2020-01-08 - The Murder of Memory

For a while, she did nothing but watch him sleep, running gentle fingers through the mass of dark curls on the top of his head and thumbed away the streak of moisture that stained his cheek. It had been a rough few hours - the rest wasn't just well-deserved, but much needed.

Dreams by nature were grueling endeavors that tested one's mind, spirit and body, often taken up by the Dreamer's worst fears and traumas, though that wasn't always guaranteed, but in spite of numerous experiences there, she could admit, if not just privately, that the last one hadn't just been harrowing, but emotionally damning. The last thing she expected was to be dropped into the middle of one of Alexander's worst nightmares, and one which held the manifestation of one of the persistent ghosts that haunted his battered heart. While Isabella had heard of Zachary before, she never thought in a million years that she would ever be afforded a glimpse of what he was like while living, blond, blue-eyed and radiating confidence and clarity of purpose. If she knew nothing else about him, those alone would make her understand just why Alexander ended up so securely within his thrall, and why he loved him so deeply, and so well.

But like most things that purported to be powerful and certain, he proved to be a beautiful and terrible lie. Jealousy and fury nearly inspired her to murder his construct on the spot, the moment he ripped Alexander's back open, the moment he said a single word or even looked at him. But somehow, despite the heat of the moment, she remembered a single, incontrovertible truth that stayed with her for over a decade, found it threading like wire through most of her closest associates:

You can't kill a memory.

At least, not the kind that Zachary represented.

She braced him against her after the ordeal, anchoring him before he could completely unmoor himself with the bitterness of his self-recriminations, almost from the moment they returned from Byron's penthouse, recalling the intense, dark-eyed look of concern and curiosity on her childhood friend's face when they departed. All Alexander wanted to do was hold, and be held; to expend the tears he was willing to share with her until he spent the rest of the evening in silence with his head on her lap and her fingers threaded through his midnight strands, knowing how much that soothed him, normally, and discovering that no bluster or bravado in the world could ever triumph over that treacherous beast. It was akin to fighting a war on two fronts, and as usual, always and whenever it mattered, she found herself in the losing end of it, battling impotently against the white hot rage borne from the fact that he had to relive the worst moments of his past all over again in the flesh, and the helpless acknowledgment of not being able to do anything but this. It wasn't fair. None of it was.

She didn't know what else to do, and she hated herself for it.

The heat in Alexander's residence must be stifling to him. He was completely recovered from the monsters' foot tag game a few days ago, but had kept the temperature up for her sake, because she hadn't - her foot was still healing, and while her hearing was returning, it would take a week more to heal fully, and the unnatural chill remained in blood and bone since. Her hand reached for the thermostat's dial and turned it down; she could suffer for more than a few degrees, if it meant ensuring that he got some comfortable rest, once she returned to a cooler house.

She didn't know what time it was, nor did she care, not really.

The world was dark when she arrived at a familiar clearing in Firefly Forest, having driven the Jeep up the forest trail until it could go no further. She could glimpse it, barely, in the dark, nearly pitch black save for the light of the full moon above her head, blanketing drifts of pale snow, masking the large patch where dandelions tended to grow over the summers, their downy fluff illuminated by drifting fireflies. None of them were present, currently, but she could picture them, still, even at the arrival of the dark days of winter.

She clambered on top of the hood of her Jeep, rested her back against the windshield and felt the heat of the engine pressing against her from underneath. From the pocket of her arctic-grade winter jacket, she withdrew the cigarette she obtained from Byron. Just one, she thought, digging out a matchbook from Two If By Sea, striking the head against the scratcher and taking a deep puff. Tar and smoke filled her lungs, nicotine spiced her blood....

...and she coughed uncontrollably, groaning as she collapsed against her vehicle's windshield.

I'm sorely out of practice.

Wisps of gray-white twisted from her slightly parted lips like serpents, and she followed their wake with her eyes as they drifted upwards, her arms behind her head and watching the cloud cover looming at her from above, blocking out scattered starlight. She did her best not to be angry on Alexander's behalf; it was a more difficult prospect than she thought, knowing full well what was causing it - she didn't want to let go of it, because to release it and dive deeper into the thick, messy tangle underneath would mean confronting the core of it and she wasn't ready for that, much less subject anyone else to it.

He didn't need...

Zachary's smile, brilliant even through the charred and broken ruin of his face filled her thoughts and she forced the image of it away with gritted teeth, putting a boot into the growing wave of nausea that tickled the back of her throat. She slowly sat up on the hood and turned her eyes to the dark, reacquainting herself with her ghosts instead, because they were preferrable and easier to deal with at the moment. She conjured up the spectres of her childhood, followed her smaller self as she ran through these woods, attempting to catch the fireflies in the small jar she held in her grip, vitality and enthusiasm writ on every smile directed to her twin as Isidore ran along with her, nearly tripping over a root. Their conjoined laughter slipped around bole, faint but welcome, threading through empty branches.

The clock continued to tick, somewhere in the back of her skull, in time with every step her child-self took as she danced through the forest. She heard it now and then, since the day they purportedly visited the Asylum, the memories of it as slippery as a rainy Spring's muck, but in the dark and the silence, it sounded louder, and closer now. It was no antiquated thing, not something that she would expect from a museum, and her brows drew down slowly as her attention slipped away from her own memories, lightly touching into another one.

Tick...tick...tick...

She puffed at her cigarette, felt the hands beckon at her as she wound her arms around her knees and hugged them to her chest. She had been trying to ignore the cold; it was easier to, when surrounded by it. But the closer her conscious thoughts ventured towards the sound, it grew colder, still. Her gloved hands curled tightly into her knuckles as she shut her eyes and let herself sink. And the further she drove herself under, the more the face of it surfaced, tick-tick-ticking away, its minute and hour hands sliding slowly along the numbers...

...letters?

Letters. Words.

Code?

"No, it's..." she murmured while she continued to think, turning it over the ruined scholar's galleries within her mind. To reach further into the slick, gray film, her mental fingers closing around it and drawing it out. The words were clearer now, and once she could read it, everything else cascaded into place. She didn't have a full picture, but what she did have was enough for a start.

Her eyes snapped open. Realization hit her stomach like a fist; it was a confusing epiphany, as far as she knew, the building didn't have such a thing....

...but what if she was wrong?

And if there was, she had the right skills to find it.

Digging into her pockets, her breath coalesced in white puffs of steam as she worked a glove off to send a message, her fingertips growing numb immediately:

We need to talk. Let me know when I can stop by.

Grunting softly, she slid off the hood of her Jeep, and clambered into it. It wasn't long until she was shifting the gears of her vehicle, to head back down the forest trail, and back towards the city. She didn't notice the emptiness of the forest, smothered as it was by sudden and purposeful movement, or the lack of laughter, or the image of her and her brother, playing hide and seek in the woods. Like the ghosts that they were, they were simply gone, folded back into the ether, unable to be reclaimed.

As if they never existed.