CHARA AND TIM

ho ho hoLY SHIT am i on board with wherever things go from here.

Tim was a troubled youth growing up; now that you're familiar with Marble Hornets, you're well aware of just how troubled he was. He was pretty much alone and devoid of any kind of responsible parenting. Instead of a family, he had doctors and nurses and an imaginary tall man who made his head hurt. And while at first Chara struck him as this vaguely strange kid, they didn't really set off any weirdness sensors in a "danger" sense. They were a kid in a warzone. They had every reason to have grown up too fast. And that was sobering to think about, but there wasn't much he could do, was there?

Only things would proceed to get increasingly more complicated from there. The more he'd interact with them, the more Tim would be struck with the uncomfortable realization that they reminded him of him. They reminded him of a child who screamed at hospital walls and reached the point where all he could think of to do was burn the entire place down and hide from the ashes, bury every last part of his past and keep running from it for as long as he could. A kid who panicked until his teeth chattered and never dared forget that he was a freak, freak, freak, who was fucking crazy and off his meds and needed his fucking happy pills to keep him normal and sane and interacting with people. A kid who only really had a meager collection of friends, one of whom was so earnest and genuine in his smiles and his laughter that Tim couldn't help but marvel at what someone like Brian could possibly see in a depressed loner like Tim.

He could recognize that Chara was a child with a lot of rage. A lot of rage that they did a lot better job of controlling than Tim ever did as a kid, but it was still unsettling to think about - what happens to a kid to make them like that. He'd know that children are impressionable. He'd know that there are certain things you just can't walk away from unscathed, when you're so young that every word sears itself into your brain.

And then when they proved that they could recognize a suicide attempt on sight, that just confirmed some of those grim suspicions. Something terrible, or maybe multiple somethings, had happened to them, and hell if he could say what. Tim is far less controlled than Chara in almost every respect, easily succumbing to self-loathing and downward spirals of self-blame and self-directed frustration, particularly in a crisis. Which didn't help Chara's general disdain for that sort of thing lol. But Tim is also cursed with this goddamn.......compassion for people he can relate to, and he can see a lot of himself in Chara. So he tries to help them with their shadow and ultimately proves to be more of a burden than a help whoops :') He tries to be less of a problem, less of a responsibility, and like most things in Tim's life, he fails at that too.

Particularly since they resonated.

Holy shit, not only did he realize that his concerns regarding Chara were well-founded, he had no idea how to actually deal with it. He's so profoundly unused to handling his own shit in addition to someone else's that he floundered. He used their determination as a fulcrum multiple times for his own gain, and while he felt intensely guilty after, that sure as hell didn't change the fact that he was still using them. Turning them into a tool, which he of all people should understand is such a shitty thing to be made into. He had no idea he had a soul. He had no idea how to handle someone else's thoughts in parallel to his. He completely fucking lost it, downward-spiraling like only Tim Wright can, which didn't help Chara's situation in the slightest; an unfortunate tendency Tim has, to get so wrapped up in his own shit that he can't always see past his own fury and hatred for himself.

But if he could do one thing, he could keep a secret. He could tell a lie. He could understand a plan to disappear, and he could understand the desperate clinging to that one shred of agency a plan like that allows, particularly to someone who's never been granted that sort of agency in their life (while he was paradoxically kiiiind of stripping them of theirs in his own way lol). And even if it was sobering, he wouldn't encroach on that. There was a solidarity there that he couldn't ignore.

So when they tried to literally cut themself out of him, he let it happen. Even if it resulted in his death, that was a small price to pay.

Because they deserved a break, if nothing else. And what had he ever been to them but a burden?