dr_robchase | (no subject)

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By now, six years and counting, Chase should have been ready for whatever he had to come up against. He should have been expecting the worst and thought -- stupidly, stupidly thought -- that whatever this place had for him, it couldn't be worse than what he'd already lived through. It was bad enough to see both your parents leave you again (whether by death or disappearance), bad enough to have a near-death experience, to constantly lose everyone you ever loved, but the one thing this place had never done was take him back to the harrowing moments he had growing up.

At least, not until today.

He'd been downstairs, in Gwen's old room, trying to figure out whether they could shift the space around. One moment, it was the spare room with its dusty floors and the empty bed. He blinked, only closed his eyes for a second, but when he opened them, he knew that smell. He knew the feeling of being closed in, and he swore he could even smell the faint aroma of gin in the air. Chase felt a sick lurching in his stomach.

"No," he begged, terrified that he was right back to where it all started.

What if, behind this door, his mother was drinking herself into a stupor. What if his father has left for months? What if he finds his baby sister, what if -- what if what if. Chase slams both palms against the door, feeling a stricken with panic as memories filter back and he remembers, all too well, the begging and the shouting and the pleading he did to get out of this room. The books were the same, the leather armchair still had the cigar burn in the arm, and the carpet had that same old musty smell from too many glasses of scotch and gin spilled on it.

"Let me out!" he shouted, his voice catching. "Let me out of here! Let me..." he trails off, a weak and frustrated exhalation of 'Mum, please' on his breath before he slams his palms harder against the locked door, struggling with the antiquated copper knob.

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Times like these, Ishiah was glad for the fact that he had set a precedent for himself to venture around the island, keeping his pace quick and steady to increase the chance of coming across peers, neighbors, anyone who perhaps needed a hand or, alternatively, simply needed a kind nod and wave to start their day. Ishiah was trundling along at a quick pace when he heard that shout from the distance, recognizing Chase's part of the neighborhood, his pace hastening as he grabbed for the sword at his hip and drew it, wondering what the reason was behind the strangled yell.

Once closer, he noticed the jarring coming from the doorknob, and quickly sheathed his sword again. Locked in? Perhaps with someone else inside.

Turning the lock with a click, Ishiah tugged the door sharply open, wood creaking in its wake.

Chase staggered backwards in shock when the door opened and the familiarity of the face in front of him took him a moment to process, especially when his panic-ridden state of mind was already filling his brain with worst-case-scenarios. For a moment (before the height and the scar hit his awareness), he actually thought it might have been himself. Then, realization hit, the confusion cleared, and he knew where he was.

It took him a minute, but he managed to take a deep breath and compose himself, refusing to look over his shoulder into the room. He just wanted to keep staring forward. "Ishiah," he said, evenly. "Sorry, I didn't want to cause any disturbances."

Ishiah waved off the apology with a quick tilt of his hand and a shake of his head, reaching out for Chase's shoulder to try and encourage him to leave the room that was clearly giving him trouble. Staring back into the room, he tried to discern what exactly it was that frightened Chase, but could come up with no quick answer. His parents' library? Perhaps.

He knew the general picture, but not the specifics.

"No apologies. The island has a tendency to bring what troubles us most," Ishiah replied. "Do you want me to help you clear all of this away?"

Chase looked back at the room -- how the interior had completely changed and how the paint was exactly as he remembered it. "The books," he said, before he could even process what he was saying. "I need to get the books out of here." No matter what else they did, he needed to get that done first. "They should go to the Clinic, they could use them. They're helpful, they're all medical texts."

Without pause, Ishiah stepped into the room, quickly gathering large piles of books under his arm and hauling them outside, under the sun, where Chase wouldn't be forced to deal with the confinement and all that it apparently triggered. And that was when he realized, glancing back to the lock of the door, nose turning about to try and catch any hint of a scent in the air, eyes darkening significantly.

"This is the study," he said with that moment of realization, eyes wide as he glanced about, gathering more books still under his arms.

"This is..." he trailed off, mostly because his voice caught in his throat and he found that he couldn't even find the words to get past that. That was the problem, wasn't it? No matter what he tried to do, it was hard to get over the fact that his family had stunted his emotional development on such a base level. "Yeah, the study," he finally got out. "I just, I thought I was back there. I thought I was locked in, again."

"You're not," Ishiah said, not because he believed Chase somehow believed himself still there, but instead because there were times when the spoken word had more weight than anything else— or so Ishiah was told. "You're still on the island, nothing here has changed. This is another occasion where the island is bringing back pieces from our previous lives for some type of dramatic emotional effect."

His eyes roved over the surroundings, before he strode to the front door and placed the books outside. "Do you still plan to live in this house?"

"It's the Doctor and my house," was what Chase said, quietly. "We've been married for five years. We've lived here for almost six," he said, a quiet feeling of dread settling in his stomach. "This is my home and now it's here," he said, taking in a deep breath and trying to settle his mind down from the edge of panic he'd been inching towards.

"The island is your home," Ishiah said quietly, and although he made no active effort to try and sway Chase one way or the other, the peri thought it important to remind Chase that there was more than the physical place itself that made a house into a home. Ultimately, it was the relationship that meant the most, something that Ishiah had to remind himself of on a fairly regular basis, having been displaced so often before.

"If you moved elsewhere, you're still on the same island. You're still with the same person. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if it helped to set your mind at greater ease."

"Maybe, but this Treehouse? This is where I have so many of my memories. This is where I want Nate to grow up," Chase insisted, searching past Ishiah to the stairs that led from the first up to the third floor, winding around the tree. "I'm just tired of living in the past, of being scared of what's lurking in the shadows. I'm tired of running scared."

Ishiah couldn't entirely argue with the notion of wanting to stay rooted for the memories that a place afforded. It was the main reason why he was still staying in the same hut now, because it was a home that he'd shared with Robin, and although it would have been a stretch to say that either of them were truly happy on the island, nevertheless they were memories that he wanted to cherish and have last for as long as they could.

"I get the impression," he said quietly, "that this is a decision that only you can make for yourself."

Chase pushed a hand through his hair, trying to find some centre of calm and peace, but no matter how much he did that, he always cycled back to the same inevitability. "The Doctor's right," he said with a sigh, bowing his head lower. "I need to talk to someone, don't I?"

"It may not be a bad idea. Particularly if the Doctor has suggested it before," Ishiah nodded, watching as Chase's fingers wove through his hair and his entire countenance turned tense and restless. Not being entirely familiar with what it was like to be on the receiving end of such abuse, Ishiah couldn't offer advice when it came to how best one could overcome any of it. "If there's anything you think I can do— although I don't have experience with things like this— let me know. I'd be glad to help."

At this point, Chase just needed the support of the friends he did have, here. It was horrible of him, but he also thought that he needed people like Ishiah and not House -- considering that House only reminded him of all the things that had gone wrong in his life. "If your past came here, right in front of you, would it make you happy? Or as distressed as I am, right now?"

"I have a very long past, comparatively. I'm not sure that so much of it could arrive here in the manner that your past just did," Ishiah replied, glancing around at the room again and trying to determine whether or not any equivalent existed in his own world; his suspicion was that it didn't. Eyes bright, he shook his head again. "Two thousand years as a peri, and countless before that as an angel whose experiences carved very little into his skin. No, there is nothing of my past that could come like this. But were there reminders to arrive— possessions of Robin's, perhaps... the only distress I would feel is over my regrets. My brother Cambriel, for instance. That aside, I think I would welcome most things attached to my past."

"You're lucky," was Chase's response. He wished that there was something about his childhood that he could look back to and love, but there wasn't anything. There was only the memory of his father's absence, his sister's blame, and his mother's negligence. When he put them all together, the best thing that happened to him was the day he left Australia for good. "I mean, since I've been here, I've been lucky too," he admitted, trying to be cheerful about something.

Ishiah's gaze momentarily turned to the side. Was lucky a descriptor that he would have put to his life? Perhaps. In many ways, he had experienced so much more than he could have conceived of the day he was created. And there was a lot of good in all of it. Everything that he'd come to learn about Robin, about both chaos and order, about the mortals which passed through their lives like mayflies, had its own value, and Ishiah would have seen none of it without walking the path that he did through life.

Inevitably, however, everything came with loss as well, but there was no need for Ishiah to lord that over anyone's head, and so he kept those thoughts to himself, perhaps for another day.

"Then focus on the parts of your life that you feel fortunate to have experienced," Ishiah concluded. "Perhaps this advice sounds condescending, but it's the best that I can think to offer."

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