Percy's nose wrinkles automatically at the stringent scent of turpentine and acrylic, mingling with the copious dust of the top floor art studio. He adjusts his position on the stool and tries not to sneeze.
"Quit squirming."
Gatz hasn't even looked up from the canvas. On one hand, they balance a weathered painting palette covered in so many splotches of paint you can't even tell what color it was originally. The other holds a dainty detail brush, with which Gatz keeps making delicate strokes, frowning, and making more strokes. Admittedly Percy agreed to be Gatz's muse mostly out of his own ego, but now it's been two hours, and he's beginning to regret it.
"And stop doing that thing with your face."
"What thing?"
"I don't know. You keep crinkling it all weird."
"That's because I have to sneeze. Haven't you noticed it smells like a fucking meth lab in here?"
Gatz sighsâPercy has heard this sigh many times before from Gatz, and it's almost always his faultâand drops the brush to the easel with an echoing twang. "Somehow I doubt you've ever been in a meth lab," Gatz says. "Take a break. I'm almost done."
Glad to be free from this prison to which he voluntarily condemned himself, Percy grins and hops off the stool, going to wrestle his water bottle free from the sleeve on the side of his backpack. "And you have been?" he asks.
Gatz doesn't reply for a while, and Percy looks over to find them gone. It's not that they've left the room. They haven't moved from their spot right in front of the easel, fingers scratching at the dark stubble beneath their chin, a startling contrast to the blond buzz cut they got a few weeks back. Nevertheless, Percy recognizes this look, as he's seen it on Indy's face, too. Like nothing else in the surrounding world is important. Like the process of thinking is just as much physical as it is mental, and they've split their presence in two.
Percy doesn't want to disturb them. But also, they're freaking him out. "Gatz."
Gatz blinks. "What?"
"Have you been to a meth lab?"
"No, unfortunately. I wanted to make my own once, but my mother seemed to be against it," Gatz says. "Break time over. Back on your high horse, Percival."
"That was barely a break!" Percy whines. He tosses his water bottle down again, careful to avoid knocking over the styrofoam heads and other dummy models of various materials gathered there in the ostensible storage corner. "At least let me see how it looks so far. What if I've been sitting here this whole time just to find out you're not doing me justice?"
Percy starts to walk over behind the easel, but Gatz flicks paint at him. "Art's more than the finished product and I can make you as ugly as I please. Sit, Percy."
Percy has been friends with Gatz for two years now, and he's never won an argument against them. Percy sits.
"You haven't heard anything from Indy today, have you?" Percy asks once he's positioned himself how he was before: turned sideways, towards the sun streaming in through the dust-streaked windows, head tilted up and back.
For a moment the swish swish swish of Gatz's brushstrokes is their only reply. "No. She wasn't at lunch for some reason. Why?"
"I don't know. I ran into her earlier, and we talked or whatever. I just still don't know if we're...good, you know?"
Gatz clicks their teeth. "Do not turn this studio into a therapy session, Percy. Does that stool look like a therapy bench to you?"
"She's just still so hard to read, even after all these fucking years. I think I know her, but thenâI don't know. It's like I never really do."
"Yeah?" Gatz scoffs. "Imagine how she feels."
"She's not picking up her phone, either. I'mâI'm worried, dude."
Gatz pauses, giving Percy a look like they're considering feeling bad for him, but in the end it seems they decide not to."Indy likes space. Let her have her space."
Percy wants to believe that's all it is; it would certainly make his life easier if that were the case. But something about this feels different, like there's something he should be doing, something he can't afford to miss.
"That's it for now," Gatz says, and the moment they do, Percy's on his feet, racing for his stuff.
"I'm gonna go find her," Percy says. "Just to make sure."
Gatz rolls their eyes, but doesn't stop him. "How noble! I'm sure she'll be thrilled."
"Don't be an ass, Gatz."
"Sorry. I picked it up naturally from being around you."
Percy very fondly flips Gatz off, at which Gatz only laughs, and ducks out of the room.
Indy has the feeling what she's doing isn't exactly legal.
No. In fact, she's sure of it.
Even without any help from stubborn Officer Kelso, a quick Google image match gave her the address of the old Dobbs residence easily enough. The moment she steps on its grounds, however, she knows it's no place for her. Brisk autumn wind whistles through overgrown grass, uneven cobblestones crumbling beneath her feet at every step. The two-story house is dark, its windows boarded with wooden planks, roof weathered from years and years' worth of storms. Indy shudders, thinking of the last time someone alive ever graced this place with their presence. She worries that someone might have been Elizabeth Dobbs herself.
Here comes the part she knows is illegal. She takes one of the loose stones from the walk, picking her way around the abandoned yard and to the back of the house. She pauses a moment to question if she's really doing this, before she hurls the stone at one of the windows.
The glass splinters and breaks, clearing an albeit precarious path of entry. Cursing under her breath, Indy shimmies herself through.
Instantly, she scowls, the scents of mildew and mold, of rotting wood, assaulting her senses. She confirms her suspicions that the house has largely been left without visitors. Dated floral wallpaper peels from the walls in long, sticky sheets, unidentified stains on the floor catching in the grooves of her shoes. The windows are dusty; termites have eaten their way through the moulding. A rat carcass greets her when she steps into the living room, and she barely stifles a yelp.
It's strange, but she can tell that it wasn't always like this, that once, this was a lively place. Almost as if she stands there in the living room and the souls of those who were before her move around, unseen but nevertheless felt. Indy's skin crawls. She decides to finish her investigation quickly, and get the hell out of this place.
She takes a somewhat unorthodox route, moving through the kitchen, coming back into the living room, examining the first floor bedroom. To be honest she's not exactly sure what she's looking for, just that the old arm chairs and crumpled posters and soda cans are not it.
She climbs the stairs slowly, afraid they'll crumble beneath her feet. The room she figures must have been Dobbs's is small but cozy, the type with ceilings that slope towards a window at the far wall. The only thing left in it is an empty dresser. A draft easily filters through the walls, and Indy shivers as she crouches to look beneath it.
With her ear to the floor, she hears the footsteps. They're coming from downstairs somewhere, but they're moving in her direction, and quickly.
Indy's heart races but she forces her mind to be clear, reaching beneath the dresser, folding her fingers tight around the roller tray and pulling and pulling until at last the old piece of wood snaps loose. She grits her teeth as a splinter jabs at her fingers, and gets to her feet.
"Whoa. What's the wooden stake for, Buffy?"
Indy drops her makeshift weapon to the ground. "Percy? What the hell are youâ"
"I was worried. I asked Gatz where you were and they didn't know, so I asked Sylvia and she also said she didn't know," Percy explains, raking his locs out of his face. Indy watches him wander over to one of the ceiling beams, pulling on it as if to test its stability. "Then she checked your location and saw you were all the way out in the middle of nowhere. I was sent here to make sure you hadn't been murdered."
Considering the story behind the house in which they were currently standing, Indy winces. "I'm very alive, thank you. You shouldn't be here."
"Neither should you," Percy argues as Indy brushes past him on her way back out to the staircase. "Breaking and entering is illegal, you know. They put people in jail for that. Especially us."
"No one is telling me anything I want to know. I had to take things into my own hands."
A pause. Percy casts a look around, then looks at Indy again, realization just then dawning on him. "Is this about Dr. Clover's assignment again? Indy. Come on."
"Don't youâdon't do that," Indy grumbles. She stops on the landing, turning just to raise an accusatory eyebrow at Percy. "Don't act like I'm the stupid one when you're the one running off getting drunk with people who don't give a shit about you."
Percy nods. "We're still on that, then."
"We're notâ" Indy sighs. "Perce. I'm just...saying. If you're going to do all that, you can't get all high-and-mighty when I decide to do my own thing, too."
"I know," he says, and he smiles, not the smile he shoots at the cameras after he's just made a goal, but his real smile, the one Indy grew up with. "I just...I do think the two things may be on different playing fields, though."
"Oh, shut upâ" A strange creak underneath Indy's foot makes her stop, right where she stands on the lowest stair.
"Indy?" Percy asks. "What is it?"
Indy backs up onto the step behind her, bumping Percy in the chest. She steps down again, and the creak sounds again.
"That soundsâ"
"Hollow," Percy finishes for her.
"It could just be the wood rot," Indy says.
"Sure," Percy says, "but you're going to try to get it open anyway, right?"
"Obviously," Indy answers, already lowering to a crouch. "Are you going to give me a hand?"
"Obviously."
Percy feels around until he finds a groove between the lattice and step, digging his fingers into it, leveraging his own weight to wrench it free. Indy helps, pushing as he pulls, and it gives with surprising ease, the stair sliding off like the top to a gift box.
Indy doesn't move for a second, and Percy gives her a look as if to say, It's all you. She makes a point of rolling her eyes at him before she reaches in, and pulls out a journal.
It's pocket-sized, barely bigger than Indy's palm, with gold-rimmed pages that have gone wrinkly with water damage. The leather front is engraved with a curly letter E, and Indy sucks in a breath.
Though something about it feels sacrilegious, Indy figures she's already committed enough atrocities, and there's no lines left for her to cross at this point. She opens the journal, flipping through it. The entries are all written in a neat, feminine print, alternating blue and black ink. She doesn't read it entirely yet, just skims it, but it's more than enough to tell her what she needs to know.
"There's no way," Indy gasps.
"What?" Percy says, frowning. What is it?"
"This journal," Indy tells him. "I'm pretty sure it belonged to the woman who was murdered here. Elizabeth Dobbs."