kayakking | (no subject)

[It is what the Lonely looks like.

When Algric's hand touches the frame, it shivers under him. Then starts to grow, expand past its natural frame size. Larger and larger, like a tale of a girl who once ate the wrong side of the mushroom and grew to a too-large size. Until it finally becomes the size of a proper doorway. The sound of the waves gently crashing into the shore drifts into the otherwise silent room, the smell of salt in the air unmistakable.

KidJon and JonCat both watch them, expectant and a little sad.]

Good luck.

[Once through, the beach stretches out, as much as Algric remembers. He hadn't been lying, though. There is a marked change in the distance: a lighthouse. Tall, dark, and Watching. It is undeniable the way the Eye stretches to watch them as the pair encroaches on the Panopticon, with hints of eyes just beyond the clouds in the sky watching as they progress.]

[ Tim steps through a pace or two behind Algric... Is it bad that there being the watchtower, even with the unsettling hint of eyes above is a deep and terrible comfort?

Because he can't quite help it. ]

Shit.

[ He wraps his arms around himself, even taking the odd one out of his pocket to do it properly. No matter how close Algric is, it feels too far... ]

[ Algric -

Algric isn’t there. For just a moment, Tim is alone as the Lonely swallows Algric up, as he loses himself in this memory. God he hates this - he hates it he hates this place—

(He’ll be back in a moment but for now he cannot cope.) ]

[The Lonely fog stretches and curls around. But as Tim walks, the Lighthouse does start t get closer, looming taller and more powerful. A few of the eyes above blink before still watching.]

"Algric!" Tim yells, stumbling towards the Lighthouse, the only point of reference he has in this miserable place. The fog swallows the sound. "Algric! Martin! DAMMIT, answer!"

N-no - no - I can’t be here - god, it was a dream after all, I knew it —

[ Algric’s voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. ]

[ At the first word, Tim starts towards where he thinks Algric's voice came from, but it's no nearer or farther than it was, isn't it? ]

It... it is a dream. But you're not dreaming. This... You have to stay with me.

[ A little bit of desperation to that? Maybe. ]

[ Indeed, the closer Tim gets, the more Algric seems to drift away. ]

No. No, I - I always knew. I never actually left this place. Time travel - what a ridiculous idea.

[ The soft sound of crying is not a happy one but … it seems a bit more solid? Thataway. ]

[ The fury has dribbled away, leeched by the cold into something a bit more numb, a bit more empty. But even that miserable sound was something, anything in this bleak nothing place.

He surges toward it.

What was that Genoa statement? The one with the backpack.

He tries to picture the man (there were... soft cheeks? The face is blurred. Red hair but... no, no its more white now, isn't it) and who he is... (Oh there's still the tea, and the fluttering when he's nervous, but there's those worn edges, and the sharper ones...) ]

Algric. Algric, stay with me. This IS Tim, and you're here with us. You have to find Jon... You're the only one who can. Help us get there.

[ It’s a little like that first time Tim met Algric, isn’t it? The ghost in Jon’s kitchen, a monster that could have replaced Martin. His words fall in and out of Tim’s head.

But Tim is getting closer. The outline of a figure is slowly emerging from the fog. ]

You’re dead, Tim. So is Jon. There’s no one here.

[ He sounds… uncertain though. Is Tim dead? He - can’t seem to remember properly - ]

If I'm dead, no one's cared to inform me. And Jon may be if we don't get to him.

[ That wraith in the kitchen... it was hard to... what was he looking for. Jon, right? Jon and he couldn't find him because he needed...

He held on to it even harder. The Martin who had come back through time. Filled with that guilty hope, always trying to make himself smaller but never quite leave. Desperate for that love but never quite accepting it either. Oh, and the fucker who GOT THEM IN THIS MESS. He manages to hold onto THAT too. But... the watery eyes of seeing him again, for the first time after he'd died (he HADN'T... but A Him had). . . A good friend, the way he flustered... ]

Algric, you're here and so am I. I can prove it, you just have to ...

[ To what? ]

Remember that statement? Hold onto the thoughts of someone you love, right?

[ ... Shit, he'd made him put the rings back. ] So think about him.

[ Those rings would have been so helpful about now! So helpful! But who knows what damage having them here would have done.

Algric… thinks then. About the people he loves. Jon, of course. Both Jons, the one blind in their flat and the one currently trapped in his own head. Martin, too. Like a brother he never had, enduring the same history together. And … and Tim too, of course. Hotheaded but right, even when - especially when - Algric is screwing up.

Slowly but surely, a solid figure emerges from the fog. All of his colour is gone, but it’s Algric. ]

Tim?

[ He feels his knees get a bit weak and SEEING him again. Both that release from danger, and ... someone. ANYONE here. ]

Algric!

[ He reaches out to take Algric's hand. ]

[ Algric’s hand is neither warm nor fully solid, but he grips Tim back tightly, clinging in turn. ]

I - I’m here, I’m here. Somehow.

[ He holds it as tightly as this place allows. ]

Right. You're here, and I'm not letting go.

Right. Right. God, I -

[ He clings for another moment. ]

We have to find Jon. I’ll lead the way, okay?

[ He’ll start walking anyway, still holding fast to TimX and hope. ]

[The way is at least clear to a Lonely avatar with the Eye's fond blessing. A path of light smokey fog winding its way through the sand dunes and shoreline to that looming, overpowering lighthouse of black obsidian and dark glass. It's large, and that ever present feeling of being watched is bearing its full weight on the two of them now.

Round the back though is a single door. It's small, nondescript and hidden in a small fog bank. Like maybe a staff entrance, or things not meant to be acknowledged.]

[ EVEN OUTSIDE OF THE BITTER COLD OF THE LONELY, Tim keeps that hold on Algric, his turn to cling. Oh, he's been suited to the Eye, but that requires fear too. ]

Think there's a chance it'll be better inside?

[ Algric’s laugh is terribly brittle. ]

No way in hell. But what else can we do?

[ Algric pushes that door open. ]

[How 'bad' it is is likely depending on perspective.

Just inside the door is a narrow stairway, down to their left and up to their right like an old castle tower. The way up is lit by small torches, and the way down the torches peter out into darkness. But evenly space between each are portraits with placecards underneath providing some information to each. Some are familiar faces (Sasha. Tim. Martin. Basira. Daisy. Melanie. Georgie.) while others aren't quite as familiar, but their placecards inform well enough (Tobias Fisher. Naomi Herne. Helen Richardson. Jurgen Leitner. Lionell Elliot. Tessa Winters, etc.) All the live statements he took in his own time and this new timeline.

There is, of course, a recorder somewhere. And the beginning of small webs up in the corners of the ceiling and where the stairs meet the walls.

Up or down is up to the two of them.]

[ ... He immediately looks to the placard with Sasha, staring up at the picture there. Whose memory does it match? ]

[With the Not-Them destroyed, and Jonah's place with the Eye, well...

It certainly isn't a face Tim remembers.]

[ Right. So for a moment then, in this swarm of other faces, some familiar, some not, he takes a moment to trace along the cheek of a face of someone he doesn't know, but has a precious name. ]

... Memories, maybe?

[ Algric recognizes more, of course, and that’s enough to lead him to the right conclusion, probably. ]

Ah. Statements, I think.

[The cold does seem to settle, in that way that the chill creeps into and over bone and muscle alike. One would almost think they were in this forever and had always been.]