2020-02-29 - The End of Silence

Early, early on this gray woolly winter morning, Itzhak has hung a work light from the Outback's open hood and is waist-deep in the engine compartment. When August had checked on them before, he and Ruiz were sacked out on the futon, clinging to each other as much as was possible with their injuries. Now, Ruiz is still asleep, doing his best impression of a Mexican-shaped rock, but Itzhak is out here, digging around in the engine and cursing. One of August's hiking sticks leans on the fender, not falling even with all the fussing Itzhak is doing. He's putting no weight on his left leg.

Although August probably should have texted Erika from down the road to take care of the animals so he could sleep in and rest, he didn't feel like explaining things like Ruiz's car being in his yard, or his own car being a wreck, or his two houseguests, one of whom is a police captain. He loves Erika but she'll gossip at the drop of a hat.

So he rolls out of bed despite the protestations of every part of his body from his eyelashes to his toenails, gets changed and fires up the coffee maker. He checks on Ruiz and Itzhak--

Ah. No Itzhak. August is beginning to wonder where he is (no sound in the bathroom, not in the reading nook) when he hears cursing, and in its wake, the annoyed mutters of the animals. Why are we not being fed first, those noises say. Everyone knows the order--us, then anything else.

August heads outside to see what's up, frowns as his eyes and shaping sense translate the leg problem. "You don't need to do that," he says, making his way over through the crunchy half-frozen mud. "I'm sure the whole electrical's fried."

Itzhak ducks to peer between hood and frame, eyeing August as he makes his way outside. The narrow, aggravated look on his face is easy to imagine on him back in NYC prior to some street race, mantling over Ignacio's car like a hawk over its kill, warning off all intruders. He snorts at him and goes back to his digging.

"It sure as fuck is." He's got a pair of wire cutters in one hand, and he wields them: snip! snip! A tangle of charred wiring is tossed on the ground, into a growing pile. "Connections melted. Everything toasted to a crisp. Even the gaskets are cracked from the heat. Blew your sound system straight to hell too. But I can fix it."

August, meanwhile, looks not too much unlike he did some twenty or more years ago; exhausted, in pain, a little out of sorts. There's a few long, thin, cuts just visible on his neck, maybe from when the tower imploded.

He watches Itzhak for a spell, hands stuffed in his pockets. "You absolutely don't need to do that. I can just part it out. Probably should get something a little newer anyways. I'll take Ellie and Ignacio, they'll get me a solid deal." The Outback's not that old, at a strapping 10 years and change, but there are a hell of a lot of miles on it.

"You are not gonna get shit for parting it out like this, take it from me. Scrap prices. Wiring's cheap. Stereo ain't but that's fine, dealer can install a new one and jack up the cost when they turn it around. I'll just clean up the connections." Itzhak rattles on, tense and annoyed, then abruptly shuts up and braces his arms on the sides of the engine compartment, letting his head drop. "I want to," he mutters, averting his eyes. "You done so much for me, and for him."

Ruiz had in fact promised August to pay him back for the damage to his car, in one of the few things he'd said. Itzhak still needs to do, needs to put his hands to work and accomplish something.

August opens his mouth to protest that he knows he won't get shit for it but whatever, he didn't get shit for the Civic that a tree fell on in the Hanukkah Eve Storm either. But as Itzhak goes on, his jaw snaps shut, and he looks out over the cold, dark morning. The trees are half-shrouded in mist. The goats are baaaing at the sounds of conversation.

He sighs, rubs at his temples. "I haven't done anything you or he wouldn't do in my place," he says, finally. Another span of silence, then, "But if it helps you. Okay. Sure. Like you say, then I can at least, you know. Trade it in."

Itzhak flips a hand out. Of course we'd do it in your place, that says. Of course we would.

They have, in a way, when they plumbed the depths of August's own Dream, to reach the corrupted aspen at the crossroads of his soul. Itzhak had raced to help August, bypassing all other considerations. Ruiz and Alexander had backed him up. So in a way, they could be considered even.

In every other way that counts, there's no counting such things.

"It helps." His voice is low, uncertain. "Otherwise you'd have me banging around the place yelling and neither a you need that."

August relaxes when Itzhak agrees to that much, at least, smiles even for the admission he'd just be up in everyone's business, raging against feeling useless and helpless. And August can't entirely blame him on that front; isn't he out here, about to do morning chores in the face of common sense?

But first... "Listen, ah. When we were in there." He stops, tries to think of how to say this without freaking Itzhak out. He's staring at that leg Itzhak won't stand on. No, he's staring at the torn hamstring.

He makes himself look at Itzhak directly. "That thing you almost told me about. Was it Monaghan?"

Itzhak sighs, from the very bottom of his diaphragm. His braced arms quiver.

"Yeah." He doesn't look at August, head still sunk between his shoulders. At most, August can see his wild curly hair. His voice is almost swallowed up by the engine compartment. Then he chuffs a rueful not-quite-a-laugh. "Knew sooner or later you'd figure it out. Wanted to tell you for a long time."

August ducks his head, lets out a long, slow breath. "Look, I'm...sorry, that you didn't feel like you could tell me. I don't want you to think there's things you have to keep from me. You've got a right to, but feeling like you can't--I apologize for anything I've done or said that made you think that." He grunts. "Please don't think I expect some kind of, explanation. I don't. That's not my business."

"No, that's not--" Itzhak shakes his head. "That ain't why I didn't tell you. I didn't tell you because what you don't know can't be got outta you with a rubber hose." He lifts his head enough to look at August over his shoulder with one over-glossy hazel eye. "It was to protect you. To protect our family. I sure done a shit job of that, though."

August actually laughs, morbid humor mixing with the sincere. "You know that doesn't mean the rubber hose doesn't get used, right?" He studies Itzhak for a while, maybe regretting not asking what it's about for a half a second. He shakes his head, looks out over the trees. "I won't blame you for thinking that'd protect us. I guess in a way it would; Ignacio's first question would be when are you telling him you quit." He flicks a brief, wry glance at Itzhak which says August thinks Itzhak knows he's right. Then he's studying the trees again. "But it won't. Not from the likes of him. His reach, and the reach of guys like him, is way beyond that of any one person working for him." He kicks a rock loose on the ground. "Anyways, you've done a perfectly fine job of protecting us."

Itzhak pries himself out of the engine, grabs the hiking stick so he can limp around to the side of the car and lean on the door. He grunts. "Yeah. I know." A shrug and a twitch of his mouth. There's a rag stuffed in his back pocket, and he grabs it so he can wipe his hands. "They tell me that, too. That lyin' to you don't protect you. It's pretty funny, when They're not wrong." He looks down at his hands while he wipes away the grease. "You know what it's like for adjuncts, right?" he says, quietly.

"'Funny'," August echoes, tone absent. His expression goes blank for a time, his eyes lost in some memory or another. An old one, an ugly one. "Yeah. Even more than lying to us, They love telling us the shitty truth." He sighs, making a cloud of mist. Sets aside whatever's gnawing at him, eyes Itzhak. "No," he admits, tone hesitant. An invitation for Itzhak to tell him, or not, as his discretion.

"It's shit," Itzhak says briskly, or at least faking briskness halfway dece. "They get paid pocket change. Just under twenty thousand dollars a year, don't matter how many classes you teach? They gotta teach at three, four schools just to make ends meet. No benefits, nothin'. Naomi wound up there after she got pregnant. Mommy-tracked. Then she got cancer." He stares down at the rag.

"Then I had this schmuck tellin' me," he goes on, soft, intense, "I could help her."

And this, of course, is what August missed out on by not remaining in the Ivory Tower. (And, in all honesty, by not being able to get pregnant.) He'd never been particularly interested in the ins and outs of academia at this level; assistants versus adjuncts versus tenure. He was a field biologist, it was understood that he'd be working for the government or a company like Weyerhauser his whole career.

Not so for people like Itzhak's sister Naomi. And doubly not so for those who had children, and more so for those who had the temerity to not be perfectly healthy.

The drip dry pot on the aspen stump, a special type meant to withstand the expansion brought on by freezing water in the soil within it, shifts. Not when Itzhak mentions the mommy-tracking or the cancer, though those are bad. No, it's when Itzhak reveals a guy told him Itzhak 'could help Naomi' that the pot groans. August mutters, "Shit," under his breath, looks away. "Money?" he asks the yard. "Or, access to a special trial?" Those could be the answer to life and death all on their own, as risky as they were.

"Money. Nothing gets you into those trials unless you fit what they need." Itzhak stuffs the rag back into his pocket. "Even then, you could get a placebo. You know what the worst fucking part is? You make any amount of money and the hospitals won't help you. The state won't help you. Nobody will fuckin' help you if you got two pennies to rub together." Shrugging, he looks away. "So I said okay. I figured I been worthless to her and Ma my entire stupid life, maybe...maybe this way I could finally do something good for them. Because I'm an idiot." His voice is clogging up, fighting back tears.

"Money," August repeats, runs a hand over his face. And of course, a lot of money, because he's aware via his mother how much cancer meds cost when they aren't covered. That was something any long-serving RN had stood by and watched ravage patients' financial security again, and again, and again.

August nods his understanding about the curse of falling into the financial gap. That crack in the system where millions of people deemed not poor enough for assistance but who also don't make enough to get by, he knows it all too well. He'd grown up in it, his whole family had fought tooth and nail to claw their collective way out of it. He had only sympathy for anyone else fighting the bullshit society trapping them there.

He moves over to Itzhak, puts a hand on his shoulder to grip it. "You weren't worthless to them. I'm sure they'd say that. And, sure, maybe this wasn't a great decision--but I can get why you'd look at an offer like that, weighed against your whole family going bankrupt, and opt for it instead." He snorts, ducks his head. "It's not like it's all that different than kids who join the military just to get something back to their family, is it?"

Itzhak promptly winds an arm around August's waist, pulls himself to him, leans his head on his shoulder. Skin-hunger, desperate neediness emits from him. He hiccups a half-laugh. "I guess it's...it's not so different. No, it ain't so different at all." That makes him feel better, of all things. "Not even Mireleh's father's around to help, he's a schmuck and a scumbag. Naomi dumped him when she caught him sleeping around on her. I never liked that guy." So of course, Itzhak is correct about everything. "I had to do something, Roen, I had to." His voice vibrates against August.

August gathers Itzhak up without hesitation, swallowing down a lump in his throat. It's a little painful to hug right now, but he grips Itzhak nice and tight. "Hey, hey, hey," he says, voice low. "You did have to do something, and you did. She's getting treatment, yeah? Miriam's got her mom still thanks to you." Of course, the flip side is, they lost Itzhak in the process. He wound up out here, on a thin spot, sucked into the uncertain life surrounding the Art.

He sighs heavily for that, the sound of air moving in and out of him deep against Itzhak's ear. There were no good choices he could have made. Just hard ones; bad ones. "They'd rather be bankrupt with you than getting by without, but," he pulls a face, "doesn't mean you did the worst thing possible. Maybe not the best. But definitely not the worst."

The tight sound Itzhak makes indicates it's pretty painful for him to hug right now, too, but he's doing it. He's doing it so hard. "She's getting treatment. She's alive. I learned a whole lot about cancer, and I learned it might come back any day, or it might never come back. Nobody knows. And she's...she's messed up from so much chemo, she talked to me about it over Thanksgiving." He rambles low and rapid against August's shoulder. "Won't ever be like she was. But she's alive. Mireleh still has a ma. I still have a little sister." He swallows. "I...I know I kinda traded myself for her. But I'd do it again. In a second I'd do it again."

August stills as he listens to all of that. He knows cancer only the way any biologist does; it's more of a technical exercise in understanding that there are some things which break in a way which are so fundamental to the processes of existing that they can be near impossible to fix, not a medical situation which leaves people destitute in just about all ways possible. He's been aware of this reality, but there's awareness, and then there's holding your friend while he explains he sold himself to a crime lord to get his sister treatment.

But another part of him is reacting to all this information quite differently; that part of him that came to life under a building and refused to stop trying to make people live. "Maybe..." He pauses. He hasn't tried that. Has Finch? Lilith won't have, they're two sides of the same coin when it comes to healing. Bennie, maybe? "One of us...might be able to make sure it won't come back. Or shore her up. Heal what the chemo did." That last one he knows he can do. But get rid of the cancer entirely?

He makes a note to buy a book online later, blinks back the tears threatening to form. "See? You protected them. Your family." He makes a low, discontented sound. "No idea how we could ever pay that off, though." And yet here he is, thinking about it. How much is in his retirement now?

Shaking his head, Itzhak swallows again and again. He can't talk for a long few moments. Then, "They're hungry," he mumbles. "I can hear 'em, seething just over the border. You do that, They'd suck you down and God only knows if we'd ever get you back. I won't risk it. Not now. Maybe not ever." He snorts, a little wetly. "I didn't figure on ever payin' it back. How guys like him work, they just keep adding on your tab and you can't stop 'em. I knew it going in. Used to work for guys like him, before I went to prison. Watched what they'd do to hapless sons a bitches. Knew what I was getting into. You know. More or less."

August hmphs, annoyed. He can't deny the reality of that; yes, banishing cancer from someone was probably a one way ticket to a Dream he might never get out of. And yes, the interest alone on Itzhak's debt was enough to keep him indentured for life, unless something radical changed.

Still. "If you show up in tears because it's come back, I'm on the first flight into LaGuardia, and I'm not going to ask you about where she lives. I'll just find her myself." He says this matter-of-fact, much the same way he informs one of his employees of the day's schedule.

'More or less.' Of course, the 'less' amounts to a whole lot when it comes to Gray Harbor. Even if they can assume Felix isn't wise to the Art and its effects, what's to say his people aren't, and banking on it in numerous ways?

The pot on the aspen shifts again, and August knuckles down. The geese honk, annoyed that they haven't been fed. He sighs. "Look. You know I can't really afford to...offer to help with that sort of thing. But," he tips his head back, looks down at Itzhak, "should you get seriously hurt doing shit for him, I will heal you, and I'm not asking permission first."

Itzhak sighs, gustily, edged round with a bitter laugh, like lace. "Shit, all you'd have to do is head somewhere around Delancy Street and Essex," he murmurs, "ask some guy wearin' a kippah about the Rosencrantzes. Everyone knows us." He leans back against the car, coming out of clinging to August, but not quite letting him go yet, hands still on his arms. "It ain't your job to fix my bullshit," he tells him, serious, risking eye contact. "You gotta know that."

August relinquishes Itzhak, clears his throat. "I know it's not," he says, nodding. "But I also don't mind helping when you need it. It..." He pauses, shifts his attention out over the slow break of day. "It's been hard, feeling like I could be any good to anyone, after Bosnia. So." He wrinkles his nose. "Alexander called it, getting control back. He's probably right about that."

Now he looks at Itzhak again. "I'm not gonna say anything to anyone about it." That's kind of thing he says when he's not telling anyone else. "And I'm not going to make trouble about it either. That won't help you at all."

Itzhak dips his head to the side to rub his wet eyes on his shoulder, just-had-my-hands-in-an-engine style. He does it without thinking and it pulls his wounded shoulder and he hisses, jolting in pain. "Fuck. Dammit." But he's nodding, eyes closed. "Don't make trouble. Put you in danger, put de Santos and Fincheleh in danger, too, if ya do. I did this and I knew what I'd get. And don't," he adds, squinting at August, "don't even think about tryin' to take him down. Wouldn't matter if you did. There's always some asshole ready to take his place. And they might be worse. He's bad, I mean he's bad, but he knows how to manage shit, you know what I'm saying? Be worse if there was some cowboy schmuck with delusions of supervillainy."

August winces at Itzhak's pain, sets his teeth and focuses on a spot somewhere else. When it passes, he nods, says, "No, I..." He stops, sags. "I don't even know if I could kill Peregrine." It's half a life, and the sad look he gives Itzhak says he knows it is. But it's not all a lie either. "It's not that I don't want to, it's...hurting people, is way worse than healing them." There it is, the stark reality of his life for the last two decades. He licks his lips. "But that aside, I won't. You're right, he'd just get replaced by some other asshole." His angers simmers, though, and not being able to fix it. Like so many other things.

He shrugs it off. Later. They have to deal with what they can, when they can. For example, "You two can stay here as long as you need. I can have Erika come and take care of the animals." He blinks. "Oh, and."

He turns, holds out a hand, slowly spreading his fingers, then drawing them inward part way. Ruiz's gun pops out of the frozen mud and lands in August's hand, clean as a whistle, good as new. He turns and offers it to Itzhak, muzzle down, grip first. "If he shoots one of my geese I'm breaking it again."

Itzhak grimaces. "That's pretty bad, considering you toss ya cookies every time you heal someone. Not every time, but, well, almost every time." He nods, accepting August's half lie, although he's actually like 89% certain August would in fact turn on Peregrine and crush his lungs, like he'd done to that Dark construct. If Peregrine even made a threatening move towards Itzhak, it'd happen. And maybe, in the future, it will.

For now, he shakes his head again. "His place is just a mile down the road, we'll go there." He's about to say something else when--whooooo August flexes all those psychic muscles and Itzhak sucks a startled breath in, a shudder racing down his spine. "Fuck, Roen. I heard that, all right!" Like a symphony shouting he heard it. Ruiz's gun reappears, looking like it was freshly cleaned and oiled, perfect once again, and he laughs low, accepts it, turns it over in his hands. "He'll...he'll be real happy to have this back." His laugh is easier when August says he'll break it again. "Yeah, well, I won't stop ya."

"Yeah yeah," August says of his stomach complications aka inability to not keep it together when someone's injured. "Look, I'm getting there." His levity fades for a moment; he's getting there, in both directions. But maybe that was always going to happen. And maybe, if Peregrine makes a wrong move, they'll find out just how far he's come.

He nods his understanding about heading back to Ruiz's cabin. "I'll text you a warning if I see any of his, ah, coworkers heading down that way." One eyebrow goes up in a wry gesture of, 'that would be awkward, if you answered the door, fully clothed or not'.

He smiles at the laugh. "That's a bit better," he mutters, flexing his hand. "Been acting up." A goose honks, angry. "Okay, okay," he murmurs, and claps Itzhak on the shoulder. "I'll make breakfast soon as I'm done. Coffee's probably ready in there, if you need it."

Gripping August's wrist hard, Itzhak sniffles, nods. "Okay. Better feed 'em before they remember they're dinosaurs and bust out all Jurassic Park." He unsteadily limps his way back to the front of the car, to get back to his angry, cursing auto repair. Hands back into the engine, mind back on the machine. This, he can fix.

August returns the gesture, closing a hand over Itzhak's to hold it tight for a second. "Any day now they'll do it. Just you wait." Then he turns and makes his way to the pens, which earns him a chorus of honks loud enough to wake the dead.