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 Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 8:59 pm
The midday sun was already warming the room pleasantly when Rob finally stirred from his sleep. He groggily wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth with a corner of the pillowcase. Bit of a nice lie-in, he thought -- until it dawned on him that he wasn't in his own bed. Then he remembered the reason he was there. Sid. She was already out of the bed and out of the room somewhere, which meant she had woken up alive. That was good, at least. He remembered crawling into bed with her, wrapping himself around her small frame, concerned that she'd throw up in her sleep and choke on it. She had been so very high, a combination of vodka and something else he had no idea of but which was apparently pretty potent. He'd never seen her so wasted. And the destroyed dreams that had littered the floor, torn up by her own hand… The anger and upset returned, even stronger than he'd felt it last night because he was actually more awake now. Anger at the situation, upset with Sid. Why hadn't she told him any of this before now? Why did she have to resort to drugs to deal with it? Though he couldn't blame her, to a certain extent; he sometimes drank his problems away. Rob sat up in the bed and scrubbed his face to wake up more quickly. He wanted answers, and he knew of only one source for them. Scrambling out of Sid's bed, he stumbled to his own room and retrieved his phone from the nightstand next to his own bed. He had no idea where she had gone, and he wanted to get this taken care of before she came back. Scrolling through his contacts, he found the one he was looking for and hit the icon to call, then put the phone up to his ear, his expression tight and scowling.
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Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:45 am
Follows The Price of Worthlessness and Humpty Dumpty respectively.Isaiah did not wake so kindly.
Splitting headaches were a semblance of normalcy. Sun seared through his eyelids with little effort - a condition borne, he knew, of his distinct aversion to water when binge drinking his remaining calorie allotment. The entire grueling breadth of the day prior left him wanting for the taste of alcohol again, and he found little reason to deny it. Why should he? He recently rediscovered his fiancee not once, but twice among Destiny City crowds. The city truly proved far smaller than he originally imagined.
Groggily he grew aware of the constant thrumming grind, curiously akin to heavy machinery. In time with it, he felt distinct vibrations from under his pillow. Someone called, and judging by the particular tune chosen, he understood it as work-related.
Don't let it be another ******** call-off, he thought to himself bitterly. He remembered the last handful of times where a cashier intended to ditch for the day rather than work their assigned shift, and when he couldn't locate another worker capable and interested in picking up the shift, he wound up needing to do it himself. A humiliating experience, certainly, but it offered perspective that his ownership of the establishment did not preclude him from menial tasks.
Finally Isaiah reached under the pillow and wrenched out the phone. Sliding the unlock, he held the speaker to ear. "Zähne speaking," he answered groggily. For all his years, his recent wakefulness remained forever evident in his voice for the first hour of consciousness. He must've sounded like s**t to the person on the other end - which meant, if he answered a client, then they grew far less likely to do business with him. Inwardly he wondered if odds would've improved if he never answered the phone.
But the speaker was no client - it was 'Rob Anybody', likely looking for a job.
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Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 10:19 am
When Isaiah answered the phone, Rob's expression turned into a sneer. "I'm sorry, did I wake you up, Ice?" he growled. That should get the man's attention. "Look, Ice, I want some answers." He began to pace the bedroom as he spoke. "Sid came home stoned as ********' balls last night. She told me you two were going to get married back in New York. She showed me pretty pictures of the plans she was making. Did you know about those? They're destroyed now, Ice, and you have something to do with it. "What I want to know is, what kind of s**t does she do besides booze and pot? In case she does it again so I don't have to be up all ******** night worrying if she's going to see another morning or not." Sitting down on the bed, Rob swung his legs up onto the mattress and leaned back against the headboard. "We'll start there and see where this conversation goes."
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Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 10:45 am
The cold hands of dread curled into his viscera as soon as he heard his nickname spoken in Rob's mordant words. His heart thudded heavily, his hands shook, a cold sweat threatened its reign over his internal temperature management. Rob started alongside demands, and one tremoring finger politely touched the mute button to prevent Rob's further awareness.
"Fuuuuuuuck," he groaned out into the pillow. He started to weigh sobriety - full sobriety - against a fifth of whiskey to drown out the spite. Alcohol produced a slowly degrading effect on the human body, he knew, that would ultimately impact his appearance and mental faculties. He watched the backslides of alcoholics before; NA wasn't often exclusive to narcotics. But those symptoms demanded years of heavier drinking than what he often resorted to. Somehow he suspected that Lorne would find it understandable. Nadia would, too. Colin wouldn't mind it, and Kam often encouraged it. Even Sidney James herself would show him a thumbs-up at the first tip of a shot ******** being sober for this, he decided matter-of-factly. I'm getting up.
So, with phone carefully glued to ear (and mute taken off), Isaiah started down the stairs toward the kitchen. He hadn't bothered dressing through the whole affair; putting the phone on speaker while he got dressed sounded like a terrible idea. Instead he started toward the kitchen in full birthday suit and spared few cares toward anyone in similar high-rises that could see through his unguarded windows.
"I'll answer your questions, then. I knew about the pictures." He kept his tone clipped and neutral to the point of cold - if he reacted to the news, it wasn't apparent. "As for your other question, it's hard for me to say what she does currently. In the past she has used MDMA - ecstasy - with fondness. She's tried meth and cocaine. Psychedelic mushrooms. LSD was another favorite that I recall. She has - or had - a tendency for stimulants, or uppers. She knew what to avoid mixing. But..." He lingered in silence for a few moments as he rifled the cabinets for a good liquor to suit the conversation. Given the time of day, he knew he could use some caffeine. White Russian it was.
"If you live with her, you know she has a tendency for avoidance. It... Takes a great amount of stress for her to return to the things that hurt her. She's obviously tried to confront them, so I expect she doesn't care what she mixes now, or what it could do to her." With a bottle of Kahlua in hand, he started the mixing process. Breakfast of failures.
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Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 8:06 pm
"That's some list," Rob replied, noting the drugs down mentally. He didn't know a huge lot about drugs, not being much of an imbiber himself of anything except alcohol and the occasional weed. But he'd been around people, bandmates mostly and their hangers-on, who did use. So some of the presentations of various drug use he was familiar with. Not all of them, though. Mostly, to his view, Sid had just been acting very very very drunk. At least Ice hadn't mentioned heroin. Rob also noted the impassive tone of voice Isaiah was using as he spoke about Sid. It gave him even more pause than the laundry list of recreational drugs did. And it irritated him a little bit. This man supposedly loved her, enough in fact to want to marry her. If it'd been Rob, he would have been expressing a bit more emotion, even if it was just anger. But everyone dealt with things in their own way. Maybe Ice's was with a detached coolness. Or maybe that was just a defense mechanism and he really was hurting. He continued to listen, his anger and upset slowly growing. "Yeah, well, I imagine running into you was something of a stressor, hmm?" The face he made was filled with sarcasm. "I want to know what happened in New York. Why she would run when she supposedly had her future all planned out with you. Though I reckon only she could answer that, I still want to hear a theory from you."
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Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 7:20 am
'I imagine running into you was something of a stressor, hmm?'
The bottle in Isaiah's hand struck the table with a loud, clarion clack that may have cracked the glass. He didn't pause to check. He simply stood, with one hand still wrapped tightly about its neck, and looked to the farthest point in the room. His face remained impassive through the rest of Rob's requests. Never did he cut in edgewise.
The pounding in his chest spread to shaking hands while he unscrewed the bottle cap. It felt sticky and chafed with old evaporated alcohol. "She dropped into my pawn shop with a very expensive, real brooch. It was an art deco piece I recognized from early in the century, so I knew it cost several thousand dollars retail. She wanted straight cash for it. I offered her strictly collateral. She turned me down and must've sold it somewhere else. I sincerely doubt I had anything to do with her... episode. I was just an inconvenience on the way to getting high." Ice first (naturally), then two fingers' worth of Kahlua pooled into the bottom of the glass. He capped it, replaced the bottle, and added another two fingers of Bailey's irish cream (for, he found, he really disliked the wine-base of O'mara's).
Liquor bottles returned to their respective cabinets (for he found he needed to expand their allotted space recently) and out came the whole milk from the fridge to top off the glass. He spared a spoon for stirring it, and didn't bother to remove its presence before he sipped from the glass. "I don't see why my theories matter here, Rob. You are her friend, first and foremost. I am not going to pretend that I hold greater or equal importance to you. I am not even going to pretend that you're listening to me with an open mind. Sid is hurting - I cannot help this. Waking me up at 5AM for an interrogation cannot help this. Talking down to me like a dog cannot help this.
"If you want to know what happened in New York, then you know who to ask. It isn't me, Rob. You made that clear the moment you spoke. You're looking for someone to lambast - not answers." Preparing himself for a long retaliatory diatribe, Isaiah drank through as much of the alcohol as he could tolerate.
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Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:17 am
"Yeah, she mentioned the brooch," Rob replied, trying to keep his temper down, "but not so much the details, just that you wouldn't buy it from her. I doubt you were a simple obstacle to her getting high, however. I don't know if it was desperation or what that drove her to seek you out, or maybe she still trusts you for whatever reason. I don't know anything about this s**t, and I intend to find out. "AND honestly d'you think I'd get a straight answer about New York -- about anything -- out of her? You know as well as I do she has selective truth-telling abilities. Part of that whole avoidance thing you mentioned -- and yeah, I have noticed that.." He sighed heavily into the phone, pinching the bridge of his nose to calm down. He really didn't want to treat Ice like a dog, because the man was the only source of information on what really happened to Sid, what really drove her to come running to Destiny City. Yelling at him wasn't going to solve anything. Ice was probably hurting too. It always hurt to be the one dumped. "Look. I'm sorry. It's been a long ******** night, alright? I genuinely want to hear your side of things, Isaiah. I genuinely want answers. Yeah, I'm her friend, but again, selective truth-telling. Plus she was high as balls and yeah she was hurting and I'm sure that filtered the truth even more. If you'd rather not talk over the phone about it, we can arrange to meet somewhere and you can tell me what you know. I can't promise I won't beat the ******** out of you if I don't like the answers, though." He sighed again. "Sorry, sorry. I won't hit you. Promise. Cross me heart and hope to die."
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Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 10:22 am
Isaiah leaned his naked hip against the counter and quickly regretted it; the cold surface bit through the flesh almost immediately. Still, he maintained the pose, and placed one foot atop the other to warm his cold soles. The conversation did not progress in a heartening manner.
"You're right," he conceded. "You wouldn't. She will tell you what she thinks you need to know." And yet you think I'm any different. "I don't think she sought me out. She looked surprised to find that I was there. She was probably going to sell it whether I was there or not, else she wouldn't have walked into a pawn shop, but I can't say whether she had other intentions for the money or if finding me drove her to use. That's a question you need to ask her." He breathed a sigh.
"I don't know if she trusts me. I think she has reservations about me that aren't correct." He took another sip of the remaining dregs of his drink. It warmed him, the core of him, but his toes were left feeling chilled. His spirit was, perhaps, the coldest part of him. "Which, I suppose, segues nicely into the Fabulous Adventures of Sid and Ice." As if he needed a fresh reason to make another drink. He knew not to, however, due to his present size and alcohol's method of saturation into his body. He would wait, even if present company was determined to drive him there. He would not follow his mother's path in drinking straight from the bottle, all pretenses discarded.
"How we met is less important than how we stayed together. Sid and I made a mutual habit out of self-destruction, you could say. She enjoyed her uppers and her alcohol and her parties, where I enjoyed my alcohol and parties and heroin." He paused and stared toward the swirls in the concrete beneath his feet. The welling disappointment informed him that this wasn't how he wanted to introduce his past - any part of it. Where Sid may have left behind most of her possessions when she fled the apartment they shared, she kept with her every last ounce of emotional baggage. And, perhaps as he should have expected, she unpacked the lot of it in a vitriolic rage that left friends to deal with the aftermath. "I think... I might be to blame for her getting into drugs. You can punch me for that.
"But, I think it's important to know that when you're using, you're a different person. You use because you have demons you want to chase away for a while, because you think that your troubles are worse than the downswing on your pretty little party popper. Except you're always wrong. Every reason to use is a shitty reason. In reality, you use because you're a shitty person. And you're a shitty person because instead of sharing your problems with your friends that are perfectly willing and capable of helping with the burden, you decide to trap it all inside. She did it when she decided to run away from her life with her aunt and family, and what happened with her parents, and all the little troubles she elected to ignore. And I was shitty enough to let her do it. Believe me, this story is going to be two shitty people doing a lot of shitty things. And you're going to feel awful by the end of it, too, because there's no catharsis. Obviously.
"While we were using, we got on splendidly." With a long sigh, Isaiah shifted to sit against the counter. The floor continued to greet him coldly, but he lacked interest in going upstairs and getting dressed. In the stove, he watched his pale reflection. Parts of him looked fat, and the other parts too skinny. He started to wonder if his body gave up on balance. "But there are a lot of financial troubles that come with that kind of lifestyle. New York is not a cheap place to live, and at the time I was running a pawn shop that I inherited from the owner and making just enough to pay for our postage stamp apartment and have a little extra. As you can probably guess, it's also very difficult to hold down a job when you're strung out by half-past-two and trying to hide it like an injured dog. The business suffered because my health suffered, and sometimes money got tight.
"Sometimes 'money got tight' meant that Sid had to deal, or one of us paid with tricks, or we both just suffered through withdrawals, or any kind of shitty behavior you can think of. There was one stretch of time when Sterling Pawn was being investigated, as pawn shops are often fences for stolen merchandise, so money came in at a crawl. Simultaneously the market for my poison of choice tanked. I spent about a week without it, which is an incredibly shitty experience that I won't ever repeat, but Sid managed to nose some out for my birthday.
"Which is in two weeks, by the way," he added bitterly.
"So I used what she gave me and wound up in the hospital straight away. Tolerances are a tricky thing, you see. I heard I died a few times, which I don't doubt because I felt even shittier after I woke up."
'...Sorry, Ice.'
"We were already engaged at the time. I chose to get clean before the wedding. She tried it, too, but I don't think she had the impetus for it. We still had the same friends, and nothing really changes when you almost die." Though I suppose that isn't entirely true. Questionable thanks to Scholomance. "But, from what she told me, I changed. And I did. I told her no drugs in the house, and she thought I was trying to control her. I became less inclined to support her through the lows because I saw the damage. She used, and I walked away to avoid the temptation. And --" He paused momentarily, and as he continued, there came a barely perceptible quaver to his otherwise sure voice, "I think the hardest thing to endure is the realization that you're just telling yourself you love someone. You start to feel like the worst person in the world."
Ice pressed the chilled glass to his forehead. His voice recovered thereafter. "Sid left very quickly, so I think either something scared her or she psyched herself into thinking there would be a terrible argument. I think she was similarly disenchanted with me because she thought I wouldn't take care of her like I promised I would. I don't mean to sound like I'm a victim. I'm not. I'm not even going to say that we're both at fault for all of it, because we were both subject to shitty circumstances and had nothing but bad choices to pick from in order to cope with it." He snorted, then laughed. "And now, apparently, we both haven't learned and are continuing to make shitty decisions to deal with our shitty decisions." He eyed the empty glass in hand.
"So, that's my theory. Now, what's yours?"
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Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 12:28 pm
Listening to the other man unreel his tale of woe, Rob was beginning to get the idea that the common factor in Sid and Ice's relationship was drugs. Probably sex too, if he knew anything about Sid, but primarily drugs. He swung his legs out of the bed and stood, then began to pace barefoot around the room, phone to his ear as he processed Isaiah's story, nodding occasionally. There was no way he was going to outright dismiss the words of the only person apart from Sid herself who knew what actually happened in New York. He knew there was no way he'd ever get a straight answer out of Sid on that subject, that had already been demonstrated. Not that she would actually lie to him (or would she?). In fact, he was actually beginning to feel a little bad for Isaiah. Hearing the slight faltering in his voice, it sounded like he had really had been in love with Sid, deeply so, and she left him when she couldn't handle him getting straight. That much of what Sid had blubbered last night was evidently true. And Sid's evident rebelliousness translated Ice's encouragement to get straight into trying to control her. He knew Sid had had it rough as a kid, what with her parents dying on her at such a young age, but what had happened with the relatives she was sent to live with? Sid had never spoken to him about the situation, except to say it was bad. Was it bad because they were awful people, or was it bad because she didn't get her way? "My theory?" Rob finally said when Isaiah was through. "My theory is you got screwed, mate, and not in the fun way." He stopped pacing. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hunt you down and beat you up. Though I should for getting Sid into drugs in the first place. Nah, not even for that -- I suspect she would have found her way there eventually on her own." If there was one thing he'd already figured out about his childhood friend, it was that she had one of those personalities that lended itself all too easily to addiction. Girl was clearly already addicted to sex and booze. "Look, I don't know if she'll seek you out again. I can't control what she does. I wish I could sometimes, but after what you've told me I'm not even going to try." Pressing the phone between his shoulder and ear, Rob retrieved a pair of jeans from the floor and started to pull them on as he spoke. "I'm just warning you that she might. Though that's something I'm sure you probably figured out already." Zipping his jeans up, he straightened, taking the phone back in his hand. "I'm sorry for what she did to you. Friend of mine or not, that wasn't right."
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Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2015 7:41 am
Isaiah covered the speaker of the phone and sighed at length. He wasn't certain which was worse - being pitied or being misunderstood. He needn't decide, in this case, for he received both in short order.
"She would have, probably, found drugs at some time or another. Her life was headed in that direction, you're right. I think it's natural to her to want to avoid the things that trouble her, and it's obvious that drugs are the prime choice for that." He paused to ask himself if he felt guilty over getting Sid into drugs, but he hadn't. He knew that she was the one to say yes, to ask for a hit, to try the next best in a long line of great experiences. Isaiah Zähne had little to do with it. And even if he did, would he feel a measure of guilt for it? No, but he wouldn't tell Rob that.
"I know what she does, Rob." He sounded clipped. "I almost married her. She will find me again if she has reason to - or if she's desperate enough. Once you get into drugs, you start to realize that kindness is as much a tool as a gift, and you learn how to use it. You learn who to use and when, and how to keep them strung along as a good friend of yours so they don't cut you off at the next favor. She got better at it than I did. She's probably using you in some way, too." Perhaps she even used Rob to call Isaiah in the first place. He couldn't imagine that she wanted to stir the pot without reason, but if she had a vested interest in emotionally harming him for some veiled benefit, then he couldn't discount the theory.
Isaiah's legs stretched until they sprawled across the floor in their still, prostrate manner. Stretching one foot, the tips of his toes managed to touch the cold, unwelcoming edge of the stove. "Rob. You weren't listening when I said that neither one of us was at fault for the s**t we went through. It's not that what she did was right or wrong, but that it just was. Sure, she might've ended up clean if she decided to stick it out with me and then we somehow win the lottery and live happily ever after. But it's just as viable that we'd both wind up dead from our own vices. You can't say that what she did was wrong just because it caused damage. We all cause damage. Sometimes we even go looking for damage.
"But sometimes causing damage is the only way you know you're still alive." And sometimes fixing damage seems worse than living with it. Isn't that so, Isaiah Varney?
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Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2015 2:43 pm
Rob nodded, even though Isaiah couldn't see or hear it. Sid probably was using him. She was almost certainly taking advantage of his childhood connection with her and his basic philosophy that friends help other friends out. But he allowed it, by letting her live in his house without worry about rent. Now that he knew at least some of the truth of what happened in New York, he was beginning to regret letting her come in here without some guidelines that might help keep her from destroying herself -- or Isaiah or him -- with her drug use and wild ways. But he wasn't about to concede that she had in effect won to Isaiah. It wasn't any of his ******** business. Nevermind that it kind of was. "Yeah, there's something therapeutic sometimes about damaging something. I don't recommend it as a regular activity, however." His lip curled in a snarl. "And I was paying attention, Ice. I know neither of you were entirely at fault. I can still express sympathy that you got shat upon but good. Just accept my ******** apology and quit bitching about it." He heard a door slam downstairs. "********. I think she's back." He heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose again. "Well, this has certainly been an enlightening conversation, Isaiah. I thank you for being as forthcoming with information as you have been. You didn't have to speak with me at all, you know, and I do appreciate that you did. Things make a whole lot more sense now in Sid-land."
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Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2015 1:24 am
Even Sid proclaimed that, sometimes, bitching was what Ice did best. He listened to the rest of Rob's speech with gritted teeth as he held his breath unknowingly. He announced that Sid was back now, and that he had to go - as if he was a hostage in his own home, chancing a call? - and expressed thanks in a manner that left Isaiah regretting that he said anything at all. "Of course," he managed, wooden.
Isaiah managed no goodbyes or pleasantries, then - he simply hung up. And once he did, Isaiah reeled his empty glass back and threw it toward the metal cabinets, where it shattered across the kitchen floor. Small droplets of his drink dribbled down the side of the largely unharmed cabinet. Afterward he drew a slow sigh, reeled legs to his chest, and pressed his head to his knees to shut out all light. "This is ******** ridiculous."
After a few steady minutes, he raised his eyes to the shattered ice and broken glass that formed an arc across the floor. "I'm not going to train someone else on how to keep her from killing herself." She's her own responsibility.
It's not my place to save her anymore.
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