anywhere but where i am — vin & roe

The last option is the roof. Trying to get into the vents was a bust. There's too much security on the ground floor. There's only a brief hour every evening where his silly little personnel gives him that before-bed privacy. He's supposed to be brushing his teeth and shit, washing his hair, or whatever it is people with regular access to these fancy perfumed soaps do. Instead, Roe leaves the water running and convinces Marik to make a bit of noise, and then he slips out from the ensuite and hustles his way from the Twelfth floor to the roof.

Easy peasy?

He flings the fire door open and goes for that first breath of fresh air and then immediately stumbles back against the frame. There's noise. There's fucking people up here. And tech. Screens as wide as his wingspan. Even that gentle staticky sound of the forcefield is lost under the murmur of technicians and people milling about. Someone in uniform brushes by him. He might scream, actually.

"You here for the sim?"

"The wha-"

Too late, they're already moving. There's a hand on Roe's shoulder, guiding him into a shimmery sort of box, radiant and alien-like, "Hold on- I'm-"

The walls waver like a mirage. Roe spins around to slap the hands off of him and get the fuck out, but then everything goes dark and boundless. He stares into the giantness of the nothing and very quickly, very suddenly, feels his heart drop. Water starts to fill his shoes. It climbs up to his ankles and then to his knees, cold, it feels like root rot - they're drowning him, "HEY!!"

Grey yawns above, tepidness spilling into the sky like the belly of a flayed fish.

"What-" He breathes, incomprehensible.

What the hell.

All he can hear is the whistle in his own ears. He glances down and sees himself in murky reflection. The long stem grass brushes against his wrist. The panic of it all tastes like mud.

Something in the corner of his eye then, something touching, he jumps out of his skin -"SHIT-" and then steps back in the muck, tripping slow through the drag of the water. It sloshes up against his shoulders when he goes down. His hands sink into the soft bed to catch himself, fingers curling in the peat.

The figure's still there, pale against the weak light. Wraith-like.

"Fuck." Roe spits again, full of feeling, "Spooky little shit - don't do that."

He has to tilt his head to look up at them from the water, squinting, "What're you supposed to be? A ghost? Zombie? Personification of my greatest fear?"

The once-over is derivative.

"Not quite spider-y enough for that one, pal."

"Vin."

"Vin."

It takes a minute.

"You're that cult kid."

They get closer, glowing murkily, silhouette like the reflection of lamplight on a pond surface. Roe grimaces at the water pooled around him. It feels real, despite the fact that it's not. His legs are wet and cold and the wind gnaws at him like a feral thing.

It's not supposed to be real. Somehow it is.

"And what are you supposed to be? A mutt?"

The moment breaks. Roe scoffs.

"That'd probably make it easier on both of us. I could just eat you and be done with this."

He takes Vin's hand, simply because when he tries to move on his own his foot slips against the slickness of the mud and the fumble is nearly impossible to hide. He's barely settled before Vin is leaning again, posture curling, voice half-lost under the howl of the wind.

It sounds like the world's worst nursery rhyme.

"You're creepy as hell, you know that?"

It's just his luck that he gets stuck in here with the world's freakiest little freak. Roe can feel the eyes on the his back, watching, making his skin crawl. He can feel them on his face too. Unsettling. The landscape is open, but it's claustrophobic. He glances at Vin. To the sky.

"I'm, uh-" He points to the side, a random direction, "I'm gonna try going that way."