.]

[On day four, a watery scarlet iris stares hollowly at the screen for several moments before Tim pulls back. If the presence of thick white fur and rounded horns and branchlike protrusions doesn't cement that something has gone really, horribly, terribly wrong, then the tremor in his voice and the glisten of tears down his cheeks certainly should.]

I, uh...

[Maybe it's the eyes - the eyes that, though they've changed in color, undeniably belong to one Timothy Wright.]

Asgore told me - he said that I had to, I had to take it before anyone else did. I didn't know this would - god - I didn't know.

[He's trying not to break down. He's trying not to. He can no longer tell whose guilt is swelling like a tumor in his chest, whose grief is eating at his heart. At the soul he allegedly, apparently possesses.]

I'm sorry.

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[The doubled memory is the worst of it, the polar opposite of the problem he's always had; when you spend your whole life guessing at the gaps in you memories, you're entirely unprepared to have hundreds of years worth of someone else's dumped into your skull in recompense. Sifting through all of them is difficult enough - especially when, with the heaviness of certain points in time, marred with guilt, it feels like long stretches have blurred together.]

[How Asgore has a long enough memory to account for all of it is beyond him. But then, he's just a human.]

["Tim the Human." Always formal, always contrite. He'd smile, if he could.]

[Maybe he could borrow that instinct too.]

[Hey.]

[He stiffens, abruptly, and there's an instinct that almost has him pulling, reaching out. If he were to complete it, maybe he could form a brilliantly red trident from the thin air, clasp it in one paw, eyes flashing in a contrast of orange and pale blue, and drag the human's soul into being. Seven human souls to free all of monsterkind. Reaped from their small, fragile bodies, each and every one of them - ]

[He blinks, and the instinct fades.]

...yeah. I think so.

[He swallows heavily, glances down at the urn in his...hands. Paws.]

I, uh. His kids are...

They asked me to.

[His kids asked him to. And it looks like an urn, so...oh. Oh. That's not. Okay, that's not something Jay wanted to contemplate, but here it is. Whatever those things did to Asgore, there's not enough left of him to fill a little vase.]

[Wonderland can fix this, right? This can't be permanent. It always brings people back.]

[Jay didn't like the way Tim's expression darkened just now. For a split-second, there was a little too much Alex Kralie there for comfort. Jay decides he'll have to keep a closer eye on him.]

Alright, uh. [Jay can hear a small commotion outside. As much as he wants to go look, he's got to get Tim upstairs. He picks up the pace, just slightly.] Let's--let's go.

[What the hell's he thinking, letting something like that run rampant in his head? In...their head?]

[Fuck if he knows.]

Okay.

[Asgore must not be a smoker, because that's not the instinct pulling at his lungs. There's something else, something morbidly mundane; the quiet urge to offer a fucking cup of tea, like that would ease any of this, or make any of it better. He carried that around with him, just...on the spot. Immediately after rescuing Tim from his near-drowning, he'd just casually broken out this tea-heating kit and gone to town with it.]

[He's getting distracted.]

...where're we going?

[...Where are they going? Jay had the general idea of "somewhere safe" which typically translated to something in the region of "his room, with the door locked behind," but he's got Tim, so that plan might shift a couple floors up. Is that the safest place for him right now, though? Tim's got horns and branches and a look in his eye that shakes Jay to his core, and for all Jay knows, Tim might be the most dangerous thing in the room.]

[Well, he's not going to leave him here. That'd be stupid.]

Uh.

[He glances back, toward the door of the mansion and the last shouts of a dying battle.]

Well, as far as we can from that, that's for sure.

[Don't shiver. Don't shake. Just...keep walking. It turns out that Asgore has a lot of experience with maintaining his composure even when all else would dictate that he should be falling apart. You have to get used to that sort of thing when you're the public face for all of monster kind. Who would've thought that?]

[He's better than Tim ever was.]

You're not...you haven't run into anything like that. Right?

[Jay starts up the stairs, glancing back every couple seconds to make sure Tim's still following.]

[He shakes his head.]

Not really. Guess I sorta kept out of the way this time.

[And by "kept out of the way" he means "barred himself in his room the second the reality warps started and only left to get some footage and sneak some food from the feast."]

[...good.]

[Good.]

[That's about all he can ask for; for Jay to not have stuck his nose into something he shouldn't, for goddamn once. For him to recognize that he's out of his depth, and not risk being buried in the consequences of that. Tim's newly furred shoulders hunch, and he hugs Asgore's...remains...a bit closer to himself.]

So what now?

[Tim's asking him what to do next, rather than the other way around, and suddenly he's months back. They're making progress on the investigation, scant as it is, and Jay's the one winding back through old footage, comparing it to the shapes on the map, sketching up a rough plan for the next few days' drive. Tim's nodding along, cigarette dangling from one hand as he tells Jay it makes sense (because of course it makes sense).]

[He tries to scrape together enough of that Jay to answer decisively.]

First thing, we get higher. Worst of it never really reached the fourth floor, so anything there and above should be okay.

[Unless the attacks get even worse tomorrow.]

Then we...figure out how to fix what happened to you.

[It's a next step. It's not a well-defined next step, and he's already bracing himself for a snide comment from Tim, but it's a next step nonetheless.]

[Fix it.]

[For a second, it almost feels like it did months ago. Years ago? Back when Jay was the one nominally in charge, calling the shots, and Tim was just along for the ride, unused to running with someone at all, let alone in the name of an investigation of a problem that had always been there, hovering mindlessly at his periphery.]

[There's always something that needs fixing, with him. Too morose. Too fatalistic. Too fucking schizo. Not trying hard enough to make it all better. Not trying hard enough to be normal.]

[He'd laugh, because this problem, this little current problem of his - does it even count as something fixable? Or was it just him, being a dumbass, being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Maybe he can be grateful that, for once, it wasn't due to any inherent qualities that Tim possessed, but simple fucking misfortune. At least now it's his fault for a completely goddamn different reason. Variety's the spice of life.]

Asgore's dead.

[It's meant to come out sharp. Instead, it emerges with a defeated sag of his shoulders, adjusting his grip around those remnants like they're a lifeline.]

We can't - there's no fixing that until he comes back.

[The words are out of his mouth before he has time to consider whether or not he should bite his tongue.]

Yeah? Can he come back while you're like this?

[Is he not really Tim anymore? Did Asgore's soul latch on like a parasite and turn him into whatever (whoever) this is? Sure, he sounds like Tim, but Jay's already learned that doesn't mean anything here.]

I mean, this isn't...normal, right?

[People keep asking him that. Can he even come back like this? He doesn't know. He doesn't know. His head bows in apparent shame. This isn't normal. Nothing about any of this is normal. Nothing about Tim ever has been.]

I don't know. No one knows.

[So Asgore - he could be trapped like this, couldn't he? Forever.]

[And it's his fault for doing something so stupid.]

[The way he bows his head, curling into himself...yeah, that's Tim. Maybe not all of him's Tim right now, but that part definitely is. Too bad he doesn't have answers for this like he did for the rest of it.]

[(If he's telling the truth right now.)]

Alright.

[The event replaced his camera with some ornate, golden box that Jay's still not entirely sure how to use, but in the hours spent locked in his room, he's been able to figure out how to record and download the video off it. He shifts the thing that might or might not be a camera back and forth in his hands.]

Well, for now, let's just...get upstairs and figure out whatever we can.

[If they can.]

[It hasn't occurred to him, yet, to ask after a camera. Maybe if he weren't like this just now, he would be. Doesn't cross his mind. Why would it? He has to get upstairs. He keeps waiting for his newly heavy (but oddly light - monsters, their atoms spun from dust and scrapped together emotions and knotted up trails of grief, don't weight very much at all) tread to break the stairs beneath him, or at least cause the floor to groan.]

[But the architecture would be used to bearing people clad in armor, of all things. So why not Tim, in all his hybrid glory?]

Figure out what? [His voice spikes awkwardly, pitching higher. Breathe, breathe, Tim. There's an instinct howling in the back of his skull - an assertiveness contesting a desire for patience, to sit back and wait and see what fate may yield, and he can no longer sort which belongs to which soul.]

[So he settles for the one instinct he can recognize.]

[Panic.]

[High, tense, and splintering.]

There's no - there might not be any coming back from this, Jay.

[Jay jolts, bracing himself like he's about to be hit. It's nearly enough to make him drop the camera.]

I know, alright?

[He's not shouting, but the tension in his throat's enough that his voice quavers anyway, raw and on the edge of cracking like he's thirteen all over again.]

But if there's something we can do, we have to figure out what that is, or else...

[Or else they'll lose the opportunity to fix it. Fix something.]

Like what?

[Just another Jay Merrick styled plan, isn't it? Some nebulous and poorly-defined something that he has no conceptualization of and no way of implementing. If there's something they can do - and there's only one thing he can consider.]

[He'd do it in a heartbeat, too. If it didn't risk Asgore - again.]

If I...if something happens to me - [Keep it vague. As if Jay can't pick up on the implications there.] What if it counts for his second death? Huh?

[It takes a second for what Tim's saying to sink in, but sink in it does. Jay absolutely picks up on the implications there. And the implications for Asgore, which aren't anything Jay wants to risk either.]

Okay, so we go upstairs, away from all that, and we... sure that doesn't happen.

[They get away from anything that could endanger Tim's life except, y'know, the obvious. Hopefully cut down the risk at least a bit. As much as they can.]

[Fuck, what is he doing? What are either of them doing?]

Are you sure we should?

[He's...fuck. He's asking Jay for this kind of advice. Like, for help. Jay can't even help himself, let alone an old college friend, let alone this - this hybrid of monster and human, two souls twined together into bristling asynchrony. That's not even getting into the way things ended with them.]

If he doesn't come back, there might not be any other way.

[So why...]

[Why wait?]

[Jay's suddenly reminded of Alex. Not the one he remembers, barely the one he forgot, but the one he pieced together through scraps of footage and information from Tim. The blank-eyed one who pulled the trigger. The one who was so sure that the only way to fix all this was for people to die.]

[Jay feels himself deflate.]

Sure, but I'd rather...try all the other ways first, if it's all the same to you.

[He'll figure this out. He'll figure this out and Tim will be fine, and he won't open up the hotel door to find him gone because he wasn't fast enough.]

[He'd rather try that instead. Of course he would. It isn't fair to default to the easy way out, when Jay's the one who'd have to sit with the weight of two lives, two more lives, for the twenty-four hours it would take for them to revive again.]

[If it's all the same to you.]

[He doesn't have an argument to that. Nothing except the obvious, and the desperate:]

What other ways are you seeing here, Jay?

[No other ways, not really, but he's not thinking about that right now. They have to get upstairs, because that's the next step, and from there the rest of the plan just fades out to nothing, but he's not thinking about that.]

I guess we just...keep our heads down the next twenty-four hours and see what happens.

[What if whatever needs to be done needs to be done before Asgore would normally come back? What if Asgore comes back, but it kills Tim in the process?]

[He's not thinking about that.]

You said nobody's seen anything like this before?

[Sit around and wait.]

[Some part of him, or some newly-acquired piece of him, seems to like that idea. Drawn toward it like a magnet. Just wait. Just wait and see how things go. Can't make any judgment calls until things align a little better, right? Just wait. Just wait for another human to fall. For a War to begin, and to end.]

[For someone else's soul.]

[He can't shake it. So he doesn't.]

Not...no. I mean, there's been one instance of - a monster taking a human soul.

[And now he can visualize it. Perfectly.]

[Now that gets his attention. Information. Nothing makes sense, but Tim knows something about what's going on that might make it make sense, and that drags this whole mess back into familiar territory.]

[Jay makes sure the camera's running.]

How did that--I mean, what happened?

[He can remember it. That's the weird thing. The terrifying thing. Missing memories he can handle. Memories that belong to someone else, suddenly tossed into his skull? That's completely out of his area of expertise, and he doubts Asgore is any better.]

[(Don't doors open both ways?)]

It didn't...

[He - it's a story. It's a story, like a fairytale, that every monster hears. But that doesn't mean he has to get into the specifics.]

They died.

[Those were the absolute last words Jay wanted to hear, but at least they're something. Better than flying blind. And maybe it'll lead to something useful.]

[Or at least maybe they'll be prepared when everything goes to hell.]

Was it because they were sharing...souls or whatever, or did something else happen?

Edited 2017-09-02 04:20 (UTC)

They were attacked.

[He knows the story. He knows it intimately (entirely too intimately), and he's heard it as it warped and its iterations repeated and closed and opened again like uncoiling snakes. Heard it like a fairytale, like it was all just a bad dream. Saw it happen, watched ~~his son~~ turn into something unspeakable and that collapsed into dust as he cried.]

[There's something hot and wet running down his cheeks.]

[He paws at his face.]

[Those aren't his tears to shed.]

The...humans. They attacked them. They'd looked - [He can't finish the sentence. It chokes off. They'd looked wrong, in every sense possible, but those were ~~his children~~, and how could he ever claim something like that?] S-so they -

[They killed them.]

Edited 2017-09-02 04:27 (UTC)

action

tim please don't take jay's soul and put it in a glass jar to save monsterkind

he was just THINKING it god jay

jay would rather not be killed by two different friends within six months if it's all the same

w o w

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cw internalized ableism

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cw for some really vague suicide ideation

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