2019-06-04 - Just Smoke, No Fire

When Alexander arrived home, he would notice something immediately strange. The smell of food? After talking to Harper, Isolde got it in her head that she wanted to prove Alexander didn't need to worry about her. She was just fine! She would be okay. So why not make dinner? Wasn't cooking the perfect way to show you were in the right frame of mind? She'd gone back to Safeway and picked up a couple things - easy things. A premixed salad and one o those frozen family meals - lasagna.

Except, something had to have gone terribly wrong. Because when Alexander opened the door there was a smokey haze starting to roll out of the kitchen - likely caused Luigi some distress - and Isolde was curled up on the kitchen floor against the cabinets. She was rocking back and forth, crying and her arms looked to be covered in some kind of scratches and cuts.

Things it's worth knowing about Alexander: he can 'tune in' to people several miles away, and he often reaches out during a day to make sure his damn bird is okay. This time, the bird wasn't. So he's already running when he reaches the door, takeout bags swinging from his hand. He lets himself inside the house, then immediately starts coughing at the smoke. The door is left open and a quick look identifies the source of the smoke. "What the fuck?" He runs into the kitchen and hastily shuts off the oven, waving his hands wildly to scatter the smoke. If this was an actual fire, he'd probably be encouraging the entire kitchen to catch fire.

He also nearly trips over Isolde, and freezes. "Isolde?" He doesn't touch her, but crouches down in front of her, assessing the depths of her wounds and the amount of blood. "Where did you go?" Not 'what happened'; he's a Gray Harbor native, after all.

Isolde doesn't even seem to register Alexander is running into the house, or even him nearly tripping over her. She murmuring something indiscernable through the tears. The cuts are shallow, like paper cuts, or getting knicked by a thorny vine. Or both. Her head finally lifts, hearing Alexander's voice. Her body is shaking as she tries to get a hold of herself. "I ruined it." Whispered as she seems to see the smoke for the first time. Then back to him, face almost crumpling back into tears. "I'm sorry. sorry. sorry. sorry." Repeated as she rubs at her eyes.

"I was here. Here. I was. I thought." Isolde hugged her knees tighter to her chest. "I p...p-put the food in...and the voices...and the plants...the plants talked! They're bad things! The plants are bad things!" Burying her face into her knee.

Alexander puts down the takeout on the floor, and settles on the floor in front of her, still coughing, harshly. His mind reaches out to Luigi's, and the bird flutters to the carpet in the living room, his distressed tweeting going abruptly silent. Suddenly, walking around on the floor is the /most interesting thing ever/. Alexander's attention turns back to Isolde, and he frowns. "You ruined..." a glance to the oven. "Ah. Whatever that was. Yes. I'd say it's inedible, now." Nice. Smooth.

He rubs at his head as she cries out. Looks back at the plants, then back to her. "You got lost," he says, softly. "Those plants weren't," even he seems to recognize that 'real' is probably not the right word to use here, "these plants. It was a different place, and you just ended up there. It was a place with bad plants, Isolde." He leans in a little closer. "But you're back, now. You found your way back."

Isolde shook her head, drawing in a ragged breath. Then slowly peeked back up at him. "...Are you sure?" Her voice was quiet. "Are you sure I'm back? What if I'm still lost? What if you aren't you? And I'm not me and the plants are bad." The wheels in her head were starting to rev up again. What if all of this was just a Dream? What if she wasn't in Gray Harbor at all? What if...

Isolde's eyes widened. "Luigi! Is he okay? I didn't hurt him did I?" Suddenly seeming very distressed about possibly having hurt the bird that may or may not be real. Straightening up a bit, she hissed out a breath, finally properly also taking note of the scratches. "...it stings." Of course it did. "Why did they hurt me Alexander? Why couldn't they just leave me alone?"

Alexander is rarely, if ever, sure about ANY of those things. But somehow, he doesn't feel that an explanation of just how unstable and mutable what we laughingly call 'reality' is would go over very well. So he meets her eyes squarely when she looks back at him, and smiles. "I'm sure. You're back. I am me, and you are in the real world right this second. I am certain of it." He even manages to make it sound convincing, and reassuring.

The question about Luigi, though, is harder to lie about. He says, instead, "He doesn't seem badly harmed. I'll check on him in just a moment. And they eat pain, Isolde. Feast on sorrow, on suffering. You just have a lot of it. So do I. I'm sorry." He stands, then, and moves to start opening windows so that the smoke can trickle out. Hopefully without getting the fire department called on them. He walks by the plants and they fail to attack him.

Isolde relaxes just a little, seeming to believe his words. Reality was entirely subjective and when she wasn't freaking out - that would probably be an enlightening discussion. But for now, she'd heard what she needed to hear. "I'm sorry." She says again when he talks about Luigi. Feeling terrible about putting him in danger. Slowly, she got to her feet, when she saw the plants didn't attack him. That was a good sign.

She picked up the takeout bags he had dropped to the floor and sets them up on the counter. Her hands were starting to shake, but Isolde was trying hard to keep her breathing even, and focus on other things. "Harper was right." She muttered, putting the bag of salad into the bare refridgerator and then starting to unpack the bag he'd brought.

Once Alexander has opened the windows, he scoops up the bird, and does a quick checkover for any major breathing issues. "He looks fine, Isolde." Nonetheless, Luigi goes into the bedroom, where the smoke hasn't had a chance to reach, and the door is closed behind him for a bit. Then Alexander stops off into the bathroom to pick up his very well-stocked first aid kit, and returns to the kitchen.

The food is greasy diner food - Alexander feeds the bird better than he does himself (or, apparently, his guests) by far. "Harper? The librarian? What was she right about?" he asks, even as he opens the first aid kit. "Here. The food will wait. Let me treat your wounds."

Isolde watches Alexander disappear down the hall with Luigi and then resumed the unpacking. The bags going to the trashcan and she snags a frech fry from one of the containers when he comes back with the first aid kit. "She said you were worried about me." She rubs at her eyes again with her thumb and pointer finger to wipe away any lingering tears. "I didn't want you to worry..." She steps away from the counter and then walked towards the living room where the smoke wasn't as bad so he could clean up the scratches. "But I can't...this is why I need the medicine." She sounds defeated. "Bad things happen when I don't take it." But bad things also happened when she did - so that really wasn't an arguement.

"I see." Alexander's lips press tight together, biting back the instinctive flare of irritation and anger. And although he makes a mental note to have a Talk with a certain librarian LATER, he does his best to keep it out of his voice and face. He follows her into the living room, settling in on the couch with the kit, and clearly expecting her to do the same. He thinks, for a while, about what to say and how to say it, fiddling with antiseptic with way more attention than is needed. "Isolde. You're you. I'm not gonna stop you from doing what you feel you need to do, unless I have to. I got some books from the library, so that if you wanted to try to go clean, I could help you through it. But I wasn't gonna try and make you." He hesitates, then says, "Put your arms out. Are there wounds anywhere else?"

Isolde peered at him for a moment, studying him. Noting the pursed lips and perhaps any brief tenseness there may have been. "Don't be mad at her." She poke softly. "She seems like a nice lady." Sitting down on the couch and turning towards him. "...Do you think no medicine will help me focus?" Putting her arms out for him. "Uhm. Maybe." Moving one arm and lifting her shirt a little to check. A few small nicks. "I can take care of those later." She let the shirt fall back and then held the arm out again.

Alexander gives Isolde a flat look. "Just as you are welcome to do as you need, I will be angry at whomever I wish. She should damned well keep her mouth shut about what her patrons choose to research or disclose." But, with difficulty, he takes a breath and moderates his tone and expression again. "It might. Drugs and alcohol always made me worse at controlling it. More things would leak - in and out. I don't know if other people are the same. But it's where I would start. You don't have to." He starts dabbing antiseptic on the wounds, without warning. Asshole.

Isolde doesn't say anything more on the subject. Chewing on her bottom lip as she thought. And then gasped when he started using the antiseptic. "Ow!" Frowning and then exhaling softly and shaking her head. "I will try then. If you think it maybe might help...I'll trust you." Falling silent again aside a little whimper or gasp now and again from the antiseptic. "Do you want me to go?" She asked after another bout of silence. "I don't want to mess up more things for you. I don't want to be a burden."

"Sorry," Alexander mutters at her ow. But he doesn't stop, until every injury is thoroughly cleaned. Those that seem to need it are then covered with bandaids, while the others are just left. "That's terrifying," he deadpans, at the thought of her trusting him, although it's accompanied by the ghost of a smile. "If I wanted you to go, I would tell you to go, Isolde. You're not a burden. You didn't mess anything up." He pauses, glances towards the kitchen. "Except...whatever was in the oven. That's toast." A glance back at her, with an actual, teasing light in his eyes. "WAS it toast?"

Isolde just grits her teeth and bears it. The stinging. Knowing it's for the best. A little bit of a giggle escapes her as he deadpans. Starting to smile some. "Okay...but. You tell me. If I become...uhm...extra." Like she was dredging up a word maybe used to describe her in the past. Glancing towards the kitchen again then back to him. "No! It wasn't toast! It was supposed to be lasagna..." Her nose wrinkled and she smiled again. "It probably looks like a science project now."

"Isolde. Getting lost happens. It happens to me a lot. It's not...happening right now, I think, because something we did made the Shadows happy, sated. But it'll probably start happening again," Alexander says, with resignation. "Because that's just how it goes. So you might hear me scream at night, or I might not be there, or god only knows what else. Gray Harbor's just fucked up like that." He tries to smile, but it comes out crooked and strange. "It's the one advantage of being here. We're all fucked together." He looks back towards the oven again. "Well. Try again, one day. Experiments are a part of science."

Isolde listened closely to Alexander's words and nodded. "If you go away, I'll stay until you come back." She said seriously. Because someone who was lost needed people when they were found. "The bad and the good are all mixed up. But yes. Together. Maybe it's not as bad as it could be." She rubbed the back of her neck and sighed softly. Though maybe looked a little surprised when he said she should try the cooking thing again some time. Then a little uneasy. "Maybe...maybe when you're home too." It was going to take some time for her to trust those plants and that kitchen again.

Alexander stares at her for a long moment, then jerks his head downwards in a nod. What little assurance and confidence he'd been displaying seems to evaporate at the simple seriousness of the response. "Thank you," he mutters, turning to put away the things in the first aid kit. To the last, though, there's a brief chuff of air, hardly a laugh. "Maybe for the best." He closes the kit. "Let's eat, Isolde. Then get some sleep. I think the smoke'll have cleared out by then." He rises to go put the kit up. And then? Dinner. From a diner.