LOG; ONGOING

[audiens.livejournal.com]

When; Wednesday night, July 29, roughly 8:30 PM
Rating; G-PG?
Characters; Noise Marie (audiens) & Allen Walker (isabeansprout)
Summary; Miranda's departure from the City is rather badly timed.
Log;

Given her nature, it was not actually a surprise that Miranda had produced a birthday present. Even recognizing that, Marie could not help but feel touched. But that was natural, wasn't it? More worrying was her insistence on feeling grateful toward him, as if she was somehow in his debt. But he could worry about that after receiving his present, couldn't he?

Leaving Kanda to his meditation, Marie set out to Miranda's apartment, adjusting his headphones, navigating the city streets with satisfactory ease. The ticking was simply one more sound, among thousands, much as it remained impervious to his fine-tuning.

Stopping outside her apartment, he raised his hand and knocked. Dropped it and waited. There was always noise coming from the adjacent flat. As much as that sort of chaos could produce an easy headache, it also served as a source of comfort. It reminded him of the Order, his home of near a decade. In those walls there had been no quiet- but then, there was no such thing as true silence. Not really. He fiddled with a knob, seeking Timothy or Allen, and it was only when he'd located the latter that he realized a minute had passed without an answer of any kind from Miranda.

Turning the dials again, Marie listened. Running water. An actual clock ticking. Fine-tuned further. And further. But no matter how hard he listened, Marie couldn't hear a heartbeat. The sound of the water was a rush, splashing and overflowing and soaking. His breath caught. When the door knob turned beneath his hand and the door swung in, he didn't pause before running inside.

"Miranda?" He asked, then, a shout, "Miranda!"

The difficulty with relying on sound: silence wasn't golden, it wasn't peaceful. It was wrong, unnatural, abnormal. Silence was dead. Experience favored that over the easily forgotten City departure. There were enemies in the City. Or she'd hit her head and fallen in the tub and-- that was too ridiculous.

But there he was storming toward the bathroom, tearing open the door, water flooding out around his ankles.

"MIRANDA," (but if she were alive, or there, he would hear, so what was he doing?), only he couldn't hear, and he reached blindly into the water.

Comments

[isabeansprout.livejournal.com]

When Allen heard the shouting initially, he thought it might have been a figment of his imagination. All the same, he set his book- a retelling of the Robin Hood legend he'd stumbled across in the library earlier that week- face down on the living room coffee table and rested his forearms on his thighs. Luckily, nobody was using the television at the moment. Allen's hearing wasn't horrible, but it wasn't as sensitive as Marie's, and any additional distractions would be a hindrance. As it was, he had to force himself to tune out the steady stream of conversation filtering over from the kitchen, and the noise in Timothy's room.

The second shout followed not long after the first- there was no mistaking it now. The voice was male, and it came from Miranda's apartment next door.

Miranda's apartment...

Allen wasted no more time. Fearing the worst, he bolted off the couch and ran the short distance to the front door, which he wrenched unceremoniously open. Miranda's door, when he got to it, was already open, so he entered the apartment without hesitation. Immediately, he heard water running, saw the water leak into the hall. And was that...splashing, too?

"Hello," he called as he made his way to the bathroom. "Miranda???"

No, no, it was Marie. Marie reaching into a tub that overflowed, a tub that was decidedly empty. A hard knot formed in Allen's stomach. "Marie! It's me." He sloshed forward through the water, put a hand on Marie's shoulder and leaned across him to twist the faucet off.

"She isn't here..."

[audiens.livejournal.com]

Allen. Marie had heard him well before he entered the apartment, as he ran out of his apartment, into the hall, and hastened into Miranda's. His instincts were too sharp, too ingrained after his years as an exorcist, to allow panic to dull his senses. It was Allen's hand on his shoulder, and his other that produced the sharp sound of the faucet turning. The room quieted as the thunder of rushing water halted, as the last of the water slopped over the tub's side.

"I know," that Allen was Allen, and perhaps even that Miranda wasn't there. His shoulders slumped, he sagged for a moment. In the next, he was upright, Allen's hand falling with the movement. He scratched his neck.

"Guess we should check the hall, before pointing any fingers."

A beat. Could he smell apple? Cinnamon and apple. Little did he know that Miranda's gift had been an apple strudel, left ready in the kitchen.