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[oohforeshadowing]

Let me get back to you, darling.

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audio

[reflectatine]

Double Trouble? [ He sounds less dubious than he could, less amused—there's a streak of both, to be sure, but he worked with people answering to Red Scare and Pirate Jenny. ]

I'm Wade. [ His accent's pronounced, has the slow rhythm of a screen door in the wind. ] What're your feelings on the Enclosure?

Re: audio

[oohforeshadowing]

Neutral. You're my minder this month?

[reflectatine]

That's me. [ If he takes issue with the designation, it's not apparent from his tone. In fact, he appreciates it: succinct. No need to ask their feelings on the pairing process. ]

I figured we could meet there to start.

[oohforeshadowing]

Very well. Give me five minutes, darling, I'll meet you at the door.

[And so they will.]

[reflectatine]

Howdy. [ It's faintly wondering. He's too practiced at schooling his expression for outright astonishment, but he doesn't make the quick study of them that he would a human. Eyes, ears, hair, tail—he looks at each in turn, doing his best not to stare. ]

Thank you for being punctual. [ Producing a little silver remote from his pocket, he opens the door. He hasn't been in the Enclosure since before the breach—too many layers of unreality—and once inside takes a moment to adjust. To stand there and let the room settle around him. ]

Set it to whatever you'd like.

[oohforeshadowing]

"Mm."

Their tail flicks thoughtfully.

"The Valley of the Lost. Without its residents, thank you."

The world reforms. They're standing at the bottom of a deep, broad gorge cutting through a reddish desert. Civilisation has been built in piecemeal: hollows and walkways dug out of the valley walls, bridges strung from side to side, rough canvas awnings giving shelter from the beating sun.

Trouble stretches.

"Ah, home sweet home."

[reflectatine]

The shift in scale, the plunge to the bottom of a gorge—though they haven't moved at all—flips his stomach, and Wade looks up, squinting in the newfound sunlight. He breathes out, takes a few steps forward, kicking up dust as he moves. There's precious little awe left in him, but it's there while he takes in the landscape, conscious even of the change in the air.

He bends down to pick up a stone, roll it thoughtfully between his fingers. His attention shifts back to Double Trouble. “Would that make you one of the lost?”

[oohforeshadowing]

"If there's enough of us in one place that you could call it a city, are any of us really lost?" they ask, philosophically. "Really, I think it's just high drama on the part of whoever founded this place."

[reflectatine]

A chipped-away smile at that—more in recognition than amusement. “Show me around?” Wade's not dressed for glaring heat, but he's in jeans and boots. He'll make it a while.

His gaze is drawn back to the rock surrounding them—back, and up and up. He sticks his hands in his pockets, throws a look Trouble's way. “Can you climb that?” he asks, outright wondering.

[oohforeshadowing]

Trouble flicks a glance upward, then back at Wade, before starting to walk.

"Yes, but I use the stairs to be sociable. Why do you ask?"

[reflectatine]

He follows, taking care with where he treads but stealing an occasional glance at the landscape, the weave of bridges through the sheer cliffs. The cacti clinging there. The question stumps him—it gives him something to chew on as they walk, until he arrives at: “Because it's well outside my experience.”

Cool isn't in his vocabulary.

[oohforeshadowing]

Trouble blinks over their shoulder, slowly, with their vertical eyelids.

"Is everyone human where you're from?"

[reflectatine]

“By that,” he says, briefly meeting their eyes before going back to watching where he's walking, “I meant I ain't in the habit of scaling cliffs. But yeah. On Earth sapient life pretty much starts and stops at humanity.”

He continues on in silence, in the wake of Double Trouble's tail. A good twenty minutes might pass before he asks: “Does it bug you? Being cooped up with so many of us?”

[oohforeshadowing]

Trouble has, in the interim, found one of those staircases and goes climbing.

"They're not really a minority back home, darling, I've had a lifetime to get used to you. It's clear enough that the Admiral has his preferences, but no, I wouldn't say it bugs me. Why, do all the freaks and monsters here bug you?"

[reflectatine]

He'll follow suit, though his pace will slacken as they go on, his progress increasingly punctuated by grunts. “Not at present,” he says a little breathlessly, after weighing the question. It's a goad, sure, but—fair enough. “But nobody's done anything particularly monstrous to me.”

Nothing's come close to what he'd felt watching Iris' ship pop into existence on the deck.

[oohforeshadowing]

"I see."

They step out onto a narrow bridge across the canyon. No handrails. If this was a building, they'd be three storeys up.

"This way, Wade-Tillman."

What is a surname.

[reflectatine]

He walks to the lip of the canyon and peers down. Imagines the fall—the momentary weightlessness, the pain. His body dashed on the rock floor. He asks himself if it would be worth it, scrapes the bottom of his intentions and comes up with: it has to be.

Wade steps onto the bridge, arms out for balance. He doesn't correct them—he doesn't have the breath to spare, and his mouth's gone dry besides. His tread is slow but even, his breathing gradually slipping into time with it.

His gaze doesn't dip into the canyon again.

[oohforeshadowing]

Trouble, by contrast, is positively waltzing across the bridge.

"So what did you ask me out to discuss, darling?"

[reflectatine]

He stops—a mistake, maybe, his balance already more precarious. Wipes sweat from his forehead. “I'd planned on taking it slow,” he says dryly, “but—” A gesture their way, carefully contained—as though motioning them through a door. Clearly they have other ideas.

He wobbles to a start again, gradually rediscovering his footing. “Tell me”—a huff, several more steps—“what's the worst thing you've done? In your—in your estimation.”

[oohforeshadowing]

Trouble skips off the bridge and onto the rocky ledge forming a pathway.

"Given the - transitive nature of our relationship, darling, why the curiosity?"

[reflectatine]

“I don't think”—he carries on picking his way over the bridge, Double Trouble a green blur in the corner of his eye—“that has to be the case. Unless you want it to.”

He holds up again, squinting to the end of the bridge. “Are we gonna wind up in the same spot?”

[oohforeshadowing]

"Were you planning on being somewhere else? And I think it's the Admiral's decision, who ends up with the task of shaping me into a productive member of society."

[reflectatine]

“Sure,” he allows—letting that phrasing glide on by for the moment. “Doesn't mean he gets a say in our particular dynamic.”

They're still gonna know each other once the month's out, and it is, in some ways, a small boat.

Wade sets his hands on his hips. An attempt to ease his breathing. “You don't want to answer the question, that's fine. Go ahead and assume I asked why not.”

[oohforeshadowing]

They roll their eyes.

"Maybe you'd care to clarify your question, then, because I do not know which 'same spot' you're referring to."

[reflectatine]

"My prior question." They're probably too far off to see his lips twitch. "About the worst thing you ever did."