Day 29 | Exploration Log

[desperate_times_right]

WHO: Chloe Frazer and Taissa Turner
WHAT: Scavenging in the office hotel
WHEN: Day 29 Day
WHERE: Cliffside hotel structure at VI.J.16
WARNINGS: Potential discussion of blood (non-standard uses of) and torture, creepy apparitions

Seeing Lalo so sick and defeated’s got Chloe feeling both freaked out and vindicated about her decision to escape the group. Chloe gets him as comfortable as she can in one of the rooms they've cleared out, gives him her game cartridge as a distraction of sorts (”Do not call him.”), then returns to face the music. Taissa’s still cross with her about this whole thing, but whatever. It's not like she had to come.

Chloe pops her head around the doorframe of the room she's started thinking of as theirs. “Hey.”

Comments

[doomcame]

Taissa had hoped that days after they managed to escape their own rescue, Chloe would have calmed down enough to reconsider hiding out from the rest of the island. But Ben Mr. Salamanca's appearance in the hotel ruins has made that an even more unlikely possibility.

"Hey. How's he holding up?"

It's more of a request for a status update than a show of concern. He's alive, which in itself is something of a miracle.

[desperate_times_right]

“He made it up, but…” Chloe’s voice is weaker than she means for it to be, and she clears her throat, self-conscious. “They told me when you die here you go back to the way you were before, but he didn't. There's scars all over him from what that cop did, and he's got this bad cough. I put him in the next room so he can rest up.”

She shakes her head. “I don't even know. This is crazy, right? That we're even talking about this.”

[doomcame]

"Shit." Honestly, it's the only response she can muster. The scars sound like they're personal, considering that after freeing himself the detective could have just killed his captor outright. She wonders what really happened out there between them. Simultaneously, she wishes she wasn't privy to the drama of a drug lord to begin with. She rubs her face. "Everything on this island has been crazy so far. I'd wonder if any of it was even real if I thought my imagination was this damn good."

She stands and closes the gap between herself and Chloe, and lowers her voice. "You know I wouldn't let anyone do that to you, right? Lazarus rising from the fucking dead or not."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe closes her eyes, wishing she could let herself be comforted. “I know you’d try. We don't know what those people are capable of. Someone was following us - following me - and we didn't even know.”

[doomcame]

Not even remotely giving up on the comforting, Taissa takes Chloe's hand. Her brow furrows. "What do you mean, following us? When?"

[desperate_times_right]

“Ben - Lalo - he walked down from the north, the opposite way to us.” Have fun getting used to her using a diminutive nickname for this guy. “Just over the hill where we camped, someone built some weird… I don't know, structure. Aimed at me.”

[doomcame]

"What kind of structure?" The concern is genuine, though which way it's headed depends very much on the clarification of Chloe's wording.

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe takes the hand holding hers in both hands, just to have something to hold on to.

“He called it a shrine, but I don't know. He said it had my old bandages on it, so maybe they were just trying to attract predators to us, but there was other stuff. A severed animal’s foot. A computer key - control. Why would someone do that?”

[doomcame]

Fuck. A weird shrine. The missing items. Tai's heart rate can at least be dismissed by another intense round of handholding or fear from the possibility of being stalked.

"Who knows why anyone would do something like that," she answers without hesitation, the reflexes of a practiced liar. "Cohle said your friend made him leave a bloody arrow for the guy in the cabin, maybe this... thing... was meant to be a message sent back to him. Maybe he was the one being watched."

See? Lalo is dangerous. Let's just get rid of Lalo.

[desperate_times_right]

“He didn't think so, and this guy is the king of making everything about his weird relationships.” Especially coming off that 'guardian angel' shit, if it was possible to interpret it as a message to him he would have.

“I don't want you to get hurt out here because of me.”

[doomcame]

"He's been through a lot," she says, implying that the very trauma of being tortured, dying, and then coming back might not make Lalo the most accurate judge of anything right now.

"And I'm tougher than I look." She squeezes Chloe's hand. "It's going to take more than some creep in the woods to scare me away."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe sighs deeply, letting the tension slip out of her shoulders. Now that she's no longer helpless it's kind of nice to feel taken care of.

“Okay. You want to look around a little more while he's sleeping it off?” She’s not going to admit to distracting him with the game cartridge she’d found like some kind of iPad baby.

[doomcame]

"Absolutely," she slips her hand from Chloe's gently, and proceeds out the door. "There has to be something worthwhile in this place."

[desperate_times_right]

They might not be holding hands any longer but Chloe still hovers a little closer than usual as they walk together. She's shaken by everything that had happened, not to mention that Taissa’s declaration that she’d protect her from torture has got her a little dizzy.

“I'm actually impressed how much food we've found up here. I thought I’d have had to climb down by now.”

No question that she's the best climber.

“Oh!” She’d almost forgotten somehow. “Look at this.” Chloe kicks out her foot, which now has a dirty but expensive looking men’s outdoor boot on it.

[doomcame]

She has to admit, "It's not the worst place to hide out for now." Food, shelter, and not easily accessible for others to stumble upon.

She glances down at Chloe's new old boot and gives her a smirk. Lalo was a pain in the ass, but he did prove useful when he wanted to. "And now you're unstoppable."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe can't hide her smile at that. “You know it.”

She hasn't been able to walk normally in so long that she’d almost worried she’d forget how.

“He only came back with one for some reason. Opposite to the one I lost.”

[doomcame]

He's lucky if that's all he lost. But Taissa's doesn't even want to think about all the possible repercussions of returning from the dead at the moment. And they both could use a little bit of levity to keep them sane.

"You two have too much in common. Is there a big cartel reveal I should prepare myself for?"

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe snorts, testing one of the doors. “Can you picture me letting a guy like that tell me what to do?”

Taissa has honestly been weirdly accepting of all of the little scraps of information that have come up about Chloe, especially since for a lot of this she's been too injured to avoid questions in the ways she usually does.

Not to mention, of course, that running away the way she had only highlights the ways that they're the same. The ways that they're different might not matter to whoever holds the knife.

Locked, which by this point isn't surprising. Chloe kneels (and it almost doesn't hurt at all!) and pulls the pins from her hair to pick the lock.

[doomcame]

Taissa suppresses the urge to offer the lockpick she found, knowing that Chloe will only refuse it. "You'll have to show me how to do that sometime, you know."

She leans on a bit of wall and watches her.

"And what, you don't think you could lead a cartel yourself? You'd get to tell guys like that to fuck off on a regular basis."

[desperate_times_right]

“Of course,” Chloe says, testing one of the pins. “It's not that hard. Lots of people use these simple locks for babies, as if the presence of the lock itself is the deterrent.”

Probably in a place like this they'd always had security around. And alarms or cameras, maybe.

The deadbolt disengages and she laughs. “God. And be responsible for that many people? No thanks. All I need is myself. And a partner, maybe.”

She gropes behind her for the crutch before remembering she hadn't brought it. “Help me up?”

[doomcame]

Taissa offers Chloe a hand up and has her other arm hovering to hold onto her if she wobbles. She can see how a partner would be a good thing for her. "Duly noted."

She hopes they'll get something decent out of this room. Chloe's lock-picking skills have definitely come in handy even though they make Taissa think she needs to reconsider the security levels at her home and office once she leaves the island. "Should I ask where you learned how to pick these 'simple locks for babies'?"

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe takes the offered hand to pull herself up. She’s doing pretty well now, but her leg sometimes still wants to buckle if she puts too much weight on it. “Thanks.”

She swings a door open to find another conference room. “This place seems like meeting hell.”

Sifting through the debris on the table, she finds a rubber stamp and flips it over to examine it.

“I learned about locks from this guy I dated when I was a teenager. He wasn't that great, but his showoff shit was useful for me.”

[doomcame]

"I've been to meeting hell. There's a lot more old, white men." Taissa follows Chloe into conference room and begins to assist her with searching the area. Office supplies are an unsurprising find, and she comes up with a small ruler herself. She momentarily thinks over its usefulness before setting it back down.

"Hopefully you've developed better taste in who you date by now."

[desperate_times_right]

“You never know, maybe this place was crawling with ‘em back in the day.” Maybe it's lucky that they didn't get here until now.

Crawling with empty staplers, too. Clearly, these guys didn't believe in being prepared.

“Didn't have a lot of choices back then. It's different now. Picking locks has saved my life more than once, though, so I can't be too mean to him.”

[doomcame]

Index cards. An entire ream, unused. At least paper is useful enough to take from the leftover office clutter. Taissa grabs it and looks over at Chloe.

"I have a hard time imagining you without choices."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe shoots her a smug little smile. “Yeah. Took a few years, but I learned to grab the world by the throat and demand my due. I think this room is a wash.”

She pockets the stamp, though. Maybe someone else will know what GSD is.

[doomcame]

"The world, huh? Is there a big picture in mind or are you taking things one throat at a time?" Taissa asks, heading back out into the hall. She makes her way to the next door and crouches before it before Chloe can, waiting for her. She pulls out the hook lockpick she'd found back in the jail and will look up at Chloe once she approaches.

"Don't you make fun of me if I mess this up," she says dryly.

[desperate_times_right]

“I'm taking things when I can get them.” Treasure hunting has a lot of benefits, but stability isn't one of them.

She snickers when she sees what Taissa’s doing.”No, give it a shot! Been a while since I've been a bad influence.”

[doomcame]

Taissa does her best to mimic what she's witnessed from Chloe with her lockpick, but doesn't quite have it down. Chloe has a way of making things seem effortless. A charming and frustrating trait.

"Should I be worried what you'll have me doing next?"

She continues fishing for a clicking sound.

[desperate_times_right]

“Depends on what you're scared of, I guess.” And how well Lalo behaves but she doesn't exactly have high hopes there.

“Be gentle with it.” Chloe leans over Taissa’s shoulder to try and get a look. “Maybe try the pin closest to the front. People always miss that one.”

[doomcame]

Taissa tries a gentler touch, and moves the lockpick as Chloe suggests. It helps. And perhaps the feeling of her looking over Tai's shoulder motivates even further.

"What I'm scared of, on this island, changes every... single... day..."

A-ha. Success. Taissa is a little delayed in hiding her smile when she unlocks the door. She stands back up and wipes the dust off her pants out of habit than anything else... they're just as dirty as anyone else's on the island.

"But I'll take a lesson in anything that'll help me get through this shit."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe steps back so Taissa can stand, not bothering to hide her own smug little smile.

“Would you look at that. You're a natural.” Surely what every woman in such a heavily optics-based profession wants to hear.

“Can’t really say I think you need help. You've been the one saving my ass so far.”