Melt With You [Tsara/Arthur]

For better or worse, he’d be stuck with the kid from eleven. Arthur had grand visions of having found some tree to hide in for a few days, maybe make his own sort of lean-to in its branches, but of course they’d wound up in a volcanic arena that looked as though they were stuck on mars. He’d count his blessings that at least there’d been water at the cornucopia, so it wasn’t as though the game makers were holding them hostage to the elements just yet. And who knew – perhaps across another set of bridges he’d find a freezing cold set of hills covered in snow? At any rate, he’d settled on scrounging he landscape like the vulture he was for anything he could find useful.

His hands had half been buried in the black dirt when he’d heard the walkie talkie crackle at his side. He wiped a hand across his forehead as he tugged the medkit out from the ground, spoils from his search. He’d sat back against the gravel and caught sight of the girls in the distance. Stupidly, he’d given a wave with a grin. It was a sort of open invitation for them to come smash his head in, probably brought on from the toxic gas blowing across from the west. He twisted the knot on the handkerchief behind his head and pulled it up above his nose again.

‘Hello…? He recognized the voice coming from his walkie, and brought the thing to his ear. ‘This really should have come with an instruction manual…’

Arthur chuckled at the sound of Tsara’s voice. Something in his chest fluttered, if only that she sounded like home. He had spent a good chunk of time in the training center ignoring her, but now he couldn’t think of anyone else alive that he’d rather have been speaking to. She was his last tether to a place he might never see again, and he wouldn’t forget that.

“Breaker breaker, I hear you loud and clear. How’s it going, Tsar?” He smiled through the soot and ash, “Glad to hear your voice. You doing all right?”

He looked over his shoulder for Abel, but the kid had gone and wandered off somewhere. Figured. Arthur had a feeling he was going to be tailing that boy from here until his dying day.

“Your people treating you okay?” Arthur gave a wave to the figures in the distance. She’d struck him as smart enough to pick the right people to be at her side. Hopefully nobody too bloodthirsty, though.