Chapter Text
“Teddy! And here I thought I was your one and only!”
Ted hears the voice first. It’s rough like nails on a chalkboard, it doesn’t fit the space between his ears, somehow too loud and too quiet at once- But it wakes him up. He blinks, shivers running through him, and realises he’s not in the mall anymore.
He kneels in a pitch black space, with his hands wet with blood of his neighbour, who refused to give up the Wiggly doll; it ended up in pieces, white fluff spilled. Stained. The irrational ache for the plushie feels faraway, but the memory of a cooling body is fresh with sensation. He takes a deep breath, then another, and another, and-
“C’mon Teddybear, it’s not fun if you’re panicking. I already know how you are, you get so scared and then you get mad, so! Get mad! C’mon!”
He shakes and shakes some more, making the most pitiful whining noises yet. He clutches at his chest and his hands don’t dirty the shirt- It’s already bloody. God, fuck, he can taste it, the copper on his tongue, he remembers biting at something squishy and wet, and he gags. Falling to his knees he starts to dry heave.
“Yeah, that actually was Nibs’ fault. Couldn’t stop herself, silly girl.” The guy? The guy. The guy giggles. “She has less opportunities than the rest of us to play with y’all. Then again, she doesn’t have the patience to play. Too hungry for that.”
“The fuck- What the fuck are you talking about, man?” He gasps, the stomach acid burning his throat. “What the fuck?”
“Oh ho! There he is!” A hand wrenches Ted back by the hair and he comes face to face with a wild grin. “My Teddybear.” The guy tugs his face up more. Ted squints, he’s like the sun; bright and glowing in the darkness.
“I’m not your anything,” Ted says, mouth firing before he can stop himself. “Who the fuck are you? Where are we?”
“Oh, I never get tired of the questions,” the guy positively crows. “Who, what, where, how, why- You ask, and I show you, and we play!” He squishes Ted’s cheeks with his other hand. “But today’s not about our game, Teddyboy. It’s my big brother’s birthday! Isn’t that fun!”
Ted thinks back to the bodies and the blood smeared on his face, and decides, no, this is not fun. “Let me go,” he mumbles, and the guy doesn’t, just keeps staring at him, so he screams in the fucker’s face, “LET ME GO YOU PIECE OF SHIT OR I’LL FUCKING-”
The man abruptly does just that, dancing away as Ted crumples to the floor. The giggles get higher and louder as he groans and tries to get to his feet. Ted only climbs to his knees, but the man crouches in front of him anyway. He’s close, too close, right in Ted’s face.
“You got me good last time, Teddy,” he says, grinning widely. “Don’t wanna get got again!”
“Why- How?” Ted trembles with rage, with fear. “What are you?”
The man grins even wider, hands fluttering with aborted movements like he’s barely stopping himself from touching Ted. “Why, Teddy,” he says. “I’m your best friend! Name’s T’noy Karaxis! Call me Tinky.”
“What- Like teletubbies?”
Tinky cackles in answer like it’s the best joke he heard in ages.
“Alright,” Ted says, unnerved and angry, and itching to punch the bastard. “What the fuck’s your brother done to the mall?”
Tinky dims somewhat, grin downgrading to a smile. Something almost fond. “I forget how fast you pick it up- Dunno why the guys always ignore you! They got that wily guy, and the hollow lady,” there’s a small brush of fingers against his bloodstained cheek, “but they always follow the same footsteps, or they try to fix shit, but other shit gets in their way, and you don’t! You’re the best, Teddybear.”
Ted tilts his head away, scowling. “The fuck you’re on about?”
“Nuh-uh!” Tinky waggles one bloodstained finger. “This is not our playtime! That’s gonna come later- or earlier if I can swing it!” He stands up, offering Ted a hand.
Ted ignores it and goes to stand up on his own. Just as he gets his feet under him, the ground trembles and he falls, to the badly muffled giggles. He glares up at the bastard who grins, unrepentant.
“Take my hand, Teddy.” He waggles his eyebrows. “This one’s a freebie. Feeling generous today.”
“Fuck you,” Ted says and takes the hand.
There is a broken man sitting next to the mall’s entrance. He mumbles to himself, sometimes chuckling, sometimes sobbing, but always coming back to one question, “Spare change for the homeless?”
At night, when it’s cold and dark, and unspeakable things are howling in the woods and in the streets and even in some homes, he walks, so he won’t freeze. And sometimes another man will walk out from the shadows to join him, grinning all the while.
“Why me?” Ted, or what’s left of him, asks. “Why me? I wasn’t the first. I saw others playing with, with your toy,” he spits. “They got off easy.”
“Teddyboy,” T’noy Karaxis says, “I told you. You’re the only one that’s any fun. All the others just don’t get it. They think they do, they make up arbitrary rules, they write them down even, but there’s none!” He laughs abruptly. “Time is a bitch and I like her so much!”
“You piece of shit, I can barely fucking function,” Ted says. “I can’t talk to anyone because I keep seeing them dying, or worse!” They both know it’s mostly the worse thing. “The only time I get to speak it’s when one of you sick fucks try to make a break for it again, and you accidentally destroy the world while you’re at it, again!”
“But what a show!”
“You don’t care about the show!” Ted rounds on Tinky. “You’re not that theatre kid! You only care about your stupid game, that no one wants to play! You know everything! You’ve seen it all! Every ritual, every outcome, every useless apotheosis! Why are you letting them try? Why keep dragging me into this? What’s the fucking point?”
The bastard giggles, delighted by Ted’s anger every time it appears. “Why would I stop them? This is the best fun we had in ages! Ever since that hag, it’s been a real party! But don’t worry, Teddy bear, I wasn’t properly entertained until you.” And he says it so sincerely too, like Ted was ever worried about not being the favourite.
“I don’t want to play anymore. I’m fucking tired. I become this,” Ted gestures furiously at himself, “every goddamn time- and it’s-” He shakes his head, chokes down a sob. “It sucks man.”
Tinky’s hands flutter around Ted, soft touches to his cheek, upper arm, collar of his coat. “But what fun, Teddy,” he says, insistently. “Cheating at the game. Playing outside the rules. Only you, Teddy bear.” He swipes his thumb along Ted’s brow. “You’re my best friend. Playmate. You were so good in the box, so entertaining outside of it- I’ll never tire of you.”
It’s almost romantic when T’noy Karaxis says shit like that. He certainly sounds it, breathy with excitement, he looks it, horizontal pupils drinking in every detail. His touches are proprietary, his words possessive, it’s a wonder Ted’s not back in the toybox.
Not that he wants to be there, of course. He doesn’t want that again. Not ever. But if he is depressed enough, in the coldest months as his breath freezes and his fingertips go blue, there’s a small part of himself that comes to knock.
After the few thousand years in his personal corner of hell, Ted got used to the unpredictability of his host. Tinky got a sick kind of joy from trying everything from the Lords’ arsenal on him. From flaying and the physical arts to showing him everyone he ever cared about bloodied and screaming for salvation. He received a full education in human suffering. It was gut wrenching, and he forgot how many times he begged to stop, and yet .
There’s a wretched, snivelling, animal part of himself, which was moulded in that nightmare, was fed nothing but terror- It wants to go back. It yearns for it, starved for it, because it’s familiar. Because getting flayed open and feasted on feels better than sitting on the cold pavement with Peter walking by just a few meters away.
He feels bile coming up just thinking about it. How pathetic is he? Finally out, and all he wants is to go back into his kennel.
“None of that, Teddy,” Tinky says, still smiling. “No matter how many times you deny and cry and ask why- We will always end up here. Raging against that which you have no control over is pointless.”
“Fuck right off with that sanctimonious bullshit.” Ted slaps away the hand stroking his cheek. “I make my choice each time I get my hands on that fucking box of yours. Every goddamn time. I end up homeless and fucked in the head, because you-” Ted trembles with emotion- “you want to play.”
“Of course I do!” The glowing yellow eyes bore into him. “Teddy, Ted, Teddybear- You don’t know just how boring the world is. How blind all these people! My siblings even!” Tinky leans in, chin tilted up so he can keep staring Ted down. He is so warm. “You are the only one. The only one. You know ! You see !”
“I don’t want to,” Ted whispers. “Just take it away. Take it back.”
Tinky laughs, bright and wheezing. He grabs Ted by the collar and tugs him down. He presses burning hot lips to Ted’s cheek and says, “Never.”
People stare as he walks through the Hatchetfield. Ted prefers not to, but for all of the knowledge stuffed in his skull, for all the writhing memories from the box, for all the things T’noy has done to him- He still has to take care of his body. He is still human as far away as such concepts are to the blood bag he inhabits.
Few places tolerate his begging, fewer still are willing to give him what little food isn’t gone at the end of the day. The food trucks are usually good for it, mall gets him the most change, and he stays clear of the church. Faith was never his strong suit before , and now he can’t step through the doors without hearing the chanting.
Rituals are usually one innocent bystander away in this town, and a homeless man is very easy to disappear.
Ted would know.
So he walks from the food truck lot to the mall, stays clear of most suspect places and generally tries to fade into the background. Today he plants down near the city square and settles into another hollow day of repeating the same question over and over and over .
“Spare change for the homeless?”
Mid-afternoon though, something deviates from the predictable routine. There is a man watching him.
Caucasian, curly hair, scruffy and smoking a cigarette. Ted doesn’t look at him directly. No one likes a hobo staring, least of all imposing white men. He stands stiff too, military type probably. God, he hopes it’s not a kidnapping attempt that does him in this time.
But the man does nothing, and eventually he disappears into a crowd of passersby. As soon as he does, there’s a familiar sensation- Like spiders skittering across his brain.
“Teddy! Have I told you how glad I am you used my box?”
“Not recently,” Ted mumbles and slumps against his chosen wall. No more pretending to be a semi-sane homeless man that deserves change, it seems.
“Because, boy! This is some crazy good stuff!”
“What is it?”
He feels a glow from the back of his head. It’s the only way he can describe the giddy, restless feeling that T’noy is projecting at him.
“Teddy, baby, this? All of today? That guy who was staring at you? That’s new.”
Ted’s breath catches in his chest.
He remembers a long-winded monologue he was subjected to as maggots writhed in his intestines and vultures pecked at his legs.
“Time is like a river, Teddybear,” Tinky had said, braiding Ted’s too-long hair in a pantomime of care. “It flows in its bank. Sometimes it splits. It rushes into oceans and rivers to form little pockets of set events or people.”
Ted wheezed as worms got to his lungs and further still into the trachea.
“It likes predictability. It likes its little routes. It’s why you and I get to have lots and lots of fun together. Other times it… Overflows. Partly because of you guys, but also because it needs to run freely. It’s infinite. There is no such thing as too much.”
Tinky wiped the blood off Ted’s cheek as blood started spurting from his neck.
“So it always forms new connections and meanders. That butterfly theory has it pretty spot on, actually. Something is always different. A gesture. A word. Different choices make those meanders. And when it happens enough times, ha, it becomes a fixed point.
“Wanna know something fun, Teddy?”
Tinky looked at him then, little braids running through his hair and worms coming up his nose and birds eating the last of the flesh of his left thigh.
“I made us a fixed point.”
Ted frowns. “So what?”
It’s not guaranteed that this new baby stream will grow. Besides it’s just one man staring at a bum on the street, there’s been plenty of them over the years.
Tinky cackles, delighted. “What, what? Nothing! Or maybe something! We’ll see what Johnny has cooking up for us!”
“Wait, us?”
He feels Tinky’s excitement catch at him like a broken nail on a piece of fabric.
“But of course, Teddy old boy! I’m not missing this show for the world!”
The next day, Ted decides to sit next to the diner.
The day after, Hatchetfield is swallowed by a sinkhole with teeth.
As soon as Ted is back in the box, Tinky cheerfully informs him that the sole survivor was the mayor’s daughter.
When Ted is thrown out of the box, he tallies up one more apocalypse for Nibbly.
Memories are weird for Ted. He technically knows everything that ever happened, or could happen, or can happen. Every day in Hatchetfield is ripe with potential for disaster.
He doesn’t try to prevent it anymore. Whatever happens, happens, whether it’s a wedding or a funeral, with or without his input. At the beginning he tried. Tinky had a blast when he threw himself into danger, screamed useless warnings… Until he stopped.
He can’t save everyone. He’s stuck in this loop because he’s an idiot and an arrogant fool, why had he ever hoped for something more?
Nowadays he has flashbacks, scenes playing over the reality in front of him, that he can’t stop. Time keeps moving forward, then backwards, then forwards again, and he’s along for the ride. Plucked from the stream like a fish. Flapping about. Dying.
Ted can’t remember the last time he had a conversation that didn’t amount to small talk with another person. It’s… Must’ve been years at this point. His past life as an office worker seems so distant. Pete, his parents, ha, even Jenny, he can hardly tell which things he knows because he had lived them and which ones are from the box.
He walks, now, bleeding from an axe wound. He wandered too close to the woods, again. He can count on ol’ Lumby to be precise at least. No torture, just a couple of hits does the trick.
Ted manages to get to a road leading to the camp. His leg buckles under him as he slumps down. Hopefully no one will find him in time and he can just… Take it from the top.
“Brooding?” Tinky leans against a tree. His yellow eyes glow in the darkness of the forest.
Ted doesn’t get startled anymore by his sudden appearances. He did the first few times, but now he can tell when the bastard will pop up. A sixth sense just for him.
“Bleeding, more like.” Ted sighs as he feels his body slow down. Not long left.
“Teddy, what did we talk about?”
“Uh,” Ted swallows heavily, his vision getting darker, “new thing? Time stream, or whatever.”
“Exactly! And why are you bleeding in the dirt now?”
“Got got. Can’t help it.”
Ted gasps as Tinky steps on one of his wounds. Damn his hooves are sharp.
“You can’t, can you.” There’s a creak of a bone as the bastard bears down harder. “Hm. You can’t…” Tinky trails off, thoughtfully, maybe. Ted can’t tell. He can, however, feel blood flowing as his bone snaps and pierces his artery.
“Don’t worry Teddyboy,” he distantly heard Tinky say, “I’ll help you out.”
There’s a familiar fuzzy feeling in the tips of his fingers as he drifts. He thinks he should be scared by what Tinky said. The bastard’s help doesn’t come cheap, or at all. Ted tries hard to will himself to remember this moment, the time fuckery notwithstanding, because he knows, he knows, something will come out of it.
And he knows that whatever will happen, he won’t like it.