Rogue Shadow

Chapter 26 - One Step Forwards

Chapter 26 – One Step Forwards

09:05 Friday, 27th October 2017

The next few days were a quiet affair. The topic of staying or going had not been brought up again. Training had gone smoothly the next morning, although Slade could tell that the girl's heart wasn't in it. She had been detached throughout the session and even more so during breakfast. Tash was in her own little world and hadn't heard half the things he had said. Knowing Tash, and knowing how she preferred to clear her thoughts, Slade had set some questions for the girl to work through instead of a one-on-one lesson.

At his question, Nat had confirmed that she didn't need help with a short, curt nod. Wilson had promised his return in an hour, closing the door behind him as he left. That was another thing No one ever closed her door. It wasn't allowed half the time. Nat turned her attention back to the laptop on the desk: completely new and the latest model, although Wilson had installed and downloaded some apps and folders to the hard drive already. Nat started up the computer, mentally noting to personalise it and later that day. Nothing was in the right spot, there was no quick access, and the background was the standard, boring blue pattern. At least there was internet, so that was something.

The questions weren't difficult and after reading the chapter for the questions, Nat understood them with ease. The concept itself wasn't difficult to follow, the only bump she came across was when an element didn't follow normal rules. Each exception had its own rules that needed to be memorised. Nat used a mechanical pencil to note the answers in the textbook beside the questions in small writing. Somewhere over the next hour, Natasha's legs wound up crossed on her desk chair, working diligently through the chemistry book, going chapter by chapter. She was finally learning something interesting. It wasn't exactly hard, but she still had to think, unlike her previous home-schooling. That stuff had literally bored her to sleep multiple times over.

When Nat turned the page to see the beginning of chapter six, she decided that she needed a brain break. She didn't know how much of the textbook Wilson wanted her to do, he hadn't specified, so she assumed all of it. Nat began doodling absentmindedly in the margins of her book. Life could never just be normal, could it? Normal kids didn't have to question every move they made. They didn't have to worry if they were safe, or if trusting someone could get them killed. They didn't have to hide behind a façade to keep the monsters at bay. And even though Nat knew that she was safe, there was always that little voice in the back of her mind, weeding words of doubt into her every thought.

Nat had a new dilemma now; did she need to keep the façade around him? Did she want to? Nat knew that it would be exhausting trying to it up for so long, this man was a part of her life now whether she liked it or not. Most of the time, when Nat was alone, she could let her guard down, not fully, but enough to relax. But this man was different.

He was the Shadow.

She had trusted him once. When she didn't even know who he was, Nat had felt a sense of safety whenever he was near. That had to be worth something. They say that the human brain decides if someone is trustworthy or not within the first tenth of a second of seeing them. And even before Nat had ever seen him up close, she had trusted Wilson, the Shadow that watched over her like a guardian angel. And now that sense of safety was back and everything she knew was gone. Things were so different.

The first time she had seen him, it had been after a particularly horrible night terror. Only a few weeks into her first foster placement and Nat had awoken to find Wilson gently shaking her arms and calling her name softly. Even back then, he had called her Tash. Only ever Tash. Not Nat or freak or anything else. And she never understood why. Not that she bothered to ask. Nat knew she had been struggling that night, and by the pain in her wrists, she had figured that he had needed to restrain her so that she didn't hurt herself. It wouldn't have been the first time. The number of times she recalled waking to find blood on her hands, scratches on her face, and bruises down her legs, there were too many to count. It happened so often that the sight it did not perturb her in the slightest.