WHO: Jack and Izzy WHAT: Jack and Izzy meet again~ WHEN: Day 3 WHERE: the halls WARNINGS: none
“Hellooo,” Izzy called out as she trailed one of the staff of the hotel. “Can you hear me? I want to know why someone killed me and my friends.”
The man didn’t turn and she jogged ahead a few steps to stand in front of him. He looked right through her, but she had to try. She’d been chasing down staff for a while now, memorizing their faces, waiting for a telltale response that she was heard. Because someone had to know something.
She wasn’t paying attention to where she was going as she backed her way through the room, snapping her fingers, clapping her hands, jumping a little, in an effort to reach the man who was making a quick exit. He made his getaway as she stumbled over something and into someone else.
“Sorry!” she shouted quickly, moving to pick herself up off of the floor from where she’d fallen. “Oh,” she said, her tone dipped into disappointment. “It’s just you.”
“It’s just me,” Jack repeated. The hurt look he gave her was less feigned than he would have hoped. He wasn’t particularly put off by the fact that he wasn’t the person she most wanted to see, but he was still emotionally drained from hearing about Jude, from running into Wes, from everything that had happened in the past day and a half. While the wounded look in his eye wasn’t because of her, it wasn’t something he needed to fake either. “Ouch, babe. Breaking my heart out of nowhere.” Even his teasing was half hearted, and the small smile he offered, if you could call it that, was still sad.
Still, he offered her a hand. “You okay there?” It was a ridiculous question. A small stumble wouldn’t hurt anything more than her pride but they were all far from okay. Surely she knew by now.
Izzy took the hand he offered and climbed to her feet, flashing him a wry smile. “That’s not what I meant, Jungle Boy.” She brushed herself off and crossed an arm over her chest. “I thought maybe..”
Anyway.
“Where’s your smirk? Your cocky self-assurance? It’s what made you attractive.”
“Wow, you really know how to hit a guy when he’s down.” He was stalling and he tried to smirk but that, too, lacked his usual cocky self assurance. “You thought what though?” Still stalling. Still avoiding answering the question. He didn’t really want to explain that he had just seen one of his best friends, the one responsible for him coming to the island. The one responsible for him being dead.
Her brows furrowed at his words and she took a moment to study him, take all of him in. Some part of her was telling her that something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure if she cared enough to ask. She still needed to track down the rest of the staff. She squinted at him for a moment before she gestured toward the door the other man had left through. “If ghosts exist, and we do,” she pointed between the two of them, “then someone has to be able to talk to them. I plan to find someone who can. A lot of people work in this hotel and I’m going to track down every single person until I find someone who can see me or hear me or help me. And then I’m getting the fuck off of this island.”
Jack felt the smallest tinge of relief over not needing to tell her they were dead. There had been a sick pleasure in it earlier, it was true, but now he was just exhausted and he didn’t have it in him to lash out at anyone right now, nor did he have the empathy required to break the news gently. “How can anyone help us? We’re still dead. We’re going to stay dead. Even if we leave, we’ll just be dead somewhere else.” His arguments felt forced though. He didn’t want to believe they were helpless, but he didn’t think he could handle false hope.
“Not if I can find some brain-dead person in a hospital that doesn’t need their body anymore,” she responded breezily. “It won’t be me, exactly, but it would be more me than no me at all.” She took several steps past him and turned back after a moment. “And who says we have to make life easy on them in the meantime?” With effort, she knocked a folder full of papers out of a woman’s hands and watched as she scrambled with bewilderment to collect them.
Jack blinked in surprise before he slowly smiled. “Well, a girl after my own heart.” Except she was kinder- or smarter, depending on how you looked at it- for thinking about someone brain dead. He turned towards the woman, debating whether to be the bigger person or to have some fun. As always, fun won out. He bent down, but instead of helping her pick up her papers, as he would have done when he was alive, he swept a few pages forward away from her. While he couldn’t move all of them, it seemed like it was less effort this time to affect things and that gave him a small hope.
Izzy’s laugh burst forth with bitter glee as she watched Jack scatter the papers away from the woman. “What else is there to do? Except sit around and resent everyone?” She waited until someone else came by and knocked the papers out of their hands, too. She sighed with contentment. “I haven’t been able to do much more than paper. Some napkins in the bar. I’ve been interrogating all of the staff I can find, but it’s hard to keep track of them.”
“I broke a vase,” Jack offered proudly. Admittedly he hadn’t done it intentionally, but she didn’t need to know that.
“How fancy,” she drawled, though the arch to her eyebrows expressed that she was impressed with what he’d accomplished.
“Wait, hey. I spoke with someone. Sort of. She’s my friend’s girlfriend, and I think she came looking for us, for ghosts. We were in our old rooms, which are a complete wreck now, and I was able to write, a little, in the dust. She knows a ghost is here, even if she didn’t figure out who I was.” His disappointment and anger and frustration at not being able to spell his name, at not being able to make himself known, still lingered but it was less fresh now.
Her eyebrows lowered as she squinted at him again. She tilted her head as she studied him. She wasn’t sure if that was the type of thing he’d make up. But if he knew someone was looking for ghosts, she wanted a chance to talk. “Show me,” she said, finally.
Jack’s head tilted to one side. “Gotta be more specific than that. The rooms? Writing? Sydney?” None of which he was entirely sure he could show her.
“Your friend,” she confirmed. “Unless you don’t want to share. But that wouldn’t be very nice, Jungle Boy.”
Jack made a show of looking around, and he turned in a half circle. “Nope, don’t see her, she’s not around here. I don’t know where she is. I don’t have a tracking device on her because that would be fucking creepy.” He hadn’t seen her since yesterday (was it yesterday?) evening, and he had no idea where she would be.
Izzy’s mouth split into a dangerous smile. “Well,” she said, shrugging. “I’ll just have to find her myself then. You’re no use to me at this point.”
Jack raised a brow. “And how, exactly, will you do that? You don’t even know what she looks like. She doesn’t exactly wear a sign saying she’s looking for ghosts.” Though, truthfully, he wouldn’t be surprised if she was exploring the hotel with some kind of ghost-detecting equipment.
“You said her name’s Sydney,” she said. “She’s obviously not here for you. Which means she’s likely here for someone else. And that someone else might be like us. So all I have to do is figure out who she came for. There’s a good chance they’re trailing her.” Izzy bit her lip in thought. “I doubt there are any more than five Sydneys in this whole hotel.”
She had a point. Sydney’s brother- if he was here; Jack assumed he was dead too but he hasn’t seen him yet so maybe he was somehow spared all of this- would likely be able to direct Izzy in the right direction. She didn’t need him. But at that moment, Jack became acutely aware of how much he didn’t want to be left alone. He didn’t want to be dismissed so she could go off and find someone else who would be of more use. He wanted her to stay with him.
He couldn’t say whether it was her in particular he wanted or just general companionship but the end result was the same.
“Hey, now, no need to give up on me like that.” There was an edge of panic in his voice he didn’t like, an edge his smile couldn’t erase. “I didn’t say I couldn’t help or couldn’t find her again. I am just, presently, unaware of where she is.”
There was that look again. Izzy had never been able to turn away a guy that looked at her like that. There was something beyond the smile, something that lingered in his eyes. Her expression softened. “Let’s go then,” she said. “We can see what else you can break.”