2020-05-15 - Filling In The Blanks

It was a text from him requesting a meeting, suggesting the picnic tables that overlook the water, near the docks.

And when she arrives, Joe's already there, sitting propped lazily at the table. Not smoking, for once. He's only got a bottle of coke, one of the glass ones with real sugar, and a spare one set out for her.

Already different from the man she met a few months ago. The dark blond hair has grown out a bit, showing its curl in earnest, and taken on the brassy lights of someone who's spent days at sea in the sun. There's new ink on his hands, the phrase HOLD FAST done on his knuckles in black and shades of ocean blue...

And most notably, his own little allotment of Glimmer is almost entirely gone. Faded, indeed, down to a few shimmering dregs, barely enough to prove him one of the elect.

It's the HOLD FAST tattoo on his knuckles that catch her attention when Isabella arrives to greet Joe with a smile as well as the coke in his hand. "In proper glass bottles like a good southern boy," she teases. She's presently dressed in waterproofed gear - a hoodie, jeans and boots. She eases to sit on top of the picnic table near him, and works the cap off her coke.

"I see what you did there." A nod to the tattoo, given their mutual love for the Aubrey-Maturin novels, she knows precisely where the reference came from. And surprisingly, much like Joseph, her own aura looks faded and drained, but considering her vast potential to start, light flickers from her now and then, to those who can see.

"August told me what happened, with you and Megan. Is that why you wanted to talk to me?"

He grins at her, unabashed. "This is the Mexican kind, with real sugar," he tells her. "The best kind there is. Want one? Thought you might." Joe splays the long hands, showing off the ink with the satisfaction of a girl newly engaged displaying the ring. "Exactly," he says. "I figured....I get ink as a commemoration, as a mnemonic. This is a reminder of what I've found here."

Then he's nodding. "Yeah. Marshall suggested it. Spoken to Clayton and Roen, too. 's slowly gettin' better, stronger, but it's takin' a while. Looks like you got some of the same treatment."

"I did. I didn't really want to, but I think some of us have to." Isabella glances down at her coke with a frown. "Alexander didn't like it, but better me than him, or the other powerhouses with the Talent. Mine was broken anyway, much of my use is up here...intellectually." She taps her fingertip against her temple. "Figuring things out and diving into things first and face-first." There's a small self-deprecating smile, but not used to it. She's very comfortable with the role of guinea pig.

"So what did you want to talk about, exactly?

"Why do you think we have to?" Joe wonders, at that. "I'm curious. I've gotten a lot of warnings about Megan, but....even with some of the explanations I've got, and my memories returned, the Asylum isn't clear to me. Why it is what it is, and what it means for those who were patients there. You've been, right?"

"I have, only once, but I've been hearing about it well before then." Isabella rolls the coke bottle between her palms. "Ever since the Summer, when I first came back to Gray Harbor." She chews on her bottom lip. "From what I remember of someone telling me who used to work there during Dr. Marshall's time, the Asylum seemed to have a purpose that was almost...helpful. I was told at the time that the facility wasn't what anyone thought it was, which was a strange turn of phrase enough considering nobody really knew what its purpose was, and enough harrowing stories and suspicions towards where the facility's allegiances lay made it something that we always looked at with some....trepidation. But I think whatever its purpose now, however benign it started, maybe - has been perverted after it shifted over to new management. At least, that's what two people who managed to recover their memories have said about the place. Neither of them are stable though, so there's also a question as to how credible they are."

"I don't remember the old management, so I can't do a compare and contrast," Joe's voice is dry, as he offers her a little metal bottle opener. "What I went through....it was like it was two different places. Stuff intended for genuine therapy at times, and then what was frankly torture. I mean, admittedly, it was stuff that was accepted best practices....circa 1850 or somethin'. I felt like fuckin' Renfield, half the time, out of my head and straitjacketed. Who else you talkin' about? Keene and Whitehouse?"

"Keene and Whitehouse," Isabella confirms, gratefully accepting the bottle opener. She tucks the cap in once it's removed from her coke, ever so conscientious about littering around the beach. She takes a careful swig of her coke; always mindful of her sugar intake, her pulls are careful ones from the caffeinated drink. Listening to Joe's own experiences there, brows furrow faintly. "That's interesting. An ancestor of Alexander's was confined there around the early 1900s, what you described parses with what we knew of what happened to him in the facility. How did they torture you? If....you want to or could talk about it?"

He was the one foolish enough to raise the subject, and he swallows hard. A motion of his hand, like he's contemplating reaching for a cigarette....and now, of course, he doesn't have one. "Electroshock," he says. "Water treatments. Drugs. Pain. Confinement. Dovetails with what I know of the period. There was ....a....a...being there, in a nurse's outfit. Only pretending to be human. Doctor Marshall was there, too." Trying to keep his hands from shaking - he's not looking at her, but fixedly out at the water.

There is a pause when he tells her about the being in the nurse's outfit. Isabella's green-and-gold eyes lock into Joseph's immediately - something tells her she already knows the answer to this, but she asks it anyway. "The nurse...did she look beautiful on top of her mask, but wrong when you saw the rest of her body? She would be blonde."

"Yes," he says, without hesitation. They don't need Glimmer for that wordless understanding. "You know what it is, don't you? What is it? Somethin' that lives over there, needs human pain, needs human minds?" Joe's gone a little gray, but his gaze doesn't waver. Not in the least.

"Jesus Christ." Isabella scrubs the side of her face. "I always thought I'd come across someone who'd been...by her, I didn't think it was..." She takes another drink of her coke. "She's one of the titled ones, through the Veil. The Vivisectionist." If the name would strike apprehension with anyone, it would be for a very good reason, made very apparent. "She performed experiments on people just like us, affiliated with a company from across that ground up Veil creatures and people to imbue abilities into items. I always wondered whether she would have some involvement with the Asylum, too. It wouldn't be all too far-fetched, considering what she does. You just confirmed my suspicions." Her fingers tap into the bottle absently, narrowing her eyes.

"I killed her," she tells Joseph bluntly. "She tried to kill Lilith Winslow, and then tried to kill me. She didn't give me much of a choice."

A glint of something like madness, in the blue eyes and he retorts, "Well, honey, you did this world and that a big service. Hell, I'd pin a medal on you if I had one."

Joe's leaned in, a little. "What do you mean - the titled ones? And what company? There're companies over there, corporations? But you didn't know that she'd done work in the Asylum." A shudder of naked revulsion, and he wraps his hand around the coke bottle, just to have something to hold.

"There's a few." Isabella exhales a breath and shifts over at Joseph's lean, so they can talk quietly without rubberneckers looking at them as if they're insane. "The Veil as we know it here is run by entities that we only know about by titles. I've met the Archivist, the Exorcist, the Vivisectionist, the Psychiatrist, the Doctor...and I've heard of the Collector. It's something of a bureaucracy headquartered in the Veil's counterpart of City Hall. Each of them has a specific function - for instance, the Archivist's domain is the Hall of Records, and is responsible for keeping track of different families and people in Gray Harbor. Births, deaths, ancestry. The Exorcist is in charge of the Haunted Department. The Psychiatrist, who we used to know as Dr. Marshall, Easton's uncle, used to be in charge of the Asylum, but he's been replaced by someone called the Doctor. I met him the one and only time I was in the Asylum. The company that the Vivisectionist was involved in was called FCN - for Fake Company Name." She makes such a face when she tells him this. "Its factory was destroyed when the Vivisectionist died. If they can even die."

"Jesus," he breathes. "Of course. Screwtape and Wormwood run things around here." A low chuckle, but it has that edge to it. Joe glances back at her. "So, someone who was human can....become one of those things? I mean, if Marshall did, the others presumably were people as we reckon it, back when?" A pull from his soda bottle, and then he nearly tips it over, setting it down. "But the company....did it have roots on this side of the Veil? Is there a paper trail in this world to track?"

"Maybe," Isabella says slowly. "The most human of any of them that I've seen was the Exorcist, who's a reprehensible chainsmoker with a serious grudge against Margaret Addington." The city's grande dame, or at least, she was, until the recent death of her brother Thomas. "Not much of a paper trail on here - there were some dead ends on the east coast, an e-mail server, but other than that, most of its foundations were across."

She lowers the bottle, before turning to Joe. "I don't know when, but if things are going as they are, we might have to go back there. A couple of us are trying to figure out how, without setting an appointment like the last time, and I believe there's a way if we could just hammer the pieces out together. Alexander suggested that you come along, when we attempt it." She searches his face carefully then. "You're not obligated, but I wanted you to know."

She can see his throat work, at the thought. "If you gotta go, I'll go. I remember it now. All of it. And I was there a lot longer'n any visitor. I know the layout and the routines, if not all of the ways there and back. I mean, honestly, you know one of the doors is under Two If By Sea and it moves on a regular pattern, right? Just keep tryin' that door until it opens, I guess."

"Yeah, I know about the Door," Isabella tells Joseph with a small smile. "I twigged E that it might be down there, and Alexander and I found it. It was well hidden, I think Dr. Marshall made sure that it would be hard to find." She nods. "And yeah, Ruby Cavendish and Alistair Carver were the ones who figured out the pattern, I used the clock I remembered in my visit to find the Door - I remember it vividly now. There are more locations though some are labeled a little weirdly." She gestures to one side. "We have a specific time window we could try, thanks to all the information we put together and thanks to what Easton remembers with his uncle. Megan Keene visited him also, gave him the same deal as you and me."

"Ruby's name I've heard. Carver, no, that's a new one. Those're folks wise enough to have left 'n gotten the hell out of Dodge, right?" Joe takes another pull of the soda. Something to do with his hands, in lieu of the old rituals with cigarettes. "When're y'all thinkin'? 'n where else're the doors?"

"Alistair Carver was unusual." Isabella takes another long sip of her coke. "He tried to get out, and he didn't make it." How she knows though, she doesn't clarify, but the darkness in her expression suggests that it is a memory that she would rather keep to herself. "But he was knowledgeable, and helped us in a few ways. His research on the Asylum with Ruby was the last of his legacy here. As to when? We're not sure, the thing moves, so we have to time it correctly and so far, the Door in Easton's basement and a specific shelf in the Addington Hospital Morgue are the only two Doors I've actually seen."

The first one that he really knows has died. The first named casualty, even if he never met the man. Joe doesn't press, but simply nods, once. "What.....do you think I could do to help?" His voice is soft, almost thready, and he holds himself still, like a man braced for pain he knows is coming.

"Do what you can to recover from this." Isabella gestures to her state of fade, and his as well. "Megan and Alice aren't working together, but they said there was a way on separate occasions. Something about putting things in the right order, or finding some kind of purpose - achieve something that's important to you right at this moment. Whatever state remembering's put us in, I don't think is permanent - only when we want it to be." She sighs. "In truth this has happened to me three times already, the fading and returning of the Talent. My potential's strong enough in it, maybe it's ridiculous enough that it simply can't be suppressed for very long no matter my choices or what I do to it, but I've been monitoring my changes to make sure. You, me, Easton...if we intend to go on some kind of Hail Mary run at the Asylum, we need to increase our advantages as much as we can. That includes...fixing this."

She can all but see something in him unknot, in sheer relief. "That's....enormously reassuring, honestly," he confesses. "I knew it wasn't permanent, talking to Roen made that clear, but....Jeez, I'm glad to hear you say it."

Joe rubs at his scalp, leaves that loose curl in further disarray. "I'll work on it. I'm not sure how, other than trying stuff, like doing physical therapy on a weakened muscle. But I'll talk to Roen again, and Rosencrantz.....even de la Vega. I bet they can all help."

"Putting things in the right order, or achieving something important to you," Isabella reiterates. "If you've got a problem you're struggling with, maybe now's the time to try and fix it. Javier and August are good sources, too. This whole crew's been banding together regarding stuff like this since the Summer. If you've been spending time with them, and if you're looking to them for help in that, they're good people to have in your corner. August and I do plenty of research together also, usually what I know, he knows, and vice-versa."

She looks down at her empty bottle, before she slides off the picnic table. "Thanks for the coke, and it's good to see you. I'm glad you're alright. Once we figure out the Door, we'll let you guys know, yeah? But I don't think it's wise to go through it with our shit broken like this. We'll fix this first, and then we'll see about sneaking in."