theresnodoor | (no subject)

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(no subject)

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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She almost misses the warning - since she almost dropped the scythe, trying to swing it into her grip like that. There's a grunt and a sharp sigh of irritation before she hefts it up again, putting more effort into the run. It's going to be harder, with extra weight.

Mel has acid eating through her skin.

...from caterpillars of all things.

They're too small to notice, moving this fast, but Rachel makes the effort to watch for them, to keep an eye out. On the forest floor, more than anything.

She's barefoot.

Between the rush of wind through the leaves, the call of a bird, the rustle of some animal, there is a soft babbling call.

Rachel may as well have put the brakes on her heels, fast she she suddenly turns to the right.

"This way!" she calls, ducking through the trees. "To the water!"

Mel finally gets it. She looks up - sees water, hears what Rachel is saying, and starts running.

"If something eats me," she says, "kill it."

She's covered in shit and acid, and her hand hurts so bad she can hardly think of anything else.

She dives, hand first, into the river.

Rachel doesn't stop running, fully planning to leap into the water beside her.

There is something horribly, horrifyingly familiar about this, what she is doing. She can't quite put a memory to it, just a feeling. And she's certain she doesn't want more than that.

But running with Mel was a good idea.

There's a squish beneath her foot, and while she loses that breath she'd tried to save in a sudden gasp of pain, she's underwater just a second behind Mel.

Mel kicks herself deep into the middle of the river, touching the ground with her right hand before rocketing up to the surface and a place where she can stand, holding her hand in the current as long as she can stand.

The movement of the water hurts. The breeze above the water hurts. the pressure of her other hand hurts.

But at least it's just injury now. The active eating away appears to have calmed down.

She can see her ligaments.

Mel decides right there not to let Rachel see.

Rachel breaks the surface of the water behind her, sputtering and coughing. Missing that last breath of air she lost in her surprise and growling angrily as she starts to kick after Mel.

It's small, she can feel that. Barely had time to injure her at all.

But oh, if Mel is feeling ten times worse than this, Rachel hopes to never understand more than a tenth.

"How is it?" she calls, treading water with one leg and her arms, letting the other dangle.

Mel pulls the hand closer to her, holding it in the water still, but turning the palm towards her gut.

"I'll live," she says. "Good call on the water."

Rachel nods, using her arms to pull herself closer to Mel. When it's shallow enough to stand, she pulls herself up, hopping a little. But her eyes are on Mel. "We can stop. How bad is it?"

The compliment about water - she heard it. And it was mostly due to high school science class that she knew to try it at all.

"I've had worse."

She's broken her back, in the past. She's been eaten by a snake. She's been impaled and torn and bitten and shot. She's never had her flesh eaten away by acid.

She's not sure if she will avoid scarring. But she'll manage.

"You should do your thing. Get your foot and arm back."

And Mel will take the time to not do anything right now.

Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. But Rachel's pretty sure Mel already knows that.

She hops again, balancing on one foot as she examines her arm. It doesn't always work, morphing, demorphing. Not on the real body. But you know what sucks?

Pain sucks.

Something easy, that doesn't take too long, take too much energy. Who knows how much they have left here?

The hair on her arms and legs grows longer, darker. She begins to shrink, skin turning rougher, more leathery.

But no real skeletal changes.

Chimp isn't an often-used morph, but it's a good one when she's trying to keep her energy.

Mel glances over her shoulder to check her scythe is in place, and then sits, heavily, down in the mud.

She's surrounded by noises and smells and animals that may try to kill her at any moment, but dammit she would like to sit down right now.

"Hey," she says, holding out her good hand. "Bandage."

She's mid-morph, hang on a damn minute.

Okay, second. Two or three of them, she's nearly there.

Then thick, hairy fingers pick at her arm until she has the bandage pinched and held out to Mel.

Mel nods as she takes it off her, rinses the bandage quickly in the water and uses it to bind up her injured hand.

Let's hope Rachel has no blood-borne diseases, this isn't hygienic

"Thanks. Give me a minute and we'll haul ass."

<You've got time.>

Chimps have their place - strength, flexibility, intelligence. But Rachel would rather be herself until she knows what the threat is.

Also, she is blood-borne-disease free, unless Mel is allergic to some of the other DNA swimming around there with Rachel's.

Might be a thought, while she demorphs.

Let's hope not. She can't access that DNA anyway, so it's moot.

This time she watches, because it's a particularly un-disgusting process and because it beats actually thinking about her hand. When Rachel's human enough to be alert for a few seconds, Mel ducks her head under the water and runs her free hand through her hair, shaking off the last piece of sewage.

She's still fully dressed, and her shoes and socks are going to make her life miserable, but she doesn't envy Rachel's barefeet for a second.

Although...

She wonders how Rachel will feel about being carried, and decides probably negatively.

"Right, let's get outa here. I'm not dealing with another one of those."

'Negatively' is a rather mild way of putting it.

When she's human again, sitting in the dirt beside Mel, Rachel cranes to get a look at the underside of her foot.

Healed.

Then her arm, rubbing it with a free hand.

Sore, but visually fine.

"Man, it's so nice when that actually works," Rachel sighs, climbing to her feet.

"Don't it always?"

Mel gets her scythe first, of course. Reflecting that she's got electronics in her pockets that are probably dead now. Including a gun. She'll deal.

"That's skitzed."

"...sometimes."

The information's probably safe with Mel. She doesn't seem the type to use it - or care much, once she has it.

Rachel shrugs and stretches her arms above her head, wincing at the pull in the once-injured bicep. "Can you walk?"

Her legs are fine, Rachel knows that much. It's the combination of acid and sewage that concerns her.

"Yeah," Mel says.

As if her ability to do this reflects on her ability to walk, she flips into a handstand on her good hand, and back again. She's strong and fit, except for her useless left hand and that tiny burn on her shoulder.

It'll heal.

"just don't ask me to play guitar."

"But it would improve the ambiance so much," Rachel drawls.

She watches the rest of that handstand - admiringly - before they start walking again. As they move, she's scanning the ground, the trees.

"Caterpillars, jeez. This is ridiculous."

Mel is moving skittishly, watching the ground with every step, but looking up and around. Avoiding as many trees as possible. Watching every branch she can't help but push out of the way.

Nothing in this damn jungle is going to touch her without her permission.

"Evil should be big," she grumbles, sulkily. "The last caterpillar I fought as the size of a building. You know where you are when something eats you whole."

...you're in a mouth, for the most part.

Predictably: "Yeah, you're in a mouth."

Rachel wrinkles her nose, moving almost but not nearly as carefully as Mel. She has less to worry about, now she knows her morphing is behaving itself.

Or it was that last time. Is two in a row so hard to hope for?

"I used to fight Taxxons. Centipedes taller than me, big jelly bodies, and mouths-"

Rachel rolls her shoulders here. Mostly to hide her shudder.

"-well. It had more to do with the hunger than the mouths, but one kinda goes with the other."

Mel scowls. "Yeah, there's a whole ton of things that I'd get along with just fine if they weren't so hungry."

Lurks, for one.

"Or if they had any concept of what's inappropriate for eating."

"Taxxons will eat anything. Preferably with a heartbeat."

She's not entirely sure why she's talking about it. In the time she's been in Milliways, this is maybe the second time she's ever mentioned the aliens of her world.

Except Mel's hurt and Rachel isn't and it's possible she feels bad about that.

"I know the sort," Mel says. Because she does. There are lots of demons that fit that.

"Wish I didn't."

For that, Rachel can only shrug. After a moment, nod. Giving agreement instead of ignoring the statements. Because it's Mel talking about Mel-things, not pressing for more.

"Happens."