Deborah smiled and sighed as she stretched out beneath the trees of the park. It was one of the few warm days they had had in awhile so why not enjoy it. She was stretched out under a tree, her PSP in her hands and a piece of poky held between her teeth. She was totally focused on her game that she didn't feel her phone vibrating in her pocket at first. It wasn't until the third vib did she notice, and not until the fifth that she was able to pick up. Not bothering to look at the number, she pushed the green button and placed the phone on her ear, pinning it with her shoulder.

"Deb here, what's up?" This was her usual phone greeting and she was speaking through her teeth, holding onto the poky still.

"Hows the new game?" The voice on the other end was nasal but deep. Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped, sending her poky tumbling into the grass. "Great graphics huh? I told you you would enjoy it. Wonderful shirt by the way, I happened to enjoy Robin Hood too...but your additions fit nicely."

Looking down, she was indeed wearing a Robin Hood t-shirt, but she had added a bunch of men in tights doing a can-can on the back.

Deborah jumped to her feet, slightly panicked. "How did you get this number Sheen?" she asked, looking around to try and spot him. "You're not even suppose to be within 500 yards of me."

"That's not a way to greet your boyfriend-"

"You're not my boyfriend!" Deb shouted into the phone. "We never dated! Ever!"

Before the kid could say another word, she hung up her phone, grabbed her things and ran. She didn't get far before crashing into another being and falling back onto her butt, her bag spilling everywhere.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" she said, scrabbling to pick up her things. She kept pushing her hair out of her face, it had fallen out of its ponytail as she ran. "I wasn't looking where I was going, I'm so, so sorry."

Shoved forward by the force of someone crashing into his back, Sidney's own bags fell as well, sending groceries all over the path. He'd heard the girl's footsteps as she approached, the sound of heavy breathing, but this wasn't the first time he'd cut through the park on his way back to Neverwhere while running errands. In time, he'd learned to identify such sounds with the joggers that frequently passed by, who were usually focused entirely on their running and what was in front of him, merely dodging around him if he was in the way.

So it's perfectly understandable if Sidney expected the same this time around, right? It's normal for him to be caught off guard, surprised enough that he loses his grip on his bags and stumbles slightly before regaining his footing, trying to avoid stomping on runaway tangerines as they rolled about. He tried to estimate the amount of damage; the eggs were definitely broken, as was the glass jar at the bottom of the first bag to hit the ground (he couldn't remember at first if it was the jam or the olives, though the smell of vinegar that started to seep out made it obvious--definitely the olives). The bread might be smushed, but everything else should've been salvageable. Hopefully.

While he was busy trying to figure out just how bruised a fruit had to be before it became unfit for human consumption, the girl who ran into him was busy apologizing, suddenly reminding him why it was he'd dropped his things in the first place. He turned around to face her as she hurried to gather her own belongings, wondering if maybe he should help before ultimately deciding she seemed to have it under control and he had his own things to pick up. He kneeled down, checking one of the bags to make sure it hadn't ripped and that what few items remained inside it were safe before starting to pack the tangerines into it.

He didn't say anything to the girl, though every time she repeated the word sorry he would smile to himself and shake his head, if she bothered to look up. Somewhere in it all, he goes to refill another one of his bags and ends up holding her PSP, which had been what stopped a few of his things from rolling too far away. For a second, Sidney turned it over in his hands, like he wasn't quite sure what it was. But it definitely hadn't come from any of his bags, so it must've been hers. He made a noise to get Deborah's attention, something that sounded like hey (or maybe here) except cut abruptly short as he held the game out to her, nudging it forward slightly and nodding at it, as if to tell her to take it.

Deborah hurried to help this stranger, looking over her shoulder every chance she got. She could feel eyes on her and her skin crawled just thinking about...it. She couldn't even say his name in her head without making her skin crawl.

The girl was frantic, and her appearance reflected that a bit. Her hair was dishevaled, having fallen out of her poneytail and into her face. She pushed it out of her eyes and face but made no effort to pull it back again. That would take contious thought, something she couldn't comprehend very well at the moment.

She looked up every so often at the guy she hit, just after he nodded so he just had a nutural look on his features. She began packing her own things again and stood, apologizing again. She paused when he held out her PSP.

"Oh, ah, th-thank you," she said, taking the game system gently into her hands. Under normal curcinstances, she would inspect it for damage or scratches, but she was under stress, not normal, so she stuffed it in her pocket.

"Um...d-did you happen to see a guy with black hair, blue eyes and acne scars walking around with a stalker like air about him?" she asked. She needed to know if he was close, and the fact that he might be scared her...well shitless for lack of better words.

Most of the groceries had been gathered up by then (only round objects rolled, pretty much everything else stayed in it's bag or tumbled just outside of it and stayed there) and Sidney was in the process of examining the eggs. All but one had shattered and while he knew that one egg was hardly anything, he still tucks it in the pocket of his jacket, thinking that as long he doesn't bump or crush it, it might survive the rest of the journey.

He was zipping the pocket shut when Deborah had asked her question, all of it just gibberish to his ears, which showed in the way he looked up at her from where he was crouching, obviously confused and maybe a little uneasy. Like her, he looked over his own shoulders, wishing that maybe Antonia had come with him to make sense of things, but regular trips into town and too much walking would make her old bones ache and her ankles swell, so a majority of errands he had been handling on his own recently.

And maybe, if he'd been paying attention to the words and only the words, Sidney might've been able to pick out a few he recognized. But having been distracted, those few words had been overpowered by the ones he didn't know. The way the girl spoke; all stressed, nervous, and stuttering didn't help much either. At Neverwhere, most knew to speak slower than usual to Sidney, with each word clearly separated. Otherwise, it all had the habit of bleeding together to him so that it was nothing but a mess of syllables that he couldn't make heads or tails of.

This was one of those moments. And without Antonia around to translate, Sidney is left taking wild guesses at what the girl might have been asking him.

"You lose?" He tries finally, motioning at the ground. It's the most obvious conclusion to jump to; he figures that she's asking about something else she dropped, which would've also explained her apparent distress, if the item was important or expensive.

Her panic subsided slightly. He didn't understand her well. He had an accent and was sounding very confused. She felt terrible.

"No...um...I'm hiding," she said slowly. "From...um...a man...with black hair," she pointed to her own hair. "Blue eyes, and scars on his face?"

She continued to speak slowly, hoping to get the points across. It was then Deborah noticed his spilled and broken groceries.

"Can I replace those?" she asked. "I can buy you new ones. Replace the broken ones."

She was calmer now. She would go back to her dorm, she would call her lawyer, she would deal with this maturely.

But right now, she had to help a man with his groceries.

"Can I do that for you?"

"Ah." Sidney understood then, or at least got the gist of it enough to smile and nod, as if maybe it were a game or joke the girl had let him in on. But remembering how freaked out she sounded about it just seconds ago, the way she'd been running, he realized it probably wasn't a laughing matter and he dropped the smile almost immediately, waving off whatever she was saying about the groceries as he finished stuffing everything into whichever bags weren't broken. He wasn't too worried, there was still plenty of food. What all had he lost other than some olives, some eggs, and maybe a few pieces of fruit? Hardly anything to make a big deal over, especially when the girl was already in distress and hadn't knocked the bags out of Sidney's grasp intentionally.

"Here bad hiding," he offers helpfully, speaking as if Deborah was the one that had trouble understanding and he was the one trying to explain things to her. He points at the cluster of trees about fifty yards away, specifically the upper branches. "Good." Then to bushes in the opposite direction that were much closer. "Good too. For short hiding." He looks back at Deborah, trying to gauge if this information would be useful to her, if he had understood the situation right. "He, ah..." Sidney squeezed his eyes shut briefly, trying to think of the right word, but it wasn't coming to him. He settled for simple terms instead. "Bad? To hurt you?"