Ava heard footsteps tearing after and ran faster, pouring every last bit of energy into carrying herself forward. There was a small, tightly packed copse of trees at the edge of the city, before the hills, and she planned to hide in there. A shadow among shadows, a stick amongst the trees.

Finally, she was there, swinging round to dive into the trees and hide, hoping to wait out her pursuer. For a while, there was no sign of anyone, and Ava had to remind herself they were quite far behind before she left and started running again.

"Ava!"

She span round, knocking the side of her face against the tree trunk, also scraping her knee over the rough bark. "Nathan?" She asked in a hushed shout.

"Ava!" More excited this time. Nathan still wasn't visible in the dead of night but Ava had no doubt it was him. For one, she'd recognise his voice anywhere. But she also knew him by the quiet he radiated. His whole essence was a whisper in the wind, almost as though he'd been cut off from everyone or everything for his whole life, like he'd had no opportunity during his childhood to run around, to scream and shout, to laugh or play. It was strange, how someone the same age as her, with a home more active than hers, and a sister to play games with, could be so... empty.

He obviously still cared for Hazel, but even in his own recollection of the last time he saw her, he'd done nothing. Absolutely nothing. And she'd told him that was okay.

"Let's get out of here," Ava said, moving between the trees towards the steep slope back to the woods where she felt more comfortable. As if proving her point, Nathan only nodded. Rolling her eyes, she kept going, knowing he was following but feeling as though it was simply his instinct, as if he had less going on in his brain than a sheep.

At the base of the hill, she paused, testing for a reaction from him. She felt horrible doing so, she did actually count him a friend. Sometimes she wondered if it was actually that he had so much going on in his head that he couldn't get anything out for all the fighting everything was doing to come first and get all the attention, fighting to be heard, and everything fighting with equal power and therefore stuck at a standstill. Most of the time, she dismissed this theory.

She'd imagined the moment when he talked of Hazel and Dursley as a turning point, where everything would suddenly become so easy to talk about. But it hadn't happened that way, which she knew was one of the reasons she stormed over to Dursley alone. Knowing she didn't look like the type of person to read, she was usually fine with people assuming she avoided books to play sport or climb trees or have fights. The first two of those were of course things that she did do, and regularly too, and she couldn't resist a story that made her seem tougher. But coming from Nathan, someone who didn't share any opinions normally, or anything at all, and the only thing he can think to say about her is that she doesn't look like she could read? It had angered more than she ever thought possible, but even then she knew she was using it as an excuse to get away from the hollow shell of a human that honestly scared her sometimes.

There was no verbal reaction, Nathan simply turning to face her and tilting his head slightly in question. His eyes were unfocused, flicking around her face and over her shoulder, searching aimlessly in the dark to catch her eyes. But of course, she couldn't see either, and carried on walking with more power in each stride, trying to shake off the pressing sense of silence.

Trying their best to find small ledges or rabbit holes as footholds, they slowly climbed back up the hill. Each step took more effort than the last and when they reached about halfway, Ava's muscles in her legs began to ache, the burning sensation threatening to roll her right back to the bottom of the hill. Her chest pounded with the effort and she dropped to her hands and knees to go the rest of the way. Beside her, Nathan did the same.

Eventually, they made it to the top and collapsed in a pile of sweat and pain in the snow beneath the canopy of bare branches. Ava lay down with the rucksack under her back as Nathan opened the small, almost-empty, plastic bag and handed her the last bottle of water from it. She took it and drank, saying thank you without expecting a response.

"You're welcome. Did you manage to get food?"

Smiling brightly, Ava sat up and took the bag off her back, "Yeah, quite a lot." Then she remembered all the cans she'd taken, the weight of them had made her shoulders and neck sore, and the way she'd been interrupted before she could grab a tin opener. Handing the water bottle back to Nathan, she opened the rucksack as he drank. "Water, Fanta-"

"Fanta? Is that... that orange thing... with bubbles?" Nathan asked, tripping over each word, seeming to seriously struggle to remember.

"Yeah, yeah it is," Ava said sadly, confused. "And one ready made sandwich and some bread and some meat, so we can make our own, and cheese because I love it, and juice, and..." she ran through everything, half of which they couldn't open, and half of the rest which would more than likely go off if she left it in the bag pressed to the warmth of her body.

Nathan smiled an invisible smile and the two of them fidgeted around in the dark, climbing into the two sleeping bags, Ava in Hazel's, and then trying to open a packet of ham, break up a block of cheese, and get them inside a piece of bread which they then folded. Enjoying the much-needed food and the warmth of the fluffy sleeping bags, the two children laughed together about how more food was getting into the mouths of their sleeping bags than their own mouths. "I thought I at least knew how to eat," Nathan laughed.

Ava nodded, "I blame the cheese for being so crumbly and unreliable."

"Okay, I blame the ham."

"Why? What's the ham done?" Ava asked with a small giggle, not seeing how the ham could be the issue.

Nathan shrugged, "Just think you're being mean to the cheese."

"But now you're being mean to the ham!"

"Ham doesn't have feelings," Nathan said, grinning.

They both laughed, not really knowing where to go from there. Ava loved talking to Nathan, when he was answering that was. She tried to find his eyes in the dark and, failing, she turned back to her sandwich, smile dropping ever so slightly. Feeling a little thump on her leg, she took a bite of pure bread.

She picked the cheese off her lap and put it in her mouth with the bread so she could actually stomach the taste. Once she'd eaten it, she, still staring at her sandwich, commented, "I'm going to wake up with so much cheese in my hair."

"Same," he agreed. "And breadcrumbs too. Guess it's good to have a bit of variety in your life."

Ava just burst out into a little fit of giggles. "Guess so." She didn't know why she found it so funny, only that it took a while to stop laughing. When she finally managed to stop, she found that all her energy had been laughed away and she snuggled down into the sleeping bag. "I'm going to sleep now."

Nathan nodded, "Okay," careful not to let her hair touch his bare skin, unsure if hair could also be a pathway for the virus and not wanting to find out.

Rolling over, thoughts churned through her mind, never diverging away from the main topic in question: the boy sitting beside her. "Nathan, how did you manage to escape that hell-hole?" Her sleepy voice used her parents language to feel closer to them, because she was starting to feel their absence now there was no one saying goodnight, and to make herself seem more mature.

Eyes suddenly wide and shaky, and mouth frozen parted, Nathan took a while to respond. For Ava, who couldn't see his reaction, his lack of replies was getting annoying. Before he could find his voice, Ava had fallen to sleep, her snoring resounded through their adopted woodland home.

Soon after, Nathan heard her, and fell to sleep himself.

Reflected off the polished white snow, the blinding light of the sun woke up the two children at five in the morning. With synchronised yawns, they stretched their arms above their heads, lifting the sun. Once they were awake, the same light that had burned through their eye lids began to chase away the shadows, burying those that couldn't run fast enough. The trees stretched out their own arms, standing tall, taking advantage of the stunning shine the light gave them. The whole woodland had turned a glistening silver winter wonderland.

Ava couldn't help but gasp and gaze while Nathan started gathering them a breakfast of fruit and juice from the depths of the rucksack. "Woah... It's beautiful. Nate, Nate, look," she whispered in awe, absent-mindedly tapping his shoulder, getting harder with each tap.

"Ava, I've seen it every morning," Nathan said, earning a very sad-looking frown from his newest, and only second memorable, friend. "Sorry, it is beautiful, I know it is. Just.... I find it hard to love what's so normal now."

"Then I better hope spending time with me doesn't become normal," Ava laughed, breaking her false look of hurt that, once upon a time, she'd used on her dad to allow for her escape. She giggled and danced in the snow, kicking up poofs of the soft dust. Nathan smiled but didn't join her to begin with, it would hurt him too much, physically wear away his muscles and tissues, but he thought to himself not a moment later, 'Why do I focus on keeping myself alive when the life that gives me is awful?' And so he got to his feet, leaving the fruit in a pile on the snow where he'd been sat, and started spinning with his arms out wide, laughing along with Ava.

For a while, they threw snowballs at each other, Nathan having finally understood it was a game, and didn't say anything of great value, simply enjoyed the snow they were surrounded by, making the most of what they had. They even attempted snow angels - though the snow was too thin in some areas to make much of an impact, and it froze Ava's neck. Her fault entirely, Nathan had told her to put her hood up. She'd simply claimed that her angel deserved to have hair too, so left it down, though of course her hair didn't make a mark in the snow other than making the head a bit of a weird shape, wobbly and lumpy over the top; not the effect she'd been going for!

"Ha! Knew it wouldn't work," Nathan laughed, not unkindly.

"Says the one with no wings," Ava laughed back. It wasn't exactly true, Nathan's snow angel still had wings, just incredibly small ones because he hadn't been physically capable of pushing much more snow out the way.

"They're just tucked behind his back," Nathan said shyly, looking at his angel on the floor.

"Okay," Ava smiled, walking over to the bag. "Breakfast?"

"Oh yeah," Nathan smiled, glad to change the topic. "Fruit's in the front pocket."

Grinning, her mouth watering ever so slightly more than usual, Ava opened the front pocket of the rucksack and grabbed an orange. "Can you peel it for me? I don't think I'm strong enough," she asked, thumbs starting to dent the top. "Wait!" She called as Nathan gave a sigh of relief at not having to do it himself. "Almost.. got it..." her thumb shot straight down the middle, coating the thumb of her glove in a layer of sticky orange juice. "Wanna go halves? Then halves on an apple as well or something?"

"What, do you want me to snap an apple in half now?" Nathan joked. "Yeah, I'll take half," he reached a hand out and Ava pulled the orange into two pieces, handing one to Nathan who continued to thank her and take a bite out of the orange.

A laugh from Ava got his attention and he watched as she peeled each segment away from the next, eating them one at a time and not getting any more juice on her. Every so often, her cheeks expanded as her tongue moved around a little and then, catching her prey at the front of her mouth, she parted her lips slightly and blew with power enough to send the pip flying to land in the snow a few feet away.

Nathan tried to copy. He was fine with the segments, separating them quite happily from one another, though with a tiny bit more difficulty as he'd already bitten through the ends of most of them and sometimes struggled to get a grip on the thin slippery skin, eating two or three segments at once. The pips however, he couldn't quite get to grips with. He'd find one and accidentally crunch it, pulling it out of his mouth in crumbs, or swallow it, not realising it was there, or, most embarrassingly, he'd find it, bring it to the front of his mouth, spit, and watch as it fell to the ground right beside him. And that wasn't even the worst of it: Ava had been watching.

"You need more power behind it!" She'd giggle, or, "Do it like this." As if he wasn't already trying that.

He managed a laugh himself, covering up his irrational sense of shame. Luckily for him, he didn't come across any more pips. After the orange fiasco, Nathan was happy to share an apple, something he expected would be a lot simpler. "So who's eating first?"

"We can just take it in turns to have a bite," Ava suggested with a shrug then a smile.

"Okay, but one side each," Nathan agreed, not seeing anything wrong with it but coming back to his original question, "Who's going first? Do you want to?"

"Do I want to? Yes," Ava started, and Nathan held the apple out to her, but of course, it couldn't be that simple. "But that wouldn't be fair on you."

"But-"

"No, no, no," Ava held a finger up. "It wouldn't be fair. We'll do 'Rock, Paper Scissors' for it." She held up a fist and Nathan scrambled back immediately before stopping, remembering who it was sat in front of him, and looked up at her. "Don't tell me you don't know how to play it?"

"It's a game?" Nathan asked, his voice a little shaky, staring at Ava's fist.

"Yes, I'll explain it later but I'm hungry now so I'll just do eenie, meenie, miney, mo instead. Okay?" Ava asked, not really caring for his answer. She made sure to point at each of them in turn, over and over with the words, "Eenie meenie miney mo, catch a tiger by its toe, if it squeals let it go, eenie meenie miney mo!" Her finger ended pointed at herself and she happily grabbed the apple from Nathan's hand and took as big a bite as was possible.

"Is that not illegal? And dangerous?" Nathan asked. Waiting for Ava's answer, he took his bite of the apple.

Ava swallowed, took the apple back, and said, "It's only a rhyme, so not at all. You don't actually do any of it," and then took another bite, holding onto the apple while Nathan took his turn to speak.

"Okay, if you say so." And then they sat, passing the shrinking apple back and forth between each other, Nathan making sure he had the last two bits joining their two halves so Ava didn't catch The Fist through his saliva, until it was reduced to just its core and stalk. "Is this bit edible?" Nathan asked, holding it up.

"I mean, yeah, it is, but I wouldn't bother with it," Ava said honestly, taking it from him and chucking it away, flinging it further into the woods. "The animals around here will get more out of it than we would, especially in terms of flavour."

Nathan could do nothing but agree, after all, she'd thrown it away.

"What do we do next?" Ava asked.

"Next?" Nathan asked, almost panting, still drained of all his energy from the snowball fight and angel making.

"I don't mean right now," Ava clarified. "I mean later today. And then tomorrow, and the next day. What happens then?"

"I know there's not a lot to do out here, but I managed just fine, didn't I?" Nathan asked, his eyes wide as if actually asking for Ava's opinion, which she didn't give. Nathan turned his sad eyes back to the floor as Ava turned away, remembering the state Nathan had been in when she'd found him. Before she'd gotten him to have a little fun.

She remembered the hollow shell of a human he'd become. The silence that had swallowed him and had proposed a constant of enveloping everything around it in its nothingness. It was awful, what she was thinking, and she knew it was. But she couldn't deny the horrible feeling she'd had to begin with.

The only trouble was, originally, she hadn't been able to put her finger on what it was that felt so wrong, couldn't describe what it actually felt like. Originally having thought him to be a thief, then a trickster and, by default, murderer, she had been sure something was up with him, but clearly was never very certain quite what it was. Although, she had been certain, hadn't she? She'd convinced herself he was a thief, she'd had almost no doubt about it. She'd convinced herself he was a trickster, wanting her dead, and had slightly more, but still not much, doubt about it. So how could she still be so certain she'd got it figured out now?

Maybe the wrongness ran deeper than his being quiet.

And if it did, she was going to find out.