sweetchaos (sweetchaos) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2020-06-30 01:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | #january 2018, jasper, jasper x max, max |
Who: Max and Jasper
Where: The Other Side
When: Day...1? 2?
Status: Complete
Warning: Other Side
Max didn't know where they were. All he knew was that he had felt his sanity wash over him, like sobering up in a split second, and suddenly he was aware just how crazy he'd been acting. And then a split second later he felt like he'd truly gone insane because all around him the woods were wrong and those gigantic creatures from the fog were all around them as well as some smaller ones. It had been chaos. People were screaming, a guy he recognized from the arcade got swept up in the air and crushed by one of the creatures but it was hard to see well what was going on. Max ran, that was all he could do though he didn't even know where he was running. The woods were wrong, the ground more slippery than it should be, the trees twisted in unnatural ways, covered by something that at first glance looked like some alien fungus.
Max didn't stop running until his lungs were burning and even then he kept walking until he found somewhere to hide and couldn't hear the noises anymore. It was hard to piece together just what the hell was happening. He'd gone insane, he'd hurt his family - he had wanted to hurt his family more, he'd been on his way home to give them a piece of his mind when he had that strange urge to park out on Witcham Road and walk into the woods. Like he'd been hypnotized. And now he was curled up in a grove of trees that were more likely to give him some horrible infection than they were to protect him.
He didn't dare move from that spot for the longest time but eventually he started walking again, slow and hesitant, listening for any little sound, watching for any movement. That man from the arcade had been crushed to death, maybe all of the other people had been killed and those creatures were just waiting to find the last one standing. Max wanted to crawl back into his grotesque hiding place and cry for days but he kept walking. He'd never thought of himself as much of a survivor, had always joked about rather wanting to die than survive the apocalypse because everything would be so fucking miserable, but now he just wanted to live and the mere idea that one of those things might come barrelling from beyond the trees to pick him up and end his life had him shaken to his core.
Jasper had never been so afraid in his life. It had flooded into him all at once, as soon as the real world vanished in favor of this new fucked up place. Jasper hadn’t been able to recognize that right away, since there had been a massive fucking werewolf on top of him. One second he’d been trying to drag Jules into the fog with him, to show her the truth and end her meddling, and the next he was being bowled over by one monster while other, different monsters crowded around. The next little while had been complete chaos, and all of the confidence he’d had evaporated. There was nothing left but animal survival instincts ... so he’d run. The werewolf hadn’t hurt him, not that he could feel anyway, and it had been quickly distracted by the bigger threats around them, and Jasper had taken the opportunity to get his feet under him and flee.
Everything about the environment was wrong. Granted, Jasper had never ventured too deep into the woods off Witcham Road, but these weren’t the kinds of trees he was used to seeing. The air wasn’t the same, the underbrush wasn’t the same, the fucking quality of the light wasn’t the same. He was somewhere else, somewhere with them, and the realization eventually hit him that Jules had done this. She’d opened up the portal and trapped them here. At the moment he couldn’t feel anything about that but fear and a desperate hope that she was okay. He put enough distance between himself and the noise that he felt alone ... and that was when a different fear set in. Jasper was disoriented, his heart pounding fast and his lungs seeming to struggle with the different air. His mind was reeling, trying to catch up to so many abrupt changes at once. Had he ... had he really killed his grandfather?
Jasper didn’t have much time to think on it before a rustling off to his left caught his attention. Something popped its head up out of the cover of the low-lying fog, some horrible demonic mashup of a rabbit and a fox with far too many teeth, its eyes on Jasper. He turned and ran again, crashing blindly through the trees and feeling like he was about to die. He didn’t though, and by the time he was completely out of breath, there was nothing behind him. After trying to catch his breath for a while, Jasper heard more noise approaching and he ducked down, pretty sure that he would just collapse if he tried to run any further. The sound got closer, steady and rhythmic, and he finally recognized it as footsteps. Jasper peered around some underbrush and saw a man walking. A normal man, looking as scared as he felt. Jasper’s heart clenched and he stood up, though he tried not to do it too abruptly and scare the guy. “Hey,” he stage-whispered, afraid to make too much noise. “Hey dude.”
For a second the voice seemed like it would be a trap. Max had heard plenty of horror stories about wendigos and forest spirits that lured people to their deaths by posing as human but in a place like this, everything seemed like potential death and the hope that this really was just another human far outweighed that particular fear though he had plenty of massive panic going on without it. He stopped walking, felt his muscles tense even more - was that even possible? - as he turned to find the source of the voice and found he actually recognized the face. "You're... Caden's nephew," he whispered as he tried to remember his name but he was stuck on Lucas which was the family name so obviously Caden's brother wasn't big enough of a jerk to call his son that. Lucas Lucas. It made him laugh suddenly, just a hiss of amusement spiked with fear and hysteria.
"You're human right? Please tell me you're human." God he still felt out of breath and he was pretty sure he was breathing in multiple toxins and fungus that were sure to kill him. Everything in this place felt like it wanted to kill him and prison suddenly seemed like such a lovely place.
Jasper’s eyes widened slightly at the unexpected connection, but it was reassuring in a way. Some otherworldly monster wouldn’t know his uncle’s name, even if it was pretending to be a person. He hoped not, anyway. Jasper straightened up the rest of the way and moved in closer to the guy, instinctively wanting to huddle closer to someone who looked like him. Someone older, who might have his shit together more than Jasper currently did. “It’s Jasper, and yeah I’m human,” he answered, his wide eyes darting around them. “You know Caden? You were there and came through the uh, the portal?” Maybe it was a dumb question, but who the fuck knew what was going on in this place, maybe he’d come from somewhere else. Maybe Jasper had totally fallen off his rocker and he was hallucinating everything, he wasn’t even sure that wasn’t the case.
Max might have laughed at the idea he had his shit together. He didn't have his shit together out in the 'real' world and he sure as hell didn't have his shit together in this place, whatever this was. Hell? It looked like hell. "I'm Max," he said, weirdly relieved when Jasper came closer. He could still turn into something horrible but Max didn't think he would. "I met you once when you were just uh - like yay high, at the shop Aaron worked in? Caden and I have been friends since high school." It felt weird to talk about normal stuff like that but it also felt good, grounding in a way, like maybe they could make it out and go to those places Max was thinking of now, the bar, the repair shop, Caden's place, home. "Were you... did you go fucking crazy too?" There had been a lot of people and they had all scattered like rats on a sinking ship when the woods changed. They had to be out there somewhere too, maybe it was in their best interest to find them. But how? Maybe they were all dead. Maybe it was just him and Jasper now, all alone and about to get killed too. "Fuck it's good to see another person," he blurted out before Jasper had a chance to reply. "I'm losing my fucking mind."
Jasper looked at Max again, a little more closely. He looked vaguely familiar, but most people in town did. It sounded like it had been a long time since they’d been in the same place, and that made sense. It wasn’t like he hung out with Caden’s friends. At the moment it was just incredibly good to have another person with him. Max’s question put a cold, horrible feeling in Jasper’s stomach. The crunching sound that his grandfather’s skull had made flashed through his head and Jasper swallowed thickly. Yes, he’d gone fucking crazy. And maybe he was still there, like he’d graduated to another plane of crazy. “Yeah uh, shit’s been wrong with me a long time,” Jasper said, his gaze roaming around them again. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to grab them from behind at any second. They needed to get to shelter, but did that even exist in this fucking place? “Do you remember which way the road is?” he asked, though he didn’t have much hope that Max did. All Jasper could see was woods, and if this side was anything like their world, those went on for hundreds of miles in some directions.
"I barely even know which way I came from," Max groaned. "I sure as shit don't know where we... landed." Was that even the right word for it? It wasn't like they'd been flung from one place to another, the world had sort of just shifted around them, from normal woods to this, a grotesque mockery of a forest, all wrong. He kept hoping Knox would show up, the familiar had knack for knowing where he was and if he was okay but hours had passed - he was pretty sure it was hours anyway - and there had been no sign of anyone until now. The rest of his family would have been better equipped at dealing with this place, he thought, even if he wouldn't wish this on anyone he loved. They had magic, intuition, skills. Max had grown up in the forest but he'd never really learned much about surviving in it. "I know we weren't far from the road before- you know... So we could try walking and uh... Limit the walking to a certain amount of time before we go back and try another direction? I'm guessing you weren't a fucking scout either."
Well shit. From what Jules had told him about the incident at school, Jasper was pretty sure they’d ‘landed’ in the same area they’d come from, just in this other world. Of course, if multiple Other Worlds existed, he had no idea if this was the same one Jules had opened up at school. Really, Jasper knew fuckall, and that was feeling very clear at the moment. He shook his head and would’ve scoffed at that idea if things hadn’t felt so dire. “Fuck no,” he muttered. “But yeah, we can try that. Um ... you got a watch or anything? I think I lost my phone.” Maybe that had been when the werewolf had been manhandling him, Jasper didn’t know. He was sure it wouldn’t work over here anyway. Wherever they were, he doubted there were cell phone towers.
"I have a cell phone," Max muttered. "No watch and the phone is... It was acting weird." He thought back on all the times he'd made plans to carry things with him in case of emergency - compass, provisions, smart shit. He'd never started and now it was too late. "I've got a pocket knife but I don't know if that'll do shit for us here." He wasn't going to go up against those creatures with it, that was for sure. Not even the smaller ones. He thought about cutting arrows into the trees but they were all gooey and he was reluctant to touch them. Cutting something might make it worse, or it might not even show. He went quiet to listen to their surroundings for a moment. It seemed like they were the only living things in the vicinity at the moment and - if true - that was a good thing. "Do you have anything on you?"
Jasper had never really been taught any survivalism, the extent of his father’s warnings on the woods were ‘stay out of them.’ They’d never even been camping. It would make sense to mark their path somehow, but looking around at all the dark twisted trees, Jasper didn’t trust any mark they made to even stay put. Maybe that shit would start to disappear like in the movies. Or that mold-looking crap would just swallow it or ... something. “Uh ...” Jasper said as he patted down his pockets. He hadn’t exactly been thinking straight when he’d walked away from his car, but now he was wishing that craziness had driven him to pack a pistol or something. “I’ve got a knife too ... wallet ... my cigarettes and a lighter ... but that’s it. I didn’t even take my fucking keys outta the car.” God, they were going to die, weren’t they? Jasper didn’t feel thirsty yet, but part of his brain was already wondering how long it took you to die of dehydration. “We sh-- we should try to find the others. If we’re not crazy anymore, maybe they’re not either.”
"Lighter's good," Max said though he didn't think that would help them anymore than pocket knives would. He went still again, listening to their surroundings with trepidation. "Well we can't stay here," he agreed before his insides went cold with pure terror. There among the trees one of those giant things was moving toward them, not hurriedly like it was charging, but slow and leisurely, as if it knew they had nowhere to go. It was far more visible than it had been in the fog in Point Pleasant but Max still wasn't really sure what he was looking at other than something wrong and horrible. He didn't think, jolted into some survival gear he hadn't known he possessed as he grabbed Jasper's arm like a vice and started running. There was no way he was losing sight of the one person also there but there was no way he was standing still either so Jasper had better keep up. Hell, maybe the kid ran faster than he did and wasn't that something, running faster than your companion was a good way to stay alive - and alone.
The sound had alerted Jasper, and he spotted the thing a millisecond after Max did. The fear response had exploded in his body before his brain could even process what he was looking at. It remembered those things, and how it had felt to have his flesh ripped by one of them. Adrenaline surged through him, and Jasper only took one stumbling step when Max started to run. A few moments ago he hadn’t felt like he could run anymore if his life depended on it, but it turned out he was wrong. He ran blindly with Max, his heart and lungs working hard again as he tried not to trip over anything on the fucked up forest floor. He didn’t dare look back, but his terror was sure the huge creature was right on their tail. Everything on Jasper was starting to burn when the tree line suddenly ended. Jasper skidded to a stop, grabbing for Max’s jacket and panting hard. It was Witcham Road in front of them, only it ... wasn’t. The asphalt was cracked and worn, strange fungi growing out through the cracks. There were a handful of cars that lined the road, all of them looking like junkyard trash -- broken windows, rotted tires, rusted metal. The fucked up thing was, Jasper recognized them. “What the fuck,” he wheezed, aware there wasn’t really an answer for that.
"That one's mine," Max hissed and god was he in no shape to run anymore. He'd lifted weights and done all sorts of shit to stay fit but running? Not like this. Jogging a little sure, not running until his body felt like it was about to stop functioning for good. His dad's truck was there only not really, it was some crude mockery of the truck, like it had been left to decay for decades and not even in the spot where Max had parked it. But he recognized it and while it wouldn't run and looked disgusting, Max remembered taking shelter inside a car the last time he'd been attacked by one of those things. It hadn't followed him then, maybe it wouldn't now. He didn't think too hard about it, just tugged Jasper with him as he ran - how the fuck was he still running? - toward the truck and tried the doors. "Hide," he hissed and it might not do them any good but they had to try, it was better than nothing.
He was looking for it, but Jasper didn’t spot any cars that were shaped like his baby, and that relieved some tiny part of him. Most of his brain was completely occupied with survival though, so he couldn’t put much thought into it. He ran to where Max pulled him, finally looking over his shoulder. He was sure he spotted something huge moving in the trees, but it was impossible to tell for sure. One of the doors of Max’s truck squealed as the other man pulled it open, and a second later Jasper was scrambling inside with him. He got down on the floorboard of the passenger side as much as he could, trying to make himself as small as possible. It smelled like mold and rot in there, and Jasper’s skin crawled to touch anything inside, but hiding anywhere was better than dying, so he did his best to be invisible and quiet as he fought to catch his breath again.
They were going to die here, Max already knew but he wasn't about to tell Jasper that. What a horrible thing to tell someone, we're just prolonging the inevitable. But there was no way he was going to eat anything that grew or appeared in this world, there were gigantic monsters roaming around them, his cell phone had glitched in ways that freaked him out and whatever way there had been out of there had closed right before his eyes. He huddled down in the back, holding tightly onto the door because it wouldn't close properly and he kept picturing that thing out there tearing it open to pull him outside. Holding it wouldn't do shit against that kind of power but he still did, his knuckles white as he clasped at the handle and shit if there wasn't some long forgotten prayer forming on his lips. No atheists in fox holes? Fuck that, he didn't believe in God, but he would pray to his sister, to his brother, to Knox to please, please, please find him.
Jasper curled as tightly as he could, his hands over his tucked head, his hair gripped in his fingers like he could possibly hold himself together if something wanted to tear him apart. Maybe all of this stemmed from the fact that they’d all survived the first attack. Maybe those things -- this place -- had drawn them all back in to finish the job. And they’d had to use Jules and her friends to do it. God ... Jules. Jasper’s eyes were squeezed shut as he panted the foul-smelling air in big gulps, and in his mind’s eye he could see her face, wide-eyed and terrified as he tried to drag her with him into the portal. He’d wanted to bring her to them, feed her to whatever was chasing them now, gain their favor, do his part. He’d been compelled. To kill the love of his life. It made him feel sick in ways that had nothing to do with the air. And his grandfather ... fuck. Maybe he deserved to get eaten. Hot tears forced their way out of Jasper’s eyes and every muscle started to ache with tension. Max didn’t have to tell him they were going to die here, he knew it too.
The car rocked once, then again, as something bumped into it hard and Max was acutely aware of how weak he was in comparison, how his hold on the door was pathetic and potentially hilarious in a different context. He felt simultaneously too small and too big, taking up too much space and not big enough to fight. This survival instinct was a bitch, he wished he just wanted to die and had the means to do it fast and painlessly but no. He wanted to live, more than anything, his body didn't want to stop breathing even if the air was foul, his heart didn't want to stop beating even if every beat hurt and he could taste blood in his mouth from all the running. The prayer had died on his lips but it echoed in his mind now, simple and repetitive: Please, please, please, please, please. The car didn't rock again but Max didn't dare move, didn't dare ease his grip or look up. He just stayed hunched down, face pressed against his arms as he listened intently to Jasper's breathing, to the oppressive silence outside the truck.
He had to bite the arm of his jacket to keep from crying out when the car rocked. Not that being quiet probably helped anything. The monster could probably smell them, or see them, or hear their hearts pounding, who the fuck knew. Jasper waited for the car to get peeled open like a tin can, waited for the door Max was holding to tear free, waited for claws to dig into his skin and rip him out of the busted-out window. He was shaking and he couldn’t catch his breath and his eyes burned with tears and whatever poison was growing in this ancient husk of a vehicle. Even after everything went still outside, he couldn’t move, paralyzed into a terrified fetal ball. It felt like a confusing eternity, waiting for death that didn’t come. Eventually Jasper had to loosen up, and he lifted his head, wincing at the pain in his neck from so much straining. His eyes darted around through the windows, but there was nothing to see from his angle but a gray sky and the very tops of some trees. Jasper craned his neck a bit to look over at Max.
Max was hyper alert and he could hear as much as sense it when Jasper moved even if it was dead quiet and subtle. That movement sparked a fresh source of panic in him where he thought he couldn't possibly feel more of it but nothing happened, nothing crashed down on the car once it sensed movement, nothing yanked the door from his grip. He had started taking some comfort in the smell of his leather jacket, nose buried against his sleeve as he waited and silently pleaded for mercy. In this new stillness he finally raised his head slowly, meeting Jasper's red-rimmed eyes. They were so fucking dead, they were both thinking it, they didn't need to say it. But maybe they weren't dying just yet. Max tore his gaze away from the younger man and reluctantly peeked out through the filthy window. There was nothing to be seen but fog and twisted trees and a large beat up black van. Maybe that would be safer. If they could get inside it they could hide there for a little while. No windows in the back. "Are you okay?" Max whispered even if he knew neither of them was.
When nothing crashed through the window to tear Max’s head off or anything, Jasper risked sitting up a tiny bit himself to peer around them. The area looked deserted, except for the shitty junkyard cars that definitely hadn’t looked like that hours ago. Or in the world they’d come from or whatever. Jasper was having a hard enough time wrapping his brain around what was happening, and he knew what Jules could do. The others must’ve been feeling completely insane. Not that Jasper was sparing them much thought. His world had narrowed to him and Max and their immediate danger ... that seemed to have moved on. Max’s question gave him a little start, and then the ridiculousness of it drew a soft snort out of him. He was probably the farthest he’d ever been from okay. “Not hurt,” Jasper whispered back, because that was the important part, he guessed. “You?” Something cold in him decided that if Max was injured and couldn’t walk, he was going to leave him there. They were on Witcham Road now, and that led back into town. Jasper had no clue what town might look like in this place, but surely there would be more shelter there than out in the fucking woods.
That van was still tempting Max, as much as anything in this awful place could pass as tempting. He still had that urge to just curl up in a dark place and hide, wait for rescue to show up, another portal to open up or until he simply starved to death. At the same time he was thinking the same as Jasper as he slowly peered around the car. There was the road and the road might lead to town. Maybe there was something there they could use, maybe there were other survivors, maybe it was less horrific than the woods. "I'm still alive," he whispered. "Honestly wasn't expecting that." He sat up straight and winced as he did so, his body aching from all the running and hunching. That much tension was like a whole workout all on its own. He ran his fingers through his hair, then crossed them against behind his neck, pressing down into the sore muscles. "I don't know what the fuck to do. I should know what to do, right? I'm... older. Fuck."
Jasper had been pretty young when he’d been relieved of the notion that all adults knew what they were doing at all times. Having parents like his, it hadn’t been difficult to figure out. He still felt a flash of weird, misplaced anger that Max had no idea what to do and was admitting it out loud. Couldn’t anybody fucking help him with anything? Maybe if some actual adults in his life had their shit more together, he wouldn’t be in this awful fucking place. It made him want to scream at the moment, but that wouldn’t do anything but make them a target again. Jaw clenched, Jasper looked around them with more purpose. “The van,” he whispered, pointing at the black -- well, only partly black now -- van across the street and down from them a couple of car lengths. “We can hide in there for a while, get some rest. Then we should try to walk to town, see if it’s even fucking there.” Maybe trying to walk those few miles out in the open of the road was crazy, but Jasper didn’t think it was any crazier than trying to survive in the woods. He couldn’t have even done that back home.
Max let out a slightly hysterical, though quiet, laugh at the thought of walking to town. It wasn't far if they were driving and none of these cars looked like they were going anywhere, but walking would take a while and they'd be out in the open, vulnerable and visible with nowhere to run to. This was why people invented superheroes, he thought. That wish he could fly away was strong in him right now, or the strength to carry the shelter with them when they left, telepathically run those cars, laser-beam those monsters away with his eyes. "Fuck," he whispered again, covering his face with his hands for a few seconds as he processed the idea of getting out of the truck. What if the van was locked? "You're faster runner, you go check if it's open, I'll spot you, make sure nothing's coming." He wished he could cover him too but there was no gun, just two small pocket knives and a lighter.
Of course the guy wanted him to go. Jasper almost said no, that Max should go check because he was older and all that, but he wasn’t a child anymore, so he needed to get over that. Especially considering where they were and what was happening. Caden hung out with a bunch of shitty people, and maybe this was just one of those types of guys. Keeping his irritated contempt to himself, Jasper twisted and started to push the door closest to him open as gently as he could. It still screamed from all of the rust, and he winced and ducked and had to wait another couple of minutes before he felt okay stepping outside again. Jasper kept himself low and hunched over, even though all of his muscles were screaming with overwork. He crouch-walked to the front of the truck and paused, his head swiveling all around. The area seemed deserted, but who the fuck knew how reliable his senses were out here. After a full minute, he ran, still hunched, toward the black van. Jasper was sure there would be something huge to snatch him up and eat him, but he made it, and the back doors of the van did open when he tugged on them. Jasper boosted himself inside, heart pounding hard. After another minute, he stuck his head out to look back toward the truck Max was in.
Max did watch for danger, though he had no idea what he'd do if one presented itself. He felt like he'd done the run himself when he saw Jasper crawl inside, holding his breath until he seemed to be safe and letting it out in a rush of air. It was his turn and he didn't want to go but the alternative was no better so he slowly crawled outside, going to the front seat first because the door there was already open and he didn't want to make more noise. He crouched beside the car and looked around before he sprinted, feeling like something was about to grab onto him with every step he took. It wasn't more than a few seconds but it felt like minutes and he could hear the rushing of blood in his ears when he joined Jasper inside the van. "We made it," he whispered breathlessly and even if this meant maybe an hour or two of guaranteed survival at best, it was a little comforting to be in a closed space again.
Jasper kept watch while Max made the journey, though he felt the same sort of helplessness. What could he do if something did snatch Max up? Not shit but close the van doors and pray it didn’t come for him next. Though maybe that would be better, because Jasper had no fucking idea how they were going to get out of this place. Jules had opened the portal, but she was on the other side of it, and obviously not going to undo what she’d had to do. And Jasper knew in his gut that she’d had to do it. He pulled the back doors closed as soon as Max was fully inside the van, cutting off most of the light but what was filtering in through the filthy windshield in the front. He was still panting. It felt hard to catch his breath in this place. “Yeah,” he answered softly. The question of ‘now what?’ drifted through his mind but he didn’t give voice to it, just tried to find a comfortable place to sit and stretch his aching legs out. Jasper pulled the front of his shirt up to rub his face with it.
It didn't feel like a safe haven, more like a moment of reprieve at best and even then Max was sure that the things they were breathing in were doing a number on their bodies already. Maybe they were hallucinating those creatures, there was definitely a chance they were both really high by now, but there was no way they'd take a chance on it not being real, not after what they'd seen it do already, flinging a man up in the air and crushing it right before their eyes. Max wondered if Jasper had seen it too or if he'd already been running. Max just knew he would never unsee that thing. He moved to rest against the wall of the van, a little less disgusting than it was on the outside, it was more just rust than grotesque growth at least. "I don't know if it's better or worse to go out there when it's dark," he admitted. "If it even gets dark. Maybe it's just this fucked up half-light all the time."
Now that they had something like a shelter and Jasper wasn’t running for his life for the first time since arriving in this hell, the reality of it all was starting to sink in. Unwelcome memories of how he’d been acting since he’d gotten scratched by one of those things were flooding in, and it was all compressing his chest even more. Jasper didn’t want to freak out, especially not in front of this guy he didn’t know, but God ... Jules. What he’d done to Jules, how he’d been draining Amelia without even caring, what had happened with his grandfather. He’d brutally killed Joseph. He’d broken Jules’s heart and then turned around and cheated on her. He’d put his sister in a coma. What the fuck had been wrong with him? He wanted nothing more than to be out of this place and back home, but how could he even go back? His life as he knew it was gone, and the weight of that was crushing. “I dunno man,” Jasper muttered to what Max said, only half-listening as he kept the collar of his shirt up over his hot face while he tried not to hyperventilate.
It was hard to believe Max had felt like prison was the ultimate low point in his life. He'd thought he couldn't get more scared and small than he had when he served his time, stripped of his humanity and freedom, but it was nothing compared to this. He kept hoping this was just a dream, that he was running a fever and having a hellish nightmare that he could soon wake up from with Shayna Mae tutting at him to take better care of himself. He even wished he could believe that for a minute just to enjoy that faint hope but he couldn't because this was real and he was all too aware of it. "If the others find their way out of the woods, they'll head to town," he said quietly. He hadn't really recognized any of them, there had been a fucking werewolf, that much he was sure of, some people with guns, maybe none of them were people they wanted to associate with but all he could think of now was safety in numbers. If there was even such a thing as safety. "So we'll walk into town and try our best not to fucking die."
Jasper wasn’t sure who ‘the others’ even were and if he wanted to have anything to do with them, but having people around seemed better than having no people ... right? He didn’t know, really. He’d never been in a situation like this before. Jasper thought about small and vulnerable nine year old Amelia, thrust into a situation just like this one, and his throat felt even tighter. Had she had to run from monsters right off the bat too? Even after making it back home against all odds, there had been monsters, hadn’t there? Namely Jasper. God, would she ever forgive him? Maybe he would never make it back to even find out. Fuck. With his face still tucked into his shirt, Jasper started to cry. He tried to be quiet about it, but it was hard to hide anything in such close quarters, and he was scared and it was hard to even breathe normally, much less when his lungs were struggling with emotion.
It was almost comforting, the sound of muffled sobs, because that meant Jasper wasn't a sociopath but at the same time it just drove home the hopelessness of their situation and Max shrank in on himself, unsure if he should attempt to comfort Jasper somehow. There was no way to lighten the mood which was his usual go-to when someone was down, shrug it off and come have a beer with me. There was no beer, there was nowhere to go, everything around them felt like decay. We're still alive, he thought but he wasn't even sure that was a good thing. Being alive meant potential for suffering, they'd be tired and hungry soon, they could get mauled by some alien creature at any moment. So Max cried too, though he did so more quietly, eyes watering and dripping as he slowly shifted around and crawled over to sit next to Jasper. He didn't say anything, had no promises to give, no jokes to crack, so he just offered up his presence because if Jasper felt anything like he did, he was just glad to not be alone right now.
Having company was conflicting for Jasper -- on one hand, he was very glad not to be alone, and on the other ... he was a male Lucas, and crying with an audience was torture. It paled in comparison to everything else going on, of course, so he couldn’t quite stop himself, but his cheeks burned extra hot knowing that Max was watching him. It made him think of the night he’d encountered the Black Eyed Kids, and rushed home to crawl into bed with his dad, sobbing and terrified. Jasper wanted Gavin in that moment, stronger than he ever had since he’d been a little kid. His father would’ve been just as lost and helpless as they currently were, but it was a deep-seated instinct to yearn for his protection and comfort. He turned his face away when he felt Max settle next to him, even though it was still hidden, and Jasper tried to hold his breath through the worst of the sobs. It didn’t feel safe to make too much noise anyway. He worked to get himself back under control, but it still took him a long stretch of minutes before he was scrubbing his face with his shirt and taking those deep steadying breaths. “Sorry,” he whispered finally.
There was nothing to be sorry for but it felt condescending to say so and Max just met the apology with silence, struggling for something to tell Jasper, to tell himself. "This is gonna sound fucking crazy to you," he whispered then. "No more crazy than being in this place is I guess but... I come from a family of witches. I'm not one, because of course fucking not," he huffed indignantly and hugged his knees, breathing in the comforting smell of leather before he continued. "If anyone can find us, it'll be them. We have a familiar, he's not human and he always... He always fucking knows where I am, you know? Not cool when you're fifteen and sneaking out to drink but very, very cool when you're... Here." He was telling himself this as much as he was telling Jasper, maybe if there was even a whiff of hope that they could get home, they needed to cling to that to survive. "I haven't even told your uncle but since we're stuck in hell together... Now you know."
While not as crazy-sounding as Max might have expected, that confession did take Jasper by surprise. His brow furrowed as he stared at Max in the dim van interior. He knew Max wasn’t related to Reagan Kelly, was he? Jasper couldn’t imagine Caden being friends with any of the Kellys. Or anybody who came from Overlook, really. He had to conclude that there were more witchy families in Point Pleasant than he knew about, and for once that idea gave him some hope. If Max’s family and familiar -- whatever the fuck that was -- were going to look for him ... maybe he was the man to stick close to. “You think they can find us?” he asked, still wiping at one eye. It felt red and irritated, but he didn’t know if that was from the air or the crying. “I uh, I know how we got in here. And I thought only Jules could do it.” If there was some magical way to open a portal, he hoped Max’s family knew how, for fuck’s sake.
Jules. Max didn't know her - yet he did from that weird paranoid bout he'd had when he could name all four people who wanted to hurt him. It had been true, which was creepy all in itself, but if they hadn't intervened he might have killed his family - or Knox might have killed him. Max didn't want to be dead any more than he wanted to be in this decaying, terrible place but he couldn't imagine how fucked up that would have felt for Knox. Or maybe it was a thing he got over quickly, he'd seen so many family members die already and Max wasn't even really O'Reilly blood. "They'll find us," he said stubbornly, even if he didn't believe it. He needed to convince Jasper and himself of that if only so they could keep going for a little longer because right now he was overcome with the lack of hope and the terror biting into every muscle. He needed that frail rope to hang onto, chanting Knox's name in his head.
Jasper couldn’t be certain of that, but Max sounded sure, and he wanted to believe it too, so he would try. He didn’t think it would happen anytime soon though, so he didn’t think it was time to relax and wait for rescue. They had to survive long enough to be found. That part was seeming tenuous, judging from the thing that had chased them into this ancient-looking van. Was there even drinkable water in this fucking place? How long was it until you died of thirst? Jasper didn’t know. He tried to push the questions away, because he already felt like he was suffocating through all of this, and he felt so much younger than his eighteen years. He nodded to Max and tried to take slower, calmer breaths. That thing could be back at any second, he couldn’t afford to totally break down yet. “Okay ... maybe we’ll be easier to find in town, so ... we’ll head that way when we can,” he said, just to repeat the plan.
Max imagined hearing Knox outside, imagined him standing there with his hand outstretched, come with me if you want to live while Shayna Mae and Aidan kept the monsters and fog at bay with some sparkly magic shit. It was unrealistic, so unrealistic that it almost suffocated what little hope he had of them actually finding him. Knox would find him in the woods just as easily as he would in town but he still nodded because they couldn't just sit in this van and wait to die. Maybe there was something in town that would help them survive, maybe this had happened before and they'd meet seasoned warriors in town - though the thought of that was far less comforting to him than he'd hoped. Maybe this place had exits, maybe it ended. Max had never truly felt the need to explore dangerous things outside of computer games and at the moment he wished he was Like That, that he could find some sense of adventure in this instead of just tragedy and fear. "I've been running so much," he muttered. "Let's wait for a bit, okay?" He was hurting in places he didn't know his body could hurt and it was hard to shake the idea that he'd been infected with something awful from contact with whatever the hell coated the trees.
Jasper wasn’t ready to go either, which was why he’d said ‘when we can,’ but he didn’t bother to repeat that. He didn’t want to talk anymore, he just wanted to try to rest. He didn’t even think he’d slept since the day he’d killed Joseph. All of his time infected was starting to blur together, though he starkly remembered so much of it. It was just hard to say what had happened when, at the moment. Jasper slouched down lower in place, wrapping his arms around himself and nodding a bit. There was no sense of adventure in him either, just a burning fear and regret. He had no idea how anything would go from there, he would just try to stay alive as best he could until something else happened. Either they would be rescued or they would die, those were the only two options he saw. All he could do was hold on tight to life and hope someone would come for them ... or he would get a quick end.