The Strange Beautiful Places
Chapter 3
In all of Nadia's life she had never felt like a person on the outside looking in, but as soon as she woke up in a jail cell that morning she realized that this was exactly what that felt like. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes as if doing so would make her go back to her original home and back to the person she had thought was her father only that didn't happen and instead all she saw was the guard across the way from her staring at her as if she was the one who committed the crime. It wasn';t her fault that her father had kidnapped her as a baby
And before she knew it they were there. If she had to describe them they looked like the poster children for good parenting. She had seen there picture earlier but nothing really had done them justice until she was looking into her real mother's face. It felt like warmth. It felt like home.
"Nadia-" The woman breathed getting closer to the bars desperately hoping that Nadia would take her hand, but she stood where she was motionless as if she didn't move than this wouldn't be real. That he could go back to living in the states and not some foreign country that she knew nothing about. Where had they been searching for her all these years and how did they finally know where to find her.
Breaking the silence, the guard cleared his throat grabbing his keys and opening her cell causing her mother to fly into her arms. Nadia was taken by surprise and tried to struggle away but she kept holding her. No. This was too real. She felt as if she couldn't breath.
"Please. Get off me." she said through a strangled breath.
Katherine let go with a look of shock crossing her face. Nadia really didn't care what she felt like at the moment because it couldn't have been any worse than what she was feeling. Katherine and Stefan already had their daughter back. They had had everything they had always wanted standing right in front of them, but it was Nadia who had to leave things like her friends and the only family she had ever had. And now she was being forced into this new lifestyle that she didn't even know about. How was she supposed to live like this? And how was she supposed to cope? How could anyone understand having an emotional attachment to a person who had kidnapped you?
Nadia had no real reason to trust these people. Sure they were her flesh and blood, but they weren't the people who raised her. They weren't the people who had taught her how to walk. They weren't the people who had taught her how to talk or write or ride a bike or the numerous other things that the person who she thought was her dad did. They never held her while she cried at night awoken by nightmares that she couldn't explain and they weren't there for the times that she felt utter joy. How could you claim that someone was yours if you weren't there to begin with. She knew it was irrational to have that thought process. She couldn;t help it. It was better than thinking that the person who had raised her was a criminal, because to her he was her dad who tried his damn hardest to make her the best person that she could be and she hated that about this situation. How could they just expect her to drop everything she had known about this guy and to hate him? It just wasn't fair.
But the look of hurt that washed over Katherine's eyes when she had found out that Nadia had rejected her made her hurt even worse. Nadia had never had a mother growing up thanks to her father claiming that she was dead, but now that she knew she had a mother she felt cheated that she had missed out on that whole experience. She knew this was hurting her, but she also rationally knew that this whole situation was hurting Stefan and Katherine too, just in a completely different way.
"I'm sorry. I guess I'm still getting used to this. It's not every day that a person finds out that she was kidnapped and she now has to go live a different life out of the one she's had for years."
"I apologize too. I should have known better than to hug you. I knew you wouldn't be ready it's just that..Well you have no idea what this has been like for me losing you for all these years and than finally we found you. Its a dream come true for me. I guess I just wanted to prove to myself that it was real."
"And I can understand that, but I'm still adjusting and if you're going to take me to some foreign countries than I want to say goodbye to a few people first."
Stefan and Katherine exchanged looks as if they wanted to drag her out of the cell and throw her on the neck plane ride right there and now, but they wouldn't be that lucky. If they wanted a fight from her it was a fight they would get but she would rather go peacefully so this was her only exception.
"Who do you want to say goodbye to?" Stefan said speaking up for the first time since they had been there.
"I know you guys will disapprove, but I want to say goodbye to my father. Now before you say anything please note that I didn't know he was a bad person when I was hauled here. He's the only person I've ever really had in my life and he's the only one I want to say goodbye to. You guys can keep supervise it if you want or don't I can imagine you want to tear him limb from limb and you have every right to, but please for my sake let me say goodbye."
For a brief second it seemed like Katherine was going to fight her on this, but after that she only nodded her head as she asked the guard to take them to him. Nadia took a deep breath knowing that what she was about to hear next would change her life forever.