psychoshenanigans | GRATIA // PSL

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GRATIA // PSL

So, here's what Irahl knows.

He's alone in a dark, cold cave. He has most, if not all, of his gear. No one is guarding his location. As he heads away from the spot where he came to consciousness, no one tries to stop him, and no one gets in his way. The few people he finds down there seem human, and not about to approach the nearly-seven-foot man that comes stalking out of the lower tunnels. Honestly, everyone here seems a surprised and a little astonished about his... Entire scene.

There is a way up. It's a maze of twisting corridors and confusing passageways, half of which feel too small for him. It's bigger and bigger groups of people, some of which scatter like schools of fish, and some of which have to be pushed through to get anywhere. It's climbing up into streets lit with dingy lights, graffiti-covered hallways, warehouses, weird holes in stone walls that may or may not be windows. It's alarm bells, it's people yelling at each other down the street. It's just an absurd number of stairs. A couple of people make an attempt to stop him somewhere, and it goes poorly for them.

Elsewhere, events are being set in motion where Irahl cannot see. But he's on his way out.

Eventually, more people try to stop him. At the end of another long stretch of Underground city, a group of official-looking folks are putting a real effort into blocking off the obvious exit, and some of them have weapons.

Down a side alley, into another tunnel, and then the space opens up into a... Plaza, of some sort? The floor is made of stone. The buildings surrounding it are made of stone and are hard to distinguish from one another. At at least the ceiling (also made of stone) is a lot higher than before. Cavernous. There's some kind of sculpture in the middle of it, some impressive feat of geometric stonework that gives the illusion of defying gravity despite weighing literal tons.

This is where someone finally catches him. Sounds have been echoing unhelpfully down every passageway, making it hard to tell if people are coming or going - but this series of quick footsteps comes from an upward direction before someone hits the ground about five feet in front of Irahl.

His clothes are different. His hair is better-kept. Maybe if the situation wasn't quite so tense, there'd be time to see the ways in which his face is different, the way his eyes don't have quite as vicious and sharp a gleam as they used to. But whatever Irahl can take in of him, there is Robin, having hopped down from a rooftop to put himself between him and the exit again.

"...Holy shit."

Kind of weird that he looks absolutely shocked to see the person in front of him, though.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Now, here's how things have been going from Robin's perspective.

Robin is pretty sure that Vincent took a quick trip to the Drift Fleet. They haven't talked about it much, it didn't sound quite how he remembers, and Robin hasn't explained much more than the very basics to commiserate with his friend when the guy woke up in a fucking delirious panic one morning. But it did happen and Robin has secretly been rattled about it ever since.

But that had been three months ago. Today, he and Vincent had been in the police department, begrudgingly filling out paperwork related to a certain incident involving him and a foreign dignitary being publicly indecent in the Archive. He didn't want to go. Vincent made him. He needs his license back. Anyway, he was about to give a statement when they overheard one of the officers telling their coworker that there's trouble moving from the Forth Level to the Third--some seven-foot-tall guy with a big gun throwing Guards around, trying to leave the lower levels in a real hurry.

Of course everyone nearby looked at Vincent, since he's the notoriously seven-foot-tall guy in town, but Vincent stood up in a hurry and booked it out of the room. After a long pause and a quick apology to the administrator, Robin hustled out after him, tried to ask him what's going on. Vincent just told him to "run ahead and catch him" and "don't let him leave 'til I get there".

He said it with such insistence that Robin couldn't not move with an instilled sense of urgency towards something he didn't even understand. He'd kind of been expecting to find Seth here, honestly, because that at least made sense. But this?

There's... Nothing. There's just... Nothing, no clever quips, no bewildered questions, no paranoid calculations. His brain just stops working as he stares into the eyes of someone he was foolishly sure he would never see again. Especially not here. Especially not now.

He doesn't move. He doesn't back up, doesn't crouch, doesn't raise his hands in surrender. He just stares as the other man draws a side-arm on him.

What the fuck is happening to this City? Is this a dream? Did he fucking die or something?

The fact that Robin doesn't move a muscle is probably what saves him, ultimately. Irahl's instincts of Flight and Fight are both currently cranked up in high-octane overdrive, but Robin doesn't move in a way that tags himself as either predator or prey in that instant. So, that only leaves Freeze.

It buys Robin the second needed for even a single coherent thought to enter Irahl's mind, for the first time since he'd woken up in the bottom of this hole. He's still just as sure as he was a moment ago that Robin is here to drag him back into a cage, but he hasn't done so yet, which might mean nothing in the long-run, but Irahl is lost here and Robin is the only glimmer of familiarity he has found. He could shoot that glimmer in the head, but then he would be left with zero options and a much bigger mess.

So, if Robin needs one more jolt of reality to confirm the specter that he's seeing, he hears what is unmistakably Irahl's voice and all of the absolutely dire coldness that it is capable of holding.

"I'm leaving."

It is stated as unwavering fact. His tone leaves no room for negotiation. Robin has one chance to either help or get out of the way, because Irahl is heading up, whether with, without, or through him.

It's like hearing the start of an old favorite song after forgetting about it for decades. Irahl's voice hits memories and half-buried feelings before it hits conscious thought, and he feels a shiver run down his spine. Robin probably would have blundered into a panic of his own if the words hadn't been so direct and clear.

"Okay." Not off to the best start, but at least Robin's not fighting him. "Yeah."

Boy, actually, now that he's sort of thinking and saying words, a couple of things filter through his scrambled mental state. The first is that he's pretty sure the Police Guard are on their way, which is bad. The second is that he's supposed to keep him from leaving, according to Vincent, which is also bad. And more confusing?

But the first one--he can do something with that. He finally looks at something other than Irahl, eyes darting around the central square until he sees what he thinks is a viable way out of this mess.

"Up," he says, which is still not a great explanation, "...That way, onto the roof."

He points. There's a thin staircase on the exterior of some kind of a duplex? It leads to a second-story door, but the edge of is roof is low and flat enough that someone of Irahl's height could easily grab on and pull himself up.

As some more shouting voices and footsteps come echoing up the tunnel Irahl had come through, Robin decides it's actually a great time for both of them to be leaving, and bolts off to go make the climb himself.

They both set into motion at about the same moment, then. Irahl probably begins moving before Robin--as he's moving before he has even fully processed the scene before him--but Robin is smaller and quicker and knows the territory. He'll probably get there first.

But wherever Robin is or isn't has no bearing on what Irahl is doing. A route of escape has been drawn for him and he bolts for it without a second thought.

The steps are cleared four at a time, and he desperately vaults himself and all of his extremely heavy gear up onto someone's roof in a matter of moments. He can only hope that the occupants are not currently home, because there's no way that they're not going to hear something like that landing above their heads.

As soon as he's up, he either looks for the next highest thing to climb, or for a place to hide--even if that means just lying flat out on the roof and letting his city-ruins-camouflage cloak do the work. Whatever will either get him away from danger, or keep him safe until danger has gone chasing his shadow somewhere else.

Robin clambers onto the roof mere moments before Irahl hauls himself up. The rooftops here are a bit of a mess, hard to make out what's even happening, but Robin points at a structure around the same time that Irahl notices it.

"Tower, scale the side. Head for the window."

The structure in front of them hardly deserves to be called a "tower," but at the far end of the rooftops, there is a pile of tarp-covered metal crates pressed against the base of a wide, stone pillar jutting out from the wall. Rough, rung-like handles have been carved into the side of this pillar, leading upwards. Following these handles all the way up would probably take them to another roof or walkway, but Robin is pointing to a large hole, about twenty feet above them, in an adjacent wall. This hole seems reachable if they jump to it from around two-thirds of the way up the pillar.

Robin knows that on the other side is another hallway, lined with windows looking down into this very plaza, but it should be out of the way enough to at least hunker down and buy him a few seconds to think.

To the sniper's credit, Robin is having a very hard time keeping any coherent thoughts going himself. It's hard not to feel like he's somehow slipped somewhere else, like he's back in different tunnels, running from different monsters. Hard not to want to bolt and hide, and he's not even the one who'll be in trouble if they catch him.

Irahl is also feeling a little displaced in space and time, and that's not even counting finding himself trapped in tunnels. It has been a very, very long time since he has run through a city maze away from something. It's distracting, feeling like you've lost track of how many rungs backward in your own memory you've slipped.

He almost doesn't make the jump.

As disoriented as he is, Irahl has misplaced the most important memory of all, which is of the last thing that he actually remembers. It isn't until he has hauled himself partway up some stone rungs and leaped toward a hole in a wall that he recalls exactly what he'd been doing right before opening his eyes here. He isn't geared up from having been in the middle of work. He's geared up from having been walking home from it, carrying all of his stuff. So, he's significantly more weighed down than he likes to be for leaping around in city ruins.

He drops faster than he'd accounted for. A bag of gear under his cloak slings his weight a little to one side, causing him to hit the edge of the "window" with his shoulder instead of jumping cleanly through it, and then he grunts as the weight of a six-foot-long rifle on his back hits him.

There is a strained growl and a little more scrabbling than he'd like as he gets a better grip on the edge of the window, but he manages to angle his body through. As soon as he's safe, he collapses off to one side, out of view.

From there, he can pant for breath through his mask and try to hear anything around the roar of adrenaline.

Boy, that's painful to watch for a couple of reasons, one of them being that he was hoping this would be a way to make less noise, not more. Halfway up the rungs, Robin can feel figures stirring all around them. The yelling is drawing attention. He climbs the rest of the way, pushes off the wall, and vaults himself over the lip of the window.

Thank the Gods in all their Kingdoms that there's nobody in the hallway. He scrambles low to the ground and gets his back to the wall across from the window. He watches the window like he half-expects someone to come vaulting in after them.

Honestly, his plan so far is pretty shitty. It won't take long for the guards to figure out they ran to the rooftops. There's no way to say how many people saw or heard them clambering in here. If there had been someone in this hallway, they would have been doubly-fucked. If he could think of a distraction that didn't involve time or manslaughter, he'd throw them out there, but... Right now, all he's really bought them is the statistical likelihood that to find them, folks will have to take the long way around.

He wants to slow down, but he can't. He breathes in, he runs both hands back through the sides of his hair. He accidentally smears some blood on his temple, because he's forgotten one of his palms is cut open. He wants to ask Irahl why he's here, how he got here, what he remembers (did he miss him) how long it's been for him (are they enemies) but he feels like if he looks at him he's just going to collapse.

"Fuck," he says, summing up his entire state of being before he starts to talk through his own thoughts, "Can't leave through the main exit, too many people. Everyone will see you. You're not licensed."

Well, he's... Pretty sure he's not licensed. He probably would have heard before now if a huge guy with a giant gun showed up at the Department of Licensing to get certified. He'd be the talk of the town.

"There's... Another way up, cuts out to the forest. We just have to get across this level and take the ladder up. Through the Petrified City."

That's... That's perfect, the Petrified City. That might work, actually. Trying not to be seen on this level is no worse than trying not to be seen on the Second or First, but more importantly, Vincent knows that area like the back of his hand. He'll be able to find them there. Maybe he can intercept them, distract Irahl, and give Robin enough room to steer this in a new direction.

Because right now, he has no choice. He has to let Irahl upstairs. He cannot keep him prisoner in a hole under the ground a second time.

He gets to his feet, takes a couple of steps down the hall.

"C'mon. Try not to look like you're in a hurry."

Inside Irahl's mind are a million thoughts that individually make sense, but fit together as well as broken bones.

Licensed. Of course he's licensed; though, what would that even matter down here? His only guess is it maybe being slang for some stupid underkingdom thing, but then the forest is mentioned and that sends his compass spinning wildly, trying to imagine where in the city he could be. This pours straight into the feedback loop of why is he here, how did he get here, why is Robin here--why is he helping?

Normally, he doesn't really notice the buzz of human throngs, but the fact that he is beginning to sense the sheer number of them in every conceivable direction is getting into his head. The walls are sliding closer.

So, up he goes. He climbs to his feet. Need to keep moving.

He pulls off his mask as he follows after Robin--both to seem even slightly less menacing for anyone who might glance at his face, and to give himself a little more psychological room to breathe.

Edited (look, smalltags are just a reflex now ok) 2024-07-16 19:51 (UTC)

Great, they're going. They're moving. If the two of them keep calm and try not to be completely menacing, maybe they'll just look like two normal mercenaries out on a stroll.

Gods, they're such a fucking eyesore. Everyone's going to notice Irahl by his height alone, and Robin for once regrets making his human form so singularly recognizable. Doesn't help that he's openly bleeding. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem if the red didn't stand out so starkly against the white.

But he gets them going. Soon they're going down another flight of stairs. They'll need to cross quite a bit of cave to get to where they're going. Unfortunately, that also means that Robin has quite a bit of time to get to thinking, which means his hesitance to try talking to Irahl is eventually eclipsed by his need to feel like he has any idea what's going on here.

He can't believe this is the second time he's going to have this conversation.

"How long have you been down here?"

He doesn't bother sounding casual or putting formalities in front of the question. Tek may have been able to bluff his way through a charming conversation, but he doesn't remember Irahl being quite so socially inclined. He probably wouldn't appreciate the cover anyway.

Meanwhile, halfway across the level, Vincent is hauling ass down the city streets, which will probably end up causing some confusion among the Guard in and of itself. He's kind of stuck taking the passages he knows he'll fit through, and he isn't sure he's still following the trail.

On a busy promenade, he skids to a stop outside a food cart. The people standing around and waiting for their mudfish wraps look startled as he cuts in and ducks under the awning to get the attention of the person running the cart.

"Carsha, Carsha--" He says, urgently, "Did a guy come through here, seven feet tall? Headin' upstairs?"

Carsha, as they're named (a lovely person, dark curly hair, round face, short stature), is caught off-guard partway through frying up some fish. They answer with some hesitation, "No...? No one but you, hon."

Thankfully, a young woman four spots back in line pipes up, sensing some emergency here, "You looking for a tall guy? There were some people yelling about a guy just a few blocks back...!"

"Really?" Vincent turns, "Where?"

"That way, back towards Tallrock Plaza!" She points, but Vincent can't see. It doesn't matter. He breaks into a relieved and grateful smile.

"Amazing-- Thank you!"

And he books it away again, dodging around a group of teenagers just in time to not run them over on the way.

"You don't know?"

Yeah, the only way in which Irahl knows how to be socially-acceptable is by keeping his mouth shut, and Robin ruins that by asking him a question. So, no one within earshot would miss the icy, accusatory tone in Irahl's response. Even the briefest of passerby immediately knows that the big guy is not happy, and the smaller guy seems to be the reason why.

Irahl may be confused about nearly every aspect about his current situation, but the one thing he knows for sure is that Robin is somehow to blame for it. It would be wild for him not to assume this to be the case, honestly. Not only had Robin been the whole reason that Irahl had found himself waking up inexplicably underground the last time, the guy did kind of drop down dramatically right in front of him earlier here. So, Robin is going to have to make a very strong case if he wants to fight for his innocence.

In the meantime, Irahl is putting all of his skills of stoicism to work, and it still only gets as far as granting him all the nonchalance and poise of a half-feral dog being dragged through a shopping center.

Robin replies a little too fast, a little too irritated.

"No, I don't know."

Oh, boy. He suddenly remembers how this goes. He takes a deep breath to try and reign this in, though at least now he supposes that they kind of look like two mercenaries seconds from having an argument, which is a little more convincing.

For a moment, he considers saying nothing. Someone walking past them near a fork in the tunnel is a convenient excuse for him to gather his thoughts before he tries again with a little more restraint.

"I'm trying to figure it out. I'm just as surprised to see you as I'm sure you are to see me."

Even if it's mostly being used as a strategic excuse, at least one of the pair of them is concerned at all with what is and isn't being said around other people. Irahl's list of concerns is currently too crowded for something silly like that.

For instance, it's almost believable that he intentionally waits an extra second or two for the next person to cross their path before he replies.

"Sure if you ask ask around, one of your friends will know."

Robin continues to be guilty until proven innocent.

Ah, instant boiling rage. That's fun. That's not how he thought he'd react.

Through some sheer force of willpower (perhaps a sign that he has matured, in some way, however pitiful), he doesn't act on it. He scowls, he sighs, he fidgets irritably with the fingers of his not-bleeding hand, but he doesn't say a damn thing.

He can't even begin to think through how Irahl must be feeling right now, because he doesn't know anything about when and where Irahl came from, and he probably won't answer a single question Robin has about any of it. It was always like pulling teeth with this guy--something he wishes he had remembered earlier.

So he shuts his mouth to keep from rattling into some kind of stupid argument. Irahl may have been the center of his universe, once, but he forgot he was also one of the biggest pains-in-the-ass he'd ever met.

They're going to walk in silence for a while.

(Nevermind, this isn't mature. It's him throwing a fit.)

Edited (deep sigh) 2024-07-17 03:23 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, Irahl is thankful when Robin lets the quiet settle. He can keep venting the overflow of anxiety and anger through barbed comments, but it isn't actually making him feel any better, and he isn't figuring anything out in the process. He knows very well that dealing with the surprise of seeing Robin again is going to be a whole thing, especially after experiencing months of freedom, but he is not about to slow down long enough to expend any mental or emotional labor right now.

If he reaches the surface alive, then he can consider having a real conversation. Until then, next to nothing is going distract him until he either makes it out or is taken down while trying.

Maybe the silence will be good for the both of them. Robin, at the very least, will have plenty of time to think about all the ways in which Irahl being here is very, very, very bad for everyone and everything he likes.

After a while, they begin to pass through old chambers and the crumbling shells of buildings. Passing through what looks suspiciously like the back half of an old office floor, Robin leads him down a ramp that is basically just the other half of the office floor and onto something that looks uncannily like a real city street... Just underground.

One thing going right for them is that it's a weird part of the day, maybe mid-afternoon. A lot of people are working, the bars aren't busy yet... The street is fairly empty, save for a pedestrian or two on their way to somewhere else.

We rejoin Vincent, now leaning with one arm against the corner of a half-dilapidated brick building, trying to catch his breath before he passes out.

He's really not a runner. He's sweaty, he's exhausted, he feels a little like throwing up... It's the kind of thing he tries to avoid under all but the most dire of circumstances.

But that's why he's running. He knows it's not his brother. It could be a freak coincidence, yeah, maybe the other big guy in town finally snapped and is running amok in the wrong direction... But he can't help shake the feeling that if Irahl is down here, and Vincent misses him, he's never going to see him again.

He tries not to question these things much anymore. He straightens up with a groan, gets in a couple of deep breaths, and... Sets off again, figuring he's got to run into Robin around here somewhere.

He smells the guy long before he sees him. He thinks he's coming down one of the entry ramps from Third, and calls out to him (slightly out-of-breath) before he can tell whether or not Robin has someone else with him.

"Hey! Didja find him?"

Aside from those couple of moments in which it had been unavoidable, Irahl has not stopped moving. Every cell in his body is set on go, go, go with that brand of unbreakable focus that makes him so good at his job and so bad at many other things.

Which is why it may strike Robin as a little strange when Irahl suddenly stops dead in his tracks. If Robin happens to glance over, he'll catch an expression that he has absolutely never seen on the sniper's face before, and probably would have doubted as even being possible. However surprised that he'd seemed at suddenly finding Robin dropping in on him earlier, it doesn't compare to the clear and unguarded shock on his face now.

Three months is apparently long enough for hope to die. Irahl feels like he's hearing a ghost.

Shock quickly turns into hesitance--his breath is held tightly around it--and two long-legged strides carry him past where he'd been following at Robin's elbow as if he really needs to step out around him in order to see the giant at the bottom of the ramp.

In the span of those two steps, the aggression is gone, his march has stalled. As frigid and unwavering as Irahl's first words to Robin had been, what his other friend first hears from him sounds nothing but strained.

"...Vincent?"

The recognition is immediately apparent on his face. He'd know that voice anywhere.

Robin may look a little different from the last time Irahl saw him, but Vincent hasn't changed a bit. He's wearing practically the same threadbare shirt, under the same massive jacket, and he's still in need of a haircut. His gaze is still unfocused and pointed in the wrong direction. He's got a big case strapped to his back, but otherwise he could have come here straight from the Eclipse.

"Irahl!?"

The surprised laugh this kicks out of him hasn't changed either. With a huge grin, he forgets all about his exhaustion and runs to go catch his friend in the biggest hug he can manage.

He never gave up looking. He'd thought about him almost every day. Seth's always getting on his case for being too stubborn, but he probably would have kept looking until the day he died.

"The fuck are you doin' down here, man!?" He laughs this into his shoulder, absolutely astonished and dizzy with relief to have found him again.

At the top of the ramp, Robin says nothing, because his reality is being shattered for the second time today.

Irahl doesn't run, but he does move forward to meet his friend on the ramp. He lets himself be caught in a hug. He hugs him back.

For the moment, he doesn't look like he's gunning for escape. Vincent can briefly feel claws dig into the fabric of his coat, and the breath that seethes out of Irahl makes it seem as though this is what he'd been looking for, instead of the surface.

It takes him a couple seconds to answer. He hadn't been planning on letting his guard slip until he was out in open air again, for fear that one little crack would throw off the momentum needed to escape. But Vincent ruins all of that. Vincent can practically feel the anxiety radiating out of the sniper through the gaps in his metaphorical armor.

"I don't know--" This, he says into Vincent's shoulder, tinged with audible distress and frustration before he finally realizes that his guard is beginning to crumble, and he pulls back.

He doesn't move back very far, barely half a step, but he at least has a little room to speak and pulls his tone together. Upset but not distraught--at least to most outside observers.

"I don't remember how I got down here."

"What?"

Vincent tilts his head to listen very carefully to Irahl as the two of them separate. He's spent the better part of the last month being worried that something bad happened to him, once Seth failed to locate him in the Capitol... He's been worried about everything from him getting caught and shoved in a lab somewhere to him maybe still being up in space-jail, alone on a ship and losing his mind.

So he's already primed for trouble, he just didn't think it would be this confusing. He grips Irahl's shoulder, hesitant to let the guy out of his reach for even a second.

"That's... Fuckin' weird, man, but I hear you. You hurt or anythin'?"

From the top of the ramp, Robin finally says something, sounding absolutely bewildered: "You guys know each other!?"

Having an anchor again is making him dizzy with relief. It isn't something he'd ever thought he needed, but after being without anything solid to hold him down for months, he's latching on now that he's found it again. He doesn't attempt to dislodge Vincent's hand on his shoulder, even when he half-turns back toward Robin.

There had been a pause after Vincent's question where Irahl did have to stop and think about whether or not he felt injured, but Robin's question jars him.

"You two know each other?" Irahl's question is slightly less bewildered than Robin's, since he doesn't have quite the same scope of disreality happening in his brain, but it's still pretty damn confused.

Robin is low-key spiraling. His exes are friends and he had no idea. He'd hoped that Vincent would be a distraction, but this is not the kind of distraction he ever thought he'd have to deal with.

He comes a few steps closer down the ramp, vaguely aware that people are watching them. Mostly on account of all the hugging and yelling going on, but if they aren't careful, they're probably going to draw a crowd...

Unfortunately, Robin is busy looking with looking dumbfounded and furiously searching his mental red-string-board theories for any idea how the fuck these two have already met if they're from two completely different worlds. Around the same time that an idea finally dawns on him, Vincent helpfully fills them both in.

Because Vincent, unlike the other two, doesn't think it's that weird that Irahl and Robin are already acquainted, because Robin knows tons of people he shouldn't.

"Yeah, Robin, this is my friend from, uh..." Vincent hesitates a moment, because he forgot what Robin called it and 'space-jail' isn't really a term he shared once he got back. He gestures vaguely between them, "...You know, that place. Irahl, this is that shitty roommate I told you about."

He jabs his thumb at Robin with the hand that isn't currently anchored to Irahl's shoulder. Sweet Vincent still thinks this is a funny coincidence. Poor, sweet Vincent.

There is an odd, hanging pause between Irahl disentangling himself from his own mental drama long enough to process what Vincent is saying, play it back through his head a couple of times, and then turn again to send a rather cryptic look over toward Robin.

"...Is he."

It's cryptic in that it's a bit loaded, and it's loaded with so many different things that it's too much to convey briefly.

Robin knows what most of those facets are, and this fact is more or less what that look is all about. Maybe Irahl is finally becoming aware of their surroundings again, because there are many things that he could say right there, in that moment, but he chooses not to. Either that, or he's morbidly curious about how Robin would summarize to Vincent how they know each other, if he would even say anything at all.

Either way, Irahl only replies with a detached sort of, "...Funny."

Vincent can't see the look directed at Robin, but he can pick up on the tone just fine.

"...Why," His smile fades, "How do you guys know each other?"

Robin, on the other hand, quails visibly.

It's funny, after everything that happened with Nel back on the Fleet, he'd finally realized that sometimes he liked having friends, and that maybe he should cool it with constantly doing destructive, traumatic, manipulative things behind their backs whenever he was feeling kind of sad (or bored, or spiteful). And to his credit, one he'd found himself in Skeleton City again, he'd did a decent job of easing off the gas on the dozens of things he'd previously been trying to tie his own noose with.

But... Oh man, he forgot about just how much shit he'd been up to down there. And Irahl knows all of it, and Vincent... Knows absolutely none of it, and Irahl knows that Vincent knows none of it, and Robin knows that Irahl is probably figuring out that he could make Robin's life really uncomfortable with a few choice words right now.

"We should go," Robin insists, staring back at Irahl with the look of a kid who knows they're grounded as soon as they get home, "People are watching."

"Oh, shit... Think my place is good?" Vincent asks Robin, hesitant to drop the topic but also finally realizing just how in-public they are. Then to Irahl, explaining, "It's right near here."

Irahl had been set on the-surface-or-nothing. Bringing his focus back to the situation at hand, if anything, is a good distraction tactic on Robin's part, as the sniper is reminded of what had been his goal only minutes before. There's a moment of his attention visibly shifting outward and upward as he considers arguing for their original plan. Something about a way up from here that opens into the forest?

But, his gaze ultimately drifts back down and settles on Vincent. Irahl still has a hand resting on his shoulder.

He notably doesn't say a thing. His attention just completes the circle and looks back to Robin, seemingly deferring to his judgement call on what happens next.

Robin glances at Vincent, then back at Irahl.

He could conceivably get everyone up to the surface. He could probably get the trees to leave Vincent alone. Who knows what Irahl would do when he's up there. Who knows if he'd ever want to come back down here again.

"I think..." He chooses his words very carefully to answer Vincent, "We're trying to head Up-Top, but if you're coming with, I'd rather we have a plan."

"Fuck yeah I'm comin' with." No hesitation from Vincent there, he finally moves his hand, but it's just so he can pat his friend on the shoulder a couple of times. "Didn't run halfway 'cross fuckin' Third just to split now."

"Then let's take a couple hours... Head to Vincent's, let the Guard cool down, and head up once we know what we're going to do up there."

Robin is working to rebuild some semblance of self-control here. He scrubs irritably at his scalp, the cut on his hand having healed up on its own at some point now that he doesn't need to leave a trail.

Vincent turns his attention back to Irahl, and can't help but break into another smile.

"Shit, man. Can't believe you're here..."

He pats Irahl's shoulder one more time, his hand lingering there for a moment or two as he's nearly overcome with relief again, before he finally lets his friend have his space back. He'll take the first few steps down the block in the direction of his apartment.

"I know it ain't outside, but I got a pretty good couch..."

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