Round One: Mouse vs Claude (D9)
Apr 24, 2023 5:33:26 GMT -5
Post by ✨ zozo. on Apr 24, 2023 5:33:26 GMT -5
Her interview was... well. As you'd expect for a girl that does not speak. That man with darkness in his eyes asked a lot of good questions. It was a pity she had no more that a few gestures for him.
Mouse shook her head no -
you don't speak, do you mouse?
nodded her head yes -
but you'll answer my questions?
shrugged her shoulders -
what say your chances of survival
for a tiny thing like you?
stared at her feet -will anyone miss you?
and stayed utterly silent throughout.
It had earned her a bread roll, at least. She should have shared it with the boy from the train, she knows that - but Mouse is smart, not stupid. She'd snatched at it, rolled through the bars in the cage they kept her in, scoffed it down like the food were air. Tiny little thing, coiled around a single, stale piece of bread. How sad.
How sad that nothing has changed from then, back home, to now.
For all Mouse's quiet, Claude is noise. She quite likes that. Biting down a smile as she huddles in the dark, Claude Èmile yelling in a strange language she doesn't understand but Mouse gets the gist in the way he uses words like knives, his own kind of bravado. Claude reminds her of the boys at the factory back home, one of their surnames meant only for temporarily attachment probably carved into a gravestone by now. Mouse crouches, keeping out of trouble, biting down on the corners of her fingernails until they bleed.
Don't get attached, she scolds herself. You're both dead. Then - but if you're both dead, then what's the harm? Mouse has heard these silent conversations over and over again, a spectator to her own unsure conscious. Her eyes dart back, forth, back, forth, she shuts them.
Opens, dressed in white and purple, no shoes. Mud between her toes. She wiggles them, tries to swallow down the fear thrumming in her throat. Just like home, she thinks - as if that's any way to console a child of this new, terrible Panem. Dust and blinding light, fear as common as breathing. Just like home.
Just like home.
Maybe it's because she's younger, or smaller, or without words, but Claude is the one to spring into action first. He takes charge, questioning everything, coming up with a plan - if you can call wasted anger beating a lock with a blunt hilt of a sword. Mouse rolls her eyes and sighs, walks straight up to Claude and - mindful he's got a bloodied sword in hand - nudges him out of the way.
Her hands work quickly, up into the depths of her messy auburn hair. Mouse feels around her scalp then pulls out a hairpin, almost smiles at herself - how clever. But this is no time for showmance, the last thing she wants to give these people up there in the crowds. Right now she has a task to do.
The tip of her tongue trapped between her teeth, she flattens the pin out of its shape and pries it in to the lock - twisting with one hand, holding the lock steady with the other.
There's always a way. There must be a way. She's done this a dozen or so times: a neighbour's shed when she needs to borrow a tool, the factory offices after dark with the boys keeping watch, a shopkeeper's storage facility when it feels her stomach might turn in on itself. Mouse just needs a moment, two, several, before they release the hounds - or the cat realises it's caged in with its natural pray.