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[burntvideocassette]

"This is, uh. It's Jay. Leave a message, and I'll try to get back to you."

[voice/text/video/action/anything]

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[pseudological]

[He falls apart, pretty much immediately. Good. He should. There's no escaping what It's capable of. It will find and claim every one of them, in the end. He escaped It, for now, by ducking away here, but he's only staving off what's already staked Its claim.

The words disappear slowly, wiped clean.]

You escaped It before.
No more.
Our sins will always come home to roost.
They will be baptized in water.

[Wash them away, cleanse the stench from your skin. Cough like the victim you are, lungs filling with invisible water, thick and bubbling and inescapable.

Are you drowning, Jay?]

[burntvideocassette]

[Jay doubles over, wheezing. What he's writing doesn't make sense, it doesn't, but something in it rings true, like it's bypassing his conscious mind and plugging directly into something else.

Just breathe. There's nothing in your lungs, just--

Jay fights to stay upright. When he speaks, it burns, like there's a hand around his throat.]

What the hell are you doing?

[pseudological]

[Too far, maybe?

Too bad.]

I thought you wanted the truth, Jay.

[Or is too hard to stomach? He's never shied away from difficult illuminations before. The world is dark place shot through with blank white, and Jay knows that. If he didn't before, he sure as hell needs to now.]

[burntvideocassette]

[Jay looks back, behind him, at the corners the mirror's reflection doesn't show. It's not here, so why--?

He can't suppress it this time, and the cough tears across his throat. (Psychosomatic? Or much, much worse?)

When he speaks again, his voice is low, strained.]

How do you know--[He pauses, gulping in air.]--Why do you think you know anything about what that thing wants?

[pseudological]

Somewhere along the line, our roads diverged in a yellow wood.

[What did he think the answer would be? If his Tim fought It for every step of the way, this one stopped fighting a long, long time ago.]

[burntvideocassette]

[His memories are different from Tim's. He made a different choice, and something changed, and now he knows something the Real Tim doesn't.]

[Gripping the frame of the mirror, he lets out a hoarse, painful cough.] What did you do? What's different? How do I...[His voice drops softer, to a raspy whisper.] I want to know what you know.

[pseudological]

[Success. Now he's got him all but begging for it, desperate for the answers the Mirror has set himself up all for knowing. He's pathetic. It's perfect.]

Hey, Jay.
You aren't looking so good there.

[burntvideocassette]

[Jay hisses through his teeth.]

And whose fault is that?

[He'll play along for a second--just a second--but Tim can't change the subject. He can't.]

[pseudological]

You were asking for answers.
I thought I was doing the right thing.

Or maybe the Real me was right after all, to keep everything from you.
If this is what it does to you...

[burntvideocassette]

[He thinks the truth did this to him? The truth is the only thing that saved him, the only thing that kept him alive this long. Alex could have killed him in his sleep if he'd never gone looking. Alex could have broken into his cheap little cinder-block apartment, shot him in his bed while he was sleeping, and he would have never known why.

(He still would have never known why, except that Tim told him. It's always Tim who knows, always Jay that's lagging behind.)]

You know what did this to me. Tell me what you know! Tell me what he knows!

[pseudological]

[Oh, but now he has him begging. He's really fraying at the edges now, isn't he? He looks awful, sounds as desperate as he did the day things began to fall apart between him and Tim, well and utterly.

Death doesn't fix things like that, it turns out.

Buy me dinner first, he wants to say, but that would eradicate whatever progress has been made here. No. Start with something easy.]

It's a lot.
It's a lot to sort through.
And I don't think you're feeling well.

Can you breathe for me, Jay?
Start there, and maybe I can help.

[burntvideocassette]

[He's still talking. He's still talking and he hasn't left and all Jay needs to do is

breathe.

Even breathing through his nose--in short bursts, sounding like a winded animal--causes his throat to tingle and burn. He doesn't need to calm down; he doesn't need to humor this stranger who says he's Tim's Mirror (and who knows too much to be anything but).

Why is he acting so concerned all of a sudden?

Could a liar's reflection still be a liar?]

What do you want?

[pseudological]

[Jay's rampant paranoia will get none of them anywhere. He's struggling to make sense of it, he must be; he's not really a trusting person anymore, Tim, right? It's always harder with the Reals he doesn't know, but Jay - he knows Jay.

Knows him well enough to pull a stunt like this.]

Isn't it obvious?
I want you to know you can trust me.

[burntvideocassette]

[Jay snorts. Trust him?

He doesn't need to trust him to learn from him. Between what Tim and Georgia had said about Mirrors and what "Mr. Wrong" himself had said earlier--the thing that had lit up his skull and pushed water into his lungs--Jay isn't going to just agree to take everything he says at face value.

Still, he doesn't want to alienate what might be his most promising lead. Maybe he really does mean well. Maybe he really is just trying to help. It's never happened before, but maybe it's possible.]

It's not really that simple. It's okay, though, you can still... [There's no nice way to say this, is there? But he has to understand.]...Even if we don't trust each other, it doesn't mean we can't still help each other.

[Great. Now it sounds like an offer. Would he be willing to help Tim's mirror? They've only met once, and his motives have been tough to read at best.

But if he was in trouble--real trouble? Yes. Jay thinks he would.]

[pseudological]

[It's not a surprise. Of course Jay would require contingencies. He's still putting that all together, isn't he? The Real Tim is a hurdle that still needs clearing, so why should the Mirror be any different?

He'll live with it. He can play the long con.

Start small, and things will grow from there.]

Exactly.
I can't make what Tim did to you any better, Jay.
But I can try not to hurt you the same ways he did.

[burntvideocassette]

[The mirror will "try not to hurt you the same ways he did," like Jay is Tim's jilted ex. Tim didn't hurt Jay. He hurt the investigation. He hurt Jessica, just because he wanted to narrow Jay's options down to "find Alex" or nothing. Just because he wanted Jay to trust him.]

No more secrets.

[It comes out bitter. Jay shakes his head.

Start small. The mirror diverted the conversation when Jay asked about it, but maybe he'll tell Jay something smaller.]

Is there anyone out here like...like Alex? Anyone I have to watch out for if they, y'know, ask to meet alone in the woods?

[pseudological]

In general, I wouldn't agree to meet anyone here alone in the woods.

[But Jay's brand of common sense always did fall a bit off the beaten path, didn't it? He's got to laugh at "no more secrets," a hollow echo if nothing else. That's right. Tim won't help you, but this version of him - he will.]

Fallen angels, satanic entities.
Vampires. Heathens.
But then, we're all mad here.

[burntvideocassette]

[That was not the answer Jay was expecting.]

Is that a metaphor, or, uh...[There's already been zombies. Why not?]...are you talking about literal vampires?

[pseudological]

Both.
One of them even used to run a little detective agency here.

It was very cute.

[burntvideocassette]

["Very cute." If Tim and his Mirror are this different, at least in the way they talk (well, write), then Jay's not looking forward to meeting his own. Doppelganger plots always unsettled him. Hell, even seeing a familiar actor playing against type sometimes unsettled him.

Now that he's had a chance to...well, like the Mirror said, "breathe", he wants to get right back into it. He wants "Mr. Wrong" to tell him everything he knows about that thing and how it followed them here. But he doesn't want what happened before to happen again, not if he can help it.

After a moment of silence, Jay looks back up at the mirror.]

Look, do you have any way of telling me about...y'know, that, without...

[He kneads at his head briefly, miming a headache. He and Tim never came up with a language for this kind of stuff. They didn't really need to, and if Jay's honest, he doubts either of them wanted to.]

[pseudological]

[He never did learn his lesson at all, did he? Even now. Still asking after the thing that would and has destroyed him. But the Mirror is proving more talkative, and so he has Jay's attention. For now.]

Maybe we should work out a system.
Certain words still have power here.

[burntvideocassette]

[Knowing his luck, as soon as they figure out words that work, it'll evade those as well. Or make them forget. Jay tries to keep his voice even, casual, tries to mask his concern.]

What d'you have in mind?

[pseudological]

Give it a name.
Something only you know.

[This may very well have the exact opposite effect that Jay wants. But if it widens the gulf between him and the Real Tim, it's worth it. That's the endgame, here.

That's what It needs.]

[burntvideocassette]

[A few names come to mind--no, one in particular. There's a familiarity to it, like he's seen it before, but he can't place where.]

Wait, but why--how does this help us talk about it?

[pseudological]

Isolated from context, even God loses His power.
Without the memories of what fueled them, even the strongest of things wither and die.

[That thing in the window, shadowed in the woods. God?


No.


Gods.]