2020-02-13 - y o u a r e T H E L O S T

There's a visible nervousness to Anne as she comes up to the empty grave today. Maybe it's just the cold, but she doesn't look like she necessarily wants to be here. Still, she's come early, dressed in black like one of the mourners, a heavy coat that keeps away the chill. She has a small messenger bag that she keeps tucked under one arm today - she hasn't yet gone out to buy a gun, but there's a kitchen knife inside just in case. She will probably have to explain to Patrick someday why his knife is gone - no, nevermind, it's not the one he uses to cut his citrus fruits for his drinks so he probably won't even notice it's missing.

Either way, here she is on the edge of Gohl's grave, staring down into the pit that someone's redug as she waits for the others. She does idly toe a rock out of the ground and kick it into the hole, watching it plummet into the empty space.

She comes as prepared as she can be considering her past experiences in the last few weeks. When Isabella emerges from the dreary gray mist blanketing the Gardens of Eternal Rest, she's dressed warmly and practically - a warm, but lightweight black jacket piped with red dons her today, pulled over jeans and winter boots. There's a small pack strapped to one shoulder, containing the things she usually brings to expeditions on the other side, with a few additional items that she had proposed to the exploration group, as well as a secured canister of ground chalk - it had been helpful the last time. The weight of a gun rests somewhere in the small of her back, its cold metal rolling goosebumps up her spine.

Then again, it could just be the cold and their surroundings, too.

She arrives with Alexander, her cherry-red Jeep parked nearby, hands encased in fingerless gloves slid in her pockets; every breath coalesces into visible puffs, as if threads of her very life are escaping her own body. The sight of Anne by the purported gravesite earns her a smile regardless. "Hey, Blue Eyes," she greets. "How are you feeling? Still...?" Off, is what she means to say, but she already knows the answer to that. She feels it also.

Alexander is bundled from head to neck; hats still hurt a little, so his hair is disheveled and bared to the chill. He slumps along behind Isabella, staring for a moment at the funeral in progress, before looking back to Anne, and letting a slow smile settle on his features. "We don't look so happy to be doing this," he notes to both women, with amusement. He's also got a small pack slung over one shoulder, and his knife strapped in under his sweater. The pack contains only a few items - a spade, some rope, fresh water, a change of clothes. The serious expedition gear, he leaves to the more organized.

Today, there's no brightening when Anne spies her friends getting out of Isabella's Jeep. Sure, there's a smile, but it's faint and not its typical sunniness; it's probably obvious to the both of them that she's tired, the dark spots under her eyes suggestive of someone who hasn't gotten a lot of sleep. "Hey," at least her greeting is warm even if the rest of her is not, an assessing glance given to Isabella and particularly Alexander, to whom she addresses: "This is probably a really stupid thing for all of us to do, all things considered," Somebody has to say it. Still, she adds sort of reluctantly, "But also a necessary thing, I think." She hopes, anyway. There's a sigh as she casts a glance down the cemetery grounds to the tent of people mourning their loss, and then she drops her focus to the edge of Billy's grave.

"It feels different here," she says, taking one giant step back. "I'll try to make the door here. But I don't think we should go very far. If somebody did something .. over there? Hopefully it will be obvious right away."

"I guess I could be a little more festive about this by dancing around the grave," Isabella replies to Alexander's amused comment with a bland, dry drawl, but her mouth lifts in the corners afterwards, quirked in a faint grin. "Kick up my legs like a can-can dancer, or do my finest impression of the Jazz Hands." She wiggles her fingers in a demonstrative fashion to her companions, though when Anne prepares herself to open the door, tension winds down her spine and braids across the line of her shoulders; she digs into her pocket to stuff a white pill in her mouth. Considering that the investigator is still recovering, and unwilling to strain Alexander any more than she already has this week, she turns to pharmaceutical means to prepare her entry the best she can.

It is getting easier, however, the more trips she takes with Anne through the Doors.

"Agree," she tells Anne and Alexander quietly. "Gravesite and around the gravesite only. We'll try and bail the moment we find what we need to."

Alexander takes a moment to look at Isabella's legs. His eyebrows go up. "I won't object." Then he winks at her. His lips do tighten a bit when she pops the bill - he certainly offered to help her with the anxiety, but he didn't argue too much when she chose otherwise. He just judged. Silently. Like he's doing RIGHT NOW. But what he doesn't judge is the advice about the depth of the expedition; his agreement is immediate and firm. "Either something will be here or it won't. If we have to go wandering to find it, then it probably isn't here. And something will probably attempt to kill us either way, so be on your guard." So saying, he reaches under his sweater to lay his hand on the knife, although he doesn't pull it here in public.

There's a bubble of laughter from Anne at Isabella's can-can dancing comments, though it's quiet and mostly dry. She's lacking so much humor today, sorry for the sour pus. "It'd be better to dance around the grave if something was in here," but there's nothing in here; she looks again, just to make sure. Then there's a GRAVE (lol, I slay myself) nod to Alexander at the talk of something probably waiting to kill them. "And if that something doesn't kill me, Patrick probably will for putting myself in danger, so," she rolls back her shoulders, straightens up, and looks to the empty space of air in front of her. "Here goes nothing." Let's see what happens, guys!

The wink and the blatant flirtation has Isabella gasping, and even makes a big show of clutching her fingers around her collar, nevermind that she is hardly affluent enough to have any pearls unlike certain Margaret Addingtons that might be lurking in the woodwork. "Objectification!" she says in mock outrage, but she does plant a light kiss on Alexander's cheek, her grin absolutely puckish and irrepressible, while doing her level best to ignore the look of judgment she finds on his features because they do not have the minutes to spare to argue over whether they ought to chance him using his gifts while he's recovering from a grievous head injury, and haven't had the opportunity to test or measure his more challenging changes.

She takes a deep breath when she feels the ephemeral yank; it makes more gooseflesh fountain over her skin, and cold sweat trickle down the shallow channel of her spine. She swallows when the familiar fear registers in her bones, all the more discomfited by the fact that something has changed and they don't know what it is yet, but it is making itself known.

"Why do we do this again?" she wonders to her companions, helplessly, before shoving herself through the narrow doorway anyway despite her words, because she's an archaeologist and explorer, and telling one not to go through a door or examine a secret passageway is like telling a doctor not to stab someone with a needle (looking at you, Hailey). She eases into it, taking step by careful step...

...and nearly falls right into the grave on the other side. "Oh, Jesus Christ!"

Alexander smiles at the light kiss, and murmurs, "You have sexy legs. I don't apologize." He seems to ease a bit at seeing her own grin and that flare of humor, and this allows him to wait quietly, and with a pretense of patience, for the door to be opened, although he watches Anne with a furrowed brow and no little concern as she does. "Because we're nosy," he suggests as an answer to Isabella's question, and seems entirely serious about it. He follows close behind Isabella, anxious not to lose sight of her OR get caught in the closing door, if that's even a thing which might happen. When she starts to tumble forward, he grabs at her with an arm, ready to pull back in a moment. But barring blood or murder attempts, he presses forward, calling back to Anne, "Be careful. There's a drop."

And if his face is paler than it should be, well, it isn't has if he's had Dreams of being buried in a shallow grave or anything, before. This is fine.

"This isn't right," Anne says to her companions as she reaches out to tug on the door, a quiet noise of frustration crawling out of her throat. "This doesn't feel right at all." It was a strain, far too much of a strain to be normal, if creating some sort of other-dimensional doorway could be considered normal at all. But she finally breaks through, sucking in a breath once its done, her shoulders trembling slightly when she sees where the door opened. Why do we do this again?

"Because we're stupid," she mumbles as she drops down onto the ground with every intention of sliding into the hole on her rear end. She waits for the others this time, casting one long look over her shoulder back to the mourners, and she winces her eyes shut. "I'm sorry," she breathes out in a whisper to nobody in particular, and then shoves herself forward into the shimmery hole.

She would have told Alexander that for someone who is about to step through a potentially unimaginable hellhole of homegrown horrors, that he is being very sweet. But as they go through the strangely-placed door, there's no helping it; with Isabella's arm grabbed, her momentum is already propelling them forward, so there's no other recourse than to hang onto him and make herself as limp as possible when the fall feels like they've decided to throw themselves off a balcony, instead. The moment of impact jars her bones, and leaves her groaning near the rest of her party.

"Everyone okay?" she asks, already attempting to push herself off the ground, ignoring the scrapes and bruises she could feel forming underneath her clothes - but she can't afford to lie down for too long. Green-and-gold eyes lift to blink at the memorial waiting for them, fashioned out of granite so black it swallows up light. Unable to help herself, she moves closer, to try and help up Anne and Alexander, and then take a look at the names carved into the smooth, polished surface. Her stomach sinks at the realization that she can probably already expect which names she'll be seeing upon it, though.

Alexander is trying to be good, but his recovering balance is still pretty shaky, and when they trip, his arms pinwheel wildly, only narrowly missing slamming into his companions as he pitches forward, desperately striving to stop the inevitable. He probably should have put his hands out before him instead, because when the inevitable does happen, he slams his forehead into the black stone rather than grabbing it with his hands, and then drops to the ground like a rock.

He's not out, though; there's a low, whimpering sound. "I hate this fucking town," he mumbles into the soil, before turning himself over. The skin has split just above his temple, and a cake of dirt is all that's keeping him from bleeding everywhere. He doesn't try to stand up, and his eyes are unfocused. "Alive?"

"Do you remember that scene in Alice in Wonderland, where she pushes herself through the rabbit hole and --" Sorry to say that there's no poof of a pretty blue skirt with white apron for Anne that'll have her floating gently to the ground. Instead, she pitches herself forward and falls, SPLAT, into the memorial. At least she doesn't land face-first; it's right on her arm, scraping her elbow and forearm across it. It wasn't her already damaged arm, so now she'll have matching owies! "What the fuck," she scrambles back, falls over her feet, and lands on her ass too, staring up at the endlessly tall wall that surrounds them now, her eyes going bigger as she cranes her neck further and further back - and then falls over all the way, landing on her tailbone with another squeak of an ow. "I can't see the top of it," she tells them from the ground. She's fine. This is fine. "Everything's fine!" she doesn't sound convinced.

The sense of wrongness accompanies the splitting headache that is starting to blossom in the back of her head like a thorny rose, but Isabella tries to hang on, to see and look as much as she can before it starts to hurt. She finally jerks her head away from the memorial, her heart hammering like thunder against her ribcage. "Don't...don't look at it for too long - not where it stretches. It's..." Too much. It's too much. She shakes her head hard in an attempt to clear it, and swallow down the nausea that threatens to grow in her stomach.

And look, asking her not to read is like asking her not to breathe. She can't help it!

She reaches out in an attempt to help Anne with shaky fingers, first, because she's closer, but her concern is palpable at the state of the other. "Alexander!" His name pulls out of her in a rush when she approaches, because he hit his head again and the copper tang of a new wound spices the air around him. Isabella crouches next to him at that, and she doesn't move him yet, frowning at his unfocused eyes. "I should have pressed you harder to stay home," she murmurs, expression twisting faintly - he is not fully recovered. Gentle fingers frame his face, if he allows, so she could take in the state of his eyes - and the fuzziness there only deepens her frown.

"Are you okay? Can you sit?" She'll help him, if she can, but this does put her on eye level with a familiar set of words engraved on stone. Her lips part. "No..." she whispers. "I thought he just left town, not that he was..."

Unable to help herself, her fingers stretch out to brush over the letters that spell out Alistair Carver's name.

"M'fine," Alexander says, blinking rapidly. He frowns up at the memorial, and sways even as he's moved into a seated position. "What is it. Where?" He stops before he can just babble for a while, and focuses on Isabella's face, and her hands. A reassuring smile. "It's okay. Just a bump. Hard-headed," he claims. He twists around to see what she's found, and after another bout of heavy blinking, makes out the words. "...lost. I knew he was gonna try. Guess he didn't make it. Unless." He swipes some trickling blood out of his eye. "Um. See if we can find a name of someone we know is alive? But who stands out? Not our own. That never ends well." He reaches out to the wall, tries to find a name of someone he's pretty damned sure is alive: Yule Duchannes. He just spoke to the guy, after all.

"Ohgod, I'm gonna throw up," Anne's got that swimmy look to her eyes as she tries to find the top of infinity, it's almost too hard to pull her eyes away. But she rolls onto her side and puts her arm over her head, blocking her view from what is endless. She doesn't blow chunks at least, it's too small of a space for her to start puking, it just takes her a minute for her stomach to settle and the pounding in her head to die to a drum beat. Just in time for her to sit up .. and put her eyes upon T H E L O S T.

If she wasn't pale before, Anne becomes as white as a sheet. "No," she utters quietly, backing up and hitting another wall. The breathes she takes are deep but ragged, and as Alexander and Isabella are searching for names, she's staring at T H E L O S T with bulging eyes. "We need to find a way out of here," determined, she hops to her feet. "We need to find a way out of here right now. Fuck looking for names. I MADE A PROMISE!"

She's not done fussing, and when she finds that blood, Isabella reaches into her pack and tapes Alexander's wound shut with a bandaid. It's got a little R2-D2 on it. And once that's done, she shakes her head hard again in an attempt to clear it, and rises slowly on her feet. She'll try to assist Alexander, too, as she does.

"We'll get out of here," she says. "Can you--" She almost makes the same mistake; to ask her to open a door back out of here, until she remembers what happened to Anne the last time she used her powers. It sets her teeth on edge. "Hard way it is, let's see if we can find a break or something through the walls that we can squeeze through." She pauses when she finds Vivian's name on the wall, and shuts her eyes, expression twisting faintly with regret. "God damn it," she whispers quietly through her clenched jaw, remembering Byron's worried face the last time they had spoken of the psychiatrist. Her eyes continue to move, strafing over the names she can find in eye-level for any sign of Baxter.

Alexander stares at Carmody's name for longer than it warrants. Part of that is because his ears are ringing and standing is one of those things that he only manages with Isabella's help and one hand on the memorial. At least once he's on his feet, he seems to find his stability. He smiles as he reaches up to touch the bandaid on his forehead, and then he studies Anne. He reaches out carefully with one hand, trying to lay it gently (and briefly) on her shoulder. "Hey. We'll get home. Deep breath?" He tries to demonstrate. "Okay?" He nods to Isabella. "It's dark. Maybe there's a hidden passage."

This is entirely wishful thinking, his expression says, but better that than panic.

Anne isn't having a tantrum. Anne isn't freaking out. Did you not see how she crushed that composure roll, GM? No, everything is absolutely and perfectly fine; this is just her focusing on getting the fuck out of her so that her name doesn't end up on these walls. Speaking of walls, she's going to start to push at them where ever she can reach, slapping her palms onto the stones and digging her heels into the ground to give this stupid wall a good shove in hopes it moves. Granted, she's got about as much brute force as a wet noodle, but dammit, she's trying. It's around then that her hand smacks onto the name of KELSEY WADE, and that makes her scurry back, sucking in a breath. "I know her," she points, her finger trembling. "We used to talk, trade stories, we.. I thought she.. oh god," she pulls her hands over her cheeks, about to go back to pushing the walls when Alexander puts his hand on her shoulder. It stills her for the moment, and she can't do the deep breathing he suggests, but she can at least stop frantically trying to bring the walls down.

"I brought a flashlight," it occurs to her suddenly. Her bag was still here, on the ground, but she goes and gets the flashlight out of the bag. Time to shed some light on this situation.

Not lost, then, but dead.

Isabella does her best to keep herself from searching for the one name that dances in the back of her head when she thinks of the Lost, and with Anne shedding some light into their surroundings, there's a small wave of relief washing out of her that is all too short lived when she finds their own names engraved on the wall. She stares at them for a moment, her jaw working and her face draining of color, before it hardens determinedly and she turns away from the recently litany to reach out and start feeling around the walls for something, anything. Switches, cracks. Attempting to climb out of their trap was out of the question - the walls extend for miles, but she does attempt to try and find protrusions, or passages out - if they can't get over them, they would have to go through them, right?

Or...under them?

Eyes swing towards the ground where the grave was supposed to sit.

"Keep in mind that we don't know that any of this is real," Alexander says, quietly, as he also gropes the wall, but in a more careful, systemic manner, looking for switches or hinges. "This could just be a way to try and hurt us. Everything here pretty much tries to hurt us." When the light comes on, he looks where it falls by instinct, and goes very, very still when he sees the three names. "Case. In. Point." He tries one of those deep breaths, himself, as a shudder works its way down his spine. "We're not dead. We're not lost. We're just a little trapped."

There's a sudden furrowing of his brow. "Either this was made specifically for us, or there has to be a way in and out. Otherwise, the names wouldn't be engraved on the inside."

Nope. That's Anne's first reaction when her light illuminates Isabella's name, Alexander's name. Her own name. And this is the point where Anne loses her cool. "I am NOT LOST!" she screams at the wall, tightens her fist around the Maglite flashlight, and smashes it into her name on the wall. She's going to beat her name to death, FYI.

She attempts to stem the rising tide of panic welling up in her chest, exacerbated by Anne's furious beating of their names with her flashlight, breaking it in the process. "Anne, please, we can't-- " Lose our heads. Isabella swallows, because the feel of it is so pervasive, how she feels like she's fading away. That the light in her is snuffing out, so helpless and hopeless and...

...ordinary....

"...but we're not," she says quietly. They aren't ordinary. "We're not. We're not." She glances at the floor and the words etched upon it, taunting them. Her jaw sets, and she suddenly reaches out, throwing both of her arms around Anne and Alexander and squeezing them ferociously, if she can. "I'm going to try it," she tells them. "If it turns out poorly, I'm...I'm so sorry." To Alexander: "I love you."

With that, she turns around and launches herself at the wall with their names etched on it. Her hand presses flat against it and attempts to will whatever mending ability she has in an attempt to scratch out their names from the wall.

"Stop," Alexander says when Anne starts to smash her flashlight into the wall. "Anne, stop it! You're going to--" crack, tinkle, darkness, "...break it. Fuck." And then they're dimming, and for a moment, Alexander figures he's just passing the fuck out, because hey, repeated cranial trauma. But everything is going on and on and it's wrong and he's draining and then Isabella is launching herself at the wall. "GOD DAMN IT ISABELLA WILL YOU STOP IT?" It's a bellow, pain and fury and an attempt to fight back against that dragging scene of hollowness all at once. He tries to reach out to grab Isabella in one arm, and Anne in another, and just drag them away from the walls towards the center of the slab. He's not gentle, or particularly worried about hurting either of them for the moment.

"I," smash goes the flashlight, "made," SMACK it goes again, "A PROMISE!!" one more hit before the crack-tinkle-darkness, and there's a scream of frustration as she flings the useless thing at the wall. It doesn't do anything at all, and she can feel herself dimming, the little light inside of her starting to extinguish, and she was probably going to beat the wall some more with her fists if Alexander didn't grab her in the moment. "God dammit Alexander I need to get out of here!" she fights him, but it's a lot of pointless squirming - he's got a grip on her.

The pain keeps her alert, at least, but her body's been battered by enough punishments in the last few weeks that they register in the sense that it keeps her mind focused on the present and not the dangerous, drifting thought that she's disappearing. And she clearly prefers that over vanishing, so it's definitely for the best that Alexander's managed to pry her away from the wall. Because it's dim, and since she's in pain and being manhandled, she doesn't see the letters carved in her hands just yet - maybe later, once they figure this out and once she removes her gloves. That surge of temper seems to be going well for the investigator, though, because he doesn't seem to be fading like the rest of them.

She's breathing raggedly, her eyes wide and wild with panic. She isn't saying anything, because she's presently struggling to keep her wits about her. It must be the sight of him looking real and bright, though, because she's re-centering herself the more she looks at him. There's relief on her features - so much so that she doesn't even care that she just got yelled at. He isn't disappearing.

"We," she finally says, pushing the word out from her knotted throat. "We need to get out of here." She reaches out to try and grasp Anne's shoulder because she's still squirming.

The echoes are echoing in Alexander's poor, battered brain, which is thudding enthusiastically along with the rhythm the flashlight had started. He closes his eyes, trying not to be nauseous, and pulls the both of them closer to try and basically force a group hug on them. "Stop," he tells them, voice rough. "We're being played. Stop. Don't panic. And please stop yelling. My head hurts." He sways a little in place. "We'll get out of here. We're not alone. We're not dead. It wants to hurt us, to make us angry and despairing so that it can feed. So remember: we're here together. We're okay."

He even sounds like he believes that. But he's also got a concussion, so he might be believing a lot of stupid things.

The angry yelling from eternity above was terrifying; it chills down Anne's spine and makes her stomach twist into knots. And then there is the scent of blood in the air, and the fact that she's becoming grayer while Alexander gets brighter. The panic's still there but all the fight left in her is exhausted; Anne goes limp in Alexander's arms. "I don't know what to do," the sob gets trapped in her throat as she admits that, staring up at the newly bloodied wall and her name up there, all the names up there. We need to get out of here is Isabella's suggestion, and Alexander's echo, but Anne can't stop staring at the wall and her name up there with all the rest. "I don't know how. I don't know how to get out of here," she admits to the others. It's not defeat that taints her words, that springs tears to her eyes. It's just acceptance.

There's barely any of her left because what the trap wants her to do is anathema to her nature, and whatever passes for a heart Isabella has left leaps to her throat when she nearly winks out of existence. Tears start to spring in her eyes, because she doesn't want to go. She doesn't want to be Lost. But she doesn't know how to give up, doesn't know how to let go, and both disparate states war within her as all that she is passes in and out of two completely different lives, unsure of where she would land - one of adventure and the unknown, and one that is colorless and doomed to obscurity. The panic threatens to take her again, and when she reaches for Alexander now that Anne has disappeared, her fingers slip through his shoulders when he attempts to get them all in a group hug, unable to make contact.

Her heart breaks through her relief that Anne has managed to save herself, because she doesn't know if she can come back with him in this state, can't even touch him, really, but she wants him to go and given that he's fading again, she swallows - she barely feels physical anymore. Her hands fall to her sides, balling into fists and feeling blood well from the cuts, and soak through leather. "Alexander, stop." Even her voice sounds like a ghost's, but she's concerned about his swaying, the state of his head, that he's not recovered, and that his colors and solidity are dulling again. "Please stop."

Alexander feels all the things that are worth living sort of drain out of him, and there's not even enough 'there' there left to panic. When Isabella tells him to stop, he gives her a tired smile, nods, and starts to sit down. To stop. When Anne flickers back to life briefly before disappearing, he breathes out, long and slow and tired. "All right, then," he says, to the empty space left behind. "Let us be lost, then. It's okay. I've been lost my entire life. What can it hurt?" He reaches up towards Isabella, his hand passing through her. "Isabella, beautiful. Let's be lost." He tries to take her wounded hands in his own, and press kisses on the bloody palms.

It's not a thing that Anne wants to accept, that she doesn't know what to do. That she might very well be lost. But maybe that's been the point the entire time, maybe that's why she does this to begin with - because she is lost, and she's searching for something. Searching for herself. Searching for answers. So in the end, acceptance was easier than not; except where she lands is not easy - on her stomach, arms and legs bent, in the bottom of an empty grave that is not her own, soil in her hair and her nose and her lungs. Alone.

"Isabella?! ALEXANDER?!" she shouts, scrambling to her feet, frantically twisting around in the grave. "Alexander?! ISABELLA!!!" she screams, but she's screaming to herself.

All right then, he says.

Isabella blinks at him as he simply sits down and...doesn't go and that almost breaks her entirely, emotion pulsing through her fading form, barely a flicker. When she moves, she drifts rather than steps, and she sinks down on her knees in front of him. "I didn't want this for you," she tells him quietly, her hand coming up to try and touch the side of his face, spectral fingers running lightly over the curve. If tears could fall at the moment, they would - she was usually so good at keeping them at bay, and now that she feels free to, there are literally none to shed. At the moment, she is incapable of it.

And when he vanishes when he tries to dispense those tokens on her palms, she turns to lean against the wall of her prison, staring up at her name. "Okay," she tells the darkness, her eyes drifting shut and attempts to prepare herself for the inevitable. "Lost it is."

She doesn't know where Anne went. Where Alexander went. Some part of her hopes that they ended up in a better place than this.

Alexander lands with a dull thump in the dirt. It takes him a moment to shake off the feelings of dull rationality. And when he does, what replaces it is mostly...worry? He staggers to his feet in the grave, looking around. "Anne? Isabella?" Although it's a dull croak at first, then he finds the strength to shout it. "ANNE! ISABELLA!" He looks frantically around for a sign of either or both of them. Alive, hopefully.

It was less realization than futility, really - all that mattered to her at that point was that Alexander and Anne had managed to, hopefully, get out. Though she wasn't sure of that, herself either. That will probably change once she realizes that she, too, is out of the trap.

Her face finds snow and dirt and honestly, this wouldn't be the first time in the span of days that she has found herself in this position, but if she was worried about getting dirt under her fingernails and face, she shouldn't be an archaeologist in the first place. Isabella groans quietly, and then she shifts, blood-soaked leather leaving garish streaks on ice as she pushes herself to her knees. There's another hard shake of her head, dull eyes trying to get used to the dark. It had been daylight when they came, and when she sees darkness and considering the fact that it has been hours, and another at that until she appeared, she can't help but think she is lost, and her experience had landed her in another part of the Veil's twisted landscape. There's a soft groan, her fingers finding the grass as she attempts to push herself back up and gain her bearings...

...and see if she can un-lost herself, if that's what happened.

Alexander climbs out of the hole with Anne's help, makes sure she's alive and BRIGHT, and then paces around the grave like an unhappy dog who has seen their owner disappear through a doorway for the first time. "An hour? But it was only a moment!" He shivers, shudders, and sets in with great impatience and rising worry to WAIT. And wait. Until Isabella does appear, and he lets out an incoherent cry of relief, scrambling to meet her, to pull her out of the grave with them. "Isabella. Are you okay?"

She's so confused and somewhat discombobulated over what just happened that she doesn't even scream when someone moves like a viper in the dark and drags her out of the grave. "...Alexander?" Her wide-eyed look can't be glimpsed easily when her arms throw around him, staring over his shoulder at the darkness and clutching him ferociously, as if adrift in some Pacific storm with nothing but him as a buoy. "I thought I was...I thought...I don't understand..." she tells him, hoarsely. She sees Anne too, and it slowly dawns on her that they're back. Or are they? "...but why is it so dark? What time is it...?"

They had been gone for a day - at least according to the distant chiming of St. Mary's bells. But she doesn't let go of Alexander. She eases back, her blood-caked fingers finding the sides of his face and look in his eyes to make sure he is real, and this isn't some twisted delusion that she's having because her body is still trapped on some strange, granite mausoleum through the Veil. "We're not lost? Are we back? But it....we were fading, I don't...." Her voice falters, growing more confused by the moment, but she decides to ease away from that to just back in relief, hugging him tightly and uncaring of their creepy surroundings.

"It's late," Alexander states the obvious, while being all aboard Project Fierce Hugging. He wraps her in his arms and squeezes. "We've been waiting about an hour. And I got out an hour after Anne. We've been gone for most of the day." He buries his head in her hair. "I think...I think...I have thoughts." He leans against her. "But I need time to think about them. We should go home." A glance to Anne. "We need to talk about what happened, though. Just...not immediately."

"You always think, and have thoughts." On any other day, that would be a joke from Isabella, but today it only spurs a near-overwhelming wave of relief because it only confirms that they aren't lost and they are themselves, and she's doing her best not to cry because it had been so close and she genuinely thought they were all done for. That there wasn't any coming back from what they just experienced. She takes a breath, gives him a squeeze. "Yeah, we do. Nothing about that felt right...but later." To Anne, she reaches out with one hand so she can hug her fiercely, also.

She's so glad they all made it out.

"Do you have a ride? We'll wait with you, or walk you to your car." She's definitely not letting go of Alexander though. She thought that had been it. It's going to take a few to recover from.

And then there's Patrick and she watches them take off. She's even relieved to see him, too. But there's a sidelong glance at Alexander as the car vanishes in the distance before they, too, set for home.