I have to say, being on hiatus sucks... Even so, I'm kinda back (but not so much at the same time). I won't update as regularly as I used to but I will try to at least get something up. Nelya and Blake are most definitely a thing, but it won't be easy for either of them. (Huehuehuehuehue)
Between the last chapter and this one, there's a rather large timeskip, you guys will see how long in a moment. Essentially, a reason I haven't updated in SUCH a long time (how did it come to that) is because it was difficult getting exactly what I wanted down to properly show how Nelya and Blake's relationship develops from Chapter 10 onwards. Having said that, I'm pretty confident on where I'm going to take it now so hopefully, this story won't be completely finished so soon.
And just to give you a heads up, I'm currently planning two companion pieces to When Knight Falls, too. One is a bunch of drabbles that span across Dark Knight's Legacy and When Knight Falls, filling in the gaps, so to speak. The other is a multi-chaptered fic surrounding Bruce and Selina's lives after the end of Dark Knight Rises and the course their relationship takes.
I do hope you enjoy everything that's coming up!
Stay cool.
It would take them, unbelievably, a month and a half to get back to Gotham. Following that night, when everything had somehow both fallen down and built up around them again, Nelya and Blake managed to get to a small farming village, the last of many, its name a mystery to them at the time, and seek help.
At first, the inhabitants of the place were suspicious of their new arrivals, but after finding the couple looking more than bedraggled, tired, and desperate, some authority figures stood forward and attempted to establish contact. In spite of her reservations on the subject of communication, Nelya soon found English was a language spoken here. Despite its limits, in their situation, Blake and Nelya were more than grateful at the presence of something familiar.
Directed to an old telephone in the middle of an even older post-office, they called the only person they knew and trusted enough to sort things out. One Commissioner Jim Gordon.
After chastising the two foolish youths for their less than legal machinations and waking him up at three o'clock on a Sunday morning, he agreed to have them out of Russia as soon as he could. Their passports were, however, lost to them. At this, Gordon grumbled some more before taking down the number of the telephone they contacted him on and hung up.
Thus began the duo's three week stay at what they soon discovered was called Ubezhishchem Zimnyaya, Winter's Refuge in English. They had no money, no other clothes, and hardly any peace of mind. It would take them a while to reach the conclusion that nobody, whoever they may be, were after them anymore, fearing the fate of the village should they be found. They took strength that they had each other, even if neither could boost the other's much needed morale.
To keep from boredom and earn their keep as uninvited, though not unwelcome, guests, work was probably the only thing they could resort to. While Nelya sowed row after row of vegetable crop and wove baskets upon baskets from the wheat grass grown in the hills to the north of the village, Blake shorn sheep, sheep, and more sheep, alternating between that and helping with pressing animal muck and earth together to make compost. It wasn't back breaking or entirely unpleasant, which was the least they could do for the hospitality the villagers provided them with. Particularly the small Tsyrinsky family who allowed them to stay in their cottage, which was only slightly larger than the others about town.
Due to the village's size, however, news spread of these visitors in less than a night, attracting quite a bit of attention to the two, particularly the 'mysterious' Blake in the eyes of many a young girl seeking excitement only a handsome new man could bring to their quaint village. Unknowing of how Nelya would react, Blake didn't mention a particular incident in their second week there regarding the clergyman's daughter surprising him early one morning in the barn he was shoveling clean hay in. After she tried to kiss him, in spite of his hands raised defensively (which he honestly thought sent a clear enough message), the girl, Galina, soon understood what he was trying to tell her and left in a huff.
Nelya, being Nelya, soon found out and couldn't hold back her laughter, kissing him square on the mouth and punching his arm lightly, letting Blake know that he, well and truly, was being ridiculous.
Every evening after work, they would walk back to the Tsyrinsky's cottage together, their little fingers linked, for an eagerly awaited dinner. The delicious and simple meals they shared with the family were the highlights of the day, the language barriers seemingly non-existant. Blake found how much Nelya and Gavril, the father of the family, had in common. Though they had strikingly different backgrounds, their personalities and way of speech were incredibly similar. Witty and hardy, they took to each other like fish to water, Nelya soon affectionately calling him Uncle Gav and the latter treating her like the niece he never had. Blake would find that he had taken a shine to Isidora, Gavril's Serbian and very bubbly wife, and Matvey, their serious and quiet ten-year-old son.
In the short time they came to know each other, Blake found the family he didn't realise he needed. He had always wanted a family, of course he wanted a family, but as they years went on and he found independence after leaving the orphanage behind him for good, a family no longer seemed a necessity for him. On one evening, while he helped clear the table, he had looked over at Nelya explaining, with dramatic hand-gestures and animated face, an old Scottish story her father used to tell her to a wide-eyed and entranced Caterina, the Tsyrinky's five-year-old daughter, a picture of her mother but not dissimilar to her father's gung-ho attitude to life. He saw in Nelya a door opening to another life, a life like the one they were living here, except one to call their own. He hoped high and low that this new relationship with her lasted, that it wasn't simply a fleeting occurance brought about by a desperate need for company during an equally desperate time. He had shaken these doubts from his head and became adamant that he would take each day as it was and if there was more, well, he'd know it when they got there.
It wouldn't be until the week after that these dinners would be cut short when they would get a call from Gordon telling them to get ready for pick up in a few days to take them to the United States Embassy that would eventually bring them back home. Surprisingly, Nelya and Blake both felt their hearts sink at the news. The three weeks they had spent at Ubezhishchem Zimnyaya had come to an end far too quickly. It had become a place where their past didn't matter, a place to, in manner of speaking, reinvent themselves. That, for a small time, at least, Nelya and Blake had a chance to live in the now. There was no helm to take up, a city to protect, a legend to fight for, and a name to live under. They were just, and happily so, Nelya and Blake.
They needed to get back to Gotham, though. As, for as much as they wanted to stay, they belonged in Gotham, and they would always have to go back to it.
Saying their goodbyes and expressing their gratitude, though Nelya and Blake couldn't quite show enough, they left what they truly felt was their home away from home. Caterina, as they packed their meagre belongings, gave them a little handmade necklace each: red, tightly woven grass beads on a woolen string. The gesture touched them both and they promised to keep in contact. Though, Nelya and Blake knew, it wouldn't be the same.
As the truck that picked them up drove away from the village, they waved back at it till it disappeared over the horizon, another chapter in their life visibly closing.
Staying at the embassy for the next week and a half was not so pleasant.
Ages was spent running to and from their modest room to offices around the building back in Moscow proving their identities and waiting for their reprinted passports to be checked and examined till they were blue in the face.
Their charge, a Mr Webster, amicable as he was, bored them to tears. Droning conversations about their lives in Gotham stretched on for hours, particularly on the part of Nelya, who didn't have the policing records Blake did for his time in the GCPD and as a private investigator.
They had eventually gotten what they needed and proven that they were who they said they were, packed their bags yet again, and, unlike that of Ubezhishchem Zimnyaya, were glad to be leaving.
Back to Gotham they went.