Nadya looked... different.
She'd also been hiding out in a basement ever since they escaped from Peter and Paul. But, unlike Sasha, she was alone in that basement. And her time in seclusion had treated her far worse than it had treated Sasha and Nadezhda.
"She spends most of her time in that corner," Virtanen explained as they stood on one end of the basement, where the stairs were. He motioned over to the corner where a lonely cot sat. Sure enough, Nadya was there, curled up with her back facing them. "A lot of the time, I see her over there with a knife, and I see her with deep cuts on her arms. I'm... afraid that she's doing them to herself."
"Should we really be talking about her like this when she's right here?" Nadezhda asked.
"She doesn't seem to mind," Virtanen said.
"Just because she doesn't say anything about it doesn't mean she's fine with it," Nadezhda said. She took a few steps towards Nadya. "Nadya? Nadya, it's Nadezhda. Are you alright?"
Nadya didn't say anything.
Nadezhda looked back at Virtanen, confused.
"She hasn't spoken much," Virtanen explained. "Part of me kind of wonders if she isn't just a little sick of seeing my mug."
"I would be," Arttüri grumbled to himself.
Virtanen gave him a smack on the arm
Sasha sighed, then slowly walked over to Nadya's spot, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
"I see the solitude's making you go a little crazy, too," Sasha said, plopping down on a chair near her cot. "Any particular reason why you're cutting yourself like that?"
Nadya stopped cutting her arm. Was that a good sign? Who knew. But, he was feeling a little optimistic, at the moment.
"Nikola's dead," she whispered.
Sasha sighed. "I know. I'm sorry: he was a good kid, as much as an ass as he was."
Nadya didn't say anything.
Sasha reached for the knife. Slowly, hoping that he didn't look threatening, to her: he didn't feel much like getting stabbed. "Now, what do you say to handing over that knife?"
Nadya didn't stab him, thank God, but she did clutch the knife a little closer to her chest. Looked like it would be a no.
"Alright," Sasha said. "Alright: you don't need to give me the knife. Will you at least tell me why you feel like you need to cut yourself?"
Nadya didn't say anything.
Sasha sighed. "It was cigarettes, for me. After my Grandpa died, I started smashing cigarette butts on my thigh: reminded me that I was still alive and not in the limbo it felt like, some days."
Nadya looked over at him. "I feel that, too."
"Of course, you do," Sasha said. "Nikola was your blood: hurts like hell, doesn't it? A little worse than that knife?"
Nadya nodded.
Sasha's leg began to itch, right where his burn scars were from those months of mourning before he found the army. They weren't there, anymore, of course: he lost those when he lost his leg, when Anastasia came and blew St. Petersburg to hell.
God, was it strange: he hadn't had a leg for months, now, and he could still feel it, sometimes.
"That knife ain't the way to go about making yourself feel better about what happened to Nikola," Sasha said bluntly. "You know that, right?"
Nadya didn't say anything, nor did she nod or shake her head. She just gave him that same, sad look in her eyes as she gave him when Sasha first sat down next to her.
"I think I have a way to make things right, though," Sasha said. "We're going to kill Anastasia Romanov, before she can hurt someone else. And I want you to be part of it."
Nadya still didn't say anything: just stared at him.
"You not want to get any revenge for what happened to Nikola?" Sasha asked.
"The best revenge is not to be like your enemy," Nadya said quietly. "Marcus Aurelius once said that. And he was one of the best generals Rome ever knew."
Sasha raised an eyebrow. "Since when do you know Marcus Au... Arry... that Roman bastard?"
"The man that lives upstairs reads to me, sometimes," Nadya said. "I think he must have been a professor, back when the school was here: everything he reads is at least five hundred years old."
Of course. It was always the academics that had to argue. Apparently, it was impossible to be wrong about something when one had a stupid piece of paper from some institution filled with old men who'd been complimented a few too many times and hadn't had their teeth knocked out near enough.
"Well, why the hell do you think Rome fell?" Sasha asked. "That Marcus boy of yours didn't know shit: sometimes, revenge is the best medicine. And so is the knowledge that what happened to you and your family isn't going to happen to anybody else."
Nadya didn't say anything.
"What do you want me to do?" She finally asked.
Sasha held his hand out. "Not until that knife is in my hand."
Nadya hesitated, then handed him the knife.
"What do you want me to do?" She asked again.
Sasha smirked.
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Hello, everybody! Here's chapter two of five today.
So, just have some housekeeping items that I forgot to share with that first chapter. Now that this book is finished, I can give you guys an update schedule! So, after this week, we have ten weeks left of updates, assuming the only one that doubles up are the last two chapters. So, at the very latest, the last updates for this book will come to you on September 18 of this year. But, of course, that's assuming that we won't hit any benchmarks for reads or votes, or break any personal hotlist records, maybe even win something in the wattys.
Alright: time to do some more writing on my end, and we'll see you guys with another update for this story in a few hours :D