hellhouse | (no subject)

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WHO: Derek Hale & Cleo Sertori
WHAT: Waking up in Hell House
WHEN: Day 1, early afternoon
WARNINGS: tbd

It hadn't actually been all that surprising to find that life tended to slow down rather a lot once one leaves Beacon Hills long in his wake. Derek liked South America, but it wasn't for him. He visited Cora for a while and then he'd gone to the only other place besides Beacon Hills that he'd ever called home. Brooklyn. He's been enjoying the lack of urgency and the rest and relaxation he's been able to indulge himself in taking because in Brooklyn, there's way less supernatural drama going on. He's not that guy who was suspected of killing his sister out in the woods, anymore. Now, he's just another nobody in a sea of ever-changing faces. It's loud as hell and it was disorienting to come back into it, at first, but once he'd gotten over that hump, this is much more his style: staying out of trouble.

But, of course, nothing good ever lasts because Derek Hale can't have nice things, so when he wakes up slumped over a table in uncomfortable clothes that barely fit properly, some part of him isn't actually all that surprised. He is, obviously, but some deeper part of him shrugs it off. What else is new? More drama. Always more drama.

It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and he realizes that the room is just lit with candles, which...why? It takes him several more seconds to notice the woman slumped over on the table a few seats down from him and he only knows she isn't dead because he can hear her heart beating slow and steady, like she's sleeping. She's dressed like she's on her way to a gala or something and when Derek looks down at himself, he realizes she's in good company. What the actual hell is going on?

"Ma'am," he says in a voice that's neither gentle nor rough; neither quiet nor too loud. Just...his normal volume. There's a scratching sound and Derek looks over to see what looks to him like a record player turning itself on and lifting a record to place onto the platform. "Miss?" asks, this time a little louder as he gets to his feet and moves toward the record player, looking at it with interest. Whoever she is, she's about to miss something and Derek has no idea how important or unimportant that something is.

This room is dark and dank, old fashioned like something out of a movie set in a haunted mansion and he can't shake the discomfort that comes with that. His focus is more on what's going on, where is he, and who is she? The rest will come together after answering those questions, he hopes.

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Derek watched her move for the door and when it opened to...nothing, he followed her out into the hall. It just looked like a normal house. Dark and a little creepy, sure, but just a house. Derek looked both ways down the hallway and noticed that they seemed to be about in the middle. One end of the hall looked like it led into a kitchen and the other end was cloaked in darkness, but Derek assumed that there was a door at one end or the other.

"I don't suppose it'll be as easy as finding the front door and walking out," he muttered, frowning slightly. "But if it is and we miss it because we assume it isn't, then we're shooting ourselves in the foot. This way?" he asked, gesturing weakly toward the end of the hall swallowed in darkness. If the kitchen-looking room was on the other end, then probably the front door was at the end of the darkness, right?

Derek looked over at her and took a step in his chosen direction, hoping that she would follow. They both looked ridiculous dressed like they were going to some sort of formal event with glowing cell phone faces in their arms, and her reaction had suggested to him that they were in the same position here. She wasn't secretly the person who'd kidnapped him; he'd have smelled the lie. Or heard it. Or both.

"I'm Derek," he offered. "We're gonna get out of here. I wish I was exaggerating but this isn't my first rodeo." He left out the part where he'd never gotten out of a kidnapping situation without help from Scott. Cleo didn't need to know that.

Cleo didn't have the slightest clue where to go. She'd faced a lot of things in the past few years, but she always had her friends with her. They were always the brave ones, convincing Cleo to step up through encouragement or by example. She was so much braver now than she used to be, but this was a whole new level of messed up. Did this have anything to do with what she was, or was she taken for a different reason? "I guess we check all the doors then, hey?" Because he was right, the last thing they wanted to do was miss the exit.

She easily followed, trying to stay close but also not wanting to invade personal space so not getting too close.

"Cleo." she responded with the weakest of smiles. "I...yeah, it's not mine either. But the last time I was kidnapped was nothing like this." The house, the fact that someone had changed her clothes. It was creepy and invasive. "Do you think we're still in Melbourne?" She couldn't recall seeing any house that might look like this on the inside.

Taking a deep breath, Derek nodded. "Yeah, I think that's probably our best bet. One of them leads outside; one of them has to lead outside, so we just...open them all until we find the right one," he replied with a shrug. It seemed as good an idea as any.

When Cleo didn't hesitate or contradict him, Derek started down the hall in the direction he had indicated. There was bound to be several doors to check along the way, but he was guessing that they were mostly going to be bedrooms or sitting areas.

His eyebrows lifted when she said that this wasn't her first time, either. "Wow, Cleo, that is a really shitty thing for us to have in common, huh?" he asked, giving her a look that couldn't decide whether it was sympathetic or amused. He wondered if she was supernatural, too. Maybe that was something else they had in common, but he wasn't going to come out and ask her. She wasn't a werewolf; he couldn't smell that on her, but she could be a kitsune or a banshee or God only knew what else.

He reached for the first doorknob they came to and turned it, pushing the door open. It was empty save a couple of paintings on the wall. A thin layer of dust had settled over the floor and the frames. Derek couldn't help noticing that it was missing a window. Most rooms had windows, didn't they? But this was two, now, in a row, that didn't.

He registered what she'd asked belatedly and looked over at her again, blinking his confusion for a beat before responding. "...I was in Brooklyn. New York. United States," he told her, looking uncomfortable again. "You were in Australia? I just assumed you were in America, too, but that you just hadn't lost your accent or you'd been visiting on a business trip or something... We came from different parts of the world? That's...not very comforting..." he replied, his brow creasing with concern.

The biggest problem he had with this place so far was that nothing made sense. Two people waking up in one creepy room of one creepy house who started on opposite sides of the planet, no windows that he's been able to see so far. That message on the record player. The fact that they were dressed for a party neither of them planned on attending. ...that he can't smell anything off; he just smells a musty old house and a pretty girl with coconut-scented shampoo and a hint of salt water like she'd been to a beach in the past day or two. There's nothing wrong with the picture, which was exactly what was wrong with the picture.

It wasn't possible for one of them not to lead outside. Unless they were dealing with some kind of magic, and Cleo didn't want to even consider the possibility.

"Very." she said in agreement. "Though I doubt it's the reason we're both here. 'These people have already been kidnapped, lets do it again?'" Unless the reason for their kidnapping was because someone else had found out about Cleo. Maybe Derek had a secret too? Though if that was the case, she would their kidnappers would want them in water. Correlation at best.

Cleo did not notice the windows, but she physically stopped moving for a moment when Derek mentioned he had been in the US. "Are you serious? How long were we out for? Could we literally just be anywhere in the world?" People had to already know that she was missing if that was the case, right? Cleo got worried texts from school friends when she missed one class. Forget being out of touch for any amount of time.

Distracted by trying to work out how any of this was possible, Cleo reached for the next door they had to check out and pushed it open, stepping into the room to look around.

"This whole house is so da-" she cut herself off when she turned around to talk to Derek, only to find herself staring at a blank wall instead of the door she had just walked through." "Hey!" she yelled, stepping forward to bang on the wall. "Derek? Hello?!"

Derek shook his head. "Yeah, no. That's not what I meant, just a crappy coincidence," he replied. Though, that's not actually what he means. It's entirely possible that they're both here for the same reason. He just hopes she's a better fighter than he is or at least that she's smarter, because he's never been good at this and if she's not, they're screwed.

"I don't know. Long enough not to notice being moved God knows how far. And changed, or at least I was; this suit isn't mine, that's for sure," he said with a frown. That was a lot more disconcerting, the way she'd said it. They could be anywhere in the world. How were they supposed to get home once they got out if they had no idea where they were?

Cleo moved into the next room to check it out and Derek moved past it, figuring they could cover more ground faster if they both checked different doors. They could just keep checking doors adjacent to one another to stay close. One of them would find the way out and alert the other.

She started to say something as Derek opened a door leading into a room that looked like what used to be a nursery. The very idea of that creeped him out enough to decide he didn't want to go inside of it if he didn't have to. It didn't go outside, that was all he needed to know. But then her voice cut off abruptly and Derek looked over. The door she'd walked into beside his was closed, but he hadn't heard her close it. "Cleo...?"

It was eerily silent all of a sudden. "Cleo, now's really not a good time to go quiet on me..." he said, sounding worried as he scented the air and found, to his sudden horror, that her scent was practically gone. It smelled like she'd been gone for hours. A chill shot down his spine when he heard a bang on a wall further down the hallway. "Cleo?" he called out, moving toward it, knocking on the wall as he went in an effort to glean a reaction from her if she'd disappeared behind a different door in the short time he'd had his eyes off her. "Cleo?"

Nothing.

Frowning, he looked resentfully down at his arm and took a deep breath. The last thing he wanted to do was use this stupid thing, but maybe it was the only way to find out where she was. It was like she just vanished. So he sent off a message and kept moving down the hall, trying to follow her scent, but the problem with that was that it was so faint that he kept losing it and picking it back up again, as he headed down the hallway. She shouldn't have been able to move that quickly; she shouldn't be this far down the hall...

The room was dark. The only light she had was the glowing from the cellphone that had been embedded into her skin, and nothing about that sentence was okay. When she couldn't find the door again and she couldn't hear Derek, she turned to look at the room around her, holding out her left arm. She moved very carefully, fully expecting to bump into something. Or someone waiting to attack her. But there was nothing. As she moved around the room she noted that it was basically empty, save for pictures on the walls that held zero meaning for her.

Eventually she went back to the spot she thought the door was in, and tried pounding on the wall again. "Derek!" she yelled as loud as she could manage. Dust from the paintings fell onto her face, causing her to sneeze and close her eyes.

This house was magic. Had to be. Some sort of nightmare magic.

She was staring down at the phone in arm when she noticed a few of the different options on it. Cleo took a few minutes to examine the phone that was much more advanced than her own mobile, before eventually finding what looked like some sort of online forum or message board. Two posts. One asking if people could read it, one threatening violence if someone was hurt.

Maybe that was Derek. She spent several minutes sending him messages hoping he'd find a way to get her out. But maybe she was going to have to get herself out. The question was, how?

The house wasn't so dry that she had nothing to work with. Quite the opposite really. She could feel moisture around her. Could she use that to break through older walls? And what if Derek was there and saw her. That would be worth it, wouldn't it? Derek would probably guess she had powers, but she would at least escape.

The walls had moisture. She could pull at it, and pull apart the wall. Bust a whole through it and get out. She'd never done that kind of damage before, but in theory there was no reason it couldn't work.

Cleo stood back form the wall, raised her hand and concentrated. The wood held water, probably too much water. She had to use that water in the wall to rip a hole through it. It took a few moments, but eventually it started to work. She could hear the wood splintering and splitting as she manipulated the water inside of it. It would only take few minutes for her to bust through the wall, sending wood flying, and hopefully no one ended up hurt.

For several minutes, Derek went back and forth with Cleo via text message, only managing to confuse himself even more when nothing matched or lined up in any way that made sense to him. There was something wrong with this house. All of this was some serious Dark Druid sort of stuff, way out of his scope of knowledge. He had no idea how he was going to find her, but he wasn't going to stop looking until he did, that was for sure. Then, he wasn't going to lose her again and they were going to get the hell out of this place. Hell House, indeed.

Behind him and to his right, Derek heard wood splintering and it caught his attention, pulling him away from the conversation he was having with Cleo, trying to work out where she could possibly be. Because he had no reason not to, at this point, Derek followed the sound of the splintering wood. The house had already proven to him that it could throw off his senses, because there was no way Cleo was in two places at once, and yet the house had wanted him to think that she was.

A few feet in front of him, the wall seemed to explode outward and Derek lifted an arm quickly and reflexively to block his face as he ducked his head. As soon as he thought it would be safe to, seconds later, Derek lifted his head again and let out a relieved huff, seeing Cleo there. If he were the hugging type, he'd have gathered her up in his arms right then, but instead, he just marveled at her. Derek wasn't going to ask how she did it; he was already under the assumption that she was some sort of supernatural, so it would've made plenty of sense to him that she'd just busted through the wall when he couldn't find the right wall to bust through. "Cleo! Are you okay?!" burst out of him before he could rein it in.

The fact that the wall she'd somehow blown out was on the opposite side of the wall and not even directly across from the room she'd originally gone into was not lost on Derek, but there were more important things on which to concentrate just then. Like making sure she was okay.

When the dust settled, Cleo was able to see Derek out in the hallway. Very carefully she stepped over the damage that she had caused to escape the room. Two things she noticed from the start. One, Derek didn't seen surprised. She was going to wait to see how that played out. Two, Cleo was fairly certain she was stepping out into the hall from the opposite side she had vanished in. It was hard to tell though, the house was started to twist her sense of direction. Maybe it was just making her think that.

"Yeah. I'm okay." She seemed pretty shook up, but there was also and underlying sense of determination. Cleo was over this, and she wanted out. If she had to tear down this whole house to do it, fine.

Pushing the confusion of the house aside, she looked to Derek ad nodded. "I'm alright. I'm just...I want out. As if it needs to be said." She couldn't now what he was thinking, but he probably wanted out just as badly. "There has to be a way out." A window, a door, another hole she could blow through the wall. Something.

Derek could hear her heartbeat starting to slow a little from its racing and he could smell the adrenaline in the air. More importantly, he could smell the coconut shampoo and the Cleo smell that had disappeared so abruptly before and while he should probably have been thinking twice to make sure that he believed that was real, he couldn't help trusting his nose. It had never let him down. That was really Cleo and she was really okay.

His expression changed with her comment and he nodded. They needed to get out of here, yeah, that was for sure. He looked more determined even though he felt anger starting to rise the more he thought about the last several minutes — or hours; if the house had magic, who knew if it was also manipulating time in addition to space — and what had transpired.

Reaching out, Derek offered his hand to her. "So we don't get separated again," he explained. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Cleo got the feeling that Derek wasn't one for signs of affection with just anyone. This was purely survival, and that was the only reason she reached out to take his hand instead of clasping her fingers together in front of her stomach. Cleo wanted out of here, and they stood a better chance of escaping together.

"It can't take us that much longer, can it?" How big was this house anyway? She knew there were massive homes in the world, but eventually you needed to reach a wall to the outside, or a window with rooms, or the damn door.

Cleo started to walk again, in search of a way out. One hand held tightly to Derek, the other was raised protectively in front of her. She didn't even care if this looked weird. Getting out and surviving was more important. Convincing Derek to keep her secret could some later.

Shaking his head, Derek shrugged as he started to move forward again. "I don't know. I also wouldn't have thought a person could get trapped in a room with no doors or windows when there had been a door for them to go through to begin with, but here we are," he pointed out, frowning. There was something wrong with this place and it went beyond it being creepy; way beyond that.

It wasn't lost on him that she had a hand out in front of her and he wondered if whatever she'd done to bust open that wall had come from her hands; maybe they were the source of whatever it was she could do. It made him wonder more what she was, because she probably wasn't human. Derek wasn't going to call her on it because that would mean either outing himself or being a hypocrite. ...or both. But he was curious, all the same.

When they got further down the hall, Derek could finally see a door more ornate than the one they'd come out of and the others they'd seen so far. "That's got to be it," he thought aloud. Weren't ornate doors usually reserved for the main entrances? That made sense to him, anyway. If nothing else, it was worth a shot.

Cleo's eyes fell on the door that Derek saw after he mentioned it. It certainly looked like something that would be more of a main entry and exit to a house. It stood out from the others, so unless that door was meant to draw attention for another reason, it seemed like a safe bet.

"What are the chances someone attacks to try and keep us from leaving?" She wondered out loud, voice dropping to a soft whisper. If someone was going to attack, now would be the time, when they were close to escape.

When the reached the door, Cleo used her free hand to grab onto the knob and twist. She attempted to be as quiet as she could with the knob, before pushing it open quickly.

It was black. Pure black. And cold. Cleo instantly felt air temperature drop around her, causing her to shiver. She couldn't see anything, but if she didn't have her glasses on she would be convinced she was imagining the darkness around the edge of the door frame moving, almost like it a shadow, or smoke.

"...I don't...think we should go in here."

"They'll be sorry if they do, I can promise you that," Derek replied in a low voice, frowning. He'd make sure of it. Frustrated would be the understatement of the century if one tried to use it to describe Derek right then. He'd had it with the place already and he couldn't have even been there that long. Enough was enough and if they wanted to attack he and Cleo now, then let them try. He'd make them sorry for it. Very, very sorry for it.

Cleo opened the door and Derek could almost immediately feel the drop in the temperature. Taking care not to let them glow when he did, Derek reflexively switched to wolf vision, because he should've been able to see better that way. It looked just as black inside either way he tried, which was confusing and disconcerting.

"Yeah, no," he agreed, moving to close it again. "Whatever is in there, I don't actually want to know that bad. It doesn't lead outside, so it's fine if we just leave it alone, right?"

As far as he was concerned, it was, anyway. Derek sighed. "This is ridiculous. Maybe we're on an underground floor, like a basement level? I haven't seen any windows; maybe it's because we're not on the ground level. Let's look for some stairs." Why anyone would have a dining room below ground level was beyond him, but that was probably the least weird thing he'd encountered today, so it was hardly the most concerning.

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