2020-02-28 - Violence Isn't (Always) The Answer

(TXT to Isabella) Alexander : Isabella.

(TXT to Alexander) Isabella : How are you, Alexander?

(TXT to Isabella) Alexander : I have an idea. Would you meet me somewhere, if I asked?

(TXT to Alexander) Isabella : Yes.

(TXT to Alexander) Isabella : Where? Is everything alright?

(TXT to Isabella) Alexander : Here's the address for the parking lot. There's a trail, it goes up about a quarter mile. I'll meet you there.

(TXT to Isabella) Alexander : ::heart emoji::

(TXT to Alexander) Isabella : Okay. Give me a few minutes.

The clearing Alexander directs Isabella to is not one of the few popular trails for this time of year. It's a small, snow-covered trail that winds into the forest in a curled sort of pattern and ends at a very plain sort of campsite with soggy ground and a sad little firepit. Alexander has at least arrived early enough to get a fire started, so that there's a hint of warmth in the air. He's dressed as he often is - badly - but warmly, and his bruises have almost completely cleared up. He's still wearing a battered and grimy R2D2 bandaid on his forehead, though. On the cheap little picnic table, there's what appear to be a couple of weapons - a baseball bat and the knife August gave him. He's standing off to the side, near the fire, tending to it.

The skies are clear, at least, but the weather is extremely cold. The cherry-red jeep that Isabella owns is working overtime to keep the chill at bay, leaving the windshield framed by a faint film of fog. Thankfully, she's able to drive in spite of that, albeit carefully - that's what defoggers and windshield wipers are for.

The lot is empty, enabling her to park on the spot closest to the trail. It doesn't take her long to find it, and cross it towards the clearing in which he directed her to go; she doesn't hide her approach and as Alexander tends to the fire, he would hear it, the crunching of light footsteps on snow and ice, the occasional snap of dry twigs under a human weight. When Isabella finally emerges from the gathering dark, she's clad in gear meant for these sorts of excursions - a warm, but lightweight winter jacket, black piped with red, pulled over thermal leggings of a similar color, and sturdy, but comfortable boots. He'd also recognize the small pack strapped to her shoulder, one that she has put together for expeditions into the Veil, suggestive enough that she has somehow anticipated the need for it - that maybe he needed assistance for something.

The presence of the knife and the baseball bat only confirms her suspicions, but she pauses in her tracks, watching his broad-shouldered form tend to the fire for just a moment. Her expression twists, the hinges of her jaw tightening where they meet her throat, forcing down the bittersweet upswell of longing so sharp, it nearly takes her breath away. She is thankful for the half-light, lingering in the shadowed fringes and unwilling to step out of it until she manages to get her face back in control.

It doesn't take long, thankfully, and when she finally moves away from it, she tucks her hand in her pocket. Her dark hair is loose, left in tempestuous waves around her face and making her green eyes seem larger, firelight reflecting the golden shards within. There's light makeup on her, just foundation and eyeliner, but this is care that is not at all spurred by vanity, and instead by necessity in an effort to make herself look healthier than she actually is.

"Alexander?" she prompts, unshouldering the pack and settling it on the table. "A little too early for baseball season, I think."

There's the faintest brush of his mind against hers when Alexander hears her footsteps approaching; just the quick confirmation that he recognizes the one approaching. By the time she emerges into sight, he's lifted his head and turned to face her, staring fixedly at her as if his eyes are devouring the sight of her, drinking it down with a dark intensity. In contrast to her tightening jaw, his expression lightens when he sees her, eyes widening and the corners of his mouth turning up. "Hello, Isabella. It's good to see you."

He doesn't hurry her emergence, nor does he try to approach her. He seems to be keeping his distance. "It is. Early for baseball season. But I still have a bat. Or a knife. You can pick whichever you want." For what? He at least doesn't make her wait. He says, voice rapid and low, "I hurt you. I killed you, and even if you forgive me for that, I can't risk it happening again. At least, I have to know that you won't let me hurt you. That you can stop me. So. I want to see you fight. With everything you have."

Every word he drops into the air is one that threatens to kindle a spark of anger in the growing powder keg of frustrations inside herself, and her teeth clamp together from behind closed lips. It's a struggle, and given his nature, he can feel it - how it washes like a fiery tide over her, snapping out like something alive and with teeth, not unlike the dragon that guards the internal fortresses of her. Memories of Vivian's one and only therapy session with her dance within her mind, warring with the desire to bask in his presence again (not helped by the fact that the R2-D2 bandaid is still on his skin)...and the sheer need to actually punch him in the face for what he's suggesting.

She is doing what she can not to come from a place of anger and she doesn't know if she can succeed.

"So you want me to stab you, or maim you, or break your bones, just to prove I can handle being with you?" Isabella asks, turning those burning eyes towards him, lit with so much of her growing fury that they practically glow in the dark. "Just to prove that I can....what, survive you? Didn't you tell me, yourself? We can't trust what's in there. We're being played from the moment we breathe the air inside of a Dream. If it were anyone else, you would absolve them of the crime easily, why can't you cut yourself the same break as you would them? Me?" She sweeps her hand sideways. "If our situations were reversed, do you think I'd actually...if I told you to do this, you would hate it! I know you would!"

She squeezes her eyes shut in an attempt to seize the reins of her temper back. "I'm not resisting because I'm a coward," she says at last, after a long pause. "I'm resisting because I don't want to establish a pattern where the only way you'll forgive yourself is for me to hurt you back."

"Yes." It's flat, the answer to her first question, and he makes no attempt to hide his intent, like Alexander doesn't see what the problem is. The fury in her face seems to cause him a moment of bewilderment and his brow furrows. "I'm not you. You don't have it in you to hurt and kill people just because...just because it seems like the thing that needs to be done at the time. I would absolve you because the circumstances would be different. You're not a coward, but," he takes a breath, "you're not a killer, either. I am. And...and. The way things have been, I can't guarantee that I will be able to control myself." His face falls, and his voice breaks. "I will try. I always try. But I need to know that even if I fail, you will know that you can put me down. That you won't hesitate, if it's you or me."

He takes a step towards her, one hand coming up. "I love you, Isabella. I want to know that you're safe, even when I'm bad."

"Yeah?" The word is blunt and disbelieving. "And how are you so sure you weren't being manipulated while you were in there? I'm not, and I'd like to think I'm very perceptive. Byron, Lil, both of them were fooled, too. They had to try and kill each other, too - Ronnie thought it was the only way it would end. And it's understandable to be caught in it, if you're right in that Dreams are just empty spaces to be filled by our worst nightmares. But outside of it?" Isabella's lips part, her clenched teeth visible from behind the dew-clung seam. "To be played into hurting each other even after it?" Her eyes lift to meet his dark ones, her expression writ with affection and agony in equal parts.

"How many times will I have to repeat it over and over again that this is what They want you to believe?" she whispers. "Am I just incapable of..."

She shuts the rest of the words away, body turning to fall on the items on the table. Choose your weapon. Her hand touches the baseball bat, closing her fingers on the grip.

"I meant what I said," she says, finally, quietly. "I said it to you over the Summer, I repeated it again in that Dream with Zachary." The name is imbued with white heat, practically spat out of her. "If I have to kill you in order to save you, I will, but that doesn't mean that it won't kill me, too, in other ways." Green-and-gold eyes fall on the wood. "I already have to brace myself, if I have to face Sid one day, altered and changed by god-knows-what." A duty that she refuses to relinquish to anyone, if it ever comes to that...and some part of her knows it will.

"And now you're asking me to cut you, or break your bones, because you can't forgive yourself for a situation that anyone would fall prey to, regardless of what their past is." She grips the bat tight, and pulls it from the table, feeling its dead weight against her leg when it settles there. "You tell me you love me, but I don't know what I hate more. That this is the only way you'll ever forgive yourself for something anyone else would do in your situation - that getting someone else to hurt you and treat you like a dog meant to be put down is somehow reassuring for you, or that you're forcing me into the cluster of people who've treated you like that before when that is the last thing I ever..." She swallows. "It's the last thing I could ever want."

She turns to face him then, knuckles white on the bat. "You are equipped to understand any language spoken or written on the planet, provided that the author or speaker is in range of your formidable talent," she grates. "And yet, somehow, this is the only language you understand. How are you going to get better if all you can readily accept is pain?"

Something like anger sparks in Alexander's eyes as Isabella speaks, but he holds his piece, remaining in that same, slump-shouldered pose, watching her, listening to every word without trying to shout or defend himself. His eyes follow her hand as she picks up the baseball bat, and it's not until her last words that his eyes go back to her face. "That's not what this is about," he says, at last. "I'm not...trying to punish myself. Or you. I don't, I don't, I don't want to hurt you, Isabella. But I don't know what else to do. If I can't trust myself, then I have to be able to trust you. To know that you can," his expression tightens, "that you can deal with me if you have to. If I go bad. Otherwise, how can I ever justify putting you in harm's way by being around you? If I break, if They break me, I know that I'll go after what I love, first. I know that I will."

His hands come up, then, rubbing at his face in something between infinite weariness and infinity frustration. "I don't know what else to do," he says, dully. "I just don't."

I'm not trying to punish myself.

"Aren't you?" Isabella challenges, quietly, her fingers tightening on the bat and meeting his eyes, watching frustration tighten his lean musculature. "You intend to test my ability to defend myself with everything I have, and I can only assume it's by seriously threatening my life, otherwise this exercise wouldn't really spit out whatever...whatever data you need to ascertain my survivability. In a way, you want us to relive something that has already tried to destroy you - is still trying to destroy you, and did you honestly think I would just agree to that? To be a party to that? How would I be able to tell y..." She grits her teeth. "How would I be able to say the words, look you in the eye and make you believe I mean it if I didn't fight you on that?"

She falls quiet, watching his hands come up. She takes a step closer, but she doesn't touch him. Instead, she leans against the table in the nearest point to him. "I didn't let you kill me," she points out quietly. "I don't know what it is you saw in the Dream, but I'm standing here with you. I'm alive, and I'd like to think that didn't just happen because I let you abuse me. I don't know what else to do to make you believe me - maybe it would be really difficult to fell you, or anything with your face, but I'll survive it. Even without you in the equation, I want to live, Alexander." She hesitates, and adds, softly, "...with you, if you'd let me."

Her eyes fall on the bat in her grasp. "Is this the only way you'll believe me?" she wonders, her anger finally cracking, bone-deep sadness welling up from that heated, bitter caldera. "If I took this in my hand, and beat you down with it?"

"It's not about believing you!" Alexander's voice cracks again, his hands coming up to sketch frustration against the sky. "It's not! I know that you mean what you say. But I also know that when...when we fought, you punched, you hit, and you pushed me away, but you didn't--you didn't go for the kill. And I did." He moves in jerky but powerful motions towards her, although he stops short of touching her. "It was the closest we've been to a situation where you had to defend yourself from me, and you lost. I don't want you to lose again. If you think you can put me down without hurting me, then that's fine. But I need to know, not just believe but know that you can."

He makes a low, frustrated growling sound. "I'm not going to attack you, Isabella. That's not why, that's not what I want. I just need to know." What he needs to know, though? Maybe even he's not sure - there's a torment in his eyes as he watches her, tries to catch and hold her gaze. "I'm doing the best I can."

"I didn't go for the kill because I haven't been knifing things in the dark since I was eleven!" Isabella exclaims, pushing away from the table and stomping towards him, closing the distance until his shadow falls across her own. "I didn't go for the kill because I haven't spent the last twenty-odd years killing things with my own face trying to steal my life, and god knows how many times you've had to kill people you know in your Dreams! You seem to think you shouldn't have, that this is somehow proof that you're less than able, when you've survived this long because you did!"

The rest of the words sink in, and she blanches visibly. "....wait...you just...you intended to just stand there while I stabbed you or worse?! You weren't even going to... what did you want me to do, exactly?!" Her voice rises, her fury returning. "You're my boyfriend, not a fucking pinata!"

"Yes," Alexander says to the first exclamation. And then he bobs his head, looking pleased when she shouts that second bit. "Exactly." They're on the same page, now! He seems very excited about this - at least, until she blanches and looks shocked. "I brought a med kit." He points - and yes, there's a kit over there in the snow, where the white of its casing blends in all too well with the snow. His brow furrows. "I need to know that you can stop me. If you can bring yourself to stop me when I'm not a threat, then I know you'll be able to do it when I am." Look, Isabella, this is all VERY LOGICAL. His expression and the somewhat bewildered tone of his voice says that he is not entirely sure why she's having this sort of reaction to the very reasonable request to hit him with a baseball bat.

Or stab him with the knife. He's good with either, really.

The earlier blanching fades when color suddenly explodes through her aggravated capillaries and bleeds up from underneath her skin, cheeks and the hollow of her throat reddening at the breathtaking force of her ire. Fingers ball in on her sides, and the urge to punch him is actually one that she almost acts upon. There's a part of her, in the back of her mind, that sings with it, to just take the bat and use it on him anyway if not just to bleed out the sudden wave of aggression that she's experiencing in her body. But what does happen is that she drops the bat and surges forward, hands seizing the front of his shirt and, if she makes contact, shaking him.

"HOW THE HELL IS THIS IN ANY WAY LOGICAL?!" Isabella shrieks in blistering outrage, her voice echoing well across the clearing. "WHAT'S THERE TO STOP IF YOU'RE NOT DOING ANYTHING TO BEGIN WITH?!"

Alexander doesn't avoid her lunge; the barehandedness was unexpected, but he seems completely okay with the idea that she's going to grab him and...shake and yell at him? Okay, that wasn't the point of this. Isabella is NOT FOLLOWING THE SCRIPT! He had this all planned out and now she's YELLING AT HIM! He reaches up and grabs the wrists that are shaking him, and sudden anger snaps in his face. "It's perfectly logical! If you can't hurt me, then how the hell will you ever be able to kill me if you need to! It's important! I can't hurt you again! You have to be able to stop me, Isabella! You have to!"

And then he bursts into tears, his hands tightening around her wrists. "I remember seeing you dead. At my hand. I can't I can't Ican't."

He reaches out to grab her wrists, and there's resistance, attempting to tug them away from him. "Oh, trust me, Alexander, I'm doing everything I can to stop myself from punching you in the face!" Isabella rages, the dam exploding at the force of her temper - anger and frustration spilling from her in waves. "If you're questioning my willingness to hurt you when you're provoking me, you can take a peek but I think you should take my word for it in that it's there! I can't believe you expected me to just take a bat to you like you've got candy inside!" And she doesn't even like candy!

She would have gone on - maybe she would have cracked him one if she was able to pry her hands away from him. But now he's crying, fingers clamping down on her limbs and she grits her teeth to prevent herself from joining him, because this is incredibly frustrating and the pain and trauma of it spills into her. The tension in her forearms grows slack, and she stares at his weeping face even as its finer details start to blur, heat stinging under her lashes.

"...I'm alive," she reiterates in a fierce whisper. "I did stop you. I wouldn't be here if I didn't." She closes her eyes then, and leans forward until her forehead touches his, if he allows.

"If we need to come up with some kind of psychic back door to shut you down, we will," she says after a pause and a deep breath. "We're both relatively intelligent people when one of us isn't trying to get the other to beat them into hamburger, I'm sure if we put our heads together, we can come up with a way. But this isn't..." She swallows. "Alexander, even if I oblige you on this ridiculousness, it won't really prove anything, don't you understand? All it will prove is that I can hurt you while you're still and willing to be hurt, and anyone would come to that conclusion even without a practical demonstration. That doesn't in any way guarantee my survival when things do get serious and that's ultimately the aim, isn't it?"

"You should," Alexander says, quietly. "Punch me. You know you should. I hurt you. Don't you want...doesn't that frighten you at all?" He hangs on when she tries to pull her arms away - less out of a demand, and more as if now that he's permitted himself to touch her, it's too painful to let her go. "I know you're alive. I'm glad. I'm so, so glad it wasn't entirely real. I want you to be alive, and brilliant, and fierce. I don't want..." He just shakes his head, tears running down his cheeks without shame. "I want you to be okay. And I don't know how to make things okay."

His shoulders droop, and his hands gradually loosen to fall down to his sides again. He glances over to the bat. "I thought we could just punch it out, and it'd be okay." A pause. "I guess that was sort of," a long pause, "ridiculous."

"I should," comes Isabella's easy agreement; it's quiet, but also with a hint of amusement. "For this, and for running away from me in the first place." She glances down at the fingers grasping her wrists. "...but then I keep remembering the other people who hurt you before, and who drove you to hurt others before, and I don't....I don't want to do that. I know that it will happen anyway, because people who care for each other can't help but do that, sometimes, but...if I can prevent it as much as I can, I will. I don't want to be just another person in your life who didn't give a damn about how you are, how this sort of thing could affect you, and how you felt. Even if..." She chokes out a laugh, a few stray drops falling from her lashes. "...even if I'm terrible at it. I'm so bad at it."

When he finally releases her, she reaches up, unwilling to let go of this, still, skin-hungry for his presence and she doesn't even hesitate when she attempts to cup his face with both her hands, her thumbs drawing over his skin to wipe away his tears. "I'm not fearless," she reminds him quietly. "But it's not as if I didn't know what I was getting into, with you. You told me once that I wasn't safe...and yet here you are, anyway. Why can't that be my choice, too? I chose this. I chose you. I know no matter what I say won't undo what happened, but....I know, and I can trust the fact that you never, ever want to hurt me. That it's the last thing you want, and so long as I know that, I can do what I have to." She tries to tilt her head, to hunt for his eyes. "There's probably a million things wrong with me, anyway, but the main reason why I'm not okay right at this moment is because we're apart, and nobody..." Another hard swallow. "Nobody ever solved a problem by running away from it, Alexander."

His last remark has her turning her head to look at the baseball bat. "...well, you have to remember that specific coping mechanism only just usually works on other men," she tells him. "But I'm glad that got through to you, at least." The line of her own shoulders droop. "...I didn't want to go back to England with this being the last thing I did before leaving for my three hour academic interrogation. Breaking your bones, or stabbing you." Her smile turns up, however faint. "Not exactly great for morale."

Alexander doesn't pull away from her touch; in fact, as her hands cup his face, he closes his eyes and presses into the touch, a shudder running through him that can be felt through their connection. "You can't think of it like that," he murmurs, eyes still closed as her thumbs skate over his damp, chilled skin. "Others don't matter. And I wasn't running from you. I was running from what I did to you. I just couldn't...I felt your neck snap, I saw your face - your dead eyes. And I did that. I did that." He takes a deep, ragged breath; it's clear that this is something he won't be 'over' for quite a while, but at least he doesn't seem like he's going to be pushing her to try and break his face.

At least for the next couple of days.

His eyes open when she speaks about choice, and why she's not okay. His hands come to slide around her waist and pull her tentatively closer. "I don't see why," he mutters about the coping mechanism. "When you think about it, it's a very sensible and logical way of resolving things." He swallows. "And...I know. I wanted to try to resolve this, one way or another, before you left. I want you to do your best over there. Forget all about this place and its craziness for just a little while, and strike them dead with awe." He presses harder into her hands. "Promise me you'll try? I'll be here when you get back."

"They matter because these scars are part of you," Isabella tells him softly, her touch solidifying under the insistent press of his face. "And I'm in love with and accept everything about you. How could I..." She closes her eyes then, but her thumbs don't stop moving, banishing the trails as much as she can, before they slip away to find his hair, the tip of one thumb pressing gently against his jaw. "I can impart on you over and over that you didn't." Otherwise she would be dead. "But I understand that isn't what you saw and remember, and if I could erase it from your mind, I would in a heartbeat. As it is, I can't help but wish I had won. I knew..." She sighs. "I knew this was the one thing I couldn't let happen, between us." I choke when it matters. "And I don't...I don't want to make things more difficult for you, too." Even if she does, anyway.

Unlike him, anyway. He fights, and he wins, and what she wouldn't give to have some of that.

She is determined not to weep in front of him; she had spent enough of the last few weeks as a pathetic mess, but she threatens to come apart at the seams anyway when he pulls her closer. Lashes blink rapidly and while a few tears slip down her cheeks, she doesn't sob. She curls her arms around his shoulders instead, tightening her grip, a set of fingers finding his hair - the midnight-black half-curls that she adores. Looking up at his eyes, despite all of it, her smile cuts through the darkness like a razor. "I can't promise to forget," she tells him. "But I can promise to utterly cow anyone who dares try to stand in the way of my doctorate."

Soft eyes find his face, half-illuminated by firelight, sweeping upwards in an intangible caress. "Just a week," she promises. "I'll be back in a week. I...could you do me a favor?"

Alexander's head is still tender, but he doesn't seem to mind when her fingers make their way into his hair, just starting to grey. He gives a stubborn little shake of his head. "I did. Maybe I didn't think it was you at the time, but it had your face," mostly, "and...I should have paid more attention. You said it, and I knew the place was fucking with us. I should have put my faith in you and let you kill me. I'm sorry, Isabella. I'm sorry." But when she goes on, it's his turn to give her a shake, although a gentle one.

"Stop that. It's not your responsibility. You didn't fail. You didn't 'let' it happen. I did it. It was my action. My responsibility." Does this make a whole lot of sense with his earlier demand to prove she can stop him? No. But when it comes to this, it's clear Alexander is just a roiling mess of contradictory and painful emotion that he doesn't know what to do with. Which makes him even more earnest than ever when he says, "Nothing will stand in your way. I know it. And yes," to the favor, before he even knows what it is. "Whatever you want."

"I know," Isabella replies softly. "And you already know that I forgive you, but it's not my forgiveness that you really need." Her touch is gentle at the back of his head, stroking it once before letting her hand fall to drape on his shoulder. "And while that's something you have to work out for yourself, I hope you know that you won't be by yourself, whether you find some resolution with that or not. I'm at your corner, always."

His following words and his light shaking does have her furrowing her brows at him, because all of that is contradictory, but at the moment she is willing to let this slide because she's learned her lesson, unwilling to chafe his wounds any further before they've even scabbed up. But when he readily professes his acquiescence, she sighs, reaching up to touch the side of his face with light fingers. "A few, really," she says. "First, let me change your band-aid, at the very least. R2-D2's looking kind of decrepit." Her lips twitch there. "And then...I want you to try and get some actual rest. You look tired, darling."

"You shouldn't be so quick to forgive," Alexander tells her, but with a sigh, not a snap. "And I know you are. I don't...I can't fathom what I've done to be worthy of that, but I am too selfish to reject it." He leans in and plants a gentle kiss on her forehead. "You can change my band-aid," he tells her very solemnly, although for the first time there's a hint of humor in his eyes and his voice. "Although I don't really need one, at this point. It's all right, and the bruises are even fading. I just didn't want to take it off."

The last makes him chuckle - a low and broken sort of sound, but not without humor. Or love. "I would do anything you ask of me, Isabella Reede, and all you want is for me to take a nap?" He squeezes her hips through the layers, before letting his hands slide away. "All right. Bennie's through the worst of her withdrawal, and she's been released from the room. So I can even sleep on an actual bed. I'm looking into something for the mortician - that murderous stalker that was attacking her - but I'll do my best to get some sleep. Deal?"

"Maybe not," Isabella tells him simply, looking him right in the eye. "But the pain of that experience is nothing compared to what I had just gone through missing you, so." The words make her wince, the discomfiture of expressing that vulnerability flashing in the evergreen depths of her eyes, but she's unable to look away from him for even a moment after weeks of not being in his presence, or being touched by him, or spoken to with his own voice. With her own impending departure, she is unwilling to miss a thing. But she's forced to, anyway, when he leans forward, soaking in the gentle warmth of the kiss. Her chest tightens and she has to keep them closed when he expresses just why the band-aid looks the way it does.

"You're adorable," she says instead, her voice low, but almost heartbreakingly tender. It reflects in her smile when she finally opens her eyes to look at him.

His humored remark has her shaking her head. "I know that, and especially right now, I know I could ask for anything...but I don't want to..." She hesitates. "Press. Or push it. I don't know if it helped, being away from me, when all you could think of was..." Her neck snapping, her dead eyes. "...whenever you closed your eyes. And while it would be the typical ask to spend my remaining hours here with you before I go, I'm more...I'm more worried about you." Her smile returns, soft and sad, but determined too. "I can keep missing you for a little while longer if it means that you'll be okay. That you'll be rested, especially if you're going to be killing monstrous stalkers." Concern gentles her features. "You'll be careful?"

Alexander kisses her again at that expression of vulnerability. "I'm sorry. I missed you, too. I tried to keep watch on you. I sent you dinner." Like she hadn't noticed the stalking or the delivery. He smiles, just a little, at the 'you're adorable', and says, more serious than not, "You have very strange taste in men, Isabella. I hope you know that."

"And I like it when you press. And when you push it." That? That isn't serious at all, really; there's a devil lurking in the dark eyes, and he waggles his eyebrows just once with amusement. "But yes, I'll be as careful as I can be. As long as you promise to do the same - you won't have any support over there, so if you decide to seek out a thin spot, be very careful. And call me? I mean. If you want. If you think about it. It's okay if you don't. You'll be busy."

This time, his kiss is one that she returns, Isabella's lips pressing in gently, and lightly. But no matter how soft the touch actually is, there's no hesitation or fear behind it and when it disengages, she shakes her head. "I know," she tells him, a more audible laugh escaping her. "I ate all of it. In one sitting. I'm not particularly proud of it, but..." There's a helpless shrug, her own mischief surfacing to the fore, overtaking the earlier glint of furious eyes into something more girlish instead. "....you're terrible at stalking, by the way. Unless you absolutely wanted me to know that you were there."

Her eyes roll upwards when he points out, once again, her strange taste in men. She leans in to kiss him more fully - contact that is brief, but intense. "I'm a woman who knows what she wants," she reminds him with a sharp, wicked little smile. "It just so happens that you're one of those."

The answering devil in his eyes earns him a groan. "Well, I'm glad that hasn't changed," she says with another laugh, reaching up so she can gently peel the band-aid away from his eyebrow, folding it carefully and easing it into one of his palms, before curling his fingers in and lowering her face to press gentle kisses on his knuckles. "I'll be very careful, and I will. Call you. Every day." Her hands squeeze his gently before she looks up to meet his eyes.

The point is to never stop, she had told Javier just recently.

"I love you," she tells him quietly, but simply. "Wait for me?"

"I'm not stealthy," Alexander grumbles. "And it was cold. And wet. And you are very clever." He takes a deep breath, and lets it out in a sigh, some part of the misery he was carrying around disappearing at the banter. He goes still to let her peel the band-aid away; he wasn't exaggerating about the wound - it's all scabbed over and mostly healed, and even the bruises are just a sickly yellow with tinges of green here and there. Practically normal.

"I love you, too," he says, without hesitation. "And I will wait as long as it takes." He puts his arms around her, brief and warm and fierce in his embrace. Then leans back and says, "We should go some place warmer. Or at least more dry. And I need my knife." He slips away to retrieve the weapons and the first aid kit. "I'll walk you back to your car."

She returns the embrace, ferocious in its own right despite her comparatively negligible strength, Isabella's eyes squeezing shut. "Battering ram," she murmurs against his temple, her smile imprinted upon it, at his grumbling about not being stealthy, or subtle in any way. But as she said before, it's part of his charm.

His promise does have her relaxing, easing away to watch him retrieve his knife. Her own pack, she retrieves, slinging it over her shoulder. "Okay," she says. "Where would you like to go? I'll drive you there." She grins at him, broadly enough to chase the usually hidden dimple out into visibility. "Cold and wet and everything." Mention of the vehicle does put another thought to her, clear by her eyes as she falls a step next to him, her hand extending outwards for him.

"You know, I could leave you the Jeep," she tells him. "I can just take the bus to SEATAC. That way you have access to the vehicle while I'm gone."