2020-01-19 - Needed: Babysitter

It's a dreary Sunday morning in Gray Harbor, bitingly cold and wet. The kind of day that, in the Pacific Northwest, means you find a nice little shop to hide in if you're not working. August isn't; he's nursing an injured foot in a red moonboot, which of course means he's come to Memento Mori, aka the junk store ("Stop calling it that!" Thoma always shouts when she hears him say it). He's become a bigger fan of weird, rare, esoteric things. Also some truly fascinating books have shown up in this place ('Poisonous Plants of the Pacific Northwest' is a personal favorite).

He's in a red, black, and white check flannel over a black turtle neck, denim jeans, and his good foot is in a heavy hiking boot. His heavy black pea coat hung up on the coat rack, along with the green and bronze knit cap and matching scarf with the tree of life embroidery. He picks among the odods and ends, pausing to examine a snowglobe of...is that a yeti...?

They will simply have to suffer together.

Every breath burns along with the cold, but there's only so much medical professionals can do when one is suffering a couple of broken ribs - just a dose of very good painkillers before the patient is sent on her way. That was Isabella's plight a few days ago and while she's healing quickly, it leaves her movements slower, still, despite doing everything in her power not to let it show. Much like August, she has stepped in from the wet, drops of water clinging to her face and darkening her hair even further. Her eyes, however, are alert.

She's never set foot in Memento Mori before, but the name itself is enough to catch her attention even without its reputation or knowing who the prior owner was. A finger drags lightly over the spine of the books she finds, but August's tall and distinct form catches her attention easily and she moseys over. "Hey, August," she says, before glancing down at his foot with a frown. "How are you feeling?"

August puts the odd snowglobe back, expression dubious. It takes all kinds. He's about to check out a bird skull carved from some sort of lustrous stone--labradorite, maybe--when he hears Isabella, turns to give her an up-nod and a small smile. "Hey yourself." The smile fades quickly, though, as he injuries come to him, and he makes a face, quickly tries to hide it.

He glances down at his foot when she does. "Not too bad, really. Should be okay in a few more days, I just have to baby it. Not broken, apparently." He shrugs. "We don't get a lot of climbing work this time of year, so, it's not as bad as it could be. Just means more office work and writing than greenhouse work until it's healed up." He eyes her now. "How about you? Are Enzo and Anne still in the hospital?"

She looks relieved, at least, when she hears that August's foot isn't broken, Isabella's fingers splaying loosely on her ribs as she takes another breath. Despite the wince that she, too, tries to hide, her look is an apologetic one - now that she can detect injuries, she can only imagine what it's like on his end. "That's great that it's not broken, we really need to be more prepared whenever we venture over there." She pauses before she remarks, tentatively, "I asked Anne if she would rather we stopped our excursions for a while, but she would like to keep going."

Her expression is inscrutable there, alive due to conflicting emotions and not for the lack of it. "It hurts to breathe," she tells him with a frown. "This wouldn't be the first time I broke a couple of ribs, but it's been a while and I've forgotten what a pain in the ass that actually is. Good though that you're not doing a lot of climbing. And as far as I know, Enzo and Anne are still in the hospital though I think they're due out in the next couple of days. I was going to bring the girls over to her this week to do something fun, maybe cheer her up a little and keep her from not getting so bored given her state."

Relieved that Anne doesn't want to stop, August says, "Definitely," of preparing properly. "I guess we need to treat it like an actual field excursion--you know, good rope, headlamps, fire kit..." He thinks of the actual issues they'd been faced with. "Maybe, things like a crowbar, a leatherman, a good knife." He sighs. "And I really need to get a handgun." He's not sure how Eleanor's going to feel about that. He's not sure how he feels about it, though maybe if he only takes it out on Veil excursions, like when he hunts.

He grunts, folds his arms. He'd wanted to heal them, but had known, instinctively, it wasn't a good idea. "I'll see if I can drop by and check on them." He arches an eyebrow. "Is Anne's hand gonna be okay?"

"We've been focusing on traveling light whenever we go over there," Isabella murmurs, fingers drifting over the other curios in the nearby shelf. "In case we need to run. But considering how our expeditions have only become more and more dangerous, I don't know how we can justify it. I bring my notebook, a medkit, a camera, flashlight, a water bottle, a leatherman and gun just in case, but I think we're going to need to balance out load requirements, or come up with lightweight alternatives. I don't think it'd be practical to split the necessities amongst ourselves, also, due to the fact that getting separated while there is a possibility we can't ignore. Anne says she's compiling a list, we should put in our recommendations to her, I think, given our experience. What do you think?"

There's a small smile when he offers to see to them. "Thanks, I think they'll appreciate it. Anne's doctor said that her hand will heal, it'll just take a while and..." Her expression darkens. "She almost lost it - I didn't move fast enough. And we got very little information about the Carousel on top of it." Frustration slips into the undercurrents of her expression. "I'm thinking of chipping at it more on this side while we all recover."

August nods, scratches his beard. "We need to be light, but, not that light. Some things everyone should have--knife, headlamp, that kind of thing--but the heavier items, we could split those if we really had to. At the very least, we can keep it to under ten pounds." Spoken like a man who's used to hauling ten to fifteen up and down a tree, and used to hike with fifty and change.

He holds up a hand. "Hang on--she didn't lose it, and you did move fast. That the place was booby-trapped against our Art, well, that's not your fault. We need to figure out some way to detect that." He snorts. "Speaking of which. I got my MRI results back, from after we went to the Asylum? And ah..." His mouth twists, wry, "There was an interesting note with them, from some place called 'FCN'."

"Under ten pounds would be ideal - it doesn't seem like much, but when you're on your feet for hours on end..." Isabella grins faintly at him. "Not to mention some of us aren't built like you." She nudges him with her elbow playfully. "We might need to do some trial runs once everyone's better, and once it's warmer." There's a quiet frown towards the weather outside. "It's probably going to be like this through February."

August's reassurances have her glancing down at the antique she's fiddling with, her emerald eyes stormy, but she sets it down before she can break it. "We might need to default to the assumption that we won't be able to use our abilities there without making things worse," she tells him. "When Alexander and I got caught in that footprint game, I tried to detect the terrain, and for traps. I was chastized for it. These things...didn't used to be consistent before, not until the Dream we had with the Furies. There might be a connection - remember when they said that we ought to be treating this entire thing more like a puzzle than a battle? We might have to adjust our thinking to that direction."

There's a tilt of her head when FCN is involved. "Right, the same people who made your glasses, and my coin. They grabbed your MRIs, also?" She narrows her eyes. "They commandeered my blood sample and Yule Duchannes' when we tried to have ours analyzed for strange genetic markers. What's odd is that Yule didn't even send it to FCN, he sent it to another lab, and the story was that they had a backlog of other things that they needed to run, so they shipped our stuff to FCN. Someone's watching, and interfering, like Alexander says." Her frown becomes more visible. "I think we're definitely going to need to help Yule get his lab up and running if we want results we can trust."

August accepts the nudge with a small, smug smile. He relents, says, "Under ten is doable, especially if we have a set of basics and just relegate the special-case items to a couple of people." He glances outside, amused. "February? Oh," he shakes his head, "I suspect we'll be lucky if the sleet's done by March, at this rate." He doesn't seem opposed to waiting until then, though. He looks askance, nods. "Checking on this side's not a bad idea, in the mean time."

He bites his lip. "I suspect it's less that we always need to stop looking to them, more that we need to consider them like any other tool. You don't use the matter Art to pick a lock if you have the tools to do it without. No need to smash open a car's window if the door's unlocked." He raises his eyebrows to see if she follows. "We don't have the Art to never use it. That wouldn't make sense. But using it more strategically, well..." His tone turns rueful; he's entirely aware of his point on the spectrum when it comes to these things, "that'd make more sense."

His eyes narrow. "I was thinking of contacting them," he admits. "They offered to make my MRI less astronomically expensive if I had a chat with them. Figured I might be able to get some information on them at the same time."

"Agree regarding the special items, though this means never letting them out of our sight also as best as we can. Not that we shouldn't do that anyway, I'm not a fan of splitting up the party, but sometimes we don't have a choice." Isabella frowns faintly in memory of the last one, before she exhales a breath. "Well, hopefully it abates some at March. I'll need to head back to England the first week for my defense. I was thinking of checking out a thin point there, also - if I can. I don't think Alexander wants me to go alone if I do find one, but that doesn't mean I can't check on archival records about it while I'm there."

She shakes her head. "I rarely ever use mine," she tells him. "That is not my default...not after I left, anyway. I've done my best to live without them. If anything, considering how these nightmares have been structured lately, I think we're being baited to use." She sighs. "But I guess we won't know unless we obtain more data, and that means throwing ourselves back into the breach again. I have an idea as to where we should start looking next but it'll depend on what else I find on Jill Baxter. I'll keep you and Anne posted."

His confession has her looking up at him in alarm, though. "I...don't know if we ought to trust them," she continues slowly. "The chicken soup was also produced by FCN, and they were sent to us by an entity called the Vivisectionist. It's just a theory but I don't think we can discount the possibility that she's affiliated with them, and you've seen the list of experiments her group's been performing. The domain names of the e-mail addresses are different, though, but that doesn't mean anything. I wouldn't recommend it....or at least, wouldn't recommend it without taking some back up with you. Alexander said he tried looking into the company before and came up with nothing, but he did say he would try again."

"Yeah, I wouldn't try to cross one or anything alone." August wrinkles his nose. "We had a whole group of us in Portland and it didn't go well at all. But, poking around, taking some observations," he shrugs. "You could even ask them about the day we buried Gohl, if you know anyone in the area who," he rubs his fingers together, raises his eyebrows.

He takes a book off the shelf. It's an old, old flora and fauna guide for Eastern Washington, hardbound and fraying, some of the gilt edging faded. "It's a harvest," he says, picking his way through a theory. "Of our pain, and fear--so, if you're someone who uses your Art a lot, not using it, or having it backfire, is also scary." He glances up from the book. The plates aren't in color, but otherwise have held up well over the years. "And if you don't use it a lot, being forced to, and feeling clumsy, is too. And if you're in the middle, well, they'll just raise the stakes." He sighs about that. As he and Itzhak have posited, there's no winning. Just survival. But when you're the meal for existential monsters, survival is winning.

"Oh I absolutely would not be going alone," he says, shaking his head. "At a minimum, Eleanor, or Itzhak--someone, for sure. Maybe even de la Vega, if I can talk him into it. I for sure don't think we should trust them, but there's trust, then there's turning down an opportunity to know more. I'm not sure we can afford to do the later while Yule' still getting up and running. I was going to ask Eleanor to try looking into them too. Maybe between her and Alexander they can find something."

"Save for a classmate in New Orleans, I didn't come across many I've established personal connection with," Isabella replies after a moment of quiet thinking, expression briefly softening as she remembers Ethan. "Then again once I was across the pond I was doing my best to forget I even had the Talent. But no, I wouldn't be going alone. I never would, unless I have no choice." She made that mistake before and it cost her greatly.

The word has her making a face. "Like a reaping, yeah," she murmurs softly in agreement. Otherwise she says nothing else about the rest; there are no protests there or even a different opinion. On some level, she knows that the older man is right.

Still, she's relieved that he doesn't intend to go alone and there's a small but determined bob of her head. "I was pretty tempted when Yule showed me his letter," she tells him. "But I'm already pushing it with the physical strain, I don't want to keep breaking my body the way I have been." There's a glance down at her ribs with a frown. "Just be careful, okay?"

She toy absently with the dandelion bracelet on her wrist - currently more accessible than the pendant tucked into her jacket, but touching it never fails to bring a smile on her lips, however absent. "Anyway, what else is new? What are you doing here? Just stepping out of the rain?"

Well, if anyone can relate to lack of personal connections formed academically, it's August. He was known for being a bit isolated, and it surprised no one when he joined the Forest Service and went to hide in the woods, appearing only to publish a paper or a book. He smiles, rueful. "Yeah, it's easy for people in our kind of field to get that way. Who knows, maybe you can set down some new lines of communication." A brief lift of his brows to suggest she keep that in mind.

"Reaping. Yeah. Maybe that's what we should call it. Feels apt." He shuts the book, keeps a hold of it. "I'll be careful. One of us needs to bite the bullet, and as much as he's determined to lie down on every train track he can find, I'm not letting it be Alexander this time."

He tilts his head, looks around them at the odd shelves and cases and stacks. "Sometimes I feel like this place is asking me to come take a peak. I know that sounds weird, but," he takes up the bird skull, turns it over in his hand. It catches the light, shimmering gold and blue. Labradorite for sure. "If there's any place in town where the weird stuff will settle, it's in here."

"Yeah, I intend to. Since there's clearly no escaping this, I might as well see what's out there. I'm an explorer by trade, I can't exactly invest in blinders after everything else that's happened." Isabella glances down at the top of her boots, shifting her weight awkwardly between them. "While I'm gone, would you be willing to keep an eye on Alexander? I know he's a grown man and he's not a child, and I'm not so conceited that I legitimately think I can shield him from everything but...I know I would worry anyway." She looks up to meet August's eyes and smiles ruefully. "And I know you would anyway but I wanted to ask."

There's a bit of a laugh when August brings up Alexander's propensity for self-sacrifice. "Definitely one of the more frustrating parts about him but I doubt we would ever like him as much as we do if he wasn't like that," she replies. "But you're right. He needs to learn how to share. You saw what he did when he thought I was just going to jump after Anne, he tried to pre-empt me!" The last is petulantly exasperated.

She watches him examine the labradorite bird skull, peering at it curiously as she slides her hands in her pockets. "I can probably lose myself in here for hours if not just for the books. I've never been here before until today, though. All I know about this store is that Violet Whitehouse used to own it." She looks around, taking a few steps towards the interior. "I wonder if we can find any additional history on the Whitehouses around here. Alexander got the book from her, I don't know if he mentioned...the one that led him into investigating Billy the Ghoul." And in the attempt, meeting her. Funny how that works.

August coughs a laugh at the request. "I don't mind you asking, and I know how you feel. As much as Eleanor would hate it, I'd ask the same of someone on her behalf too, so, I know where you're coming from. And I will." One brow goes up, wry humor edging into his voice. "I'm not sure I'll be able to successfully lie to him if he asks me about you setting a watch on him, though. Fair warning."

Now he laughs openly, nodding. "Yeah, that's...that's true. It's not that I don't appreciate it. I even understand why he's doing it." Ironically, for a similar reason August is determined to heal anyone who will let him. "But I don't have to like it, and I'm determined to make sure we don't lose him as a result." Her exasperation makes him pause. Cautiously, he says, "It's worth discussing with him. He's trying to protect you, but he's also denying you a right to make your own choices. That's not okay, in the long run, even if his intentions are good." He could go on at length here, but doesn't.

Instead, "History about them in here?" He looks around them, expression thoughtful. "Might be able to. Maybe Anne or Clarissa could find something about them in the archives or historical records."

"He can deal with it," Isabella sniffs. "It's not as if I'm hiring a babysitter, and it's not as if I'm asking you to handcuff him to a bed or lock him up in a dungeon. I'm just making sure he has some necessary back up at whatever reckless thing he decides to do next. And I know very well that's rich coming from me, but in the end, we're all hypocrites in that regard and there's honestly no use trying to fight against it. We have bigger problems these days." But his laugh does have her grinning faintly at him.

His more open laugh pulls that smile into a broader one, enough that hints of her teeth are visible from the parted seam of her lips, and affords the Combat Botanist the rarely-seen dimple on her left cheek. "I'd like to think that my faith in Alexander's ability to survive is well earned, but it can't hurt to take measures to doubly ensure it. I'm...glad that you are, August. Honestly. I don't want to lose him either. I just found him." Her eyes find another shelf, and a hand lifts to toy at the objects there, suddenly very interested in looking at them rather than her companion. "He's had a few close calls already." She can still remember taping his throat shut over the summer, his blood gushing over her fingers. Or the fact that Peregrine had him, and that could have been the last time any one of them would have ever seen him. Her smile fades at these memories.

"You know what complicates that?" she says, finally, turning her eyes to her friend. "The fact that I think it's sweet. I'm not immune to those gestures, no matter how loudly I bluster about them, but it does chafe. At the same time, I understand that, also. If I thought danger was coming for Alexander, I don't think I'd be able to stop myself, either, throwing myself in front of him. Some things just...escape the more cognitive functions of the brain, when a situation like that happens. And I..." She sighs. "I already told him that I didn't want to be safe. I didn't get into the profession I have for that, and when he's thinking rationally, he does remember that. It's just...the heat of the moment, and I'm not one to judge him too harshly for it because I'm the same way." After a moment, she lets loose a breathless laugh. "Ugh, how did I get here, August? When I came back, it was for a job, and reluctantly at that, not...."

She exhales a breath, setting down the antique as she looks up at the taller man. "Might have to start to - their family history is twined with mine in at least one event," she murmurs. "It could yield something about Alice, too. Alexander's determined to find her." She rolls her head back. "Anyway, looks like the rain's letting up - wanna go warm up with some coffee?"

"You're welcome. I try not to be too much of a hypocrite about that, but," August rubs the back of his neck. "Anyways, I'd never agree to babysitting him, it wouldn't be possible."

He makes a sound, waggles his hand. "There's jumping in front of a bullet for someone, then there's what he did back at the carousel." Wanting to stop her from going after Anne, he means. "I'd like to think with Eleanor in your place, I'd go with her, not try to stop her." And with that thing from her past coming around again, he might just get his chance.

"I ask myself a lot. Or, I used to. Now," he sets the skull back down on the shelf, "I just roll with it." A small smile, then he nods at the checkout and holds up the book. "Sure, just gonna grab this."