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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"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.

Is it?

Rachel glares, focusing more on the first part of the answer than the second. "Congratulations, now you're in it. The guided tour includes 'Don't get yourself killed, the end.'"

"Sounds like my kind of place."

Just to be sure, Mel reaches behind her waist and taps the scythe on her back, to make sure it's loose in the sheath. There are other weapons, but this if her absolute favourite, so.

And since the tapping calls her attention to it, Rachel suddenly realizes the stick on Mel's back is less a fashion accessory and more... a freaking scythe.

And very nearly stops dead in the dark stone tunnel.

A moment or two later, there are soft (barefoot) steps hurrying to catch up and Rachel falls into step beside Mel, eyeing her in a way that would be a glare if she weren't so amused.

And pleased.

"Is there some kind of secret rule in Milliways that everybody has to know how to kick butt before they can visit?"

"Nah," Mel says. She hadn't meant to be all 'check out my cool stabby thing', but she'd be daft not to realise where this remark came from. "Plenty of people who can't."

Although a coupe of steps later she adds, "no one I know, though."

It kind of is a cool stabby thing, though.

Rachel considers this as they walk, scanning the red light ahead and around them - what little it shows. "I know a little kid who probably can't. She might try, though."

Boo thinks she's terribly ferocious.

"That's why I still carry, in bar," Mel explains, kicking a stone hard enough to watch it fly out of the light. "For the ones who can't."

This response conjures a frown. Rachel specifically remembers this very woman getting in her way while trying to break up a bar fight.

Okay, yes, she was having fun while breaking it up, but it would have eventually broken up.

She's quite sure of it.

"That's right. You're Security."

Mel didn't see it that way. She saw two metas having fun in a fight, not breaking it up. She does enough of both to knwo the difference.

"Yep. That's me."

Rachel wouldn't know why the two would have to be separate.

At the cheerful confirmation, Rachel frowns a little.

At some point, she knows, she'll have to tell Mel what she's capable of. Getting surprised in the Labyrinth is not a whole lot of fun, she's found.

And she will.

Soon.

Mel is used to being surprised, though. It makes life interesting.

She's striding along, with a confidence that's mostly real, partly bravado, while keeping an eye on the nature of the tunnel. When the stone sides start being more evenly cut, nearly polished, her posture straightens, but her pace doesn't change.

The striding, what with knowing next to nothing of Mel other than that she's annoying and walks into situations blindly, is really kind of irritating to Rachel.

When her posture straightens, Rachel's pace actually does slow, just slightly. Enough so to look around.

She does not need to keep up just because Mel is blindly plowing forward. She does not.

But it's odd to see the tunnels change before they've even found a symbol. Surely that part of the Labyrinth wasn't flexible?

Probably not. Mel's never been in here before so she doesn't know.

When Rachel slows, she looks over her shoulder just to check on her. She's assuming that the girl can hndle herself, after just coming in and taking her clothes off for what Mel guesses is a magic trick of some sort.

Magic is debatable. Mostly, she's slowed to look around. The rough cave-like walls turning into more of a passageway, until what they're standing in could be the halls of a castle, rather than the cave they'd found in Milliways' woods.

Rachel is still looking up, studying the slow bleed of rough wall to smooth stone when Mel glances back. She hasn't stopped, still moving forward.

But also waiting.

It hadn't taken long, the last time she'd found herself here. Nothing's jumped out just yet, though.

It's Mel who hers it first - very low rumbling ahead of them in the tunnel.

A very quiet rumbling in fact, like a very small do growling.

Which as it turns out, is coming from a very small dog growling. Small with long hair the colour of Rachel's.

Still, Mel stands about ten feet away from it, and frowns.

"What is that?"

Dogs shouldn't be that ugly.