choosetruth | ic contact post (entranceway)

he noticed.
he just didn't care.

[It's how he'd known he could hold Tim down and be effective in actually getting the answers he so badly wanted. How else would he have taken down someone so obviously bigger and more solid?]

[.....there's not really a reason for Tim to lie about this unless he wants to turn her against Jay for some reason, but it's so incongruous with the reading she'd got on Jay. And especially the reading she'd got on Jay and Tim.]

Why were you two hanging out then? After he hurt you?

i owed him some answers

[So maybe Jay's tried to kill him a few times. It's not like Tim's guilt-free of the same crime. Especially where he himself is concerned.]

He's never heard of asking nicely? He did say he's not a journalist. Guess I see why if torture is the interrogation technique he goes to.

we didn't part on real great terms.
he was still pretty angry.

[Tim doesn't blame him.]

But you're on better terms now? Nothing a little bleeding all over the place couldn't fix?

for now

[That's...really the best he can give her.]

he's paranoid, and i don't give him a lot of reason to trust me.

Haven't given him a lot of reasons to trust you, or have given him a lot of reasons to distrust you?

[Subtle, but very important distinction.]

both.

[He won't sugarcoat it. He's been far from the sort of ally Jay probably wanted.]

Sounds complicated.

Is he dangerous?

[A long moment passes before he answers that. What can he say to that, exactly? He's lied to her before, but at this point in time -

Fuck.

She's helped him more than he's helped her. He owes her more than what he's been giving her.]

maybe.
not on his own.

he's

susceptible

easy to lead into trouble.

[Ah yes. Heaven help the chronically gullible and their good intentions. She knows the type. Fuck, the type were partially responsible for starting the zombie apocalypse. People with all the good intentions in the world and none of the critical thinking skills or fact-checking.

Sometimes, that's even more dangerous than bad intentions.]

Noted. I'll keep an eye on him, then.

[Like she wouldn't have otherwise. She keeps at least half an eye on most people.]

I was thinking of offering him a job.

doing what?

[That is...either a really good idea or a really bad one. Depending on the idea. Still, George has a much better sense of long-term planning than Jay ever did. Maybe with someone like her as a "boss," he'll be less liable to get into trouble.

...right. As if that's possible.]

Same thing I do. Reporting the news.

[She honestly isn't sure if it's a good idea or not, which is part of why she's running it by Tim, who knows Jay better.]

He seems to care about telling the truth. [For better or worse.] And like I said. I want to keep an eye on him.

you're not wrong there.
though as a warning he'll kind of prioritize that over everything else.
including himself.

[Including...everyone else, too. The well-being and safety of everyone around him, the privacy of them, be damned.]

Wow, prioritizing the truth above all else including yourself.

Wonder what that's like.

except unlike you he hasn't been doing this his whole life.
he's done this for five years and he doesn't exactly sort stuff before he sticks it on the internet for everyone to see.
including people who might want to see him dead.

I wasn't saying it's a good thing.

[She's dead. A whole lot of other people are too, and it might not be her fault exactly, but she's still responsible. Her words. Her truths. Her blast zone.]

I'm saying I know exactly what that's like. But like you said, I've been doing this my whole life. I can help him get his shit together.

that would

[...That would what? That would be nice? Give him a chance, maybe? Allow him to do something better with himself? He wanted to be, he knows he did; the idea of being perpetually on the run from a former friend had been, apparently, more appealing to Jay than sitting alone in a shitty apartment doing nothing.

Like It gave him meaning.

It gives him a better chance of being able to...to expose Tim further. His Mirror's warnings and pronouncements, except coming from a more credible source. Better at uncovering what Tim's still trying to hide, at the risk of his own damn life.

Maybe that's worth it, in the end.

If it lets him have more of a chance than he had back home.]

thanks.

Don't thank me yet. People who work for me don't have the highest survival rate.

I'll do my best with him. But in the end everyone makes their own choices, and far too often all the options are shitty. There's no winning. Just trying not to lose too much that actually matters.

can't be any worse than

[...home.

Can't be any worse than the way things were. And here, they get multiple chances. It's - maybe he'll learn something better. Maybe he'll learn to preserve his own life instead of chasing ghosts.]

he's

earned that.
he deserves a chance to do that much.

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?

ic contact post (entranceway)

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