Witness Protection ✔

The Cold And The Dark

Thinking back to that dreadful morning where it all began, she began to panic. The men. The alley. The gun. The blood. It all came back to her. They must've found her, and now they were coming to shut her up. Permanently.

She hadn't imagined her life to end this way, she'd always expected to die of old age, surrounded by her loved ones. But life had never been fair to her and so this seemed like a fitting end. Her only regret was that she'd drag Darius into a grave with her, as they'd have to go through him to get to her.

Would he be missed by family? By friends? She briefly wondered what caused him to sign up for something that could cost him his life, but she doubted she'd ever find out.

Her breath sped up and her heart pounded in her ears. She looked back at Darius and, to her relief, saw it had been his gun she'd heard. She stood close enough to make out the features on his face as he scoped out the area around them. She had no idea how he did it, she could see nothing but darkness surrounding them.

"Darius wh--" she started, but a hand over her mouth effectively shut her up. he walked around her, gun in one hand and her face in the other, and stood behind her. Though the position was slightly awkward to her, she liked the way she could feel his whole body up against her back and his breath on her neck. It felt strangely soothing, being held against him like that. Even if it wouldn't look like it from an outside perspective.

"Don't talk," he whispered in her ear before removing his hand from her mouth and setting it on her hip. He started to slowly walk towards the house and, being in the position they were in, forced Nathalia to do the same. Once inside he locked the door and gestured for her to stay put as he checked every room in the house. He soon returned, having replaced his gun with his phone. Ending the call with who she assumed to be his supervisor, he turned his attention to her.

"There's a power outage in the entire area, they don't know when it's gonna be fixed," he said.

At that Nathalia released a breath she didn't know she was holding. Though she was relieved, it had shaken her up a little bit. But as she started to relax she realized she was still wearing his jacket, so she took it off to hang it on the rack. By doing so she was instantly reminded of not only the cold weather but also the power outage. The heater was off as well and the house was rapidly losing its heat.

There was also the issue of her not seeing much, Darius had turned on the flash on his phone but that wasn't enough to illuminate the room enough to do anything.

"We could light some candles, they're in the kitchen cabinet," she suggested.

"Lead the way," he replied as he handed her his phone, which had its flash on, "you can set them up in the living room, we're staying there tonight."

"What? Why?" she asked.

"The security systems are offline, it's best to stay here until they're online again," he said as he followed her into the kitchen.

"But there's only one couch," she said slightly panicked, imagining how embarrassing it would be to sleep with him on the same couch.

"You'll take the couch, I'm not going to sleep."

That made her stop, suddenly she felt guilty about not wanting to share the couch with him as he'd have to take the floor then. She'd never had to sleep on the floor but she could only imagine it to be very uncomfortable.

"N-no I didn't mean it like that. We can share the couch if you want to," she said quickly.

He laughed.

Or more like, he kind of blew air out of his nose.

"No, I meant I'm not going to sleep at all, I have to be alert and all that. But that was a very kind offer."