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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Rachel follows her gaze and wrinkles her nose at the sludge. "Yeah, that happens," she says, going for nonchalant.

Not as shaky as she feels, looking at it, remembering being stuck in it. She's imagining the equivalent of a blueberry in a block of jello.

She rubs at another blob on Mel's shoulder, curious about the rubbery texture - and the little creature burbles happily and falls off, squishing on the ground.

Mel turns her head, and looks at the thing on the ground. Then up at Rachel.

"...

"What did you just do? I've been pulling at these for ages."

Rachel shrugs back, unphased by her apparent expertise in sucker-creatures. "I just rubbed it a little. Feels more like a dolphin than a jellyfish."

Mel glances at her, weighing the need to remark on the fact that she knows what dolphins and jellyfish feel like, against the fact that she can turn into at least two different types of animals so hey, maybe she can do dolphins and jellyfish too.

(Are jellyfish animals? Mel is pretty certain they're not plants.)

After further pondering of whether to remark Rachel's apparent magic touch with dolphin sucker things, Mel again decides against words and instead chooses to give it a go herself.

Rub aaaand plop. Another comes off.

She'll be doing that with the others, then.

Easier than tearing off her skin.

Rachel's a little hesitant to pick one up, seeing the marks left on Mel's skin, but she'll rub some of the others with a fingertip to get them to release.

squeegee-squeegee

One of the more weirdly entertaining moments in the labyrinth.

(Rachel has never been a jellyfish, but she could potentially be. If touching one ever seemed like a good idea.)

The last one comes off, and Mel holds it up to squint at it, then look down at the five red marks it left on her skin.

"I've got those all over, haven't I?"

Hooray for Slayer healing, though! The first few are already fading.

"Yup. Like freckle chicken pox."

She tilts her head, watching them fade, then frowns at the way Mel just picked one of the little things up like that. And if Mel's going to do it, that means Rachel can, too.

Pick it up and watch it wave its little tentacles.

"...I'd feel bad about squishing one if it hadn't been trying to eat me."

Mel shrugs.

"Not really got time to feel bad about squishing everything that tries to eat me."

Standing with the little monster waving its tentacles in her hand, she looks back to find the cover she came up through - and comes up blank.

"Hope they don't get all dried up outside of sewers, though."

"Assuming they're real at all."

It's the Labyrinth, multiple changing worlds with every door passed and no discernible pattern.

And Rachel struggles with how to define reality on her normal days.

Climbing to her feet, she looks around the little room, all round stone. A few feet away is a low wooden table, round with four rough legs. There are a few items on top, not immediately recognizable.

So.

She'll just wander over and see what they are.

"Start thinking like that and you'll start wondering it I'm real," Mel says. "And I'll hafta hit you to prove it and we'll get nowhere."

She's oh-so-cheerful with this. Abandoning pink sucker dude to his friends, she follows Rachel over to the table.

"I'm assuming you are," Rachel says, casual.

Not quiet, not to herself. But without something else to focus on, she may have.

Whether or not something is real doesn't matter nearly as much as the question Do I have to deal with it?

Over by the table, there is not much. A very tiny bottle and a very tiny cookie. There are tags on each of them.

"Oh."

Her voice is dark and wary.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"Oh hey," says Mel, "a classic lit reference that even I get."

She scoops the bottle up in her hand and shakes the liquid inside it by her ear, listening to it slosh. Then she grabs the cookie in her other hand.

Rachel just eyes her for a moment.

And then starts looking for a tiny door.

Because if there is a tiny way out of here, Mel is not allowed to eat the keys.

...not all of them.

"Wait wait, there it is," Rachel snaps, pointing to the small round door in the small round room near the small round table - with the small round knob. "Don't eat all of those or I won't be able t-"

"Oh."

"Duh."

"Yeah, go ahead, eat 'em."

Mel eyes the things in her hand, and then eyes the door, and for a few seconds wonders if she really has to, because they would make great souvenirs.

Then, she looks to Rachel, looking lost.

"You remember which one is which?"

"...um."

Rachel frowns. It's been a while, but the movie was a constant favorite for her youngest sister. If only she'd paid better attention to it.

"...I think it's the bottle. But just try a little, to make sure."

"Wasn't planning on snarfing it," Mel informs her.

She puts the cookie in her pocket, and as an after thought, puts the tiny little key that was on the table in there as well.

Then she changes her mind and takes the key out and drops it on the floor. She has no idea what'll happen to her pants.

And she pulls the glass stopper out of the bottle and takes a sip.

"...ew."

There's another nose wrinkle here, if only for the word 'snarf.' Leads to all sorts of grunting, snuffling, pig-like connotations, should she ever see Mel at a meal.

While Mel goes about drinking gross things, Rachel checks the tiny door to see if that's the key is for. Otherwise, they're snagging things they don't really need and carrying them around.

She glances at Mel over her shoulder next. Honestly, she's only pretty sure about the whole liquid-equals-tiny-Mel thing and would really prefer to not be wrong here.

It tastes way too sweet. Like drinking runny cough syrup. Mel wonders if it should be mixed with gin or something.

She licks the sticky off her lips while trying not to think about the weird sensation that feels like her ankles and wrists really want to know what's up with her torso. She loses her balance briefly and stumbles back, now about two feet tall.

And fortunately for everyone watching, her clothes has adjusted accordingly.

"That was the short one," she says.

But she's still too big for the door. One more sip.

"Nice call."

It's the short one 'cause she's not tall, see. Mel is a deductive genius.

Rachel watches this, to be perfectly honest, with some jealousy. This probably isn't all that comfortable for Mel, but it's a lot more attractive than Rachel's smoothest morph.

"How's it feel?"

"Feels like I swallowed a vac and have it stuck on 'suck'," Mel says eloquently. She loses her step again when her feet are pulled up and ends up resting a hand on the floor to steady herself.

"How does your thing feel?"

Rachel started it.

"It doesn't, really."

So there, Mel. Rachel will answer your questions and you can just take it.

She's still watching, too, head tilted curiously. "It just sounds horrible. The only physical part is some serious vertigo on anything that has to shrink first."

"Yeah," Mel says, standing upright again, and eyeing the door to see if she would fit through.

She looks like she might.

And she turns up to look at Giant Rachel, whose ankles are now most of Mel's vision.

"You coming down?"

She's starting to smirk, looking down at her. Small and puny. Even with her scythe and superior skill, Rachel could simply lift her foot and-

Just like-

When it-

She takes a step back.

Or maybe she stumbled.

"Yeah." Small. Almost breathless.

"Yeah, I'm coming."

Small. Small and able to get through the door, preferably able to fight.

Mel sees something happen, and her face softens.

Sort of.

Becomes less hard, anyway. Because she recognised something and... well, Mel would never talk about that stuff out loud.

Instead she turns and tries the door.

Keerrrr-ack

Turns out they didn't need a key.

Go figure.

Small. Not too small. Something pointy, or-

Ooh.

There's some vertigo with this morph. But at least it starts out pretty.

Rachel's hair turns glossy and black, shorter, thicker. Growing in a wave down her back, then spreading over her entire body, over the black clothing she wears. And as she starts to shrink, blue eyes bright, a single white stripe starts at her nose and flows back over her head, down her neck, all the way to her tail.

See, she has a tail now.

And shortly, there is a fat little skunk waddling along behind Mel.