I will love again

Part 7 - Lost in the wild

The instructor handed each participating group a map with three different paths drawn onto it. Each had a different colour that matched their difficulty. Gabriel and Nathalie arrived last, where the man was standing, and so it was only them left, as the others had already departed.

Nathalie smirked as she took the map and went ahead to lead him onto the most difficult path, that was to choose. Gabriel sighed and followed her. This time he hadn't even screwed things up himself. He really was about to tell her his feelings, when the guide had started calling for them.

After trying to keep up with her pace, he eventually gave up on his pride and called her name:

"Nathalie! Please, I can't follow you that fast!" he paused where he was standing and bent over, his hands on his knees, to catch his breath.

She turned her head and her face got a worried expression. She quickly walked back to him.

"Are you alright? What's wrong? I-I wasn't going that fast...I..."

He put a hand on her shoulder, to straighten himself.

"It's alright. I-I am j-just not.....used t-to walking uphill.", he panted.

"Oh", she smiled. "Maybe you are a little old for that path!"

She didn't mean to really hurt him with that, she was just feeling sad from before and tried to tease him a little. But a look at his face told her, that she had wounded him deeply.

She tried to get closer to him and hug him, to tell him, that she was just joking around, but he pushed her aside and began to climb up the path as fast as he could. He didn't care, if he would have a heart attack or a stroke, when he reached the top of that steep hillside, he just wanted to prove to her, that he was not too old for it.

Nathalie quickly followed him, as she was way more used to things like that, because it was part of her every day training before the miraculous had started to break her. But she soon realized, that exactly these wounds, the miraculous had caused, and that still had an impact on her on bad days, kept her from catching up with Gabriel.

They had only made half of the way, when she started coughing, and it quickly got so bad, she wasn't even able to call for him to wait up.

Luckily Gabriel wasn't so far ahead and heard her. He instantly stopped and turned around, to see what was happening. Then he ran, because Nathalie was already on her knees her left hand holding her chest, while she used her right, to cover her mouth.

He crouched down at her side, the moment he reached her and pulled her into his arms. Without waiting for her coughing to get better, he lifted her up and carried her a little away from the path, to make her sit on a tree stump, that was just at a good height and had another tree growing behind it, so she could lean her back against that.

It took her a few minutes to be able to breathe normally again. And Gabriel held her in his arms every second of them, rubbing her back and kissing her head, saying how sorry he was, for getting her into this situation.

As she finally could stop, she leaned her head against his chest and was still panting, but also tried to speak:

"I-I n-need t-to..."

"Shush", Gabriel interjected. "The only thing you need to do right now, is breathing!" He kissed the top of her head. "Just relax and try to calm down. Deep breaths. I am right here with you and I won't go away, so take your time."

But she shook her head and started again: "I need t-to t-t-tell y-you..."

Another coughing fit. Gabriel desperately observed their surroundings. All they had with them, were their backpacks with the sandwiches they packed for lunch, their water bottles and two picnic blankets, one in each bag. Of course they had left the phones in their room. And to their bad luck, they were the only ones, who had taken the most difficult way. So all he could do right now, was trying to calm her down and get her to recover so far, that they could make their way back.