2020-03-18 - I'll Follow You Down

She tried. She really did.

To expect Isabella Reede to sit idle while Alexander Clayton is off doing something particularly dangerous is a hope doomed to failure, because it isn't long after he sets off with the rest of the Addingtons on a (some would say foolhardy) excursion that she is off the couch again, pulling on a lighter set of outerwear in deference to the spring, and a shovel, setting off into the eastern portion of the house where she had heard the bird cawing her twin brother's name. After rooting around on the muck, she finally finds what she is looking for, some trace of the animal that had been attempting to contact her in the midst of the days earlier braintrust. Plucking the white feather off the ground, she closes her eyes and casts a wide net - it isn't long until she finds another one.

And another, and another. Does she follow? Of course she does.

No matter where her quest ends up, she manages to find herself back in the residence well before Alexander does, and she has done her level best to keep herself occupied to prevent herself from fretting needlessly - overall a futile endeavor, given her nature. She eats a light dinner, she pores over various correspondences her father had sent over, frowning slightly at a letter from Oxford; that one, she opens first, and its contents leads her to shoving it under piles of other paper, because she doesn't have the room to think about those implications at the moment, and pores through various updates from Delaware about the data breach the GEC had suffered in the last couple of weeks. She attempts to make friends with Luigi, without cheating using her newly discovered mental talents, only to be rebuffed, and so spends most of the evening entertaining Blue Bell with her laser pointer, watching the normally dignified creature chase the red dot around with mischievous enthusiasm.

By the time the clock strikes an hour past midnight, with him still not arrived, she's clearly had it.

The heavy black box is opened; the two pistols within are black and nondescript, but not so heavy that they can't easily be carried. She pulls out her own shoulder rig and sets it on the coffee table in preparation, ready and willing to fill each and every pocket on her person with death if it meant that her lover wasn't coming home today. She thinks about driving back to the houseboat to retrieve a spare canister of gasoline, tries to remember how to make a molotov cocktail in the way her father had taught her, in case she needs to set a bonfire, and her hatchet....

Where was her hatchet?

She summons it in her hand. It goes flying in negligible speed from her expedition pack, its dangerous blade spinning in the air before she snatches it from the empty. She inclines her head to inspect the edge.

"I could really get used to using you," she murmurs to it, eyes hooded. "Do you need a name?"

Alexander does eventually get home. He walked through the woods, doing the best sort of search pattern he could devise, until it got too dark to see a body if one was likely to be found. Then, unwilling to face the night perfectly sober, he walked to the Two if By Sea, where news of Ignacio's accident reached him through August. He didn't stay long at the hospital, but by the time he makes it back home, it's significantly after midnight, and he trudges into the house, tired and dirty, with an expedition pack hanging loosely over his shoulder. "Isabella?" There were lights on, so he knew someone was home. Hopefully it was Isabella, and not a horrible Dream Monster, because he's had just about enough of that.

The door opens and her grip on the hatchet tightens, but hearing that familiar voice and inflection chases the tension out of her face entirely, flooding it with the stirrings of near bone-breaking relief. Isabella pushes off from the couch, kicking the black box shut; quick steps on stockinged feet carry her from the main living area and into the narrow entryway where she espies the silhouette of a hunched, broad-shouldered figure making his way inside of the house.

"Oh, thank god!"

She doesn't care how dirty he is, with melting snow, caked earth and the other detritus of the coming Spring hanging off his clothes. She throws her arms around him, and while she doesn't shake, her heart nearly stages a jailbreak through her ribs. "I was about to go look for you with every intent to set the entire forest on fire if I couldn't find you," she breathes; it sounds like an exaggeration, but probably not in her case. After giving him a squeeze, she pulls back just enough so she could reach out with both hands to cup his face. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

Alexander drops the expedition backpack so that he can be properly hugged. He returns the hug with tired enthusiasm; he smells of the woods: cold dirt, loam, the faintest hint of green things. "I'm fine. It's fine. No one got hurt," he assures her as they embrace, and whens she cups his face, he leans tiredly into it. "I'm not saying the woods couldn't use a good burning down, though. If you were so inclined."

A glance at the black box near the couch and the hatchet. "You were really gonna come after me?" A slow smile. "That's kind." Then the smile dies. "Anne is missing. She's not responding to texts. I looked in the forest for her, but it got too dark. And, um, Ignacio DeSantos got hit by a car. A bus. He's a friend of August and Itzhak, and all of them. I stopped by the hospital, but he was still in surgery."

"If you really want me to, I will. I know where I can get gasoline." Her thumbs trace the ridges of his cheekbones, pressing a relieved kiss on his mouth. "Come in and get warm, okay?" Isabella murmurs against his skin before easing away. She'll assist him out of the rest of his gear, then, and hangs up his expedition pack next to her own, familiar enough with the routines of the house to know where most things ought to be placed. Then, she'll usher him to sit on the couch.

She doesn't join him yet. She moves to the kitchen so she could brew some coffee; something to warm him up. It doesn't take long - she returns with two mugs and offers one to him before easing onto the cushions next to him.

"That wasn't even a question," she tells him quietly, and despite her tone, the ferocity in her eyes is palpable and intense. "I would've hacked through anything that got in my way." News about Anne does drain the color off her face for the time being, however. "....what? What do you mean? I thought she went with you? And...the author of the advice column? Jesus. He's lucky he's alive. I hope he pulls through."

Alexander is easy to guide at the moment. He makes his way to the couch and then just collapses on it, resting his head against the back of the seat, eyes immediately closing. And staying closed even when she returns, although he sniffs the air and reaches blindly for a coffee mug. He doesn't show much interest in drinking it, though; he just wraps his hands around it. "Don't burn down the forest. August would cry. I'm not ready to see August cry."

There's a long sigh at her response about Anne. "I thought she did, too. She opened the door for us, and walked through. But she didn't come out on the other side. At least not where we did. Vincenzo's continuing to look for her. I hope she's just lost, and will come back soon." Just a soft noise of agreement about Ignacio.

"You're never ready to see anyone cry," Isabella remarks, but with the most infinite affection. She presses her lips gently against his cheek at that.

She, too, isn't all that interested in her coffee, but she does try to take care of him, even if her attempts are fumbling at best. She sets her own mug down, with its pithy slogan emblazoned on the pale ceramic, and reaches out for her phone. She dials Anne's number, and though she knows that she'll probably won't reach her, she leaves a voicemail anyway. She sighs and ends the call. "Shit," she mutters. "I'll try her house in the morning. If she's not there, I can always see if I can find anything she dropped in or close to your meeting spot for you to read." There's a faint grimace at the last, but with it comes the clear resignation that this is something he does, and does well, and there's absolutely no stopping him anyway.

"What happened out there, darling?" A hand reaches out in a manner that she hopes is comforting, her warmth smoothing a curl off his forehead - as promised, she'd given him a cut that morning before he braved the bevy of Addingtons, but as per her preference, she had kept the top long enough to sweep back. "I'm worried about Anne, but I'm concerned about you also. Did it try to..." Eat you.

Alexander leans into the touch with a pleased sort of sigh, although his eyes still don't open. He waited patiently through the call, but does say, "Don't go out to the sawmill. Not alone. Please, Isabella. It's teeming with Shadows, and I'd rather them not pull you over just because you're nearby." Which may sort of answer her other question, but if so, he contradicts the obvious answer, by saying, "No. We were intercepted by the Exorcist before we could reach the Veil Sawmill. But she confirmed some things. Margaret, and I guess earlier generations of Addingtons, but Margaret was the one who was specifically mentioned, have been destroying Baxter bodies and binding or shredding our souls so that we can't move on and 'take the light with us'." He finally takes a sip of coffee. "I saw Lindon Baxter's ghost. He says that if one of us sacrifices ourselves, we can snuff out all the lights forever, and no one else has to die. I think he means removing our abilities."

She waits until Alexander takes a sip of his coffee, before shifting away from him on the couch - to give him the room to sprawl on it, if he wants. Isabella pats her lap in an inviting fashion, to encourage him to rest his head there, and if he does, she'll proceed to stroke his hair while he rests - or attempts to, depending on how he feels. She's quiet throughout his litany, but he can practically sense it - the way the tumblers and gauges of her labyrinthine mind shifts, recalibrates and changes with every piece of information introduced.

"I won't go alone, and unless absolutely necessary." She makes the promise easily, willing to agree on this point at least, and further encouraged by the fact that Anne is missing. Worry creases her forehead at the thought of her blue-eyed friend. "...I wondered why the Exorcist seemed not too fond of Margaret in particular, but now I know why. Souls are her purview, so with Margaret interrupting that....my question is how she's able to do that, though. Bind souls that way. As powerful as she is, I've never heard of any one of our ilk being able to do that."

She pauses when he mentions Lindon Baxter. Her head tilts back, eyes hooding as she observes the ceiling.

"The Addingtons seem determined to keep the lights on," she observes, remembering what Margaret said at the funeral. "The Baxters, or at least Lindon, want them off. There's something almost absolutely classic about this particular struggle. Great-great-great-great grandfather isn't exactly the most reliable source, however, considering what we know he did. I know very little about ghosts, but considering they're shades of the past unable to leave for the next life without help, I imagine decades of that sort of isolation may have driven him mad. I don't know if we can trust any of them."

Alexander doesn't have to be invited twice. He takes another sip of his coffee, then sets it down on the table so that he can stretch out, legs hanging untidily over one end of the sofa, his head resting in her lap, face tilted up towards her. "Mm. Yes. And Margaret can't have children because of the Exorcist. Who is very pissed off about all the souls being shredded and bound - she didn't seem to know how it was being done, or if it could be undone."

There's an agreeable noise about Lindon's general reliability. "He said that he burned them because...because what was it? He thought he needed the bodies, or something. But that he was wrong, but he knows how to do it now." He snorts. "But he's not isolated. They're all there, Isabella. All of the Baxters who have had their bodies destroyed. Trapped on that side, around that mill, in a dust made of their own ground bones. For eternity, perhaps."

Her expression when he tilts his face that way is contemplative, but gentle - there's always an undercurrent of affection, whenever she looks at him; occasionally, passion or frustration would sheath over it, but whenever he's near, it never truly goes away. Isabella's fingers find the curls on top of his head, diving into it and rolling the pads of them against his scalp, massaging gently. There's even a hint of a smile, in spite of the subject matter of their conversation.

The explanation behind Margaret's childlessness draws her brows upwards. "Huh. Well, consequences are what they are." It sounds absolutely callous, but that contemplative expression only grows. "I suppose what she said about the sacrifices she had made over the summer isn't completely hyperbole. If the Exorcist doesn't know if there's a way for it to be undone, maybe there's a way. It's another avenue we could explore."

Thoughtfulness gives way, eventually, to skepticism. "We Baxters thought we were right about some things over the summer, and we ended up being absolutely incorrect - for all we know, it's a genetic affliction." The last stated dryly. Green-and-gold eyes tilt downward to meet his darker own. "....is that what's going to happen to us?" she asks, quietly, after a very long pause. "We'll be trapped there, also, if we don't find another way to free the souls of our forebears?"

"If someone tries to bury us here, I guess," Alexander says, after a moment of thought. "And if Margaret's even capable of...doing that, anymore. From what you and the Addingtons have said, she's withdrawn and not the woman she used to be, since Thomas' death. Which, apparently, involved him trying to undo what we did at the funeral - sending a Baxter soul on without letting it be bound - but he apparently didn't do it 'right'?" A shift of his head in her lap, and a soft groan of pleasure at the working of her fingers on his scalp. His eyes open at last. "...Isabella? I hate to ask, but what arrangements were made for your mother?"

"She wouldn't even let anyone inside of her house, from what Hyacinth and Enzo managed to tell me," Isabella confirms to Alexander softly. "Hyacinth suspects she's been getting some help from or at least is maintaining some contact with the Asylum, but I don't know if she knows for certain, or whether these are conclusions she has reached from what she learned about her relatives over the summer." She closes her eyes in an attempt to remember. "Enzo told me that he did something in the Veil, Thomas....something about flipping the switch. He asked me about the Vivisectionist, and I advised him against meeting her and suggested some alternate ways he and his sister could pursue Thomas' last mystery." A pause, and she looks down at him, expression perplexed. "....he also said something about...replenishing a gnome population?"

At his quiet groan, she leans forward, so she could lift her other hand and roll her thumbs gently over his temples, but when he asks that last question, they still. It leaves her leaning over him, the shadows cast by her face eclipsing his.

"...I arranged to have her cremated," she confesses. "The morgue gave us a container after, and I gave it to my father to take away from here when he left for New Orleans with Skipper. I was determined that this place not have any more of her. Why?"

Alexander breathes a sigh of relief. "I'm glad. That you arranged to have her cremated. I just wanted to make sure that," he hesitates, then plows on through, "that Margaret couldn't get hold of the remains. I doubt the Addingtons have a great deal of pull away from the town...and I don't know that anything they can do to, uh, bind us even works away from Gray Harbor. Or if our ability to 'take away the light' works, either." His brow furrows under her fingers, his frustration momentarily visible. "There's still a lot we just don't know. About this. But, I feel better knowing that your mother isn't in danger of it, regardless."

The gnomes, on the other hand? Those make him snicker. "Uh. Yeah. Vincenzo either managed to impress or tick off a whole bunch of tiny, ugly gnomes with acid pee. They tried to kill him in the hospital, and he agreed to repopulate their species and kill their leader if they would stop trying to murder him. So I guess I'm helping him start a gnomic revolution. For some reason."

"No." Isabella's voice is stitched with heat at that, emerald eyes growing dark, threads of rage that remains unaddressed in any meaningful way lurking within the gold-flecked depths. "This place has done enough to her. I wanted to make doubly sure that nobody else was going to lay hands on her that weren't my father's. He deserves that, to be the one to set her soul free in a place she loves." Her jaw tightens at the hinges. "At least on that, my foresight was good for something." Traces of bitterness linger there, potent on her tongue, but after a moment, her gaze detracts from his to settle on one of his blue walls, falling silent.

She reanimates after a calming breath or two, leaning down to press her lips warmly on her forehead. "You're sweet to worry about her," she says, gratitude overtaking her features, reclaiming the task of gently massaging his scalp. "But she's in no danger of that, thankfully. As for our ability to take away the light, I wondered about that also. Anne didn't believe what we had was a curse, but she's so far removed from this affair that I'm not so certain if that's accurate." Open hesitation plays over her face, but only briefly, before venturing with, "Anne mentioned Patrick left this place to get away from all of it...or tried to. I wonder if she meant this also, and not just generally. Do you think it's worth asking him? If he has some idea as to how all of that works?"

His quiet snicker makes her smile. "I suggested that in some cultures, dominating and killing the leader means you get to be the leader, in turn," she informs him. "If gnomish society works the same way, maybe if he manages to defeat the chief, he'd be in the position to relieve himself of the duty to repopulate it. He's going to try."

She rolls her own head back at that, closing her eyes. "I was thinking about your white crows, when you left. I needed to do something to occupy my time. I followed a trail, while you were gone."

Alexander lets out a breath and a tension that he hadn't consciously acknowledge. "Good." A pause. "I suppose I'll have to make arrangements for my parents. Or try to convince them to make arrangements. I don't know if any other Addingtons have...inclinations in that direction. None of the ones I went with seemed to, but it's a large family, and I would imagine Margaret realized she would die SOME day. She has to be training someone. Or at least made arrangements." He falls silent as he picks up on that bitterness, and his eyes open, studying her. "Hey. What's wrong, Isabella? You've done a lot to help things, here. It's not your fault everything about this town is broken." He lifts a smudged hand to awkwardly reach up and stroke her.

"I...can ask. I have to ask about the basement, anyway. Once Anne is found." He consciously doesn't say 'if'. "And I certainly hope he does. We only need so many Addingtons, and the full-sized ones are quite enough trouble. I'd hate to see what pocket sized ones could get into." He goes a bit tense again when she mentions following a trail. "What happened?"

"You don't have to worry about arrangements for your parents for a while yet," Isabella replies softly - or at least, that is the hope, forever more willing to do so than Alexander's own brutally pragmatic inclinations. "We'll keep an eye out for them." There's a smile, meant to be encouraging. "I definitely recommend cremation, if nothing else but to set them free from this place. Ashes can go wherever the wind scatters them. I'd like to be, one day." The last is said absently, from a young woman who has long accepted her own mortality, but when asked about the earlier barbed comment, there's a blink.

"...it's nothing," is what she elects to say, running her fingers through his hair again, her face turning towards his stroking hand. She doesn't care if bits of earth remain clinging to his skin, pressing her lips on the fleshy heel of his palm. "Old wounds....old inadequacies." One of her hands detaches, to brush light, warm fingertips in the spaces between his knuckles, giving him a smile that she hopes assuages a few worries.

"As for the Addingtons, they'll all probably be buried here, if they die here. Father Daniel told me all Addingtons go through the church, presumably that means during the beginning and the end of their lives. They don't have to worry about taking the light with them when they leave, anyway, and they seem exempt from any concerns getting ground up with their souls trapped along with a pile of dust on the other side."

There's a visible furrowing of her brows regarding the basement. "There are a couple of dangerous spots down there," she reminds; she's told him this before. "Why the renewed interest?"

When his tension returns, the white edges of her teeth nibble on her lower lip. "I found a feather while you were out. It led me to more - I thought that if crows were being sent out here in the real world to pester us that they were being sent from an actual, physical place. So I found a trail and I followed it....all the way to the coast. I felt the world go thin, there. There's a Door either close to or above the water...and no, I didn't open it. I wasn't about to go through alone."

Alexander sighs. "I can't guarantee that. I hope it to be true - neither of them have abilities, so they seem to be mostly left alone by the craziness here. But I can't guarantee it." But he says no more about it, except a brief grimace at the thought of cremation. Instead, he's watching her as she responds to his question, and he replies, softly, "That's not nothing, Isabella. Although I understand." He smiles at the light touch. "Just don't be too hard on yourself."

There's a shrug at Addington burial arrangements; it clearly isn't something that worries him, too much, one way or the other. But the basement? That brings a thoughtful noise. "Remember the conversation I had with Byron? I'm sure I mentioned it. He read some memories off the wedding dress that involved 'something in the basement' and a hanging in the attic. It's worth looking into."

He listens to the rest, although one eyebrow goes up, and his voice turns dry as he asks, "You 'found', or you went looking for?" He knows who he's dating. "But that's interesting. Byron read a crow, too. Or a feather, and got a vision from an old woman in a chicken-legged hut. And I got the angry beast. Maybe your door is the way to one, or both, of those places."

"I know, love." Isabella's voice is soft, but weighted with unmitigated affection, three words to reply to everything else that Alexander addresses - so touched by his reaction that, for once, she doesn't deign to raise the fact that he doesn't have the room to talk about being too hard on oneself. There's another quiet kiss instead on his forehead.

When she straightens up, her back sinks into the cushions of the couch, her head tilted, but in a downward angle enough so she can keep looking at his face. "I agree, if only because this is Byron's family history, and he's helped us enough that we should help him also, whenever he needs it. That, and this is also the part where I unapologetically express my total interest in seeing the more private nooks and crannies of Addington House." There's a glint in her eye, the thrill of discovery apparent - to ask an explorer not to go through a door is to ask her not to breathe, and she doesn't intend to die any time soon. "Let me know if Patrick is cooperative?"

And when he demonstrates his intimate knowledge of her quirks and foibles, she's unable to suppress a laugh. "Fine. I went looking for it, but you could hardly expect me to sit still while you went haring off danger. It was all I could do to occupy myself and prevent my body from following you, Anne and Enzo into the breach." Fingers reach to tickle his ribs, pausing only briefly when he goes into further detail about Byron's vision. "A chicken-legged hut? Sounds like a reference to Baba Yaga if I heard one. Like the song - Now inside the witch’s hut you will now obey, you know the price to fail; agony, fence of bones keep you in, spinning hut with chicken legs."

Alexander's smile widens, fractionally, at the kiss on his forehead. "I'm not saying that I don't want to help Byron, because I do, even if he did try to pawn me off on Easton's ex-fiance. But I'm as interested in poking around in the secrets of Addingtons past as I am anything else, I must admit I'll definitely let you know." He grins at the laugh, the expression brief and as bright as summer lightning. "No. I would not expect you to sit still. Never that. I'm glad that you don't seem injured." There's a lift on the last word that turns it into ALMOST a question. His eyebrows come up at her contribution. "Baba Yaga?" He's not a huge fiction fan, and apparently that extends to Russian folklore. "That seems like a...not very cheery song, Isabella. Is this witch going to be a problem?"

"...Easton's ex-fiancee?" Again, the last aboard the gossip wheel, Isabella's brows pull upwards in curiosity there. "I didn't even know he had one. Is she local?" Can't be, otherwise Easton would have mentioned her already after all of these months. "Why would he pawn you off of her?" She's trying not to bristle, but with the bartender having shoved Alexander near-facefirst into two pairs of boobs recently, she can't help but wonder if everyone's about to do the same after the Valentine's Day debacle. "Am I going to have to take off my earrings?" Basically the very first indicator that two women are about to have a fight.

That bright, boyish grin mollifies her some (and stokes the intensity of her ire in others, because he is hers, damn it), her hand lowering to thumb the corner of his grin gently. "I'm not injured because all I did was follow the trail. I didn't open the Door, I was hoping to wrangle a few more bodies before I even did that." The last with a smile. "She's a well-known figure in Slavic folkloric traditions. Sometimes she's one person, sometimes she's a trio of sisters - not unlike the Fates, or the Furies in Greek mythology and like any other similar incarnations, she's a capricious but powerful entity. In some stories, she cannibalizes her visitors. In other stories, she offers them aid - but always with a price. So when you ask if she's going to be a problem, generally? Probably. I wonder what her connection is with the beast you saw, however. Maybe she was the one who stole its name? Or lost its name to her due to an ill-advised transaction?"

Alexander shakes his head. "No, not local. A lawyer. Katherine Kennedy." He eyes her reaction, then laughs. "Not...not like that. I can't imagine a universe where Byron is trying to hook me up on dates, even if he doesn't think I'm good enough for you. Which - he's not wrong," he adds, dryly. "But no. I decided to ask him about financial crime. If he would give me some instruction in how money moves, how you might hide it, all of that." His shoulders move against her thighs as he shrugs. "He wasn't interested. It's fine." The last two words are particularly dull, but nothing else indicates that he might be disappointed.

"Hmm. Maybe. What I saw was a lake of stolen names, and it seemed to work pretty autonomously, but this witch - Baba Yaga - told Byron to seek her out, if he wanted to know more. If she's a bargainer, then he probably is the person who should find her, but not alone. In case she's feeling like Thorne stew that day, or something."

"Oh, his new lawyer." The name is familiar, and Isabella's bristling gentles - but only a little. She still has that half-lidded and wary look, though thankfully it isn't directed at Alexander. "He mentioned her a while back, putting her on retainer. She's from New England, though I never got a straight answer from Ronnie as to whether she belongs to those Kennedys." The dry statement has her sniffing delicately, nose and jaw tilting in that defiant and imperious fashion that he's long associated with her. "Well, thankfully I get to choose, and those who don't like it would simply have to deal. And if anyone has a serious issue..." He's already heard it - the promise of her size eight doing unmentionable things to the backside of whoever dares.

It isn't fine, but at least he tried. Her face softens there and she brushes a lock of hair from his forehead. "You know," she begins. "There are other lawyers. And unlike Byron, Patrick doesn't seem all that adverse to spending time with you." That green-eyed look returns. "Though if he is serious about his flirtations, I might be the next one to break his face." It's said lightly, largely in jest, but with the young Doctor Reede, it's probably a crapshoot as to whether she'll actually do it.

"Well, if anything it looks like a certain crossing over is necessary, anyway, and Byron can't do that on his own to begin with," she tells him. "I'll poke him about it, the next time I talk to him. Did he say anything else about his encounter with the witch?"

Alexander reaches up, fondly stroking that defiant jawline with his fingertips. "Honestly, if Easton had jilted one of those Kennedys, I'd fully expect him to be missing more than a leg by now," he quips. "But I guess it could be a branch. I dunno. She's probably very nice." He falls silent as she goes on, his eyes lighting up a little at the implied threat - Isabella threatening to kick ass always brings out Alexander's heart eyes, and this is no exception.

At the other suggestion, Alexander blinks. "I. Uh. I never really...thought of that. Asking Patrick, I mean. I suppose I could." Although there's still a hint of reluctance there, which turns to amusement as she threatens the Addington. "You know he's not," he says, with a chuckle. "I don't quite understand his and Anne's relationship, but even I can tell it's not one that requires additional complication." He hums as the subject returns to Byron. "He said a few things, but I conveyed the gist. I think he said that his feather felt like an actual reading, while my reading catapulted me to a Dream. Which suggests this Baba Yaga knows a lot about our abilities. That's probably important."

"Well, New England, famous name, lawyers. Probably educated in an Ivy, also, chances are high," Isabella quips, smiling down at the affectionate touch. She nips playfully, but delicately, at one of his fingers. "She probably is, if Easton loved her enough to try and marry her, at some point." Amusement dances over the line of her mouth when his expression lights up. "You're adorable," she murmurs, fondly. Her fingers return to his hair.

"I'm all for anything that expands your knowledge base over a thing you're especially good at." Solving mysteries, and beating the city's detectives at their own game - he may not see it that way, but she does, an infinitely more competitive soul than he is unless games are concerned. "And I do, whatever it is that's going on with him and Anne, it's serious if it's gone on for this long and still maintains its complicated bits no matter how long the separation." That worried face returns, reminded of Anne again and glancing towards the window leading into the outside world.

Attention returns to the present quickly enough, though. "I wouldn't be surprised, if she exists through a Doorway. Not like we don't know to be on guard whenever we go through, just...now. More than ever, especially with the increase in Their activity even with Winter dwindling into the backburner. Whatever Thomas did? Must've really spooked Them, or attracted Them, if They're taking so much trouble overrunning the mill as They have."

She gets poked gently in her nose for the nip on the finger tip. Take that! Alexander grins, though, and clearly doesn't mind it. "And you're beautiful, and I love you," he says, bluntly, in response to her fond murmur. "And they'll do what they need to do, I guess." He nods to her suggestions about Baba Yaga - or whatever Veil thing is inspiring her, perhaps. "I don't know if it spooked them, or attracted them. I don't plan to find out, either," he says, with a shudder she can feel. "I don't want to see Them. Ever. It's the one thing that makes me think that snuffing all the lights would be worth it, if it would close the doors between this world and that world, and save people from being fed on by those monsters ever again. If I knew Lindon's plan would do that? It might be worth it." His eyes slide close, the words becoming half a mumble as he relaxes into the couch, clearly close to falling asleep.

His grin inspires an answering one from Isabella. "You're extremely biased, but I'm glad that you do," she replies, simply and softly. "As for snuffing out the lights, as you said, it would be worth it, if that actually solved the problem. But we don't know that - at least, not yet. As it stands, snuffing out the lights may very well also mean that we'll never see them coming, when They come for us. There's simply no way of knowing unless we dig, and dig. I think everyone's sacrificed enough that if we can prevent more of that, especially if it's needless, we should."

His shudder is one she empathizes with, and he'd feel tension there - a concentrated effort to quell her own shiver at the idea of seeing what They actually look like outside of their agents and other inhuman minions. But with him nearly drifting off to sleep, she leans in to kiss him softly.

"Anyway, you've had a long day, and you should rest," she encourages gently. "Sleep. They won't take you, if one of us is awake." Her fingers stroke his hair, watching his face, the way lashes brush over his cheeks and how the rise and fall of his chest becomes all the more pronounced, the deeper he's lulled into unconsciousness.

"I love you, Alexander."