The interior of the elevator shaft, unsurprisingly, didn't feel all that different from the rooms they'd just left. Most of it was poorly lit, like the rest of the space they'd navigated on their way here. While the two of them clung to the sides of the interior wall in near total darkness, only thin shafts of light slicing through the gaps in some of the elevator doors far above were just barely visible.

Henry focused more on the lights above then he did the fall below, faint as they were to make out. While he didn't consider himself much of an acrophobe, even just thinking about a potential free-fall was enough to make memories of the first Witching Hour resurface.

Even now, he could visualize the precise weight of the ice pick in his outstretched hand from that night.

His fingers curled around the edge of the polished steel elevator doors, and the moment passed. Dangling over the edge of the abyss, he moved with painstaking care as he tried to heave them back into place, covering their tracks behind them in preparation for their ascent. One hand and leg braced firmly against the rungs of the ladder, his whole body leaned as far to the side as possible. Out over the void below so that his other arm could grasp the lip of the far door and bring the two shut.

It was not a good angle for him to get leverage from. Strain though he might, the doors refused to budge more than a centimeter at a time. He felt like a rubber band stretched to just before the point it snapped.

"Are you sure you don't need help?", Layla asked from a few rungs above him, mostly obscured by darkness.

"Come on -ngh- this is nothing," he grunted in between attempts. "I'll have this shut before you know it."

Another heave. He felt his neck pop a bit as he yanked with all the force he could muster. The doors rolled about halfway shut before getting stuck on the rails with a loud click. An unassuming roadblock, but one that proved to be more than his outstretched position could handle.

After a few more vigorous attempts, he finally admitted defeat.

"Yeah," he mumbled with a glum sigh. "I could use a hand here."

Layla was amused, but not surprised. A few sounds of positional readjustment came down from above, and she angled herself to lean out over the chasm much like he was.

"I'll push, you pull," she instructed, bracing the sole of her shoe against a crevice on the second, closer door. He grunted in acknowledgement in return, letting her work just out of his field of view and very pointedly keeping it that way. Wisdom told him that looking up right now would probably get himself kicked in the head.

He re-centered his balance in preparation for the team effort. Letting out a deep exhale, and finding that neither of them could be any more ready, he counted them down.

"On three… one… two… three-"

A second click, and the elevator doors jumped the damage piece of track, sliding closed once again.The sudden drop in resistance made him wobble on his perch for a moment, but his grip held firm enough to slam the two panels shut.

If it had been dark before, the shaft was nearly completely pitch-black now. Progress would be slow… but at least now they could move around without risking being seen or heard.

"Take your time," he reminded in a hushed tone. "Three points of contact." Layla hummed an affirmative, and the faint rustle of movement from above indicated when he was okay to advance. Ever so gently, they worked their way up the ladder. One rung at a time, foothold by foothold.

Somewhere above, Guillaume was hiding. Lying in wait as he held his ground against the rapid assault of the Landed Knights. Likely behind plenty of guards, defenses, and enough layers of misdirection to buy him the time needed to weather the storm, even if it cost him every resource at his disposal. Somewhere probably very well lit, so he could see danger coming from any direction.

Soon, the two of them would have to come out of the darkness. And by then, they'd need to be prepared for a fight.

"Ready for anything?", he asked Layla.

"Hm?", she distractedly before her brain caught up with his words.

"…I mean… maybe? How can I know for sure until anything happens?"

"…Fair point. Um…"

Where was he going with this? What was he trying to say right now?

"…Just thinking out loud here a bit… what happens after this is over?"

A beat of silence followed, unsurety ringing out through the confines of the elevator shaft as they both stopped climbing. Halting soundlessly, yet somehow louder than any words.

"After we take out Guillaume," he clarified. "What happens then?"

"Well... what did you have in mind?"

"That's just the thing. Once this whole fiasco is sorted, I have no idea where I go next. Everything's been building up to this deal I made with him, and now that's fallen through with the Knights swooping in for… whatever reason. Aside from whatever scraps I can loot before the rest of the scavs can pick this place clean, aside from a few loose threads the Club was looking into on artifacts, I'm stuck."

"Sounds like you've got plenty of options to me," she replied as she resumed climbing. "But... does there really need to be anything after?"

"...Come again?"

"I mean...Isn't just… surviving until the end… enough?"

"Just like that?" He raised an eyebrow, despite her not being able to see him do so in the near blackness. "…Maybe? I'll definitely have to lie low and rest for a bit after this no matter what, given I still can't access my Domain right now. But... once that comes back… Can't say I really like the sound of crawling into a corner and hiding forever, but it's a possibility..."

More silence. They climbed a bit further, before Layla piped up.

"… You could always come back with us, Henry."

There was something in her voice as she said that. Regret? Doubt? Some hint of sadness, certainly, but past that… he couldn't quite tell.

"Join back up with the Nobles, run scavenger expeditions with the rest of us like we used to… like old times, right?"

Old times. What a way to put it, considering it had only been a few short months. A few months more, and London was just another metropolitan area, too. Funny how they'd managed to draw little mental boxes around their current lives and their 'old lives' like that.

He let out a gentle laugh, reminiscing. "After getting out of Greenwich for the first time, those runs felt like Heaven on Earth in comparison, didn't they? I still think it's a miracle that we managed to get away from home in one piece at all."

"Not to mention how you still managed to find ways to fall headfirst into trouble each time. Cavendish kept saying it was like clockwork with you, remember?"

"You think he'd have let me forget?"

Layla laughed a bit too at his rhetorical question, before the melancholy silence took hold once again.

"Come back," she repeated. "I know it's nowhere near ideal, but… wouldn't it be better?"

A lump formed in Henry's throat at those words. He wanted to. Desperately, desperately, he wanted to. But…

"You know I can't." he let out a weary sigh. "Not yet. As great as those adventures together were, at the end of the day the whole thing was still under the Nobles' thumb. coming back from them every time just felt, like… wrong, in a way. Claustrophobic. Constrained, maybe is the correct word?"

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"Constrained?"

"Well… how do I put this... like our most important job was to be dolls on a shelf for the Nobles first while those moments in between came second, or worse. Like they were… some sort of regrettable necessity, in their eyes. Remember how hard it got to ever get paired up for a run at the same time, after a while?"

"…Yeah…"

"Funny how they always had some sort of parade one of us needed to be in attendance for, wasn't it? Or if not that. some propaganda piece that Cavendish wanted to deliver his personal attention to us for? Surely, that felt stifling to deal with when our first order of business concerned the other Dev-"

"I know, Henry," she barked back at him a bit crossly.

"Then you agree with me?"

"I-" She paused her climb once more, idling while she tried to think of the right words to say. She sighed frustratedly.

"Look, I get that you have your issues with Cavendish. But if it weren't for him, a lot more people would be dead by now."

"A lot of people died on his orders, too. Not just because of the wolves."

He's a good man," she insisted.

"He's ambitious," Henry finished. "In a way that drags others along in his vision."

"That's… not a bad thing, you know…" Layla countered weakly.

They were in well tread ground on this conversation already. He shrugged, not that either of them could see it. "Agree to disagree."

She didn't respond back.

< -|- -|- >

They ascended in silence for a few minutes more. Not complete silence, movement still made noise when it happened, of course. But focus was shifted almost entirely to the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other. It was easy for Henry to focus on in the initial moments of it, but as time dragged on longer and longer, the familiar grating feeling of conversations going unfilled reared its head like a phantom itch. The need to hear anyone's voice in this time of peace and quiet - even if it was just his own - called to him louder and louder, until he could ignore it no longer.

Despite being the one to kill the conversation earlier, he started it back up like nothing had ever happened. Or at least, acted like nothing had happened.

"Hey, Layla… You want to know what's funny?"

"What?" Her monosyllabic response was tersely made and gruffly delivered, but he pressed on regardless.

"Well, despite how much we wanted to get out of Greenwich at first… after I left with Cecil and the rest, one of the first things I did was go back there."

No response came, but once again he pressed on regardless.

"Not sure why, to be honest. Just… kicked around, wandered aimlessly, picked a few fights with vamps for God knows what reason… Never felt too dangerous or too risky for me at that point, odd as it sounds."

Words poured out seamlessly, one after the next. Rambling like a fool, to no one in particular, just to convince himself he wasn't alone.

"And the craziest part? The only reason I stopped eventually was that I got too bored. How is that even possible in a no-man's land like Greenwich? It got so bad... it got so bad, my usual drifting started getting longer and longer each day. Before I knew it, I was visiting the other boroughs just to see if there was anything different. And then, after I finished doing that, I was making attempts to get my body back from The Mad Prince's spiderweb day after day. I don't even know the exact day I started doing it. Just decided one moment."

Finally, an interjection came.

"Henry, just what the hell are you getting at? Not a single moment of that seems even remotely pleasant. If you're complaining about your own choice to be stubborn-"

"Exactly. every way you look at it, it should have just been a big string of stressful or painful situations brought on by stubbornness. Cecil on several occasions tried to give me a permanent posting with the Remnant, somewhere safe and self-sustaining, and each time Why? Because somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that my chances to prove myself were waiting for me out on those random adventures into the streets. And when one was just on the horizon, I'd get excited."

"So… hold on, wait." Palpable confusion laced Layla's voice. "You enjoyed fighting for your life at every moment?"

"Wouldn't put it that way, myself... but on some level? Yeah."

Confusion gave way to worry. "Henry, you sound crazy talking like that."

An understandable perspective, he thought. He'd wondered the same thing for a while now, and had reached a similar conclusion.

"...Yeah, I probably am a bit now, honestly," he openly admitted. "But doesn't that just put me in the same boat as everyone else?"

Slightly brighter light was trickling down from above, highlighting the barest edges of their faces just enough to look each other in the eyes with.

"As it stands right now, you're hands down the most level-headed person I know that's left out here," he continued. "And even then, I know for a fact that you're fighting personal demons just like the rest of us. Don't know how you manage, but it'd be weirder if you handled it better than you were already, too. Matter of fact, suppose there just happened to be someone who could remain perfectly normal after surviving werewolves, vampires, and new Domains of magic. Wouldn't that make them the craziest person alive? How could you not end up with a few screws loose after that?"

"I… suppose so," she conceded.

The first powered floors were only a few stories above them, now. Only a few minutes to go before-

From above, a loud screech of metal against metal reverberated, and what he'd mistaken for the ceiling above slid down a few centimeters. The entire chasm shook, threatening to buck Henry off the sides of the ladder as the sounds of steel cable rippling and flexing followed just behind the aftershocks.

Henry understood exactly what was happening, and none of it was good for them.

"The elevator cabin!", he exclaimed. "It's breaking down!"

More groans of stressed metal from above, and another tremor threatened to shake him loose. Someone above was throwing weight far exceeding the carrying capacity of the booth inside, and not being quiet about it, either. In short order, the cables would snap and it would be plummeting down as fast as gravity would take it, carrying both of them to their graves alongside.

Layla didn't need even need to be told once to spring into action. Pale grey particles hissed in the air as she latched on to the nearest door, straining her entire weight against it as much as she could.

Vapor flooded the interior in billowing clouds. The humidity ratcheted up to near unbearable levels in milliseconds. Looking up at where she was working, the whole adjoining story of elevator shaft suddenly became a lot more claustrophobic as she dumped every last ounce of her reserves into forcing open a gap wide enough for them to slip through fast enough for them to act on it.

Only one of the two doors came undone, and it bent at an odd angle a bit, but that was more than enough. From below, Henry was able to pull himself up onto the floor of the doorway, while Layla used the last of her strength to push the warped remains of the door out of her way from her position aside it.

Henry's fingernails scrabbled against the polished smooth linoleum floor, only just barely finding the bare minimum purchase needed for him to hoist himself up. Another rumble from above roared like a starving beast, the tremors fighting him for every inch of footing he managed to squeeze out of his tenuous grip.

The ceiling was almost a meter lower than before, now.

Not a lot more time before-!

Brain shut down, instincts screamed into overdrive. Working in tandem with Layla, he braced both of his legs against the ruined gap, offering himself as a better handhold for her to disembark to. Strong hands clasped around his forearms, visibly shaking from overexertion but holding on tight. He took both her hands in his and pulled with all his might as she kicked off the wall to get inside quicker.

Time felt like it slowed down, like every moment was processed at the speed of molasses. In the briefest of moments between her clearing the door frame and bowling him over completely, he saw the remains of the elevator slice past.

The lumbering box of metal rolled past like the blade of a guillotine, bare millimeters from the tip of her toes. Despite the world moving in slow motion in his mind's eye, it sped past seemingly unaffected. It only remained in his vision for that bare glimpse of time, but to him it felt much longer and scared him much more.

The whole building shook in its passing, throwing both of them to the floor in a tangle of limbs as he returned to his senses. Henry was left gasping for air, an elbow pressing into his diaphragm and a loose strand of blonde hair caught in his mouth.

But, they were on solid ground and safe, something neither of them wanted to disrupt. The two of them lay perfectly stock still, as tremors rumbled deeper and deeper into the floors below for what felt like forever. It was only when the cabin finally came to an abrupt halt with a thunderous crash below, that either of them dared to breathe again.

"Pagh," he spat, extricating himself from the mess just enough to be able to start calming down. "That… that was too close."

Layla groaned, rolling off of him finally to massage her shoulder.

"I thought dangerous situations excited you," she complained absently.

Henry giggled, despite himself. For whatever reason, her blasé attitude was the funniest thing he could have heard in that moment.

A particle of something or other caught in the back of his throat as he breathed in deep, and his wheezing chuckle turned into a choked splutter. "Making me eat my own words…" he mumbled halfheartedly, fruitlessly trying to save even a shred of dignity. He realized the futility of doing so quickly, and went back to his nervous laughter rather quickly.

He kept it up for a good while after that. It helped take his mind off the margins by which they'd escaped on. A few millimeters were all they'd gotten away with, and she'd been this close to losing a foot, or worse. Had something like that happened to her, he wasn't sure if he could have ever forgiven himself.

Just like old times, he realized belatedly.

That made him laugh a bit harder. And, to his surprise, Layla joined in alongside him, weakly at first but getting stronger as they fed off each other's amusement.

Their merriment was cut short, however, by the sound of rapid footfalls coming from up ahead of where they lay. It was hard to tell, but it seemed like there might be about a dozen people headed toward them-

Several blades and speartips interposed themselves at the top of his vision. Glancing to the side, it seemed like a similar situation was unfolding for Layla.

He craned his neck back to see who was fanning out to surround them. Expecting the faceless steel visors of the Landed Knights to greet them, he was instead surprised to find the gaunt, malnourished faces of wild-eyed survivors, trembling with resolve as they kept the random assortment of weapons trained firmly on them both.

A short distance past those faces was the remains of what looked to be rows upon rows of demolished cages.

"Who are you?!", one of the crazed, fearful men with a pike shouted at him, brandishing his weapon closer to his neck. "WHO ARE YOU?!?!"

Henry wasn't quite sure why, but his first move was to reach for Layla's hand and squeeze it tight.

She squeezed back.

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