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CHAPTER ELEVEN stealing yo' girl
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
NADINE DID A LOT of things on her own. She'd booked a flight to America on her own, spending hours in a cramped airplane just for the possibility of meeting the Umbrella Academy, stayed in her motel alone, went to breakfast alone...
Even in France, even at the hotel, there had often been days where she barely spoke to anyone. So it should've been a given that Nadine Vidal wouldn't have minded holding down the fort while the Hargreeves siblings went off to look for their brothers and sister, right? There were plenty of things she could've done alone at the Umbrella Academy mansion, things she might've enjoyed more than going on a wild goose chase, collecting people for a family meeting she wouldn't even be involved in. But when faced with the prospect of either staying behind or going to find Vanya with Allison, Nadine Vidal, bizarrely, chose the latter.
Of course, she had good reasons for her decision. A) She didn't like the idea of being alone at the Academy when Hazel and Cha-Cha were still out there, blissfully unaware of her presence but with the potential to find her out, and B) because she wanted to see Vanya again. Nadine knew it was nonsensical, but for some reason, she felt she'd formed a real connection with Number Seven. She liked Vanya, she really did, which was why when Allison had announced she was leaving, Nadine asked if she could come with.
Allison had agreed, bewildered, and that was how the two women found themselves heading out together in search of Vanya. There was a slight late-winter chill hovering in the air, and Nadine wrapped a scarf around her neck, which doubled as a shield from the cold and as a cover to hide her scar. The wind bit at her face as she headed down the busy streets, a little on edge (every time she saw either blue or pink her heart rate would accelerate). To deal with her hands, which were fluttering nervously at her side like startled birds, she shoved them in her pockets.
At first, things were awkward between Allison and Nadine. Although they'd both apologized for their quarrel yesterday, there was still tension between them, taut as a rubber band. Allison seemed almost frigid, an ice block, but after a couple of minutes of agonizing silence, she eventually asked Nadine about herself. Nadine wove a basic image of her childhood for Allison, marveling at the way it compared to the movie star's, and then added in a few fun facts about herself, to make it interesting. Once Allison told Nadine more about her life as a parent, Nadine could feel the ice beginning to melt, revealing the warm, entertaining woman she'd become a fan of.
Even with her heart still racing and her mind still locked on her conversation with Five, Nadine did feel a little better, especially when she and Allison eventually began passionately discussing the plot to one of the latter's movies, a Groundhog Day type situation where every time the day reset, the main character woke up in a different body. They were just reaching the finer points of the film when they finally ran into Vanya, who was talking to a scruffy-looking man, her eyes bright.
