#&tiberius

The woman at the front desk had long since stopped asking Natalia why she was there, long since stopped questioning if Mr. Germaine was expecting her. Natalia didn't know why the woman had stopped, maybe accustomed enough to Natalia showing up or maybe Tiberius had told her himself that Natalia was always welcome. Whatever the reason, Natalia was thankful as she sulked into the building with a bloodied lip and what would probably become a lovely bruise if the ache of her throat was any indication.

The penthouse apartment was silent and dark when she let herself in, but that hadn't kept her from making herself at home. Pouring a glass of wine. Showering. Donning a pair of his sweats she'd pulled from his dresser and a t-shirt that she'd found tossed on his bed. Curling up on his couch. Waiting in the still darkness as she sipped from the glass of wine she'd poured herself. Her body hurt and she couldn't let Mags or Beck or Murphy see her like this. At least not until she'd slept it off. God she just wished she could get out, get Snow and all his goons to leave her fuck alone.

She must have dozed off, glass of wine in one hand, the other holding the shirt she wore to her nose, finding comfort in just his scent alone even when he wasn't physically there. God, she's falling in love. Really, she already has. She won't admit that. Doesn't need the gossip journalists anymore in her business. She startles at the sound of the elevator's ding as it announces someone having arrived. Tiberius, she knows, he never hosts other company.

She'd seen his interview, however short it'd been, from home - no, from Tiberius's apartment. She refused to get to know this as home. She had her own apartment in the Capitol, but even that wasn't home, and she was only at his apartment because she quite literally could not sleep at her own - not without knowing he was safe. Home was Four. Home was the sound of waves lapping at jagged rocks or sandy beaches. Home was salty air and the call of seagulls. This place that celebrated in death was not home and she would not allow herself to see any place in the Capitol as home.

Since the interview had aired, she'd stewed. Sat curled up on his couch in his t-shirt and his sweat pants with a bottle of what she was sure was one of the most expensive bottles of wine in his wine fridge. The wine was nearly gone when she heard the elevator to his apartment open. "Really?" It was all she said, dragging a hand through her hair as she leaned towards the coffee table to fill her glass once more. "We spend thirty years keeping that vulture and everyone else off our backs and you just tell the whole damn country that you love me?" She doesn't get angry at him often, more so since this whole damn rebellion thing happened, but it was more often aimed at him as a capitalite and not him as a person. No, now she was angry at him as a person and her lips were a little more loose with the over half bottle of wine she'd consumed.

The longer she has sat the more her muscles ache, the more the deep purple bruise reaching out from her temple towards her eye pulses, trauma letting itself be known in the absence of adrenalin, in the absence of a need to keep herself and her family safe. She had been let go, but she knew she wasn't free. She hadn't been free since the day her voice rang out to volunteer in Nixie's place. Just a pawn in Snow's game even if she'd long since been out of his little ring of forced company of sponsors.

She is sore and irate, angry even though nothing shines from behind her eyes, eyes that have long since leveled a stare on the wall across the room. The sound of his heavy footsteps startle her out of her dissociative state, almost feeling like the twenty-something year old girl who'd been sent to his apartment for the first time, but certainly not like the fifty-some year old woman who usually let herself into his apartment without a second thought.

"They're going to kill them," it's all she says as her eyes fall on his broad frame. There's a fear in her eyes, terrified of loosing anyone she cares for. Mags and Finnick she knows are gone, defected, rebels. They are as good as gone if Snow gets his hands on them. How many nights had Mags been there to clean her up after a visit gone wrong with a sponsor before tucking her into bed and keeping vigil all night? A second mother, one who understood better than anyone back home what she was going through? And Finnick... the son she'd never had, sharing perhaps a stronger bond than even she and Mags for they shared in the same trauma inflicted by the president. But Annie... she hadn't been mentioned with those who were rebels, but Natalia knows what happens to the loved ones of those who have done wrong in Snow's eyes.

And yet here she is. Alive and safe. Saved again by the man standing before her. A choked sob falls from her lips, hands moving to press into her eyes. "I...I can't do this. I can't continue to pretend everything is okay, Tiberius." But she doesn't see any other choice. Snow may take away Mags and Finnick and Annie, but she can still save Rose... can't she? She's not so sure anymore.

She'd made sure everyone was settled at the tower before slipping out for the night. She needed to see Tiberius, needed to discuss the predicament they were currently in, but also needed to calm her nerves before she broke down and he had always been a calming presence on her. Her feet had carried her over the all too familiar path, down one street and then another, and then up stairs where a building guard gave her a quick glance before allowing her to continue the familiar path.

The elevator doors closed as she input the code that would take her to his floor and then opened again to allow her access to the apartment. "Ti..." She was on the verge of a crisis and she needed his familiar strength, so used to putting on the facade of strength, so used to being everyone else's support. She could finally let herself let all those walls down. "Did you see it? Did you see what she did?" She dragged her hands over her face as she let herself into his apartment.