notfaking_it | (no subject)

The gala had been a bit of a bore.

Lily was used to it, mingling with investors, the people who essentially paid for her to be a dancer, and she was usually good at it. Even tonight, she doubted anyone noticed that she was bored, but it had gone on long and all the champagne in the world couldn't make it end any quicker. She passed by Nina several times, pausing long enough to talk to her, to laugh about something that had been said, but she knew it was encouraged for them to be as social as possible and so she moved on after a few minutes.

It was something she was good at, even at her worst, and Lily smiled and laughed as she knew she was supposed to.

Between conversations, she set down her champagne flute and slipped toward the bathroom, her purse in hand. Raising her hand as she passed Nina, she grinned, then slipped through the bathroom door, glancing down into her purse for her compact as she crossed toward the mirror. Her heels clicked against the tile floor and when she glanced up, at first it seemed that nothing was wrong.

But the bathroom was gone.

Beyond the mirror she had glanced into stretched a long, golden hall and Lily shifted, moving away from the mirror to stare at what had appeared. She blinked, then turned back toward the bathroom door only to find it gone, replaced with a beautiful hall, the walls adorned with art she'd never seen before, rich looking and lush.

"What the hell?" she murmured.

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Nina, unfortunately, wasn't quite as much of a natural at parties as Lily was.

She smiled and chatted and even laughed, and there were moments where it even felt good to be the focus of attention for so many strange eyes, but even after a year of working to feel more comfortable in her own skin, she spent much of the evening feeling lost.

Watching Lily disappear through the bathroom door, Nina finished off her champagne and then slipped through the crowd after her, but she was stopped along the way by a donor to the company, a middle-aged man with eyes that lingered a little too long on places other than her face.

When she finally escaped, she pushed through the bathroom door, Lily's name already on her lips, but it echoed down a long, unfamiliar hallway, and when she turned, she found more of the same: ornate columns, gilded in gold, a wide open atrium and imposing marble statues.

"Hello?" she called, her voice wavering, her small, beaded clutch falling to the marble floor with a clatter.

Lily had already spent several long minutes exploring what she could, though she hadn't yet stopped anyone to speak with them. They looked friendly enough, dressed like she'd never seen before, talking amongst themselves as they moved through the halls, but they weren't familiar.

She wasn't prone to panic, but the thought of being taken away from Darrow now weighed on her heavily, so instead of thinking about it, she was studying a statue when she heard Nina. Turning, Lily stepped away from the statue, her heels clicking loudly on the floor as she walked, trying to follow the echo of Nina's voice.

"Nina?" she called, tucking her purse under her arm. "Where are you?"

Breath caught in her throat, Nina hurried toward the sound of Lily's voice, her own heels clicking along the floor as she turned a corner, the air leaving her lungs in a relieved whoosh.

"Lily, what's going on?"

"I don't know," Lily said, though she was relieved to see a familiar face and she headed toward Nina. Several people had passed her by since she'd come down the hall, but she hadn't bothered to speak to anyone yet.

"I was going into the bathroom," she said. "And then I was here."

"Me too. I stepped through a door, and..." she trailed off, fighting off the urge to reach out and take Lily's hand, just to prove to herself that she was real.

"You don't think we've left the city for good, do you?" she asked, because she couldn't ignore the similarities between this and that first day in Darrow, when she'd exchanged one street for another, in the blink of an eye.

"I don't know," Lily answered, because it seemed very similar, a familiar shift, but she'd also heard more than a few stories of people leaving Darrow only temporarily. She had no idea which applied to them here.

"Excuse me," she called when she spotted someone approaching. "Can you tell us where we are?"

The man looked at Lily first, then at Nina before he smiled. "How can you not know where you are?"

Arms wrapped tight around her middle, her eyes slid sideways to try and search Lily's face, wondering if she felt the same rising panic that threatened to overwhelm Nina entirely.

"We're fine, we're just... a little lost," she said, afraid to tell him too much. They had absolutely no reason to trust this guy, and the more vulnerable they seemed, the more likely they were to be taken advantage of.

"Took a wrong turn by the golden mirror," Lily agreed, stepping forward, putting herself between the man and Nina, although she wasn't sure why. There was something about the way he was looking at Nina that she didn't like, something more than just looking at her because she was beautiful.

"You're in Atlantis," he told them. "You know that, right?"

"Of course," she said, nervousness clutching at her throat, her fingers curling convulsively at her sides.

"We'll just be... going," she said, resting a hand on Lily's shoulder and trying to steer her away... somewhere. Anywhere without this guy leering at them both.

Lily could feel his eyes on them as they walked away and she glanced back once to find him still watching them as they left. "Fucking creep," she muttered, though she wasn't sure if it was the man or this entire place leaving her feeling unsettled. There was nothing here, nothing to guide them, no one to greet them and tell them where to go.

"This isn't like the island," she said. "And it isn't like Darrow."