Room 507, Monday evening

[nadiathesaint]

. . . Nadia was swimming desperately upwards as bullets shot past her through the murky water. She could hear a familiar voice up ahead, a voice she could trust. She just had to reach it, and she'd be safe . . . .

Almost there. She pushed harder, the green water parting in front of her and brightening as she neared the surface.

"I'm sorry," the voice said.

Sorry? For what?

"I have to."

Veronica?

She had no idea what Veronica was apologizing for, but a sense of dread stabbed through her.

No!

She broke the surface into a fluttering blaze and watched as Veronica turned her back.

"No!"

Someone was approaching, and the sense of dread depened. She spun, treading green water and peered through the ashes at the figure.

It was different than she had expected, the hair longer and pulled back, a monacle glinting in the flames along with red eyes and fangs. But she knew the face, knew it entirely too well.

"Walter?"

The creature that had been one of her closest friends stepped closer.

And smiled.

He reached out a hand for her face and she screamed--

And sat up, in her own bed in her own room, breathing hard and trying to escape the grip of her sheets.

And spotted Walter.

She screamed again, her hand automatically pulling the mallet from under her pillow and she swung it hard at Walter's head.

Comments

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter was really going to have to learn to watch Nadia more closely. He'd been sitting next to her bed with his feet propped on her mattress. The sudden shift from restlessly dreaming Nadia to mallet-wielding Nadia took him entirely by surprise and his push back to avoid getting smacked in the head landed him and the chair flat backwards on the floor.

"Nadia! It's me. Put. The Mallet. Down."

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia wasn't exactly listening.

Fortunately for Walter, and his . . . tender bits, she also wasn't exactly up to her usual malleting abilities, what with having just woken up, and still being entangled in her sheet.

"¡Monstruo!" She swung the mallet again.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

This time he was a bit better prepared and rolled away from the mallet, snagging it with a wire and yanking hard to pull it out of Nadia's hand.

"Nadia, you're safe in your room." Of course, he was saying that from his place on the floor while watching her very carefully.

[nadiathesaint]

Disarmed, Nadia's instincts immediately flipped from 'fight' to 'flight' and she shoved herself back into a corner even as she started trying to process what Walter was saying.

And the fact that his eyes were normal. And he wasn't wearing a monacle.

No pony tail, either.

She wondered if she asked him nicely to show his teeth if he would do so. Instead, she just pushed herself back into the corner a little tighter and tried to catch her breath and calm down.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

There are people and things that Walter would be pleased to see look that terrified of him. Nadia was not on that list.

Moving very slowly, he backed away from the corner she was huddling in and stood up to right the chair he'd knocked over.

"You're safe," he repeated in the same quiet tones you might use to soothe a frightened child. "You were drugged and I found you and brought you back here. Do you remember?"

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia watched Walter warily, then tried to think back. She remembered going to dinner, then to Empire, then going to find her father after and--

She made a soft sound that was half-gag, half-sob. Drugged. Which explained the dreams, which meant--

"Oh god, I just tried to kill you,"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter picked up the mallet and put it back under Nadia's pillow on her bed.

He smiled wryly at her and sat back down in the chair he'd just fallen out of so gracelessly.

"It's going to take more than a mallet to kill me. Are you ready to come out of the corner yet?"

[nadiathesaint]

After everything she'd been through in the last few days, there was something reassuring about Walter being so . . . blase.

Also something infuriating, but she didn't really have the energy to get a good mad on right now.

"Um, no." She shook her head slightly, then peered at him again. Same eyes, hair, lack of vision aids that she'd always known, but how could she be sure--"show me your teeth."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Drugged. She said she'd probably be okay by Tuesday and this was still Monday.

Walter humored her and showed her his teeth. "I haven't brushed yet. I haven't been back to my room and I thought you'd hit me with a mallet if I used your toothbrush."

[nadiathesaint]

Okay, teeth were normal. The fact that she kept flashing back on that last dream was just the drugs. Drugs making her think of horrible, weird, impossible things.

"You're normal." She relaxed a bit more, then realizing she probably sounded like she'd completley lost it (which she hadn't, not completely, at least, she didn't think so), she went on. "It was you, but with red eyes and fangs and then you were right there," she said in explanation, pointing at the end of her bed where he'd been sitting.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"That would be the drug." And that wasn't a chill Walter was suppressing, just because she'd pretty much described one of his worst nightmares.

"I'm still human. Now come out of the corner. I'm not going to do anything bad to you." What could I do that would compare? He still had the note (http://nadiathesaint.livejournal.com/22963.html) to give her, too.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia stayed in the corner for a moment longer before slowly pulling herself away. Furrball stuck his head out from under the bed, peering at her warily.

Great. She'd managed to scare her cat, now, too.

Something Walter had said earlier clicked. He hadn't brushed his teeth. "Have you really been here the whole . . . ." she frowned, putting a hand to her head. "What time is it?"

Hell, what day was it? In Russia, she knew she sometimes lost three or four days at a time.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter stayed where he was, making no move that might rattle her. "It's Monday evening." He nodded toward the clock. "I've been here since I found you last night."

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia followed his look and blinked at her own clock. He'd been sitting in her room for probably twenty hours . . . doing what? Just watching her?

"Why?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Why? What kind of question was that?

"Because I don't leave my friends alone when they're drugged and unconscious. What if something more had happened to you?"

[nadiathesaint]

Okay, so, yeah, Nadia might have done the same thing. But someone doing it for her. . . .

"Didn't you miss classes?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"So did you."

Okay, Nadia was coherent enough to be asking about classes, and he'd told himself he'd give it to her after she woke.

"You had this," he said, fishing the note out of his waistcoat pocket, "with you. I think you need to read it."

He tossed the note on the bed close to Nadia, rather than getting up to hand it to her. He didn't want to see her shrinking back from him again.

[nadiathesaint]

God, he wouldn't even come near her. He'd stayed up all night and day to make sure she was okay, and what thanks did he get? She'd tried to kill him.

Some friend she was.

She eyed the note, then picked it up and read through it.

Three times.

Then she just sat, trying to collect her thoughts.

"I had this?" she asked quietly, not looking up from the paper.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"Yes. You brought it with you from wherever you were. You dropped it here when you passed out."

He stood up at last. He didn't know the last time Nadia had had anything to eat or drink, which couldn't be good for her combined with the drug and the stress on her body and mind.

"Come sit down." He reached out to put a hand on her arm.

[nadiathesaint]

She was still staring at the letter, and she startled slightly when Walter touched her, but didn't draw away.

"Did you read it?"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"Yes." He guided her toward the bed to sit down with her. "But I won't say anything about it to anyone."

[nadiathesaint]

"I should probably explain."

Nadia sat down where Walter had placed her. She wasn't thinking much about the room, or not having eaten, or any of that. The letter, just a collection of words, had her complete attention.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Walter was thinking about food and drink, but they could wait a little longer. He sat next to her and watched her staring at the piece of paper.

"Tell me anything you think will help us keep you safe."

[nadiathesaint]

"Rambaldi." Nadia closed her eyes tight and clenched her teeth. "That damned Rambaldi!" She opened her eyes again, looking up at Walter.

Oh yeah, here was that good mad on.

"You were listening at dinner, you had to be. That's a butler thing, you had to know when we might need something else. My fath--he talked about Rambaldi. About how I'm supposed to be some kind of . . . oracle for him. That's what this is about. That's what the Russian lab was about, and that's why he did this." Nadia slapped at the paper. "He said that . . . my aunt? She did something to me, or would do something to me, and that only Rambaldi could tell him how to fix it, and so he had to go through me to do it and--"

She crumpled the paper in her hand.

"Fucking Rambaldi!"

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"Popular man, this Rambaldi." Walter really wanted a cigarette. It had been a full day.

"But from what I hear, he's long dead. If you had to guess, would you believe what your-- Mr. Sloane said in the letter?"

[nadiathesaint]

She closed her eyes again, trying to hold back tears.

"Back in the orphanage," she took a deep breath. "Sophia used to have us all dress up on Sundays. Clean up, wear our best clothes, and then we'd all line up and wait for the families to come and choose us."

She glanced at Walter with a sad smile. "I wouldn't do it. I'd make myself dirty and I'd always frown, because I knew that somewhere out there, my father was looking for me."

A few tears slipped down her cheeks as she looked back down at her fist.

"If I'd have known it was him I was waiting for?"

She threw the paper across the room. Furrball dashed out from under the bed and pounced on it.

"I would have cleaned up."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

For the first time, Walter was almost glad his parents had been killed so conclusively.

Maybe someone else would have been able to find the magic words to make this better, but that wasn't this butler. He put his arm carefully around Nadia's shoulders and squeezed.

If it pissed her off? At least she seemed like the type who knew how to handle anger better than some other emotions.

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia didn't stiffen at Walter's arm, but she also didn't relax. She stared at the paper that Furrball was slowly chewing and clawing to bits and she tried, as hard as she could, to stay angry at the man who tricked her so cruelly, who had lured her in and tied her down and drugged her and then just left her.

The trouble was, she hadn't answered Walter's question. He'd asked if she believed what Sloane had said in the letter.

The trouble was, she did.

He had done this, cruelly tricked her and drugged her and tied her down and just left her . . . because somewhere else, another her needed him more.

And that was the part she just couldn't handle.

There was only one thing she could do. She leaned into Walter's embrace and cried.

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Which sounded like an answer to Walter. He wasn't positive about the answer, but could take a pretty good guess.

He sat quietly and held Nadia, waiting for her tears to slow and wanting to find her father and cut him into small pieces.

[nadiathesaint]

The thing about a good cry is, you can't just cut it off once you've gotten started. No matter how hard you try.

By the time Nadia was done, she was completely exhausted again, wanting nothing more to climb back into bed. But Walter deserved more than that.

"Thank you." She pulled back and sat up again, rubbing at her hair. "I'm okay now. You don't have to stay."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

"I'll make a deal with you," he said, pulling a clean handkerchief out of his waistcoat and handing it to her.

"I have food from the restaurant and some tea. If I bring them up here and you have some, I'll let you sleep."

Of course, he fully intended to watch his exhausted friend fall asleep and then tell her that he'd fallen asleep before he could leave, but she didn't need to know that.

[nadiathesaint]

And there was the British again. Personally, Nadia might have opted for some rum, but tea sounded okay.

She realized she was starving. Then she realized the last time she'd eaten something was dinner at Cafe Fina on Saturday.

"Okay. It's a deal."

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

Rum would have been welcome, but Walter wasn't going to be the one to put alcohol on top of whatever might still be in her bloodstream.

"Good." He left the room to go warm up the food and fetch his electric kettle.

[nadiathesaint]

As soon as Walter was gone, Nadia got up from the bed and shooed Furrball away from the letter. It was damp and torn, but still mostly intact.

She scratched her cat gently on the head, then read the letter again.

"Damn you," she said softly, then flattened it out as best as she could without ripping it further, and lay it in her desk drawer under some of her books.

Whatever else it was, it was proof. That she had a family. That someone, in his own, insane way, loved her.

Nadia climbed back onto the bed, tucked her feet under her knees, folded her hands, and focused on staying awake until Walter came back.

And maybe that was proof, too. That Walter loved her, not the way she wanted him to, but as a friend, at least.

She just hoped he'd get some sleep tonight, too.