Pietro burst into Alyona's restaurant, disturbing the people dining within it. He didn't care that they got a full look at his face, he wouldn't be there for much longer anyways.
"Nadia!"
She turned away from her and Alyona's conversation at the counter, to look at Pietro with a confused expression.
"We need to go now," he said.
Nadia looked somewhat angry at him for storming into the store and not bothering to hide his face.
"Pietro what are you doing here!?" She asked, while walking closer to him.
He shook his head desperately, "I couldn't wait, we need to leave."
"Alright, I'll leave now," she reluctantly agreed. "Alyona, I have to go!"
Nadia allowed Pietro to pull her out of the restaurant quickly.
-
"Pietro tell me what's going on, and please slow down, you're hurting my wrist," she told him, her breaths coming out in short gasps.
"I'll tell you when we get back," he said.
"We're at the apartment complex, why can't you tell me now?" She asked.
"You'll know when we get back," he stated, then continued up the stairwell faster.
Nadia rolled her eyes and continued to be dragged by him. When they got to the fifth floor they were met by Roman pacing around.
Roman noticed Nadia first. "Oh thank god," he said, hugging her tightly.
"Would you two tell me what the hell is going on?!" Nadia burst out.
"They have my sister, they blackmailed me to turn myself in, right on TV," Pietro explained. He didn't know why Roman was so worried about them both though. "I don't know what-"
Roman spoke over Pietro. "Listen, we need to go now, they know where he is and now we're all in danger. They're coming for us right now."
Nadia's eyes widened and Pietro shifted uncomfortably.
"Okay I need to go get some stuff from the apartment and-"
Again Roman cut her off. "I was worried because I thought they got here before me, we don't have time to stand around and talk, much less go back to the apartment. We have to go now."
The three of them flew down the flights of stairs they had just climbed and ran into the street.
Already, there were police present.
They were spotted by the police who immediately opened fire. Pietro thought they wanted him alive- evidently not.
One bullet grazed Roman's arm as the three of them ran to his car. More police cruisers began to arrive.
They didn't have time to think while getting in the car. All they could do was try to not get a bullet in them.
"I can't drive!" Nadia exclaimed. She had the misfortune of ending up right in the driver's seat.
"No, you can drive, you just don't want to!" Roman yelled at her.
"I can't!" She replied, panicking. Bullets pelted the car and the officers were narrowing in.
"Oh to hell with it," Pietro said. If there was ever a time that he thought his powers would come in handy, that time was in their current situation.
The world around him felt weird, but he was in control. The bullet's paces were slowed down to a point where he could manage to avoid them. He picked up Nadia and placed her in the backseat then proceeded to start the car.
"The keys!" He shouted.
By then the world around him was the same pace it normally would be. Roman and Nadia looked surprised that she was suddenly in the back seat.
Roman snapped out of his stupor, wincing when he went to dig for his keys using his injured arm. Pietro put the car into drive, zooming around the other police cruisers.
"The police are on our tail!" Roman shouted.
"I'm well aware!" Pietro yelled back to Roman as he swerved to get ahead of a car.
"We need to get somewhere that's quiet and where we can lose them easily, got any idea?" Pietro asked.
Roman opened his mouth to speak but Nadia cut him off. "Turn down that alley and make a right as soon as possible," Nadia calmly instructed.
Pietro did as she said, but it only slowed the vehicles pursuing them.
"Okay now dive as fast as possible until we make it to a gravel road."
Pietro nodded in affirmation and floored the gas pedal. Nadia didn't seem to like her own plan as she shakily watched objects and buildings pass by in the narrow alley. Pietro didn't have time to worry about that though, for he carried on driving through the narrow alley. It gave off the illusion that he would crash into some garbage cans or brick walls of buildings, which worried him. Thankfully he emerged from the thin alley onto a gravel road.
There was trees surrounding the path, the leaves were absent due to winter. The road was covered in tracks from other cars making them intractable.
"Turn right and then drive really fast, even if the road is icy!" Nadia stated.
Roman looked behind the car to see if the police behind them, which they were not. Roman gave a sigh of relief, even if it meant that the police weren't completely off their trail.
"Nadia where the hell are we?" Roman asked. He had never been to this part of the city, he wasn't even sure it was in city limits.
"This is right by my parents house... I grew up here, and I figured if we needed to get off the grid, then their house would be the place to go. It's sort of a wildlife refuge, but some isolated people live around here," she explained.
Suddenly Pietro took a sharp turn right. The back tires of Roman's car lost traction and the car swerved off the road. Thankfully the snow wasn't dense during the winter season so they weren't stuck.
Nadia looked panicked about their situation and Roman continued to look for signs of the police.
Pietro tried to speed up, but the road was so icy that progress was slowed.
"Shit," he swore under his breath.
Through constant swerving and slowing down, there were still no signs of the police. They continued the drive more smoothly until they hit a point where the road morphed into dense snow.
"Oh no," Pietro said, directing Nadia and Roman's attention ahead to the snow.
"What do we do now?" Roman inquired.
"We walk. My parent's house isn't too far from here, but we'll need to cover our tracks," Nadia told the two men.
"And what happens to my car?" Roman asked.
Pietro laughed. "Do you prefer your car or your freedom?"
"Well that's an easy way to put it," Nadia said with a smile.
Roman sighed. "Point taken. Alright, let's get moving before we all freeze."
The three of them got out of the car and onto the snowy road. Immediately, the three of them were cold, but didn't comment on it. They were used to the biting wind and freezing temperatures after living in Sokovia for their entire lives.
"I don't think they were really trying to catch us. I mean, who sends police after a superhero?" Nadia said in realization.
As they started walking, Nadia thought about ways they could be tracked; Obviously their footprints could be used, unless it snowed or the wind blew hard enough.
Though they could also be tracked through technology, Nadia knew Pietro didn't have a phone and she had left hers at home. Did Roman have his on him?
"Roman, do you have your phone with you?" She asked urgently.
He stopped, his eyes wide. "How the hell could I forget?"
"Throw it in the snow, hopefully they haven't started tracking us yet," she requested.
"Do I have to give everything I own?" He said sarcastically .
Nadia looked at him with anger. "I love it when you joke around, but we can't take long or hesitate."
"I know, I know," he said as he tossed his phone onto the road. "It was my choice to get involved in all of this anyways. Hopefully the snow will damage my phone."
"I didn't mean for us to end up like this," Pietro commented. He really had not intended for them to be trudging through a snowy forest in the evening, but that was their current situation, and he had to deal with it.
"I know. It's not like we were expecting helping you to be simple, though I didn't imagine walking through a secluded forest," Roman said.
Nadia laughed and continued to guide the two of them to her parent's house, but the snow started to get deeper and Nadia realized she wasn't wearing boots.
She suddenly stopped and Pietro nearly bumped into her.
"Why are you stopping for?" He asked.
"I don't like going through snow like this. My dad got frostbite and lost a toe once doing the same thing," Nadia replied.
Roman looked at her weirdly. "Then what are you wearing?"
"Runners. I was just going over to Alyona's, I wasn't expecting to have an expedition in a forest."
"It's fine," Pietro said, proceeding to pick her up. She gave a yelp of surprise.
"Being small comes in handy sometimes, no?" She asked with a smile, trying to keep up the light spirits they had, despite their situation.
Pietro nodded. "As long as it isn't much farther we'll be fine."
"Don't worry, we'll be there in a little bit, but we'll have to go through a stream to cover our tracks. And if they're really stubborn and try to track us with dogs, it'll cover our scents," she explained.
Roman gave a sound of disbelief. "We're going to walk through a stream in the middle of winter? Shouldn't it be frozen? And if it's not, won't we freeze while walking through it?"
Nadia shook her head. "The water comes from underground. It's still quite cold, but it won't kill us to walk through it."
"How do you even know all this? Were you planning a murder get away?" Pietro asked.
"No, I just grew up around here, and it wouldn't kill you two to read more."
Roman snorted. "Me and you both know that isn't happening."
Nadia was about to respond with a witty comment when they reached a clearing. In between both sides of the forest was a stream that went up to the men's calves and Nadia's knees. It wasn't wide or flowing quickly either.
Pietro set Nadia down.
"We need to take off our shoes and go through, otherwise our feet will freeze when we're walking to the house," Nadia instructed them.
"Oh god. This is going to be so difficult," Roman complained.
"Do I need to carry you across, princess?" Pietro snidely asked Roman.
Roman glared at Pietro, "Shut it, speedy."
"Cut it out you two. We can't be out here for much longer," Nadia berated while moving closer to the stream and taking her shoes off.
As soon as her first foot hit the ground she immediately wanted to retract it, but she knew she couldn't. It took an enormous amount of willpower to push herself to go into the stream.
The cold wasn't helping matters. All three of them could feel it constricting and chilling their feet; their body temperatures were already plummeting.
"Why did it have to be upstream?" She asked herself. Nadia was struggling to keep up with Pietro and Roman because she wasn't as tall or heavy as them.
Many times Nadia almost slipped on the rocks beneath her, yet she persisted. They all managed to get upstream after a while of torture in the cold water.
They were all more than happy to put their shoes back on, hoping to regain feeling in their numb feet.
"That may have been smart to keep them off our tracks, but my feet don't agree," Roman commented.
"I know what we're doing and made sure we got out before serious problems could happen," Nadia said.
Roman shrugged and began running his hands together in an attempt to keep them warm.
"How much longer until we get there?" Pietro asked.
Nadia took a look around her, recognizing a tree she used to play on with her brother. She swept away the memories before she could feel the sadness and kept walking.
"How much longer?" Pietro said, a bit louder this time.
"Oh right, sorry. Less than five minutes," she responded, irked that she forgot to answer.
"Thank god," Roman said in relief.
-
They entered a clearing that had a huge field and a nice, but somewhat small, house. There was a car parked in the driveway indicating someone was home. Nadia decided that they hadn't left the house in a while judging from the undisturbed snow that covered the driveway.
Nadia realized that her parents had redone the house since she was last here.
Roman walked ahead, but Pietro realized Nadia was hesitating.
"There's a reason you don't talk about your parents, or have pictures of them," he stated.
He'd seen enough to know she wasn't close to her parents, it was more than likely they weren't on speaking terms.
"I made a mistake a while ago and we never really were the same family after it," she told him, then walked off not waiting for him.
Walking up to the front door Nadia hesitated, becoming anxious her parents wouldn't care to see her after the way she last parted with them. Roman and Pietro looked at her expectantly. Nadia sighed and knocked on the door.
It took a while, and Nadia began to worry that they wouldn't answer the door for her. Her feet were aching and they needed someplace safe to go; if her parents turned them down, she would lose all hope in them.
Finally the door opened and her dad stood in the doorway in shock. He looked the same to her, aside from the grey hairs on his head.
"Hi dad."
-
Sorry about not updating as frequently. To make up for it here's an extra long chapter. ; )