Through the Cracks - There Will Be One Vacant Chair
#9 of Through the Cracks
This is a fic presented as if a documentary miniseries you're watching, is something I should say now that this has gotten long enough and the premise is involved enough. You should likely start with Part 1 here: https://www.sofurry.com/view/1795361.
I'm doing my best to avoid the realization that I just wrote a "-reacts!" video as the chapter of this somber meditation on bereavement and loss. But think of it like this: where previous chapters have been "can I build a story out of people theorycrafting between build updates?" this is "can I build a story out of people live reading to the most recent build update?"
I sure am giving Jenna the dramatic last word in a lot of chapters, huh.
Rated Adult, not because of content, but because the source work is Adults Only. If you're under 18 you're not supposed to have read Echo in the first place.
The titles say: Part 8 - There Will Be One Vacant Chair
"So." Jacob looks grave. "The footage you've just seen arrived, on a flash drive, in the mail. Addressed to Micha, at this office. No return address. The day we were supposed to begin filming."
"Let me be clear: we thought the case was closed. Micha, Devon, and Cameron had pursued every lead. I couldn't find any more leads. Frankly, we found more than I expected, but I was convinced that was all there was to find. It took nearly three months after we thought the investigation was done to be approached about filming this project, to get everyone's agreement to appear, to arrange for travel and, well, all the things the director has to do to make a project like this," he flourishes one hand toward the camera into which he's talking, "happen."
"And then this footage just... turns up. When it does. Synchronicity."
His eyes go distant, he stares through the wall at nothing.
"I don't see any way to escape believing that means something."
"I watched it first. Jacob said I should, it was addressed to me." Micha seems dazed, like a man still trying to make sense of where he is and how he got there. "Jacob never wants to jump to conclusions. I say, why the [bleep] not. I get to get to conclusions however I want: and I believe that video. I can't prove it's what I think it is, but so what? It sure looks like what it looks like."
"So," Jacob taps his desk, pensively, "the first thing we planned to film was introductions. That went out the window when we saw the footage. Instead, what follows are initial reactions to the video."
"Oh shit," breathes the ram, face ashen, "Oh [bleep]." He leans over the laptop. "He looks like he hasn't slept in years, man."
"What is he going on about? I know dunno where this is, or what he's doing, but like... how does this get him any closer to getting back with Chase? That's what he's still going for, right? So like what's the point?"
"Is... he trying to do magic? The hell is this?"
"Oh shit!" His hand shoots out, reflexively, fumbles for the spacebar and has to try several times to pause the playback, without tearing his eyes from the screen. "Ah shit, I didn't... it'd be just like me to panic and like delete it by accident..."
He looks off camera, apparently listening to someone. "Ok, yeah. Of course. Course there's a backup. Sorry for freaking."
"Hey, that's the kinda quartz from the mine in Echo," the gila points, "Used to be a big dusty display case of them in City Hall. The hell's he doing with it?"
The lynx stares, eyes wide, paws over his mouth. "Oh no," he moans, "this is that. The thing everyone's been talking about, that I never saw. That's it."
"It's like a horror movie parody of a marriage. How lonely does he have to be to be willing to let that touch him?"
"Wait he tricked it!" He yelps "Where..." the elation drains from his eyes, leaving baffled confusion. "So, where was he trying to get? What's going on at the end?"
"[bleep]ing hell, Leo." The gila shakes his head, "how's this better? You just... head off alone, chasing your ghosts, run away to ghost world? You think turning yourself into another [bleep]ing ghost monster's gonna bring back what you lost?" He turns away in disgust, his face scrunches, and his eyes clench shut.
He rubs them with the heels of his palms, after a moment, and takes a deep breath. "God damn idiot."
"So... he, like, summoned it? How?! Why?!" the ram still hasn't resumed playing the video. "Like, [bleep] I don't think there's been a single day goes by, these last six years, where I didn't get just a twinge of 'what if there's some real hum shit right around this corner' anxiety! And here he is summoning one..."
"Well, it's not what I was afraid it was going to be," frowns the raccoon. "That's something."
He lowers his head, for a long moment, face too still to tell if he's thinking or trying to work up his nerve.
"If I'd tried to be more of a friend, or if he hadn't been so stuck in the past, then..." he finally says, "this wouldn't have to be how it ended, right?
"Wait, wait. If you've got this video, like, he had to have recorded it, right?" The ram's face gets very serious. "So either you got in touch with him and he gave it to you, or this whole tulpa thing's about to go really badly and you found it on his... Ok, I don't think I'm watching any more of this till you tell me if Leo's alive."
"Dude. I'm the one paying you." His eyes widen. His nostrils flare. He rises to his hooves, out of frame. "I'm funding this [bleep]ing movie, you can stop yanking my chain and [bleep]ing tell me if my friend is alive!"
"When I was first starting out," Devon watches gravely till the end of the video, "this is the kinda proof I would've given anything for. Real proof, you know?"
"But like, look what it cost him. And I don't mean in a 'oh, suffering was the path, to spiritual whatever' bullshit way, I mean like, him doing this would've been literally impossible without the specific things he suffered: without the loneliness you don't get the tulpa, without Echo the tulpa doesn't become whatever it was in addition, without being the only one who doesn't get to put his life back together after, he wouldn't have gone back to it."
"I don't want to say it's not worth it," he says with a face that unequivocally says it's not worth it, "cause like, he didn't choose to have that shit happen to him. It's his choice to do this with it, and I dunno what I'd've done in his place. Maybe it was worth it to get out of where he was stuck."
"But if this is what 'proving the paranormal is real' costs? Then that's not worth it."
"Well," Cameron says, "I've read more than a few books that would call that an initiation ordeal."
"If Jacob's right about the things the Echo hysteria reveals about non-ordinary reality, and if Leo's right about this being a way to go there--cause like, I dunno how else you can describe what I just watched him do--then that means he gets to be, like, the version of himself that everything worked out all right for. He gets to have all the different possible alternate histories of himself."
"I can see the appeal. I just can't imagine what it'd be like to have so little left to lose that it'd occur to you to try."
The ram sits cradled in the gila's arms, the first they've been on camera together. "It's ok," the lizard says. "I watched the whole thing, they're not lying. They really dunno if Leo's alive or where he is. Shit, you want me to like, describe the rest of it?"
"Nah." The ram sniffs, wipes his nose. "I can do this."
The Gila opens the laptop and presses a key.
The ram watches the rest in silence. The gila holds him very tightly.
"Okay, when he's talking, in the long part in the middle?" The lynx leans forward over the laptop. "Can we play that again?"
"Okay. So, I've had to learn to lip read, for work? And I'm not sure what it is, but he's repeating the same phrase over and over. Dunno why I noticed. Crazy the details your mind grabs onto to avoid, you know... the implications."
"Anyway, I think it's something like.. 'The eminence of your love?' 'Elegance of your love?' Almost looks like 'feminist,' maybe? Do any of those mean anything?"
"Do I think Leo's in a better place?" the ram leans back on the couch, by himself again, exhales slowly. "[bleep]. I mean... it'd have to be better than Echo, wouldn't it? Better than any place that thing wants him to be."
"I think I have to. Like, what kinda sociopath would I have to be to look back at all this and go 'yeah, he's for sure in some kinda hell, what a loser?'"
"Let's say I hope, don't say believe. I hope he's in a better place. I believe he's... somewhere, I guess, but I dunno if I could say any more than that."
The fox says nothing. She watches the entire thing, eyes wide, ears stiff. Then she looks past the camera. "Why did you show me this?" she asks quietly. "What is this supposed to mean?"