Tabula Rasa

Chapter 7

"You're still here."

Calina glanced over her shoulder at Yelena, but returned her gaze to the woman in the garden before answering. "Yes, for another day. I'm getting the bus home tomorrow."

It had been three days since the mission. Three days since Calina and Katya had made it back from the Ambassador's house, bleeding and bruised, but alive. Calina had stayed to have her wounds treated, and to let the worst of the bruising fade before heading back to New York.

By bus.

She wasn't looking forward to the long journey - or series of journeys really. She would have to change Greyhounds in Virginia and detour through Pennsylvania to throw off any possible tails. It would be a long, uncomfortable trip home, but she would suffer it gladly to avoid giving away this location.

Yelena joined her at the window. "You've been watching over her for days like some mother hen."

Calina shrugged. "Don't you wish you'd had someone looking out for you when you were first freed? Instead of floundering through it alone?"

"I was fine."

Calina spared her a sceptical glance.

Yelena rolled her eyes. "Okay. I was too busy running for my life to worry about my mental health. But the distraction helped." She nodded to the woman outside. "She has no distractions, though. So how do you think she's doing?"

Calina wrapped her arms around herself, wincing as the action pulled on the stitches across her shoulder. "I think she's about to reach the anger stage," she murmured.

The two of them studied Katya as she wandered amongst the petunias. The Widow's base was located near the South Carolina coast, in a beautiful old Antebellum mansion. It had been relatively cheap, and private - isolated from the major roads and towns, but not too far from Charleston airport - and the South had seemed as good a place as any to hide out.

But Yelena liked to joke that she hadn't considered any of those practical reasons, and had chosen the house because it had once been a plantation. She thought there was poetic symmetry in a bunch of ex mind-enslaved Widows reclaiming a slaver's space.

Calina didn't care about that. She just liked it for the gardens.

The warm, sub-tropical climate was perfect for growing vibrant, lush flowers, and they filled the landscape at the back of the house. The garden was a riot of colour and scent, and the air hummed with bees and the flapping of butterfly wings.

It was peaceful, but so full of life.

She thought it was good for the Widows to have this space. A place where they could just walk amidst the beauty of the world and reflect. So many of them were still so...angry. Hyper-focussed on their rage and their revenge.

It was one of the reasons she'd wanted to leave and make a life for herself elsewhere.

Yes, she was angry too. It was a background simmer that she could mostly ignore, only occasionally boiling over when she thought too hard about what had been done to her. And what she had been forced to do. But she didn't want to feed that rage. She didn't want to drown in it, become bitter with it.

She wanted to live.

That was how she would spite Dreykov and all the other evil bastards of the Red Room. That was how she would win: by letting go of her training and enjoying her new life.

She hoped the woman in the garden would get to that place soon.

Katya had been confused in the moments after receiving the antidote. As the mist evaporated and the red tinge cleared from her eyes, she had stumbled off Calina, shaking her head as if to clear it.