Alastor was back. He woke up the day after he had arrived at the swamp with a surplus of energy that he didn't know what to do with, that burst around his body like electricity and would not let him rest for even a second. He and Adelaide didn't exchange a single word about their experiences that night.
They didn't even question one another when they both found out that they had slept in their beds with no recollection of having returned to their rooms. Had they mutually helped each other?
Had anything happened? It was irrelevant, as things always seemed to become when they did this type of ritual. Despite their lack of communication, Alastor could tell that Adelaide's disposition had generally cheered up. It was a subtle change since Adelaide's face was rather stony, incomprehensible, so unlike what it had been when she was younger. And yet there was a certain bounce to her step, a certain lightness about her that hadn't been there before.
Maybe she was just happy that she had been able to perform this ritual after so many years of an utter lack of communication. Whatever it was, he and Adelaide acted as though they had been renewed. He was happy to be with her and happy to be back at the swamp, back in his sort of hometown, but he also felt the undying, propelling urge, a feeling that he couldn't take anymore, needing to leave, needing the energy and the electrifying life of the city around him.
He needed to feel pulses, needed to feel the existence of people around him milling about, the endless potential of the infinite everything that he felt he might find in the big city. He made quick work of his silent, shared breakfast, and when he gathered his things to leave, Harry reluctantly under one of his arms, Adelaide didn't even seem to question it, as if she had taken it for a fact that he wouldn't be there for more than a day.
And, in truth, he had to hurry back to his job. But he wouldn't be hurrying back just for the radio, no. It seemed that all the things that had lost their flavor when he had gotten into that fight with Anthony had suddenly been redeemed, and he thought of the city fondly and attributed to it a sort of charm that he hadn't seen in it for years since he had crawled out of the hole in the ground.
Yes, Alastor was eager to be back. It was not like he had completely forgotten about Anthony, but he finally felt as if he were back on top of things. That sensation that he had had of a lack of control, which was what drove him up the wall, had now been reversed since he felt in control. Now, he had not analyzed his state in profundity.
He had no idea whether his new state of mind had to do with the general communication of the spirits, or if it had something to do with the visions that he had during the communication. He didn't stop to think about it too much, although his brain was dizzy, thinking and thinking and thinking, but not necessarily about the visions that he had had.
He didn't know what they meant, especially the first one. But the last one… well, they had given him an inkling, they had pushed him in the direction that he had needed, they had been the final inspiration for the dejection that he had been living through. He was back. He and Adelaide had their pleasant morning, their breakfast, and finally their curt farewell.
However, despite their general sensation of comfort with one another, a silent comfort that didn't need to be stated explicitly, Alastor felt that there was something that Adelaide was itching to tell him, or maybe even ask of him. He was heading over to the door, Adelaide only going together with him probably because of decor and habit, when he decided he would not leave things pending with her.
Despite their positive disposition, it seemed as though both of them, due to their mutual survivor status, never wanted to leave things unresolved with anybody.
It was as if they had both become used to thinking that anybody could leave at any moment. Funnily enough, they both felt they had running clocks, and they didn't even care to bet on who would run out faster. And so Alastor faced her before he faced the swamp. "Adelaide, is something the matter?"
He asked though he could hardly hear himself over the sound of Harry's incessant meowing - he did not want to return to the tedious trek that he had already lived through the previous day. Adelaide paused, without having expected the question.
She had already been thinking of what she'd do about lunch, and that the croc needed to be fed. She looked at Alastor, recognizing that there was something that she had wanted to say to him that she was not externalizing. She looked at him, and then at the protesting cat. "It gets lonely," she suddenly stated, her voice carrying over into the partial, natural silence of the swamp.
Alastor waited. "Alastor, do you… get lonely?" She asked, and he suddenly realized that her eyes were no longer focused on him, but rather that they were staring at something that he could not see, something beyond the swamp. What was this question about? Could it be related to something that she had seen last night? Alastor didn't want to think of the sort of loneliness that Adelaide might feel, the deep pit and painful desires buried deep within her.
They might be too much like his own. "I suppose I do," he answered, not internalizing the question, but answering that was because he simply knew it to be the truth. Adelaide didn't speak for a moment, but Alastor did not turn away, knowing that there was more coming. She suddenly focused the whole intensity of her gaze on him. "Leave me the cat." "What?" "I'd like to have the cat," she said simply. Alastor was taken aback, not having expected this at all. He looked from the meowing Harry back to Adelaide, dumbstruck.
He felt very reluctant to leave her with his cat, his immediate reaction being to tell her to screw off, and then run away into the swamp with Harry tucked under his arm. But then he carefully looked at the way that she was watching him. Survivor mentality. He didn't know why, but all of a sudden he felt that he really should leave Harry with Adelaide.
Just in case. Just in case? A chill went down his spine, something of a bad feeling washing over him despite the previous sensation of well-being, his happy-go-lucky attitude dissipating most uncomfortably, all of a sudden. Had Adelaide seen something yesterday? What had she seen? But Alastor knew better than to start asking questions that he probably shouldn't know the answer to.
If he had not been shown, and Adelaide had, then it was not for him to know. He tried to brush the feeling away and then had to make peace with his painful emotions at needing to leave Harry. But if he was being honest, the cat had seemed much more at home here than he ever had back in the apartment in New Orleans.
He had started to worry that he wouldn't be able to take him through the length of the swamp, as fidgety as he was getting even at the beginning. Was it because he didn't want to leave at all? Alastor was suddenly struck by the knowledge that Harry really would be happier here, with someone constantly looking after him as opposed to leaving most of the time, someone to feed him, someone who wasn't a mass murderer, who didn't come back with the scent of blood on his clothes, who didn't have a hallowed heart and a burned-out conscience. Someone that could love that cat as it should be loved.
And he could see the loneliness in Adelaide's eyes, and the capability for love that never found a recipient.
Alastor looked at the cat, then back at Adelaide before setting Harry down on the steps before him. "You have to stop stealing my cats," he murmured under his breath, feeling very strangely emotional, wanting to snatch Harry right back up and run away with him.
He had gotten soft if he was afraid of leaving a cat under someone else's care. Somehow, it felt as if he were leaving more behind than just Harry "I always take care of them," Adelaide replied with the smallest hint of a smile on her face, her hands on her hips as Harry happily went right over to her and began to curl himself around her legs, the little traitor. "Take care of yourself," Alastor said, turning away a little bit more burdened than before. "I'd say the same, but I know you won't," Adelaide replied, the smile still on her face, but with an underlying sadness that slapped Alastor painfully. All of a sudden, he felt that he needed to get out of there and back to the city at once.
He raised his hand in farewell, took one last look at Harry, trying to convey his affection for him in just one stare, and then left forever.
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It seemed to Alastor that the city had never been so alive, that it had never been so clean, that the colors had never been so saturated as when he arrived back from the swamp. It felt to him as if things were falling into place, the previous bad sensation that he had had with his brief conversation with Adelaide dissipating as he reached the city and felt its intoxicating presence wrapping him up once again.
The chipperness to his step, the lightness which he had usually carried himself with, the constant smile, they were all back. When he arrived back at his apartment, only to see that he had received an invitation to one of the Montenegro's dinners, it only seemed to further reinforce the sensation that things were falling into place. Wouldn't that be a test to him?
He wouldn't lie to himself and say that his stomach was in perfect condition at the thought that Anthony might very well be at that dinner, but he had other seeds to sow, other plans to take part in. And Anthony didn't want him anymore.
The apartment was very vacant without that dumb cat to bother him, but Alastor didn't mind, because he knew that right now, he was in a state to throw himself into his work. Into all of his work.
Yes, yes, he had suddenly realized that he had been neglectful with what he was truly supposed to do. He had never meant to stray from the true path, to become soft, to allow Anthony to make him soft. But that was gone now, he thought that he had accepted it, even if he hadn't. But it was enough, it was enough for him to get back on track. When had he lost sight of what he was supposed to be doing? Catching all these tiny fish, when the big ones had been just at his hands' reach?
Gathering all the information that he had been for all of these months, and doing nothing with it? Becoming sloppy, rusty, never daring to go beyond what he had been doing for all these months. There had been a time when Alastor had been a pioneer when he had been an experimenter, bold and brazen and never lacking wit when he had taken the world in the palms of his hands, and decided with what intensity, and with what bloodlust he would crush it.
He had been the type to make calculations, he had made equations to determine who it would be best to kill, when, who would be best to eat, and how. He had been an absolute menace. And it was about time that he returned to that. The sun seemed to shine brighter through his curtains, and when he went back to work, he put his entire energy into it. He had never made so many people laugh, and he had never thought that he had so much potential inside of him as he did at that moment. He was back.