2020-01-29 - AJ and Ellie

There are little flurries of snow outside, and Eleanor has left the closing up of the shop to Matias, rather than drive back in. She's upstairs in her room, going through some boxes in her closet, trying to find a couple files she thinks were packed away a long time ago and never relocated to her home office after buying the house from her parents.

She's been trying to put together any incidents and information happening in wooded areas regarding Sylvans, Dryads, and her old pal Modr. A lot of that she delved deep into when she was a teen, and now she wants to correlate it with her adult research. She calls downstairs as she sorts through another box of teenage stuff.

"August? Can you go down in the basement and see if there are any file boxes down there still? I may have let some down there with my old school paperwork and stuff."

August has been making dinner--lasagna, the perfect thing to warm up the house and them--and now that it's in the oven he is in fact free to do other things for the next hour or so. He glances up from reading through an old poetry book (spine creased, cover frayed. "Sure. Am I looking for anything in particular or should I just bring up whatever I find?" He sets the book aside and gets up, heading for the door into the basement. The front cover lifts just enough to reveal decades-old writing on the inside; a note in fine cursive.

"Should be full of manila folders labelled in Sharpie like 'DEAD FOREST' or 'MISSING PETS'!" Eleanor calls back. "I wrote them when I was a kid so there are probably stickers on the important ones!" She thumbs through some old journals of hers, before tossing them back in the box and carrying the whole thing down the stairs.

Eleanor's basement is not as tidy as the rest of the house. Clearly her mother and father left quite a lot of stuff behind when they moved to Florida, seriously downsizing to a condo on the beach. There are old toys, a crib from when Lucas was a baby, several plastic bins of holiday decorations, and one pile of file boxes that lack labels.

"'Dead forest' and 'missing pets'," August murmurs to himself. "Sure sounds like Gray Harbor." He pauses at the basement door, raises his voice to say, "Got it!" and heads on in.

If there's anything August can relate to, it's lots of stuff. His parents had lived in the house Hannah now lived in for only a decade, and yet somehow they'd managed to accumulate plenty of boxes and piles of things in the process. Clearing out that had been a bonding experience for all five of them, to say the least.

He spies the unlabeled file boxes and goes right to those; it's files Eleanor is looking for, so these seem like a good place to start. He has no intention of hauling them upstairs if they're not what she wants, though, so he pulls the lids off to have a look.

Eleanor sets the box on the kitchen island to sort through more deeply and plucks out some old frames with photos in them of her and Lucas as kids. They were happy photos, until the incident, then she was not often smiling in photos, always looking past the photographer, as if watching for something terrible to come for her.

The first few boxes August opens are no go's. Some are her brother's school work, others are hers. Looks like Mrs. Lake kept everything from Kindergarten on. There is a box of Eleanor's papers from the community college as well, which look like she kept them herself.

The next box he opens, seems to be pay dirt. It's filled with folders labelled in Sharpie and stickers, and look to be ordered from oldest to newest. 'Missing poodle' has a black star on it. Looking inside will reveal that Mrs. Norris' Fifi had been hit by a car, nothing weird, case closed.

'Patch of forest dies' has a red star, and looking inside shows photos from newspapers and magazines from all over the PNW where patches of forests went barren for unexplained reasons.

There's another folder, close to the very front, labeled 'AJ' with heart stickers on it.

August flips through the handful of boxes that don't yield much quickly. It's easy to tell these don't have what she's looking for in short order, though he does make sure to pull out a pen and add a quick note to the top of each about what's inside them.

"Here you are," he says, sitting back on his heels when he finds what she's no doubt looking for. He's about to put the lid back on and bring it up when he sees that manilla folder, with the hearts.

He's in the process of reaching for it when it occurs to him he should ask. Those are hearts, the writing looks 'younger'; it might be something from when she was a kid. But he can ask. (Who's he kidding? He's going to ask.)

He puts that folder on the top, closes the box up and hauls it up the stairs. "Looks like it was just this one," he says, setting it on the island.

Eleanor begins heading towards the cellar door to meet him, when she spots the writing inside that book. She picks it up to peruse the inscription curiously instead, as he comes back up with the needed box. "Yeah should just be one I think. I wasn't as prolific back then."

The book's cover is an older, 60s style; No Voyage and Other Poems by Mary Oliver. The inscription on the inside front cover reads:

AJ,

I think Rose would want you to have this one. For all that Oliver's style changed greatly over the years, this was the first poetry book she released, and Rose loved it.

-- Auntie Tru

One of the poems in the book proper is dog-eared: On the Escape of a Dream.

"Well you were just a kid," August says, tone dry. He pulls the lid off, revealing the heart-sticketed file folder. "I feel compelled to ask about this one," he says, tapping on it and smiling. "I won't lie, the heart stickers have me curious."

Eleanor reads the writing and she almost staggers physically. When he holds up the AJ folder with its heart stickers, she looks like she was hit by a truck. He might also see, on the table, photos of young Eleanor, when she was twelve. A face he would recognize, freckles he could mentally recall, bookish glasses, and coppery hair. She's in a white peasant blouse in one, with green leaves and vines embroidered on the collar and cuffs.

"It was about six months after the, the incident. With Modr. I was pulled into a Dream, and there was a boy my age who helped me. His name was AJ. I tried to find him for years, but I never could. He wasn't born in the hospital here, and didn't attend any schools here. I...this book, is this yours?" she asks, holding it up.

August sees the photo on the table, and for a moment he doesn't even hear Eleanor talking. He sets down the file folder and picks up one of the photos. He stares at the shirt.

God, that was over twenty years ago. He'd always assumed it had been a dream about Bosnia. It was one of the first ones he'd written down, at the suggestion of the therapy group he'd been attending. Not the horrible, painful ones, but anything that seemed gentler, less ugly. To remember their progress, in effect.

That journal was in a box in his cabin, alongside his old uniform and patches. But he'd never forgotten it: the nurses, the dragon, the key and the box. The red-haired girl with glasses, in a white shirt with vines and leaves.

He looks at Eleanor like he's only just now seeing her, for the first time. He blinks, shakes his head. "Yeah, ah...my Aunt Rose. All my poetry books were hers. She and Trudy, her partner, they called me AJ. I only ever let them do that. After they passed I didn't...I wanted it to be theirs. My dad just teases me with it sometimes." His Aunts, his father, and a girl in a Dream, a very long time ago.

Eleanor stares at him, open-mouthed, for a long time. She blinks a few times. "It was you. You were my AJ, weren't you? You came back for me, when that nurse took me." She had loved him from that moment, the mysterious boy in the Dream. Only years of dead ends trying to find him ever got her to move on. Even then, she never dated much, not until she met August.

"That was you. Ellie. I thought..." August stops, shakes his head. "I thought it was about Bosnia. Everything was about Bosnia, then. So I figured it was just more of the same." He sets the picture down, moves close to Eleanor. "You were looking for me that whole time." He laughs, pained. "God, it's better you didn't find me. I was--" He stops, shakes his head. "I was hardly any good for anyone. I was just out of the hospital and I hated a whole lot of everything."

He reaches up to stroke her cheek, slides his hand to her neck. "You were, what thirteen at most? You had to be scared out of your mind. And you still told me to let them take you, and just run."

"Twelve. I was twelve. We'd just moved to this house, after Addie's cancer diagnosis that I knew wasn't really cancer." Eleanor's cheek turns into his palm, eyes closing for a moment. "I didn't want them to get someone else. I just wanted you to get away. Those syringes, they were why I never got a tattoo all these years, the idea of needles in my skin brought me back there."

She opens her eyes and there are tears in them. "You weren't all that far away in miles were you? But the years, you had to have been in your early twenties? I never even considered they might have made you younger in the dream, on purpose. Is that...is that how we were drawn together? Did they know even back then? Or did something in us recognize each other unconsciously?"

"You might not have wanted it, but I think you knew that was going to happen," August says. He strokes her hair with his other hand. "You keep telling me you need to learn how to be brave, but you already are. You always were."

He rests his forehead on hers. "Yeah, I guess I was...twenty-two. Just barely out of the hospital. They were having a field day with me back then, I bet they just made me young so they could remind me how helpless I was. Put me with a little girl I could watch die." A word hangs on the end of that sentence, unsaid, but Eleanor can feel it: again.

He blinks, frowns. It could easily be that the Dream had left its impressions, kept them orbitting each other until one day, Eleanor opted to ask him out. But, "They don't get credit for us being together. You get credit for that. For asking me out. Nominally I get credit for saying yes."

That gets a little chuckle from Eleanor and she wraps her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. "I still can't believe I asked you. But I am so grateful I did. You'll get a kick out of that AJ file I think. The musings of a twelve year old girl over her boy hero of mystery."

"Yeah? You're willing to let me read what twelve year old you thought of twenty-two year old me in twelve year old me's body?" August laughs too, eyes bright with tears. He sobers. "Twelve years old and saving me from hospitals." He sighs, shuts his eyes. "I mean it, though. Sure, it showed us one another. We still did all the hard work." He kisses her forehead. "I'm glad you did too. It wouldn't have occurred to me to try to get the attention of a woman like you. You're out of my league."

Ellie leans up to kiss him gently. "Hardly. I think we're in just the right leagues for each other. I think this proves it. Saving you from hospitals at 12, with my gangly legs, freckles, and glasses." She grins. "At least I grew into the legs, eh?"

August returns the kiss, slow and sweet. "Into the legs?" He makes a low, appreciative sound, runs a hand up one of said legs to Eleanor's hip. "More like grew into all of it." He smiles, sly, reluctantly sets that aside. "Of course, we do have dinner in the oven. And," he nods at the table, where an envelop sits, "my MRI results had a creepy note with them. From that company that did the gladiator match I told you about--FCN? I was wondering if you could try to dig up anything on them."

Eleanor groans at dinner and Them interrupting, but she lets him go to go look at the envelope. She opens it to look for the note. "FCN, hrm. Where have I heard that before?" She reads with a frown, fingers sliding over the paper as if to test it for being otherworldly as well.

August smiles at the groan, understanding Eleanor's frustration at the delays. "Anticipation is the purest form of pleasure," he reminds her, nibbling at her ear before letting her go. "Well, those funky glasses I got? That turned me into someone else? They made those. Turns out Isabella got a coin at that parade, and they made that too. So, chances are, you bath bombs?" He raises his eyebrows. "I gave Yule the glasses, because he's checking all of that over to see how they got them to work. They all seem to do something."

He comes to stand by the island, setting a hip against it. "They've got their fingers in a lot of pies, that's for sure. So--be careful, looking the, up." He pauses, tries to casually add, "Depending on what you find, we can set up an appointment with them."

Eleanor ponders a long moment and then holds up a finger. She rushes upstairs into the master bath and grabs the bath bombs package from the parade, with the single bomb remaining in it. "That's it! The things we got from the parade! FCN made them." She adds them to the table with a frown. "I'll try more conventional routes first, the Internet, maybe a library or BBB office in a city not on a thin spot. Maybe if I keep clear of those I can keep off their radar with my research. My stone can warn me."

August mmmmms, picks up the last bath bomb and turns it over in his hand. "Well I guess I'd be more concerned about us using these if I hadn't watched people eat the soup and come out of it okay." He makes a face. "Which makes me wonder if they're not...adversaries, but, maybe a bit amoral." Not that it's a huge improvment, but maybe it means FCN isn't an arm of Theirs?

He nods, approving of conventional methods, i.e. ones that one put her at risk. Even if he did just oh-so-casually talk about meeting these people in person, after attending a gladiator match, and after they violated HIPAA and commandeered his medical records. "I'll contact them for an appointment. Maybe you, me, and Itzhak can go." Aka people who can bust out if needed.

"They could even be on this side of the Veil," Eleanor points out, "and operating on the other side. Maybe it's a government black ops kind of thing. Maybe it's something else. They seem like researchers of some sort, testing things, don't they?" She nods at his suggestion. "Sounds like a good idea, don't go alone."

"Mmm, yeah...kind of wonder of that Asylum's not the same way, in fact. People get there somehow." August shrugs, moves back to Eleanor's side and picks up the envelope about himself. "So. I got heart stickers, huh?" It's an invitation for her to explain in detail before he goes into the folder, sparse as the data may be.