2020-01-01 - Miss Mags Poptart Delivery Service

From the guest rooms of the house there's a tak of something falling. And then there is another one, and slowly another. There's a tiny squeak of metal o metal and then nothing. These things don't happen when Gran is watching over the weak and wounded does it? What she must make of it. In the kitchen the broom budges. And then a little more, and then unceremoniously slowly tips into the counter with tak.

There's a small scrapey sound of tiny claws on carpeting coming from the stairs, a soft thud, and then again... and another... and with a gentile dainty tapping of nails on the hardwood floor comes Miss Mags from the hall making good time. Sniffing around she makes her way to where the broom tipped over and examines it, and starts crawling up to the counter top. Odd. What is she looking for? Oh! that box of pop tarts, which gets tipped over and proceeds to stuff half of herself into it trying to pull one package out by pushing it along. Pop tart skateboard.

August watches Mags come running into the kitchen from his spot at the table, sipping some tea Dove made for him. He dropped by to check on everyone, but they seem to be asleep, so he'll probably amble off once she's come back. "Pretty sure you're not supposed to be getting into those," he says, and gets up from the table to shoo her out of the box.

Shoooove!

Miss Mags backs her wiggly butt out of the box and turns in a three-quarter circle to face him one paw up; questioning. She sets it back on the package. It isn't heavy so it budges only a little. She looks at August and nudges it again, still watching, and then shoves it off the counter onto the floor and climbs down.

Because rats do not the English language speak.

She does keep trying to drag it though across the floor past August but abandons it on the floor because she cannot do the step and carry the thing of pop tarts. Also this is a terrible place for her to park her butt.

There's a sigh and a tired voice from floor two saying, "Points for tryin, Mags."

August watches Mags go about this, amused, eventually moves after her to gather up the poptarts and put them back in the box. His movements are hesitant and he makes a lot of faces as he does this. Cashmere turtleneck, knit scarf, silk long-johns under his jeans, heavy hiking socks under his boots and he still feels like shivering.

He glances up the stairs, back to Mags. "Ah. On a mission, were we? Rude of him, he could just ask us." A gentle mental tap on the shoulder to Ignacio, then, <<Seriously. Getting Mags to bring you food when I'm right here?>> He starts up the steps, slow and steady, moving like he's 65 and not 45.

Waking up he speaks out loud, in his head, all over the place with a yawn feeling frozen and retired. <<"Oh hey, did know you were still here. Don't trip on Mags, yeah? I offered to share with her. She was cool with it.">> Because Finch adopts all the animals in the world and he's Dr. Doolittle now? Right.

Ignacio's moved and propped himself up at least, and still with the heating pad. He lost that fight to Finch on the promise Gran grab another at the CVS. The hood of his sweatshirt is pulled up and he looks to the door when August gets there, or just before. He greats him, trying to be casual but not having the usual energy to do so seamlessly, "We've got to stop meeting like this."

<<'Don't trip on her' like I'm the one who just sent her to try to haul a box of poptarts up the damned stairs.>> August's mindvoice is laced with an irritation born of pain and annoyance that he feels much older than he's used to. <<Not 'still'. It's tomorrow. Went to Ellie's, slept, got called in the middle of the night to stop someone from dying, went back to Ellie's, slept some more.>> He appears in the doorframe, and he sure looks as tired as all of that sounds. He holds up the box of poptarts, begins to make his way across the room to the bed. "Afraid that's just how it works around here."

Miss Mags (eventually) follows.

In spite of the tired and defeated tone his internal monologue carries, there's a lift in his mood seeing August and the pop tarts. His eyes drift to the floor where *taktaktaktak*nails on flooring carry the scurrying rat, and then up the wood bedpost and up the blanket. Ignacio looks to her and says, "Yeah yeah you get a finder's fee." His hand, knuckles still blanched and fingers as warm as they don't look take the pop tarts. "Thanks. There's a um... chair." He frowns, "Someone almost died? Everyone at work okay?" His eyes squint, "Ice storm?"

August waves a hand about someone almost dying. Ignacio can almost feel an angle of 'no one you should worry about', though August never actually says that. He meanders over to the chair, offers the poptarts. His hand is steady, which is gratifying to see, but he's not going to press his luck; he settles into the chair, bones and titanium aching. "Everyone at work's okay. Cy knows the drill; no one gets in a tree until the snow's done. Downed trees and quotes for work once the snow's gone only. Jen doesn't mind, she wanted the holidays off anyways. She and her girlfriend drove down to the Bay Area, won't be back until after the first." He groans, leans back. "How're you holding up?"

Ignacio nods slowly and drops the concern though he keeps some for August himself or as he sometimes calls him '60 year old Me'. Never in front of August and pretty much only to Ully. "Good deeds don't go unpunished though, don't they?" Taking a deep breath he shrugs, "Just... been rough ya know. New York was not easy. Kind of a cluster right now. Sister's wedding is coming up aaaand now I have to wonder if I can still stand up in it." He pauses and murmurs, "Or stand. So..." His jaw sets and more aware tries to pull a chokechain on all the feelings tied to that like an angry dog so August doesn't get bit.

He reasons, "Life's a little, um, scary right now. I know you're gonna give me shit about saying it but we all appreciate what you did for Finch. She's like an arrow. Hard to catch once she's loosed her mind on somethin." Dark eyes look over the bossman assessing as he opens the pop tart pouch and breaking off a corner for a grateful rodent. "Looks like you caught what we got."

"Well, that's how things stay balanced, right? I heal someone...I get hurt somehow. Conservation of effect. Or, somesuch." August leans his long legs out, crosses them at the ankle. He eyes Ignacio at the comment about the wedding. "Nothing wrong with sitting for it, you know. Being there's what matters. Standing? Sitting? She's not going to give a shit. And it's her wedding, so, keep that in mind. Her opinion matters more than yours." August speaks like he's an authority on sister-weddings. And, well, he's been through at least one.

He grunts about the appreciation, yet doesn't hand out a ration for once. "I know you do. And remember, I will always do it. I'm happy to take on Them, for the right to make sure you're all okay." He considers his hand, which trembles with the cold, works it and makes a face. "Yeah." he says, voice low. "Somehow. That or I'm getting sick."

Ignacio nods slowly. He knows their own. He knows that conversation they had like the back of his hand. "Oh I remember. I just don't appreciate Them making her watch. " His jaw tightens and there's still anger undiminished outdone only by fatigue. "Ya know, I have a whole new lack of appreciation for those people." there's a positive tone: spite.

Regarding his sister he digs his heels in, theoretically. So much pride to swallow. Exhaustion and - well not the pop tart fills him taking a bite. "Raf ain't going now. . So that'll be a fun trip. " he takes another bite and chews slower pausing to look at it, and then back up to August, "This cold start when you, um, when you healed Finch?" He waits for the confirmation and asks with a curious tilt of his head, "You been getting the visions and the voices with it or..."

August mmmms deep in his chest. "Them making her watch which--you getting a beat down?" He thinks of Eleanor in the bombed out Gray Harbor, of himself in Itzhak's prison. "Yeah they sure are some next level shitbags."

He makes a low sound of confirmation of the cold coming from healing Finch. "...yeah." That about nightmares, about hearing and smelling things. "But, I always get those, when they're poking at me. Expect I've got something coming." He makes a face, shakes his head. "Nothing I'm not used to."

He pauses a second, peers at Ignacio. "What is it you're seeing and hearing?"

Ignacio frowns slightly and nods. When asked what he's seeing and hearing he says trying to find his narrative, "I could show you but it's... quiet. There's snow light but it's not dark. It just... is like a flat grey sky in a whiteout. It was the most dead of January think I'd ever seen. And there were.. no trees but one. Alone and feted and in the distance, Pretty much where that gate was. There's not anything but the snow and the wind. In my hand this...bird; dead from frostbite and the windchill in my hands. And..."

It's not even startling so much as he's resigned to its recall, "I tried to keep it warm and from the...the wind but the ice blowing through the air keeps tattering it and flaying it apart until it's like those bone crows. And... " His hand comes up with that tone of a storyteller remembering, not creating, "What I notice is I can't even feel the cold. Like your toes lose all their blood and there's that tingly numbness? There's not even that, but the wind feels sharp like it's burning my skin reminding me everything is cold and I'm the only one for.... ever."

Taking a deep breath he murmurs, "I wasn't trying to be extra last night. the wind poke with us and when there's not enough noise I can hear it all on repeat over and over. You know you belong here. You won't ever leave and right now it still feels like I'm there and passed out and this? This only feels half real." Opening his eyes he looks to August assuring, "Oh I KNOW here is...real. Still it feels - everything feels off."

August listens to Ignacio, eyes focused on some point on the floor as he sees all of that in his own mind. He nods his comprehension of the half-real feeling. "That's Them all right. They make it just close enough that you doubt yourself, and eventually everyone around you." A confirmation that this has a known, and maybe most importantly, external, source. For what that's worth. "No one thinks you were being extra. You were reacting, and broadcasting a bit."

After a few seconds of silence. "It's usually Bosnia, for me. I smell the concrete, the cordite. Hear those shells coming down, people screaming, snipers shooting." He narrows his eyes. "Other day there was this crow I thought I saw...white with black shit dripping from its claws. Red eyes. It cawed, and it said a name. 'Rose.'" He sighs. "That was my mom's sister, she died whileI was in Bosnia. I went to run it off but it was gone." He looks to Ignacio again. "That's how they do it. They find the shit you hate most, the stuff that'll kill you--in your heart--and they make you exist there." He shivers, rubs his hands like it'll warm them. "Thing is, though, you can't just act on something like that, something that might be. That's where they're wrong. We've got one another. That's what matters."

Ignacio arches an eyebrows and winces with that slow regret only a very ladylike rat tiptoeing up your chest to nap there can fix. Ir she's trying to reach the pop tart. Something's going on here. "Miiiierda. I'm.. sorry I had no idea." From the guilty look that is something the 27 year old definitely had no intention to do. He breaks off a little piece and feeds it to her with a murmur of Don't tell your mother. He runs a finger down her head and back a few times listening.

Looking to August he says, "If you ever want to talk about your Tia Rose sometime . We say," His hand goes down trying to shift and move himself little bit just for the change, "that we are only dead when people stop telling our stories. We will have time." He breaks off another piece of the pastry and says, 'Marissa pointed this our to me when she visited on Dia de los Muertos, man. Either way? Honouring her memory is never bad. For either of you. "

Sometimes he's got ideas.

The tail end of August's sentiment brings a tired, but easy lopsided-smile to his face. "We do have that, jefe. I uh... I dunno I told you yet but all my stuff arrives next-" He pauses and his jaw tightens,. There' the anger and regret he tries to bury hard and fast. Well he can't get to the table to flip it. "I'm h, I'm going to be permanently moved soon. Might need help moving some things siiiiince..." Though there's a pause, and both eyebrows go up, "Shit at this rate Itzhak might be able to deadlift the moving truck without touching it. But I aaaaam officially going to be a resident. M, um, my dad's not too thrilled but I got a few reasons to do it. My own."

August waves away the apology. "Don't worry about it. That gets back to what I was saying about, spending time sitting somewhere and getting comfortable with turning it off, so to speak. Being.ore aware of it, so that it can't get away from you like that." A rueful smile and a laugh to go with it. "I'm having the same problem myself. That's why I almost tore out that wall. So, don't think I'm not sympathetic to what you're going through, there. We all have to get a better handle on this...Art, we have, if we're going to know when to use it, and when not to."

He nods, thankful for the offer to talk about Rose. But the other subject makes him frown as he takes it all in. He sighs, shakes his head. "Christ. That's a hell of a thing." He's quiet a time. Then, "You're welcome here, though. I mean, in general, not just," he flicks his hand, indicating Mallard House. "I'm sorry, though, that that's how it's turning out."

Ignacio lays his head back against the pillow and the head board listening. His eyes glance to Miss Mags and a finger runs back along her fuzzy head and spine. "Yeah I know. It's been..." Words, man, you're an author. He hunts for them weighing tone and sub-context looking back to August, "Some things I don't know if you can prepare to need to handle. Sometimes? Sometimes there's nothing you can do but wait for the impact of the train and even then? Then we can only guess."

There's a moment but this is that wall and the fight slacks out of him setting pop tart #2 down and curling a cold hand around the rat who brings her leetle hands up trying to hold onto his finger with her tiny thumbs. She crawls up and over his hand and up into his hood bringing confusion and only a mild alarm as she turns around and around to hunker down between his neck and the inside of his hood. One eye winces criticizing halfheartedly to her, "Your foots is in my ear. Can you... thanks." His jaw sets in a faint scowl and his hand turns in a relenting gesture. "Yeah. Me too. Gracias. " He sighs and really considers the overarching part of the story and finally agrees, though he doesn't want to, because saying things out loud makes them somehow more true, "I need to call my sister and tell her...what I dunno. I mean I actually wanted to dance with my baby sister at her wedding ya know? Why... why do They have to take everything? Why are they trying extra hard?" There's no answer to that though and there will never be a good answer to it.

"Yeah," August agrees, voice low. "Life's shitty that way, sometimes." He raises his eyebrows. "But give yourself time. Maybe you'll heal up from this. You might dance with her yet." He watches Miss Mags settle herself in a spot meant to comfort Ignacio, eyes crinkling in a light smile. But it doesn't last, given the topic.

He continues, somewhat apologetically, "This isn't really trying extra hard." He's not happy to report that. "It's just Their usual. And...all I can figure is, it's just what They are." His eyes shift to the window. "They don't know anything else. Same way animals and plants don't know any better than to be how they are. Try not to think of Them like us, with higher motivations or the like. They're pretty much just hungry, and we're food." He shrugs. "I dunno, maybe I'm wrong about that, but I've yet to see Them do a single thing outside that service. They're on the look out for the next meal. That's, pretty much it." He makes a face. "Which makes Them both easier and harder to deal with. There's no negotiation there, nothing to fight. They want to feed, period. The best we can do, is reduce what's around for Them to eat, within the bounds of not letting things go unanswered."