fandomhigh | Living On Your Own, Friday, 8/8, Period 1

The home ec classroom looked more like an art class today, with home decorating catalogs strewn about and a stash of shoeboxes on one table with felt, paper, fake flowers, wallpaper and carpet samples, scissors, paint, modeling clay and other ~~moddable~~ supplies in abundance.

"Morning," Tyler said, once the students were mostly assembled. He had a large travel mug of coffee in one hand. "Today is our class on decorating, or, how to make whatever dump you're holed up in feel a little less like a dump."

He hesitated before talking again. "You don't have to do any of this. You are not your Pottery Barn rug or your clever coffee table shaped like a yin-yang. Stuff gets oppressive ... you do not want a life defined by stuff."

"But," he added, a smile dancing somewhere around his eyes, "I've been told I'm an extremist on this. And on the theory some of you might someday want more than a futon and a coffee maker, you're going to spend class today constructing and decorating dioramas of rooms in your future home. It can be a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen if that's where your mind goes. Here are some handouts on low-cost decorating for you to get some ideas."

He gestured to the table of supplies. "There's building stuff and some catalogs for more ideas over there. Go to it. I'm around if you need help."

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He's around to be bothered.

Alice stopped at Tyler's desk, giving him a strangely curious look.

"You don't have to share your name," she said. "Either of them. Is that why you keep one secret?"

She had meant to ask him (http://community.livejournal.com/fandomtownies/3011847.html?thread=128459271#t128459271) in a far more rational manner if that child on the beach was him. But that was before she'd started hallucinating (http://community.livejournal.com/fandomhighdorms/1443334.html?thread=118193670#t118193670) again. Fires and flames and perhaps there'd been no beach, no child at all. Only Alice, prattling to herself and making a sandcastle with invisible hands.

Back to the asylum, Alice. Unstable, just as the doctor had said. Delicate condition. But I don't want to go among mad people.

Edited 2008-08-08 20:04 (UTC)

He should not have been surprised by the confrontation, but he was.

"I haven't used that other name in a long time," he said neutrally. "Not since I was only a little older than I was that weekend."

He lied, and he did not answer her question.

"I thought perhaps I dreamed you," she said, lacing her fingers behind her back. "Telling me of secret names and sandcastles. Last night it was a boy, aflame, and when I grabbed him he wasn't. She's far too unstable to be released, sir, you can't be serious. But she's no longer our problem, is she, doctor?"

Tyler wasn't quite sure how to untangle this, but his own time as the patient too unstable to release made him be as gentle as he could manage. "A couple days ago, a friend of mine told me it didn't do any good to decide real things weren't real because it was easier, or because we had problems," he said, and he hoped he had River's gist right. "I don't know about the guy on fire, but there was a little boy named Jack who you helped build a sandcastle. And he's me, and I don't answer to that name anymore."

Not that anyone knew to call him it, his father's incursions into his life being so sporadic as to effectively be nonexistent.

Alice shook her head. "It's not so simple," she said. "If I'm still held down in a small room in Rutledge, I want to know. I want to wake up, and stop dreaming more of my life away before it's too late. Before I'm so far gone I'll never awaken again."

Perhaps she was here, and here was real, but she was slipping away again. Back to flames and screams and the Jabberwock reminding her of what a wretched girl she was.

Oh, this was too familiar, and Tyler stood impassive for a moment trying to decide whether he needed to be Tyler Durden ... or whether he wanted to be Jack for a second.

He let Jack win. "Look, Alice, I'm not going to show you my file, but believe me when I tell you I know what you're saying better than you think. And you're awake and this is real and you need to live it. It won't run through your fingers."

"Jack," he added, "is the name my parents gave me. Tyler is the name I chose."

That ... got her attention, from somewhere in the riddles and rhymes and strange cadences.

"Reno said that," she said calmly. "The Card Guard, when he pulled me from the nightmares. That -- this is reality, and fearing that it isn't will be what makes it go away again."

Her eyes were less glassy, as they found his. "Thank you," she said, bobbing her head slightly. "From Queen Alice, to whichever name you like. I wasn't lying about that. I really was a Queen, though that's more of the madness, I suppose. Maybe all of it's real and reality's got more room in it than people think. It's reality, it doesn't have to go around bowing and scraping to our notions."

"Reno's smart," Tyler decided. "And certainly reality is something people are gonna see differently."

Then, because curiosity got the better of him: "What were you queen of?"

"Maybe none of us see it as it is," she mused. "Perhaps it hides when we aren't looking."

Or it put up a parasol, to shield itself from too much sun. And then, of course, people would say reality was parasol-shaped.

"Wonderland," she said, smiling to herself at the rest of it. "Even a pawn can be queen, if you reach the final square."

River would have understood her, and Tyler was almost tempted to call the girl and have her come translate. But, as that seemed impractical, he simply considered this.

"Queens who start as pawns are probably luckier," he suggested. 'They haev to fight their way up."

Living On Your Own, Friday, 8/8, Period 1

Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]

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Re: Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]

Re: Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]

Re: Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]

Re: Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]

Re: Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]

Re: Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]

Re: Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]

Re: Talk to Tyler (& Meg if someone brings her by) [8/8]