2020-01-16 - Everything's Broken

On this bitter-clear cold day, a day when the perpetual blanket of clouds above the PNW has lifted off, there is something very wrong with Steelhead Service Center.

Hard to say what, at a glance. The building is ever so subtly somehow wrong. It's not falling down or crushed, it's just kinda...torqued. Tweaked a little. There's no 90 degree angle on it anymore, but there's 91s and 84s. The kind of thing that makes you want to shake your head and clear your vision. The bay doors are blown inwards, the civilian doors hang off their hinges.

Within, it's worse. The hydraulic lifts no longer sit flat. The workbenches are askew and akimbo, no longer suitable places to do anything. Even Itzhak's tool chests and pegboards are tweaked. And the worst of all? Itzhak himself kneels in the middle of the concrete floor, laying out tools in a precise fan in front of him, as if trying to inflict some form of sanity and control on them. But there's none of that to be had here: every single one of his tools has been reformed into something lopsided and useless. Itzhak is muttering to himself in Yinglish, taking gleaming metal tools one after the other out of a tool chest and trying, somehow, to make sense of it, to force it into a pattern where it will logically fit.

Nope. Not all his glimmering strength can fix any of this.

Alexander makes his way up to the Service Center, having heard through the grapevine (there is always a grapevine in small towns) that Itzhak has returned from his trip out of town. He's bundled against the cold, and one hand is damaged, but otherwise definitely seems in better shape than, say, the service center. Upon seeing the building, he stops. That blank reptilian stare is in full force as he tries to pin down just what is WRONG with the building. Other than 'the doors are blown off'. Because that one is a gimme. He approaches carefully, and calls out, "Itzhak?" when he's still well clear of the doors.

The tires of August's Outback crunch agaisnt the slushy snow that's frozen over as he pulls into the parking area shortly after Alexander's gone in. He doesn't get out immediately, arrested by the shape of the shop. He can't even describe what's wrong, just is matter and spirits sense are both nagging him, annoyed that something is off from the last time he as here. He stares at it a while, finally sighs and shakes his head. Well, he can ask Itzhak about that.

He gets out with care; one foot is in a heavy hiking boot, but the other has a softer, dark red moonboot, and he moves gingerly over the treacherous ground. As he gets closer, he realizes the doors and windows are all blown in. Fear spikes through him, and he picks up the pace (well, in as much as he can). "Itzhak?" He tries not to sound panicked, fails.

Itzhak looks up, hearing the voices of his friends. An atonal violin melody sings out to both of them--his request for a mental connection. The atonal stuff really grates, though. Doesn't follow the rules that make music melodious. Instead it inverts those rules and makes music something distressing and nonsensical, something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Nothing like Itzhak's usual self at all.

"Yeah, I'm okay," he yells, voice raspy and hoarse. "It's safe." Then, muttering, "you know, mostly," to himself, his face tense and distraught.

Alexander pauses when he feels that mental request - it's as wrong, as off as everything else here in the building, and there's apprehension in the set of his shoulders. Is this real? He doesn't ask it, but the question can be read in the set of his shoulders and then in the faint tickle of worry in his mental voice as he reaches out and clasps Itzhak's offered mind with his own. <<What happened?>> is the immediate question, offered while Alexander prowls through the shop, examining each of the little wrongnesses with a keen interest.

August grabs at that atonal melody, the same way he might grasp someone who's staggered up to him, injured and exhausted. A frisson of uncertainty makes his mindscape ripple, keeps the elk hidden among the trees. Like Alexander, he's worried this isn't real, that they've been sucked into a construct of Theirs.

Well, even if it is, Itzhak and Alexander are real enough. He moves to join Itzhak in the floor, let's Alexander's question stand. It's a tricky maneuver, work his injured for, but he manages. He reaches out to find Lemondrop, determine if she's alright or needs to be healed.

Itzhak lets out a shaky sigh of relief, twining his painfully-prickly mental fractals with Alexander's mind. He's always loved linking with him, loved it a little too much maybe, and right now Alexander's not-necessarily-comfortable mental connection feels as good and soothing as getting into a hot bath. August joins in and that's even better; Itzhak sits back on his heels, eyes closing, reveling in the sense of the other men supporting him. He needs it. Bad. When August kneels next to him, he puts his arm around him and leans his forehead into his shoulder, his lanky frame thin and solid.

<<They did this. They see me.>> The violin's scrapey and atonal.

Lemondrop is okay; her terrarium is off kilter, and Itzhak's improvised a closure for the terrarium doors with some clips and wire, and the whole situation there is kind of a wreck. But that's where her basking spots and heat are, so he's got her in there. She seems healthy, if stressed out--she's hiding under a now-crooked platform.

Alexander tests Itzhak's mind and connection, the shape and feel of it. But he's soon satisfied, and there's a flood of warm, soothing reassurance through the link, even as his stars spin in slow contemplation. His voice reaches out for both men, as his fingers slide over tools that are just slightly out of true. He doesn't need to have the physical abilities to pick up on all of the changes, and it feels wrong and odd. <<What got their attention?>> he asks, his worry shading his mental voice with deep blue and the scent of evening.

A gentle breeze murmurs through the winter forest which is August's mind. <<Beware of heartless them.>> He slips an arm around Itzhak, leans his head in. No platitudes about how 'at least you and Lemondrop are okay', nothing about the relief he feels it wasn't worse. He's here to mourn the loss of security. (A brief image of himself, Alexander, and another man fighting off a bunch of...dolls?)

He shoves that aside. The aspens in the caldera creak in the wind, a welcoming sound for Alexander. The barren side stretches out into nothing. August picks up a torque wrench; wrongness of it bugs him like a plant he can't identify but swears he knows. He flicks a wry glance at Alexander with a hint of 'do you need to ask?' underlying it.

Itzhak, at least, feels like himself at the core. The fractal constructs are askew, the ocean of Penrose tiles is churning and seething, the violin is atonal--but all those things are still him. He's troubled and distressed to the very foundations of his self, but it's him.

He laughs rough and silent. <<I don't even remember, now. I've been...>> Flashes of memory. Itzhak brimful of the Song, the Art, wielding his overwhelming strength. The tip of the spear, the shield and the sword--he's never hesitated to fight, to tell the Unshaped to kiss his ass.

Now They're laughing at him, sipping his misery like fine bourbon. He's locked in place, struggling to cope, every glance at his tools or his building that he sacrificed so much for driving him a little further away from sanity.

Alexander gives a shrug to August; he's always going to ask. It's like the sun rising in the east. But Itzhak's distress cuts deep, and so he comes to orbit around the two men, not touching them, but pacing around as if to lay down a protective perimeter between them and the twisted retaliation the Shadows have wreaked on Itzhak. "What can we do to help?" he asks, switching to verbal communication. "You'll need new tools. What can still be used, at least for the moment, and what can't?"

August makes a low, contemplative sound at that sight. He'd used the Song to sacrifice the aspen for Gohl, and they'd seen an opening and come for him. He'd healed a few too many, found himself in the ruins of Gray Harbor with Eleanor. And now, the old enemy from her past had caught her scent again, noticed her, and was on the hunt.

(The memory of a bone white crow, black tar in its beak and claws, its harsh voice forming a single word, a name. Rose.)

<<I'm sorry. They sure are nasty of late.>> He glances up at Alexander, bolsters that sentiment verbally. "I can help put in new windows. Fix the doors and the lift." He looks out at the work benches. "Hyacinth might have ideas about your benches, how to use them as is." Expensive, all of it. But doable.

"Nothing." Itzhak's voice is a rasp. "Nothing. Everything's ruined. Fuckin' everything." He snorts, his head down against August's broad shoulder. "They were thorough. Oy vey izt mir were they thorough. ...Take me out of here?" he says, abruptly pleading, eyes flicking up to August and then Alexander. "Please? I can't make myself leave it and...Christ, I really need to fuckin' leave it."

Alexander's lips thin. The urge to argue - to try and find something that might be useable still - is strong in him. But Itzhak's grief is powerful, and in the end, he just shoves his hands in his pockets and nods. "Right. Plan a little later, but for now...yeah, let's get out of here. Where you wanna go, Itzhak? Get a drink? Or we could find a nice place to watch the city - maybe the park?" Of course, it's not like he's got a car to cash in any of these ideas, but his eyes skitter towards August.

August accepts Itzhak's assessment of the situation without argument. He waits for Alexander to do similar, nods in agreement at the notion of getting out. "How about dinner." He kisses the top of Itzhak's head, begins the process of getting up. Sitting on a cold, hard floor with a sprain wasn't the brightest idea he's ever had.

"Thai Table, maybe? They've got a great panang curry. And some custard and sticky rice with coconut milk would really hit the spot."

Itzhak gets up, rising neatly to his feet as always, so he can help August up with the offer of his arms. "There ya go, old-timer. Kinda beat up, huh?" Well that's more like him! He glances at Alexander, with a certain longing tilt to his eyebrows, and the kythe sings across clear: he wishes he could hug him, but he won't ask him to tolerate that, not now, not while Itzhak is busy being a wreck. (That this is the exact reason Alexander might acquiesce to physical contact doesn't occur to him.)

"Thai. That sounds amazing. Let me drive so you can rest ya foot." Itzhak as always finds his own comfort in protecting the people he cares about.

"I like Thai," Alexander says, with a brief smile at August. "I got some duck there the other night, and it was pretty tasty." He feels that clear desire coming from Itzhak, and his eyes skitter away from the two men. He thinks, and then there's a brief bracing of himself, before he sidles in and offers Itzhak one warm of a hug, and August the other. If they accept, it's a brief hug, but warm and fierce, before he sidles away again. But not too far; he's clearly going to follow the two men out to the Outback.

"It was some overly violent dolls," August complains. "Don't judge me." He winces, makes a face, gets to his feet without incident thanks to Itzhak. His thanks comes through the link as a sigh of relief. "Yeah," he says, of Itzhak driving. Truth be told, he shouldn't be; has already had the 'sit your ass at home' talk with Cy and Eleanor.

He accepts the hug with a happy sigh, keeps it as brief as Alexander likes. "Duck, huh. Might have to see if I like how they make it." Himself, he's after a curry.