Isaiah wanted to get this switch over with.
He’d known months ago that he’d made the wrong choice — the decision he’d made to go into the Saints feeding into the insidious ‘I should be better’ thoughts that plagued him; ones that drove him to do everything he did. But they’d gotten unhealthy by the time the pop up hotel of horrors had rolled around. After the integration of War into Belial, Isaiah had felt like he’d gone into a tailspin.
Then again, hadn’t the whole world been in a tailspin for the past year?
Isaiah knew he was selfish, he knew that he’d self-serve his curiosities over conventionalities. The failure at the Oscars added to the pile of reasons he felt he didn’t fit with the Saints — they were so many things that he just… didn’t understand, and for once didn’t want to. He wasn’t Adele, he wasn’t forgiving. He didn’t see ideals, he saw realities; he seeked the truth and he didn’t care how he got that.
So he’d made his way to Renee’s office, feeling that vague sense of shame that he’d developed in the past few months because of how his last meeting in the church with Renee had gone. But this time it had a purpose other than fun; this was something that Isaiah needed to do.
He knocked on the door, throat tightening just that little bit when he heard her voice — had he hoped she’d be out of her office? — but he came in anyway. His eyes widened at seeing the ghost, and his mouth opened to speak before Renee answered the first of his seemingly endless questions.
The whole development of the dead rising wasn’t something that anyone could ignore, and it certainly wasn’t something that Isaiah wanted to ignore. Then again, he’d also not been haunted by anyone that he loved ( at least not yet ).
“A ghost?” Isaiah couldn’t help the excited look that lit up his face, “I know it’s the end of times and, uh, and that the dead rising isn’t a good sign, and I’m sure that it’s really not fun to have someone from your past haunting you but… ghosts!” He stared at the ghost of a man presumably from Renee’s past, eyes wide and sparkling, and mouth open just a little. “I- I remember ghost hunting back in Laramie and uh,” he shook his head, holding the excited expression on his face, “I never found anything, but this? This is exciting!”
The words he just said took a beat to sink in.
He bowed his head, “I, um, I don’t mean that… uh, don’t mean that as it sounded.” He shook head and and his hands. “Anyway, business, yes, that’s a thing.”
Isaiah scratched at his eyebrow with his index finger, eyes flicking between the top of Renee’s desk, Renee herself, and the ghost. His tongue darted out. “I want to join the Sinners. I think it’s… a better fit.”
Isaiah’s excitement was both palpable and predictable and Renee wasn’t even remotely surprised by his declaration of excitement. After all, this was the boy who had gone out of his way to make friends with Satan and Belial, much as such a thing could be done. She could have ignored his excitement, but she knew him, and knew him well: he’d try and focus, but his gaze would inevitably shift back and he’d blurt out a question, hoping she’d answer.
And so, Renee sighed, rolling her eyes slightly, before doing the only thing she could think to do under the circumstances, even as she knew she was opening the door to something she wouldn’t necessarily be able to control and was extraordinarily personal. “Not so much exciting as... bittersweet, Isaiah,” Renee returned quietly, honest because there was nothing to do but be that, before offering an introduction, that would hopefully help to explain, “Isaiah, this is Alexander Matlock. We were married for a few years in the late fifties, before he died.”
And even as she wasn’t entirely pleased to see ghost sitting next to her, even as she had said things that had made her feel better, but weren’t kind, it was easier to talk about him than the way that she too had failed to find some way to fix it, fix everything. And yet, Isaiah’s redirect brought her thoughts back there.
Brows arched, caught between wanting to laugh and sigh again at Isaiah’s final statement; she had been hoping for something entirely more entertaining from Isaiah than business or lingering on the past, but there was an aspect of satisfaction that settled over her. Sure, the world was nearly ending, but in the last year, the two biggest disappointments she had endured when it came to business were Grace and Isaiah.
You can’t win them all she had reminded herself, again and again, and let herself maintain the connections she had, even as it irritated her to watch the two of them try to be good when they could be so much more. “Far be it from me to stop you, and darling, frankly it’s about damn time,” Renee said first, letting the satisfaction show, before head canted lightly, “Have you talked to Zoe about this?”
She had a feeling the answer would be no, and she didn’t really care either way, she was more just curious at to what Zoe had to say, if anything at all. And yet, there was one other thing she felt compelled to say, because this was Isaiah, who had let her cry in his car and tried to give her Cinnabon and hadn’t pretended that everything was supposed to be okay when it wasn’t. “Isaiah, you should know, though, I don’t have some magic fix,” she cautioned, softly, “Switch if you want, I sincerely don’t disagree that you’d fit here, but I can’t offer you saving, not when I don’t have any myself.”
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