all_the_gifts | (no subject)

Melanie likes to explore the suburbs. Sometimes she looks for food for Miss Justineau; sometimes she looks for books for everyone. And sometimes, she just looks: at the furniture, at the family photos, at all the pieces of the way things used to be.

Clean, mostly. That's how it looks in the pictures. It makes her remember the bunker, and how tidy things were there. Messy is more interesting, but the value of tidiness hasn't been entirely drummed out of her. She thinks it would be good to have a safe, dry place to keep all the books she's been collecting. And though none of the houses are hers, none of them are anyone else's either. There is no one else to claim them.

She likes staying close to Miss Justineau, but maybe later, she should pick a house and make it tidy -- a place to keep the things she needs.

There's no hurry, and these are idle thoughts. Melanie's only half-thinking them when she steps out of someone's house and into their overgrown back garden. That's when everything shifts: the angle of the sun in the sky, the pitch of the droning insects. Melanie goes still as the world resettles around her into something new, and different, and wrong.

She's in a field. There are a few distant houses in one direction. She pivots on unsteady legs, feeling that same dizziness she did when she bolted out of the truck and the whole world was out there, stretching out to distances her eyes had never measured before. But this isn't all new: she knows forest and trees and field. She knows building and skyscraper, though the skyline doesn't look like any part of London she's seen before.

"Greater London has thirty-two boroughs," she reminds herself, "and an area of 1,572 square kilometers." She remembers that from her lessons. It means that London is big, and she might not be as lost as she feels.

... How did she get here, though? Sometimes she loses herself a little when she's hunting, but she's never run so far without realizing it. And if she was hunting, she didn't catch anything. Her chin is clean and dry, and she doesn't feel that sleepy-satisfied way she does after she's eaten.

She looks back to the houses. Houses have carports, and carport have cars, and cars have maps. Maps are important, and Miss Justineau has already taught her how to find where Rosie is parked. If Melanie can find a map, maybe she can figure out which borough she's in, and how to get back. Melanie doesn't see any Hungries, but she starts toward the nearest house slowly, anyway, not wanting to wake any that she might come across.

It's because she's moving carefully that she sees the mask before she steps on it. It's just like hers: elastic straps and plastic buckles clinging to a piece of clear plastic, with holes at eyes, nose, and mouth. Enough to breathe, not enough to bite through. Melanie picks it up, turning it over and wondering how it got out here. It looks the way nothing else really looks anymore: clean. Like it just fell out of a convoy, except those shouldn't be happening anymore.

Melanie frowns, then continues toward the house even more cautiously, the mask clutched in her hands.

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Melanie shakes her head. She understands Sara's confusion, and she understands why someone wouldn't believe what she has to say. But this is important, and they don't have much time.

She hasn't eaten today.

It hasn't been something she's needed to think about over the past few weeks. She hunts when she's hungry, and with Miss Justineau safe inside Rosie, there have been no human scents to tempt her. She is dangerous to animals, and dangerous towards the other children when she has to be (or has to pretend to be), but she hasn't been dangerous like she is here -- not for ages. So she hasn't been careful.

When Sara lifts her arm, even though she isn't close enough to touch, she's close enough to smell.

Melanie's jaw starts to ache. Oh, no. She steps back, reeling a little. "You have to go," she grits out as something wild and uncompromising starts to yawn open inside of her. "Go inside! Now!"

There's something familiar in the way her eyes shift. Something is changing, but Sara isn't sure what. It's nothing like Cid losing his temper. That's always loud and trembling, and she knows what to do. But she doesn't know Melanie, and she has no idea what's happening to her.

She wants to help.

She steps forward, instead of back.

"Melanie, what's happening? Are you okay?"

No no no. Sara might still be all right if she would just go inside and barricade the door. The hunger would tire of throwing itself against the outside eventually, just as it tired of beating against the door of her cell in the bunker. Sara would be scared and sorry, like Miss Justineau, but she'd be safe, too.

But she doesn't run inside. She comes closer. Melanie lets out a growl that starts out human, childish, petulant, and then twists into something else. "GO!" she shouts as the hunger fights her for the reins.

There's one fraught moment of tenuous balance, in which Melanie simultaneously tries to leap forward and scramble back, the end result being an ungainly fall to the ground. But the jarring sensation of hitting the dirt loosens her hold on herself, and it's the hunger that digs its fingers into the dirt and drags itself toward Sara, all four limbs scrabbling for purchase as it hurls itself at food, the only thing it wants.

Self preservation has never exactly been one of Sara's strong suits. She watches Melanie change with a sort of morbid fascination. It's nothing overtly physical, like she'd expected from Melanie's insistence to be locked away. It's all in her eyes, in the set of her shoulders and jaw. Suddenly, she's not Melanie.

And this isn't like one of Cid's temper tantrums. No matter how angry Cid had gotten, he'd always been Cid. Sara doesn't know Melanie, but she knows that whatever is rushing her right now, it's not the sweet little girl she'd seen through her window.

These thoughts race through Sara's mind just as Melanie crashes into her. For someone so small, she's so strong. Sara hadn't expected that.

Yes yes yes yes--

The hunger is a lot of things, the hunger is a lot, but it's not clever. It doesn't remember the mask, and doesn't think to remove it. It just pushes against Sara's neck, jaw snapping mindlessly against the sturdy plastic barrier as it endeavors to wrap its arms and legs around her.

Sara gasps, gritting her teeth as she struggles. The plastic bears into her skin, sharp enough that she thinks it might cut her. She manages to get a grasp on Melanie's shoulders; she's not as small as Cid, but she's still small.

With a grunt of effort, she draws up as much TK as she can muster and uses it to push Melanie back. For a moment, she only manages an inch or two. Her arms are shaking with effort, jaw clenched so tight she's sure to have a headache later.

"Melanie! I need you to stop! Can you hear me?" She has no idea if Melanie is even mentally present at this point.

Somewhere, deep down, Melanie is astonished to find herself moving backward. It doesn't make sense. Sara pushing her had made sense, and she still feels that push, but Sara isn't even touching her anymore.

She doesn't know how to feel when Sara yells at her. No, not at her, for her. For her help in fighting the hunger. Melanie has held it back before, bought time, but she's never been able to wrestle control back when it's like this, in control and in a frenzy.

Then again, she isn't sure she's ever really tried.

There's still a force pushing her back, and Melanie tries to let it. Her legs are still scrabbling for purchase in the dirt, and her jaw is still snapping, but with a growl of effort, she manages to arch her head back and away.

Sara feels a headache coming on, but she can't stop. She doesn't know how or why this is happening, but she can't stop.

"Melanie! I know you gotta be in there. I need you to listen to me! Melanie!"

It's so hard to move away, even with Sara pushing her. Even with Sara asking her. No other adult Melanie knows would try to talk to her when she's like this. Sergeant Parks would think Sara was mad for trying.

But Sergeant Parks hadn't been right about everything. Melanie remembers confronting the other hungry children, holding them off, because they could be held off. She could make them understand what they couldn't have. They weren't mindless, and neither is she.

Melanie reels back, pivoting on her heel, then stumbles a few paces away. Nothing stops her, nothing but the pull of Sara's scent, and she makes her legs keep moving. It's not as hard as it could be; the hunger wants to go, not strain against some invisible boundary. They can go to the forest. Something will be there. Something she can kill without consequence. Melanie closes her ears to anything else Sara might say, and runs.

Sara doesn't know what works, but suddenly Melanie is reeling back, pulling away. She watches, letting her TK back off and her arms fall to the ground. It isn't until Melanie vanishes in the trees that she realizes: this little girl has just tried to eat her, and now she's running off into the woods.

"Melanie!" she calls, but before the sound even fades from her ears, she knows there's no point. She pushes to her feet and dares to try to follow. But she's not a tracker, not a gat man. She can't hear her making a ruckus in the woods, and that would be her only anchor. With nothing to follow, Sara stands there, helplessly staring into the trees.