2020-01-14 - Don't Let Them Take Your Light

Six AM, and why is Itzhak here? Because he's here, the security system alerting Bex. The camera shows him at the door, leaning his forehead on it, an attitude of desperately unhappy tension in the line of his tall lanky body. He lifts his head to stare into the camera, then, like it occurs to him he should let Bex know he's here or something, he digs into his pocket for his phone.

Her phone alerts her to someone at the door. She greatly upgraded her security during the Gohl fiasco. Rebecca is in the kitchen, sipping coffee and tapping away at her laptop, when the alert dings. She glances at it, sees it's Itzhak, and taps the screen to unlock the door. "Come in! You're up early!" she calls from the kitchen. She's in a pair of black slacks and a grey silk blouse that ties at the throat in a bow.

The locks go clak! and Itzhak fumbles his phone back into his pocket and opens the door. He pauses to pry his boots off, like he always does, and shed his coat and scarf, but he's moving slow. When he comes over to Bex, he's not sauntering or strutting or anything except dragging his sorry ass from point A to point Bex. He's having trouble making words--he stares at her, and signs something, inked hands flashing.

And she understands now. She understands languages. Not fluently mind you, she's a beginner at ASL and Yiddish. Rebecca watches his hands flow in that distinct language and she frowns, looking up at him. "Your garage is broken?" she asks, needing clarification. She opens her mind to try and connect to his, since speaking seems beyond him at the moment, and she lets her sense of calm order wash over him as well, in that fluttering of individual, perfect, differing snowflakes.

Rebecca looks so perfect and composed and put-together, like she always does. Itzhak loves that about her, that even at six in the frikkin' morning she looks like she could step into a board room and have a bunch of jerkoff executives eating out of her hand. That bow at her throat is tempting even in his worn-thin state.

He isn't sure if it's okay to touch her, though, and so he sags over on the cool of the counter, folding his arms and resting his forehead on them. Accepting the kythe gratefully, he pulls her in--and he's a mess. His fractals are in a storm, dendritic iterations tangled and lashing, the Penrose tiles of his inner ocean swelling in massive surges. His mental violin rasps to her, bow scraping the strings.

<<It's broken. It's ALL broken.>>

An image of his garage. Everything, absolutely everything, is off kilter. In some cases it's subtle, in others it's large. The windows and bay doors are busted in from some tremendous implosion. Itzhak's tools are scattered everywhere, and here's the worst part to him: they've all been warped out of true. All his precision metric tools are no longer precise.

Rebecca stares at the image of the garage, her every nerve going on edge, her teeth itching at the slight 'off' of every single last bit of it. <<What on earth did that? How can that even happen?>> she asks, moving to wrap her arms around him as if she could shelter him from the pure horror of that image. She understands his being a mess. She doesn't own any of that and it's making her OCD go berserk. She starts ordering the images for them both, putting them into piles of repair, restore, replace.

The real horror of this is, what seems repairable--the workbenches, say, tilted forward and various degrees to right or left--are going to be more of a chore than they should be. Because they're not just broken. They've been reformed, their fuckedupedness now a part of them as if some mad carpenter built tables that had no use. A pencil placed on one would roll off, and the hell of it is that it's so subtle, someone might not notice and wonder why their pencil always lands on the floor.

Itzhak's strength with physical objects, the way they love him and lean in to listen to him, has been twisted. Now it feels like every object in his garage hates him, with mocking glee.

<<Them,>> his violin whispers, off-tune.

Rebecca grimaces and holds him tighter. <<Maybe....maybe someone like August could fix the things that are off a little? Restore them to what they were?>> she offers quietly in her thoughts, and through the flurry of snowflakes, the pale leucitic mountain lion pads quietly, a comforting presence. Its vibrant blue eyes seem to focus on Itzhak from this place to reality. <<Things, love, things can be replaced.>> Her hands move to stroke his back, like one might soothe a child who woke up from a nightmare.

Itzhak, arms wound around her waist, actually whimpers, a high thin thread of a sound. But the snowflakes soothe his feverish despair. The leucistic mountain lioness emerges and Itzhak sighs to 'see' her. The kythe shudders, and then the black unicorn is standing in the snow, its head and tail low. It steps forward on silent cloven hooves to meet the cougar.

<<I wouldn't ask him to,>> he murmurs. <<I couldn't. I brought it on myself.>> A flash of a memory of a Dream: Itzhak pushing a massive boulder up a mountain, only to have it slip from his grasp and tumble down the slope.

<<That is what they wish you to think>> Cougar-Rebecca pads around the unicorn and headbutts his chest with her great head like an oversized housecat. <<They want to make us feel helpless, afraid to ask each other for help, afraid to band together against them. We can't let them intimidate us from helping one another, or from living as we deserve to.>>

Outside of their connection, Rebecca strokes his hair gently, just holding him, being his support. There is anger rippling beneath the surface, for how they keep targeting him. It makes her want to hunt them down.

Each perfect miracle of a snowflake landing on the unicorn's heated skin cools and soothes him. The fabulous beast lifts its handsomely carved head to lip at the cougar, adoring. Itzhak sighs again, deeper, shifting as close as he can in this awkward position.

<<You smell so good,>> he sends, an impulse that he can find no need to suppress. For once, he's not angry. A man who runs on angry like he runs on coffee has no anger in him. The anger was earlier, when he saw what They had done. Then it was a roar, a tsunami's relentless power wrecking all in its path. Now there's no anger, only misery, shame, and self-recrimination. Of course Itzhak deserved this. He knew, even, knew that the hungry shadows find people like him particularly delectable. And still he refuses to not use his powers, still he shines like a lighthouse in the night.

And They feast.

The pale cougar lies down in the snow, casually crossing her front paws, heavily-weighted tail swishing back and forth. She is all regal calm, a vision of Rebecca's spirit, poised on the outside, but a furnace of roiling emotions within. <<Stop that. Stop letting them make you feel like that. It's what they feed on, misery and pain and despair. We need to fight that force of despondency, Itzil. Du zalst nisht lozn zey nemen deyn likht.>> Yiddish. Do not let them take your light.

The Yiddish! Itzhak sucks in a sharp, surprised breath. The Yiddish...and she called him Itzil. That name resonates down the kythe, plucking a thousand associations good and bad. He quivers with the strength of it. Emotions well up like the tones from a Hardinger fiddle--and a lot of them are about Bex.

Her cool mental voice telling him not to give up his light, calling him his Yiddish nickname, cracks something open in his scarred heart. He can have trouble with his emotions--she knows this about him. Something he lost in prison, something that was so badly damaged it's never grown back right. His love for her swells in him, stretching his scars painfully. Oh it hurts, and oh, it is good.

<<Keynmol. Keynmol, meyn teibeleh.>> Never, my little dove. Itzhak lifts his head to kiss her, his eyebrows yearning. The unicorn stands guard over the cougar, its own head lifting into the snow.

Rebecca returns his kiss gently, still stroking his hair with delicate fingers. So many in this town have prepared for life here by becoming harder in body, learning to be physical fighters, learning to use weapons like knives and guns. Not her. She has instead hardened her mind, becoming a fortress for those who need it, like Itzhak needs now. <<Lozn mir zeyn deyn shtarkeyt haynt bay nakht. Morgn mir kenen farrikhtn vos iz tsebrakhn.>> Let me be your strength tonight. Tomorrow we can fix what is broken. The cougar purrs quietly, letting that steady rumble shudder through their connection.

<<Bitte. Bitte, bitte, bitte.>> Please please please. Itzhak is powerful, he's strong, he's a street fighter and an ass kicker--and Rebecca shores up all the parts of him that are weak. The fortress of her mind is a shelter he desperately needs. For all his strength, this is where he fails.

His black curls are springy under her slim fingers. Itzhak grips her chin and deepens the kiss, fitting their mouths together in a way that brooks no argument. <<You need to shut that laptop.>> His violin sings again, no longer scraping and out of tune. <<Whatever you're doing can wait.>>

Rebecca chuckles in their connection, the purring of the great cat getting louder and stronger. <<You get to explain to my boss why I'm late for work today; he'll live I'm sure.>> Then she's tugging the lanky mechanic out of the kitchen and towards the bedroom.