[ Scott tells her (not for the first time): Alayne, Isaac is here.
Isaac, she thinks, and the thought colors her demeanor with something that is equal parts soft and sad. By her count, Alayne has known four Isaacs all told — each of identical brow and jaw but of varying temperaments. Of the four, none have come closer to her than the first, but even then that orbit had been wide, albeit closing. (How close it would be come, Alayne would never know. For the ship had swallowed him and spat out another in due time, his distance and his strangeness a bitter thorn in Alayne's side that made her ribcage ache.)
Scott tells her: Alayne, Isaac is here and the response she does not give him is an again?
Still, four days after she finds herself on his doorstep. Her hair is freshly washed and newly plaited — not an elaborate hairstyle like the ones she used to attempt on the Tranquility, but something quieter and more staid. (Alayne is not the girl from the stars any longer, but some of it lingers in her posture and her gaze.) By her side sits Lady, who pays anxiously at the door.
Alayne knocks. Smooths her skirts with an anxious hand. ]
[ Things are strange when he wakes up, and Isaac pinpoints the differences when he comes to without a tube stuck down and deep into his throat.
He wakes and the smells are different — old, softer, buzzing with a kind of electricity that doesn't come from the wires and pipes that run through the Tranquility. His skin is dry, no longer touched by the cold of capsulized liquids, his his throat clean of the ache he's become used to over the months of his stay on the ship, but the inside of his bones feel drenched with a weariness that he doesn't want to name. He feels so tired, tired of lying to Derek, of keeping secrets from Josh and Tyler and Jenna, feels stretched to the brink that the pack that is his home is being picked apart by the things they all choose not to tell each other - some of which are secrets that he owns, and which leaves bitter grits in his mouth every time he remembers.
Isaac is sure that this isn't a new start. He turns around, looks around, and a train chugs away with his knowing that whatever horror is coming along after this, it won't be any easier than it was before.
So when he sees Scott, he doesn't say it's you again because there's a kind of recognition in the other's eyes that tell him this one doesn't know of space and the damage it's done on him; when he sees Erica, he knows she doesn't remember the jokes about the jeggings or the Reeses, and the Stiles he gets to talk to isn't the one who throws him goals with makeshift lacrosse sticks — each familiar face he sees is familiar only because he knows who they were.
It feels like he's lost home all over again — which is why he doesn't expect to see Alayne Stone standing outside his door when he opens it, nor does he expect to see Lady by her side. He doesn't expect the fierceness of feeling that seizes him like a fist around the heart, squeezing so tightly that all the air escapes out of him in a rush.
He stands still, frozen, because she looks so much like he remembers her, but he doesn't know how to ask if she remembers, if she knows who he is, if she knows that he broke his hands trying to free her wolf from the confines of the quarters while the halls had screeched in red light. He doesn't know if he wants to hear an answer that gets phrased like a welcome, how are you, are you new here, because Isaac had—
Truly liked her. Had skipped a heart beat in knowing she was pleased of him, that his injuries and efforts had done her some comfort. She was kind to him and Isaac had wanted to lend himself to her feet if it meant she would have smiled at him again.
Isaac pulls at the hem of his shirt, fingers unsure where to place themselves, his gaze to the floor. ]
[ Isaac speaks and before Alayne can answer Lady responds with a whimper, her head dipped with the insecurity that Alayne is loathe to show in herself. She should shoosh her, Alayne thinks, she should ask to me, Lady and get her to sit properly; but when she looks down at the beast beside her and sees the sadness in the wolf's golden eyes (—do you recognize me, brother wolf, you smell like metal and stars—) Alayne cannot bring herself to chastise Lady, instead crouching to bring the direwolf's snout in her hands. ]
Come now, [ she tells her companion (it is easier than facing the familiarity of Isaac's face, than searching his eyes for recognition that she fears will not come). ] Is that any way to greet Isaac? [ There is a familiarity to the way she says his name, but a politeness too which could be nothing but generic courtesy. Alayne presses her face to the top of Lady's head and the wolf snuffles, settling down with her snout dropped onto her folded paws. Turning, her face upturned towards Isaac now she attempts a nervous smile at him. ]
Pardon. She meant no offense. [ When she rises a moment later, she occupies herself with her dress (he's not the only one with uncertain hands, though Alayne's are much more practiced with busy work). ] I—
[ He watches her from the corner of his eye, watches her move exactly as he remembers, if not with more grace than he knows, and when she sweeps down to press her hands on Lady, he knows that she's still Alayne — that she's not someone who wears the same face, that she isn't someone else's girl, that the curve of her wrists are the same as the ones that were held to his arm when she had consoled him in his failure that night.
Isaac hopes, and doesn't let the hope rise, because already he feels that he might choke from how fervently he wishes for her to be someone that he knows - how deeply he wishes that his short-lived acquaintance with her on a damned ship would somehow find its roots in a different world again. That the words do not hurt yourself on my account will remain as steady and as truthful as they were when she first said them to him.
That him asking her is there anything else I can do? will still be met with gratitude, and an invitation to stay.
Hope smothers a man, even one as young as Isaac. ]
You know me.
[ He says it like a question, his breath short and hitched. ]
[ His words take Alayne off-guard, so much so that her weight shifts uncertainly between her feet without her meaning it to. Had she been as obvious as that? Was the truth there written on her face — her eagerness and her trepidation? For all that she has schooled herself that the world is not kind, that COMPASS are cruel masters whose power comes from whatever hope gives and they then take away, she cannot help but feel a glimmer of it now as Isaac looks at her and seems to see her in a way none of the other Isaacs had.
You were very brave once on my behalf, she wants to confess to him, the words burbling up from her stomach after having been unearthed from a secret place. You gave me hope when I had none. You let me touch your arm.
You were kind to me and I to you in a place that had kindness for neither of us.
At her feet Lady makes a noise, as if trying to preempt the question, her head rising. Looking at Alayne and then to Isaac she seems to expect an answer; her ears twitch as they listen for it. ] I— [ Again Alayne falters, her tongue lead rather than silver, her words failing and worse than inelegant as they fail to manifest. Blue eyes travel his face, trying to find the correct answer; it's still so unclear if he knows her, even if she has given herself away already.
Eventually her gaze drifts and then falls on Isaac's arm as it hangs at his side. Taking a step forward she reaches for it carefully, looking at him lingeringly in a silent request for permission. If it was the Isaac she knew there'd be a mark there, hidden beneath the sleeve of his shirt. It would bare a number, inked into his very skin. (Under the sleeve of Alayne's sweater there is a similar mark.) ]
Ah, [ he vocalizes, and it seems like a useless sound to him. It says absolutely nothing; ah like a yes, or maybe a no, or even the whole of I don't know what to tell you because I'm thrown from familiar depths and into territory I've no knowledge of, but I don't want to see any version of you get hurt because of any of the words that might come from me. Isaac hums the sound, and ducks his head to catch her gaze, and if his brows are drawn in concern, it's only because the trouble in her eyes drive a stake through his fragile resolve to not touch her unwelcomed.
But she reaches for his arm, the one where 010-002 is tattooed deep into the skin, and he raises his arm to her — peels back the sleeve like he knows what she's looking for.
(Are you...?)
Isaac searches her face for any sign that she knows what the numbers are. Perhaps hopes that his heart won't stop along the way. ]
[ Alayne goes very still when Isaac's arm lifts to accommodate her; she barely even breathes when his fingers find the cotton of his sleeve and draws it back, only to reveal numbers so familiar to her that her heart erupts with a clamor of birdsong in the cage of her chest at the sight. Her head ducked, expression partially obscured by a fall of red hair, she steps forward again, well into Isaac's personal space, into the small distance that separates his arms from one another, the place where a person might stand if looking for a kiss or an embrace. She's close enough now that the rise of her shoulder and the side of one arm brushes against Isaac's chest. It's so close that courtesy is nowhere to be found but Alayne is too distracted by the mark Isaac offers to have much mind for manners.
Delicate fingers, long and uncalloused, hover just as hair's breadth from his skin. She wants to touch him — she wants to touch him — but would he vanish if she did? Was he a dream; was she even awake? COMPASS played crueler tricks in the past and Alayne knows she should be wiser.
Still, when she lifts her face to Isaac's Alayne seems startled by the fact that he's much closer than he had been just a moment previous. A sudden color rises in her cheeks, followed by an unprompted smile. Her lashes are wet and she exhales once, unevenly, as the flush of realization washes over her. ]
Isaac Lahey, [ she says and her voice is nothing if not grateful, if not adoring with relief. ]
Miss Alayne, [ he murmurs against her hair, and this close he can see himself reflected in the wetness that threatens to break from her. ] It's really you.
[ It's like—
Stones knocking around inside his chest, or the sound of bells on a cold winter morning, or the smell of warm chocolate on a rainy night; Isaac feels so light, so overwhelmed with relief and a type of unfamiliar joy that he laughs against his teeth, lip caught between the ivory, his whole frame instinctively shaping itself to shield her from an imagined draft. They're close enough that Isaac could imagine them being in a movie, or a television show where they could hem and haw about who kisses the other first (and instead they'd bump noses, and they'd laugh, and—), and Isaac finds a hand curled and raised against the jamb of the door to keep him from swaying, shyness and uncertainty surfacing with as much power as the joy of finding her again washes through his vocabulary.
What does he say to her? What should he do? What if—
[ It isn't often that people get this close to her and when they do, their proximity is often followed by rough hands on her shoulders or the unwelcome crush of a man's mouth against hers. (—Dontos had reeked of the cheapest wines while Petyr had breath that smelled of mint and Marillion had wreaked of mulling spices, his smile wide as he spoke of forcing himself upon him as if it were a refrain to one of his songs—) But Isaac — he hovers halfway between expectation and restraint, one arm extended to tether himself to the doorframe as Alayne finds herself bridging that distance regardless. Her face franes forward, her expression blossoming like the face of the flower having suddenly found the sun. But when she comes close, she doesn't kiss him, just lets the moth wing of her lashes brush the rise of his cheek, a hand reaching for the nape of his neck to draw him into an embrace.
There is comfort in familiarity, in rediscovering things long since lost. COMPASS had given her the Striders, then Gwen Stacy, then Lucrezia — but in time had taken those things away as well, leaving Alayne more bruised and aching than before. Even though she wishes her touch to be gentle, it is colored by that loss and so she clings rather than holds. They had never been close during their time aboard the Tranquility — never as close as this, at least — but with the mark of the ship comes a sudden intimacy. ]
Yes, [ she says quietly, her voice hushed now that her mouth is near to the shell of his ear. Lady, who has perked at the mention of Alayne's name, now sits at attention, waiting her turn with him. ] 'Tis I, and 'tis you as well.
I am not a stranger with a familiar face. I promise, I am your Alayne.
Isaac's nerves lose all their feeling outside of their point of contact, and Isaac feels every single finger pressed to the back of his neck like it's a brand on his very soul, like a claim - like the burn of the bite when he'd taken it months ago (months, has it been so long?). He feels nothing, and he feels everything all at once, long-ignored parts of himself coming alive like someone had lit a candle in the darkness of his mind.
She's not soft the way Lydia was, nowhere near her type of buxom and open beguilement; Alayne is not the loud sensuality Erica wears like armor, either, nor is she the gentle swinging between sharpness and gentleness that Allison tiptoes with a dancer's grace. Alayne is all of these without the practiced pretense, at least not the way Isaac knows them to be, where the illusions are left out in the open for boys and men to tear apart and find the traps laid underneath.
Alayne is a wolf, much like the one that stands by her now if not more so, and she's a wolf in ways that Erica could not be, a wolf in ways that Lydia could hope she might become, a wolf in ways Allison could only hunt and try to understand. Isaac had only tasted so little of Alayne's kindness - and it was nothing like the tenuous strength that Derek had offered him a long time ago.
The rise of her curves press against his front, and it spreads heat throughout him through the layers of clothes they wear. Isaac breathes deep and Alayne still smells like snow, like dusted raindrops across one's shoulders; he holds still, that the scent might never leave his lungs, and he cuts his hand with sharp nails that the pain might drive the yellow of his eyes back to blue. He wants to hold her, to keep her, and the fierceness of his attraction could nearly subsume the genuine concern for her well-being that had drawn him to her in the first place.
He is all of sixteen, going on seventeen, and when he places his free hand against the small of her back, Isaac lets his eyes fall close and his head come down, their noses bumping as his forehead comes to rest against hers. ]
I'm your Isaac.
[ If he opens his eyes — if he looks at her like the dream she is, Isaac doesn't know what he might do. ]
[ Isaac's hand is a presence along the dip of Alayne's spine just as the flat of his forehead is a gentle pressure against the sloping curve of her own. For a moment Alayne thinks that she has assumed wrongly, that Isaac will kiss her with their noses bumping and the babe-like curl of his hair tickling her temple. (And she realizes, in that very same moment, that she wouldn't quite mind if he did — that unasked is not the same as unwelcome, and that the want that rises in her sudden and strong is not new but something held at a distance for so long that it had been all but forgotten.)
The world stops and starts with the measure of his breath, the subtle heave of his chest against hers as he exhales, the warmth of him filling Alayne's mouth, prompting her to part her lips in the hopes of holding him there upon the soft pad of her tongue.
Your Isaac, he says, as if he belonged to her, as if the hand curling over the nape of his neck was a collar rather than flesh and bone. Alayne has never had anything she hasn't stolen or cheated, never once in her life. To be presented with something (someone) now without so much as prompting takes her aback and fills her with wonder, making her bones tremble in both anticipation and fear, riddling her heart with both loyalty and young love.
For a long moment she does nothing beyond breathe his breath, the air between them warm from one another's mouths. Isaac's eyes are closed but Alayne's remain open as she gazes at him, so many of his features blurred and out of focus, but the whole of it still beautiful to her — familiar and made soft by proximity and complete. They had hardly known one another aboard the Tranquility and yet suddenly they found themselves reunited like old friends. A fierceness clenches in Alayne's heart without warning.
Never leave, she thinks and then shuts her eyes. Never go away again. ]
I was frightened. [ The confession sounds small but feels large in her mouth. ] I did not wish for us to be strangers again.
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( e v ! a u )
Isaac, she thinks, and the thought colors her demeanor with something that is equal parts soft and sad. By her count, Alayne has known four Isaacs all told — each of identical brow and jaw but of varying temperaments. Of the four, none have come closer to her than the first, but even then that orbit had been wide, albeit closing. (How close it would be come, Alayne would never know. For the ship had swallowed him and spat out another in due time, his distance and his strangeness a bitter thorn in Alayne's side that made her ribcage ache.)
Scott tells her: Alayne, Isaac is here and the response she does not give him is an again?
Still, four days after she finds herself on his doorstep. Her hair is freshly washed and newly plaited — not an elaborate hairstyle like the ones she used to attempt on the Tranquility, but something quieter and more staid. (Alayne is not the girl from the stars any longer, but some of it lingers in her posture and her gaze.) By her side sits Lady, who pays anxiously at the door.
Alayne knocks. Smooths her skirts with an anxious hand. ]
no subject
He wakes and the smells are different — old, softer, buzzing with a kind of electricity that doesn't come from the wires and pipes that run through the Tranquility. His skin is dry, no longer touched by the cold of capsulized liquids, his his throat clean of the ache he's become used to over the months of his stay on the ship, but the inside of his bones feel drenched with a weariness that he doesn't want to name. He feels so tired, tired of lying to Derek, of keeping secrets from Josh and Tyler and Jenna, feels stretched to the brink that the pack that is his home is being picked apart by the things they all choose not to tell each other - some of which are secrets that he owns, and which leaves bitter grits in his mouth every time he remembers.
Isaac is sure that this isn't a new start. He turns around, looks around, and a train chugs away with his knowing that whatever horror is coming along after this, it won't be any easier than it was before.
So when he sees Scott, he doesn't say it's you again because there's a kind of recognition in the other's eyes that tell him this one doesn't know of space and the damage it's done on him; when he sees Erica, he knows she doesn't remember the jokes about the jeggings or the Reeses, and the Stiles he gets to talk to isn't the one who throws him goals with makeshift lacrosse sticks — each familiar face he sees is familiar only because he knows who they were.
It feels like he's lost home all over again — which is why he doesn't expect to see Alayne Stone standing outside his door when he opens it, nor does he expect to see Lady by her side. He doesn't expect the fierceness of feeling that seizes him like a fist around the heart, squeezing so tightly that all the air escapes out of him in a rush.
He stands still, frozen, because she looks so much like he remembers her, but he doesn't know how to ask if she remembers, if she knows who he is, if she knows that he broke his hands trying to free her wolf from the confines of the quarters while the halls had screeched in red light. He doesn't know if he wants to hear an answer that gets phrased like a welcome, how are you, are you new here, because Isaac had—
Truly liked her. Had skipped a heart beat in knowing she was pleased of him, that his injuries and efforts had done her some comfort. She was kind to him and Isaac had wanted to lend himself to her feet if it meant she would have smiled at him again.
Isaac pulls at the hem of his shirt, fingers unsure where to place themselves, his gaze to the floor. ]
Uhm, hi.
no subject
Come now, [ she tells her companion (it is easier than facing the familiarity of Isaac's face, than searching his eyes for recognition that she fears will not come). ] Is that any way to greet Isaac? [ There is a familiarity to the way she says his name, but a politeness too which could be nothing but generic courtesy. Alayne presses her face to the top of Lady's head and the wolf snuffles, settling down with her snout dropped onto her folded paws. Turning, her face upturned towards Isaac now she attempts a nervous smile at him. ]
Pardon. She meant no offense. [ When she rises a moment later, she occupies herself with her dress (he's not the only one with uncertain hands, though Alayne's are much more practiced with busy work). ] I—
[ Do you know me? ] My name is Alayne.
no subject
Isaac hopes, and doesn't let the hope rise, because already he feels that he might choke from how fervently he wishes for her to be someone that he knows - how deeply he wishes that his short-lived acquaintance with her on a damned ship would somehow find its roots in a different world again. That the words do not hurt yourself on my account will remain as steady and as truthful as they were when she first said them to him.
That him asking her is there anything else I can do? will still be met with gratitude, and an invitation to stay.
Hope smothers a man, even one as young as Isaac. ]
You know me.
[ He says it like a question, his breath short and hitched. ]
Have we met?
no subject
You were very brave once on my behalf, she wants to confess to him, the words burbling up from her stomach after having been unearthed from a secret place. You gave me hope when I had none. You let me touch your arm.
You were kind to me and I to you in a place that had kindness for neither of us.
At her feet Lady makes a noise, as if trying to preempt the question, her head rising. Looking at Alayne and then to Isaac she seems to expect an answer; her ears twitch as they listen for it. ] I— [ Again Alayne falters, her tongue lead rather than silver, her words failing and worse than inelegant as they fail to manifest. Blue eyes travel his face, trying to find the correct answer; it's still so unclear if he knows her, even if she has given herself away already.
Eventually her gaze drifts and then falls on Isaac's arm as it hangs at his side. Taking a step forward she reaches for it carefully, looking at him lingeringly in a silent request for permission. If it was the Isaac she knew there'd be a mark there, hidden beneath the sleeve of his shirt. It would bare a number, inked into his very skin. (Under the sleeve of Alayne's sweater there is a similar mark.) ]
Perhaps we have, [ she mumbles quietly. ]
no subject
But she reaches for his arm, the one where 010-002 is tattooed deep into the skin, and he raises his arm to her — peels back the sleeve like he knows what she's looking for.
(Are you...?)
Isaac searches her face for any sign that she knows what the numbers are. Perhaps hopes that his heart won't stop along the way. ]
I knew an Alayne.
[ Do I know you? ]
no subject
Delicate fingers, long and uncalloused, hover just as hair's breadth from his skin. She wants to touch him — she wants to touch him — but would he vanish if she did? Was he a dream; was she even awake? COMPASS played crueler tricks in the past and Alayne knows she should be wiser.
Still, when she lifts her face to Isaac's Alayne seems startled by the fact that he's much closer than he had been just a moment previous. A sudden color rises in her cheeks, followed by an unprompted smile. Her lashes are wet and she exhales once, unevenly, as the flush of realization washes over her. ]
Isaac Lahey, [ she says and her voice is nothing if not grateful, if not adoring with relief. ]
no subject
[ It's like—
Stones knocking around inside his chest, or the sound of bells on a cold winter morning, or the smell of warm chocolate on a rainy night; Isaac feels so light, so overwhelmed with relief and a type of unfamiliar joy that he laughs against his teeth, lip caught between the ivory, his whole frame instinctively shaping itself to shield her from an imagined draft. They're close enough that Isaac could imagine them being in a movie, or a television show where they could hem and haw about who kisses the other first (and instead they'd bump noses, and they'd laugh, and—), and Isaac finds a hand curled and raised against the jamb of the door to keep him from swaying, shyness and uncertainty surfacing with as much power as the joy of finding her again washes through his vocabulary.
What does he say to her? What should he do? What if—
I want to hold you. ]
You remember me.
no subject
There is comfort in familiarity, in rediscovering things long since lost. COMPASS had given her the Striders, then Gwen Stacy, then Lucrezia — but in time had taken those things away as well, leaving Alayne more bruised and aching than before. Even though she wishes her touch to be gentle, it is colored by that loss and so she clings rather than holds. They had never been close during their time aboard the Tranquility — never as close as this, at least — but with the mark of the ship comes a sudden intimacy. ]
Yes, [ she says quietly, her voice hushed now that her mouth is near to the shell of his ear. Lady, who has perked at the mention of Alayne's name, now sits at attention, waiting her turn with him. ] 'Tis I, and 'tis you as well.
I am not a stranger with a familiar face. I promise, I am your Alayne.
no subject
Isaac's nerves lose all their feeling outside of their point of contact, and Isaac feels every single finger pressed to the back of his neck like it's a brand on his very soul, like a claim - like the burn of the bite when he'd taken it months ago (months, has it been so long?). He feels nothing, and he feels everything all at once, long-ignored parts of himself coming alive like someone had lit a candle in the darkness of his mind.
She's not soft the way Lydia was, nowhere near her type of buxom and open beguilement; Alayne is not the loud sensuality Erica wears like armor, either, nor is she the gentle swinging between sharpness and gentleness that Allison tiptoes with a dancer's grace. Alayne is all of these without the practiced pretense, at least not the way Isaac knows them to be, where the illusions are left out in the open for boys and men to tear apart and find the traps laid underneath.
Alayne is a wolf, much like the one that stands by her now if not more so, and she's a wolf in ways that Erica could not be, a wolf in ways that Lydia could hope she might become, a wolf in ways Allison could only hunt and try to understand. Isaac had only tasted so little of Alayne's kindness - and it was nothing like the tenuous strength that Derek had offered him a long time ago.
The rise of her curves press against his front, and it spreads heat throughout him through the layers of clothes they wear. Isaac breathes deep and Alayne still smells like snow, like dusted raindrops across one's shoulders; he holds still, that the scent might never leave his lungs, and he cuts his hand with sharp nails that the pain might drive the yellow of his eyes back to blue. He wants to hold her, to keep her, and the fierceness of his attraction could nearly subsume the genuine concern for her well-being that had drawn him to her in the first place.
He is all of sixteen, going on seventeen, and when he places his free hand against the small of her back, Isaac lets his eyes fall close and his head come down, their noses bumping as his forehead comes to rest against hers. ]
I'm your Isaac.
[ If he opens his eyes — if he looks at her like the dream she is, Isaac doesn't know what he might do. ]
no subject
The world stops and starts with the measure of his breath, the subtle heave of his chest against hers as he exhales, the warmth of him filling Alayne's mouth, prompting her to part her lips in the hopes of holding him there upon the soft pad of her tongue.
Your Isaac, he says, as if he belonged to her, as if the hand curling over the nape of his neck was a collar rather than flesh and bone. Alayne has never had anything she hasn't stolen or cheated, never once in her life. To be presented with something (someone) now without so much as prompting takes her aback and fills her with wonder, making her bones tremble in both anticipation and fear, riddling her heart with both loyalty and young love.
For a long moment she does nothing beyond breathe his breath, the air between them warm from one another's mouths. Isaac's eyes are closed but Alayne's remain open as she gazes at him, so many of his features blurred and out of focus, but the whole of it still beautiful to her — familiar and made soft by proximity and complete. They had hardly known one another aboard the Tranquility and yet suddenly they found themselves reunited like old friends. A fierceness clenches in Alayne's heart without warning.
Never leave, she thinks and then shuts her eyes. Never go away again. ]
I was frightened. [ The confession sounds small but feels large in her mouth. ] I did not wish for us to be strangers again.