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CHAPTER NINE pink dog, blue bear
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
WHEN NADINE WOKE up in the hospital, she'd been told that she should be dead. Gunshot wounds are no picnic, and even though the bullet had rocketed right through her, refusing to be stuck in her shell, the wound it had opened had nearly caused her to take her last breaths. The amount of blood that had poured out of her, a waterfall of glistening crimson, had pooled around her, imprinting her body into the ground. A chalk outline around a murder victim, though instead of the white, fine powder, it had been slippery liquid previously locked away in her vessel, pumping around her body and keeping her alive. There had been too much outside her body than in, and she certainly would've succumbed to the waiting arms of Death if not for a passerby who caught a glimpse of moonlight off red in an alleyway and immediately called an ambulance.
She'd gotten her shoulder pieced together, donated blood flowing through her system, and eventually emerged from the hospital's tides with only a scar to show for it, shouldering a trauma no eighteen-year-old should've ever had to face. But between the nightmares, the aches, and the constant condolences she was given was a question, one she found herself thinking about nearly every day. She thought about it most of the time she was awake, and sometimes it happened to weave itself into her dreams, dancing in front of her tantalizingly like a cat's toy. It was a question she'd never get an answer to.
Why did they do it?
Why did two gunmen decide to go after her? Nadine was just a girl, a month over seventeen, practically still a child. She wasn't some saint who tried to solve world hunger or some sadist who kicked puppies or spat in homeless people's faces; she was an ordinary woman who enjoyed going to aquariums and wearing pink. It made absolutely no sense.
The only theory she could ever come up with was the attempted murder had happened because of her abilities, but how would the gunmen even know about them? It wasn't like she broadcasted them for the world to see—in fact, the only people who knew about them were her parents. It was all too confusing, and Nadine eventually decided to let it go, knowing she'd drive herself mad looking for the answer to an unanswerable question.
How do you even answer an unanswerable question? It is a paradox in and of itself.
Now, standing here, in the Umbrella Academy, in front of Five Hargreeves, who somehow knew her last name, her old query ran through her mind again. She stared at Five, dumbfounded, as he gaped back at her with evident interest written on his face. Great. Now that he knew who she was, she'd suddenly gotten all fascinating.
"How do you know my full name?" she asked eventually. "And what do you mean, I posed a threat to the timeline? Like, do you mean la chronologie, or what?" she kneeled so she was at Five's level. "And no cryptid responses this time. I want you to tell me the truth."
