Bane

September 27, 1973

When the door opened, and Nadjia walked in, she was uncertain what it was she saw. She dropped her backpack, staring at the entire crowd in her living room; the entire crowd stared back.

It took a moment for her to realize what was happening.

The banner, the streamers, the colorful decorations; no one yelled surprise!, but they did not have to.

The look on her face was enough.

"Jon?" Nadjia's voice weakly carried over the crowd.

"Right here." Jonathan stood next to her, doing that thing she hated, where he seemed to just appear. Nadjia chirped in surprise, and swooned a little. Jonathan steadied her.

"What's going on?"

"Your birthday, Nadjia." Jonathan's voice was low, almost a whisper.

Nida spoke up from the crowd, cutting her way through. "These are all the people who helped you get better."

Nadjia smiled, and her legs felt weak. "I would like to sit down, please."

There was a chorus of soft laughter in the crowd, and Jonathan helped walk her to the den, the crowd of celebrants parting as she passed through. Jonathan guided her to the couch, and Nadjia sat down.

Jonathan sat next to her. "Happy Birthday, Nadjia.

✟ ☧ ✟

In the nine short years of her life, Nadjia never knew surprise.

Until she was five, she did not know what she did not know, and would not know what she was missing until a boy donated the bone marrow that would contribute to saving her life.

The truth was - and always would be - the surprise party paled in comparison to the inexplicable feeling inside her, one she did not understand, but understood she would eventually find the answer... and an answer she hoped somehow included Jonathan; Jonathan who sat at her right hand now, as nine candles flickered over her birthday cake.

She had no idea how to react, being this her first surprise party.

Her first birthday party.

Ever.

Unlike Jonathan, Nadjia did not dwell on what may not have been had things ended different.

The thought that she could be a year now in the cold ground never once surfaced, not even during the ordeal itself; she never gave up, never once concluded that this was it, or all it ever would be; she never reached a stage of denial, or bargaining.

There were only two forces on her life driving her toward survival.

The faith that death was not an option, and the desire to be near family, and her best friend just one more day.

Every day, in the worse pain, before restless slumber engulfed her, she prayed, and said aloud to herself just one more day.

Maybe her mom and dad were devastated, and would be devastated had she not survived, but there was something - something deep inside her - greater than pain, suffering, or even death itself... and so, Nadjia lived.

She survived, but it was not only that she survived, she was alive; she felt alive; here, at the table surrounded by the five people she actually knew, and the so many she did not; these what-ifs, and the what-is were not in her thoughts, but the surface thoughts of Jonathan Walker, seated beside her.

Why she detected them, unimportant to Nadjia; only that she knew, even if it did not show on his face.

Beneath the table, she reached for his hand, and interlacing fingers with his, they held hands as they did when they were little.