theresnodoor | (no subject)

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When you fight for three years, you get used to the aspects of it. The secret keeping. The sudden pounding rush of adrenaline. The constant thrum of fear under your skin. The exhaustion. The rage. The helplessness and the power.

There are different kinds of 'get used to,' though.

There's the kind where, free of those constraints, you can relax. It never leaves entirely, but it ebbs. You don't miss it exactly but you recognize that you could go back to it in a heartbeat, if you needed to - and you tell yourself you don't want to.

There's another kind. Less readily admitted to.

The kind where you relax immediately. And slowly, surely, the thrum under your skin comes back. But the fear has a different flavor this time around, more restless than anything else.

The nice thing is, the solution is obvious.

The bad thing is, it's a solution you can't admit to.

Rachel does a lot of things to channel that thrum. Waking at dawn. Gymnastics routines. Runs around the lake. Training with the punching bag. Reading with Tobias. Talking, talking, talking to people. Morphing for fun.

But they're only channels, and none of them for much purpose.

There's only one thing that's given her true relaxation, release, since Milliways.

An afternoon walk in Milliways' forest and Rachel finds herself standing before a tall rock face, more than a hill but not quite a mountain. An opening several feet taller than she is - a rock cave.

Carved into the stone, a symbol she won't readily forget.

"...Daedalus."

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Mel Fray has not been keeping an eye on this one since Steph warned her.

- Well, maybe she has. But only in an interested eye in case there's ever something she can do.

Casual enough that she doesn't feel super stalkery.
Interested enough that she can recognise a warrior with nothing to fight.

She's now sitting, not particularly secretive, but not particularly prominent, either, on a branch of a tree a few yards away, mildly picking out dirt form under her fingernails.

Only this looks interesting, so she stops.

They've all been followed at one time or another. When your friends can turn into houseflies and cockroaches, being followed isn't terribly difficult.

Though it's going to be downright embarrassing when Rachel figures out a human just followed her without her notice.

Still. There are noises in a forest, cracking branches and rustling, calling animals. And at this particular moment, she hears what she wants to hear.

For instance, she can hear herself saying, vaguely convincingly, We knew it could happen again, it's no one's fault.

Though if she's gone for another month and he...

Well. He better not.

Rachel shifts her weight from one foot to the other, bottom lip sucked in slightly for her teeth to sink into. But her eyes don't leave the triangle.

Well, there's two things that might make Rachel feel better about this: firstly, Mel's kind of supernaturally designed to be a hunter, but more importantly, you don't get very far as a thief if you can't keep an eye on a mark without making it look like you're keeping an eye on them.

She looks up at the triangle, her very specific historical and mythological knowledge failing on this count, and figures that this place looks interesting at least.

And by 'interesting' she means 'don't let teenagers go in their on their own'.

She scoots along the branch, lying on her chest as she waits to see what will happen.

He's been better. They've been better. He's talked to people. Been human more. People know him now, would look for him if he went missing at the same time she did - right?

She hopes.

Maybe.

Because somehow she's a step closer to the cave than she was just a moment ago. And that thrum beneath her skin is aching with the need to keep moving forward.

Inside that cave is fear and horror and danger and purpose.

She's never asked him to be human.

He'll forgive her this.

The darkness swallows her up in a sigh.

Oh boy.

Mel grins to herself as a first reaction. She kind of likes this kid, who does exactly what Mel would have herself.
And now she hs an excuse to go rescue her.

Mel rolls off the branch, landing on the ground in a dead run, and springs into the cave after her.

Plus side: It's not the same old stone castle.

Downside: That's really just a guess because it's honestly too dark to tell what it is.

Rachel tolerates this for precisely six seconds before crouching down to remove her shoes and outer clothing. She'll be better than last time, won't tire herself out like that again. But that's no reason to go in blind.

...literally.

Mel has better than average night vision. It's still pretty much too dakr for her, anyway.

She stops as soon as she's inside, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

And in the meantime, she breaks the silence.

"Jesu, how is it this cold in the middle of summer?"

What? Because sneaking after a kid in the dark is such a good idea.

This development requires sides again:

Plus: It's the Labyrinth. Rachel was expecting both random surprises and fear.

Down: She hasn't even started her morph yet.

Double down: Her lessons with X haven't progressed nearly enough to make defending herself now at all possible.

Then again, evil creatures of the Labyrinth usually don't discuss the weather.

"Who are you?" she demands, sharp - and annoyed. No one was invited on this misadventure.

"Mel."

Which, apparently, is all the answer Rachel needs. She moves now, running a hand along the dirt wall she finds to her sides.

She has a red flashlight in her belt, but she'll use it when she needs it. Which isn't yet.

If that's all the answer she needs, why does it annoy her so much?

"What are you doing here?" is asked - well, no, demanded yet again. While also grabbing her shoes and backing away, shoulders against the wall and edging away from any noise Mel makes.

Shoelaces are tied into a quick knot, too. Rachel had expected to lose them quickly but if they can be held onto - and possibly made into a weapon - she's not going to complain.

I followed you, is entirely the wrong answer, and Mel's not that stupid.

"Exploring," she says casually, cause that's exactly what she's doing. She stops against one of the walls and peers up into the gloom, then leaps directly up, grabbing onto the wall until she can scale it, to get a handle on the height of the ceiling. "Hanging out in the bar cna get so ruttin' boring, you know?"

Rachel all but leaps back at the sound, though it takes a minute to assure herself it was Mel and not something else scuttling around up there. "Yes, I do, go explore somewhere else, all right?"

This is her escape and her adventure and Milliways has got to be big enough to entertain all the restless thrill-seekers without doing it in one space.

"Alright," says Mel, having found a weird stone ledge near the top.

"You know where the door went to?"

Okay, she should have seen that coming. Once you're in you're not supposed to get out. Still:

"God damn it."

Rachel is scowling even as she tosses her shoes over her shoulder, hanging across her skin by the laces and scowls in the general direction of Mel's voice.

"Do you have any idea what you just walked into?"

"No." Cheerfully, in a voice that suggests it's going to be fun finding out. Mel sits on her ledge and starts rummaging in the pockets on her belt. "How sensitive are your eyes right now? Might not wanna look directly at me."

Any irritation fades swiftly into suspicion, and rather than edging away, Rachel sets one foot back to strengthen her stance. "What are you going to do?"

Not that she can see Mel anyway, but it's an important question.

"I'm going to take a look at where we are."

Duh, Rachel. The only reason Mel didn't do that before is she wanted to make sure they were alone.

The flashlight is less than pocket sized, dim and red and smaller than Mels hand, filling some of the room with a pale red light that will let her see, but without compromising her adjusting night vision.

There are some tools a theif never leaves home without.

If she'd consciously planned for this, Rachel might have come a little more prepared, too. But that would be admitting that she was planning to do this. And there'd be no way out of that.

So she's left blinking in the pale red light, a tall, slim teenage girl with long blonde hair and a pair of tennis shoes tied over one shoulder.

With her t-shirt and jeans folded up in a corner.

There's a logical explanation to this, if you know her. But Rachel would rather use this opportunity to look around than to explain.

It's still a cave, roughly carved stone tall and wide and empty, tunnel extending behind and forward and fading into darkness.

And Mel's 'ledge' appears to be a piece of stone that was just a little too hard for the person carving it, although deep cracks have been left by the attempt to remove it. And in the light, seems a lot less sturdy than it felt.

She holds the flashlight in her teeth and leaps down lightly onto the floor, facing the tunnel ahead of them.

"Well, if I were going to get out of here, that's the way I'd take," she says. "Think it's too obvious?"

Why Rachel saw fit to take her clothes off, she doesn't ask.

It is a thing that is more easily ignored than addressed in most situations.

"As opposed to that way," Rachel asks, eyebrow lifted as she points behind Mel, "the way you came in?"

The annoyance has absolutely nothing to do with being stuck so much as being stuck with Mel. Flashlight-prepared or not, Rachel is scowling at her.

"It's not too obvious but it is too easy. You're not getting out of here anytime soon."

"Then it's lucky I had a big breakfast," Mel says, irritatingly cheerful as she grins at Rachel in the half-light. she has that way of responding to scowls.

"Last one back to the bar buys dinner."

She heads off purposely in the direction Rachel pointed.

Great! That's why there are two directions, surely, so that Mel can go one and Rachel can go the other.

...except that the irritatingly cheerful are often soon to find themselves the prematurely dead. So while Rachel hangs back, letting the red light fade around here, itching to go that way and not Mel's way...

She came here to feel better. Letting someone die - even an irritating, possibly stupid someone - is not going to help that.

There is some soft grumbling in the darkness behind Mel, but nothing to fear. Just an irate teenager.

Mel is irritating and stupid, it's true. She's made an art form out of it.

She's also strolling at a pace that it's easy to keep up with, if you wanted to walk and grumble at the same time. As she walks, she keeps the light angled low and dim, bathing the stone tunnel in red.

It's awfully considerate of her, despite the grumbling.

Rachel doesn't usually have a problem with someone else leading the way, when she trusts them to know what they're doing. But since Mel has already admitted to not knowing where they are, much less what they're doing there, there is some effort put forward to catch up and eye the woman.

"Have you heard of the Labyrinth?"

"Heard of it, yeah," is the reply. Mel gets around, she's heard of a lot of things. "Ever been in or had the guided tour, no. Guess it's my turn to find out."

Not quite grinning anymore, she cocks a sideways look at Rachel. "You have."

It's... partly a question.