in the dark of the night (backdated: June 24)

[every_blossom_blooming]

Katya is gone.

Nina awoke on her own rather than to the cry of a baby, and when she went to check on the infant girl, she was gone, the window to the fire escape open like a scene from a crime novel. Most of Candlewood probably heard her scream, all of them might have felt a little shiver in their hearts. Nina threw on the winter kefta that Krem made for her and went out into the dark and the snow.

She didn't even know where to start looking, how to track. She kept thinking that Geralt would never have let this happen - it wouldn't have happened, if he were here. But he isn't.

The first goblin that crosses her path is summarily executed with a decisive sweep of her hand: blood bursts from its nose and its eyes and its ears. She realizes, vaguely, that she might need one for information but she isn't there yet. She can't be rational.

Her baby is gone and she has to find her.

Comments

[bookmaker_boss]

He was in the snow before he really knew what happened, and for a moment, he thinks he slid out on ice. It affronted his sensibilities slightly. But then Nina is hurrying over, apologizing, and Tommy knows it wasn't ice at all.

She's told him, of course, that she was a soldier, that she can stop a man's heart or his breathing.

He looks up at her, still a bit dazed, as he pushes himself up from his drift. Not far away is the body of something that only looks vaguely humanoid in the way it's crumpled over itself. Tommy's seen enough death to know a dead body when he sees one.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"They have Katya."

It's all she can say. There's a cold rage in her that leaves her numb to her fingertips. She doesn't reach to help Tommy up. She can't. She can't think.

"They took her from the apartment--"

Nina forces herself to take a deep breath and she looks beyond Tommy. Her eyes narrow and she makes a sharp gesture with both hands; the sound of cracking bones and a brief, sharp scream fills the air as a body goes down.

[bookmaker_boss]

Tommy lets her have her moment, lets her react to something he can't see or hear out there in the snow. There is a visceral thing in him that responds to violence and death, a younger man that lived in him in these moments.

He got to his feet and didn't try to grab her. He wasn't sure putting hands on would result in anything other than her further rage, then directed at him. But he does come closer, quiet, present. He's got a gun in his holster. All she needs do is direct him on her war path, and he'll go with her.

"We'll find her," he promises.