2019-07-27 - The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

It's been a few scant days since the incident on the stone bridge and Byron is already prepared to be released. The paperwork was being finalized and while he tries to play catch up with all the missed calls, voice messages and emails that he'd ignored during his time of 'madness', Vivian was working on learning the whereabouts of his Rolls and seeing to having it brought to the Bayside Apartments. Thus, she was out of Thorne's hospital room by this point.

No longer wearing a patient gown and donning a long-sleeved hunter green shirt and a pair of jeans, his feet still tucked into hospital slippers, Byron is seated at the edge of his bed, legs hanging down, with a laptop to his side and his phone to his ear. It even looks like he got a little trim of his beard, having not done so in the past, oh... who knows how long, when he began obsessing over the ring. While his hair lacks any sort of styling gel, he does have it pushed back as if it did.

It almost looks as if he were completely back to normal with his busy-body need to work, how animated he looks while talking on the phone or tapping away at his keyboard. The bandage wrapped around his wrist is the only tell-tale sign that he'd gone through any physical trauma and that was a mere rouse to throw off the fact that his once broken wrist was already healed in full.

He couldn't be blamed for not realizing that she's there, standing by his door and watching him work with the same quick, determined pace that she has come to expect from him, but eventually, she does alert him to her presence.

"So we're getting married."

What.

To her credit, Isabella Reede manages to keep a straight and calm expression on her sunkissed features, nevermind the fact that she has been egregiously allergic to the concept ever since they were children. Her shoulder braced against the doorway leading into his room, the toils the ring had forced her to endure retain their marks on her person; she looks like she lost weight and the hollow underneath both her cheeks look more pronounced. But compared to the last time he had seen her, she looks a thousand times better, well on her way to reclaiming her characteristic, fiery spirit. Today sees her in red; a sleeveless blouse with front ruffles tucked under a light blazer, designer jeans and sandals for the summer. Her hair is in its usual, fetching dis-arrangement, dark chocolate locks pulled out deliberately from the bind to frame her face.

In her grip, she's carrying a tiny bubble vase.

She brought him flowers. Maybe she's serious?

Moving further into the room, she deposits the small token on his bedside table. "It's no corsage, and it's around eleven years too late, but since you're still technically confined here, I figured I'd seize the opportunity while you couldn't escape." Mischievous green eyes slide sideways towards his handsome profile. "You won't believe the runaround the nurses tried to give me just to see you. I had to pretend that we were planning this huge production along the French Riviera. I think they wanted to keep you all to themselves. So, uh...if there are rumors suddenly floating around in the next couple of days about you being in a polyamorous relationship with several women in Gray Harbor, you can blame them, not me. I did what I had to."

Watching him for a moment, her expression eases into something gentler. "How are you feeling?"

"I'll get ahold of her." Byron's voice is both confident and filled with regret all the same, "Things have just been a little crazy here, but that's no excuse." A pause, just as he spots his visitor at the doorway. One of his hands lift to indicate 'one moment' as he leans back into his phone again, "She was here at the hospital?" Jesus. "I'll look into it. Thanks." With all of the murders that had happened as of late, a couple of them inside of his apartment complex, there were a lot of grieving and/or angry family of victims that demanded answers. None of which Thorne could actually give them.

The conversation cut, the phone begins to vibrate again warning of an incoming call. Looking down at the screen to read off the name, Byron slides the bar to ignore for now. "We're what?" Yes, he'd heard what Isabella had said and though there's this lift to his brow, he wears a quiet smile.

Now that she has his full attention, all that Byron can do is examine Isabella from afar, dark eyes following along when she moves to the side table next to his bed. She looked great, but even still, that moment when he was summoned to help with her was a blur in his mind. He barely knew what he was doing, himself, but with having had time to reflect on all of this, he does come to a realization. "I'm sorry, Bella." He had said the same when he was under the influence of the ring. But this time, it wasn't a stunt to try to make the room around him believe that he was sane; still himself.

"Lilith didn't want other people to get wrapped up into the mess that was the ring, but I insisted." Reaching for the bed table on which they serve meals on, one of those that can move around easily, he takes up this glass of orange juice to sip. That quaint smile grows wider as she continues to be Isabella again, "Not gonna lie, that wouldn't be the first time anyone's accused me of being in one." A polyamorous relationship? He's most likely joking.

"I'm doing okay. My body's a bit stiff from lying around in bed all day." Does she mean how he's feeling mentally? There's this look that he gives her, gaze lifted, "I'm just glad that it's over and no one--" That's not true, there were two deaths then. To this he sighs, "That most of us got out of it alive." A pause. "How about you? How are /you/ feeling?"

She doesn't ask about the aborted conversation she had just walked in on, as always somewhat hands-off when it came to the private business of those closest to her. If Byron wanted her to know, he would let her know. So as he takes his time to complete pressing business, Isabella sets her satchel on the chair next to his bed, and fusses over the flowers. Years spent living in Europe have given her certain cultural sensibilities she wouldn't have developed if she hadn't gone - the bubble vase is arranged just so, and the blossoms are plucked and shuffled to ensure proper aesthetic appeal and lighting. It might've been meant to call back on a joke she and he have shared, but it was still a gift.

With that done, the scholar-at-large eases herself on the edge of his bed, her body turned so she could face him fully, long legs crossed at the knee. The apology has her shaking her head once, the smile she directs upon him filled with rue and exasperation in equal measure. "Stop," she tells him simply, softly, but firmly, too. "Remember what I told you before? That I have more to make up for towards you than you do towards me?" It was a concept that she never bothered to explain, to try and get the green-eyed brunette to unbottle herself and afford anyone a glimpse of the internal life she jealously guards within herself was a battle on its own, but she believes it enough to keep reiterating it whenever anything like this bubbles up. "You'd help me if things became difficult, whether or not I asked. The choice was mine, B...to be there when you and Lilith needed me to be. Between you and me, I think that absolves you from any blame. Though-- " And hints of her old amusement resurface, something resigned within it. "Despite all my reassurances, I know sometimes we can't help but feel what we feel. If I was in your position, I'd be feeling it too."

His return quip about him being some kind of harem protagonist has her flashing him a grin, lips touched with clear gloss parting to bare hints of brilliant, white teeth. His volley back does more for her concern for him than seeing him work, fueled with his own subtler, but equally relentless drive that has always stayed with him since their youth. "I'm shocked," she tells him blandly, in the way that suggests she isn't. "Absolutely surprised. I never saw you as the type surrounded by girls at all."

Levity tabled to address the quiet sigh and the brief flicker passing over his eyes. "It is," she says. "Thanks to you. I feel like if you hadn't done what you did - if you weren't so calculating and pulled off what you have, Lilith would be hanging on the bridge alongside her father." The search for him had brought Alexander Clayton and Magnolia Jones to the rescue. "And...I wouldn't have wanted to see the fallout of that tragedy. I don't know Lilith well, but she deserves a life, too. A good one. And you would've..."

She knows how it feels. To lose not just an important person, but an intrinsically, breathlessly connected soul bound to her own; the subsequent tearing off of the best pieces of oneself, leaving the gnawing, empty space of what once was.

"I didn't want to see you live through something like that."

The query turned to her, she tilts her head back, levying upon him the full force of her smile. "It was nothing I couldn't handle," she tells him. "Give me a couple of days and a dozen cheeseburgers and I'll be a hundred percent again. I promise."

Oh, Byron remembers the bit of humor shared between them of times gone by, so the mention of the corsage doesn't escape him. "You know, there was this time that I put silent blame on you for trying to mess with my mind. Throw me off my game or to make me become obsessed with trying to find the sender of a mysterious random folded up piece of paper with a black heart on it that was stuffed into my locker in Junior Year." His Junior year, but he'd known the Reedes by then. "I didn't want to ask you about it because if I seemed too curious about solving this mystery and you were the one to set me up? Watching me try to figure out who left me the black heart, I had a feeling you would take far too much enjoy in that. So to err on the side of not humiliating myself anymore, I tried to forget about it."

Taking another sip of his juice, hands resting upon his lap, he adds, "The mystery is solved though. And I was wrong despite my paranoia." Or, in truth, he was correct on the identity of the sender all along.

Does he reveal anything more to Isabella? Nope! He leaves it as a mystery on its own.

"Thanks for the gift, even though you wouldn't have had the time to have asked. Not before I did the asking." Byron isn't quite certain of the correct timeline in all of this. Only Isabella would truly know, so it's all just light jabs and the back and forth banter that the pair have grown used to by now. Unknown to him was at which moment she was planning on doing the asking and what prevented her from following through.

This talk about Lilith and what her fate could have been brings a more serious set to his jaw. He doesn't look entirely upset, but he cannot help but dwell on his own actions and just how devastating it all could have been. "She could have died because of me. I took a shot at her when she had that noose around her neck. It hit." As far as he knows. "Imagine what would've happened if her body lunged forward and off the bridge." His tone comes out quiet, eyes looking thoughtful.

There's this dismissive shake of his head now, swallowing up the rest of the juice so that he can set the empty cup back on the sliding tray. "You know, I could use a good cheeseburger about now." His watch was stored with the rest of his belongings from what he'd worn at the bridge, but his left arm lifts anyway, eyes lowering, expecting to see the watch face. Breathing deeply in mild frustration, he turns to the side to view the laptop screen, taking in the time. "We'll see when they actually OK the release. I'll be checking on Lilith." Another pause, "Surprised that they gave you this much trouble getting in here. Other patients are allowed their gentleman callers." Yes, he knows people who tell him things.

The tale about the black heart mysteriously hidden in his locker was new, and Isabella's eyebrows lift upwards, curiosity worn openly on that expressive face. "Honestly, I'm more surprised about the fact that you didn't get as many locker tokens as I thought you actually did back in high school," she says out loud, lifting a hand to tuck a tress behind her ear. "But yeah, that does sound like me, doesn't it? Leave you with a tantalizing mystery only to quietly watch you go crazy?" Her mouth traps her laughter within, but it gleams in the virid-and-gold depths of her irises. "Except the color. If it had been me, it wouldn't have been black, Ronnie." The look of her that follows afterwards is beyond mischievous, the devil in her roused from its slumber to play - encouraging signs of reclaiming her old self from what has happened. "It would've been red."

There's an expectant air to her, when he tells her that the mystery is solved, and that after all of these years, he finally knows who the mysterious sender was...but when he fails to clarify, she gives him a squint from where she sits. The twist on her mouth says it all, the demand plain upon it: Well?

But he keeps it to himself, and she chuffs, makes that grousing noise that he must remember; she's made it around him enough, especially in the moments when he managed to bait her successfully.

The revisitation of the old joke, and their history - a road that had once been open to the both of them, now barricaded by time and the involvement of others, earns him a smile; it's somewhat more cryptic than her usual, complete with the slight tilt of her head and the lowering of long, dark lashes that renders her expression reprehensibly feline and feminine. She remembers, because she can't not - the night that inextricably tied Byron Thorne, simultaneously, to her best and worst memories of Gray Harbor. There are regrets, of course, typically an unrepentant creature of long memories; daydreams spent as a teenaged girl who wondered, more often than she was comfortable with admitting, what it would be like to run her fingers through his hair and have her mouth part under his.

In the end, paths diverge for a reason. In the end, teenagers grow up into adults.

But it doesn't stop her from sliding him that look, pointing a finger at him emphatically. "I," she begins, armed with that confident assurance, chin lifted in playful defiance. "Will just keep letting you believe that, Mr. Thorne...and be wrong for the rest of our lives."

The inevitable move to a quieter and more serious discussion has her face growing more solemn, eyes catching the set of his jaw and the inscrutability in the depths of his stare. A defense mechanism in the end, he might not even be conscious of it himself - the blast doors that enabled him to maintain such a charming and capable facade despite a troubled home life. For several heartbeats, she says nothing as his profile grows more contemplative.

Finally: "I think the situation would have been a thousand times worse if you hadn't been there," she says. "The objective fact is that you led others there, B. I'm not trying to twist anything to fit a personal narrative. I'm not saying this because I'm trying to make you feel better, but if you had been less careful, I don't know if Alexander or Magnolia would have ever found Lilith, too. I'm not saying take the win, you probably feel like shit every time you think about it. But if I were her...I would be grateful." Though that isn't surprising also, it would be just like her to thank someone for shooting her if the circumstances warranted it.

"Though I think..." she continues quietly. "That you could always tell her how you feel about it and see where the chips fall." If he hasn't already.

Talk about cheeseburgers has her groaning softly. "Right?" she says. "God, you should have seen me the last couple of days. Crepes, chips, oysters, steak...I feel like I've come out of a ten year famine, my appetite is out of control. You're lucky I'm not gnawing on your arm, insert obligatory lascivious comment about you being tasty here." She draws a line in the air in emphasis.

Surprised that they gave you this much trouble getting in here.

"It can't be helped," she replies. "I think word got out that Captain de la Vega wanted to talk to you first, which meant anyone else who wasn't family was persona non grata until further notice."

"As much as I'd that all to be true, you gotta know that I wasn't the most popular guy at school. This I'll admit to you now." Because obviously, the old Byron used to play himself up with that confidence of his. Then again, with the lengths he goes through to manufacture this professional, city-boy 'look', not much has changed. He always needed people to see him as this image of himself that he's always trying to portray.

And anyway, Isidore was one of the most popular guys at school. But he's shone like a beacon. Which, in Byron's mind, would give anyone the advantage.

No eye contact is made, with Byron purposefully not meeting Isabella's gaze when he knows full well that she wants the little details about this black heart incident that he'd brought up. For the time being, that will continue to remain a secret. The rest, though, with her informing him that he would not have been the one to have reached out to her and ask her to the prom, well that just brings an impish grin to his lips, eyes still diverted. "As long as I think I'm in the right, who's going to prove me wrong?"

The topic of conversation was bound to grow more serious, getting Byron to lift to stand and pace around a little. He'd been bedridden for the past few days and then found himself busy with trying to put the pieces of his life back together again. "We spoke right before were taken into the OR in the hallway waiting area. Sure, we were probably drugged out of our minds, but words were exchanged and we've come to an understanding. That said," his chin lifts and he idly scratches at a spot below it, on his neck. "She knows the power that she posseses. She snapped my wrist like it was nothing. At the time I didn't realize it was her who did it. And then what she'd done to Clayton and Maggie?" Byron actually got off easy in all of this.

He then nods when de la Vega is brought up, before bringing up, as it's something that he's dealing with at this moment. "During all of this," Being influenced by the ring, "One of my tenants had a visiting sister who died. Murdered like Mrs. Lewis in my apartments. Carr was their last name, something which Clayton had brought up to me not too long before, but my mind wasn't focused on the bones or any of that. I hear that she, Rebecca Carr, may be staying at this hospital. I need to send my condolences, of course and try to ease her mind that I tried all that we could to protect the tenants in my apartment complex, but she's attached to this in some way. I think," He tries to remember, it's been a while and his mind became clouded by ring influence since then, "I think the Carr family were trying to get their hands on the bones of this Billy Gohl, our serial killer."

"Yeah, well," returned with all of her signature, easy bravado, Isabella's green eyes glittering with barely suppressed mirth. "Don't rule out my ability to do that just yet."

The fact that Byron and Lilith conversed already has tension she couldn't define draining away from the line of her shoulders - an understanding, which she chooses to interpret as two lifelong friends and more, always more, who have forgiven one another for the suffering they've inflicted. "That's good," she murmurs, and she means it.

She doesn't impose herself physically, or even emotionally, despite the urge to do more - to curl her arms around him and truly express how relieved she is, reminded of what she has lost and what she was, once again, on the verge of losing. That he didn't die. That he didn't kill anyone. The conflict wars within her, but unlike her other expressions, this isn't an open one, never the sort to reveal those jagged edges of her. In many ways, they have that in common - the image, the need, to seem unconquerable.

There is, however, a glance at his wrist, wincing openly. "Thankfully some of us are equipped to handle injuries in a very special way," she tells him. "Or know people who can."

Alexander and Magnolia are uncommented upon, though mentions of the former has her turning her eyes away to something else, the subtle tic of her jaw manifesting now and then and eyes lowered to hide the stewing furnace of frustration that brings. But all gone in a flash when she takes a breath, silently grateful for the conversation shifting to less thornier paths. Though the dire news has her staring at him for a moment. "What, another murder?" she says. "Ronnie, what's happening with your build--"

I think the Carr family were trying to get their hands on the bones of this Billy Gohl.

Her lips press together, her eyes suddenly wary; as hard and crystalline as marbles. The recent memory of standing next to Erin Addington, watching her set of Billy Gohl's bones go up in literal smoke (with the exception of a rib) flooding her thoughts. "Why?" she asks, ever straightforward with her questions. "How are they related, do you know?"

Byron may not have killed anyone, but he tried to. And the police might see it that way too. His revolver was still in their care as evidence. Evidence to what, however, is something that they will need to sort out with the statements that both he and Lilith had given. Separately. Who knows if their stories were even straight. They had no time to discuss any of it once they were moved into separate rooms after the OR.

He's slowly pacing about the room now, his phone vibrating like crazy on the bed near where he was seated earlier. There's silent quick thumping now. Imagine if it were sitting on a harder surface, just how much of a raucous it would be making. "I don't think it's just my building though. I'd heard that another Addington was killed, after Erin's parents died. And that was in the safety of his own home. Faust's brother being killed? Not my apartments. This, however, Kelly Carr. Younger sister of Rebecca Carr. That happened in my apartments."

He tries to remember now what Alexander had told him. He remembers the Carr name being mentioned and he'd even given the 'Investigator' a little heads up that he had a Carr as a tenant in his building. If only he'd done something before. Warned Rebecca Carr, maybe." He tries his best to remember. "This was years ago, I think. After William Gohl died." That's when he reaches for his phone to send off a text message, ignoring the incoming call.

Were she asked, that was probably the plan. To separate two suspects before they could agree on a story.

Reminded of the deaths that suddenly plague the city, Isabella leans back, palm on the mattress, watching him pace around the room, as if he could physically herd his thoughts to find the heart of the web. "I'm not a detective," she begins. "But serial murderers tend to have patterns, don't they? Easy to determine by methodology but maybe now that we've got a group maybe we can figure out how they're being chosen. There has to be a connection, it doesn't even have to be blood. I don't know how the Fausts and the Carrs are connected to the Addingtons or the Baxters."

She falls quiet as she thinks.

"You know what I said before about going back to the beginning?" she murmurs. "All we really know is that all of them are somehow connected to or had some contact with the Billy Gohl case, right? The Addingtons because Erin heard his name in the hospital, the Carrs who're after his bones for some reason, and the Fausts because...well, we brought his bones to Dr. Faust to examine. And the only thing we really know of Billy Gohl, other than the fact that he has a descriptive Wikipedia entry and that he's dead, is the fact that at some point in his life, he was committed in a sanitarium built for people like us."

Alexander's words. Her jaw tightens in the hinges.

"...I know you probably won't like what I'm going to suggest." she says quietly. "But maybe we should give Vivian's experience another once-over. I don't exactly know what she saw, I just know the basic details. What Alexander managed to tell me about it. He said it was her story to tell."

The Hendersons were the family so far out to left field that Byron just can't find a connection between them and the rest of the murders. With phone still in hand, he continues to tap out a few quick messages, before scrolling through his Contacts list for tenant phone numbers. "I'd asked Clayton whether he believed that our each taking a piece of Gohl may have resulted in the attack on Doctor Faust and her brother. He did not believe so. Still, I won't say that I wasn't uneasy about the thought of still being in possession of some of those bones after what happened to Faust."

For a moment, his gaze lifts from off the screen, dark eyes alight on Isabella. "At first, I thought this murderer was out hunting Addingtons. With Mrs. Lewis, Erin's parents and also now Hyacinth Addington's father." Yes, he recalls hearing something about that during his ring fueled mania. "So many Addingtons. One Henderson, almost took out another. And now a Carr." Sending off another message, he then says, "I'll try to reach out to Rebecca Carr and see if there's anything that she can tell me about William Gohl. Maybe there are some hints in her family history."

The phone now lowered, he just blinks at Isabella's suggestion, being a little confused by it. "Vivian's experience? At the hospital?"

The rest earns a nod, but Isabella remains contemplative, brows drawn together - the best way to tell, in the end, that her mind is going a mile a minute. Her fingers have reached up to the moonstone pendant around her neck, its swirling, rainbow color catching the light streaming in from his windows. Another beautiful day in Gray Harbor, made all the more apparent by the way the token glitters between her sun-touched fingers.

"Keep me posted?" she asks, with respect to Rebecca Carr.

His confusion is one she answers with a nod. "Yeah, whatever it was that happened to her," she said. After a moment, she sighs. "Ronnie, look...you're recovering from some very serious injuries, and I know they're expecting us in City Hall in a couple of days. I don't know whether Alexander's in any shape to go either, his leg looked awful when I saw him. I have a few of Billy Grohl's bones, if you need a break from all of this, I can go ahead. I'm fit, I'm able, my mind's my own again. I'm pretty sure I can deal with a boneless flesh blob that doesn't have any arms or legs."

She purses her lips. "Well, a bone, anyway. I saved one. I burned the rest." A stubborn look enters her features. "Between you and me, I've had my limit with inanimate objects attempting to coerce me to follow their whims. I've updated Erin on what I have also, so far. She's retained a bodyguard to protect her, though how much of a shield the man can afford her against something like this, I'm not sure about. But we do the best we can with what we've got, right?"

Dark eyes lower to the pendant and though Byron's memory of it is brief, he recalls the first time he'd seen her wearing it. It wasn't that long afterward that Isidore disappeared. He'll look on it, the way that her fingers toy with the pendant before his gaze lifts to meet with hers in a fleeting quiet moment. He won't bring it up and more than likely has no understanding of its significance, but he remembers it.

"Of course, I'll keep you informed. I don't know what importance the Carrs have in this thing with Billy the Gohl, so I'm curious." By now, he stops pacing, giving his lean frame a light stretch. "I'm, at least fine to head down to City Hall. I can't say the same about Clayton, but if he was worked on by the same doctor who did me, then I have a feeling he should be up and walking in no time." He extends his bandaged hand in her direction, she can touch it if she so wishes, to feel the bone which was once broken. "Feel free to inspect it if you like. It's repaired. We just keep the bandages on because otherwise, it's a bit odd."

This mention of the burning of Billy's bones has him blink. "You burned them? Did it scream or anything?" It was pretty maddening when he was in possession of those bones and was being corrupted by the ring. One set of items wants him to do one thing, while the other, a far stronger force, compelled him to do another. "We still have our set of bones. If you recommend burning them, I'll see about having it done."

When his dark eyes lift, he would find those eyes - reminiscent of the color of sunlit glades - turned inward because she is unable to help it; the omnipresent chill of her pendant's setting never seems to soak up any of her body heat, no matter how often she wears it, reminding her forever of the way she unconsciously reaches for the private limbo she once shared with her twin, only to come up empty. It is self-flagellation in a way, when she instinctively cuts herself open again and again on the jagged edge of this most significant loss and the failure that resulted in this cleaving of her heart and soul, leaving nothing but the vacant space he used to occupy. It was akin to the room Irene Baxter Reede still kept in their family home, all of his things clean and untouched, his clothes washed and pressed every few weeks, but with its tenant gone. Some would think it the pathetic, desperate, hollow yearning of a mother who never stopped grieving the loss of her son, but even so close to it, she doesn't feel that way.

She is there, but not and it is the way Byron's eyes meet hers that grounds her back to the present. For a heartbeat or two, something weighted and breathless hangs in the air between them, strung taut like a wire.

She almost tells him then. What happened that night. Why the call hadn't come.

The failure she has carried with her for over a decade, this urge to suddenly confess her greatest sin to someone who knew this other half of her, these missing best parts of her. Who she knows, indubitably, wouldn't judge her for it. Who would appreciate knowing. She isn't the only person that Isidore had left behind.

In the end, she doesn't. Isabella answers that silent glance with a smile that she hopes is reassuring, unwinding her fingers from the much-loved token hanging around her neck. It falls against the deep red of her blouse, multicolored motes scattering against its surface like a thousand shards of broken glass.

"Should've worn a tube top," she ribs him. A lie, in the end. She would never.

With the talk returning to the Carrs, she nods in absolute agreement. "So am I," she said, unfolding herself off the hospital bed and slipping back on her feet. The outstretched hand is one looked upon with a strange, uncharacteristic hesitation, but it doesn't last long. She reaches out, but not to inspect it. Her digits tangle with his, giving it a squeeze; ultimately a pitiful stand-in for all the things that she could tell him, but is unable to. "And it's not as if I'm a stranger to that kind of deception," she continues. She doesn't explain why, but he could guess - she was an active child, she kept falling off trees. She has had her share of broken bones, but she never suffered for long. And if Byron had ever been injured around Isidore Reede, neither did he.

"They kept yelling at me to bury them," she tells him with a wrinkle of her nose, releasing his hand gently, careful not to aggravate any injuries that she can't see. "I heard nothing when I burned them, but it might also be because there are others that can still be buried. I did it last night, but....just to be safe, give me a day or three. I'll tell you if there are any ill effects." She says this mildly, unblinkingly, as usual unfazed by whatever unknown danger might be attempting to reach her. It may be stupid, foolish bravado in the end, but what did it serve to panic? She is intimately familiar with the dangers of being deep underwater, and Life has a unique way of drowning a person if he or she is incapable of adapting.

She pauses and then she reaches out to pick up her satchel. "Anyway, if I can't talk you out of it, I'll see you in City Hall in a couple of days, if not sooner." Expression softening, emerald irises lift to fix into his darker own. "You take care, Ronnie, okay? Get some rest."

Byron's not going to hold back a smile and a laugh at this tube top joke, the edges of his eyes crinkling in humor. "If you'd worn a tube top, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have noticed the pendant at all." It would probably be buried deep in there somewhere! "It's beautiful though. Very fitting for you too." Somewhere inside, he knows that it's important to her. She wears it all the time and fingers it whenever she's thinking or fretting over something. Then again, stress and anxiety could lead to her doing the latter, needing something for her fingers to play with.

He tries not to dwell too long on the thought, his eyes watching as she presses down on what should be a splinted wrist. Byron, too, was used to shattered bones and all sorts of terrible things that were just part of his childhood. He was freed from the torment sometime when he was 12. It's a wonder, after everything that he'd experienced, that not many caught on about what was going on at home. As if he didn't often have many injuries to show.

"Well, I don't want those bones anywhere in my apartment if I can help it. I was supposed to have hidden it in one of the vacant rooms, but..." He breathes in deep, "My mind was preoccupied with other thngs." Things like the Ring. Hearing that she plans on departing, he steps in to give her a parting hug. She may not be an emotional person, but there was often something warm and friendly about Byron. The Byron of old. "Thanks for stopping by and checking in. And thanks for being someone to talk to." There's some worry in his expression now, imagining these bones being burned, but he doesn't want to voice any of these concerns. Not in front of her, "But yeah, let me know. I'm ready to get rid of them ASAP." He releases her from his embrace, shuffling back to the bed in those hospital slippers. "I'll try. Once I get back home."

The outrageous flirtation back has Isabella laughing, lips pulling up to incinerate him with a smile that would put the brilliance of a thousand stars to shame; just as bright, and just as cutting as a blade, but liable to leave a pleasant ache after. "If you're not careful, I'm going to be this close to suggesting that rumored polyamorous arrangement with Vivian," she warns him, though she's clearly not serious. Her pinky strokes the curvature of the pendant from underneath, glancing down at it, her sun-bright smile tempering into a softer, but much more inscrutable bent. "Sid gave it to me a couple of weeks after we turned sixteen, he told me he needed the time to save up for it. If it's fitting, it's only because it was given to me by someone who knew me best."

There is no sorrow in her explanation, electing to use the memory to make affection the most overt emotion; the rarest thing, for a woman who often claimed to be allergic to the gentler aspects of the human condition.

A deeper venturing forth of it is one she's unable to help; green eyes widen when his taller shadow engulfs her own, the strength of his limbs banding about her. The surprise of it leaves her arms slightly bent on the elbows, her gaze peering over his shoulder Were they younger, this would be another tick on his side of the board when she looks so flabbergasted that she doesn't know how to react for a few precious seconds.

She doesn't remember the last time she has been held purely because someone wanted to hold onto her. Other men have come and gone, other relationships - as brief and fleeting as the wind, burned out by raw passion and fury until there was nothing left to consume; reminded, in the end, that outside of her immediate family, Byron was the closest she had ever come to loving another person in the ways that truly matter.

Her arms wrap around him in turn, squeezing him gently. In those fleeting moments, she lets herself sink into the warm bath of his affection, kept this way by the first half of their lives. Within his grip, her resolve strengthens - she had failed with Isidore, of a magnitude in which she could never recover. But with everything happening, maybe her return would enable her a second chance to rectify it - to see this other figure in her life happy and freed from this doorway to the gates of Hell. To soar, to find his destiny elsewhere, and hopefully not alone.

With Vivian? With Lilith? She doesn't know, and that was an issue that she wasn't about to touch with a ten foot cattle prod, because oh god, why? Byron Thorne was a grown man, capable of making his own decisions.

Thanks for being someone to talk to.

"Always," she says, when his arms drop and her foot steps back away from him, slinging her satchel over her shoulder. "I'll let you know about the bones as soon as I can. Raincheck on that cheeseburger. Give my regards to Vivian, and let her know I'll be talking to her soon." And with that, she is on her way.