Nadia Protection Squad Assemble (Kendra/Cecil/Nadia/Tomomi)

Nadia sobbed a couple more times, mind still reeling. How was she even supposed to act right now. She felt like she was suffocating, exploding at the same time. Tomomi was right, she needed to breath, to pull away and let her brain take over. So with another sigh, she pulled away from Cecil and Kendra wiping her eyes furiously, she took a few steps toward Tomomi, before dropping down to give him a hug. He looked like he needed it.

She took the tray of drinks and picked it up, carrying it to the coffee table and setting it down. Her hands were shaking. "I've been an awful host. Please, have a seat..." she offered a little forlornly, settling herself in her small arm chair with her legs pulled up against her and a the mug of hot chocolate in her still trembling hands. She sipped the cooling cocoa just a little, letting the warmth of it spread through her from her throat. "mmm...Thank you Tomomi and...I'm sorry for..." She looked up at them through her lashes, "I don't...know what to say."

Tomomi on the floor. Nadia carrying a tray with shaking hands as she stifled tears. Kendra...saying what he already knew was true.
There was just a variety of little pains, and no matter what his friend said, it was so, so hard not to blame himself. There was no way he could have known, sure...but he'd still been derelict in his duties, and it lead to this.
He was really finding it hard to trust himself right now.

He silently helps Tomomi to his feet, and finds his own spot on the ground, around the table but away from the actual furniture. He was hardly going to sit on or near that's how this started Nadia, and he didn't get the feeling the couch would comfortably fit everyone else anyway.
Cecil smiles thinly towards Nadia as she speaks up, smile painted on in feeble cover-up. "Please don't apologise. Just...talk to u-" He coughs. "Them."

Kendra didn't want to be pushed away. She was too scared of Nadia vanishing. But she was, and Nadia was still there. Tomomi was being helped off the ground, Cecil was sitting, and everybody seemed to be setlling. Hesitating, Kendra began to sit down on the floor, near the small chair Nadia sat in, just in case she started to vanish.

"This is about you, Nadia. Don't apologize. We totally busted in unannounced. Don't apologize." She started to mess with her hair a little, trying to distract herself from everything, even if only slightly.

First, at the hug, Tomomi paused a moment, before hugging back. Then, as Nadia took the tray and Cecil helped him up, Tomomi moved to sit down near Cecil, but not quite as near as he would normally, conscious of Nadia's now open insecurity that she felt she was in the way of Cecil and Tomomi's friendship. So, he took a sip of his water, shaking his head slightly as he took in what little was said. It wasn't... Better, than earlier. But, it was different, and perhaps awkward. Nobody wanted to say something to set the others off... That was Tomomi's assumption.

So, he offered that fragile smile to Nadia once more as he spoke. "Ah, Nadia, while I'm here, do you want me to do any washing or cleaning? I mean, I may not be a good cook, or, um... Whatever the drinks term for it is, but, I can clean and make things tidy." He offered, nodding his head regardless of the answer. He had things he wanted to check up on her about, but this wasn't the time, and he couldn't just set things back off. So, he turned to Cecil and Kendra for a moment, looking between the two.

"I've... Also got apologies I want to say. But... I'll save them for when you are okay to hear them. I think we all... Just want to apologise, but, um... I say we don't, and we just... Wait, breathe, and enjoy the smooth flavour of water... Or in your case Nadia, hot chocolate. Oh, um... S-sorry if it's not very strong, I don't know how you take it, so, I milked it a bit..."

It took Nadia a few moments to form words. She had to think about what was happening. She had to breathe. They were all here and worried and staring. O-oh god they were staring. She sucked in a long breath, closed her eyes, sipped the chocolate. Despite an empty couch they were all sitting on the floor closer to her.

It was Cecil's words she heard first. That she should talk to them but not him. She chose to ignore that statement, as she didn't have the strength to argue his importance to him right now, not when she was battling with her own. She smiled lightly when Kendra attempted to reassure her. Tomomi's words surprised her, however, and she blanched. "Um...no, you don't need to do anything like that...You're sweet, as always. All of you. I don't..."

she pulled her brows together, staring into the swirl of chocolate as if it were there she would find the answers to the universe. She needed to speak, needed to explain herself. They wanted to understand, and even though Nadia knew they couldn't, she also knew she had to say something, or this pit wouldn't go away, and they wouldn't stop looking at her like that, so hugging her knees closer she started at the beginning. "I Never really felt like I belonged anywhere. Most of the time I just felt like a fly on the wall. An observer in the corner. I was happy enough to watch the world around me, it's the only thing I could do my whole life was watch..." Cecil had already heard this, but the others should probably hear it, or there was no way they could possibly understand. She didn't look at them, just kept looking into the dark chocolate. "When I left my parents and moved into the inn, started going to school, I thought I could try. But I learned very quickly that I wasn't like anyone else. I say strange things. The world I see is a little different...And there was no place for me in the world I encountered."

Her breath was steadying now, concentrating on the words instead of the feeling helped to calm her nerves. "I thought that by forcing myself into people's lives that I could change who I was, that I could become someone who really existed. I was close, I thought. But...when I talked to Tomomi, and a couple other people I began to wonder...what if that was the only reason. If I stopped trying to force myself into this world...would I find that I still didn't really have a place in it?"

"Being all alone here...all the time I guess...I couldn't see the difference between this feeling and not existing at all. I'm not afraid of death. But I am afraid of living the rest of my life with this empty feeling." She confessed. "So that's why, if it makes things easier for you, I'll depart from this world. Those were...the things I was thinking." She delivered the last line as calmly as she could, matter-of-factly, because it was the truth whether they wanted to hear it or not.

The fact that Tomomi ended up settling by his side was surprise, but not an unwelcome one to him. He smiled weakly and appreciatively at the boy at the show of solidarity, taking some small comfort from it.
He'd...really expect no less from him. He'd had to have done something right to be able to have a friend like him by his side.

The looked over to Nadia as she started speaking, retelling a story he'd heard before. But now, this time, he heard a little more than before. Little details that worried him.
And statements that worried him even more.
"...why didn't you tell anyone about this...?" He shakes his head, slowly. "It...it isn't right...you shouldn't feel like that. Never, never, never..." He swallows, and grabs a glass of water, taking small sips that grow greater til he downs the rest in one. Placing the glass down, he holds silent for a moment before looking over at Nadia again. "You're here, Nadia. With us. Everyone here, we want you here. We love having you here. You not being there would be...painful."

"...Even if you aren't, I'm...afraid of you dying..."

Kendra was quiet for a long time, staring at Tomomi as he spoke. She was still fidgeting, trying to settle, but it was hard. She wanted to just stand up, touch everybody in the room to make sure they existed, and yell at her troubles and smother her emotions in anger.

Nadia's story made Kendra tear up. She had always been pretty open about her emotions, and always had been quick to react to things. "Nadia, you have a place. And I think you've helped us all to an extent. I don't know a lot about Cecil's time with you or Tomomi's, but you helped me. You got me to get away from my parents, right? And you helped me get a job! And pick out outfits! And helped me actually be me!" She was trying. She took a breath, deciding she was not going to cry. "None of us want you to leave! We all care about you. A-And you have a place in the world! You've totally helped and united us all so..." She was crying fully now. "So maybe your purpose in the world is to help people! Maybe if she gave Nadia an answer, it would help. She didn't know if it actually would, but she had to try something.

It had become somewhat of a habit, but, Tomomi just sat silently and listened to the words of the others. Nadia's confessions, Cecil's pleading, and Kendra's desperation. Emotions were wracking people's voices, and Tomomi found himself swallowing once more to try keep his nerves out of his voice. Then, Tomomi thought of what to say once more.

No, this time he didn't. Carefully, Tomomi set his glass of water down on the floor next to him, gesturing his arms out to Cecil and Kendra as he looked towards Nadia with a soft expression, both sad yet affectionate as he spoke. "Well... Um... I know it'll be... Well... Hard to believe... But, well... We're all here, and um, living proof that we're here for you, and, all three of us want you around. It's... Fairly selfish of us, but, if you think you... Um... Disappearing would make things easier for us... Please rethink. I don't think any of us would be the okay if you left... S-s-so, um..."

Shifting around, Tomomi moved the glass out of the way, before kneeling down, and bowing with his hands on the floor, and forehead touching it, Tomomi bowing before Nadia. "P-please! Please stay! Please don't leave us!" He pleaded, keeping his eyes screwed shut as he tried to keep himself from going into a full on panic, staying in this position for now until given any semblance of reason to not, such as someone else's discomfort.

"...why didn't you tell anyone about this...?"

Nadia blinked, looking to Cecil as he asked the question, told her she shouldn't feel that way. The look on her face was calmer than it should be, given the subject matter. "Do you feel the need to tell people the sky is blue? It's a fact for me, this feeling. I can't change it any more than you can change the color of the sky." One by one they told her to stay, that she did have a place here with them. It was hard to process, with the place her mind had been, but now that she was here, with all of them around her together for the first time outside of their nightly activities, she thought maybe she could believe it. Her look of disbelief only intensified as Tomomi prostrated himself.

"T-Tomo..." She blinked, reaching down to gently touch his hair "You don't need to do that. I won't..." She looked around at each of them, eyes watering a little. "I'll stay. I will. I promise. I'm...I'm sorry I cause you all so much pain and worry. I just...I'm sorry but you might..." She swallowed. Could she really ask this of them? Could she really be selfish enough to do that?

It took her a moment to find the right words, and then another moment to feel like she could really say them. "If I-if I called one of you, and told you how I was feeling would...would it be okay? Sometimes when I'm alone here it's so quiet and dark I feel like I'm already in the grave." She said with a pained note in her voice, the evidence of a pain that she saw as worse than death. The pain she was running from everytime she walked out the door to go on one of her random escapades. She laughed a little ruefully. "I'm sorry...This probably isn't the Nadia you're used to. I didn't...want you to see. I wanted to be different. But in the end, this is the only me I can be. I'm sorry." She sat back in the chair weakly, and in that moment, eclipsed by the high back of the chair, she looked very small.

"And you didn't think we could?! Would?!"
Directly after his outburst, Cecil turned timid and shrank back, ashamed. "No, no, obviously - I'll shut up, don't mind me. I'm saying stupid things."

He stayed silent from there, hesitant to speak again. His hand crept up to where an earphone hung around his neck, fiddling with it between his fingers. He looked up to Nadia, but for all he felt this was the moment to speak, he couldn't find the confidence to do so.
Looking at the empty glass on the table, he took it in his hand and nodded weakly at Nadia before going to the sink and draining several glasses in short succession. His throat felt all too dry, but the water refused to quench it, and it was getting harder to drink any more. Letting a long breath out, he filled it up one last time and came back to the table, once more placing himself apart from everyone else.
As he put his glass down and stared at the table, his eyes came to rest on Nadia's phone. The sight brought him nothing but guilt, but he kept his eyes on it anyway. Slowly, he reached out for it, taking it in hand and looking at it for a moment as his eyes started to water.
As he hunched over to hide his face, he holds out Nadia's phone to her with one hand. He spoke up again with a quiet voice, tightly controlled. "You always could. It was always ok."

Kendra wiped at her face, listening to everybody speak. There was Cecil, with his shock and his genuine care for Nadia. There was Tomomi with his comforting words and his plea for Nadia to stay around. And then there was Nadia, with her apologies, her bluntness, her question. It was a lot. Kendra wasn't 100% sure everything was real still.

"You could call us any time! We all would accept it! For sure! You mean a lot to us, Nadia." She blurted it out suddenly, before closing her mouth. She hadn't had any water, hadn't even thought about it. She didn't want any, the idea of trying to put anything in her stomach seeming like a bad idea. She wanted to cry more, and she did. She was starting to run out tears a little, a little, tiny prick of pain in her head, but she didn't mention it, didn't react. She was fine. This was about Nadia.

"if we.. If I ever made you feel like you couldn't call or tell me, I'm sorry." What else was there to say? Kendra racked her brain for anything, but she had no clue what to say, what to do. Tomomi seemed to be able to handle it, and so did Cecil. Kendra just couldn't figure it out.

As Nadia lent down and stroked Tomomi's hair a bit while telling him he didn't need to do what he did, Tomomi stayed quiet, before sitting back up, now on his knees and looking up at her. As Nadia spoke more, Cecil spoke and moved, and Kendra begged and cried, Tomomi just... Just watched. He took note of every little detail now, seemingly alert in a state of hyper tension. The detail that Cecil now sat away from him. That Nadia was clearly exhausted, and that Kendra was at a loss.

He went from feeling like he was putting on a brave face, to feeling left alone. But, no, he still had to put on the brave face. Everyone else needed this more than him. He could panic later. He could panic and cry and hate himself later. Now was their time.

Still, he let out a light exhale, finishing off his water as he finally spoke up. "I keep my phone on me nearly all the time, even when working. Just send a t-text the instant you need, and I'll... Um... Reply and text back the soonness I can. Although, um... Nadia? Do you... Do you remember sending me a picture of a..." He gulped, swallowing his fears. Was this right to say? Was this the right time? No, thinking about it, this was the only time... If he tried to stay behind to say, Cecil and Kendra may get suspicious. If he tried to mention it later, Nadia might panic. "A picture of a-a dead baby bird? B-because, um... I um... If you leg-legitimately thought that was something n-nice to send then that's fine, b-but also your s-style of messaging was d-d-different to usual. S-so, um... I'm sorry to bring that up, but, I didn't know if that was the best time or not..."

Shaking his head, he set the glass back down. "Sorry. Wasn't the right time to b-bring that up, so, um, f-forget it... But, as um... As Cecil and Kendra s-s-said... We're um... Here for you, and even if it seems normal for you, to us... I... I want you to view yourself how we view you. You're kind, open, quirky, gentle... I... I know I messed up what I said when we watched that film, and upset you, but... But you're you! I... I... I'm sorry. I'm just... S-sorry... Um... W-want another hot choc- oh, um, you're not finished yet..."

This was exhausting, with no one knowing what to say or how to say it. Or atleast, Nadia didn't know. She couldn't apologize anymore, and she couldn't stand the faces of everyone else as they prostrated themselves trying to grasp for solutions. She got up from her chair and walked over to accept the phone that Cecil had stretched out to her, and was looking at it with a complicated expression, as Tomomi voiced his question.

Nadia's face blanked and a horrid blush of shame crossed her features. The rest of what he said was only half-heard, drowned out by her own thoughts about what to say about that. As always, she landed on the truth. "No, it's okay to ask...um. I'm really sorry, Tomomi." the distracting topic seemed to bring back some of the bluntness she was probably known for. Her tired expression cooled into one closer to her normal straight face. "I was intoxicated when I sent you that message. I plan to be more careful the next time I intake alcoholic beverages. But at the time - a couple days ago, I think - I really wasn't thinking clearly even without the alcohol." She looked at Kendra and Cecil, sure she'd see some of that irritation from the other night in Cecil's expression, but as she slid her phone into the pocket of her jeans, she knelt down to pick up the tray that the drinks were on, being careful to set their waters on the coffee table before she picked up the empty tray.

Her own drink was left sitting on the coffee table as well, half drank, as she carried the empty tray to the kitchen. She spoke up with her remorseful voice so they could hear her. "I was thinking about Cecil and how I hadn't heard from him in a few days. It was dark and I was lonely, so I did what I always do - I went out to find something to do that wasn't here. I ran into a boy in a bar named Albrecht. We shared some words and drinks. He's a cadet, so nobody asked his age or mine. It must be nice to be able to bend the rules however you want. Anyway. Afterwards he helped me home. It was..." She remembered what Albrecht had told her, and she smiled a little. "It was nice. He told me I should tell Cecil to pay more attention to me. That I needed more affection. But I thought...asking for it wouldn't make him want to give it to me. So I decided to wait longer...for him to want to." She should have felt bad about bringing up how heartbroken that had made her. The pain of it was clear as crystal in her voice. It would make Cecil hurt. Make him hate himself even more. But at the moment...it felt good to get it out of her system. She found she needed to talk about it...and they had said they would listen. While she was telling her tale, she was pulling down more mugs and using the utensils that Tomomi had used to make more hot chocolate for the other three. While the water boiled, she looked through the gap between the cabinets and the counter that looked out onto the living room with a sad expression.

"I don't mean to make you feel bad, Cecil. It's okay if you have other things to do. I don't want you to go out of your way for me if you don't want to. It's not..." She pursed her lips. "It's not fair of me to steal all your time away." Allowing herself to talk through the scenario seemed to help Nadia's general manner and body language. It was almost like she was learning how to talk to people again, after what felt like an eternity of emptiness that was largely self-inflicted. But the words were coming easier now, and her expressions had more life and energy to them, if only just a little.

After a moment, she brought the tray back over and set it down, with three mugs of dark, minty-smelling hot chocolate for them. She picked up her own mug and took a small sip before sitting back down.

For all the frustration she expected to see on his face, Nadia would find none of it. He barely reacted at all, sullen and still as he tried to hide his wet-eyed features.
He remained that way as Nadia continued to the story, deep in his shell as he stewed internally. He wasn't wrong. She wasn't wrong. This was something he should have done, been doing. There were a lot of things he ought to have been doing that he hadn't, and it led this far because of that.

Without looking up, he responded to Nadia with a tiny shake of his head. "I do want to. I do...but I couldn't. Shouldn't. Wasn't allowed. Didn't deserve it." He blinked, and a wet trickle ran down. "Doesn't matter. What you deserve does. Not my stupid hangups. They were always stupid. Made stupid things happen. Should have realised that earlier."
As the hot chocolate is set down, his eyes flick up from his hunched position, before he looks back down again and pushes the mug away into the table's centre. "Drank too much. Can't drink that."

Kendra was full of more questions she wanted to ask, though she forced herself to keep her mouth shut. She didn't really get it fully, but she could understand now wasn't the time. She wondered why Nadia had a dead bird on her phone before remembering where she worked. She probably just thought it was interesting. And the fact it had been bad enough for Nadia to feel the need to be intoxicated was telling. She had talked to a stranger, a cadet, rather than Kendra. She must've been a bad friend, because there was no other reason she could've missed it.

Kendra didn't say anything immediately. She didn't know what to say. Cecil and Tomomi could handle this, right? Kendra had no clue what she was doing. They seemed to be able to keep Nadia talking about what she was feeling. It took a few moments for her to think of what she considered the right words. Is there anything else you wanna say? In general. Like, if you're bottling anything else up that we could help with, it might be time to tell." She was sure those were the right words. They had to be.