2019-12-29 - Corrosive Memories

Meandering around in the state she's in, in a city blanketed with snow and ice, is a trap at best and the most ill-conceived idea at its very worse, but desperation brings Isabella Reede back to her dockside residence if not just to retrieve more items from her houseboat to take with her in her temporary refuge in 13 Elm Street.

At least she doesn't look completely pitiful; clad in a slim-fitting runner's hoodie made for the winter underneath warmer gear designed, specifically, for expeditions in the world's most extreme poles, legs clad in thermal leggings ease carefully out of her cherry red Jeep once she's parked it, dragging out a single crutch - it looks somewhat old and worn, but serviceable and well-kept enough. Her left foot is bandaged, and bundled by protective waterproof layers, though it hurts enough that she has to favor her right side once she gets the crutch in place. Dark tresses are loose, tousled in wild waves around her face for additional warmth, sunkissed face and their delicate features half-buried in a warm scarf, with her green-and-gold eyes framed by the hem of a knit snow-cap pulled low on her forehead. It's not that cold, not really, but the travails and toils of the last few days have inundated her with an unnatural malady that conventional medicine can alleviate, but not eradicate completely.

She eyes the walk from the parking lot and towards The Surprise, a completely refurbished and modernized, two-deck catamaran, its pristine white color gleaming from Dock 47. "I don't remember the path being this long," she groans softly, before proceeding, with her bag, towards the houseboat.

Surprise has a namesake moored further out. A little thirtysix foot monohull, her wings neatly furled, ports currently dark. There's the sound of footsteps behind her, an even tread thumping on the boards of the dock, and a voice, "Ma'am, you look like you could use some help. What's your boat?"

Then he's coming up along side her - an older man in a peacoat and jeans and a black watch cap, a sack of what must be groceries dangling from his hand. His smile is small, meant to be disarming.

She lives here, so the other Surprise catches her attention almost immediately once she disembarks from the Jeep, that sharp, intense attention directed that way. But before Isabella can wonder about it further, an unfamiliar voice drags it away from the thirty-six foot monohull that she can glimpse from this distance, her diamond focus swinging to a stranger's face. For a moment, however, she doesn't reply - perhaps she's attempting to place him, but the fact that he points out that she looks like she needs help draws a stirring of disgruntled pride somewhere from the pit of her stomach, frustration simmering within it.

But he's only being courteous and with a bit of struggling, she curtails her terrible mood to flash Joseph a half-smile that hooks the corner of her expressive mouth upwards. "I don't really get 'ma'am' very often," she quips instead, observing the groceries in his hand. "But if you're serious?" She offers him the black duffel she's dragging out the back of herJeep. "I'm just here for some things. Are you new to the neighborhood?" The bag in his hand is a giveaway.

"The boat's The Surprise," she supplies, easing her crutched self in a step next to him as they walk. "It's not really mine - it's my dad's baby. Name's Isabella."

He laughs at that - surprisingly boyish. "Yeah, I, ah....I'm from Georgia, that's how I was raised." A little bow, theatrical. "And I'm very serious, at least when it comes to the offer of help. If you'll permit?" He accepts the duffel, hefts it easily. "I am. Only been in town for a few weeks, lookin' to winter here." Then there's that smile again. "Funnily enough, my boat's the Surprise, too." He nods at the little sailboat. "Sailed her all the way from Savannah to here, and truth be told, I am so damn tired of fightin' the Pacific swell, I may never leave." His accent bears that out - it's a lazy, die-away drawl.

"Ohhh, a southern lad," Isabella teases - if there's any qualms there, she doesn't show it, ribbing strangers within a few minutes of meeting them. "What are you doing all the way out here in the cold, frozen northwest? Georgia sounds good right about now." The walk takes them, slowly, towards the actual dockside, planks of snowy, salted wood creaking under their combined weight when they hit the end of it.

A few pieces of freely-offered information capture her interest readily enough, emerald irises carrying hints of that irrepressible curiosity as she regards the profile of her taller companion. "You too? Is it because you like surprises or you're a fan of the Aubrey-Maturin novels?" At the nod towards the other Surprise, she grins. "I was just wondering about that boat, she looked unfamiliar. Experienced sailor? Sailing solo is a challenge, no matter how many years one's got and especially the Pacific over the Winter? You must've done it a lot." There's no hint of her own experience, but the fact that she can opine on it with some authority is suggestive enough of some.

"Goin' where the wind takes me," he says, blithely. "And Savannah doesn't see snow from year to year, so it's a welcome novelty, honestly. Since I ain't drivin' in it."

He gives her a sidelong look. "Both," he says, still grinning. "She was partially a gift....but if you've read the books, HMS Surprise is a lucky and a happy ship, so it seemed like a well-omened name." Sailors still being superstitious. "I've learned a lot over the past eighteen months or so, but it was a challenge, won't lie. Glad of the rest, chance to get my landlegs."

"It's been terrible on the treads," Isabella tells him with a faint wrinkle of her nose, though it presses against the wrap-around of the scarf draped on her shoulders. "Jeep's a four-wheel drive and has off-roading capabilities, but the snowfall's been so surprisingly massive that getting stuck's a real danger. It seems to be letting up though, thank God."

The sidelong look has those dark brows winging upwards toward her hairline, a more impish bent to her grin. "I've read the books. Dad introduced me, he's a fan just like any self-respecting Navy man with a fondness for history. O'Brian wrote those books with years of research under his belt, I can't not love them." She steps carefully and even with her crutch, her foot barely touching the cold ground, she seems agile enough. "Wait, so this was your first time sailing solo? Badass. And....you are?" She tilts her head at him in an inquiring fashion.

"I have no idea at all how to drive in snow," he confesses. "But this whole thing looks like it's been an enormous mess and I'm glad I only have to walk from here to Bayside and back, for the most part."

Joe keeps easy pace with her. "They're about my favorite fiction. They've got everything in 'em - adventure, romance, war, humor, science....Jane Austen had brothers who were naval officers. I feel like those're the books they'd've written, if they ever seriously picked up a pen." A nod. "Yeah. Sink or swim, literally." Belatedly, he remembers his manners, loops the handle of his canvas grocery bag around his wrist so he can extend a hand. "Joe Cavanaugh, at your service."

"For a while there, walking was honestly the only viable option to get from Point A to Point B," Isabella tells him with a soft groan. "In the middle of it, it got so bad that there was no way any vehicle was moving, and I'm relatively certain that the city's only got one plow. I don't think the planners knew this was going down, otherwise I'd hope they prepared for it if they did. It didn't seem to last long, though, and a few friends of mine were very thrilled about a white Christmas. Did you have a good holiday?"

The Surprise looms closer and when they hit the threshold of the catamaran, she pauses in her tracks to face her Good Samaritan directly. "Well, Jane Austen has her own appeal," she tells him with a laugh. "I lived across the pond for a few years, it's almost a requirement to like her books in order to be allowed to live in the UK." She reaches out, affording Joseph a sturdy handshake with a gloved hand and a smile. "And how," she says with a grin, regarding his at your service. "Thanks, Joe. For offering to walk a cripple back to her boat."

She eases with a very tentative step down into the houseboat, before she opens the door. "Least I can do is offer you a beer, though. And you can tell me why Gray Harbor, especially when you've proven yourself to be a capable sailor who can brave the seas and dock in any port around the world."

"Quiet. Family's back in Savannah, so I didn't do much. What about you? And no disrespect to Jane Austen," Joe replies, easily. "I've enjoyed her work. I just feel, sometimes, like O'Brian's her male counterpart and successor"

His handshake is firm, brisk - he's got thin fingerless gloves on, as if he couldn't bear the muffling of sensation beyond that. "You're more'n welcome....and don't mind if I do. What happened to your leg?" he wonders, with a nod towards the wrapping. Letting her precede him, with no hesitation - very, very comfortable on the water.

"My holidays were great - I spent it with the family and the boyfriend. You were alone for the holidays?" Isabella wonders with a small frown. "Or do you have friends who are local?" She pushes the door open further so she can let him in, and shuts the door once he has ventured inside with her duffel. "You can set the bag down anywhere, thanks again."

The interior of the houseboat is modern and minimalist, with clean lines, white walls and stone counters. The appliances are state-of-the-art, and there's an electric fireplace just under the mantlepiece mounted on the main wall directly across from pull-out couch, which she turns on almost immediately - it is cold in the boat, suggestive that while she clearly lives here, she hasn't occupied it for a few days. There's no TV, no indication of wireless capabilities, but keen eyes would catch camouflaged panels on the walls, to effectively maximize the space. The coffee table in front of the couch is teeming with books of various subjects, but all with a central theme: marine archaeology, marine conservation, scholastic articles on Ancient Greek and Roman culture and their seafaring methods, and National Geographic History.

"No argument there," she tells him regarding Jane Austen and Patrick O'Brian's similarities. "One of the reasons why I love his work. As for the leg, it's a very long story and I don't know if you'd believe it. Gray Harbor can get very strange, especially if you're an outsider." She pauses and for a few minutes, it looks like she's looking past him, and into him. "...though maybe not so much in your case."

She pulls the door of her refrigerator open and fishes out a beer, wiggling it at him. "Unless you prefer something that'll keep you warmer in the seaside cold?" She nods to her well-stocked bar and the rows of bourbon, whisky and scotch bottles therein.

"Jus' me an' Jack London," His tone is easy. "I spent most of my adult life in close, close quarters, with a big family. One of my pleasures in retirement is sometimes not talkin' to people for a day or two. So don't feel sorry for me on that front." He sets the bag down gently, looks around.

There's a little whistle from him, impressed. "This makes my Surprise look like someone's Walmart inflatable kayak," he says, tone warm, amused.

Then he's standing under that scrutiny, calmly. As if well aware of what she's doin'. "Town's thick with the bright, easy. An' you might be surprised at what I'll believe, given the chance. Try me." Entirely serious, beneath that easygoing tone. "Bourbon'll do me, neat."

"You're retired? But you don't look..." A day over forty is what she means to say, Isabella giving him a quietly assessing look and forced, in the middle of forging a new acquaintance, to recalibrate and make adjustments to the portrait she's busily painting of him in the vast, cerebral galleries of her. "...if you're sixty-five and over, you're the youngest-looking one I've ever seen," she tells him with a laugh. "Retired from where?"

His appreciative whistle has her tilting her head towards the interior. "Trust me, it didn't look like this when Dad got it," she informs him. "What you're seeing now is years of meticulous design. Dad had to retire from the Navy early, so when he wasn't reading, or diving, he was doing this."

She returns the beer into the fridge, moving towards the bar so she can retrieve two glasses. "Bourbon, huh? Like any self-respecting southern gentleman." She pours a Bulleit bourbon in a short glass, and a Glenlivet 18 for herself, before moving over so she could hand him his chosen libation. "Sure is," she remarks, about the town being filled with people like them. "Dream took us into a frozen tundra where me and a group of other people were forced to move to an archway in the center of the landscape, using only footprints on the snow as a guide to get there. It was some kind of game devised by the monsters on the other side. You cheat? You get hurt. I managed to get to the center first, but once I was in the safe zone, I decided I didn't have a reason, anymore, to play by their rules, and I'm a field researcher by trade - I know what exposure does to a body."

Her glove lifts, to draw down her scarf; the side of her face is marred by a very obvious, black and purple bruise, smack on her right cheekbone. "Anyway, on top of it, we were being chased, and screaming birds followed." She also turns her head sideways so he could glimpse the hearing aid wedged in the left shell of her ear. "For a few weeks, at least, I'm essentially deaf, on top of the hole in my foot."

"Twenty six years, US Navy, got out on a medical discharge in '16," Joe explains. And there is a hint of wistfulness there, behind the hail-fellow-well-met air. "I'm fifty." He glances around. "Kudos to you and your dad."

That easy grin at the comment about bourbon. "I s'pose so," he says. Lifting the glass, he intones, "To your very good health...." A beat, and he blinks, "You know, did I catch your name? My short-term memory, 's not the best."

Then he clicks his tongue. "Damn. I've never been in a Dream with other people, that I know of. Tha sure sounds like a nightmare....I know a lady who can heal. I don't know if she could help you, but...."

"Yeah? Where were you stationed?" Isabella doesn't bother hiding her curiosity, interest intensifying in her eyes as she sinks into a stool by the counter and gestures for him to sit. "Dad once commanded the USS Indomitable at Kitsap, wanted to be close to home. Nimitz-class. I visited him there once when I was much younger." There's a dreamy cast to her eyes at the recounting. "She's magnificent." She takes a quiet sip of her scotch. "Medical discharge?" She prompts for it, but it's an easy inquiry - one that he can elect not to answer, if he chooses.

When asked for her name again, she laughs. "Isabella Reede," she tells him. "Oxford University, Senior Research Assistant for its School of Archaeology - I was born and raised here, though."

What she gets, in the end, from his commentary about the Dream is: "So you've experienced Dreams before?" she asks straightforwardly. "And...normally I wouldn't hesitate, but I have it on good authority that there are bad things at play here who aren't all that keen on healers. They attract attention in a bad way, because they take away pain, and that's the primary sustenance for the more persistent of supernatural predators around here." After watching his face for a moment, she continues, "You should warn your friend, to keep an eye out and not to use too much of her gifts."

"All over," Joe sinks down on a sofa, rather gingerly. "That's the short answer. I served on carriers, so I really was kind of ever'where, one time or another. The Gulf a lot...Pacific, too. Pearl. Reede, Reede," he says, thoughtfully, as if trying to dredge up memory. "Didn't serve on the Indomitable, though. Vinson, Roosevelt, Enterprise. Yeah. Got in a wreck, jacked up too bad to keep goin'."

"A few," he says. "I think. And she knows. She's an ol' hand, or so I understand, but....I don't think she gives a damn. Which is a more metal attitude than I have, these days."

Sharp eyes catch the tentative movement, pairing it with what he says about the wreck. "I'm sorry," Isabella tells him quietly, honest sympathy there. "An engineering accident blew off my dad's leg during a routine inspection." She pushes off the stool, limping carefully so she could join him on the couch, easing down and propping her bandaged foot up on a corner of the coffee table. "It took him a long time to recover....the Navy was his life. Still, it sounds pretty adventurous - then again, military careers often are. You might've seen more places than I have." Almost a guarantee, considering his job and the fact that he's a few decades older.

Another pull of her Scotch. "Who's your friend, maybe I know her," she replies. "And...yeah, I know way too many people like that, but the risks are real. No sense calling on Their attention unless it's absolutely necessary, I think. People can legitimately die in those circumstances." She cants her head at him, eyes lidding faintly and lending her countenance a contemplative bent. "So what's your attitude on that these days?" she wonders. "If it's not metal." The last draws a faint smile.

"I did hear about that," he says, with ready sympathy. "I'm sorry about it. Hell of a thing to have happen. I imagine it did....when you've invested so much in a military career....." He takes a sip of bourbon, glances away. "I don't know that I should say, without her permission," he adds, as delicately as he can, before glancing back at her. Blue eyes a little wary. "I'm afraid of Them," he says, bluntly. "I was, for a good while, in one of Their places. The Asylum."

Now it's not wariness. It's fear. "I came late to all this." Like Glimmer is just a social occasion. "Still very much learnin'."

"It was a long time ago, I think my father's more or less come to terms with it now, but I think he misses the life, still, now and then. But I think you'd know better than I do." Isabella's a perceptive creature, most days; the wistfulness in his earlier remarks did not pass unnoticed. She takes another pull of her scotch.

And nearly chokes on her drink when he mentions the Asylum. Green-gold eyes swing towards him, so wide he can easily glimpse his face within them. For a moment, she seems to forget she's holding her glass, and the mention of it...

...it draws a blank slate; a gray formless field in her memories littered now and then by vague shapes and passing shadows. She winces a little, her hand coming up to press against the side of her head, the echoing tick tick tick tick tock of a distant clock clamoring in the deeper chambers of her skull. "Ugh..." She pinches the bridge of her nose, and says nothing for a long moment.

Finally... "I...I think I've been there. I'm...I'm not sure. I was never admitted, but I think I visited and..." She remembers the morgue, the note: MARSHALL PARTY and the tick tick tick tick tock...

She shakes her head hard. "I've heard of it," she tells him in a more certain voice. "When did you start..." She wiggles her fingers. "You said you came into it late?"

"I was there six months." He closes his eyes, as if to fend off the memories. "I try not to think about it. The memories are corrosive, they ....it's like they stain and obscure other memories."

Then he shakes his head, as if to clear it, takes another swig of bourbon. "After the wreck. I thought it was just brain damage, at first. Hallucinations, delusions, things happening....So just three years."

"Wait. Wait." Isabella takes a further swallow from her tumbler, turning serious eyes back at Joseph. "So you got into a wreck, you thought you were hallucinating, had delusions and things happening. And then you were checked in the Asylum? Is that your chronology? Did your accident happen three years ago?"

After a moment, her gaze intensifies. "When you say the memories are corrosive...what do you mean? They...corrupt your other memories?"

"Accident was about four," he says. "A year in the hospital, therapy, rehab. Body healed, but the mind went downhill, got worse." Joe looks down into the amber depths of the glass. "But it was when I was out of care that I really started to lose touch with reality. I....attempted suicide, and that's when I got sent to the Asylum. I was there in 2017, first half of the year." Then he looks up again, earnestly. "Yeah. I thought my memory loss was damage-induced dementia. But i'm not the only one who suffers it, it turns out."

Isabella's lips part, her expression inscrutable - not because of the dearth of emotions, but rather because her face is alive with so many that each war for dominance. Watching the veteran look down at his glass, perhaps in an attempt to submerge those details of his life in warm amber, she falls quiet for a very long time. The silence stretches for a while, punctuated only by the distant sound of the water, how the Winter winds batter at her windows, and the hum of the electric fireplace nearby, filling the interior of the boat with warmth.

"...Jesus, Joe," she breathes softly.

She chews thoughtfully on her bottom lip. "But you're coping now, though? After...all of that." She starts rummaging around her pockets, pulling out a wallet where she withdraws a white card, and turns it over. She finds a pen somewhere there, too, and writes down a name and a number.

"Is...you know, I can't blame you for wanting to just move on with your life after that," she begins. "But if you're interested in knowing more about your..." She taps her temple with a finger. "Call me. I'll do my best to help. Honestly, I'm assisting a small group in investigating the Asylum, but it's been a difficult enterprise. I think what you said might explain some of it." She hands him the card, with the Oxford logo. "I also included the name and number of an associate of mine, Yule Duchannes. He's a doctor, the city's new medical examiner, but he's been researching our abilities - how it works, how it starts. I...don''t know if your situation is unique, per se, but it might be that your accident may have triggered your change and it could be useful in his research. But I don't have the background to even make those assessments - I'm just an archaeologist who has a good idea now and then. So if you need it...it's there. If not, that's fine too."

He makes a helpless gesture at the question about coping, turning a long palm over. "I guess. Haven't killed myself or crawled into a bottle. Got this far." No attempt to play it off, pretend that it's all fine.

But as she makes that offer, he looks up again, desperation writ clear there. "I've heard of those attempts," he says. "And I'm real glad to hear someone's been doin' formal research. That's part of what I hoped to find here, I guess. Training. Advice. Even what kind of history we might have, if we know it...."

He leans over to accept her card, tucks it into an internal pocket in the coat he still hasn't taken off, despite the warmth.

"...if it gets hard, you can call me too," Isabella offers, brow creasing faintly with worry. "Or I can give you my dad's number, also, if you think it would help. No matter the hour. If you're not comfortable doing that with someone you just met, call your healer friend, or someone. If you need a psychiatrist, I know a very good one I can refer you to. I can't..." She pauses. "Yule...Yule was a late bloomer, too. He's not like me - I've had this all my life, but from what I remember of our last conversation, his didn't start until later, also. The two of you can compare notes."

She releases the card once he accepts it. "Advice, I have plenty - I can't guarantee that they'll all be good, but I have quite a bit. Training, I can try and deliver, and once you grow there, I can also direct you to others that you can approach, depending on what your affinity is. But we don't have to talk about that right now - I know this is probably a lot." She drains the last of her scotch. "And I should probably pack up what I need to and get going." Searching his face, she adds, quietly, "I think you'll figure it out, Joe. Just try not to give up yet."

He finishes the bourbon in a few swallows - no letting good booze go to waste - then sets aside the glass. "I am very grateful," he says, with an odd touch of formality. "You're makin' me glad I did manage to get this far. Thank you." Then he's rising. "You can find me at the other Surprise," A grin for that, "Or at Bayside 303. Phone number...." And he recites it. "IT is a lot, but it's the start I wanted. A pleasure to have met you, Miss Reede."

"You too, Joe. Be safe out there."

With that, Isabella rises and limps to see her guest out. "If you're going to be hanging around here, you'll find it's a pretty small community, the things we get up to," she tells him, pausing at the threshold of her boat. "I'll let Yule know you might be looking him up. And I'll keep you posted on this Asylum business, too, if you want." Her lips turn up in a smile. "I'll see you later."