What I Think
A short piece about Nadia's reaction to the events surrounding her new life. It's a bunny that crept up behind me when I wasn't looking. I wrote it really quickly, so cut me some slack here.
It's crazy.
There's no other way to look at what has happened these last few months. My life was always insane, even before I knew anything about myself or my family. I think, sometimes, that I was most normal when I was living on the streets. At least then I fit somewhere, in some made-up category. I was anonymous street kid, no number, because I wasn't worth it. I wasn't special, wasn't The Passenger, wasn't the daughter of a famous criminal.
I didn't have a father.
I didn't think about it back then. I missed Elena—she was my guide and, I thought, my friend. I thought she might care about me, miss me, disapprove of my new life. I never once suspected the truth.
I look back at my time in the orphanage, and I shudder to think she was with me the whole time. Watching me. Knowing more about me and not telling me. Using me.
Even now, I think it's ridiculous. A story they made up, to brainwash me or to confuse me. A story made up to try to use me, to turn me against her. If I didn't know Sydney, I might believe it.
Sydney. I know she's good at lying, at convincing others she's telling the truth. I've seen her work. I've worked with her. I've even seen her lie to my face, and I know I believed it then. For all I know she could be lying to me every time she tells me anything.
And yet, somehow I believe her. And somehow that makes me doubt the craziness of the whole thing. Of course it's impossible I'm the reincarnation of Rambaldi, but there's Sydney, who believes some of it. Of course it's impossible for a CIA agent to act on her own to prove her sister's father's innocence, but she does it. Of course it's impossible to have our sort of history and still function rationally and well, but Sydney walks into work every day and works with the man who ruined her life several times.
That's what I think of every time the facts become absurd. Because otherwise I'm crazy. Because otherwise I have nothing to believe.