Third Floor Common Room, Lunchtime

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

After a handwavey walk into town for supplies, Dawn set out a bunch of sandwich fixings, pretzels, chips of various descriptions, cookies, fruit, lemonade, iced tea, and soda.

A small handwritten sign told people to help themselves, so she didn't have to keep repeating herself.

As for Dawn, she sat down with a book to enjoy her hummus with cheese, sprouts, carrots and sweet pickles. Occasionally she sipped from her lemonade.


[ooc: Open to all, mod any sandwich fixings or side items you'd like.]

Comments

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"If you're from a world with demons, I doubt it'll be too much," Tyler said seriously.

He inclined his head toward Dawn, trying to decide where to start. "So about two years ago, I started getting horrible insomnia. I would be up for days and days. Nothing was real, and nothing was not real." He paused, not sure where to go from there.

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

"So...you couldn't tell what was real from what wasn't," Dawn repeated. "That must have really messed you up," she said, remembering when Buffy had been in a similar situation.

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"I was already messed up," Tyler admitted. "So then I started going to support group meetings, just to have a place to be. Then I met this girl. Then I started talking to someone who ... I thought he was everything I wanted to be." Tyler glanced at the burn scar on his hand then. "Anyhow, a couple things happened" -- he wasn't lying about the condo explosion, he was just skipping over it -- "and I ended up living with him in this abandoned house. After a while, he got on this thing about how you couldn't know yourself if you had never been in a fight. That part still makes sense to me."

He paused. "That's where Fight Club started."

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

Dawn actually didn't disagree with how to know yourself either, but she didn't think that was all of it. "What's Fight Club?"

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"What Rory mentioned," Tyler said. "Bareknuckle boxing, no shirts, no shoes, go until somebody says stop, and don't talk about it."

he ran a hand through his hair. "Oh, and we started playing with chemicals. Soap first. Then explosives. And Fight Club turned into this whole cult of personality thing. Bigger than we -- bigger than I expected."

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

"So, you beat each other up for fun?" Yeah, Dawn was staring at him a little. "Is this a guys only thing?"

"Explosives? W...why did you need or want explosives?"

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"Yeah," Tyler said, and frowned. "There wasn't a rule against girls, exactly, but they never came that I saw."

He ran a thumb around the crust of his sandwich, licked off the mustard it caught. "Needed explosives to make our point, I think. By this time we were trying to generally create chaos. Plus it's just fascinating. You have orange juice, you have gasoline ... and then suddenly you have nitroglycerin."

"We're getting close to the end. Want me to keep going?"

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

Figured. Guys were so dumb, sometimes.

Dawn sighed. "Yeah, might as well hear all of it at once."

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"Right," Tyler said.

"Things started going really fast, but the main thing was that our projects got bigger. Eventually there was a plan to blow up about half of Wilmington. Destroy the credit card companies, destroy society. Or something like that."

"I tried to stop it." Tyler's eyes were suddenly far away, remembering. "And that's about when the whole thing fell apart."

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

Dawn's eyes were wide now as she listened to Tyler. "Fell apart how?"

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"It turned out the other guy, the one I thought was in charge? Was me," Tyler said. "Oh, and he had been seeing this girl, the one I met in the support groups. Or I thought he had been seeing this girl. She thought I was her boyfriend-thing. Alternate personalities are fun."

He ran a hand through his hair. "Anyhow. So I find all this out, I try to stop the explosions, and ... well, I kind of succeeded. He -- I -- had used paraffin, so the bombs didn't work. Lucky mistake, really."

His eyes shifted. "I got sent somewhere," he said, evasively. "Then I made my way here. And that's the rest of the story."

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

"So...really..." Dawn hedged as she tried to process everything she'd been told, "it's not completely your fault, since you didn't know what your other personality was doing? Er, they have meds for that now, right?"

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"Not completely," Tyler agreed. "Though I'm not some innocent."

He looked at his hands again. "I won't bore you with the details, but yeah, I'm being treated. The idea is for me to be integrated and without meds eventually."

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

"Okay." Dawn fidgeted and wished for something to do with her hands. "So, um, how's that going?"

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"My shrink is very pleased by my progress," Tyler deadpanned, a tiny bit amused by her discomfort. "Would you like to call her and ask her yourself?"

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

"No," she shook her head. "I...I'm sorry, it's just that the last crazy person I knew killed an awful lot of people before he got himself back under control."

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

Clumsily, Tyler reached out to pat Dawn's arm.

"I've never killed anybody," he said, realizing that might not exactly be comforting, or -- and he saw Bob's face again -- absolutely true. "One of the things that got me under control was that I realized people could die with what we were doing."

"Does that help at all?"

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, it does, a little bit." She smiled slightly at him, tilting her head. "So, had enough of the fishbowl?"

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

Tyler blushed and looked at his hands. "Depends. Had enough of my life story?"

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

"If you're done talking about it," she shrugged, not completely sure she could trust him, but not willing to give up on him either.

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

"I'm not sure what else I can say," Tyler said. "You got the high points."

His gaze went to the floor. This might be the hardest part of the conversation.

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

Dawn sighed and set her plate on the table. "So. What do you want? I don't trust you completely, but I know how it sucks to be watched every second in case you do something wrong."

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

Tyler snorted. "I have a babysitting squad," he said. "Veronica, Bel, Cam and English Peter, and I think Jamie Madrox just volunteered. If I ever frighten you, or you talk to me and get a sense that I'm not really there? Tell one of them. They promised to leave me alone as long as I'm a good boy. I guess I have to trust them."

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

"Okay," she nodded, "I can do that." Dawn spent a minute appreciating the irony that was Bel agreeing to watch anybody else, given what he was going through. "So...anything else going on in the land of Tyler?"

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

Tyler couldn't help it. He giggled.

"I think that's enough," he said. "How is the land of Dawn?"