Nothing Personal

Communication - 20

The house that Misty had dragged Meridan into was small and compact, with a view out over someone else's back garden, stuffed with rusting trampolines and colourful children's toys. The house itself was sparse, with minimal furniture, just the occasional drab chair hunched in a corner and a desk peering out over the garden. It had an eerily empty feeling, unlike the memento-crowded houses back home. The cupboards were empty.

"I'm getting hungry," complained Misty. Meridan couldn't hear and he didn't even know she'd spoken; he was crouched by the window, looking out over the garden with his face pinched in. Misty sat on the floor and tipped the bag out. A couple of bags of fruit and nut mix tumbled onto the floor, as well as a box of matches and, bizarrely, some chopsticks. She handed Meridan one of the bags of food.

He shook his head and signed something that she didn't understand. She shook her head. He rolled his eyes and ambled towards the desk. The paint was peeling and it looked like it used to be used for drawing; pencils and half-finished sketches were scattered across it. He snatched up one of the pieces of paper with an angry movement, scribbling quickly. His writing was scrawled and childlike.

'This will be easier,' he'd written, 'I'm allergic to nuts'.

'Well there's nothing else,' Misty wrote back, taking up a dark blue pen that reminded her of the sea, 'So we'll have to raid other houses if you get hungry.'

It took Meridan a while to decipher the loopy writing. 'I'm not hungry,' he replied.

'But you will be'.

'I'll let you know when I am.'

They'd reached the bottom of the sheet of paper. Misty reached out for another one and stopped instantly. Meridan froze, thinking she'd heard a noise. The dagger had been left on the floor, too far away for him to get to quickly. Besides, he didn't even know where the danger was.

Misty held up the sheet. There was a picture on it, a pencil sketch, half-finished. Meridan frowned at it. It was in black and white, but he knew that the hair was meant to be red and the jeans blue.

It was a near-perfect sketch of Daisuke stumbling to the chair for his interview. His eyes looked scared and his arms waved by his side. Half of Martina and the rest of the tributes, though sketched in outline, weren't solid. Meridan could pick out Raylum, his face turned in profile towards District Twelve; his face was filled in lightly.

Misty shuffled through the rest, handing them to Meridan. Here was Court, storming off the stage. Oak looking at his hands, the shining expression in his eyes expertly captured. Skyler yawning. Raylum glaring at Martina. Lizz, expression frozen. The twins laughing at each other. Cherry sprawled on the floor with Sebastian looking down at her disdainfully. Clarence playing the crowd, with Pataya smiling shyly at a camera to the right. Rufus leading Fiona back to her seat, with Enzo  scowling at Martina. Crete muttering something at Grace. Vedran and his circuit board. Megan gazing into the distance.

Meridan peered over Misty's shoulder, but there were none left. 'That's weird', he wrote, 'But no us?'

'No One or Two either.'

'They're very good.'

'This is freaking me out. I wish I could swim. That always calms me down.' She muttered it aloud as she wrote, like some kind of charm. The water pendant hung comfortingly around her neck, a talisman. She always wore it when she swam, because it was supposed to protect her from the 'bends', though deep down she knew it was ridiculous.

'Don't freak out,' Meridan had written, 'That's what they want!'. She instinctively screwed up the paper. Daisuke crumpled into a little ball. Meridan took it off her and flattened it out with a scowl. He never seemed happy with anything; even now he was writing like he wanted to burn through the paper.

'So you swim well?' he'd written. He could see she was getting scared and angry, and she was no good like that, for either of them. If Misty lost her head, they could both literally lose theirs. She nodded and scribbled something.

'Yeah. I guess you could say I'm kinda like a little dolphin'. He smiled and did the sign for dolphin; like the motion for 'wave' only with a flick at the end, like a dolphin's tail. Misty tried to copy it with a laugh. Meridan tried not to grin; she'd accidentally just insulted him. 

Very slowly, someone was opening the front door. He slunk carefully down the hallway, following the muffled sound of laughter and trying not to hit his weapon on the walls; the whole place was built narrow. It made him feel claustophobic. He forced himself to ignore it and paused at the door. Should he knock, just to scare them? That would give them time to escape, especially if there was an outside door in the room. Or should he just burst in?

The problem was that they weren't speaking to each other, so he had no idea what was going on. There weren't any footsteps and the laughter seemed to be coming from the far side.

The door crashed open. Misty whirled around, backing into the table. Meridan copied, his heart rate rocketing until he would have sworn he could hear it in his ears. Misty dived for the dagger, rolled and sprung to her feet in front of the assailant. He swung at her. She ducked, just, and jabbed out with the dagger, drawing a little bit of blood.

Meridan didn't know what to do. Either he hadn't been noticed or he was being saved for later. He had no way of helping Misty except his own hands, which were clutching a blunt pencil. He could maybe sneak up behind and try and distract him.

Misty met his eyes as she ducked yet another swing. It might just have been because she was moving so quickly, but he could have sworn that her hand made the motion for 'go!' He wanted to stay and help. He wanted to run. It could have been an accident.

She did it again, taking a blow on the shoulder which made her mouth open wide.

He threw open the door and ran faster than he'd ever run before, storming down the garden and into another road. He didn't know where he was going, he was just running, and there could have been people behind him but he couldn't hear them and when he looked back he almost fell over bumps in the road. Here there was blood on the floor, a lot of it, and he felt sick and his side hurt and he couldn't keep going and he didn't know if Misty was okay. 

He ducked behind a hedge.

Though he couldn't hear it, a cannon went off.