NANCY let out a pained groan and brought a shaking, bruised hand up to her forehead as her eyelids slowly fluttered open. Above herself, she saw a brilliant blinding white light, trees crisscrossing one another in the breeze, and beyond those, clouds rolling across a darkening sky. That meant she was lying on the ground, for some reason, outside, and judging by the rolling thunder, it looked like it was going to be pretty stormy soon if she didn't get inside.
For several long moments, Nancy Drew-Hardy just lay there, unmoving, and unstirred, trying to regulate her breathing back to something that resembled normalcy, staring up at the black and purple thunderclouds slowly drifting above the groping branches that looked more to the imaginative young woman like arms, groping to reach out for her.
She wondered if those clouds would quite possibly do her the courtesy of holding off on the deluge of a downpour that it was currently threatening until her mind was able to put itself back together in one piece. As it was, Nancy couldn't even think of where she needed to go to avoid the coming bad thunderstorm, where to go. Did she even live around here?
And where, for that matter, even was 'here' anyway? She felt so confused. Nancy didn't know where she was or what had happened to her. Why was she lying on the ground now?
The only thing the woman knew was that her head hurt, her arm hurt—was it broken—her ankle, and well, ah…pretty much all of her ached and burned.
Nancy blinked her lids rapidly a couple of times until her hazy vision slowly came back into focus and—what looked to be remnants of the wreckage of a car accident swam into her blurry vision at the edge of the woods, the car in a ditch.
The furrow of confusion between her brows deepened. Nancy couldn't remember what happened or how she had gotten here, what…happened?
Why was she out here in the woods? Did she live nearby? Or had she been on her way to visit someone? She couldn't say for sure.
The only thing she was certain of was that everything ached, hurt, and her name.
Frowning, Nancy groggily sat up, stifling a groan, rubbing at her aching temples with the pads of her fingers. She had a headache that was out of this world.
She raked her fingers through her long wavy auburn-red tresses until she felt it. Underneath her fingers, Nancy felt crusted, old, dried blood as well as a good-sized egg size knot at the base of her skull.
Well, she thought rationally to herself, as well as she was able to in her disoriented state, that would explain away the headache, and perhaps why Nancy was having trouble remembering anything after waking up like this.
Nancy decided she must have hit her head on something. Or maybe…maybe someone had…hit her.
Nancy let out a pained, shaking breath and brought her hands away from her face, lifting her left hand to her eye-level and studying it with violently trembling fingers.
Resting proudly on her left ring finger, was the glint of a plain and simple yellow gold wedding ring.
Her blood chilled to ice in her veins, and what little color she possessed in her face to begin with, left her as she gaped.
Wait a minute. She was married? To whom? When had she gotten married? And to whom? Why couldn't she remember? She wracked her brain, trying to remember, and was coming up short.
"Oh, god," she moaned in a weak, faint, shaking voice.
Shrinking down a bit, stifling a whimper that was bubbling within the confines of her chest as tears pricked and stung at the edges of her eyes, Nancy swallowed hard down past the bile that settled on her tongue, but it was too late.
Nausea clawed at her throat, and Nancy tried to force down the bile, but it was too late as her head started spinning, and she knew she'd made a grave mistake in getting up too fast.
Her stomach contracted violently, forcing everything up and out. Her face was white and dripping bile, sweat, and tears.
She lurched forward and sunk to her knees. The pungent stench invaded her flaring nostrils, and Nancy heaved and retched even though there was nothing left to go until all that came up was clear liquid.
When she was finished, she shakily wiped at her mouth with the sleeve of her long black blouse, afraid.
Oooh, she probably had a concussion, for sure.
The moment she shakily sat up straighter, she felt the world slowly come back into focus. Nancy could feel herself wanting to slip into sleep and collapse into a crumpled heap back near that car that clearly wasn't hers, but she fought desperately against the tide of sleep.
She couldn't sleep now. If she did happen to have a concussion, concussions could be dangerous injuries and it was best not to sleep when suffering from one, she knew.
Also, Nancy did not particularly like the vulnerability that sleeping would expose her to while she was out here.
Wherever 'here' was for her. What if whoever lived out here wasn't friendly towards trespassers? Would they hurt her? Forcing herself to get up off the ground, Nancy shakily looked around the grassy embankment, more of a clearing.
There was no one nearby, not for miles, though she swore if she squinted her eyes in the distance, she could see a house in the distance. Perhaps, someone, there could help her, tell her where she was, then.
She didn't know if she lived around here, or who she was married to. Married.
The thought plastered a quiet vibration underneath her skin and made it crawl, and for a second time, Nancy Drew-Hardy shakily lifted her left hand and studied her plain gold ring on her finger, nervously twisting the delicate little thing.
Was her husband kind? Handsome? Ugly? Short? A plain man? Mean? Abusive? Loud? Sweet? Charming? Funny? Attentive? All of those? Nancy wracked her brain, trying to remember, but just like a ship straining to see a light in a storm, no image of this supposed husband of hers came to her, and Nancy stifled a small groan of frustration and fear.
With a small, pained whimper Nancy shrunk down and glanced around herself again, twisting her fingers together painfully, not sure what to do with her current condition.
What was she supposed to do? Walking towards that quaint-looking cottage just over there might result in getting herself killed or kidnapped by whoever lived there, assuming the inhabitants of the house harbored ill intents.
Nancy drew in a pained breath that sent her ribcage screaming, causing her right hand to travel to her right side.
She flinched, feeling the bruised skin underneath her black blouse, hoping that nothing was seriously broken.
The twenty-six-year-old amateur detective felt like she was beginning to have a panic attack as her chest constricted and made her feel lightheaded. Her breaths were catching in her throat and becoming even more frantic as the seconds turned into minutes, though time itself felt like it dragged.
Nancy looked to the left and right of the clearing she found herself in.
Finally, the woman huffed in frustration and decided to walk towards that house, thinking it was her best shot. Hopefully, the owners were friendly and not at all perverts or creeps. She could only hope that was the case. Though the moment Nancy took a cautious half-step forward, she cried out in pain and stumbled forward, the heel of her black ankle boot tripping over a gnarled old tree root.
And then her hands, which caused the woman to cry out again as she caught the worst of her fall with her wrists, almost gave out on her, bruised and bleeding as they were.
Nancy's left ankle hurt and sent a white-hot flaring jolt of pain up her leg when she tried to put pressure on it, and her wrist hurt much more than her ankle when she had broken her fall.
"Oh, what if they're broken?" Nancy cried out in a voice that did not sound like hers, hoarse, faint, and weak.
Holding back fresh tears as the salty wretched little drops threatened to escape her lids, Nancy forced herself to her feet for a second or third time in the last five minutes, cradling her injured arm in her other hand, taking her next steps much more carefully, gingerly, almost shuffling so.
She limped forward, towards the direction of that house that looked like it was inhabited, judging by how cozy the cottage looked, a lazy plume of hazy smoke emitting from the crooked chimney, so she knew someone was home.
Though whether or not the man or woman that opened the door when she knocked would be friendly towards her, she couldn't say, Nancy could only hope they would be.
The dark thunderclouds that loomed above Nancy were starting to make her anxious. Nancy's pitiful cries of pain were lost beneath the thunder that rolled just overhead.
The sky was so low that even outside on the hills like this, the young woman was beginning to feel claustrophobic.
If she wasn't able to find another living, breathing soul soon, then she was going to be stuck out in this squalling rainstorm cold, lost, utterly alone, and not remembering a bloody thing.
She'd be cold, wet, frightened, and even the night was encroaching quickly, adding to the sheer doom.
She called out again, shrill but loud, anything to pierce the thick air, hoping someone friendly could hear her cries.
The thunder seemed to crack the air as if the very heavens might split apart. It rolled like the ash could of a volcano, becoming a rolling booming rumble. It declared to all the raw power of nature and gave fair warning of the wrath that was to come.
Nancy knew she was about to be in a serious spot of trouble if she couldn't manage to find shelter, and bloody fast, at that.
Nancy walked like her limbs did not really belong to her anymore and each step forward towards that house was a negotiation rather than an order as she tried to order the rest of her body to willingly fall in line and not fight this.
Everything hurt. Every fiber of her body hurt. The ache was dull as if some lazy torturer is standing right behind Nancy, only applying enough pressure to be an annoyance.
It sat there, just to the side of the right shoulder blade toward the spine. Nancy could imagine it would be like this lying on a large glass marble; perhaps at first it would be pleasant yet soon it would be just like this pain of hers.
A chill suddenly wafted down Nancy's spine as she heard a piercing human cry rent the air, a yell of agony. It made her shudder like a cold wind would wake someone.
Her blood ran cold and a bead of sweat began to drip down the front of her temples. Nancy stood, rooted to her spot, helpless, not knowing what to do and way too frightened to even begin to think rationally now.
Nancy's ears perked up and her eyes widened as she heard a horribly loud cracking! a sound that sounded like a car backfiring, but who would be out in the middle of this storm that was bad enough to potentially cause a tornado?
A voice rent the air, startling her, ringing from somewhere beyond her line of sight, though the unexpectedness caused her to jump out of her skin.
"Nancy!" the voice called out, getting closer now, sounding both frantic and worried. "Nance? Sweetheart? Where are you? If you can hear me at all, please answer me!"
Nancy's eyes widened in abject shock and horror as she looked wildly around to the left and right, trying to spot the source of the man's voice. Whoever he was, his voice was smooth, rich, and melodious.
The kind of voice a man ought to have, and it sounded like he was looking for a Nancy. Was that her? It couldn't be. Her name was Nancy.
It clearly couldn't be her, surely, they were looking for someone else who happened to share her first name.
She nodded to herself. That was it.
But…on the off chance that it did happen to be her this man was looking for, why was he searching here for her in the middle of a coming squall?
Was this the man she was married to?
But what if the man's a creep or a bad man? What if he was the one who hit you? Crashed your car if you were even driving it, to begin with?
Too many questions and not enough answers were swirling around in her aching, throbbing skull that felt like it was fit to burst. Looking frantically around the clearing, Nancy wildly searched for a place to hide, not trusting the owner of that truly delish-sounding voice.
Something within the young woman harbored a twinge of caution towards the voice that rang from beyond her line of sight, and Nancy despised herself for even thinking such an abhorrent thought. There was nothing that would give her substantial coverage to hide behind, at least nothing that would provide her cover, save for a few trees.
But despite this fact, the woman ducked behind a tree, not hiding well enough at all from this stranger, but she knew it was better than nothing.
She sucked in her breath and held perfectly still as a towering figure approached, walking silently and swiftly, like a phantom.
"Nancy? Honey?" the man's voice continued, laced to the brim with concern as the person slowly, cautiously, made her way into Nancy's line of vision.
It was as she suspected it to be. The figure was indeed a man. A tall, muscular guy.
A handsome enough face, she supposed, with a tanned complexion and the darkest eyes Nancy had ever seen.
His shadow raven hair was wild, looking like it had a mind of its own, standing up in tufts this way and that.
He looked to be quite young, this stranger out in the beginnings of the oncoming thunderstorm, in his mid-twenties, close to her own age, Nancy guessed at the young man's age, but also could tell by the way this stranger carried himself that the man would have no trouble whatsoever winning a fight.
There was…something about him, something mysterious, festering just underneath the surface of the man's handsome, slightly scarred face that looked like it had been decked a time or two in a good hit, but Nancy, in her current confused state, couldn't quite put her finger on it.
Nancy's eyes widened as she realized what she was doing, and she gave her head a curt shake to clear it, a long red curl of her hair tumbling in front of her face as she did so. She took a curl in between her thumb and forefinger to twirl it, biting down on her lip in a fit of anxiety, feeling a sheen of sweat throng on her brow and slick down her temple.
At the moment, all the young woman knew was how utterly terrified and panic-stricken she felt, and how much physical pain she was in, and terrified of who this man was to her if he was someone that Nancy even knew at all.
Why he might be looking for her. If Nancy was even her real name…
Still hiding behind the tree, Nancy bit down on her lip and poked her head around the trunk, peeking out just enough to watch this mysterious stranger looking for a woman named Nancy, her curiosity piqued and currently overwhelming most of her timidness.
Nancy forced herself to try to remain as calm as possible, willing her breathing to come to almost a stop.
It seemed like she'd not been spotted quite just yet, which was a good thing. The man with the widow's peak and the wild dark hair clutched tightly in his hand a cell phone, and what appeared to be a woman's purse in his other hand, as he continued looking around the edge of the woods, mumbling to himself darkly under his breath.
"You can't have gone far, sweetheart. I'll find you…"
Sweetheart?
Nancy faltered at the term of endearment, furrowing her brows in confusion at why he would be speaking to her in this way, and for reasons, she could not explain, felt an inexplicable fiery warmth begin to spread in the confines of her chest, and a tiny smile threatened to break out onto her face as the edges of her lips twitched upward, but Nancy fought the smile back down again.
Nancy continued to stand unmoved and almost unresponsive behind the tree until it seemed like the muscular man who looked like he'd win a hell of an MMA fight, was looking right at her, his dark intense eyes narrowed with the intensity of his gaze, bearing straight through her, and seeing into her very heart and her soul.
Nancy felt her eyes grow even wider until she thought for sure she was looking quite bug-eyed but didn't dare move. She didn't trust herself even if she could, considering how she'd fallen twice, and her legs felt weak and shaking.
Maybe the man standing less than fifty feet apart from her hadn't really spotted her, this was just a hallucination, a delusion of her pain-wracked mind, yes.
Perhaps it only seemed that way. Nancy held her breath as she stared at the man.
"Nancy?" the tall, stocky man with the wild shadow hair exclaimed, his focus entirely on Nancy as he narrowed his eyes and took a cautious step towards the beautiful redhead woman cowering behind the trunk of the tree, staring at him with those huge almond-shaped wide blue eyes that always ensnared him, too timid to approach him.
Now was no exception. Frank Hardy let himself stare deep into his wife's fearful bright blue eyes, wrought with confusion before he blinked and came back to himself.
"What are you doing out here, sweetheart? You ran off before McGinnis could take our statement! Charlie's coming with a tow truck to deal with our car, but why did you run off like that? I—I've been worried sick about you!" He wasn't quite yelling at her, but neither was he pleased, either. "There's a storm coming, baby! You could get sick!" he demanded, a hardened edge to his voice and his tone slightly sounded condescending, which was strange, him scolding her like this.
First of all, she wasn't the Nancy he was looking for, and second, why did this man care so much about her physical well-being? Who was this man to her?!
Nancy made an odd little muffled whine at the back of her throat as she shook her head just slightly, continuing to stare at the stranger that was rapidly approaching her. She wasn't sure what to do or say in this regard. Who was this man to her? And why was he out here in a storm?
He did not look mean, not at all, far from it, in fact.
He looked quite kind, but Nancy knew better than most, given her abilities, how looks could be deceiving. That was perhaps the one thing she'd retained knowledge of when she had hit her head. She was a freelance unofficial detective, though recently taken under Chief McGinnis's wing, and her name was Nancy, yes, she wasn't his Nancy, or whoever this stranger thought her to be. She did not know this man, did not know what his intentions towards her might be.
Nancy knew she could not afford to put blind trust into this man so easily, even if he seemed like a kind enough man, and a handsome guy that, just because he looked friendly enough like he hadn't a violent bone in his body.
Nancy had woken up with several injuries, and this dark-haired man in his jeans and dark black woolen sweater wandering the woods was the only other figure besides Nancy around.
"Sweetheart? Are you all right, baby? Nan? What's wrong?" the stranger asked, furrowing his dark brows into a frown, taking another step forward, his hand outstretched to her.
Nancy did not answer him. She couldn't. Nancy lost the color of her face. It was as if the young woman's heart had suddenly stopped beating and all the blood had run down into her black boots.
Nancy swayed for just a moment before the man caught her and lowered her to the ground, almost gingerly. Nancy had thought her death should have been much less painful, as she was aware of a pair of strong arms holding her.
She seemed like she was caught in a churning tide. However, all at once, she quickly became aware of the searing pains that tormented her bruised and broken body. It was almost more than Nancy could bear. Her muscles felt like they writhed in agony, screamed in protest, but her aching bones went limp and unresponsive and kept her pinned in this stranger's surprisingly soft embrace, lying, waiting, for him to do whatever he wanted.
And then, suddenly, from nowhere, a blinding white light burned itself into her vision, and she could feel the stranger trying to pry her lids open to look at her pupils. It was dim like a flashlight beam yet agonizing, nonetheless.
It very nearly blinded the poor young woman completely. Everything felt like it weighed down on her shoulders. The air as her cracked, bleeding, swollen lips parted shocked her lungs as Nancy felt herself gasping for air. She'd swam to the surface of her own haze, only to be slammed back to the ground by whatever was wrong with her.
The force of it snapped Nancy's bright blue eyes wide open. Her chest heaved as it tried to find its rhythm. She weakly tested her body. Her muscles would flex, but her limbs refused to move, and every wiggle of her fingers and toes sent rapid fire-explosions of pain throughout her body.
Nancy shuddered to think what torment awaited her now and lay in the stranger's arms for the suffering to start.
Then, she heard the stranger's voice, speaking to her.
"No, sweetheart, don't—don't go to sleep, baby! Stay awake!"
His tone was urgent, begging, pleading with her. Nancy's mind surged, reaching for an understanding that she could begin to comprehend, though her eyes could no longer stand the strain and shut themselves closed again.
But still, the man continued to speak to her, and again, Nancy found herself battling to open her eyes, wanting to look into the man's dark eyes that reminded her of onyx or coal, even.
The effort to stay awake and do as he commanded her in a panicked tone of his own took all that she had left within herself to give. She tried again. She just had to try. She had to know what this all meant.
If she didn't, she thought it would send her insane. The torture of her eyes shooting open was once again met by the harrowing, burning pain of the blinding white light emanating from the tip of a little flashlight, still raised, and pointed directly into her eyes. Her hoarse throat screamed out against whatever this man was trying to do to her.
Nancy desperately tried to raise her arms to shove at the man's chest and get herself free of his tight grip, or at the very least to push the flashlight out of his hands, at a minimum, to shield her vision with her arm to keep her eyes.
But her body would not grant Nancy even that wish.
"That's it," came the stranger's quiet, reserved voice through the gloom of her own darkness. "Fight it. Come back to me, Nancy, babe. You're going to be fine. I'm going to look after you and get you help, baby. Carson's coming, Nance."
The man cried out to her from a place that Nancy could not see, could not follow to see where the man had gone.
Nancy heard the succulent voice again, beginning to fear that the man who had broken her fall and caught her and was now speaking to her in low, hushed tones was not a real person at all, but simply a magnificent voice radiating from all corners of…wherever 'here' happened to be.
Nancy could not take it if this man happened to be another phantasm of her current delusional own mind. Exhausted, Nancy felt her body slump backward, unable to fight against the urge to succumb to sleep no more.
She knew that she was not dead, that she had to be alive, but considering how confused she felt, and how it came to be that she couldn't remember much of anything, she almost wished that she had died when she'd fallen.
She wanted for nothing more than to dive for the sweet relief of darkness that crept its way into the edges of her vision, and as it surged towards Nancy again, the young woman silently prayed to God that it would engulf her.
Anything to escape this haze of pain and confusion she was in, and she would cease. Nancy allowed her body to relax into the void, and her head lolled back against the crook of the man's elbow, praying it would end her sorrow.
She wanted no more of whatever had happened to her. As precious sleep found Nancy Drew-Hardy again, under the watchful, cautious, and vigilant eye of her husband, she whispered the only word that meant something to her anymore, though she didn't know the name or how this person was related in any way to her.
"Frank…" the name rolled off her tongue like sweet, decadent chocolate, and Nancy didn't even know why.
She didn't know a Frank.
She let out a tired sigh and then allowed herself to slip into a deep sleep into the stranger's arms.