Night 57: X-Ray Storage Room

[ex_rosebuds752]

[From here.]

Staggering into the small room, Rose took a moment to try and control her breathing, gasping for air as she leaned against one of the shelves. Her flashlight was dim, but steady for the moment, and even that much light was enough to quell some - though certainly not all - of the unreasonable panic that had ruled her a moment before.

There was something wrong with her. This had never happened before. Oh, sure, she'd been scared before, she was nowhere near too proud to admit. Spend five hundred years running and hiding from the strongest and worst of her kind and then try to deny that little fact sounded ridiculous even to her. But this was something different. Not even facing Elijah had inspired this kind of bone-deep terror. Of things in the dark, of all things. Dammit, she was one of the things in the dark. Why was she freaking out now?

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[zack-fair.livejournal.com]

Rose's shriek had been murder on Zack's sensitive ears, even causing him to flatten them against him head. He'd had to resist the urge to just move away from her right then and there, especially when her attempts to get one of the doors open forced her flashlight back on somehow. It wasn't as bright as before, but...

Abandoning someone who was clearly at the end of her rope wasn't an option, though, and so Zack followed Rose into the small storage room. He didn't know if the cramped space would make her feel better or worse, but he chose to linger near the door, wanting to give her as much space as she needed.

He couldn't even ask her something as simple as "Are you okay?" (which was probably a pointless question anyway, seeing how she clearly wasn't), and so Zack simply watched her with a steady gaze, hoping that this spontaneous fear of hers would wear off sooner rather than later.