Author's note: Thanks for the reviews. I might be experimenting with a few new styles/ideas in the next few chapters as I have with the previous ones.

/

Sitting on her bed, Nathalie's gaze is focused solely on the outside world. It's quite a nice view over some fields that she has from her bedroom. A pity that she can't make out much of it without her glasses. She's had the opportunity to watch the sun begin to slowly set. Now, the sky is a beautiful golden color. She wishes that she could appreciate it more but her mind is inevitably elsewhere. She wouldn't be surprised if she had been assigned this room intentionally so as to keep her a least somewhat distracted, to give her something else to think about whilst she waits. A noble sentiment but a naive one.

As if anything could take her mind off of what's happened.

She can still hear the desperate gasps of the teenager. His throat and chest damaged to a degree where even the simply act of breathing was a challenge. Her hands or at least the one which isn't currently in a cast, still tremble from the shock as she's struggled with the urge to hold onto him, to try and apply some pressure to some of the wounds. If she closes her eyes, the woman finds herself reliving the sensation of the warm sticky blood against her fingers and the sense of terror and dread as Adrien Agreste had slipped further and further away.

There was no words to describe the loneliness that Nathalie felt in that little room. No doubt they had had her best interests at heart when they had given her this nice quiet place to try and recover but right now, it feels more like she's in a prison cell than anything else. This isolation is proving to be unbearable. Almost as irritating as the constant fussing of the doctors and nurses had been both when they were tending to her physical wounds and then not so discreetly attempting to access her emotional state. Even now, she finds herself gritting her teeth when she thinks back to their astonishingly stupid questions.

Of course she wasn't okay. How could she possibly be anything even faintly resembling "okay"? The pain out of ten? Well with a broken wrist and sprained ankle, that hiked her up to a nice little five. Whiplash? Easily another two. A mild concussion? That brought her up to an eight. She could probably add on at least another point for all the other cuts and bruises she's sustained. Did that pain a nice enough picture for them? It was a challenge not to scream when she was asked those questions and the last time she'd seen Adrien was when he was being loaded into the back of an ambulance with the words "pronostic vital" ringing through her ears like a terrible symphony. A fancy and polite way of saying he was dying and they weren't convinced they could do anything for him.

The only thing that is proving to be more difficult to tolerate than all the fuss and worry is being left here alone. She has no company save for her own thoughts. They are spiraling out of control at a rate of knots. It's impossible to get Adrien out of her mind. If she, by some miracle, manages to remove the image of his mangled body from behind her eyes, then instead she finds herself presented with him smiling or laughing as he had been doing a few days ago or when he was younger, more innocent. A reminder of days gone by… Everything that both of them have lost.

Even Plagg is managing to hurt her purely through his absence. She honestly doesn't know what's happened to the kwami. For all she knows he could have been killed in the crash or when the car was ignited. All that the woman can say for certain is that he isn't here with her now and the unthinkable has happened: she's actually missing the strange and irritating little creature. Something that she would never before have thought possible and certainly not a statement that she would ever willingly make aloud… Right now though, lying in bed, she would gladly sacrifice all of this warmth and comfort for the stench of some rather mature French cheese.

The door opens. The pain in her neck is such that she's reluctant to actually turn her head to greet whoever is coming in to see her. The woman assumes that it's just going to be a nurse or a doctor coming for a checkup or to top up her painkillers. Instead, when they finally do step into her field of vision, Nathalie finds herself faced with a man and a woman in uniform: the police, no technically the army (these officers in blue are gendarmes) have arrived:

"Mademoiselle Sancoeur?" They ask as if they don't already know.

"Yes." She responds quietly, her throat somewhat sore.

"Do you mind if we ask you a few questions? It's quite important."

"No… Go ahead."

It was inevitable that the police would get involved given the circumstances. Nathalie prepares herself as best as she can. Her current state, both physical and emotional, doesn't exactly lend itself to interrogation. They don't have much of a choice though and she respects authority enough not to begrudge the officers. These two are just doing their duty after all and as far as they're aware, there's a group of kidnappers out there who need to be brought to justice.

They start off gently enough. Just confirming a few very minor details, things that they no doubt already know. Perhaps, she reasons, they want to check just how plugged in she currently is. A woman suffering from a concussion is perhaps not the best person to try discussing important matters with. They might be worried that she's confused or suffering from amnesia. In many ways, Nathalie actively wishes that she was. Instead, she finds herself only too aware of what's going on and what has happened, making short work of answering their questions. Her only difficulty is the physical act of talking which in itself is painful given the swollen jaw that she now has, a direct result of one of the thugs' attempts at convincing Adrien to come out from hiding the night before.

Stupid boy… Brave boy...

"It was a vacation…" She answers, when the question of just what the two of them had been doing in Provence in the first place is brought up. "I come from down south, sometimes, when I go to visit my grandmother, he comes down with me, just to get away from the city."

"Are you close?" The man's question carries a slightly gentler tone to it.

"I… Yes." Nathalie sees no point in lying. "I've been caring for him for some years now."

Caring. Loving. The words are similar but not quite the same. It strikes her in that particular moment, that despite Marinette's encouragements, she's never to this day told him that she loves him. It's always gone unsaid… That realization hits Nathalie like a knife to the heart.

She fights on through the pain and helps the officers as best as she can. She tells them about what had happened when they had been abducted, how they had been dragged out, Adrien had been hit with a taser and drugged. The stop at the warehouse. All memories which she would frankly not have. Then there's other matters such as asking for descriptions of the perpetrators. They want to know if they're the ones who roughed up her face, just how they can attribute that to a punch as opposed to a car accident Nathalie doesn't know but ultimately, it doesn't matter. Let them go down for aggravated assault as well… If they can catch them. They were professionals. No doubt they will have disappeared by now.

"What about the woman? Can you describe her?"

"I only saw her from afar, it was dark..." Nathalie responds quietly thinking back to the events. "With my eyesight… She was thin, blonde. She didn't exactly hang around for long."

"Did she say anything?" The man asks whilst his companion takes some quick notes.

"Not that I heard." Nathalie casts her mind back to the best of her ability. "I was pulling myself together when I saw her, she was next to Adrien."

"Was she the one who put him into the recovery position?"

"I don't know." Again, it's an honest answer. "I don't think that she hurt him, no more than he was already, that is."

"Did he have any valuables on him?"

"Not much, he was in his pajamas. He will have had a ring and an old analog watch."

Curiously, that leads to some discussion between the two of them. Nathalie strains her ears to try and make out what they could possibly be saying to one another. She can definitely remember him having both on him. For whatever reason the thugs hadn't bothered to remove his miraculous, presumably not realizing just what it was and her grandfather's old watch was something which the teen only ever took off for his shower nowadays. Neither at face value were worth a lot of money. Only one of them contained a secret.

"He had a watch. No ring. Was it valuable?"

"No..." Nathalie shakes her head slowly, a terrible sinking feeling settling into the pit of her stomach. "It was just steel."

No doubt all of the implications of a stolen miraculous will come back to haunt her. For the time being however, the woman appears to be strangely unbothered by it. It's hard for her to get worked up about anything right now. Some might have blamed it on the pain or the medication which seem to make everything just that bit duller. Both eat away at the woman as she sits there. With every passing moment, she just wants to be left alone again. The irony is that she knows full-well that once they do depart, she'll wish that they were back with her, providing her with some form of distraction.

"Do you know who called the ambulance?" It's the man's turn to ask that particular question.

"It wasn't me and anyone who saw us would have stopped. So it must have been one of them."

"Do you know why they would have done that?"

"Probably to try and save Adrien's life, maybe even mine. I don't think they actually set out to kill us."

They continue their interrogation for some time more. There's a lot to be asked. They're curious as to just how the accident had happened. Nathalie can only tell them so much. Adrien had been heroic but it had backfired. She doesn't want to thick back to it.

The woman isn't entirely sure if her memory is playing tricks on her, imagining what she hadn't actually witnessed but now instead of just the screeching of brakes followed by a sudden impact and darkness, she sees Adrien go flying. She hears the cracks as his bones break and snap and the terrible sound of the windshield crumbling and shattering as he went flying into the glass. There's blood on the front of the car and the ground. Now, in the back of her mind, she can even hear a scream. She doubts he would have been capable of such a feat. Everything had happened so quickly… No. It's just her own guilt and the shock of what's happening contorting everything, making things just that little bit more horrific.

"We've informed his parents." The officers tell her eventually. "They were pretty shocked."

"I'm sure..." Nathalie mutters under her breath.

"Do you have any family members you want to contact?"

"Yes…" She makes the effort to sit up a little bit more. "I have my grandmother and my boyfriend down south, I imagine they're worrying."

After a few minutes, she's given a phone and allowed to call them. It's her grandmother who answers. Nathalie needs a full ten minutes to calm her down. Eventually, she explains plainly and flatly that she's alright, gives them the address of the hospital. There will be no stopping them.

The police leave her eventually and she's back to punctual visits from the nurses. She lies on her back, her injured hand rests on her stomach. That is painful too. She'd been punched there. There's nothing broken, despite what it might feel like. It's just bruised. The woman wants nothing. Nothing other than for Adrien to be back with her. He isn't though… She knows that he's not about to walk through that door, no matter how much she might long for him to do so. Exhausted and still suffering, Nathalie closes her eyes, desperately searching for some form of rest.

She enters a dreamless sleep. It's more than she could have hoped for…

Some hours have passed by the time she manages to creak her eyes open. The pain is slightly better although for all that knows it could be because the painkillers are kicking in again. With time having so little meaning at the moment, it's hard for the woman to assess when she's being topped up and/or due for a new one. Tired eyes mindlessly search the room. Only this time do they discover that something is very much different. She is no longer alone and whilst her vision remains blurry despite the absence of her glasses, she knows their forms well enough to be able to identify them instantly.

A weak moan escapes her lips the first time that she tries to address them. It sounds pathetic even to her own ears. Angered, she makes more of an effort. It serves to wake her up completely:

"You made it..."

"Yeah… We've been here for a while." Jacques tells her. "The staff filled us in."

Nathalie isn't given much of a chance to discuss matters with her boyfriend. Instead, she finds herself struggling to calm her grandmother. The woman is frantic, desperate to know that she's alright. So she lies a little: says that she is, even if the pain is still there. It takes quite some time for her relative to calm down. Once she has though, something of a still atmosphere takes over.

For the first time in more years than she cares to count, Nathalie allows the old woman to brush her hair. She does so whilst taking the greatest of precautions to avoid tugging at the roots or the woman's otherwise stiff and sore neck. There's something soothing about the action which she doesn't care to question. Jacques, uncharacteristically, doesn't say so much as a word. A few times, their looks meet. Both are thinking the same thing, not trying to fool the other into a sense of false comfort.

"I brought you a few things..." He informs her after a while.

"Thank you..." Nathalie manages.

Toothbrush, hair comb… It's all stuff that she's going to need given that it now seems likely she's going to be cooped up here for a few days at least. Her injuries aren't all that severe in themselves but the doctors want to be sure… Jacques places them on the table next to her bed. She could have laughed if it weren't for the current situation, among the things he'd managed to pick up are her glasses. She slips them on, grateful for being able to see once more. He places a box which she can only pray he hasn't opened down and then, far more hesitantly a picture.

She fixes the features of a younger teen as he laughs and playfully poses with her for a photograph. Man… His voice calling her echoes through her ears. All he'd ever wanted was to be loved. When his father had failed him and his mother had been unable to fulfill her role, he'd fallen back on her. To think that initially it had irritated her… Now, all she wants is to be by his side… She looks back to Jacques, the man is sheepish, evidently unsure if he's just hurt her with the reminder of all that's been lost. She can only manage a little nod (which she promptly regrets with her whiplash) but she hopes it's enough for him to realize how grateful she is.

She loses herself in the image for a while. There is a terrible shadow hanging heavily over their heads. It' one which they don't dare to speak out about. It doesn't need to be said, all of them are just as aware.

It's almost five o'clock by the time a nurse accompanied by a young doctor come in. She seems a little bit timid, uncertain. Her eyes travel over the group. She asks if everything's alright. If Nathalie needs any more painkillers. If she's suffering from any new symptoms they should no about. The woman politely refuses the offers and denies that she's doing anything but recover. She already knows what's coming. There's a reason that they seem to be a little bit cautious right now. Finally, the doctor asks the small group but the injured individual more particularly:

"Do you want to go see him?"

Yes… Nathalie knows that she has to. She owes him that much.