11839/The Just And The Feckless

The Just And The Feckless
Date of Scene:	01 July 2022
Location:	Main Room - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	Jon comes to apologize to Terry, but the evening ends in macaroni and regret.
Cast of Characters:	Terry O'Neil, Jonathan Sims

---

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry O'Neil, human flavor sans the twist of cat, is sitting in the main room of the tower, surrounded by hand-scribbled notes, notebooks, and a few books here and there. The young man has been doing some research- but it doesn't seem to be your standard research for a Daily Planet article.

Unless the article had something to do with mythical beasts and practical witchcraft, that is. Or something of that sort, by the look of some of the open books.

"... how do you defeat a Jabberwock?" he mutters, biting down on a pencil as he flips through pages and pages, makes a note here and there, lets out an exasperated 'huff', and picks up another book. "... I guess the better question is what is the closest monster comparable /to/ the Jabberwock?" he mutters, and takes a sip of his chai.

"What /is/ the Jabberwock?" he muses, turning over thoughts in his head as the sunset begins to flood the main room.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon arrives in Metropolis by portal, but /very carefully/ targets it at Titans Tower and not Terry, so he doesn't just open a magical portal and set off alarms or anything. He pops out a couple of blocks away and then walks, pinging at the Tower systems to be let in and let up. The reason? He's here to talk to Terry. To apologize to Terry, really, but he doesn't get into that.

    Their hair's dyed back to black, their nails painted in alternating black and red. They're wearing a black ankle-length skirt and a Pinky Floyd t-shirt, all of which conspires to make it look like they're going through a rebellious phase. Which... they technically are. They peer around at the research scattered about and raise a brow.

    "This looks like... what my office usually looks like. Or anywhere I'm spending much time. What are you researching, Terry?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"This and that. Words, my lord," Terry says, rubbing his eyes, looking up from his notes and at Jon. The security system is primed to let them in, since they are listed as an ally. It's nice, though, that Wendy announces incoming guests for the benefit of Titans who might have started to doze on the couch.

Not that he had. Nope.

"Just... trying to noodle about the Jabberwock, trying to find something... something we might be able to use." He grins and takes another sip from his chai, "But what brings you over to this corner of Sesamee Street?"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon walks over to peer at the various bits of paper, glancing over the notes, chewing on his lip absently as he does so. "Noodle about the Jabberwock? Did something happen...?"

    A pause, and then they shake themself. "Ahh, actually... well. So. I... came to apologize. For the other day, with..."

    A pause, and they blow out a huff of breath. "I'm sorry about passing off killing those cartel members to you. I should not have done that. Passing it off to someone else doesn't absolve me of responsibility."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The redhead exhales and taps his foot on the floor in a nervous gesture, growing suddenly quiet for a few seconds.

"It... wasn't exactly my /proudest/ moment, I'll tell you that. When I cooled down... Gar helped me realize that it really wasn't who I wanted to be."

He takes a breath, holds it for a few seconds, and then lets it go. "The question is... this is what Ma'at is asking of you, isn't it?"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "In a way," Jon replies quietly. "It used to be that the Archivist called upon Ammit to devour the essence of those judged unworthy--but that stopped when I swore off using Nullspace energy. I could call on Ammit again, or Sekhmet, or Osiris--I /did/ call on Sekhmet, to kill the man who shot Cael. But Cael herself... asked me and Ma'at not to do that anymore. There's no way for the gods to kill people without causing pain, and she thought that the executions should not cause pain."

    A beat. "I could reach in and stop their hearts with magic, but it felt wrong to do that to someone I'd just healed. It... it will mean every death is on my head. On my conscience. Directly. I'm still figuring out what I want to.. do about that. But the answer is not 'foist it off on someone else.'"

    They go to drop onto one of the couches. "Garfield came by my apartment to... well, I suspect to berate me for the whole business but he didn't, really. Gave me a lot to think about. He tells me they wound up in Arkham." A sigh. "That place..." They shake their head. "Better than nothing, I suppose."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Gar doesn't berate," Terry says, "He just is insufferably sweet and gentle until you feel three inches tall and you want to undo whatever it is that you did wrong, or right it." Terry says, and adds, "They won't be in Arkham for long. I sent a message to Tall Dark And Bat-Eared. I figured Arkham would just be a temporary accommodation there you-know-who was well-known enough to arrange a drive-through pick-up. They will be in his hands now," he smirks. "The lucky bastards."

"Jon," Terry leans forward in his seat, "Gods where are my manners? Do you want cookies? We've got cookies. And Golden lattes. Gar hasn't finished all of them..." he stands up to head over to grab something.

"And isn't there... isn't there something else Ma'at cold do with these people? Admittedly, I am not as brushed up on that Pantheon as I am on the Greeks, and their methods might be different..."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Well, normally what the Archivist deals with are immortals. Gods, demons... angels. That's why I got tapped to handle Saint Michael before we knew it was an archangel terrorizing Hell's Kitchen. I'm not the /only/ person around who deals with 'immortals abusing their power' but I was the one that was closest. And what do you do with a rampaging demon or god?" Jon shakes their head. "All too often, killing them is about the only thing that /can/ be done. Imprisonment... well, see how often demons escape Hell, you know?"

    He shakes his head again. "I think my main takeaway at the moment is to stay the hell out of dealing with mortals directly in the foreseeable future. There's a massive power imbalance, and it's not my purview, really. I should've just asked Moon Knight to take care of things, if the gods of Egypt were getting involved." A shrug.

    "At any rate... whatever the Jabberwock is, it wants eat me, which is... not as terrifying a prospect as it was just the other day, actually. I do wonder /why/ though." He smiles, if a bit wanly. "Cookies and golden lattes would be... lovely."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Coming back with a tray of cookies and two glasses with the golden lattes, Terry sits down and places the tray of cookies between them, and offers Jon the latte. "I wonder as well. It really did go for you when we went there the first time... it's... terrifying." He shudders. "It feels like the wake of a bad dream, every time I've touched anything close to it. You and Kaida had some of that stench when I ran into you in Wonderland..."

He frowns, "And it was sort of like the feeling from the dream Kian and I had, a few weeks ago." He shudders, and suddenly he finds his hand halfway through the motions of the sign of the cross, and he stops, embarrassed. "... old habit. Sister Margaret would do that any time she mentioned a nightmare. It stuck for a while. I guess old habits die hard." Pause. "Sister Margaret is still alive last time I checked, so I guess the saying is true."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon takes the mug with a murmured thanks and takes a sip, frowning thoughtfully. "We had some of that stench...?" A pause. "We'd just fallen out of a... well, a shared nightmare, really. I had been shoved out of my body and into a nightmare by... well, no one you'd know, a bad person who wanted to puppet me into doing certain things. I refused, and he just got Ma'at to do them instead." A shrug. "At any rate... I was stuck in a dream of losing my daughters. And Kaida... I'm not certain what her nightmare was about, but they sort of... merged, and we fought each other. She definitively won."

    He sighs. "I should probably say thank you to her for that, too. I don't know if I'd have gotten out if not for her. But it's curious that... I was only really untethered because I was /supposed/ to be heading for Tawaret's domain. Instead, somehow I got pulled toward Wonderland. And it's... mmm. Curious."

    He glances at Terry. "What dream did you and Kian have? Must've been something, to get you to cross yourself." A brief smirk.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry frowns, "... Gar." He purses his lips, and then speaks in a quiet voice. "... we didn't tell the media this, but during the Doppelganger nonsense last year... Gar's Doppelganger caught him unawares. Ambushed him."

He takes a deep breath, and then he continues, "And he pretended to be Gar until Diana discovered him. He probably was going to try to kill us all. See..." he turns to face Jon, and the look in his eyes is a haunted one.

"I found the security tape of the attack. His Doppelganger... tore into him. Tore his arm off. I-" He has to stop because his throat feels tight, and then he continues, "I thought he was dead. That he had been killed. Doppel Gar threw my Gar into the ocean, bleeding and practically dea-"

He stops for a second and puts his hands up to his face, reliving the memories. He takes several deep breaths, "It's ok... It's ok. I'm ok, it's just-"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Hey," Jon says, voice soft but firm. "He's okay now. He's alive. He certainly seems... well. You haven't lost him. Okay?" A pause. "Take a bite of the cookie, tell me how it tastes. Focus on that. Focus on /here/. Now."

    Their brow furrows, suddenly. "Loss. That... seems to be the throughline. My nightmare, it was... Lyra dead in my arms, handing her over to the medic. Agnes, just born, Alya dead and Martin dead and handing her over to--" A pause, a beat, his heart skips, and then--"to Annabelle Cane. Whoever she actually is. I failed them both. I..."

    They take a deep breath and they say, "I hate to ask this, Terry, but... did you feel that? You /or/ Kian? That... that if you'd just done something different, Garfield wouldn't have been harmed?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Yes," Terry says in a quiet voice. "I stood by his grave and I cried, and I said it was my fault, that I didn't save him, that I could have saved him." He glances around the tower, biting on the cookie, feeling the texture, the anise. "The Tower was empty. After Gar died, the team broke up because he's our heart. He always has been. And Kian was there and... things got bad. Very bad. He became delusional and I had to look for a place that could help him... and we both missed him so much..."

He trails off, and then looks at Jon, furrowing his brow, "What do you mean, the through-line?":

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon grabs a cookie of his own and stands, pacing. Terry might notice that he appears to have two entirely normal arms instead of the glowing green one he usually summons. (How he got here via portal is complicated and doesn't really need to be gotten into. It was a whole thing.) He takes a drink of the golden latte while he listens to Terry, nodding along.

    "Loss and grief and guilt. I don't know precisely what Kaida was dreaming, but I suspect it was much the same. That's what... Michael Hannigan told me about the dream you found in Wonderland. A little girl, Alais, killed by a wand. Her father's wand, I think? It made me think of... I was intending to go bait out the Jabberwock, to try to figure out what was going on. I think it might be a creature of Order, given how Wonderland reacts in fear of it. Or..."

    He gestures with the mug. "Wonderland is a dream, right? The Red King's dream. So. Consider Wonderland, not as a place of Chaos /per se/, but as presenting symptoms of a patient. Distraction, misdirection, elaborate illusions and delusions all carefully constructed and maintained to present the facade that 'no, really, all is well.' It's fine. I'm fine. Smiling depression." They smile, but it doesn't reach their eyes. "I know /all about/ that."

    They stop, and turn, and look at Terry, but not quite /at/ Terry. More /through/ him. "Tell me something--is the Jabberwock new to Wonderland? I mean, it never came up in the first book. Did it actually appear between Alice Liddell's first visit and her second?" A beat. "My working theory is that Alice Liddell stumbled into Wonderland and told Lewis Carroll the story, that he then set down, rather than it being the other way 'round. It's the only thing that makes any bloody sense, given what we know."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"No, that is exactly how it happened, Jon," Terry says, "I may not remember a lot of things, but I remember that. I know, because the second time she came around, she told everyone about how this funny old friend of hers with a stutter wrote down everything from her first journey..." he trails off.

"Right. Alais. That dream. The Jabberwock was on to us like /that/ the moment we saw what happened to that little girl. And you are right, the Jabberwock didn't really... well, it reared its head not long after Alice left for the first time. By the time she came back, people in Wonderland were already whispering about it..." he glances at Jon, noticing the arm, but saying nothing for the moment.

"What do you make of that? It's a puzzle. The dream with the girl. The Jabberwock, the timing..."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Right, right, that fits. The Jabberwock comes for you when you get close to the core, umm, initiating event. So... something about that little girl is at the center of it all. The loss and grief of her death."

    Jon starts pacing again, back and forth, waving cookie and mug interchangably as he talks. "So... I have a hypothesis, and it goes like this." He takes a long drink. "Something about Alice, what she did during her first visit, roiled the chaos that's been used to mask the core trauma at the heart of Wonderland. The names are similar, for all we know she /looks/ similar--does she? Did she?" A brief glance at Terry.

    Shaking that off after a moment, they go on, "So, the Jabberwock arises as a defense mechanism. Born of the trauma itself, perhaps? Is it meant to protect the core, or is it a manifestation of what the dreamer thinks he deserves...? A punishment, maybe? I mean, it fits, right? The little girl dies, it's his fault, he goes away to dream a world where none of that happened, but the reminder of what he lost brings up the alternate spectre of punishment rather than escape..."

    His brow furrows even further. "Jabberwock itself /probably/ means 'the result of much excited and voluble discussion' but even that fits, Alice /was/ a talker..."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry is quiet for a moment. "Damnit that makes sense. Donna said that one of the Lampads told her that Wonderland was the creation of a Wizard's troubled psyche. So what you are telling me that there is a wound, festering in there, and that Wonderland was the colorful band-aid that got thrown up to cover it up, but it never got fully healed?"

And then he frowns. "... wait. So what does that say about... well, me. Part of my soul comes from Wonderland."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon stops their pacing and smiles at Terry. Actually smiles /at/ him, not through him. "That you are a balm for troubled souls. And you /are/. There is no shame in that. Wonderland is a joyous thing for many people in the world, a delight and a balm in difficult times. Don't think less of yourself for that. Many wondrous things have come about as the result of deep trauma. Laughter and joy are part of healing."

    They shake their head. "Wonderland itself is not the problem, I think. The unaddressed wound is the problem. I think we'll have to address it, in order to help Wonderland heal and be... all that it /could/ be. A monument to laughter and joy and childhood games. To freedom and not taking oneself too seriously. Or at least, that's what Wonderland is for /me/."

    A pause, and then they frown. "But all of this does beg the question... Terry, what happens to Wonderland if the Jabberwock gets to the Red King? Or even if he just... wakes up?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry considers the answer to this for some time, and then he recites, as if in a half-dream, "If that there King was to wake..." he snaps his fingers. "Just like a candle."

And he eats his cookie in silence.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, then goes to sit down again, looking at Terry with some concern. "What does that mean for you?" he asks gently. "Would the Cheshire disappear? And would you... still be /you/, without the Cheshire?"

    A sigh. "It does not seem right, to ask one man to suffer so that Wonderland can live. It reminds me of 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.' Did you ever read that? It's an untenable situation, if true. But... there /must/ be a way to resolve the trauma and keep Wonderland in existence. We saved the whole bloody universe, we can save Wonderland. We'll find a way."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"I don't know," Terry admits, "And I'd rather not think about it. I'd rather not think about it because it could convince me to /not/ do the right thing, and... this whole conversation started with me stating that that's not who I want to be. SO let's... not talk about it." He stands up, with the excuse to refill his latte. "Let's talk, instead, about some ideas I have to propose to Ma'at about the concept of... occupational therapy for humans she may pass judgement on. She could have this whole realm of humans who are completely remorseless... being made to work towards the good of others. Until they learn their lesson." Clink of ice cubes, "However long it takes. Think she'll like the idea?"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon frowns at Terry. "Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away," he points out. "That's exactly why we're in this mess in the first place, with Wonderland. But, look--you won't /have/ to not do the right thing, because by the gods I did /not/ pummel Michael's face in for trying to kill you just to let you poof," he snaps his fingers, "like that. I mean, Cael /invited/ you to the apartment, can you imagine what she'd do to me if I let anything happen to you? So. Not happening. We'll fix things, one way or another."

    They raise their brows. "Occupational... therapy? Ooookay... I don't /quite/ know what you mean. And I don't normally deal with humans anyway. Would this work with, I don't know, rampaging angels?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"We'll cross that canasta when we get to it, Jon... right now it is pointless to spatulate," Terry says, serving himself some more latte. He's going to be up all night at this point, "But, okay, let me go upstairs and get some of my books on philosophy and we can talk to Ma'at about Foucault and his Panopticon and about how maybe there are better ways to deal with rampaging immortals than dissolve them and instead... I don't know, give them the responsibility to garden, anonymous good deeds, and... yes, crafts. Arts and crafts. Oh, be right back," Terry sets his glass down and starts heading for the elevator, "I can make a macaroni necklace to serve as a visual aid."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "I..." Jon opens his mouth. Closes it. Frowns thoughtfully. "I mean, I suppose that's..." He chews on his lip.

    "I will note that most of what I know about the Panopticon theory comes from Millbank Prison and... my mentor had some interest in it... so I will /admit/ to being wary but having recently discovered he was a former Archivist, perhaps he was looking for a better solution...?"

    A wave of a hand. "But you don't know any of that, /so/. I will listen. What's your thinking? Gardening and arts and crafts?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"All in good time, all in good time," Terry says, waving his hands to stop Jon, "We can't have this discussion without the proper elements. Macaroni, cardboard, paint..."

And he vanishes down the hall, but his voice floats down ominously to Jon thanks to the excellent acoustics in this part of the tower.

"-and glitter!"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon stares down the hall, eyes wide and a more than a little worried.

    "Oh good lord," they mutter. "/What/ have I gotten myself into?"