[pre season 5]
*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*
Rose Valia was shaken awake from her short nap. "What?" she said groggily, not wanting to open her eyes.
"Rosie, wake up," her best friend, Deke Shaw, said standing over her.
Rose sighed and opened her eyes, seeing the blurry face of Deke's inches away from hers. "What?" she repeated, not wanting to leave her comfortable position in her bunk. "If this is another problem with your virtual reality world thing, I'm not helping. I told you before I don't like that thing."
"Hey!" Deke said very offendedly. "The framework brings me a lot of business, and it's not weird, it's more of an escape."
Rose waved off his comments lazily, "I never said it was weird, I just said I don't like it," she correct him.
"But your tone of voice suggested you thought it was weird," Deke insisted.
Rose sat up in her bunk, "I wouldn't call something that you made weird, Deke," she said seriously.
He shook his head, "That's not true, Rosie" he said definitively pointing at her. "You called my haircut weird that one time."
Rose scoffed, surprised he brought that up again, "Okay, that doesn't count," she said laughing. "I was fourteen, and you took a pair of scissors to your hair and started chopping away. Your hairline was literally uneven, what else was I supposed to say?"
"That it looked good," Deke started letting his hands fall to his sides.
"Then I would've been lying," Rose said in a singsong voice. "I wasn't gonna let you run around looking like you had just fallen into a paper shredder."
"Okay, it didn't look like that," Deke defensively standing back up again, letting Rose hop off of her bunk.
Rose leaped off of her bunk and lightly landed on her feet, "It did, it really did Deke," she said truthfully. "Anyway, what did you come to talk to me about?" she said throwing on her utility jacket that was hanging on her bunk post.
Deke clapped his hands together, "Oh right," he said quickly. "Virgil, he didn't show up for the meeting we had. He was gonna fly me out on the trawler today. But when I got to the dock, he wasn't there."
Rose raised her eyebrow, 'It wasn't like Virgil to be late to arrangements he had. Especially if it involved flying the trawler. He loved showing off his piloting skills to his friends on the lighthouse.' She tried to rack her brain to think of why Virgil wasn't there. "Hmmm," she said deep in thought. "Maybe he had a bad run-in with the blues? You know how he gets, all worked about the future, especially about the prophecy."
Deke placed a finger over his lips and shushed her, "Don't mention that around here," he said in a hushed voice. "Kasius has eyes everywhere, he could be listening to you."
Rose rolled her eyes at Deke's actions, "Relax, it's not like Kasius installed cameras in my sleeping quarters," she said trying to reassure him. "Besides, no one believes that prophecy that the elders for-told anyway. It's just nonsense," Rose tilted her head, "Well except for Virgil, but he's Virgil so."
"You and I used to," Deke pointed out.
Rose sighed, taking a deep breath in, "That was a long time ago, Deke," she said sadly, remembering a time where she was once full of hope that they would escape and earth would magically become habitable again. "When our parents were still alive. When we had the option to believe in prophecies. But we don't anymore," she finished sadly.
Deke sighed, "Yeah. You're right," he said. "But that being said, we should also look for Virgil."
"I wasn't saying we shouldn't look for Virgil," Rose said. "Because obviously, we should look for Virgil. I mean Tess would want us too, and it's just the right thing to do." She pulled her combat boots on. "And sorry, I mentioned your parent's death," she said sincerely, tying up her laces. "I know that was a really hard time in your life, and I'm just really sorry." She stood up to face him.
"No, Rosie, really it's okay," he said taking her hands in his. "Your parents also died- and we got through that together, as we always do." He dropped her hands. "Now let's go search for our friend?"
Rose nodded, "Yeah, yeah Virgil's our friend right?"
"I think so?" Deke said unsurely. "Yeah, I would say so."
"Okay good, yeah let's go find him," Rose said.
The two set off on their journey to find Virgil, which proved to be a difficult one because he could be anywhere on the lighthouse, which was basically a million floors tall, Rose couldn't remember how many floors were actually on there, she just knew that there were certain floors to avoid. Such as level three was crawling with flesh-eating bugs that would tear your face off and eat you, which Rose tried to avoid at all costs.
They weaved through groups of people, trying to find an efficient way to get up to the level where Deke lived, so he could grab his oxygen helmet. Rose tried not to make eye contact with anyone as she passed by them. It wasn't because she was disliked. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Everyone seemed to love Rose, she just couldn't get distracted from the mission at hand: finding Virgil.
"So why are you grabbing the helmet?" Rose asked Deke as they reached one of the elevators, waiting patiently for the doors to open.
"Because, why would we waste time searching the whole lighthouse, level by level, if we can instead float around the outside of it," Deke explained. "It'll take less time, and probably attract less attention than wondering throughout the lighthouse like a couple of maniacs."
Rose nodded, as the doors to the elevator slowly began to open, "Makes sense," she said. "Wait, isn't there only one helmet, how do you expect that to work?"
Deke gave her an awkward smile as they stepped into the elevator, "While I'll use the helmet and you can stay on the inside and we'll meet on each floor."
"You asshole," she exclaimed slapping him on the arm lightly. "Are you suggesting we split up right now? That is a terrible idea."
"Okay, to be fair, we wouldn't be separated for that long," Deke pointed out.
Rose rolled her eyes, "You do realize that people get picked off easily when they split up right? Like, you had earlier, Kasius has eyes everywhere," she whispered as the elevator doors closed.
"Wow, now you're using my words against me huh?" Deke asked.
"Yeah, yeah I am because you are not thinking rationally right now, okay Deke?" Rose stumbled.
"Rosie, it's the best course of action, plus when have I ever steered you wrong?" Deke questioned.
Rose gave him a look, "Do you want me to list them because I can. Alphabetical or Chronological, you know what, let me do both."
"Okay, okay I get it," Deke said surrendering. "But, just trust me, This will work, and we'll find Virgil."
Rose nodded reluctantly, "Sure, I trust you, and we can go with your plan."
"Perfect, meet you on the fourth floor, we can start there," Deke said running off as the elevator door opened
Rose watched the man run off silently as she sighed. She probably shouldn't have let him run off on his own. But he was always so determined and headstrong, that Rose just had to let him go. Besides they would be meeting back up on level four in about ten minutes, and really what could happen in ten minutes. That's only 600 seconds, really just a small flash in time, realistically nothing bad should happen.
But still, Rose had an awful pit in her stomach the second she watched the elevator doors close. There was a terrible feeling like something was going to change, and Rose wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. Rose took a deep breath in and waited for the elevators doors to open again, which should be taking her to the fourth floor, she twiddled her thumbs and check her watch, about 30 seconds had passed. The doors should be open by now.
The elevator jolted to a stop and the doors creaked open. Rose peered out of the small sliver in the door and saw a dark hallway ahead of her. She didn't bother checking what floor she got off on, as Deke was probably already waiting for her by the nearest window. Rose heard the doors close behind her but she was already further into the hallway so she couldn't turn back now.
Rose looked around curiously, but it was hard to see without any light. From what she could see, it definitely did not look like the fourth floor. There were no windows anywhere in sight, in fact, Rose was absolutely sure she wasn't in the right place this time.
She had come to the divide in the floor plan, where the hallway split into two distinctive areas. One hallway extends to the right, and the other to the left. There was a loud hissing noise coming from the hallway to her right and Rose recognized that sound immediately.
"Shit," she said turning herself around. Instead of the fourth floor, Rose had accidentally gotten off on the third floor, which was the floor with all of the roaches that would eat people were on, which was supposed to be sealed, but it was open for some unknown reason.
The hissing noise began to draw closer and Rose tore in the other direction, choosing the hallway on her left. She ran as fast as she could, not stopping to look behind her out of fear that would slow her down. It was pure adrenaline that pumped through her veins now, Rose was not going to let a stupid mistake get her killed.
Suddenly the noise that was chasing her stopped, and Rose felt safe enough to turn around. She was met with an empty hallway behind her, no sign of the roaches, she breathed a sigh of relief, hoping she outran them for now. She didn't have that much downtime though, as she spotted a shadow at the opposite end of the hallway.
"Goddammit," she cursed as she began to sprint again. "Why are these roaches after me!" she cried, "I'm not even supposed to be here!" Rose took a glance behind her and saw one of the ugliest creatures she had ever seen in her life. It had a large scaly tail and razor-sharp teeth that could cut through flesh in a second. The creature was crawling towards her at an alarming rate.
"Fuck!" Rose shouted again. There was another divide up ahead, and Rose had to make a split-second decision, as there was no way she was going to stop running now. She immediately turned right and was met with another intersection. She looked around quickly and took the path that was closest to her right.
She glanced over her shoulder and it had seemed like she had lost the roach once more. "Oh thank god," she said slowing down and taking the time to fully look behind her. As she had thought, the roach was no longer there. Another intersection was up ahead and Rose made her way towards it, not running but walking at a fairly fast pace.
Suddenly Rose felt a huge pain in her side as something came running at her, knocking her onto the ground.
loving you's the anecdote,
golden ☼