Ty Solomon (shadowbadge) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2020-09-01 07:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | #march 2018, sage, sage x ty, ty |
Who: Sage and Ty
When: early March
Where: Over There
Status: complete
Ty knew that time was passing. He didn’t know how much or how fast, but he could see the growth in his beard. His phone had stopped working a long time ago, and he hadn’t been wearing a watch when he’d made his trek into the woods from Witcham Road, so there was no technical way to know how long it had been since then. Even the ambient light was inconsistent as far as Ty could tell, occasional periods of pitch-darkness breaking up the monotonous gray that permeated every other hour. Ty sometimes felt he couldn’t tell which he hated more, but then the dark would come again and he would know.
In any case, time had passed, and it had felt like an eternity. He and some of the others had made a sort of basecamp at Juniper Inn. There were limited entrances to guard, and they’d managed to board up all the windows. It didn’t feel safe, nothing did in this hell, but it felt a little more secure than anywhere else. Ty knew deep down that if those huge creatures wanted to get in, they could, and that would be the end of all of the humans he’d tried to keep safe. They only had a couple of guns, and those were small and had no refills for their limited ammunition. The rest of their weapons were makeshift -- rusted machetes and nails pounded into bats ... Ty had done his best. They would last as long as they could, but Ty felt more and more that it was only a matter of time.
The stress of living in a place like this -- though they were more just surviving by the skin of their teeth than living, weren’t they? -- was taking its toll. When he did sleep, he either had nightmares of being torn apart by some knowable beast, or bittersweet dreams that he was back home and none of this had ever happened. He preferred the nightmares. At least they didn’t remind him of all the guilt that sat like a stone in his gut.
Mostly Ty just tried to keep busy. Which was more challenging than he would’ve thought in this sort of situation. There were the guard-duty shifts he was glad to take, his mind occupied with intense vigilance instead of anything else. But the downtime couldn’t be filled with anything from the old world. This place was structured like Point Pleasant, but not an exact replica. Besides all the dirt and rot and black goo and weird growths, of course. There were no surviving books to read, no functional technology, no instruments, Ty hadn’t even found a usable deck of playing cards. With no pure water anywhere, much less running through Juniper’s pipes, they couldn’t even take baths. They had the fire to tend to, and they had each other, and that was it. It could be maddening. Ty was waiting for one of them to snap.
That in mind, Ty tried to regularly check in with all of them. There were more people, scattered elsewhere in town, but he’d stopped worrying about them. That was just part of the helplessness of this whole situation. He could focus on the people he had access to, though. So once he’d been relieved of his guard duty, he started a slow path through the inn, looking around for anyone not in their room.
Sage spent as little time in his room as possible, preferring to keep to the common areas of Juniper, even if there was no one else there. He was certain that the second he was alone, something was going to find its way in there and attack before he could even get a word out. Sleeping was next to impossible, something he only did when he'd run himself down completely, so that he couldn't help it if he closed his eyes for too long. As terrified as he was when he was awake, the nightmares were worse and when he woke he never felt rested. Occasionally, he fell asleep in the hotel's common room, which was where he was when Ty entered.
Sage was wedged into a corner, an old machete in his lap, which never failed to feel surreal. He'd played video games with such a thing as a weapon. Never in his life did he think he'd actually brandish one with the intent to kill something, but now he never let it out of his sight. His grip tightened on it until he saw it was Ty, then he began to relax slightly, never fully. He was certain that the second he let his guard down, he'd be dead. He gave Ty a quiet nod of acknowledgement, but hesitated to speak. Even with the walls around them, it felt dangerous to make any noise at all. Talking helped him keep sane though. If it weren't for the others, if he'd been completely alone, he'd have lost his mind for sure.
Ty would’ve agreed that if they’d each been alone through this? They would’ve ended up dead or gone insane far earlier. Some days he thought he felt himself slipping into the latter, but so far he’d stayed lucid. Ty didn’t know if that was better or not, honestly. Sometimes he thought being stark raving mad would be a relief. But there was a strong instinctual pull toward other people, safety in numbers, like it was built into human DNA to congregate and be some kind of community, however stressed they were. It was hard to get to know anyone under these circumstances, but he still tried. He had to. Returning Sage’s nod, Ty walked over and sat down with him, letting out a slow sigh. “You’re a couple names down the rotation ... can’t sleep?” he asked quietly. They all tried to be quiet now, it was just how it was.
“No, never,” Sage said with a small shake of his head. “Feels safer down here.” Safety was relative these days. Sage wouldn’t call anywhere safe, but he was a little less anxious in an interior space with lots of exits and his back against a wall, preferably in a corner so nothing could sneak up on him. He always considered something to hide behind, but if something did come for him, then he didn’t want to be trapped. “I always thought the worst had already happened,” he muttered, then shook his head. “How are we not starving to death?” He didn’t know how long they’d been there, but certainly long enough to starve. When he thought back to when he’d been injured during the fog, and how hungry he’d been while trapped in that salon and all they had was snack food, he wondered how he’d gone this long without eating anything at all. He should be dead for so many reasons, yet he was still there. It felt more like a punishment than a blessing.
Ty leaned his back against the wall, pulling his knees up to rest his forearms on them. He tried to sleep as little as possible himself, even if he knew it made his mental state even worse. Though there was no ‘better’ in this situation, not really, and it just kept dragging on and on. Like Sage, Ty had expected to start starving to death -- hell, he’d expected to start dying of thirst within the first three or four days, but it hadn’t happened. They didn’t seem to need food and water here, but still got tired and grew hair and other human things. Ty had given up trying to make logical sense of it. They were just in hell, and anything that felt good even for a moment had been taken from them. “Wish I knew,” he murmured, even if Sage’s question was meant to be rhetorical. “Wish any of this shit made sense.” The extra-terrible thought had crossed his mind that they wouldn’t be able to die here at all, but he’d seen one man die already, right at the start. At least Ty thought he was dead. He could’ve reappeared somewhere else, if this truly was Hell. It wasn’t like they all strolled around, knocking on doors and looking for other survivors. He tried not to think about that, though. “I really miss beer, though,” he added with a tiny smirk. “If we ever get back, I’m drinking like, a case and sleeping for a week.”
Reminiscing felt good in the moment, even if he’d probably end up depressed about it later. It wasn’t like he could feel much worse than he did now, so he gave into the feeling and felt himself smile a little. “A case of beer and one of Moxie’s burgers, then a week of sleep,” he said. “Then a shower. Or maybe first a shower. I have the feeling I stink.” He didn’t work up a sweat doing nothing, but bathing was worse than sleeping, so Sage did it even less often. He felt horrible for it, but without running water, getting clean was a challenge. And it wasn’t like he had a change of clothes. “It’s probably good that we don’t need to eat. I haven’t seen a thing here that looks edible.” Other than them, which was a terrifying thought. Sage would die first.
Ty hummed his appreciation at the mention of Moxie’s, then chuckled faintly. “We all stink, so ... yeah, shower first,” he agreed. A long one, as long as the hot water would hold out, maybe even after that. Ty felt like he could scrub himself until his skin bled and still not feel clean. They’d established that there was an ocean here, but the water was murky like the air and you could only see about fifteen feet out until the fog took over, and being there terrified Ty. God only knew what lived in the dark water. There wasn’t much more water around, so washing off hadn’t really been a thing. It seemed pointless now anyway. Everything here was filthy. “Yeah we definitely would’ve died already if we had to eat,” he murmured, sounding vaguely regretful about it. Starving to death was horrible, but would it have been more horrible than this? He wasn’t sure. “At least it means we don’t have to ... go out for much of anything.”
“That’s true,” Sage nodded. “Which is… good. I’m not sure there’s anything to find.” He hadn’t been one to venture out, unwilling to leave the group, but from what little he’d seen very little of value had carried over from their world to this one. It had the same basic locations, but none of the amenities, not even the most basic ones. He’d never appreciated running water so much until they were lacking it. Electricity seemed non-existent. He missed light, and music, and a bed that didn’t smell of dust and mildew. But it was too dangerous outside to even consider looking for something better. If Juniper was in this state, he assumed all the other houses were too, even those in Overlook. “Sometimes I wonder, though… if there’s a way out. I mean, we’d never find it. Not with those things outside. But… how did they get to Point Pleasant in the first place?” He didn’t really think Ty had the answer, but he needed to let his brain work. He needed to talk. Keeping to himself all the time, isolated to his own head, wasn’t good for him. It made him feel like he was going crazy. Hell, he probably was, but talking to the people around him seemed to take the edge off.
Besides the first terrifying journey from the woods off Witcham Road to town -- this hellish version of it anyway -- Ty had only gone out scouting a handful of times, always with a partner. First he’d been sure they would start starving, so the goal had been to find food ... but they’d found nothing but rot. It was everywhere. The last trip had been to look for other survivors, but Ty hadn’t found any of them either. Just danger and black goo. Sometimes he thought about laying down his weapons and just walking out into the fog, wandering until one of those things got him. But he had a deep horrible fear that he would die and then wake up in the same place all over again. Nothing else worked the same over here, why would death? Maybe they were all already dead, and this was some purgatory or Hell itself. Who even knew anymore. “I don’t know,” he murmured thoughtfully in response to Sage. “On our side, they needed Jules to open the portal, maybe there’s something over here with the same power. Or ... I dunno, it was a glitch in the Matrix or some shit. Unless we learn how to kill them or avoid them though, you’re right, don’t think we’ll find anything useful.”
It was weird to think about Jules now, the high school girl that Sage had been convinced was out to get him. He hadn’t been entirely wrong, but he could see now that he hadn’t seen the big picture. He’d been purposefully ignoring the harm he was causing to the people around him, even people he cared about. The thought of his family and friends dying because of him made him feel sick, yet it was still hard to be thankful for any solution that sent him here. It felt like an execution of sorts, banishment to a wasteland to die. “Did you know her?” he asked Ty. “Jules or… any of the others?” He figured they were all witches, though he didn’t know that for sure. It just felt like the only explanation for everything that had gone down. A trio of witches and their hell hound had attacked them, then locked them up so they couldn’t harm anyone else, a sacrifice for the greater good.
Ty rocked his head from side to side in a ‘so-so’ gesture and shrugged one shoulder a little. “Carson, the uh ... the one that ... came with us, he was my boyfriend’s buddy. And I actually arrested Nic Castell back when he was younger,” Ty said. He let out a faint chuckle and shook his head. “I didn’t know Jules or Neil though, not until we all knew them.” And then he’d gone into the library and openly threatened Neil with a gun. Every time he remembered that he wanted to dig a hole and lie down in it. It hurt in an entirely different way than almost killing Jared did, it was just what he’d never wanted to be as a cop. “And I can’t explain why any of them were there, or how they could do what they were doing. Or how any of this is possible at all. ... what about you, did you know any of them before?”
Sage shook his head. "No, none of 'em. So it was weird when I suddenly did, you know? I told my friend about it and I'm pretty sure he thought I was crazy." That was all in hindsight though. Looking back, Sage was glad Jacob had played along the way he had. If he'd fought it, there was no telling how Sage might've reached, but he knew it wouldn't have been pleasant. "I looked 'em all up on Facebook and shit, since I wanted to know who was after me, but... I guess I thought they were gonna, like, take me out mafia style, not trap me in another world, you know?" He'd imagined a lot of horrible end games, but never in his wildest dreams did it come close to this nightmare. “I thought I could hide. Shit lot of good that did.”
Ty hadn’t told anyone about the sudden paranoia that there were specific people after him. He didn’t know if it would’ve made any difference if he had. It wasn’t like he would’ve listened to Jared trying to talk sense into him or anything. If Jared could even talk by that point, Ty wasn’t sure anymore, all of it had kind of blurred together in his mind. He nodded a little to what Sage said, regret seeping into his expression. “That’s about what I thought too,” he murmured. “I went to the library and confronted Neil, tried to get him to shoot me with my own service weapon. Looking back now, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. But it didn’t matter anyway, ‘cause here we are.” He sighed and pulled the collar of his shirt up to wipe at an itchy spot on his face. Not that it did much good anymore, everything always felt filthy. “I’m just ... glad I didn’t outright kill anyone. Those last few days were really fucked up.”
“Oh fuck,” Sage muttered, his eyes widening as he pictured Ty confronting Neil in the library. He doubted he could ever have been so bold, but then he hadn’t been in possession of a gun. That was probably a good thing. The paranoia he’d been feeling had gotten extreme there at the end and he’d have been likely to shoot at shadows and kill someone in the process. “Yeah, but… if I’d been there much longer, I’m not sure I could say that, you know? And that’s fuckin’ crazy.” That last day had been such a power trip—he’d felt so good he’d ignored everything else, including how people practically dropped after spending a few minutes with him. Another day of that and he’d likely have been killing people. “You know, I got arrested a few weeks ago. Lost my shit at one of your officers, after going after someone at the bar. Looking back, I wonder if this was a part of it. Did you… did you have days where you were all kinds of paranoid? Just not yourself?”
He nodded his agreement that it was fucking crazy, completely understanding what Sage meant. Ty had never felt so out of control in his life, and it was scary in hindsight ... even more so because it hadn’t been scary at all at the time. It had felt damn good instead. Ty could easily imagine getting hooked on that feeling of power, however false it was, and having some higher purpose. It had all been bullshit of course, looking at where they were now. They hadn’t been special, they’d been patsies, and whatever the goal had been had failed, thanks to the small group in the woods. They’d probably saved a lot of lives. “Definitely did,” Ty murmured to Sage with another nod. “I was off and on not myself since the damn fog. But there at the end it got really bad.” He paused, then gave Sage a sidelong sort of glance. “Which officer was it?” It was sad and it could’ve easily been someone else, but Ty was hungry for any reminder of Jared he could get.
“A blond girl—woman, I mean. I don’t remember her name, but I hadn’t seen her before. And she didn’t seem to know me either.” Sage didn’t know all the officers by name, but all of the ones who’d been around a while knew the Cooperdale Five. If it had been anyone else, he doubted they’d have been so kind, but she’d put up with a good amount of his bullshit before taking him in. It had been one of those things that he hadn’t been able to explain, even to himself. He’d been sure Grayson had been there, messing with him, and he wondered if that was part of the fog monsters messing with his head or if that was his own fragmented psyche. Probably a combination of the two. How much more could he take before he completely lost it? If there was a limit, getting trapped in another world would probably have been it.
Ty couldn’t help but feel a stab of disappointment the instant Sage said ‘girl.’ “Deputy Jansen,” he murmured with a slow nod. “She’s pretty new, but she’s a good cop.” Bailey was rough around the edges and could be prickly, but Ty had liked working with her for the most part. He gave a little snort and shook his head ruefully. “For a while there ... with the paranoia ... I thought she was fucking my boyfriend,” he added. Looking back now, Ty could see how insane that had been, but he’d been so damn sure of it. God, would Jared even want him to come back if he could? He blew some air out through his lips and sat forward a bit, pulling his legs up to cross and lean against while he passed his hands over his head. He’d kept it shaved for so long, it was weird to feel hair there now. “They fucked us good, didn’t they,” he muttered.
In any other situation, Sage would’ve loved to hear that story. It sounded like the kind of drama that he often heard as a bartender, except this time with cops. Except this one didn’t have a happy ending. Ty hadn’t been delusional; he’d been infected by some otherworldly being and now he could never see his boyfriend again. Sage supposed it was a good thing he hadn’t left someone behind. It meant there was one less person wondering where the hell he’d disappeared to. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Hopefully, someone… one of the guys who put us here… hopefully one of them will tell him what happened. So he knows it wasn’t you. And why you’re gone.” He didn’t know if they knew everyone the way he’d known them though. There’d only been four of them and only three remained.
He’d already stepped through it a dozen times in his mind, the chain of people who Jared might need to go down in order to find the truth. And he would, Ty was fairly sure of that. Jared was good at the detective work of the job, and his friend Carson had disappeared as well, so it was possible he would figure out who to ask. If he was even still alive -- Ty had stopped being so sure that Jared was still breathing when he’d left the house. That thought haunted him almost constantly. What if Ty had ultimately killed him, and Jared would never know the truth? Ty would never know either way, and that was horrible by itself. “Hopefully so,” he said to Sage, his voice a little thick and gravely. He cleared his throat and made himself look up again and focus on someone other than himself. “And I hope whoever’s looking for you gets to the bottom of it too,” he added, looking over at the younger man. “I dunno if they’ll all get it, but they all deserve the truth.”
“My family’s been through so much shit ‘cause of me, they’d be better thinking I ran off,” Sage said softly. He couldn’t imagine how they’d take the news that he was trapped in some alternate universe, but it wouldn’t be good. They’d always believed him when he said they didn’t kill Grayson, but his inability to tell them the truth had made things difficult, especially when the town labelled them murderers. More than once he’d had the thought that they’d be better off if he just disappeared. Now he actually had. “I don’t even know if they’d believe it. Most people wouldn’t. It’s a lot, even for Point Pleasant.”
“Yeah, it is,” Ty murmured regretfully. Sage’s comment about his family going through a lot reminded him of all the shit he’d “put his family through,” as his mother would phrase it. That was kind of different though, that had been their own inability to accept who he was, but Ty knew his mom wouldn’t see it that way. Disappearing like this was just another way he broke her heart. She would never believe the truth, and if he tried to tell her, she would likely say it served him right to spend some time in Hell itself. Not for the first time, he thought of the Lucas girl, the one he’d found out in the woods covered in black goop, inexplicably grown up from when she’d disappeared two weeks prior. He shifted a little and gave Sage a sideways glance. “If I tell you something, you promise to keep it to yourself?” he whispered.
“Yeah, sure,” Sage said quietly. There weren’t a lot of people Sage could tell and even then he was generally pretty good at keeping secrets. Only one time stood out in his mind— the day he’d been attacked in the fog. He’d been so out of his mind he’d told the guy in the salon everything about what happened at the tunnel, things he’d sworn not to tell a soul. That almost seemed crazier to him now, that he’d shared something so private with a complete stranger, but fear made people do and say strange things. He wondered what that guy thought of him now or if he even realized he was gone. Probably not. It wasn’t like they’d seen each other again, though Sage would’ve gone to him to get his hair dyed. He’d seemed cool. Now his hair was a ratted mess, so far gone he’d probably have to shave it all off and start over.
Ty leaned in closer, still keeping his voice down. They all tried to be quiet in the Inn, but he really didn’t want any of the others to hear what he had to say. In all honesty, Ty knew that he probably shouldn’t be telling Sage either, but there was part of him that felt like he needed to, if only to assist with his own sanity. He felt like he had a tenuous hold on it to begin with. “Back like, several months ago,” he started, dark eyes shifting around the room like someone might pop up from behind the dilapidated furniture. “I found a girl, in the woods. Like an older-teenage girl. She was covered in this ... black muck, and she was claiming to be Amelia Lucas. Only Amelia Lucas had disappeared two weeks before that, and she had only been a kid. Like nine years old. So of course I thought this girl was on drugs or delusional, but ... turns out it was her. And she’d been in some other world where time ran faster, so she’d kinda grown up over there. Like, her family knew her and everything. It was a lot to swallow, so I kinda ... put it outta my mind I guess, like you do, you know? But now that we’re here ... I gotta wonder if this is the same fucking place, you know?” Ty met Sage’s gaze again, hunting for belief there. Considering where they were, it wasn’t a huge stretch to believe, but old habits of not wanting to look crazy died hard.
“Holy shit,” Sage muttered as Ty walked him through the story. He remembered when the Lucas girl had gone missing. There’d been search parties and everything, but she’d never been found. Every time something like that happened, Sage thought of the tunnel and wondered if it had claimed a new victim. He’d never even considered that there was another world people could be swallowed into until it had happened to him. Now anything seemed possible, even little Amelia Lucas returning home years older than when she’d left. “If this is the same place, did she say how she got back?” He didn’t want to latch onto a false hope, but it might be better than no hope at all. Sage had never thought he’d need a reason to live, but being here… Some days he thought the only reason he was still alive was because dying looked too fucking painful to actually consider.
Ty nodded a bit. “She said she ... found a puddle of black goop that other people there -- there were a few others, she said -- had told her to stay away from. She went diving in it like, like a fuckin’ lake, I guess, and she came out the other side back home in our woods.” He lifted a hand of emphasis toward Sage. “Now don’t get too excited, this might not be the same place, as fucked up as that is to think about. She never mentioned fog or monsters or whatever, and we haven’t seen anybody but us here. But I’m keeping my eyes open when I go out for black puddles, you know? Just in case. I just don’t wanna let it spread around and give people hope when I don’t know anything for sure, okay?”
Sage’s eyes couldn’t have gotten any bigger without popping out of his head. Jumping in a black pool of goop was about as high on his to do list as taking a stroll through the woods. If that was a possible way home, he’d have to be there a hell of a lot longer before he dared to try it because he was pretty sure it would kill him if it didn’t work. As much as he wanted a bath, sticking even a toe in the ocean sounded like a bad idea and this was worse. Way worse. “I won’t say anything,” he whispered. “Swear. I don’t get out much, but I’ll watch for it too. Just in case.” If things got worse, maybe jumping into a black hole would be more appealing.
Ty was pretty sure he wasn’t at the point of jumping into mysterious deep puddles either, but if her story was true, Amelia had been in that other place for almost a decade, so he could understand it intellectually. The thought of the lot of them being stuck here for that long turned his stomach. He couldn’t believe they would survive it. Ty nodded a bit at what Sage said, thinking that maybe more eyes staying peeled for it might be a better plan -- but his thought was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. It came from their left, several windows down from where they were sitting. Ty’s head whipped around toward it, his hand fumbling for his gun. The windows were boarded up, but as Ty watched, a black tentacle-like appendage slipped through one of the bigger cracks.
The sound of glass shattering was so jarring in the silence that Sage flinched, his entire body tensing up as he turned towards the sound. Just that one little tentacle sent shivers through him as he imagined the rest of the monster attached to it and he found his machete and held it tight. It didn't seem like much of a weapon, but it could probably sever the creature's arm if he swung at it. That would take getting closer, something Sage desperately wanted to avoid. "Whatdowedo?" he asked Ty in a rushed whisper. There was a chance it might just go away, but the fact that it had broken in said something, that maybe it already knew they were there. Sage just didn't want to make the situation worse, something that never seemed possible until it happened again and again.
Like any sane person, Ty had avoided getting close to any of the dangerous creatures that populated this world while he’d been there ... but he’d been watching them. They didn’t seem very intelligent to him. They at least seemed to lose interest in the building once the survivors had fought them off the first time and gotten everything boarded up. If there was an intelligence here, it was embodied in some other being that hadn’t found them yet. That was what he hoped, anyway. But there was something almost curious about the way the tentacle waved around, as if it was probing for something inside. One of the boards gave a little creak and Ty moved to action before he could overthink it. The last thing he wanted was more of that thing coming into their space. He shoved his gun back into his belt and pulled his own rusted machete free, standing up and quickly advancing on the window, his jaw set. With one hard swing, he brought the blade down and severed the wiggling tentacle. The monster outside gave a shriek, pulling the stump back out through the window.
Sage felt like he was watching a scene from an action movie, just up close and personal. Ty moved with a speed and confidence that Sage couldn't have managed on a good day, slicing the tentacle off in a single blow. And just like that, Sage remembered they were in a horror movie. The monster's screech rang in his ears as black blood splattered about the room, onto the floor, the window, back at Ty, and onto Sage's face. He whimpered and swiped at his face, desperate to get it off of him, fearful the stench might make him vomit, if not the thought alone. That shower became even more appealing in that instant, but just as impossible as before. Closing his eyes, Sage took a deep breath and reminded himself not to scream.
There wasn’t very much in this world they could have any real influence over, but Ty made a point to keep their weapons sharp. He’d found a good sharpening stone outside early on, and kept it handy to make sure the rusty machetes stayed effective. It was a small thing to fill some hours and it kept them all safer. That was the theory anyway. Ty stood where he was, out of the direct path of the window but close, his entire body tense as he waited to see if something bigger would come crashing through the boards and jagged glass behind them. The ‘blood’ was disgusting, but everything was, so Ty could ignore it for now. He had no idea how big the creature was or what its intentions were, but he was going to go down swinging as he tried to stop it from invading their space. Nothing happened though, the monster’s cries faded away and by the time Ty risked a peek through the window, there was nothing out there that he could see. He sighed and unclenched a little, looking over at Sage. “You okay?” he whispered. “Did it get in your eyes?”
“I don’t think so,” Sage answered as he swiped his hand across his face, doing his best to clean the gunk off without making it worse. It didn’t burn, which was probably a godsend because what the fuck would they do if it was some kind of alien acid blood? He’d be dead by now, so probably nothing but learn from their mistakes. “I’m okay,” he said, more to reassure himself than for Ty. “Still alive.” He still wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse. Each day made him rethink what it actually meant to be alive. “Is it gone?” he asked, still visibly shaking. He was teetering towards exhaustion, but after that he thought he could go another twenty-four hours before completely passing out. It was probably dangerous to let himself go that far, as he’d sleep through any kind of attack, but relaxing enough to let himself sleep seemed virtually impossible.
Still alive was good, that was the goal -- though sometimes Ty wondered if it ought to be. In his darker moments he thought about just walking out into the fog like a sacrificial lamb and letting whatever wanted to kill him do its thing. Then he thought of all the people here who had no skills for protecting themselves, and it gave him enough purpose to keep getting up and going his part. Sage was one of those people, and it was more evident in this moment. Ty didn’t hold it against them, because who the fuck could be prepared for this? He was in way over his head too, but he at least had some training about dangerous situations. Ty was opening his mouth to tell Sage that he thought it was gone when something huge and heavy hit the outside of the wall. The broken glass rattled and Ty flinched back from it, instinctively raising his gun and hissing a soft curse through his teeth.
Sage was down in an instant, his arms wrapped over his head, his knees pulled against his chest. It wasn’t going to save him if the monster charged its way through the window, but it might protect him from broken glass or if the roof came down upon them. That shouldn’t be an issue, but every time something brushed up against Juniper Sage thought about it, wondering how much of the wood had rotted away and was ready to give at any second. He held that position, tight in a ball, until it seemed like nothing else was going to follow, then lifted his head. If it weren’t for guys like Ty, he would most certainly be dead by now. He knew his reactions were cowardly, but he couldn’t help it. This place scared the shit out of him.
Ty had no doubt that eventually the walls around them would fail and crumble. He worried about it with every impact -- and there had been quite a few of those since they’d holed up at Juniper -- but so far the building had held fast. Maybe it was only a matter of time until one of the monsters out there brought the roof down on their heads, or maybe that was impossible because the building was still standing back in the real world. Ty didn’t know how any of this worked, honestly. He held his position, though he couldn’t exactly be steady about it, heart jackhammering in his chest, waiting for another blow to the wall. Nothing happened though, everything outside going quiet again for a stretch of a few minutes. By that time, Ty had worked up the nerve to look out again, and he bent down low to approach the window and crouched in front of it. He peered outside, his field of vision narrow, but empty. “I think it’s clear now,” he whispered over to Sage before looking again, as if saying something would draw it back in.
Sage nodded as he took a deep breath, his hands still trembling from the scare. The worst part of this was that they never really knew when it was over. It might appear so, for the time being, but it could happen again any second, or it could be hours or days. There was never a time they could let down their guard and relax, as that would most likely mean the death of them. It was exhausting physically, mentally, and emotionally. For Sage, it made him feel like he was constantly on the edge of a breakdown, clinging to the edge for reasons he could no longer understand. He pushed himself back into a seated position and rubbed his hands over his face before looking up at Ty. "Thanks," he whispered, then swallowed hard. "Are you... are you gonna be up for a while?"
He couldn’t know for sure, of course, but Ty thought now that it would never truly be over. They would all die here, one way or another. It was only a matter of time. He was completely exhausted, but his system kept pumping him full of adrenaline when something like this happened. As Ty straightened up and moved away from the window again, he felt a little jittery and lightheaded. He kicked the severed tentacle away from them, off into one of the corners to be thrown outside later. It wasn’t like they could worry about germs or rot in this fucking place, everything was contaminated and everything was rotting, so why bother risking opening the door until they had to? He heaved a sigh and nodded at Sage. “I didn’t plan to be, but ... yeah, probably, now,” he answered. “Why?”
Sage hesitated, then forced himself to continue on. “If I… If I close my eyes for a few, will you make sure something doesn’t kill me?” He hated to ask it. He was a grown ass adult and didn’t need a babysitter to watch him sleep, except… he wasn’t sure he could sleep without it. He didn’t need a bed, or even a pillow. He would make do with this space on the floor if he had to. But he needed the reassurance that when he closed his eyes it wouldn’t be for the last time. He knew Ty couldn’t promise anything, that something could still happen, but it was better than being alone and he didn’t really have anyone else to ask. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll take your watch even.” It was all he could think to offer, but he felt like he needed to do something in return.
In any other circumstances, Ty might have judged him for it. Or at least been annoyed by the request -- his whole career was built around protecting other people, but he wasn’t a babysitter. This place though ... he couldn’t blame Sage in the slightest for being terrified. Everything was fucking terrifying. If he was being completely honest, he didn’t really want to be alone either. He wasn’t so eager to stay in this room though, so he gestured for Sage to stand up while he nodded. “Come on, I’ll keep you company, just away from this window.” All of them had staked out rooms in the inn to be their own, even though they were all equally gross, and while sometimes Ty didn’t want to let another human being out of his sight, other times he craved that privacy to break down. “You wanna go to your room?” he asked Sage.
“Yeah. Wherever. That’s fine,” he said as he climbed to his feet. Normally Sage would’ve wanted to stick to the common area because they tended to feel safer, but that illusion had been shattered for the moment so it didn’t really matter where they went. His room was fine, he supposed, if someone was there with him. He kind of wished a friend was there with him to share the space, so he didn’t have to ask someone like Ty, except he wouldn’t have wished this place on any of his friends. Or his enemies. Or anyone, really. It was unfortunate that this place didn’t exactly lend itself to making friends either. Just barely surviving was all they could manage. If there was anything beyond that, Sage hadn’t found it yet.
Ty had practically forgotten what it was like to have friends. He had the people he was surviving with now, and nothing else. Some of them were more useful than others, but that didn’t make them any less valuable. For now, keeping as many of them safe as he could was the only thing he kept waking up for. And if that included sitting with one of them while he fell asleep like he was a scared kid ... well, Ty just hoped that someone would do the same for him if he needed it. God knew he felt like a scared little kid here, a lot of the time. He let Sage lead the way to the room he’d staked out, his body still a bit trembly with adrenaline and his mind still hyper alert for threats. He wasn't going to be able to sleep for a while anyway, so he might as well make use of all that energy and be a human nightlight.