Project Alpha

Chapter 24- Arguments and Backfire

After the mishap in the training room, I decided that I needed to just relax a little bit and try to stay out of my head for a while. So, I filled the bathtub in my bathroom up and took a dip.

I am not kidding you when I say it was probably the most relaxed I had been in my entire life. I asked JARVIS to put on some classical music while I just let my body sit in the warm water. It seemed to ease every knot in my body. I was still beyond stressed out, but this was helping.

It wasn't long before my hands and feet started to look like raisins. I got out, got dressed, and made my way to the comfy bed that was awaiting me.

I had just gotten under the covers when I heard a knock on my door. I didn't answer it and hoped that whoever had knocked either thought that I wasn't in my room or took the hint that I didn't want to be bothered. Sadly, for me, they didn't do either of those things and instead opened the door.

Even sadder, for me, the person who walked in was the person I wanted to see the least right now.

"Can we talk?" Nat asked as she walked into the room. When I didn't answer her, she took that as an okay to continue. In reality, I didn't answer her because I didn't know how to tell her that I never really wanted to see her ever again. "I never meant to leave you behind. I was never stringing you along. We were supposed to leave together, but somehow our plan leaked."

She paused, before continuing, probably for any signs of anything from me. I couldn't even look at her, though. Knowing that someone you trusted so much had left you to rot didn't make anything easy. She still could have told me or had someone tell me. Instead, she left without a trace.

"One of the other widows told me what she had heard from one of Drakov's close workers, and I knew I had to get out of there. If I hadn't left, things could have been much worse, Aria. You could have died. I couldn't let that happen," she finished.

"Maybe I was better off dead!" I yelled, sick of biting my tongue. "You don't know what I went through, because YOU... DIDN'T...LIVE IT. I did."

"Aria, you have to understand that I was protecting you," she defended.

"Protecting me from what? From being beaten? From being experimented on? From being killed?" I paused, expecting something from her, but there was nothing. "Well guess what, Nat? All of those things happened to me anyways. So what did you really save me from?"

"I thought it was right at the time."

"And how do you feel about it now?"

That seemed to stop the arguing for a moment. Both of us were hurt. She was the one who hurt us both. I have very little sympathy for someone who betrays their word.

"If I could have brought you with me, I would have," Nat says very calmly. "Even given the information of what happened now, I still would have made the same decision. It's what I thought was best for you. Given the circumstances, you would have done the same thing if it was me."

"I would never leave you to go through what I did. I would never want anyone to go through that. The fact that you think I would really shows a lot about what you think about me," I say. "The thing that hurt the worst is that you weren't there when I needed you the most."

"Aria," someone cleared their throat behind me. I turned to see Tony.

"And where the hell have you been?" I yelled at him. "You just left without a word for an entire day."

"I had a few things to take care of," he explained vaguely. I was too worked up to have a normal conversation with someone right now. I didn't mean to yell at Tony and the last thing that I wanted to do right now was yell at him.