2019-09-04 - Last Call Casualty

Tourist season is almost over and by how the common room of the bar looks, out-of-towners know it. Its wooden confines - within and without - are sparsely populated by bodies, around a quarter of what the crowds had been over the summer months. The poor turnout is not helped in any way by the weather, also - dark clouds hang fat and heavy over the barely-visible line of the horizon, stretched over the Pacific, their outlines illuminated by the occasional fork of lightning that branches down in a flash towards the water. Thunder, booming and loud, rolls from across the distance, the sound pushed by fast and relentless winds that rattle the establishment's doorframes and windows. Overall, it's not a night to go out socializing, but that clearly hasn't stopped a few; after all, what else is there to do in such a sleepy town at the end of the season?

Isabella Reede has a fondness for storms, forever drawn to their most active characteristics, and she must, otherwise why else would she be here in such weather? She even seems to draw some energy from it, the way she strides inside with those brisk, businesslike strides, indelibly marked by the life she had led outside of Gray Harbor, a decade and change traveling the world and living in its most metropolitan cities, emerald-gold eyes lit with her signature restlessness and brimming with the exhilaration that comes with being outside the elements. Drops of water cling to her skin, the defiant line of her jaw, a sprinkle soaking into her jacket and darkening the copper-bronze streaks in coffee-colored locks, pulled back away from her face by a single pen and a haphazard twist, making it clear enough that much like almost all women who keep their hair long, she is an expert in the kind of feminine magic that allows her to perform such a feat without the aid of a clip or elastic. She is dressed as casually as ever - jeans, a loose linen top under her blazer, and boots, her only visible accessory that moonstone pendant that she is never without, swinging against her clavicle with every step.

She makes a beeline for the bar immediately, armed with her satchel and already hunting for her wallet. But she's clearly not just there for a drink, her eyes flitting over the few faces in the room, dismissing them within half-seconds until they alight upon Easton. There's a ready smile, open and effulgent, making her way there and claiming a stool on the other side of the counter, depositing her bag on the one next to her.

"Hey, Easton," she greets with a wiggle of long academic's fingers. "You know what I like." She doesn't even look at the area behind the bar, where all of the bottles are, and it isn't even in reference to the nickname he has given her, presently unknown. Someone hasn't told her about it.

The dark skies hanging over head appear to be reflected in the lone bartenders eyes as he leans against the back of the bar. A pad of paper in his hand that he scribbles notes on and then crosses things out and tries again. What topic has him so weather appropriately vexed? Theme Nights. More specifically how to keep a steady flow of patrons into the bar without increasing the chances that he put a gun in his mouth at some point. He's cheerful enough when he puts down the pad to serve customers or just chat for a minute but his furrowed brow reappears whenever he picks that pad back up.

Looking up he sees Isabella striding in and his gloominess lifts, his lips curving into a smile. He is already moving for the Glenlivet bottle before she's said anything. He nods and says, "Yup, tall dark and touch-averse conspiracy theorists." Oh, she meant the drink. Yes, he also does know that too.

And sadly for now, her nickname goes unsaid. But give it time.

Yup, tall dark and touch-averse conspiracy theorists.

The return riposte has Isabella blinking a little bit at him, so caught off-guard by the sudden and unexpected quip that for a moment, she does nothing but stare at him even as he plucks the Glenlivet bottle out of the back shelf. But what soon follows is an unfettered laugh, face and body tilting slightly away in the doing, green-and-gold eyes coming alive even more by the sudden expulsion of mirth. "Grand. Perfect, does that mean you're fully stocked on those? Because I can table the scotch for now and drag whoever you've got to your back room. Give me at least thirty minutes." Elbow finding the surface, she braces her chin against the cup of her open palm, visibly radiating amusement. "Christ, I wonder what that says about my social life when Alexander can have that kind of talk with his buddies and I haven't even said anything to mine."

Not quite an exaggeration, but perhaps unnecessary. She was certain the entire dockside had heard her announcement through the PA speakers of her houseboat, a declaration that was, by all rights, done out of equal parts affection for and annoyance at a man who considers himself a social pariah at best and a persistent plague on one's reputation at worst.

Watching the barkeep across the bar, her earlier grin fades into a more tempered smile. "How are you, Easton? How's the life, and..." She catches the pad of paper he has left on the counter, squinting at the upside down words. "...Trippin' Texan Tuesdays? Are you thinking of setting up a mechanical bull? If you are, you definitely have to let me know - because, not gonna lie, I've always wanted to try."

Easton pours the drink and doesn't seem to mind that at least at first it looks like she doesn't appreciate his humor. He's used to being just a bit louder and bit more brash than some people's taste. He's fine with that. But then she's laughing and he lets his smile widen into a grin. He agrees again readily, "Oh yea. I keep the walk-in stocked, how do you think I met Alexander?" A ripple of laughter shakes his shoulders at the required time. "Damn, you're thorough. I normally brag on giving the ladies the best three minutes of their lives."

"In fairness, Alexander did mention something about an announcement over a boat's PA system? So I think you at least get points for effort on informing your friends and various marine life about your intentions."

At the more serious tone in her voice he gives a good natured shrug and says, "I'm still here. That's good." Looking down at the notepad as she reads it his smile slides completely off. He shakes his head sadly and says, "Yea. Sadly." But perks up a little at the mechanical bull. "Oh that's way better. I was actually falling into a depressed enough state to consider line dancing. But bull riding would actually be fun."

"I wouldn't be surprised at all if he found his beginnings somewhere in the back of your walk-in," Isabella jests back, reaching out with those long fingers to take her short glass and take a pull of her scotch, savoring the smooth burn down her throat and hitting her stomach, warmth spreading up and over her chest. She doesn't seem to be in any hurry to knock it back, but considering she is gesturing for the man to keep the bottle close in hand, chances are that she is girding herself for something, and she probably is. As much as she would like to claim that this is a social call, it isn't wholly one - serious business has brought her here today, and she needs some kind of depressant to keep her calm and able for what is about to follow.

Ultimately, the scotch is a temporary measure for problems she has yet to address - something the man across from her probably understands better than most.

Comments on her thoroughness earns Easton a lascivious wink, and a lift of her tumbler in a silent toast. "Why do if you can't do properly? I'd go into detail, but I'm not that drunk yet. Though that's not bad either- three minutes. Just means you've had plenty of practice and that, my friend, you can take to the bank and cash any day."

The quip about the houseboat has her laughing again. "Aha, so you have been talking to him. Look, it wasn't my fault." Her irritation returns, a faint ripple over her sunkissed features as she takes another sip. "He was the one making noises about how we ought to try being difficult together, and then turns around and asks me how I want it to look, because apparently the town'll lynch me for being with him - not his exact words, but they might as well be if you ever saw his face when he said that. So I got rid of the problem in the most efficient way available to me at the time." And as her rant escalates, so do her words - like a rushing tide. "Human relationships of all kinds are complicated enough, it's going to be messy either way, why anyone would bother dancing around that specific triviality is a mystery to me, so if anyone has a problem with it, they can take it up with me and I can personally tell them all to cram it up their asses."

The stubborn tilt of her jaw becomes all the more apparent and defiant at every syllable uttered, likely to drop a mic in the middle of the floor if she actually had one. But the rest of her tirade catches up with her; another blink, and she glances down at her glass. "Wow. That's really good scotch."

His more sober expression has her inclining her head. "Is that a problem, usually? You not being here?" she wonders, folding her arms on the counter and looking up at him, though seeing her suggestion being so well received earns him a return flare of her million-megawatt smile. "It would. I mean, I suppose line dancing might be fun also but then you'll have to listen to Achy Breaky Heart over, and over and over, and I like you enough to anticipate being depressed reading about you having drowned yourself in the ocean after the seventh hour of it."

Easton mouth upticks slightly as she enjoys the drink. He will readily admit that he gets tired of making the more fruity concoctions and is often tempted to tell customers to order a real damn drink but he does his best to not give in to his curmudgeonly future nature. But still he would also cop to thinking better of Isabella and and others who enjoy a good liquor all by itself without need to dress or disguise it. As for needing a drink to calm his nerves, well he's been telling himself that for about a year straight so he's hardly going to begrudge anyone that option.

Easton laughs as she seems fine with his self-deprecating joke about a mind blowing short time. Watching her get wound up in defense of her PA based boat hosted declaration of intentions causes Easton to stifle further laughter and raise his hands in mock surrender. If he had any doubts about her compatibilty with Alexander that bit of insight into her intensity assuages them easily. "Hey, I get it. Time was I probably would have been one of those assholes in need of being told to cram it. But I get it, from his stand point. He may not have realized how willing you were to tell people to shove their unwanted opinions, which by the way, I find endearing."

The comment about the scotch does get him to admit, "And I know it pisses Alexander off, but I'm sorry to say you're forever hot scotch Isabella in my head now. Your man may not be fond of nicknames but I am. Sorry to say.." As if to prove his point he pulls out his phone to show the text conversation earlier consisting of him, [Alexander NOT ALEX] and [Hot Scotch]

Her question about not being there gets a shrug "Sometimes." He had meant here as in not dead, but getting lost is also a problem as well. "I wouldn't last one, first of all and second, the mechanical bull actually might be fun. I'm sold."

"So" He raises his eyebrows and exhales before asking, "How the fuck do we do this?"

Intensity. If there was a word that could embody her with a few syllables, it may very well be that; her aura is imbued with a restless corona that would easily remind one of a star on the cusp of fusion, potential energy waiting to be transmuted into something volatile and alive - too big for her body, the fragile human vessel that she is, to contain in full, ready to come apart at the seams and leave nothing left of her to pick up and discard.

With Easton's suppressed laughter, Isabella's grin remains and slender shoulders lift faintly in a shrug. "I suppose if he needed to be kicked off the saddle in that regard, it might as well come from my boot. I know there are probably some very good reasons for how he thinks - he's perennially capable of self-reflection, but so far, I've not been privy to them. And honestly? I'm not all that in a hurry picking apart all of his mysteries." She winks at him cheekily. "Though I'm very pleased that you find it endearing, since I'm not exactly what we call a soft personality." She can be, buried under her more bombastic and temperamental layers, but she is not about to reveal to the rest of the world that she is capable of being a marshmallow.

She blinks when she's shown the texts. "I have a nickname?" she wonders, peering at them. And if it is even possible, her bright expression grows all the moreso effervescent, and she laughs in pure, unbridled appreciation for it. "Are you kidding? I love it! Don't apologize, I'm flattered to be called Hot Scotch until the day I die." Though hopefully that eventuality doesn't happen to either of them soon. Calling Alexander her man, though, does drive a more sheepish look on her features, an awkward rub of her fingers at the back of her neck as she suddenly looks very interested in what lies past Easton's shoulder, indicative that she is in no way accustomed to this - being involved, at least not to the extent that the possessive is used. She has yet to form an opinion on it.

Which will have to be delayed as she pushes off the stool. "Alright. First of all, bring the bottle, because I feel like we're going to need it. Second of all?" She jerks her thumb towards the persistently-lingering customers waiting for the ring of last call. "Tell the extras to beat it. Your place, your rules."

Intensity is something that Easton appreciates. There's no room for timidity in combat or life and death situations and Easton would argue that life here in Gray Harbor counts as both of those things. He doesn't see glimmer as visual, to him it's a visceral gut reaction when he comes across people who stand out. To him it's that feeling in your gut, at first he thought everyone who Glimmers was out to get him, mistaking it for a sense of danger. Now he has it honed to understand the difference and he's well aware of the fact that Isabella feels like a bomb about to go off. He's more like the first boom of an RPG, already in action, waiting for the impact.

Not all that in a hurry picking apart all of his mysteries

"More interested in picking off his clothes? Nothing wrong with just having some good ol' sweaty fun." He noticed the look earlier in referring to Alexander as her man. He's hardly one to push for relationships, considering Bennie is only number two on the list of what could qualify as a relationship. He just grins at her appreciation of the nickname.

Easton picks up the bottle and calls out to the bar, "Alright, y'all we're closing. Sorry for the abrupt nature, but I'm cranky and want to go home and sleep." One of the waitresses raises her eyebrows and looks between Easton and Isabella, which garners a glower from Easton and mouthed, 'no'. The patrons slowly filter out and the waitresses are just as eager to get them out and get an early night too. Finally after a few more minutes it's just Easton and Isabella. He carries the bottle out from behind the bar, snagging himself a glass on the way and heads to one of the tables.

"I'm not great at the head stuff. I'm more about moving things, stopping things. I can find stuff too, just up until now it's always been my stuff."

More interested in picking off his clothes?

"Yes." A single word confirmation, unashamed; a tactile creature by nature, she periodically immerses herself in the input from all five of her senses, especially when it comes to something she deems engaging or pleasurable. Glancing over at him, she smiles and lifts her shoulders in a shrug. "Not that we've had a lot of opportunity, considering the roulette we play regarding hospital stays. I can count how many times we've been together in one hand." Twice - practically a felony, in her opinion, for a man built like and as deliberate as Alexander, and for a woman who looks and acts like Isabella. "When it does happen, it's..." She pauses, struggling to put it into words. "....thorough," is what she elects to say in the end. "And I don't mean just physically. Neither he nor I have ever been with anyone like us before, so it's..." And there''s a helpless gesture on one side. "...not just the clothes, but the brain, too. It really wouldn't feel like being with him without that last, specifically. If nothing else, I suspect that's probably the reason why he kept being pulled in my orbit and me in his at the beginning. The intellectual stimulus."

A winning smile, a slender finger tapping to her temple. "He can keep up with me up here, and I guess he can keep up with me down there." She points downward towards the cradle of her hips, her smile turning more visibly arch and feline, eyes lidding to complete the reprehensibly feminine expression. "So it works out. Emotionally...?" She points to the bottle of Glenlivet in his hand. "I think that's what the scotch is for. The world's foremost feelings lubricant. Centuries old. Can't beat tradition."

If not just because her wild, globetrotting, hurricane self has never really struggled with infatuation of any kind before - not this intensely, not this deeply, and especially not with someone who stands to threaten bigger dreams by making her consider sticking around just by being his dark, effortlessly masculine and surprisingly magnetic self. It was just as exciting as it was ridiculously galling. All elements of that considering, the scotch is absolutely required.

The look shot at Easton by the waitress nearly has her laughing again, but at present it remains trapped within her, emerald irises carrying her amusement as she slides them in the corners towards the ex-marine's way. She follows him towards a table, surprise flitting across her expressive visage when he goes into his talents.

"So you're like me. Mostly." Isabella pauses, before she slides into a seat, working the words out of her jaw. "My twin was a genius at it - the 'head stuff' - growing up. He...you can say he taught me, our entire lives before he disappeared." To her infinite credit, she's able to keep a calm facade when she touches on it a little, though the words are paltry ghosts compared to the reality of it - how does she explain to someone the kind of connection she had lost? "But like I told you over the texts, it's been over a decade since I seriously used, but I remember a time when I could walk around a room blindfolded, and not trip on anything. Used to compete with him to look for secret passages and stolen treasure. Explains the career, I guess."

All of that is still in you, Alexander had told her just recently.

Her eyes drop to look at her scotch, expression inscrutable, tight under the blast doors of strenuous memories, before she swallows the rest of the liquor on her glass, letting liquid gold hit her nerves and soothe them. She nudges the empty tumbler towards him for a refill; meanwhile, she spends a few minutes looking at him.

It must be the alcohol, because she can't quite get a read on him and she shakes her head once. "Well, this is going swimmingly already," she says with a sigh. "Alright, could you do me a favor? Take a shot." She nods to the bottle. "And then close your eyes and think about a door opening."

Easton's slight lift of his eyebrows as she begins to talk about her relationship thus far with Alexander. The openness is unexpected but he rolls with it and nods amiably as she shares how many times they've slept together. And then she's talking about the actual act and it turns out his eyebrows can in fact go higher. His head tilts to the side when she talks about his brain, wondering exactly how that all fits in. It's not exactly the first thing he thinks about when discussing sleeping with women, but he's a bit more simpler in that department. Of course then she brings it back to him being able to keep up and Easton's back on the train with a knowing smile.

"Goodness, I both do and very much don't want you to meet Bennie." He blinks and realizes that she might already if she's a local. "Bennie Oakes? We're uh.. she's my girlfriend." He stumbles a bit at defining that, and rushes the next part in a bit of a fluster, "I think you two would have a little too much to talk about." Not that he's ever been modest by any stretch of the word, but the thought of combining the two of them seems somehow fraught with peril. In a good way.

that's what the scotch is for.

"Boy do I know how that works." Because scotch, whiskey and all their friends is just about the only reason Easton's able to function emotionally, at least as far as he's concerned. Her knowing look at the visible assumption of the waitress gets only an apologetic shrug in return. It would hardly be the first time that Easton pulled something like this, and it probably looked very much the same from the outside. Yes, in reality their time together will be far less of an enjoyable exercise but only the two of them know that.

"You had a twin?" The past tense is picked up on, even if the twin revelation surprises him for some reason. Maybe it just makes him think of Sutton, another woman who's lost her twin brother. Something about it feels eerily similar in a way that would normally be brushed off as coincidence, but here feels fraught with meaning and something more dire in a way. It's hard once you start opening yourself up to the possibility that events are meaningful and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Things that once could comfortably be scoffed at, are now taking on weight and importance.

The shot is downed and Easton gives her a look as if trying to figure something out before he closes his eyes. "I'm going to try and push that dream to the surface. I ... the last time I tried this it went poorly." But that was all those messy emotions things. This is just a dream memory. It should be fine. Fiiiiine.

It's definitely the scotch. It lubricates many things. This would be around the time that Easton may very well have a sneaking suspicion that Oxford phD candidate, Isabella Reede, might not be entirely sober. Pregaming: It's a thing. Especially when she's about to do something that normally leaves her knees locked and her fingers shaking, reliving things she is too terrified to recount. She doesn't even seem to be aware of the fact that she's opened up part of the landscape that she normally buttresses away from others in Easton's presence, and it might also be because he's a bartender; around these parts, they're practically priests with how many confessions they hear on their countertops.

Words about his girlfriend has her laughing, finally, her beaming smile directed his way. "Miss Oakes. I'm relatively sure she's one of the two people who saved my life," she tells him. "I've heard of her, seen her, but I haven't really talked to her in any length. I should probably fix that one day, especially if it'll make you nervous. Annnnd...there. See? See? It's starting already. Is that a blush, are you blushing, Mister Marshall?" She follows the wake of his fluster like a homing beacon, her grin getting so big that lines of laughter start to crease in the corners of her eyes. Too young, just yet, for them to be visible every time she laughs, but when this amused, they can't help but show.

His query about her twin has her swallowing another shot once her glass is refilled. "Junior year in high school," she murmurs, electing to answer the unspoken question. "He disappeared." The truth, but not the whole truth. "Byron told me you're a summer kid, so you wouldn't have known. But it was all over school. Our entire lives, we were connected, until that year."

After a moment, she takes another swallow of her scotch and straightens up in her seat, letting the alcohol do its work in her bloodstream. "Alright," she says, quietly, taking a breath and closing her eyes. Fingers tremble, faintly, but she digs her nails into the wooden table, as if bracing herself - to hold onto her calm, if nothing else. "Hit me."

The swallow of scotch helps to calm him too. Not so much the alcohol hitting his bloodstream, that will happen later but just the taste and the burn down his throat and the immediate warmth it provides. He's well aware that she's already had at least a drink or two, gauging patrons level of inebriation is a bartender skill after all. He doesn't care though and he certainly isn't one to question anyone about how much they are drinking. He's only recently admitted to Bennie that he's aware his own drinking is past a certain point, but that's about as far as he's gotten in that process.

"Blush? I would like to think my body isn't capable of that." His smile broadens and he says, "I happen to pride myself on having no shame what so ever Miss Reede."

The truth about her twin quiets him down though and his eyes narrow, a slight upturn of sympathy in his eyebrows at hearing about her brother. He agrees with the charge from Byron, "Guilty." but doesn't elaborate on her pain. Maybe some other night they will drink for that reason, but he makes the decision to leave it. He doesn't want to dredge up extra emotional baggage right now. It's a tactical decision to avoid a replay of the other night. He may not have a sense of shame, but he does have a sense of pride and he doesn't want to spend the next hour sobbing uncontrollably in the bar with her.

The image in Easton's mind is disjointed. Like a patchwork of stills from a movie laid next to other another. They shift between being up on a large board on the wall and set out on a table to review. It's as if he's trying to arrange them as actual photographs and his mind can't decide which framework to use. Finally he forces them up onto the board and they can be viewed. The photos themselves occasionally shift or go out of focus but with some effort are brought back in line.

One is clearly a shot of people digging up a coffin from a grave. The plain pine box is visible but dirt obscures most of it.

One is a shot of the coffin being opened, the decayed body with deteriorated clothes still covering it's shrunken shape.

The last is the coffin being loaded into a hearse. The door of the hearse keeps shutting and being forced open again like a looped image.

There is a sense of heat outside where ever this place is. Of muffled noises and activity that feels important, like you should focus on that instead of the pictures. Occasionally radio static is heard and then quieted before any messages can come across.

I happen to pride myself on having no shame whatsoever.

"Then we have more in common than initially surmised, good sir," Isabella replies, keeping up with the exaggerated, polished accent and flashing him yet another one of those smiles.

She is relieved to move past the subject of Isidore, however - it's plain on her face, so expressive normally that it's all the moreso when bathed in the gentle inducements of liquor, and tension that she is unconscious of carrying winds out of the line of her shoulders as they finally get to the crux of the evening, and the secrets he intends to impart upon her. Her chest concaves in a deep, deliberate inhale, and she does what she can to keep herself a float. One by one, those formidable mental defenses fall, unfolding a passageway for the images to slip through. Not much, just a crack, as if slipping photographic paper underneath doors that are suddenly just there, barricading the rest of everything she doesn't want to come flying forth into him. From what she remembers of her twin's tutelage, this is the part of the process that is the most tenuous, the most fragile - building the bridge.

There had been a time when she embraced these gifts with the wholeheartedness of a child at wonder and prayer, and now...

Her brows knit together, a jagged shard of shadow forming in between under the ambient light of the bar as she takes these images in her mental hands and sorts through them, her smiling mouth pulling slowly down in a reflection of furious thought and strain. She tries to look at the faces of those unearthing the coffin - them, first, before the dirt-covered box, followed by the desiccated corpse within. She flips over to the next photograph, turning the image of the hearse and the coffin within these careful, intangible fingers.

She can feel the heat, hear the noises. She slowly sinks into the experience, and lifts the portcullis higher, to let the background, the static filter through in a rush. Storing the pictures in the vault inside of her mind, some part of her can't believe it - how easily all of this comes to her, like swimming or riding a bike. Natural. Too natural.

"Easton," she murmurs. "I'm going to try and focus on something else, alright? Just keep thinking about your dream." And with that, she'll attempt to draw some better details from the background, her surroundings. After a moment's hesitation, she opens up the vault again, stepping within her own mind and letting the door of the vault seal her shut, to better immerse herself in these captured moments, and see if she can mine more details.

The image of the men digging the grave has one man in a suit, man Easton's mind vibrates the word <<Carr>> at, each time she passes her mental gaze over him. The weird omniscient dream knowing that occurs where your mind helpfully fills in details that you couldn't possibly know are associated with something visual. The other man in the ditch flickers, sometimes turns to laugh in mean, vindictive manner. Other times the flesh seems to slide from his bones. There is an intense dislike associated with him and the name <<Uncle Monty>> resonates in her mind.

The image of the corpse being revealed holds not much more associated with it. There's a disinterest almost in the decayed body as if he wishes he could fling it out and examine the box itself, but these are images from a dream, not things he can manipulate and move. They only have so much substance from the repetition. He didn't let on to most that these were long, long recurring dreams that were with him for weeks. It's likely because he found them an almost pleasant reprieve from his own.

When the vault is opened Easton instinctively moves to look. There minds are connected after all and though she's not showing him on purpose, there is a curiousity, not so much of the contents but the mental construct itself.

"Okay." He replaces quietly and tries to focus on those images, making them as clear and as still as he can. He is occasionally distracted by the need to quiet the noise around him, to force the air in the room back to a comfortable temperature. In the real world a light bead of sweat appears on his forehead as if that heat were real, or perhaps it's just from the exertion of trying to do this. Who knows.

Her manicure scrapes against the wood underneath them, Isabella falling deathly silent. A trickle of perspiration mingles with the rainwater by her right temple, sliding down slowly down the curve of her cheek as she braces herself to step further into the images spooled out by Easton's mind. Iron bands of tension start to tighten over her chest and her inhale takes on a subtle shudder - too faint, perhaps, for him to hear. But alcohol and her determination, so far, is working and she moves herself towards the men digging the grave, hearing the quiet notes of identification in the humid air.

Uncle Monty gets a pause, and he'd feel the stirrings of emotional feedback - sharp, like a blade, and white-hot as her temper rises. His eyes are closed but he can practically see her own in the distance, twin embers radiating with amber fire. Like her eyes, but at the same time not - this other piece of her, buried deep, and faint and strangely....so far away. As if she isn't sitting just across from him, close enough to reach out and touch.

As Isabella keeps examining the strange tableau before them, his shadow crosses her own and his mental eyes fall inside the vault in which she stores her memories - multiple doors, multiple hallways, the labyrinthine network of the gallery in which she houses her greatest joys and most painful regrets. But the longer he looks, the more he'll sense an unsettling incompleteness, like a picture torn in half, or most of a fresco broken off forcibly....for at the very end of the main avenue is a yawning darkness, the black almost palpable and tangible that details simply aren't visible, where winds echo and the sound of skeletal branches rattle, along with whispers of a vague terror swirling above a seemingly endless chasm - as if everything that she is suddenly drops off into nothing.

"They're very clear," the young woman murmurs. She doesn't even seem to be aware that Easton is peeking well into the vaults of her, glimpses a few of their winding corridors. "The images you can call up from your dream." She then moves towards the hearse, to take a good look at the pine box being loaded, all the while attempting to focus on the background and the noises.

While Easton is busy taking a look into the vault as if trying to understand what it's purpose and function is, his own mental landscape undergoes some subtle shifts. The most immediate being that shadows along the wall of the room the pictures are housed in, detach and move about in person shape. They aren't menacing, it's clearly his men, facelessly moving in and out of the scene around him. The noises outside are now more clearly heard as gunfire, the plink of thunk of small arms fire hitting stone buildings like a hail storm but horizontal and with a much more deadly intent. The moment Easton stops looking at the vault, once he gets a sense of the loss and what's missing, he backpedals into the room and quiets it again. The figures disappear. The noises are once again muffled.

He focuses back on the pictures and is surprised by the sensation of her eyes watching from a distance with some intensity. For a moment the scene flickers with uncertainty, ready to drop the contact if possible at first unsure by what those eyes mean.

"Yea well memorizing them was a nice distraction." He doesn't elaborate on why he would consider these pleasant dreams but truly there is nothing that disturbing about them. There's no sense of menace, only a deep desire for them to not take the body. "How do you locate something from just an image. I usually use ..." His voice is low, almost a growl as he concentrates on the mental link for sharing the images and keeping his own mental defenses at bay. But then he stumbles over trying to explain how he finds things. It's an abstract concept based on feelings and gut, not easily put into words. "Touch, I think. I think it's the feel of the object in my hand? Let me focus on that for a second. There's a point in the dream where I handed the casket up."

And that image immediately rises. Easton gripping the sides of the casket and helping to lift it up and out. The feeling of the pine box on his hands, mostly dirt but some of the roughness of the wood as well. It's damp with earth and almost soft in places. He tries to focus on the feel and reach out with his physical aspect, looking much farther for something than he ever has before, and with much less familiarity.

"I'm not sure..." He doesn't finish the thought, he just goes quiet again as he tries to focus on finding this. Find this.

There's nothing down there. Absolutely nothing and he can feel it brush against his skin, this all-encompassing, swallowing umbral shroud, where nothing remains but the corpses of what had come before.

How could there be nothing? She's a person.

...isn't she?

Sweat trickles further from Isabella's temples when the background noise intensifies the further he slips into the vault, the further he chances to take a look. The scent of gunpowder and cordite, familiar and well-loved, laced with the sweltering heat of a distant gunfight, sting her nostrils. Bullets echo in her mental acoustics - she had known Easton had been in the service, recognizes his gait for what it is, because her father has a similar injury and quite possibly similar experiences also, pieces of her past that she has not yet managed to convey to the man in front of her. The temptation to follow is strong there, too and she pauses at her exploratory wake, turning her eyes in that direction. The urge to follow, to know, pulls at her like something living, a tether that promises her the world, if she only dove deeper.

But she recognizes the trap for what it is - the old warning that she remembers, pulsing in the back of her skull.

It fades when Easton pulls back, and the young woman remains oblivious. His words, however, do cull a reaction - he can sense her nod. "If you're practiced enough in the Talent, you can do that," she murmurs. "People like you and me, the Talent we share - we tend to be very spatially aware. If you blindfolded yourself and walked around a room, you'd probably be able to get a sense of where things are even without you trying. And judging by what I see in here..."

There's a pause, a breath, added concentration. She remembers how to do this, but she can't reach far enough. It's the fear, suppressing the breadth of her enormous potential - Easton can practically taste it at the back of his throat. Her own fingers reach out and without another word, at least for now, she moves herself, to pick up the pine box's other end, and assists the man in hefting it up.

"You've been using a lot more than I ever have been," she tells him. "My brother used to say it's like a muscle. Just like anything else, it develops with practice. I don't know if I can find it from here, but maybe you can if you..." Her jaw works in an effort to explain it. "...spread yourself out. Like water spilling from a container that doesn't stop refilling, flowing over until it spreads out along the floor, covering everything. Or air, how it travels. Once you do that - when you've spread yourself as far as you can go, try homing in on a similar resonance to what's in your hand."

Slowly, slowly, she sinks further into herself, like soaking in a warm bath, made possible only because of the alcohol in her system, and the fact that she is bridged with a calmer personality - she can use him as an anchor, and in return...

"Follow me. Do what I do, or similar, what makes sense for you, whatever is easiest - and then move past me."

She ripples from her end of the coffin, her image turning blurry, water from nowhere slowly pooling from her feet, spreading out to cover the grass, defy physics and climb over everything it touches. She can't reach as far, despite all the power he can taste - something is preventing her from doing so, but he is hampered by no such thing. With the bridge between them, she can feel it, knows it as well as her books and procedures in field research. She is no good here, compared to others, but she can use old knowledge, at least, to help things along.

Between the chill of the emptiness of the vault and the burning of her eyes, Easton feels the need to back off quickly. He enforces order on his mind, commands it to snap to attention and it responds. Sure there are fuzzy edges here and there form the booze but that discipline is still there, ready to be called on. Were it another time he might go looking into that void, wanting to see what that looks like, but now is not the time for that kind of exploratory mission.

The one thing about his mindscape that sets it apart is the almost void of emotional resonance. There is planning and there is action. There is no feeling about those plans or those actions. It's like the emotional undercurrent that normally would support and infuse this space has been cleaned from it, removed and placed somewhere else. This only shifts when it comes in contact with her grief, her anger. Then there's shifting walls as if trying to block that out, to push it back.

<<I need a drink>> A thought he did not meant to send, for sure. It slips through the link though.

But then she's holding the box with him, putting them both into the frame of the picture as it animates and comes alive. He wants to stop it though and just hold the box for a moment. Feeling it's weight is important. He's never thought about why he knows where his keys are. Or knows if any gun is out of place in the apartment. It's an innate thing he never thought to practice with before now. Now he tries to get a sense for this unfamiliar object and what make it, it.

"I can't be effective if I don't practice." It's clearly something he's told himself and it's on the tip of his tongue when she mentions his practicing. "Okay" He tries to sound sure, to rise to the challenge that she sets before him, but there is definitely not the conviction of his other statements in that agreement.

When she starts to pool and spread he falters and grits his teeth. He can't sense like that. He can't move like water, his mind is too rigid. Too much structure in the way to let it flow in and around.

How does he move? How does he expand his mind's reach to look and search?

A grid overlay falls on the world around him, and he let's himself disassemble like she did. But not into water, into search teams. They work in well defined patterns, clearing square after square on the grid. He can feel them communicate back, target not found. His mind needs that structure.

I need a drink.

He'd hear her laugh softly, with his own corporeal senses. "Should've had more before we did this," Isabella tells him gamely, though she keeps her eyes closed, and her fingers gripping the table. She could elect to tell him that, mentally, considering the bridge - but for some reason, she doesn't. And as he pulls away from those far away eyes and the emptiness of the vault, he returns to the task at hand, where she patiently waits. She doesn't even seem to realize that he's seen a few things - the great drawback of the alcohol in her system is the fact that she is less alert than she normally is, and her defenses are already down in an effort to do this.

But his landscape is interesting, too - these inner shapes of him that are scrubbed of anything lying outside of the tactical, a sharp contrast to the expressions she has seen from him prior to this; stoic, clean, orderly, with sharply defined lines and clear details, right down to the echoes of gunshots and the metallic ping of bullets, the cratering of masonry on each and every impact. Precise - and not unlike her father's own interior planes, from what she remembers exploring of it back when she had been much younger and less hesitant to embrace what she had been given. She refrains from exploring too far, or too deeply, however, but much like in the physical world, her perception hardly misses anything, if not just because Easton is presently making it difficult to focus on anything else but him and his experiences with the repeating dream that has haunted him for a few weeks now, although she would have no idea that it is a welcome reprieve from his other ones.

She must sense his uncertainty - this is new to him, or at least, to use it deliberately, and she is patient when she shows him how. Lectures, after all, are part and parcel of her profession; she is not unfamiliar with the principles of educating someone, of treating anywhere she is like a classroom. It is just as true here as it is out in the physical world.

There is relief - it twigs in the air they can both taste, when he translates her meaning into something that he finds easier to grasp. As the search grid unfurls before them, he can sense, and hear, her soft murmur of approval. She is suddenly there again, solid and clear, gripping the box with him.

"Good," she says quietly, encouragingly. "Now send them outward, further and further. Take your time, Rome wasn't built in a day. You can do that until you feel something press - you'll find a perimeter, eventually, the further you go. But judging from your grid, it looks like you can travel pretty far. Keep going - I'll be right here."

Should've had more before we did this

"Seriously" Easton growls back, the concentration of extending his senses out across the grid causing him to strain. His actual hands now grip the edges of the table, steadying himself and providing some resistance for his body to flex against. Exertion of glimmer is a not something he can easily accomplish without tensing his body and usually moving with it. But her talk of letting his reach extend out helps him to think about his senses pushing out, still working through the grid in a calculated search but he finds that he's artificially limited the 'teams'. There are reserves. It helps him to consider that and decide to push more of his energy out into the surrounding area, his own aura shining just a bit brighter. She can sense there is some relief on his side as she talks him through it, gratitude at being shown how to do explicitly do more than what his mind was naturally doing with these abilities.

The duality of his mind versus his outward mannerisms is extreme. The loud boisterous, bawdy personality that pushes boundaries and is quick with a joke shows almost no correlation to the disciplined, tense and extremely combative interior. There was obviously some attempt at sanitizing that for her, whether to protect her from it or keep it private isn't as clear. The muffling of noise, the limiting of the view to a single interior without windows or 'natural' light. This is the first time he's shared a mind link with anyone beyond barking thoughts into their heads or having Aidan graciously show him how to converse more naturally.

She can feel him 'touch' something out there, there's a jostle in his mindscape that feels like the building just took a hit of some kind. It causes him to immediately retract the sensing and his actual eyes pop open. There is a sense of him pushing her out of the building, out of his mind and closing the door. It's not angry or scared it's just protocol. And with that the link shuts off.

"Fuck."

Easton lets go of the table and takes a few deep breaths trying to get his bearings and let his mind readjust to where he actually is in the physical world. The sweat has gone from a light sheen to now a more serious dampening of his shirt and hair. He runs a hand through his hair and picks up a napkin to actually mop at his face. He pours more liquor for the two of them without asking and downs his glass in a single gulp, setting the glass down hard. It's clear that whatever he touched rattled him enough to send him into action but there's no shaking in his voice or indication of what it was. "Okay. I didn't expect to touch something else." He takes another breath and says, "I think I found a door, to the veil, but it was open."

As if he's realized that he's talking more to himself than to her he looks up and gives a half hearted, tight smile.

"Sorry. We can try again."

She doesn't push - that is, to influence the man with her own defining emotions on the matter. Even when liquored, it would be dangerous, especially while she's using; if asked, she would have explained straightforwardly that when it comes to such endeavors, she preferred someone of Alexander's skill and Talent to do this, but he knows nothing about finding lost objects. The task, then, falls on her.

The contrasts he presents are significant - personable, funny and like with all facades, relatively socially acceptable on the outside, but his inner minefields reflect much of his past hurts, even when scrubbed. It is something difficult to hide from a young woman who spent over half her life living in another person. In some way, and in spite of her decade-long rejection of all of this, it is still part of her, this terrible, complicated birthright; much like blood, it is so innate that she cannot deny it despite sheer, willful effort, and one that has spanned for years and geographical distance. He'd detect it, in the end, this quiet, but intense scrutiny, watching him as he fans out his search teams into the grid, waiting for results...

...the slam of the interior building that houses the both of them has Isabella jolting, the pine box slipping from her grip and falling in a crash and splash, water spraying upwards as if in slow motion before this internal world blurs away again. It feels like being pushed out and her chest constricts when she feels her back brace against her chair, wringing out a quiet gasp. She, too, is sheened with perspiration - not to the extent that he is, considering that he is doing most of the work locating their quarry. But her skin is humid and dewy from exertion, reflecting the low light of the bar. She can hear it, the storm, raging outside, still and that is how she knows that she is back into the reality that they had left behind...for a time.

The liquor is welcome. Shaking fingers reach out to clutch the tumbler, swallowing hard when it all comes back to her - the adrenaline that small episode has generated courses through her veins like magma, doing damage to the alcoholic lull she has pushed herself into in order to do this. She needs more to quell it, to keep the fear in check. It is in no means the healthiest, nor the most permanent, way of dealing with this, a mere stop gap to a bigger problem that she has spent years running from, but it will have to do. She takes a serious draught of the scotch, and even while some part of her is weeping at not appreciating such a fine spirit this way, it can't be helped. She needs it before the symptoms start up again - the shaking, the nausea.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, lifting her green-gold eyes to Easton's darker own. "You..." She reaches out to grab the bottle and pours herself another two shots. "Not what we were looking for, but it's a start. Now, for the fun part."

His words about trying again has her shaking her head, slowly getting up from her seat. She needs to grab onto the back of her chair once she lurches upwards, feeling the world tilt in the warm, lazy way she associates with unmistakable inebriation, before careful steps take her back to her satchel. She withdraws a full sized map of Gray Harbor from her research materials, then slowly returns to where Easton sits and unfolds it on the table, laying it out.

"Sometimes, you won't be able to lead people finding a thing to the thing, yourself, but there's a way around that," she murmurs, her speakeasy contralto lower than its usual wont, rendered husky by alcohol. She reaches out and tilts her hand, palm-up towards him in silent offerance, for him to place it there. If he allows it, she'll guide it to the middle of the map and lightly press his fingers upon it.

"Close your eyes, and remember your grid," she instructs. "Let your mind do the guiding, to where you found the open door. Don't even think about it too hard. You already know where it is, you just need to unbury it and bring it out to here."

Any scrutinizing of his internal mind is passed off easily by Easton as just part of sharing the mind link with someone else. He knew that it involved some opening up and has no other experience with which to compare it in terms of what is expected. He also can't be too annoyed with her looking around after his own temptation to see what the vault held.

Silently his grey eyes meet hers and he nods as she grasps what he found. It's only been a few weeks since he learned about there being another side to this town, or world or whatever. The doors are now something he's aware of, but always it's been limited by proximity, his immediate area. It hadn't occurred to him that he's artificially limiting his ability based on his natural senses. He pours himself another drink but this one just to sip at.

At the offer of her hand he sets the glass back down and looks at her a little hesitantly. He's not sure where this is going but he's willing to try. He reaches out to let her take his hand and guide it towards the map. He shakes his head and says with a smile, one that seems just a touched forced, "And I would like to get some credit for establishing this head game and not picturing you naked by the way." He cracks the joke but it's also just a touch clearer to her maybe why he does it. His mind isn't the rowdy frat party that he's trying to present.

But he closes his cool gray eyes and with a long breath out he reaches for the door, his hand swaying across the map and his mind once again open to Isabella. In his mind now the building is the same, dark, but with a repressed heat from outside clearly felt. Easton likewise has a map out and is huddled over it with the figure of another man, one of his Forward Air Control marines who was responsible for calling in air strikes. The grid of a map, finding a target, planning an attack all mixing with memories of past actions and the proper protocols. When she appears though he forces that out from his mind and tries to re-center on Gray Harbor.

His hand sways and then moves with purpose to the Murray House, definitively pointing down at it on the map.

One eye peaks open and then the other and a slight grimace passes over his face. "Shit. That's.. that might be something else entirely."

He takes the drink in his free hand and takes a small sip, leaving the connection open for now.

His quip has Isabella shooting a look at him, half-lid eyes darkened but gleaming with amusement. "I don't think you're ready for that," she tells him - and while it might sound like a challenge, mischief curls with the pliant line of her mouth. "Could you imagine doing that while I'm in there, berating you over how you got my measurements wrong, or being like my ass isn't that big, how dare you!" She, too, is quick to do this, to rely on her sense of humor as protection. If nothing else, the evening is proving the very idea that she and Easton Marshall have more coping mechanisms in common than they've initially anticipated.

With the link open, she doesn't linger past the threshold she senses and simply watches him confer with a memory, which fades once he acknowledges her presence. She does nothing intrusive, however; she is there as a guide, nothing more, an experienced enough teacher - a future professor, in fact! - to know that some people learn faster by doing, and she suspects that Easton is very much the same. She doesn't hold his hand, and simply observes, letting him stretch out his ability this way, to practice what he has been given. His shine is clearer, now. Unlike him, she more sees it than detects it with her extrasensory gifts, forever attached to the corporeal world and largely dependent on her five senses coupled by whatever instincts she has cultivated over the years. At the moment, it gleams like a beacon - something that she knows he, too, can do, but with time and tutelage.

Later, perhaps.

With the location pointed to the Murray House, her hand lifts away from his, and she smiles faintly at him. "Like a muscle," she tells him, before plucking her glass of scotch off the table and takes another solid swallow, but with the endeavors of the evening concluded, her determination to consume as much of it as she can abates. As green-gold eyes lower to the receptacle in her hand, and the warm amber within, her lips quirk upwards further. "This was how Charles Joughin survived the sinking of the Titanic," she tells him in a conversational fashion, reaching out with her free hand to fold the map and tuck it under her arm - she still needs it for her research. There's a slight wiggle of her fingers and glass. "Normally when a boat is going under, alcohol speeds up your death in the water, but the fact that he was absolutely wasted helped. Not biologically, but because it calmed him down enough to be able to think. So he was able to get people out into the lifeboats, had the presence of mind to throw lounging chairs in the ocean to use as flotation devices, and had the capacity to realize that his chances of survival were greater if he hit the water at the absolute, very last minute, so he climbed up while the ship was slanting downward into the depths. He was the last one in the drink, and treaded water for two hours - but with so much of it in him, he didn't feel the cold, nevermind that much alcohol actually increases the risk of hypothermia."

After a moment, she drains the rest of it and sets her glass down on the table. "I should probably try and find my way home, but thank you, Easton. This was very helpful. If you intend to try again on your own, let me know?"

The quipping back and forth is far more comfortable territory for Easton. There's no vulnerability or openness in brash and meaningless flirtation. The challenge from her only brings a smile, revealing a deep dimple on one side of his face as he chuckles about getting her ass wrong, "I'm more of a legs and tits to be honest." There is a twinkle in his eyes though, right before he shuts them to concentrate back on the task at hand. It's comforting at least to banter with her, at least keeping things light on the surface while they do actual work.

Seeing Murray House on the map is hardly comforting to Easton but he's not going to dwell on that now. And as much as they weren't able to find what they were looking for he still counts this as a successful mission. He holds his drink, now with both hands on the table and nods to himself thinking about what that might mean. Both the fact that they weren't able to find the coffin and that he found a door instead, a door in a place he is in no rush to revisit. His eyes flick up as she talks about surviving the Titanic and a small single 'heh' reverbs through his chest.

"That's actually my plan. Drink enough to survive the catastrophe that is Gray Harbor."

As she stands, he nods but doesn't show any inclination to leave or get up as well.

"Thank you. For showing me some of that. And uh.." For a second there's a slight pause and it looks like he might say something meaningful, but no. "I hope you get a chance to tear Alexander's clothes off soon."

Both remarks - about the drinking and the clothes tearing, earn him another bright peal of laughter, too-bright eyes focusing on Easton as he remains in his seat.

"Me too." Isabella's levity fades abruptly, giving him a dark glower from where she stands. "...but if you tell Alexander anything about what I said about my perpetual need to get rid of his clothes or sex with him in general, I know where I can find you." She points to her eyes with her index and middle fingers, and points them back at him.

She manages to hold the expression, but she does smile again, and after gathering her things, she heads back out into the storm with her things, digging out her umbrella. At least she didn't drive here.