2020-02-14 - Hijacked Valentines (1898)

Before she set off for her appointment, Isabella had handed over her Jeep's keys to Alexander and told him that she would meet him at their destination, with a bag in her hand and a gleam borne of half-apprehension and half-exhilaration in her eyes as she went out the door. Despite the harrowing events the day before, she is more than ready to have a nice quiet dinner with her beloved this evening in the restaurant she has always wanted to go to, and a chance to fulfill a promise they made months ago to go there after her thesis is finished. And considering the fact that she's about to leave for England in just a couple of weeks, Valentines Day was clearly an appropriate time to do it. Even her latest set of injuries on her hands is not enough to deter her from her date this evening.

When she finally gets to the Lighthouse, it's by Uber, a slim leg stepping out of the vehicle and easing out of the door. The bronze and gold highlights in her hair have been enhanced and retouched, given a much-needed cut and curl, and swept in a loose arrangement to pin at the back of her head. She's wearing a sleek black half-trenchcoat that's belted at the waist, and she doesn't seem to mind leaving bare legs out in the cold - it won't last anyway, she's going to be in warmer confines in a minute. But she's wearing peeptoe heels that make the most out of her pedicure, though whatever she has decided to wear underneath can't be glimpsed because of her outerwear. She's even wearing make-up! All minimalistic with just enough shadow and liner to make the deep green and brilliant gold of her eyes stand out, and lipstick to enhance the color of her mouth. How often does that happen? The vintage drop earrings that Lilith gave her swings from her lobes as she moves, her skin touched by hints of the scent that her friend had also given her for Christmas - spicy, but subtle, with hints of jasmine and ambrette seed because Lilith is about a thousand times more fashionable than she is.

She always makes an effort to look presentable, but until today, it has always been for herself and without much regard for anyone else's opinions. Tonight is basically the first time she has ever dolled herself up for a man, because she's never really had one before, much less spent a Valentines Day with him; it does nothing but stamp some certainty in Alexander's past, playful threats about hoarding every one of her firsts for himself. She's also got a small white box in her hand, that she's hastily trying to tuck into her pocket before anyone sees.

Alexander has also never had a real Valentine's Day with a lover, and so he's perversely glad to have her go on errands, as it gives him time to secure some things for himself, as well as attempt to dress appropriately for the occasion. He arrives early at the restaurant, nervously checking on their reservation, then pacing around the foyer. He's looking sharp in a black suit with a sapphire blue shirt, and a slender tie. Or, he WOULD be, if not for the fact that the back of his head has colorful bruising...and now, so does the front of his head. And a Star Wars themed band-aid over a gash above one eye, which is radiating bruises outward and looks raw and swollen.

Despite this, when Isabella arrives, Alexander moves with unseemly haste to meet her, his smile bright and radiant. "Isabella." He stops, stares. "You look amazing."

The bruises will always make her frown, but luckily that's masked plenty by the mass of black curls that he keeps there; the band-aid is clearly visible, though, but that only gets a fond glance from Isabella. Not just because it's Alexander, but also because R2-D2 is on the band-aid and she loves that little droid. She picked it for a reason. But he does look sharp in his black suit and the sapphire-blue shirt and the fact that he looks fresh from a fight (which isn't really all that inaccurate, considering) only enhances his appeal in her eyes. For a moment she says absolutely nothing, drinking in the way he looks and stopping at the foyer when he comes out to meet her.

It's a confluence of many things - the way he moves so fast towards her direction, the radiant smile and the way he's staring at her because he's never seen her like this, and she can't help but wonder despite her earlier misgivings if she ought to do it more often. Color, unbidden, pushes up her cheeks. "I...well, it's...I mean, I've never done this before and...I've never done this for you before, so I thought...it's...."

She keeps fumbling for words as she fishes out the small white box and thrusts it towards him awkwardly, turning her glance sideways, though it gravitates towards him soon enough because she can't take her eyes off him on normal days, let alone days like these when he looks so sharp. There's a smile, half-sheepish but brilliant, and radiating with the uncomplicated happiness of standing in the same space as him. "Happy Valentines Day."

Alexander slips up close to her and cups her heating face with his hands. He leans in to give her a long, slow kiss, the sort that's likely to make anyone watching blush and mutter something about public decency. When he settles back, his eyes are twinkling. "You're amazing." And then she's offering him something, and he steps back in sudden wariness. It's there, then gone, and he reaches out for the small white box. "I. What? You don't have to..." He looks down at the box with bewilderment, but is too damned curious not to try and open it immediately. Alexander is not one for delayed gratification when it comes to mysteries.

It's when he frames her face with warm hands that has Isabella focusing in the moment, and something more impish plays on the line of her mouth. "You look-- " Not that she has a chance to say more when he's busy embarrassing everyone else around them. Quiet, passionate intensity flavors her kiss when one arm curls around him by the hip, sinking into the brace he provides, and while affluent, half-scandalized visitors drift past, she doesn't even acknowledge them, her face turning to slant and fit her mouth against his; as if she could pour all that she is into him, and allow him to consume her.

She's hazy eyed when he finally pulls away, brimming with velvet promises as she looks up at him with open adoration. "...incredible..." She finishes the sentence, though it equally applies to his appearance and what he had just treated her to. But she eases away to give him just enough room to open the box and within them...

...it isn't a lavish gift, but it would certainly remind him of something. Four truffles rest in the box, and one of them is even slightly misshapen, picked deliberately from the shelf in Vydal's. And should he look up at her, that trickster's grin is on her face.

Alexander grins. "You're terribly biased, Isabella. But. Thank you." He looks down as he opens the box, and seeing what's inside, he actually laughs out loud. "And this time, the box didn't get crushed, and no one has to be handcuffed to anything." He waggles his eyebrows at her, suddenly playful. "Unless they want to be, I guess." He carefully covers the box back up and slips it in a pocket, before offering her his arm. "Shall we?"

They enter the restaurant and everything is going well. Jazz, elegance, beautiful views of the water. But then? Everything changes in that peculiar Gray Harbor sort of way, and Alexander freezes. "Oh, no. Even my skull can only take so many rattles within twenty-four hours' time." Alexander then pauses, and looks around. "Wait. I've seen photos of this place before. Hotel Lariat. Some fascinating murders have taken place here. Or did, before it was demolished." This, of course, he's saying in a low voice in her ear, while keeping a wary eye out.

Unless they want to be. His laughter draws her own, brows raising to her hairline and prompting an answering quip. "I was never one for bondage - having to lie there, not doing anything? It's boring. Though if you want to be the passive recipient of where my imagination takes me, I have absolutely no qualms subjecting you to that." Isabella winks at him, and slips her hand into the arm he offers, before taking a step inside warmer confines of the Lighthouse.

And stepping in, he'd feel her sudden nervousness - because she bought a new dress, and she doesn't know how he'll react to it, and it's about time to take off the trenchcoat...

...but the world shifts, and suddenly they're in a different time, and once they walk through the doors they're in different attire. Her fingers grip his arm and her expression is both disbelieving and livid. "No. Oh no. No. This can't be happening right now," she hisses under her breath. Her head dips to look at her clothes, and then to the way the man is dressed. "We're along Bayside," she murmurs back, catching sight of the windows and its position. "Turn of the century, and I think the hotel was gone by the 1950's or 1960's." She takes in his bruises and her lips set in a determined line. "We have to get out of here quickly, you're not..." Her fingers brush lightly over the band-aid over his eyebrow, concern flitting over her face.

"Do I ruin the evening if I admit that I've never been much for it on either side? As you say, being restrained is a bit boring, and it's not much better from the side of restraining. Among other issues." That last is rueful, and his eyes skitter away from hers for a moment, trying not to think too much about it. And once the world has changed, he seems to forget that part of the conversation completely. Instead, he's listening to her additional information, and nodding. Although her look of concern gets a snort. "I'm fine. Just...let's keep calm and try to figure out why we're here. And if you get the sudden urge to murder me, or think I'm cheating on you, or something? Refrain. This place had a lot of love murders, back in the day." Alexander is FULL of fun facts.

He pulls Isabella closer to him at the looks from the men, meeting a couple of eyes with that blank, reptillian weight behind them, before he catches sight of a familiar pair. A breath whooshes out of him and he starts moving in that direction, raising his free hand to try and catch their eyes. When they blend into the crowd, he curses under his breath. "Did you see that?"

"No," Isabella assures, pressing her lips gently on his cheek and a flare of mischief in her eyes. "You're not ruining the evening. If anything, it just makes me want you more." The devil dances within her expression, tilting her head at him. "You can't buy this sort of compatibility, Mister Clayton." The rueful remark earns him a squeeze of her fingers on his arm, a certain tightness there as she watches his dark eyes move away from her.

Playful banter aside, brows furrow when he fills her in on the murderous history of the hotel. "Well, luckily I remember my brief crash course from you on crimes of passion," she tells him. Drawn close, she takes a step, long skirts swishing in an effort to follow his movements while at the same time directing them to a less crowded area in the hotel. Green eyes flit towards a couple of familiar apparitions. "I think...that was Byron and Lil." Her face tips back to meet his stare. "But their clothes...they're not like ours. Different era - 1930's, maybe?" After a brief scan, she lowers her voice even further. "Alexander, do you think they're also trapped here but in a different time? Maybe we need to find them...and get out of here together."

"You're biased," Alexander accuses, gently, even as his eyes are scanning the crowd. "Yeah. Looked like them. They looked...faint. Faded out? You might be right. But it wouldn't show them to us unless there was a purpose behind it." He closes his eyes for a moment, and even though he knows it will worry Isabella, he starts to reach out with his mind, trying to see if he can pinpoint where Lilith and Byron might be.

"I am, but I'm also extremely particular, and terribly decisive when I'm confronted by something I want," Isabella declares with her typical, breezy bravado, stating her opinion as if it were fact; as if it is in any way logical and utterly unassailable because of it. It's that whiff of power, though, that makes that smile fade. "Alexander..." she murmurs, her concern growing - but the softness of it fades entirely when one of the men within starts besmirching a woman's honor right in front of them.

The whipcrack of her anger is instantaneous, so sudden it's as if it boils out of her sunkissed skin; not just the fact that the man was clearly going to abuse her but also because those in the room are doing nothing. She takes a step in that direction, unaware that's where her companion's senses are twigging him - it's only because of their most recent escapade that prevents her from leaving his side entirely. She doesn't let go of her grip on him, but her expression suggests that she'd want nothing more than pick up the closest liquor bottle and stalk in that direction with every intent to use it.

It's a word that doesn't really match the elegant surroundings, which is something that catches Alexander's attention even as he realizes that the feel of the two is coming from the same direction, and that's the last place he remembered seeing them. When Isabella starts in the same direction, he shifts trajectory to guide her towards what's likely to be end up as a bad scene. If it bothers Alexander, it's rather hard to tell - he just looks generally bothered by the situation he finds them in. But if he can catch up to the guy yanking the woman along, he does say, "Let the lady go." Even as he looks past to try and find Byron and Lilith.

Steered towards the direction of the ill-fated lovers, her perception starts to swim in the corners, fixated on how beautiful the woman is and how she smiled at her companion. Doubt nestles deep within the thorns and brambles of her most jealous self, picking at them. For a brief moment, Isabella's fingernails rake into Alexander's sleeve, a hitch in her step. Her name. How did Alexander know her name? He said no such thing, but she could swear that she heard it...

But she remembers. If there is anything that will forever remain ironclad about her mind, it is the fact that she rarely ever forgets anything Alexander Clayton ever tells her. She might not always listen, but she remembers, and he told her earlier.

"Alexander," she tells him quietly in warning. "The urges you told me to refrain from..."

But it wells up anyway, because she's a jealous creature. Her hand balls in a fist, but instead of decking her date, she suddenly pivots around in an attempt to just flat-out clock the man dragging Delilah around, because that growing anger needs to go somewhere. Delilah. Even her name makes her sound like an absolute slattern, because how dare she--

No. It's this place!

Alexander frowns, gives Isabella a sidelong look as her fingers rake into his arm. "I haven't been smiling at anything since we got lost," he points out, bluntly. "And she's not real--" and then Isabella is warning him and his eyebrows go up. "Oh. I see." He takes a worried breath. "Look. Just try and stay--"

And then she's hauling off and punching the guy. "--calm. Or we could start punching figments and get into another bar fight. We could do that." It's toneless, and it doesn't stop him from moving forward to give the guy another punch if Isabella's attempt doesn't put him down.

Her fist connects, but not in the way she likes and for a few minutes, Isabella and the abusive lover lock gazes, green eyes narrowed into glittering slits and her anger stitching over the slender, delicate lines of her. If she's bracing herself for a return blow, she is meeting it defiantly with the line of that stubborn jaw. Not that she expects Alexander to be idle, throughout, because he never is....her role as an effective distraction seems to hold true even here.

But her eyes meet identical ones across the way, the flash of golden hair. It isn't right. It isn't right, but despite being older now, those all-American good looks more mature and sharper, she knows him. She knows him. He's calling her by the name he used to call her. Her face drains of color. "...Sid...?" she whispers.

As the man crumples like a wet suit on the ground when Alexander decks him, it snaps her out of it - she turns to address her companion, only for Delilah to wrap her arms around him. The sight of it makes her bristle like an angry cat, eyes lit like embers, but unable to help her unique way of showing her displeasure, what she actually says is: "Where's my embrace?" she wonders out loud, but its effects are hampered by how shaky her voice is, and how tinged with desperation - she is trying to fight the effects of this place but that persistent wound keeps getting exploited. "He wasn't...he wasn't the only one who came to the rescue!" As if, lady!

Alexander blinks as people move in to efficiently remove the troublemaker - or who Alexander sees as the troublemaker, anyway - from the floor. And the guy apparently doesn't have five friends in the wings waiting to escalate this to a brawl, which is a nice change. He stiffens when the woman wraps him into an embrace, but something she says makes his expression soften, and he even tentatively returns it with a comforting pat on her back and a murmured, "You're welcome," before she breaks away. He turns to Isabella with an amused look. "Okay, that went reasonably well."

But Isabella's bristling response has the pleased smile die away, replaced with a wary look. "I'm sure if she was sticking around she'd give you a hug, Isabella. And, what was that you said?" Alexander draws closer to her, offering his arm again. "Remember. This is a Dream," he says, quietly. "Try not to listen to it. We should find Byron and Lilith."

She isn't as practiced as Alexander when dealing with Dreams - even the ones she experienced while across another ocean are sparse, but the growing frequency is starting to really test her ability to cope, and she learns faster by sticking her hands in the fire. Isabella takes several deep breaths and she attempts to focus by how his taller shadow eclipses her within it, and her hand reaches out to curl her fingers into his inner elbow. His question gets a shake of her head, her verdurous stare avoiding his dark one. "It's not important," she tells him quietly. "Like you said, this is just a Dream. We just need to wake up."

Her fingers grip tightly at his arm. "They were heading in here yes? Knowing them, they'll be trying to find their way out also, let's go that way." She nods to the hallway.

"Not important?" Alexander frowns. He stares at Isabella with dark eyes, thoughtful and possibly a little...suspicious? Or perhaps worried. "Don't do anything reckless," he snaps, then strides off down the hallway. When they pass into the garden, he takes a deep breath. Meant to be calming, it instead makes him cough with distaste at the sickly sweet aroma. He rubs at the back of his neck, but the bruised skin doesn't provide much comfort, either. "Why couldn't we just have a nice, calm, sane Valentine's Day? Is it my fault? Do I just bring this shit down on us?" He's not really talking to Isabella; he's muttering to himself as he makes his way to follow the familiar voices.

When he sees the couple at the pond, he stops. "That doesn't look right. Not at all. I think...Lilith is infected by something? Darkness?" He's not calling out, this time. Instead, he makes a gesture to Isabella, suggesting they try to sneak up on the two as close as they can get. With the way this night is going, he's definitely going to end up with Lilith ripping open his leg and Byron shocking him again. He can just taste it.

The sudden snap has her head turning to him, green eyes narrowing into glittering slits. "What do you mean? This is the first time we've ever come here, and you asked me where I wanted to go," Isabella tells him, her low contralto imbued with heat, before she moves down the hall with him, the doors opening and leading out into the garden. The sickly sweet smell of the flowers, however, makes her wary instantly. "But if you wanted to pick where to go next, go ahead," she mutters, eyeing them with a hint of wariness. She pats down her pockets in an effort to find something that often comes standard in an era such as the turn of the century, and produces a handkerchief.

She reaches up to hold her handkerchief to her nose. There's an acknowledging nod, turning to look at both familiar figures. "They're moving in and out of...I don't know if they're actually here," she tells him quietly. "And I don't think...it isn't Lilith, it's Byron that's in shadow." She reaches out, suddenly tense, in an effort to close her fingers over Alexander's arm as they push closer. "I have an idea," she tells him quietly. "But you're right, listen first."

Alexander's face twists with anger, for just a moment, at what Isabella says. Rather than say whatever just came to his mind, though, he says, "I've tried to be better, Isabella. I have. I'm sorry if it feels like I'm making...excuses, or that I don't want to go to 'nice' places. I'm sure the Lighthouse is a nice place, and it would have been a lovely date. But maybe we can discuss that once we're out of the hell Dream?" His voice even manages to be even and calm, although the anger there has faded into hurt and sadness. He swallows whatever words he was going to add, and his shoulders slump. "I don't...I don't think it's Byron. He's bright. She's dark. If anyone is being impersonated..." but at the squeeze on the arm and the way she takes charge, he just sighs, and nods his agreement. "All right."

It might be something that Alexander says, but for a moment, her eyes grow wide, blood draining from her face - as if he had struck her across the face repeatedly. Staring at him with wide, green-gold eyes looking up at his dark ones. The urge to suddenly turn around, and stomp off and try to find her own way out is nigh-near overwhelming, and her fingers bunch up tightly on her sides - whatever he said tears some kind of wound open, because Isabella suddenly turns away from him, blinking back the sudden wash of traitorous moisture. At least in this angle, she wouldn't be able to glimpse the disgust on his features.

"...I thought you loved that about me," is all she manages to say, the rest of the words trapped behind her throat. She takes a deep shuddering breath, before listening in the images, but the more she does, the more her visible confusion grows. There's a glance down to the path.

"I...I don't know where it's coming from," she tells Alexander quietly, unable to look at him. "But they're talking about Dreams." She nods down the path.

"I do. Love it about you that you take charge. That you're fearless," Alexander assures her, looking confused and hurt. "But you don't always." He breathes out a sigh, and shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. We can talk about it later," he adds, his hands going into his pockets. He curses under his breath as the other two have disappeared, and tries to pinpoint the voices. He gives Isabella a sidelong look, something uneasy in that glance. "I...are you sure? But we can try there. I don't have any better suggestions, really." He starts moving towards the stables, but stiffly, like he's on edge with something.

She flinches at what she sees when Isabella chances to look over at his face and his expression and tension braids on her shoulders, longing warring with pain, but too prideful of a creature to reach out after what he had just said to her. But the wounded look in her virid stare fades the longer he keeps talking - words are on his lips, she can watch them move. But they slip past her mind and that's strange to her - because she usually remembers almost everything he says. She usually pays rapt, laser-focused attention.

Doesn't she?

"....alright, the carriage house it is," she says, turning around, tension keeping her shoulders and the line of her spine tight as she moves down the narrow path and towards the stables. The scent of the flowers is gone, replaced by the stench of horse manure - honestly, she's smelled worse, but she looks absolutely aggrieved when it hits her nose and her fingers clench tightly at her handkerchief because it does nothing for the smell. Eyes roam over the landscape. "The doors are locked..." She turns to look at the wide open space, brimming as it is with shadows, and is about to say something else when a door suddenly slams. She's wound so tight that she actually jumps.

"What was that?" she breathes.

Alexander's eyes water as the smell of manure becomes thicker. It lingers in the back of his throat, and he lifts a sleeve up to his nose, trying to breathe through it. "What a stench. Heracles is needed to clean this place out," he adds as an aside to Isabella, trying to give her a smile as he shares the weak Classics joke. But her obvious tension makes the brief smile die before it's ever fully born. "Did you try them?" he asks at the declaration, his eyes narrowing slightly. "I mean. Did you try them thoroughly? Here, let me." He steps up to give the doors a suspicious try himself. Then he frowns. "I...suppose we should check it out, yes. But--" he trails off, sighs. "Okay. Let's go."

For a minute, there's no reaction to the attempt at the classics joke, Isabella's eyes directed towards where she had heard the sound. But as the effects of the flowers in the garden fade and her confusion only grows, she focuses on one of the few things in the world that would unerringly grab her attention past mysteries and undiscovered tombs and artifacts. His baritone is always a pleasant one and while her earlier reluctance to look at him lingers, she can't help herself.

But the brief softening of her features is marred by the confusion that flits past her eyes, before he attempts to try the doors - and the sense of it only grows because she's torn between admiring the way the tailored threads tug tight over his shoulders as he tries to pry the open and the sheer annoyance she feels that he simply won't trust her when she tells him the doors are locked. "Alexander, just-- "

A sudden scent permeates through the stench, and her head moves in an attempt to follow it. "...I think...Lilith was here," she tells him, before she starts in that direction, carefully maneuvering around the dump heap. "I smell her. I mean, her perfume. It's similar to mine." There's a glance at it, but she pays it no attention - she's clearly on the trail of something.

Finally, there's a door. There's both relief and added tension in her as they head for it. She is, in fact, reaching for the handle - as always, she can't help herself, this tendency to bull through and kick down doorways.

"Huh. It is locked." Like Isabella didn't know that. Or like Alexander was actually suspecting that she'd lie to him over that. He casts what's meant to be an apologetic look towards her, but when he sees her, his expression shuts down and goes wary. "I don't smell anything but shit," he tells her, bluntly. He follows after her, staring at the back of her head. His fingers are tapping out a rhythm that's a hundred years too early, a nervous tic that had started to fade, but now is back in full force. As she reaches for the door, he sidles up behind her and reaches for her handkerchief. "Let me see that." It's not a question, and he tries to pluck it from her fingers - although it's not really the handkerchief he's looking at, but her face, and his expression is hard and closed.

It's the tone he uses that finally sparks the volatile filaments of her temper, flaring on the ends and traveling quickly into the relentless powder keg within her. Isabella's teeth grind into one another when she angles a look over at him that reflects her growing fury. "I don't know what I did today that's making you so hostile that you have to belittle my perception like that, but if I was right about the doors, maybe I'm right about this one, too," she snaps, but before she can pull the door open, his fingers suddenly grab ahold of her handkerchief. "And no!" She attempts to pull it back and attempts to swat his fingers away from her. "By the way you've been treating and insulting me this entire evening, you're in no position to make demands of me! You-- "

The smell keeps aggravating her senses, wafting through the open doors, sterility mingling with rot. But she's staring up at Alexander's face, expression draining of color.

He wouldn't. He would never say those things to her - would never disregard her intelligence, and if there's anything she knows is true on heaven and earth, it's that. Her heart lurches to her throat.

It's not him.

Which means he's lost, here, somewhere - possibly being led around by something that looks like her and he could be--

Her reaction is instantaneous. She suddenly lets go of the handkerchief and spins around, skirts fluttering. And then she runs - she dashes into the open corridor, her eyes finding the staircase winding up. She already knows that she'll won't be able to overpower a doppleganger that looks like and is built like Alexander, she has to get away from him and find him. Her hand snaps out in an attempt to grasp the nearest statue/pedestal/impediment she can find in an attempt to tip it over - a paltry obstacle, in the event that he chases after her. But she doesn't look back. She can't. She has to find him.

Alexander recoils from Isabella, staring at her face with horror as the clinical, asylum-like smell wafts out of the hallway. Horror -- and then a terrible resolve. "You're not Isabella," he tells her. "Give me Isabella back!"

And then she runs away, and Alexander's entire demeanor changes. He knows what's going on, now. He's had to kill things with the faces of people he loved before. They're always lies - but perhaps he was overdue for seeing Isabella cloned by one of these Dream monsters. "Only way out is through," he mutters to himself, licking his lips. He didn't bring his knife. But that's okay. He's clever. He can improvise. "Only way out is through."

He starts to follow Isabella like a hunting snake: swift, silent, and emotionless, committed to getting out of this goddamned Dream and finding Isabella, wherever she is.

In order to find him, she has to live - and she knows a losing fight when she sees one. Isabella grits her teeth and shores up all of her mental defenses. That's what Dreams do, they follow the closest approximation of a person's worst fears and this one is toying with two of a few of them; the prospect of having to hurt Alexander one day if she has to, and the prospect of him dismantling her from the inside out if he feels he needs to. The doppleganger chasing her is probably aware of that and the idea terrifies her, because at the moment, she is alone and lost.

But even that is paltry compared to the idea that he was lost, somewhere, having to tangle with a creature with her face, and while she can trust his experience - he had been knifing things in the dark since he was eleven - she had been revisiting the image of him fading in front of her eyes in the last forty-eight hours. She wanted at least tonight to reassure herself that he was solid, and real, and not going anywhere. Fear, fury, frustration rush through her veins, feeding all the wildfires and hurricanes within her.

"I'm going to find Alexander Clayton!" she rages in response to the menacing, taunting voice behind her, sibilant and slithering around her skull, black asps biting into her brain, but she doesn't look back. She can't. She won't. "I'm going to find him, and I'm getting us both out and you're not going to stop me! Like hell you are, and you can take a flying fuck off a god damn cliff if you think I'm letting you bastards keep him!"

The flash in the mirror catches her eye, and she's alert enough to catch that imagery; the scent of Lilith's perfume continues to lure her down the hallway, and Alexander's doppleganger is right behind her. It's a Dream. She can't trust anything in a Dream. She's no use to anyone if she's dead.

She may not always listen to Alexander, but she remembers everything he tells her, so she blows past the hallway where Lilith's scent is taunting her to look, ignores the mirror in which she sees Byron's image. She's running right for the stairs, and starts clambering up on it, and up towards the unknown.

Alexander skids to a halt. The false Isabella is screaming nonsense and running away, but what has caught his eyes is in the mirror, and he knows that the Isabella running is a fake. He doesn't know what the images in the mirror mean - and Alexander, when presented with a known quantity and a mystery, no matter how much he might advise caution, will always choose to poke at the mystery. The Veil creature wearing Isabella's face must be trying to distract him. So he turns away from her, and reaches out for the mirror - he thrusts his hand at the glass. "Byron? Byron!" If it gives, then he's pushing his entire self through the mirror without hesitation.

Alexander hisses with pain as his hand is burned on that icy glass, and he recoils for a moment, shouting, "Isabella! I'm coming! Byron! Lilith! Hang on!" He shrugs off his jacket, for once grateful for the layers that men's clothing of this era favors. He wraps the jacket around his arm. One eye is kept on the beast that pretended to be Isabella, but most of his attention is directed towards breaking through that mirror. He draws back enough to get a running start, then raises his padded arm and moves to slam it into the mirror with all his weight behind it. "I'm going to get you out!"

"Are you fucking kidding me!" Isabella yells, and nearly punches the brick wall - but her hands are already hurting from her last escapade and she turns her eyes to the staircase. It's empty. He didn't follow.

There's relief in her. A hand reaches out to the staircase banister and practically sags against it. She takes a breath - Lilith's perfume lingers in her nose. But the hallway is disconcertingly silent now, and...

...or maybe he found different prey? Knowing Alexander, he would be doing the same thing - trying to find her, and her friends. What if...

Ice-cold dread washes down her spine. Her jaw sets, and she slowly starts moving back down the stairs, but not without help. She reaches out and plucks a vase off one of the tables, emptying the water and plants out of it because she's not going back there without a weapon. As silently as she can, she slides back to that hallway, gripping the vase by the neck. She peeks around the bend at the sounds she hears.

Alexander snarls his displeasure when the glass shatters to reveal...a hallway, and a shimmery door. "Why is it never simple?" he mutters to himself, even as he starts to make his way towards that door. And then? Then there are many Isabellas! Under other circumstances, Alexander might consider this a very different sort of dream, but he just snarls again at the fake, false, lying Isabellas. "Stay out of my way," he tells them, trying to bull his way towards that shimmery door. He will find a way to open it. He'll break it down if he has to.

And then? That queen of Isabellas with her shadowy crown, and those whispers directing her death. And she's armed. He turns, falls into a predatory stance and starts moving towards her. "Let me out of this Dream. You're not Isabella. I can kill you. You're not real. So you better fucking just let me out."

She's surrounded by copies of Alexander and her hackles can't help but rise - the information that she has managed to collect through this entire enterprise come skittering back; how the Hotel Lariat is notorious for love murders, how she can't trust what a Dream shows her. Because she remembers almost everything Alexander Clayton tells her. She might not always listen, but she remembers.

Kill the King.

Isabella grips the neck of the vase tighter and she grits her teeth. She tries to look for a sign of him, through something she knows well, but the interference is too loud and even her ridiculous perception doesn't help her here, whining like white noise, grating like nails across the chalkboard.

Kill the King.

The profanity he utters - of killing Alexander and her friends, prompts her blood to boil from underneath her skin. But she's standing right in front of him and he looms over her. He had been threatening to kill her earlier, if that had been him. Take her back. But now that they're within breathing distance of one another, she can't help but wonder why isn't he attacking? The voices clamoring her to kill him - wouldn't he be able to hear them? Wouldn't any predator go for the kill immediately?

Slowly, she takes a step sideways away from him, and another, and another, the vase crossed defensively in front of her, but she doesn't attack - she attempts to gain some distance, because there's no way she can overpower him with just her hands and fists and it would be suicidal to get in range. Her eyes shift towards the shimmering door, but otherwise she keeps her eyes locked on the shadow with Alexander's face. "What are you waiting for?" she breathes. "Come and get it."

Alexander hesitates. He hasn't had a Dream where the monsters wore Isabella's face before, and the thought of hurting her, or even something that looks like her? It hurts. Maybe, in the back of his mind, he was hoping the monster would just give up, even though that never happens. And then she issues that challenge, and he breathes out, closing his eyes for just a second. "All right, then," he whispers.

It's the only warning she gets. He doesn't attack with Glimmer, but with his bare hands, leaping forward to add power to his attempted punch.

He leaps forward and Isabella takes several rapid steps back if she can. And whenever she's threatened seriously, she simply reacts - the physical world moves to protect her.

The force that lashes out is an invisible one, to bubble over herself in a shield, as she raises the vase in front of her in instinct, digging her heel into the ground and bracing herself for the strike. But it doesn't come up on time and Shadow Alexander drives his fist through the ceramic. It shatters in her grip and she staggers backwards when the rest of his momentum hammers his knuckles into her shoulder and sends her flying. She lands hard on the ground, skirts forcing her to skid sideways. Pain spiderwebs through her senses.

Fury and blistering hurt sharpen her focus. She reaches inside of herself - she had promised the investigator that she would never hesitate, when her life is on the line and she doesn't now. She throws everything she has into it, in an attempt to seize his clothes with her mental grip and throw him away from her before he could close in.

Alexander makes a sound when he feels the fake Isabella's shoulder crack - it's pain, even more than when he's sent flying. Or a different type of pain, one more emotional than physical. He slams into the wall slides down it, but surrounded by enemies, he claws his way back to his feet. "I have to get back," he says, panting. "I have to get back to Isabella. And my friends. And I won't let you stop me." He launches himself forward again, teeth bared with a vicious determination, one fist striking high, aimed for her throat.

The moment she hears the wall crack under his weight drives her stomach to sink further into herself, and moisture springs to her eyes. The prick of it is less from the pain, and more because one of her worst fears is coming alive before her eyes and she doesn't want to do this. It doesn't matter if it isn't really Alexander - the monster has his face, the way he moves, the cuff with the blue rune stones that she had made for him over Christmas. It hurts because despite the darkness, his eyes, and face, and voice, and movements are the same and the last thing she ever wants to do is hurt him when so much of his life has already put him into the grinder over and over. She doesn't want to be a part of those gears.

The monster is yelling and confusion wreathes her expression, but before she can say anything back, his fist swings for her. Her innate resistance to physical attacks such as these, and some manner of training, saves her from a crushed windpipe when she attempts to block the punch with the cross of a forearm and the impact jars her bones - it will leave a nasty bruise, but it does have her skidding backwards again, nearly tripping on her shoes.

"I AM Isabella!" she shrieks, diving deep into herself and attempts to throw him back away from her again, a tear trickling down her cheek. "Haven't you taken from me enough?! Give Alexander back to me!"

"You're not Isabella!" Alexander flails as he's thrown into the other dopplegangers, and he slams fists and elbows into any of them he can reach as he rises back to his feet and says, harshly, "You're just in my way. I won't let you stop me from saving them. I won't, I won't, I WON'T!" With that last rising to a scream, he throws himself forward, trying to grab that twisted head and finish breaking her neck and freeing himself from this horrible nightmare.

Is it just her, or is the door looking more solid now that it had been? It's difficult for her not to notice, her innate senses alerting her to a new object in the room - a presence that's only becoming more persistent the longer this goes on. Isabella grits her teeth and takes several quick steps back - her body hurts, but at least the monster wearing her lover's face hasn't broken out anything sharp yet - hasn't attempted to eviscerate her with anything.

But as Alexander's hands move to grab at her head, he's able to seize her in a lock - and one that would have been complete if she hadn't thrown her arm upwards in an attempt to prevent the armbar he makes from closing in full, but the angle is all wrong and her senses start to swim when her wrist pinches into the side of her throat and she squirms, and fights. A breath...she has to breathe.

"NO!" It's a bellow. She is not going to die here and once again, she dips into everything that she is, grasping at his clothes, his belt, his shoes, to hurl him away from her and towards the shimmering door.

There's a moment of triumph when Alexander feels that snap. It's not sadism, but simple and profound relief - he's been in this situation too many times before, and killing the monsters means he gets to go home. It means he gets to survive another day. And then her last desperate push flings him away - and as it does, he sees the Queen transform into his Isabella, his Isabella who he just killed, and he screams with a raw throat as he flies through the air, through the doorway, and into blackness.

And then he wakes up. Back in the real world. Back in the Lighthouse. Back with Isabella. He croaks her name, scrabbles frantically on the floor to reach her, and he looks down at her in realization and horror. He's poised between two impulses in that moment - the first, to run. To run from all of this, and quite possibly run himself off the nearest dock and into the dark, churning seas. The second? Is what he's able to force himself to do. He lifts a hand above her neck, not touching her. But using those healing gifts he rarely turns to try and undo at least a portion of what he's done. Physically, at least. "Wake up, Isabella," he urges her, hoarsely, hell in his eyes.

She doesn't know what else to do but succumb, and the last thing she sees is Alexander - her Alexander - flying out the door and all she feels after that, in the end, is relief. He was out, and while nothing makes sense at the moment, the fact that he's safe is all that matters as the world fades and it all goes black...

....and back into color again when she's made to wake.

Isabella startles upwards from the floor, her fingernails digging into the carpet, green-gold eyes flying open and hazy with confusion. She pushes up against the cabinet, looking around, her heart in her throat as the Dream returns to her in shattered fragments. But with Alexander whole and hale in front of her, everything else fades into the background. She has yet to realize what exactly has happened. "Oh, thank god," is all she says, expression twisting in relief and agony, her hands coming up in an effort to frame his face. "Alexander..." Her voice is hoarse, but she's already attempting to inspect him for injuries and damage. "Are you...you're aching everywhere." She can sense it, pulsing in the back of her head like a sledgehammer. "Is this...are we out of the Dream?"

Alexander lets out a hiss of relief - but in the next moment, as her hands come up to frame his face, he scrabbles back from her, teeth bared in a feral expression. "Don't! Don't touch me! Don't let me touch you!" The vision of her, dead at his hands chokes him, and he gets as far away from her as he can without bolting out of the door. "We're. We're. I don't know. I don't know if it's real. I don't know if you're real." He is a psychic storm of anxiety and self-loathing, eyes darting everywhere except on her. "You're alive. That's all that matters. You're probably alive. Please be alive."

Don't touch me! Don't let me touch you!

The words snap out in the air like a whip - whatever Isabella has endured in the last few moments in the Dream, she can bear with a few painkillers and a hot soak, but the way he pulls away from her, frantic and desperate, digs deep into her bones and cuts into her marrow and her hands fall on her sides. "I'm alive," she whispers - perhaps it's the way the words sound, how weak and feeble and almost pleading that she grits her teeth and remembers who and how she is. "I'm alive and it's me, god damn it!!!"

Her syllables are stitched with fury, and she closes the distance even as he scrambles backwards, her hands out - he'd feel it in the air, already stripping down her mental defenses in reckless abandon, rendering herself bare in that respect. "You have a box of truffles in your pocket," she says breathlessly. "I told you about this place - how my parents used to come here but Sid and I never got to go. You wanted to take me here because my thesis was finished, like we promised over the Fall. Read me, ask me a question - I don't care what you ask, I don't care how deeply you dive, but it's me and I'm alive, and I didn't die, I fought!"

Alexander's hand goes to his pocket, and he finds the box, there, of course. "I don't, I don't, I don't - I know it's you. I know you fought. I, I, I, killed you. I can't..." He licks his lips and shakes his head, his whole body trembling. "I have to, I have to go, Isabella. I can't, I can't. I might hurt you again. I can't do that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He turns without even trying to reach out with his mind - it's not that he doubts, not really, that it is her, but he can't bear to touch her in any regard, not with his worst nightmare pounding in his skull and his memories. He starts looking for a door.

"NO!"

The word tears out of her in a near-scream. It isn't desperate but furious and utterly ferocious. Heels dig into the ground as she leaps for him, arms coming out in an effort to seize him. She doesn't care if she makes a scene, and a lash of snapping power actually causes the doors to slam shut to barricade this hallway from servers, waiters, or whoever else could rubberneck on what just happened.

"You're not going anywhere! And you're not leaving me!" She'll hang on for dear life if she manages to make contact, her head and heart pounding against her bones and rattling them. She's aching everywhere, but her bruises are not much of an impediment. Eyes lit like embers fix on his face. "This is what They want. This is what They want, remember? They want to strip you of everything that's good, everything that would even give you any modicum of happiness in your already painful, tortured life. And what's insidious about it is that They want you to believe that you're better for it, that you don't deserve it, that whatever happens to you now, you brought on yourself, that this is your idea! And you said it, didn't you? You told me. You said it. You said fuck Them! Don't let Them turn you into a coward. Don't let Them turn you into a liar!"

She grits her teeth. "I love you. I love you. And I don't just love you, I know you. I know what you've done, the reasons why you can't forgive yourself, and I'm still here, and I want to stay with you. I know it doesn't fix everything, but it isn't nothing! Don't let Them win like this. Not when the fight's just getting started. Don't...don't let Them."

Alexander hits one of those slammed doors with a surprised grunt, and spins around to put his back to it, eyes wide. And then Isabella is coming and when her arms close around him, Alexander screams like a terrified child, and goes from high anxiety to full and glorious panic attack in the space of a breath. He immediately resists, kicking and punching and screaming again, trying to get free of her. "Let me go! Let me go let me go letmegoLETMEGO!"

She doesn't.

He twists. He screams. It hurts, because he's bigger than her, stronger than her, but Isabella keeps hanging on and squeezes her eyes shut - this wouldn't be the first time she's experienced a role reversal with him; she tends to fight when she doesn't want to be held, but he's never let her out when he really needs it and she's not about to. Her grip starts to slip and it's only desperation that enables her to hang on for as much as she can. He would have to throw her off, before she does.

LETMEGO!

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I can't."

I don't know how.

Alexander can't get away. Not without killing what's in his way, or hurting it, and he's already done too much of that tonight. So he takes the only other form of escape that he can: he shuts down. Completely. The strength runs out of his legs, and he just slides down the wall, dead weight, dead eyed. "Please. Please. Please. Just let me go. I can't. I need to get away, Isabella. Please. Please." It's dull, almost a chant, his face gone blank and hopeless. He's shaking in her grasp like a trapped animal about to scare itself to death.

It isn't his screaming that gets her to listen, in the end, but his pleading. Watching his blank, dead-eyed face, Isabella squeezes her eyes shut and slowly unwinds her arms away from him, easing back until she's on her knees, her backside resting on the heels of her feet. Her expression twists - the urge to sob is overwhelming, but she manage to keep those blast doors tightly shut. Eyes are bright and teeming with moisture but at the moment, they don't fall.

Her head lowers, but only briefly. It lifts again to look at him. But the door leading to the outside unlatches, the chilly air winding out of it and seeping into the heated hallway.

"Don't let Them win," she tells him quietly, stubbornly - it's all she can do, to mask the extent of her heartbreak.

Whatever is left for there to break.

Alexander takes a deep, shuddering breath when she releases him, and wraps his own arms around his body as if missing the feel and the heat of her, despite his pleas. His eyes close, and he just breathes for a few moments. "Isabella, Isabella. I just...I need...I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I hurt you. I'm hurting you. I'm sorry." And now he's crying with more freedom - or simply less control - than she. He rises shakily to his feet, and fumbles at the door, having heard the latch give. "I just need time. I'm sorry." And then he turns and flees.

She doesn't watch him leave, doesn't move when the door closes behind him - and not even for the interminable moments between now and then. Distantly, the clatter of silverware and the low, sultry notes of Jazz music fill her ears - but like a swarm, even these familiar notes fail to find any acknowledgment. She leans against the wall and waits for the tears to fall, but they don't, and absently, she wonders what that actually says about her, in the end.

Eventually, Isabella does rise - her bruises and aching bones don't register in the doing, just the cold when it hits her skin once she finally ventures outside, capillaries flushing in reaction. She's thankful for it, and the darkness; they help her look less pale.

It's only her pride that enables her to move as if she isn't bleeding in the ways that truly matter, but she does eventually make her way to her vehicle, and then in the night.