My eyes trained onto the rain being thrusted against the window pane by the turmoil of wind among the night air, but this racket was minute when opposed to the cracks of thunder rumbling through to the house. They followed merely seconds after the lightning strikes that flushed the room with light before they dissipated back into the eclipse only to appear again minutes later.
Soon hail began to ascend brutally onto the patio beneath my window, the downpour ambushing everything in its reach and suffocating the ground with moisture. With each clash of lightning and strike of thunder, the current intensified and left my lungs longing for a breath of fresh air, instead of the toxicity that arose through the crack in my window.
"Adelaide?" My body lurched at the sound, instantly twisting to take note of Blake's presence as he wavered hesitantly by the door. "Have you had a nightmare?"
He set his feet cautiously forward as I motioned for him to enter, "You know about those?"
"Pretty much the whole house does," Blake shrugged. "But Luke still made sure to inform me on what to do if you were to have one while he was gone." I smiled at Luke's antics, unsure of what to reply with, though Blake continued before I had the chance to intervene. "If you don't feel comfortable talking to me about it or you want to speak to him, he gave me a number? He got the tech department to get a secure line so that if you needed him, you could reach him. Shall I go get it for you? Or I could-"
"Blake," I said in an attempt to still his rambling. It was odd seeing this side of him, his hands fidgeting relentlessly with one another as he searched for the right words, something that provided a harsh contrast to his usual, bright and humorous self. "I haven't had a nightmare."
"You haven't?"
"No," I smiled. "I haven't actually gone to bed yet so..."
"Oh. How come you're up then?"
"I could say the same for you," I commented quietly as he moved to stand aside me, casting his gaze to the scene outside. "I was going through some old books of mine, I guess I just lost track of time."
Blake nodded, letting a small silence linger upon us before he spoke again, "They've landed by the way. We should hear from them again mid-morning, I know Luke's waiting to speak to you."
"How longs he been gone? What all of six hours or something?"
"To say he's smitten with you would be a rather large understatement. I wasn't even kidding about the whole boy on Christmas morning thing."
"I just wish the circumstances were different," I mumbled quietly, tightening my arms across my chest. "He wants to be able to protect me from everything, but I know that there's going to be a point in which it's out of his hands."
"You try telling him that," Blake countered as I hummed in agreement. "Like he said Adelaide, he isn't trying to be possessive, he just has a focus of keeping you safe and that's all that matters to him right now."
"I'm not his responsibly though."
Blake sighed, "I don't think he sees it that way, well he certainly doesn't view keeping you safe as part of his job anymore- it's more a need to have you safe. He cares about you, in a way that he needs you safe before he can even consider anything else that may be going on."
"I really am please for the two of you," Blake admitted after a minute or two. "Luke deserves to be happy. He's been through a hell of a lot and he doesn't go giving those cheek-aching smiles to just anyone so I'm glad that he's got you."
"You know people keep warning me about him, about what he could do, the danger that comes with him." I turned to face Blake, only to find him already inquisitively watching me. "But I really don't think that it's him they should be worried about."
Blake sent me a questionable glance, "What are you getting at?"
"I'm going to ruin him," I whispered, spitting the words from my throat as my disgust toward their meaning arose. "And there's nothing I can do to stop myself because it's already out of my control. He's getting more and more attached, and I'm just sitting back and letting that happen, I'm letting us happen, but only now am I realising how selfish I'm being. The closer he gets to me, the more dangerous this situation becomes. We both understand that, but being with me is only going to end in pure torment for him."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"We can't both make it out of here alive, that's not how these things work. You'd be foolish to think otherwise."
"Adelaide?" Blake said, reaching out to catch my arm in an attempt to force my eyes to catch his once more. "What's gotten in to you? Don't you see that everyone around you trying to save you? We're going to get Legrenzi and then everything is going to go back to how it was before."
"I don't even know what that was like," I replied bitterly, though guilt immediately flooded my mind at the realisation that I had been taking all of my anger out on Blake, when in reality he had done nothing wrong. "I'm sorry. I just don't think that everyone here is looking at the full picture. Take a look around, god knows how many guards there are, all trying to save a girl that's insignificant to the world around us, and for what? What will risking your life for me achieve? What will any of this achieve?"
"You're far from insignificant in many people's eyes Adelaide."
I discarded his comment, "We don't know how long this could go on, and I don't even know if I'm prepared to keep running for the rest of my life. We don't even know what Legrenzi wants for crying out loud. What could I possible give him?"
"Something he won't accept the fact that can't have," Blake mumbled quietly, so quietly in fact that I wondered if I had heard him correctly. "We're going to catch him Adelaide, that's what we're all here for. It has to end at some stage.
"We may not have lost anyone yet, but I saw the bloodshed that went on during the raid. These people don't mess around. The closer Luke gets to me, the closer he gets to that, but he doesn't see it that way. I need to distance myself from him, but I just can't. I can't stay away from him; I don't have it in me to do that. Neither of us do, because even though it's been merely a week since we were honest with one another about how we actually feel, what's been going on between us started a whole lot earlier than that. We're both in too deep, and one of us is going to get hurt, but I'm going to do everything I can to ensure that Luke is the one that goes untouched."
