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CHAPTER TWENTY late night bonds
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
UNFORTUNATELY, IT WAS PRETTY hard to save the world when the person you needed to help you accomplish such a thing was nowhere to be found. So although Nadine Vidal was suitably empowered—had blinked away the tears that had formed but not fallen, raised her chin and reminded herself of what she was fighting for—none of that meant shit when she was still stumbling through her goals blindly, tripping like a baby deer.
This week, she'd slowly begun to knit together the story of the apocalypse and what she had to do with it, fitting together clues like they were puzzle pieces until everything had come into shape. And yet, she'd only figured everything out because of Five. He may have been an infuriating, arrogant asshole who refused to change out of the uniform, but he'd truly been the one to guide her on the right path. Now, without him, it was like a blindfold had been tied around her eyes. She was thus forced to confront the overbearing dilemma that had beset her: she had no fucking idea what she was doing.
She made her way back to the Umbrella Academy that night, her skin crawling, ready for a fight if Hazel and Cha-Cha decided to show their masked faces. Fortunately, they didn't, and Nadine managed to make it back to the Academy in peace, which was good, given that she wasn't sure if she could actually raise her fists tonight. She was exhausted, and hollow, and just wanted to sleep, to distract herself from the overwhelming number of problems that had surmounted her during the day. Unfortunately, it seemed that even her dreams were against her, as when she finally fell into bed, her mind was full of potential apocalypse scenarios. Aliens crashed down from Jupiter, raining gunfire on Earth. Natural disasters ravaged the planet, tsunamis drowning whole cities and tornadoes ripping screaming people from the ground. A meteor came hurtling towards the atmosphere, a trail of flame behind it, and Nadine's final thoughts were of her father before she was consumed in fire.
After dying over and over again, in a number of unpleasant ways, Nadine finally woke up, her entire body shining with cold sweat. Knowing it was unlikely that she was going to fall asleep again without dreaming of the sun exploding or a disease ravaging the world's population, she instead forced herself out of bed, deciding to search the Academy's many rooms for any sign of the elusive time traveler. It was only three in the morning, but Nadine had never pegged Five as having a good sleep schedule, and she figured that if she did end up finding him, she'd find him wide awake, perhaps frantically scribbling equations on the walls.
The house was dark and full of shadows, and Nadine's heart began to race as she crept her way through, each step causing the floor to groan. She headed down the staircase to the front hallway, blood roaring in her ears, her hands clenched into readied fists.
Tonight, she wasn't wearing her usual pristine getup—instead, she was clad in a silk set of pajamas that were a bit too long, the legs dragging across the floor. Her hair, which she usually kept bunched into some kind of protective hairstyle to keep the locks from falling across her eyes, was instead long and loose, tumbling down her shoulders in a glossy blonde waterfall. And, with her face barren of makeup, she looked younger. She could probably pass for twenty.
