Nina Sayers

Lily wasn't drunk, but she wasn't entirely sober either as she walked home from the club, her boots thudding gently with every step, her jacket wrapped tight around her. She was sober enough to feel the winter wind, but still drunk enough that the past few weeks couldn't touch her. It wasn't until she was nearly upon Nina that she heard her voice and she stopped, hands clenching into fists inside her jacket pockets, hard enough that she could feel her nails biting into her palms.

The last time she'd seen Nina had been on that stupid screen in the Compound, the movie projected there for anyone to watch. For anyone to see and to blame her for what she'd done.

"It's Lily," she said, her voice steadier than she expected it to sound. "How long have you been sitting here?"

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It was an old instinct, feeling threatened by Lily's presence, a bristle of defensiveness straightening her spine. An old instinct, muddled by another feeling. A warmer feeling.

A feeling of relief.

"I don't know," she whispered, staring down at the blood drying a rusty smear on her palms.

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The clothes were familiar, even if the memory itself was distant. The poster, those snow covered streets, sitting with Nina on the sidewalk, telling her that she was real, even if nothing else around them seemed to be.

That was a year ago and in that time, things had changed.

"Come on, let's get you inside," she said, because for the first time, Lily didn't know what else to do. She'd watched Nina die, she'd seen herself the way Nina had seen her and she'd lost her. She'd lost everyone, one by one, but Nina had always been the most difficult.

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Choking back a sob, Nina gathered up her skirts, staining them with blood, and pushed unsteadily to her feet. Lily and that street corner seemed distant and murky, as if Nina was watching it all happen while submerged in icy water.

But she'd gotten used to that feeling of not quite being able to grasp the reality surrounding her.

"Where are we?"

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"We're in a city called Darrow," Lily answered and for the first time in memory, she felt like she was running on auto-pilot. Letting herself stop and think about what was happening -- Nina was dead, she watched her die -- wouldn't help anything. She couldn't.

She reached for Nina's hand to steady her, then pointed up at the apartment building.

"I live here. Third floor. It's like the island in a lot of ways," she explained, heading for the door. She'd take Nina up to her apartment, get her cleaned up and calmed down, then she'd let her sleep before taking her to the train station for her package. She wasn't looking forward to explaining the package.

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The island...

For a long moment, she didn't comprehend what that meant. She remembered heat and trees-- so much green, surrounding her on all sides. She remembered a small, windowless bedroom that she slept in alone. She remembered the darkness of a cave, music pounding off the walls, and Lily's mouth close to her ear. The two of them laughing.

She remembered blood on her hands, but in the memory, it wasn't her own.

"How did we... I was--" she looked down at her heavy skirts with a frown, "What am I wearing?"

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"The island had changed," Lily said, holding the door open, hoping she could get Nina inside and upstairs before she had to explain too much of this. She wasn't prepared to try and figure out the timing herself and she wasn't looking forward to explaining that she'd been alone for a year. That Nina had been gone for that long.

"London, remember?" she asked. "You saw your poster."

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"I..."

It was all fragments. Some of them sharper than others. Those, she drew back from, frightened. On the streets of London, that day-- today... she remembered pain. Fear and red. A crack widening, the high whine of glass straining as it reached the point of breaking.

"I think so?"

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"Now you're here," Lily said, pressing the button for the elevator. The lobby was quiet at this time of night, peaceful and calm, and even if Nina seemed relatively subdued, she sort of hoped the quiet of the building would help. "Remember the day you ended up on the island? It's like that, only you left there and came here."

She paused as the elevator doors slid open, then said, "It's better here."

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"How?" she asked, a spark of curiosity making its way through the cloud of fear. Better was perhaps relative. In her jumbled, distant tangle of memories, she couldn't remember if she'd been happier in New York, or happier on the island.

Or happy anywhere at all.

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"There's a company, for one," Lily said, pushing the button for her floor and watching as the numbers lit up one by one. "More people, less sand, real beds." Real parties. Not that the raves hadn't been great, but it was impossible to get lost on the island.

She'd tried. Someone had always found her.

"We still can't leave, but it's an improvement," she said.

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Nodding silently, Nina stood hunched in the middle of the elevator, arms wrapped tight around herself.

"You have your own apartment?"

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Lily nodded, registering that Nina looked cold or uncomfortable or both and that she should probably do something about it, but she wasn't sure what to do. "You will, too," she said as the doors slid open again, revealing the hallway that led to her apartment.

"Whenever someone arrives, there's always a package waiting for them at the train station. It has money, keys, a phone."

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Turning to look at Lily with a skeptical frown, she said, "Really?"

A package waiting for her? That couldn't possibly sound any creepier.

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"Creepy, right?" Lily asked, holding the elevator door open for Nina to follow her. She dug her keys out of her purse at the same time and held them up, dangling them from her fingers. "The fact that there's ID waiting there for you is even worse, but it's better than having nothing."

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He's on his way back to the house when he sees her, a small figure huddled there, all hunched over. Even so, if it weren't for the question, Eduardo doubts he would have thought too much of it. Instead, that small voice cutting through the cold night air brings him to a stop, brow raising. It's been too long, but it's still familiar, and while that might not mean much of anything around here, it seems worth a shot even so. He couldn't just leave her here.

"Nina?" he asks quietly. "Is that you?"

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At first, he was no more recognizable than any stranger on the street and she found herself shuffling away from him, regardless of how gentle his voice sounded.

But slowly... slowly, it came to her that he knew her name. Nina...

"I..." her voice cracked, a tear slipping down her cheek. Then, in the dim light of a streetlamp, she finally caught a glimpse of his face. "Eduardo?"

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"Yeah," Eduardo says with a slight nod, smiling just a little, though he's wary still. She's obviously shaken — if he had to guess, between the way she sounds and the way she's dressed, he'd say she couldn't have been here very long — and that's every reason to not want to make it worse, but at least she knows who he is. Trying to explain this as a stranger would be even more difficult. "Are you alright?"

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"I don't--" she shook her head, staring down at her bloodied hands and choking on a sob.

"I don't know. I think so." Wiping the back of one hand across her cheek, she unknowingly smeared a streak of blood across her face. "What's happened?"

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Eduardo curbs the urge to try to wipe the blood off her face, unsettled by the sight of it there but certain that it wouldn't make any difference. There's enough else to be focused on, anyway, though how he's supposed to explain this, he hasn't really got a clue. It's complicated enough as it is without adding in how distressed she clearly is.

"It's okay," he tells her, because that seems most important. "You're... somewhere you weren't a few minutes ago, is what's happened, but it's alright here."

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"Oh," she whispered, and perhaps she should've felt comforted, if only because he was someone she knew and should trust, but she couldn't shake the coil of fear slinking through her veins. Making her doubt him. Making her doubt herself.

"Where's here?"

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