Como si fuera esta noche la ultima vez.

[sunshine_queen]

... I wrote a Cesar/Nadia fic?

Kinda?

I don't know why, 'cept for I love me some Cesar.

(Perdition pt. 4'll come later.)

After he's been in prison a few days, Cesar resigns himself to his thoughts. It is doubtful, he has accepted, that he will ever see Nadia again, and now he thinks of things he should have said.

There are the questions- where did you go? Why did you leave? Why didn't you say anything?- that he lets himself think, but would never say, even if she were in front of him. Nadia's disappearance had been a shock, something he had classified as 'unsolved' and left well enough alone until he had heard her voice again. She had gone on her first mission- flushed with excitement and promising a victory celebration on her return- and she had never come back, gone in the black dress he had felt her warmth through, never coming to say goodbye.

There are the stale threats- I'm bigger than you, I could strangle you, I could kill you- that he thought when he learned the truth and the image of her writhing underneath him in the agony of her death was still appealing, before the inevitable flash-forward to the bruises on her throat had rendered him paralyzed. No, it would have to be quick and painless, he had decided long ago, if he ever could kill her.

There is the question of "why," but he has answers for him. She told him; he hadn't found her answers satisfactory. He should have asked her again, while handcuffed in the back of that van, in the back with her and another girl who would have gotten lost in translation once he employed street slang and their old, familiar codes. He had simply watched her- Nadia, the same, but different.

Finally, there is the final admission, something that had pained him for years- did she know what it was like, after? When word of Roberto Fox's death had trickled throughout his organization, the name of Cesar Martinez was placed next to it immediately. Who else would have better cause, the team rationalized, Fox had his eye on his girl, and Cesar didn't like to share. To the men, this had made sense, for they had done the same or worse for less, and the few women agreed. Cesar was one of them, and he was doing what he knew: protecting what was his.

Would she care that he had waited for her, a day, a week, months? How frantically he had checked their protocols, sent out men that now pledged loyalty to him as if he had earned Fox's position in some strange rite of passage to search, gone days without sleeping, waiting? He knew Nadia, what she liked and what frightened her, what made her heart race and her blood boil, the pretty lies she told and the beautiful face that made others forgetful.

"Nani," he pictures himself saying, the rare nickname he might whisper when no one could hear, softly in her ear, so close shivers ran down her spine, "Do you know what you did to me?"

Nadia wouldn't know. She would never know.

Comments

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I love it. A wonderful portrait of Nadia through his eyes; interesting, because there is a darker side to her that we don't really see on the show, but he knows her in more of that light and therefore reflects on her that way.

He knew Nadia, what she liked and what frightened her, what made her heart race and her blood boil, the pretty lies she told and the beautiful face that made others forgetful.

Much love. :)

Gorgeous as per usual, dahlin'.