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TLV: IC Inbox

You've reached Timothy Stoker, leave a message at the tone and I'll get back to you.

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Of all people, Tim's earned the right for a few well-placed jabs against his last boss, and he'll fight anyone who tries anything else.

"Probably that you know there's something you need to talk about," Tim says, with a slight cant of his head, "that you don't particularly want to but need to get off your chest."

Bertha picks up another cracker and flaps away from Tim to join Marie on the floor, waddling over to hand over the cracker.

Edited 2021-12-18 04:17 (UTC)

Marie happily takes that cracker and adds it to her pile. She gives Bertha a grateful pat with her paw.

"Eh," Jacobi says, waving a hand. "Not everything is a wardening moment, Warden," he says affectionately.

"Says the guy who wants to be wardened so he can graduate," Marie pipes up.

"Yeah, I know. It's stupid."

"Maybe it's a friending moment, mate," Bertha retorts from under the table, pecking Jacobi's ankle.

Tim just tries not to smirk. "Look, if you don't want to, just say so. Don't dance around it like a prat."

Jacobi swears, pulling his feet up. "Why is it always the ankle?" he cries out. "You and Marie both."

He sighs. "Look, I just meant - okay, do you know why shit started to fall apart with us after Maxwell? And not just...because of the obvious. It's because of the need to know. Because it was always us vs them. Me and Kepler against the Hephaestus crew. And then he started treating me like one of them. Keeping me out of the loop. I don't like...not knowing things. Being kept out."

And not in a normal way. Normally, people don't plan entire mutinies because they feel like their partner is keeping them out.

"We're coming for your Achilles, Homer!" she snickers gleefully at the retreat.

Tim smirks a little, but he does listen properly to Jacobi as he explains. Tries to turn his cringe into a more sympathetic expression.

"Same, actually." He folds his arms over his chest, tight like its a defence against the ache in it. "Jon did the same thing, after everything with Prentiss, and finding Gertrude's corpse and he just... locked us out. Didn't tell us anything, didn't let us help properly. We only started finding out how deep off the rocker he'd gone after we caught him stalking my house."

"Yeah, I know," he tells him. He's heard those stories. And he knows how Jon has tried now not to do that any longer. But how he still shuts people how. How it hurts the people around him. Jacobi might not know the extent of it, but he can see it.

He takes a breath.

"But uh - that's what I meant. About that flood. And the Hunt and everything. And it was hell on you and Jon but - at least I got to be a part of it, you know? I gave Jon a statement the other day. About being trapped in the hallways. And all of that really, really fucking sucks, but I'd rather it be that way than to feel like 'them.' I'd rather be miserable and 'us.' I think that's why - I went into Elias so hard, too. You know?"

Well, it's certainly a bit tangled, but he's definitely understanding it. He's pretty sure.

"Right, yeah. You, me, Jon and Martin, we're all an 'us' - an in-group. And yours, you're always ride and-or die for. So Elias being on the outs with the three of us, meant that he got... rather aggressively slotted into your out-group, just from the bloody Venn diagrams lining up." He purses his lips for a moment and glances away. "Massively stupid move on our parts getting so worked up at him, really, knowing you'd end up latching onto that outrage like a limpet."

"Mmhm," he says. "Not the stupid move part. You're allowed to do what you want and feel what you want and all that psychology 101 shit. But I know me. I know that I was going to get worked up about it. Especially since I had just been a part of your world harder than Little Mermaid only a few weeks before."

"Yeah, but if you hadn't been, Elias wouldn't be on your shitlist. Not in the same way."

He gives Jacobi a long look, enough that Bertha actually looks up at Jacobi as well, her beady eyes thoughtful. "You're actually shockingly empathetic, when you let yourself be. You ever notice that?"

Jacobi meets his eyes. "Yeah," he tells him. "Important words there are 'when you let yourself be.' It's not really something you can let yourself do in my line of work. I can be that way with certain people and I've kind of reached my limit of ride or dies, thanks."

"No-one's asking you to take literally every person you come across into your innermost circle of confidantes and 'will kill for's," Tim replies easily. "But-- I dunno, maybe if you let yourself more often, you might be a little less... volatile?"

Bertha's turn to hop into Jacobi's lap, nudging his hand with her beak for attention.

"Why?" he wonders, running a light hand along Bertha's feathers. "How many people do you give a shit about, Tim? How many people would you be sad about if I lit this place up right now? Just your friends?"

Bertha's feathers ruffle with the light touch, making familiar goosebumps roll down Tim's spine, and he unfolds his arms to rest one on the table.

"Admittedly it's not many. I'm aware I'm a hypocrite, thanks, but I'm working on that too."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Jacobi says but he's not upset about it. He's not disappointed. He knew. This is a difficult point for him and for Tim.

"They're not even a means to an end," Jacobi tells him. "They're just faces. I know their names and some of them I know how to hurt, but - " He shrugs. "I don't care enough."

Marie, not one to miss out on a good party, jumps into Tim's lap and offers him a berry in exchange for cuddles.

Marie's a lot heavier than Bertha, and Tim glances down in surprise, but he'll give her a smile, taking th berry to put on the table so he can give her a scratch behind her ear and down her neck.

But honestly, to Tim? The way Jacobi describes it honestly sounds miserable. It's keeping everyone at arm's length until you need them, just to hurt them. It's what he did for most of his last few months alive, just clocked out of caring.

"Just because someone's not worth killing for doesn't mean they're worth nothing." He's not trying to be condescending; he knows Jacobi knows that. It's not exactly rocket science. But there's still more of a gentle edge to it - no judgement, just commentary.

"Intellectually, I know that," he assures him, relaxing a bit as Tim pets Marie. He's not worked up about this conversation. He's not angry about it. But he is thoughtful.

He carefully shifts Bertha to his other leg so he can still pet her but also reach out for the cheese. "Unless it's part of a job, it doesn't matter. I had friends at Goddard. Regular friends. Not - 'kill for' friends. I even had a boyfriend who wasn't Warren, remember?" The one he had to put down after he was taken over. Klein.

Marie, sensing Jacobi's discomfort, curls up a bit more to Tim.

"I can do it. I just choose not to because, well, one day I might have to take them out. Why make friends with the guy you meet at the dog park when you might have to take out the factory he works at the next day? It's not personal. It's just how it is."

When he feels the daemon tense, Tim's hand curls without any real conscious thought to stroke between Marie's shoulder blades in a soothing motion. Old habits from Martin's daemon Geoffrey, back in the day.

"Something about the human condition, probably," he comments wryly. "How we're meant to be social creatures or some bollocks." He believes it too, in all honesty - he'd have had a bit of a difficult time with his degree if he didn't. But ten years is a long time. "But I suppose that's sort of the point. The whole thing with empathy is letting you recognise how hurting someone else is detrimental to yourself. Emotions aren't bigger picture, they're not supposed to be."

Jacobi stays settled, fortunately, and gives him a single shake of his head. "It's not that I don't know that," he explains. "But - hm." He looks down to Bertha a moment. "Let's go back to dog park guy. We'll call him Phil. So I see Phil and I meet Phil. I think Phil's a pretty swell dude. Phil's the foreman at the factory that I have to tank. So I do that. With no hesitation. Because if I don't, then the mission fails and I don't know what the implications of that are. I follow orders. I kill Phil because some other bigwig somewhere else has crunched the numbers. What's feeling bad about it going to do except slow me down? But it's hard to do that. It's hard to look at Phil, my friend, and say 'sorry, bud. Today's not your day.'"

Like it was hard to put down Klein, he thinks and lets out a long breath.

"So why not just skip that step? That's what I'm working with here. And yeah, I know that it might never happen, but - just by being in close proximity to me means that shit usually happens."

In Jacobi's lap, Bertha looks up at him, and gently nibbles his fingers with her beak. Holding hands is hard but she's doing it lovingly.

"Right." Tim takes another cracker, but just twiddles it between his fingers. "So your options are really limited to like. One, care - then have that blow up in your face when you feel for someone, don't do your job right, and face who the fuck knows what sort of consequences." But knowing what he does of Cutter, he can imagine.

"Or two," Bertha adds, hopping deftly onto Jacobi's sleeve so she can clamberclimb up to his shoulder again. "Don't care. Rock falls, everyone dies, but you and yours survive another day."

"Pretty much," he says, pausing to let Bertha climb. "And again, I know that not everyone I meet is like that. I know that a lot of the times, I can make friends with people and they won't get caught up in my nonsense. Even if, like I said, the likelihood is pretty high." He rubs the back of his neck.

"It's a pretty poor excuse, I know. But it's what I tell myself. Because, at the end of the day, I like doing it sometimes, Tim," he admits softly. "That when I get mad at someone, as you well know - " He makes a soft explosion sound. "That nuclear option is my first option."

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