choosetruth | ic contact post (entranceway)

He's dead back home, isn't he?

[He has to take a moment.

A moment to breathe, swallow hard, trying to deflect the painful ink-blots of memory that come leaking through, unbidden. Burning in the corners of his eyes. He shouldn't be thinking anything like that, directly after the guy fucking floored him with a hard tackle, the pair of them skidding in the leaves, and nearly choked the truth out of him with hands wrapped around his throat. What kind of person does that make him, when he can look at all the shit Jay's done and think, well, no big deal?

Maybe it's the fact that Jay simply never meant any of it. Like he doesn't quite know how to gauge his actions when they don't occur strictly in a vacuum. Like he doesn't anticipate there being consequences, doesn't anticipate being the sort of person that matters enough for something like that to effect lasting weight.

Up to and including the way it all ended.

It takes several moments of breathing, of breathing, through his nose and in and out in shaky spurts before he can ease the trembling in his fingers.]

i got him killed.

[That's... well. She's not exactly surprised, but it also wasn't entirely expected. Mostly because she isn't sure whether she believes Tim or not. This isn't a he is a liar kind of thing. This is an unreliability of humans especially when emotions and survivor's guilt gets involved thing.

It takes her a moment to respond too. She wants to be sure she's saying this right.]

Did you actually? Or do you just blame yourself regardless?

i left him tied up in my house.
what do you think?

[What the fuck, Tim.]

I think jumping to conclusions without all the facts would make me a poor journalist. He died from a bullet. I know how you feel about guns. I need more context, Tim.

[She doesn't - she's not going to drop it. If she's going to trust Jay to work with her, she's going to need to know what he's capable of. What Tim's done. Tim grimaces, trying to mentally sort the information into something palatable, something that maybe won't lead her down the wrong track.

Keep it normal. As normal as he can.]

there was someone out there who wanted to hurt us.
jay was

like i said
he's paranoid.

he came at me with a knife and i

dealt with him

[What the fuck is she getting herself into here.

It's different from her shit. Not just because attacking anyone with a knife is phenomenally stupid in a post-zombie world. Her shit is government conspiracies and cloning and trying to change the world by the power of her words alone. His is smaller, uglier, more personal. She doesn't know which is worse. Then again, not like it matters once your dead. Martyred for the truth or killed by someone you know, either way, it's over.

Unless they decide to bring you back and try and use you again.]

That still doesn't explain him dying, though it makes sense why he might end up tied up. And it sounds like self defense.

[Not that it really makes it better, especially if they're friends. Maybe courts wouldn't convict him. That wouldn't make the guilt go away.]

[It's complicated. Especially since he's still talking around the very tall elephant in the room, the one that still leers at him when he sleeps, in the corners of his eyes, everywhere he looks. The things he can't escape and the things he can't remember.

Even without...that looming over them, trying not to include It in the narrative doesn't uncomplicate it. Doesn't make it easier to talk about.

Any of it.]

he got free.
ran right into the thing i was trying to keep him safe from.

[If he'd done something, been better, kept Jay from leaving the house or talked him down or gotten his goddamn voice message -

Anything.

Anything would have been better.]

[That sounds a great deal like he tried very hard to keep Jay alive and failed, and is blaming himself rather than the thing that really is at fault for Jay's death.

She gets it more than she's willing to say. There are so many people whose deaths are indirectly on her hands. She just wanted to tell the truth at any cost. She died as part of that cost. And now she gets to live with it.]

The thing shot him?

he tell you how it happen or was it that obvious?

[Not like he was particularly trying to hide the rusted crimson staining the side of his shirt. Not like he ever tries to hide what he should try to hide, paranoid about all the wrong things and oblivious to the right ones.]

Guy had a bullet hole and blood on his shirt and asked me if this was the afterlife.

If I couldn't put that one together I may as well work in print media.

fair enough.

[She's disconcertingly frank about it. She would, though. She has the distance allowed by the fact that she never had to watch it happen. Never had to pick up the camera where it lay, the spot of red forming a handprint on the ground, piecing together the distorted footage and uploading it for the world to see with a sickening lurch in his gut.

She never had to see it. Never had to be there to watch it happen.

She knows how to be impartial.]

i shouldve seen it coming

[In fairness, she's also disconcertingly frank about her own death. Disconcertingly frank is the only way she knows how to be, especially when it comes to death. Being a journalist might be the most dangerous job out there, short of the dwindling professional football player population. She never thought she'd live to see old age. How else can she cope but to act impartial until she believes it herself?]

Easy to say after the fact.

I'm sorry. I know how much it sucks.

its fine.

[It's the furthest thing from fine, but what the hell else is he supposed to say? He's derailed things enough with his fucking problems, hasn't he? More than enough.]

bottom line he wants to help people
should be up your alley

[That's her. Helpful to a fault. Sometimes she wonders what her life would have been like if she'd let herself be a bit more selfish. If she hadn't positioned herself as truth-teller and given everything to get information to the people. Then again, she probably wouldn't even exist if she'd been like that. It wouldn't matter, though, because the original Georgia would still be alive, and maybe she'd even be happy.

Too bad that was never really an option.]

Let me know if you need anything. And stop reopening your fucking wound. It'd be a really stupid way to waste a death at this point.

i didn't know he was going to tackle me, ok?

[He really should've been able to guess, though. It's not as if their reunions are anything but tumultuous, at this point.]

but fine
i'll stay off my feet for a few days