2019-08-31 - Hope You're Not Busy

For a change, it's August who texts Itzhak. Late--much later than they'd normally be chatting.

"Just in time," August murmurs to himself, shakes his head. He's lying bed next to Eleanor, who's fast asleep. The Xanax has tamped down the lingering nerves from earlier, but he's not ready to sleep. Not yet.

August blinks as something occurs to him. "Oh."

Because Itzhak can't be relied upon to pick up subtext every time.

August chokes back a laugh. He doesn't want to wake up Eleanor.

August sets his phone aside, settles back in the bed like he's sleeping. He breathes steady and even a time, letting the power gather around him, then reaches out to Itzhak. This is easier than the last time; Itzhak is right there, only a couple of blocks away.

The greeting is different for Itzhak, though. The river is different, the forest is different. Like new growth after a fire that's allowed a change of season to push through. There are scars, burned trees sticking out among the ones that made it. The water muddied with dirt and burned branches, but beginning to clear. And around all of that, a kind of deeply satified joy, the kind that comes from considerable exertion.

<<Hey.>>

Itzhak's surprisingly close, in fact. As he settles into the link, the sense of his physical presence fades in. Loose and warm and satisfied. His mental presence is similar, relaxed without his usual edge of mania and irritation. He takes a moment to 'look around', puzzlement and worry flickering through the kythe.

<<The hell happened? You okay?>>

August answers the second question first, since it's the easier one, maybe also the most relevant. <<I'll be alright.>> He takes a second to relish that certainty. This isn't the devastation after Sarajevo. That had been more like a personal Mt. St. Helens, had taken just as long to recover from, remade the landscape of himself in similar ways with similarly irreparable scars. No, this was something else. Forest fires were growth. Painful, but a fact of life.

<<Eleanor and I, we were...taken. Pulled Over There.>> A small shudder through the link. <<It was pretty brutal.>> A long, thoughtful pause while he considers something. <<I won't show you unless you're sure you want to see it.>>

<<Shit,>> Itzhak murmurs. His violin music sweeps over the landscape, investigating. <<This feels like what happened to me after I was pulled over, except I wasn't burned the hell down. This is like what you showed me that time, isn't it? Mt. St. Helens?>>

He associates that with Disney, of all things. The Firebird Suite from Fantasia 2000, with the mountain exploding and the stag and the wood nymph. He pictures Roen's inner cleansing as the painted glorious flourishes of flowers and life--not that it's like that yet. But it will be. He can feel it.

<<Hit me, chief,>> he sends back promptly.

<<Not quite that bad.>> A fleeting image of Spirit Lake after the eruption, choked and clogged with thousands and thousands of trees, like an avalanche of bones had emptied out into it. <<More like...Yellowstone.>> He means the fire, somewhat infamous for how it ravaged the Park. But the trees came back, and the USFS had revised how it treated fires and overgrowth.

Painful, but necessary.

<<Okay. Here we go.>> The sense of August taking Itzhak's mental hand. It comes in brief stills and moments of action. August is keeping as much of his own panic and terror out of what he shows Itzhak as he can.

It's Gray Harbor, reduced to rubble. Air raid sirens wail in the distance. Eleanor is somewhere, he can hear her. He has to find her.

Someone is trapped in a building. He almost stops to help them, doesn't. Training dormant twenty years has clawed its way into his mind: triage. Save the ones you can. He can hear Eleanor, so she's alive. He has to find her, because this isn't Sarajevo. (That rattles around like a soft whisper of music, a lone flute: This isn't Sarajevo.)

The building finishes the people begging for his help. He forces himself onward. Eleanor is down in a basement of a building in precarious shape. Down in the dark. Another moment of needing to force himself to go in there and get her.

Now there are...a lot of Eleanors. Zombie Eleanors, coming out of mirrors. She seems to dance, destroying them. August smashes the mirrors because, well, now he has her back and his fear is turning into righteous anger.

The visuals falter, flicker out. The rest isn't for Itzhak to see, but maybe the aftermath is self-explanatory given how August feels: spent, satisfied.

Itzhak's quick to support and lend strength to that little whisper of flute, swelling it with his strings. This isn't Sarajevo. Matching the melody, weaving into it using his musician's skill, he creates something with it that can ring across the valley (if August so chooses). This isn't Sarajevo.

As he experiences the memories, he is so proud. Kvelling, like he's said before. August is a hero. August is his hero. And damn, Eleanor ain't too shabby either! He had no idea the quiet coffeeshop owner could pull off moves out of The Matrix. At the end, there's a strong sense of him smiling in rare, unrestrained joy. He knows that's not for him, but oh, he is reveling in how happy it made August.

<<Wow,>> his violin-voice whispers. <<Wow. August.>>

Spicy herbal scent/fossilized amber lit by the sun/the feel of rich crumbly loam. August.

August lays there in the bed, feels tears slide back into his hair. Music in the aftermath of devastation, wasn't that how it was supposed to work? The dawn chorus over the wasteland, waiting for the new beginning to get a move on. It winds through the trees, the charred corpses and the ones in tatters but still standing and the ones that escaped.

He doesn't feel particularly heroic. He let others die to get to her. He knows that's just how it is, but it never makes it better; just reminds him it's not necessarily his fault. Bitter knowledge, the worst kind.

<<Ellie thinks They wanted me to fail her. See her die.>> (The not-Eleanor in the rubble starts to coalesce into something else that he gently dissuades from taking shape. He marvels, for a second, that he can do that without a snap reaction, just tell it: no. Not Markale. Not right now.) <<I think she's right. I don't think...no. I know, I wouldn't have gotten out of there, without her. Might still be stuck in there, trying to dig everyone out.>> Not a hero, he's thinking. Just very single-minded.

Of course August chooses to wend, not ring. That's his way. Itzhak's way is to yell from the mountaintops. Play his fiddle loud, stamp in time, rev the engine of his Vette until either he's about to come or someone's about to arrest him. Or both. Both is good. He knows enough to offer the music, let August do with it as he likes. But music it is. Rich and singing violin music.

<<Think that's right. They'd feed on you a good long while like that.>> Itzhak sends it with a defiant sneer. <<Too fuckin' bad for them. You won. You and Ellie.>>

Well...is winning the right word? When this way, They can just keep harvesting? Like good farmers, making sure not to eat their seed corn.

Who cares. August changed and it's good. Therefore, winning.

He'd talked with Alexander the other day, and Alexander had said he was strong. Itzhak had said almost the same thing as August now: he didn't feel strong. He didn't feel like he'd done anything but survive one breath to the next. Well, now he knows Alexander was right, because he's thinking the same thing about August and clearly he's correct in doing so.

<<I did all my ringing when I was young.>> August isn't being sour or cynical there; his mindvoice is bright with wry humor. <<Time to let someone else sing the verses. I'm happy to listen and join the chorus instead.>> He'd still be in the song, after all.

<<They would, wouldn't they?>> He turns this over in his head, especially the farming. <<The real fight for us, then, is to be harvested as little as we can, and get out of that as best we can when we are.>>

He thinks of the devastation of two and a half decades ago which they'd replicated to do this to them. A fine example of what happens when those with power and the ability to do something choose not to. <But I'm not going to stop using my power. We just have to balance it. They're coming for us, one way or another. And I'm not letting bad shit that I could stop go unchalleneged just because they might swing the scythe.>> What was that about not ringing? For a second he does; a challenge of a brass chorus.

He might be emotionally and physically exhausted, but he's not unhappy. Yes, it was a victory.

Damn straight it was a victory.

Itzhak is feeling real smug tonight. A lot has gone his way recently. And now he gets to welcome August back home from his own trial-by-Veilfire. Oh yeah. Everything is coming up Rosencrantz.

He's worried about Ignacio, he's worried about Alexander, he's worried about Izzy (who is out of town for some reason?) and he's worried about a whole lot of things and a whole lot of people. Including himself, for a change. But this? This deserves a toast. Too bad he can't be bothered to bestir himself to do it proper.

So he just imagines it, lifting the heavy silver cup of Shabbos wine. Fragrant, cool, sacred. <<L'chaim. To life.>>

<<To life.>> August mimics the visual, happy for it. He's survived something ugly and difficult and not come back maimed and empty handed.

Still here.

<<So. Keep your eyes peeled. Never know when they're gonna show up for their share.>> He lets that sit, a necessary fact of their lives. Difficult knowledge, but worth knowing.

<<Probably my last night in town for a bit. A lot getting out of hand back home.>> He expects he'll be spending more random nights with Eleanor, though. He'll have to work out something with the neighbors.

<<How're you doing.>> He can sense the answer is 'pretty not bad' but would rather hear it from Itzhak.

In response to the fact, and the warning, that sooner or later the Unshaped will take their turn at his soul, Itzhak spins an image of an enormous armored figure, from that video game he likes. A massive rocket-powered hammer and a vast energy shield and a ridiculous German accent: "BRING. IT. ON. I live for zis!"

The big guy stands in front, taking the punishment while his team works behind the cover he gives them. That's who he's telling August he is. Or at least, who he wants to be. To hold the shield, to be the shield--he thirsts for that.

He shifts in the dark, letting August have a better sense of where he is. In someone else's bed, namely. Izzy, Bex--he's done a lot of work in the last few days, and he's replete and smug as a great cat who was starved and then permitted to gorge.

<<The ghost that cut Sandushka's throat is out for more blood. It killed Bex's sister.>> He purposefully pushes the memory of how she told him away. <<So I'm staying with her a few days. Dunno there's much I can do against a ghost, but she asked me to stay a little while.>>

August smiles at the sight of the character. He's only vaguely familiar with video games (in the sense of 'my sisters' kids play them so they define my gift purchases'), but he doesn't need to know the specifics to understand what he's seeing. <<Pretty sure that guy still needs some backup. Don't you dare ever pull that nonsense Alexander tried to.>> Not that he thinks Itzhak will, but, he sort of does. A little.

August takes in the different setting. He manages to not think at Itzhak anything like 'my my' but it's right there on the surface of his thoughts. Well he can't talk, he hadn't exactly been a monk in his college years.

The ghost. The sight of Alexander in the hospital bed, his throat cut, almost becomes Itzhak. Almost. <<They need to figure out what to do about that thing. Make sure she knows if she needs our help, she's got it.>> Is it too much to hope she's less stubborn than Alexander? Does Itzhak only go for obstinate types?

<<The worst thing you can do is charge into the enemy team. A shield's no good without damage and healing to back it up.>> Itzhak tries to act like he's totally committed to not being a chargebro, but both he and August know he's fibbing. <<Sandushka's working on it. Irvriya too. Yeah. I told her we'll help.>> He hadn't checked with the other three. He'd had no sense that he needed to. This is what they do, to him. They help. <<The Ghoul says he's gonna break his previous record. I'd almost ask if she could use your cabin while you're staying with Ellie, but she wouldn't do it. She'll only put up with protection so long as it doesn't interfere with her jumping to do whatever the Chef wants. She couldn't do that from out there.>>

So, the answer is yes, apparently. Itzhak likes the stubborn ones. Isolde grows like a wildflower in an asphalt split, ever reaching towards the sun. Bex is almost her total opposite, cool and perfectionist. Both defiant women in their own particular ways. Itzhak thrums with how happy and humbled he is to bask in their presence. August had told him he needed TLC, and he'd scoffed. August is right again. Congratulations August! Mazel tov.

Then there's Ruiz (the thought bubbles to the surface). Oh. He hasn't told August that Ruiz is coming around to brace him. Well now is clearly not the time to explain that or even begin to examine the bloody Gordian knot of the vicious little game the two of them are playing. Nope, move along, nothing to see here, no bad life choices lurking on the horizon.

August's wry smile filters through the link, a soft chuckle chasing it; it's the only response needed to Itzhak's insistance he totally knows to not go haring off by himself. Well, Itzhak's nominally aware he shouldn't be doing that, which is a step up from where Alexander was. August will take what he can get, resign himself to sometimes needing to patch him up after the fact.

A grunt of discontent about the Ghoul, and record-breaking. <<We'll see about that.>> He considers the cabin, and Itzhak's description of the woman in question. No, she doesn't sound like she'll go for that. But... <<If she does want to take you up on it, she's welcome to. We have fiber out there, whole group chipped in to get it a while back.>> A fast data stream--the real problem when out in the woods. Batteries and solar panels could handle power, water was trucked in and stored in tanks, but data that wasn't pay by the gigabyte? That was the real limiting factor these days.

Well, if Itzhak goes for the stubborn ones, August goes for the messy ones. It's just how things are sometimes. Nothing entirely wrong with that, as long as one knew what one was getting into. Of course, it was so easy to think that--

He catches a glimpse of that thought, and it derails his train of thought. Only a glimpse, though, and he's not up for chasing it. Another time, maybe with more alcohol, to discuss bad boys and why August was really over them, sexy as they could be. (Just thinking about bad boys makes him exhausted. Or maybe it's just the last few days and especially the last few hours. Or all of the above.) <<Okay, this old man needs some sleep.>>

<<Rest up, old man. Ya gotta keep up with your girl.>> Itzhak answers, affectionately saucy. <<I'll see you soon.>>

As he lets the kythe fade out, he gives off the sensation of turning over in cool rumpled sheets, a sleeping body next to him.