Breaking point

Chapter 23 - Mute

Akilina didn't talk for a little while. To many voices in her head for her to speak her own.

She followed orders,trained, ate, attended the schooling classes but didn't talk.

Zoya was trying to get her to speak about what had happened;

"it'll make you feel better" she kept saying.

But Akilina just couldn't.

The only instructors that seemed to have a problem with it were the teachers in the schooling classes.

Her hands had suffered for it. They were cut up, bloody, bruised and scarred.

Yet still there she was acting as if it didn't hurt preforming ballet with the other remaining girls. She had the routine down to almost perfection.

It was hard everyone was ahead when she came back. She caught herself thinking it was a mistake running away at times but quickly reminded herself of the good times.

The memories she and her dad had made. The new people she had met. The music she had listened to. She loved music.

It was probably one of the reasons she liked when they practiced ballet. She got to listen to the piano for hours, it was something she found peace in.

She was snapped out of her thinking when she heard a crash. She sneakily glanced at what it was.

Zoya.

She'd fallen, and she was struggling to get back up.

Madame B was on her way over. Akilina without thinking quickly grabbed Zoya and hoisted her up, quickly resuming her dancing.

Zoya regained her balance and with a grim expression continued her dance, faltering slightly when she had to put her weight on her foot.

Which seemed to be the problem, it was probably broken or fractured.

Madame B stopped and watched the interaction. Akilina just put her own safety on the line for Zoyas.

This would either come to be a problem or a blessing in disguise.

She decided to pretend she didn't see Zoya fall. Which confused all the girls that did.

Madame B was playing a game. Akilina was against her. It was a dangerous game.

People could get caught in the crossfire. But if Akilina could help it Zoya would not be one of those people.

______________________

Natasha had just escaped the custody of Thaddeus Ross. She had let her family escape with the newly freed widows and just let her self get caught as a distraction.

She was alone for the first time in a little while.

She had just taken down the red room. She had reconnected with people she thought she'd never see again, yet she still felt like she had failed.

The feeling was looming over her like a thick fog, covering over everything she had just accomplished.

Technically she did fail.

She failed her personal mission. Finding Akilina. She wasn't in the facility.

Akilina could be anywhere. She was back to where she had started. On the bright side natasha now knew where Akilina wasn't and that, that was something, with that thought she felt as though some of the fog cleared.

Not all of it but enough that it wasn't as suffocating.

Natasha was sitting in her newly acquired quinjet, thanks to her friend Rick Mason with freshly dyed white hair.