Chapter Text
She thinks, sometimes at night when the windows are open and her feet are very cold under the blanket, when her parents are asleep across the hall or maybe not, she thinks how she would die for Nico if she had to.
There are three types of dreams she has in black and white.
They always end with someone holding a gun and sometimes she dies in a puddle of her own blood and sometimes in Nico’s arms and sometimes she survives and then she get’s to keep the bullet and she wears it on a chain around her neck.
sometimes she says these things:
1. “I am sorry.“
2. “Don’t forget me.“
and
3. “Please kiss me.“
She only ever dreams in color when she dreams of them kissing and she never dreams of them kissing.
()()()()
Two things make Karolina’s stomach feel like someone punched her hard.
The first is Chase kissing her and touching her and looking at her with that hopeful, lovesick look on his face and she likes Chase, she really does, but she’d like him a lot more if he’d stop thinking he’s in love with her.
She knows he is not because she knows that a boy like Chase Stein could never be in love with a girl like Karolina Dean, she would never be enough for him in the ways that count.
They may both be a little broken but they are pieces from different puzzles and she thinks deep down he knows this.
His hands are rough even when his eyes are soft but she can’t see the beauty in this.
(She sees how Gert looks at him and knows that she would never be able to look at Chase like that, to understand him like that.
She thinks Gert and her are very similar in the saddest ways: they both want things they think they can never have.)
The second thing is when she forgets to knock on a door that’s open and sees Nico on Alex’s lap with her lips on his and his hands on her hips and when she sees Alex in the limo with his arm around her and when Nico sits so close to him they are always somehow touching.
Sometimes these truths make it hard for Karolina to breathe, her chest gets tight and painful.
She closes her eyes then, imagines a truck crashing into their car, imagines pushing Nico out of the way so Karolina would be in the impact zone, how her heart would stop beating but Nico would hold her hand.
A fair deal, Karolina thinks.
A good way to go.
They never have that accident and Chase smiles at her with all his teeth and keeps looking at her lips while she drinks glass after glass of too expensive champagne.
()()()()
(She keeps thinking of how she would die for Nico if only Nico would give her the chance.)
()()()()
There are other girls that catch her eye, that make her blush and warm. This is how she knows this is a real thing, not just a Nico thing.
One of these other girls kisses her in an upstairs bedroom at a party but afterwards Karolina’s lips still taste like copper, not coal like after Chase kissed her, more like she bit her tongue, like blood is filling her mouth.
She thinks maybe nice things just don’t happen in upstairs bedrooms at parties and maybe nice things just don’t happen to her in general.
She promises herself she won’t go to another party and she cries on the way home because she misses Nico so much, even though she is not hers to miss.
That night in bed she hugs her pillow and imagines it is her friend, but it does not smell right and it does not feel right and it is only a sad comfort.
She dreams of fires then, and of carrying Nico out before the building collapses down on her, and she takes her last breath with the ghost of Nico’s weight still in her arms.
It feels a little like flying, these pieces of debris crushing her lungs while she knows that Nico is outside and safe, and Karolina knows what flying feels like, so she thinks this must be the right thing: her offering herself up so the other one survives.
She wonders: if she’d take her bracelet off now, would she look beautiful?
Would she become one with the flames and would they carry her into the sky, where she belongs?
Maybe Nico would be jealous of the fire, for getting to take her completely, all of her skin and hair and blood and bones.
In this dream Karolina says: “Don’t worry, my heart is still yours.“ but Nico never hears her, she is already smoke and smoke and smoke and smoke.
()()()()
Karolina knows she is weaker than the others because the others don’t stop being able to concentrate in school and the others don’t need to break down in someones arms and the others don’t cry themselves to sleep more often than not and the others probably don’t feel like only half of a whole, they probably don’t dream of dying too many nights.
(Yes, sometimes she survives and then she gets to keep the bullet but sometimes the bullet crumbles in her fist and sometimes she survives and Nico and Alex still kiss and sometimes she survives but no one cares and they all look at her accusingly, like she didn’t play her part right, so she dies more and more often, night after night and it’s okay.)
She thinks, realistically, Chase and Gert and Molly and Nico all have it worse than her, maybe Alex too but she knows Alex the least and she feels that maybe a lot of his problems are his own mistakes.
She can’t fault him for that, he is still her friend even though he reminds her of everything she can’t be and everything she can’t have.
But Chase has his dad and his mom’s affair and Gert has her dinosaur and her feelings for Chase, her anxiety, and Molly her strength and her dead parents and Nico… Nico has a dead sister and a mom full of secrets and a cheating dad and the Staff of One.
What Karolina has is not more than they do, her mom is not the only one murdering kids and at least she still somehow has her dad, at least parts of him, and she may be glowing but she is not the only one with powers and she may be in love with her best friend but so is Gert and she seems to be functioning just fine.
And still, Karolina thinks that none of the others are overwhelmed like her: she is very sad and very tired a lot of the time.
Her mom watches her at the dinner table with concerned eyes, or maybe they are suspicious.
A few months ago Karolina would have maybe gone to her with her problems but now all her secrets are heavy weights upon her chest and somehow the fact that she likes girls is the heaviest of them all.
Her dad knocks on her door and asks if she wants to hike with him and every time she gives a halfhearted excuse his eyes dim a little and his brows furrow.
She tries very hard to be as inconspicuous as she can be, but her heart hurts often and deeply and she still can’t look her parents in the eyes.
They sit her down for a talk on a Wednesday after school, which she had seen coming since they had been very awkward around her that morning, but she is still surprised that her mother took the time, that her dad is looking at her all serious, his back straight.
“You’ve seemed so different.“
they say, and
“We are worried.“
and
“Has something happened? You can talk to us. Did someone hurt you.“
The last one almost makes her laugh: she thinks about the boys from the lacrosse team at the party and what she can’t remember, Chase telling her she didn’t have to worry, how that doesn’t make it better, she thinks about Nico kissing Alex and Chase kissing her and Gert throwing her dirty looks and she thinks about her mom, making her believe in lies for her whole life, murdering kids as old as Karolina behind her back, tucking Karolina’s hair back with the same hands that have led people to their deaths.
She thinks of her dad who is sometimes too naive and too good and who will do anything if her mom asks him to. She is so afraid her mom will ask him.
What she says is:
“I’m fine. School is stressing me out. I just had a fight with a friend. A girl I know got attacked at a party. It’s sad. I’m just being a teenager, dad. I just let myself go, mom. I’m gonna be better now.“
She can see in their eyes and their smiles that they don’t believe her and she wonders if they can see the same in hers.
()()()()
Timely becomes their unspoken hangout.
They spend hours there planning and plotting and looking for a glimmer of hope, for some explanation, for a sign that their parents have their reasons for doing what they’re doing, that that reason is good enough to excuse killing people.
They find none. They also don’t make any plans, all their plots have holes.
What they do do instead is homework and getting to know each other again.
They have all grown so much over the last two years and sometimes Karolina feels like she is meeting strangers and sometimes it feels like no time has passed.
She learns to love them all anew, she had forgotten what having friends felt like, what caring about someone for the most innocent reasons felt like, how you just know when you have a connection to someone.
She feels like that with all of them, but not all of them make her head and her chest and her skin tingle, make her smile even though she doesn’t want to, make her feel alive and free and flying whenever they spend time together and hollow and lonely and in pieces whenever she’s away from them.
Nico holds her heart in her hands, plays ping pong with it, doesn’t even know it.
That Thursday she sits next to Karolina and their arms are always brushing. Karolina can’t focus on anything else.
Nico looks at her the whole day, sends her soft smiles, brushes dust off her shoulder, bites her lip with unsure eyes and Karolina wants to hate her for it, she really does.
Instead she is a giggling, blushing, hopeful mess and she knows it will hurt in the end.
She knows Alex and Nico had a fight, from the way they had arrived, both stomping and glowering and always five feet between them, to the way they sit on opposite ends of the table, knows because she has Nico’s unbidden attention, because Alex is hiding behind his laptop screen and because they both are so loudly trying to ignore each other they are taking up the whole room.
She is not the only one who notices. Gert keeps throwing her looks and lifting her eyebrows questioningly and Molly is looking between the two of them, confused, and even Chase has picked up on the weird mood.
Karolina tries very hard to tell herself this: the fact that Nico is acting like this with her has nothing to do with herself and all to do with Alex. She tries hard not to engage.
She fails.
Her grin is stretching her cheeks wide and she can’t stop looking at Nico and she can’t stop soaking up the attention.
She wants to tell her everything, how she thinks that if she’d take her bracelet off now she’d glow the brightest she’s ever glowed.
How the way Nico is looking at her feels better than flying.
Karolina wants to tell her about the heart Nico is holding and how fragile it is.
She doesn’t, of course. But only because her lips hurt from smiling and because she’s not sure she’d get all the words out right.
Shortly before they leave, when they are all packing their stuff together and it’s dark outside, Nico gets up to take a call from her mom, says she’d step outside for a minute.
Karolina doesn’t notice Alex get up, doesn’t notice Nico finishing her talk, doesn’t notice the two of them meeting in front of the big window, doesn’t see Alex offering Nico his jacket and her shrugging it off.
When she looks up she is still smiling, stuffing her textbook into her backpack and thinking about asking Nico if she wants a ride home, and then she notices them, only as silhouettes illuminated by a streetlight, her dark clothes and his patterned shirt, the way he is leaning down to catch her chin in his hand, tilting her head up, placing the softest kiss on her lips, just like in a movie, and just like in a movie Nico doesn't stop him, she kisses back.
Karolina knows what flying feels like and this is everything else.
This is crashing and burning and loosing control and this is hurt and this is pain.
She looks down at the textbook still in her hand, biting down on her lip hard, and there it is again, copper, and trying to fight back the tears because this is her fault, this was her mistake, she was the stupid one, so so stupid.
She feels Gert sit down next to her and when Karolina glances at her from under her lashes she sees sad eyes and understanding.
Gert doesn’t say anything, but she reaches for Karolina’s purse and places it in her backpack, and then she squeezes her hand, once, without looking at her, which Karolina thinks means that she knows and that it’s okay and that she’s sorry.
These are all things she wouldn’t want to hear, because they would make it real and they would make her something to be pitied, but the way Gert says them, all without words, it’s okay, it helps.
Karolina wants to say thanks, but that would mean they would have to acknowledge the worlds between them, all these unspoken truths they are both keeping about what their hearts want, and so she doesn’t.
She squeezes back, just once, and she thinks Gert understands anyway.
()()()()
Some nights Karolina doesn’t sleep at all, because she is afraid she won’t get to die in her dreams and because sometimes saving Nico makes her hate Nico, makes her remember that when she wakes up Nico will still be kissing Alex and breaking her heart.
(She knows she's being unfair. Nico doesn't know and even if she did, Karolina wouldn't own her, Nico wouldn't owe her and the both of them would still be their own people. And she wants Nico to be happy, first and foremost, she really really does. She just wishes she could be the one making her happy.)
So some nights she doesn’t even start to close her eyes. Instead she lies in her bed and takes off her bracelet and listens to her “very in love with goth girls“ playlist (which features a lot of Hayley Kiyoko songs because, duh, and which she only ever listens to with headphones on.) and watches the way her skin throws rainbows against the wall while she floats six feet off the ground.
The world feels somewhat unreal those nights, like time has stopped, like maybe she's the only person alive.
Her thoughts are slow motion, her body feels more like her own than ever before.
She wishes things could be like this all the time: just her floating above all the drama and problems and her wrists free and weightless, only miles and miles to go up.
But in the end, she still misses Nico, still imagines her laying on her bed, looking up at her, reaching out her hand. The only reason Karolina would come back down.
She wants to open her windows and fly across town, make sure Nico is asleep and safe and dreaming about things other than her own death.
Karolina is a coward though, and so she doesn’t.
Instead she softly sings along to the songs coming from her headphones and stares up at her ceiling, imagines the stars and a universe close enough to touch, balls her hands to fists because she doesn't want to feel how empty they are, wants to forget that there’s no one here to hold them.
Their parents might be murderers and she may have superpowers and she may not even be human, but she is also a teenager and she is very very painfully in love.
()()()()
Gert corners her after school one day and Karolina is not completely surprised; she knows there are circles under her eyes and she keeps staring into nothing during class and she’d been silent during their last hangouts and these are all warning signs, of course, but also: the others don’t look much better.
Alex seems like he hasn't slept in months and Chase is nervous and paranoid and Nico’s been biting her lip (very distracting) and becoming more and more closed off.
Molly sleeps too much and Gert herself keeps using meaner and more sarcastic jokes as a way to cope.
Karolina is ready to defend herself but all Gert does is look at her for a whole ten seconds before she let’s go of her arm.
“Wanna get something to eat?“
she asks, but it’s not really a question, Karolina knows this, it’s a way out, a chance for her to not do this here, in front of the school, with the others waiting for them a few meters away.
“Sure.“
she says, which is the only acceptable answer.
Gert nods, she doesn’t really smile all too often anymore, Karolina noticed, and hikes her bag further up her shoulder.
“Let’s meet at the diner in an hour. I gotta get Molly home first.“
When she goes she doesn’t turn around and Karolina can see Molly ask her something but Gert just shakes her head, gets into her beat up car and leaves without saying goodbye.
Once Karolina reaches the others Nico steps up next to her, their elbows brush on accident and she tries not to shiver from the contact.
Nico looks up at her, eyes shielded by her round sunglasses and one eyebrow raised in question.
“What was that about?“
Karolina shrugs, her hands stuffed into the back-pockets of her jeans to keep them from reaching out for Nico.
(She really wants to tug her soft black hair behind her ear or clasp one of her hands in her own or hold her face in her palms, feel her soft skin.
The things she wants are all so innocent but she still feels dirty for thinking about them, it is not her place.)
“No idea.“
she answers, which is kind of the truth anyway.
Gert made it clear they had to talk but she can only guess what about.
Nico keeps looking at her, eyebrow still raised, and Karolina tries very hard not to react to the attention.
She keeps shifting on her feet, eyes glued to the ground.
Nico must sense something in the way she holds herself, because her shoulders relax and her mouth grows softer around the edges, she smiles the smile that makes Karolina’s heart flutter, the one she likes to imagine is only for her.
“Okay.“
Nico says, nudges her shoulder with her own,
“You’d tell me if something was going on though, right?“
Karolina nods, balls her hands so the nails cut into the flesh of her palms, can’t meet Nico’s eyes.
She keeps forgetting, sometimes, that Nico sees her as a friend, someone to confine in, when for Karolina the other girl is everything and more and all the things in between.
It hurts, the way her feelings have taken this from her: she can not tell Nico her secrets when they are about her.
It is not fair to either of them.
She says a quick goodbye and gets into her car before anyone can ask more questions, tries to ignore Nico’s eyes following her until she’s out of sight.
They feel like needles on the back of her head.
(She wants to tell Nico, is the thing.
Wants to say “I am so in love with you my whole body hurts and I can’t tell anyone and it is choking me.
Can you feel my heartbeat?
It has been like this ever since we’ve become friends again and I am very sorry, I tried so hard to stop.
But whenever I think of you my skin hums like there is something underneath it waiting to be freed. I know what flying feels like and I believe kissing you would be better.“
But can you imagine, all the things she would destroy?)
When Karolina arrives Gert is already waiting in a corner booth at the far end of the diner, away from anyone else.
She is sipping a milkshake and scrolling trough her phone and when Karolina sits down across from her she looks up.
Gert seems almost surprised that she came, which hurts a little.
If there is one thing Karolina is it’s loyal.
She wouldn't stand Gert up.
“Hey!“
Gert straightens up and when the waitress appears she smiles fleetingly at her, which is a thing she always does, Karolina knows.
Gert may be a little krass sometimes but she believes in being nice and polite to people who don’t deserve anything else.
It is one of the things Karolina really likes about her.
Karolina orders a smoothie and her and Gert both decide on a sandwich and Gert waits until their food arrives before she says anything else.
When it does she clears her throat and Karolina focuses extra hard on her plate.
“So I heard Chase kissed you.“
Karolina tries not to flinch at that and really, she knew this moment was coming.
Gert is going to hate her for it and she’s going to loose one of her friends.
Over a boy she doesn’t even like.
She doesn’t answer.
“That sucks. Has he apologized yet?“
Her head flies up too fast, neck snapping and she almost winces.
Gert across from her looks serious and not at all like she wants to bite Karolina’s head off, which is the reaction she had been expecting.
Karolina’s hands flutter like birds, she can’t seem to get them to settle down, they get twisted up in each other and smooth down the collar of her shirt and play with her cutlery before Gert takes them into hers, which is not really a Gert thing to do.
“Apologized?“
her voice is very weak and confused and maybe she is too.
Gert smirks a little but her eyes are still serious, they do not stray from her own.
“Well, yes. He kissed you without checking if that’s okay first, and that’s not cool.“
Karolina is trying hard not to look as stupid as she feels, her hand probably sweaty in Gert’s own, she feels like apologizing.
“I mean, it’s fine. He didn’t know.“
It’s not really fine, but she thinks that is more because of her own problems than because of anything Chase did.
He is very handsome and nice, if she were anybody else she probably would have enjoyed that kiss a lot.
But things being as they are, she hasn’t, and instead she can still taste coal on her tongue and the ghost of his lips on hers.
Karolina wonders if she will ever have a kiss that she’ll enjoy, or maybe she just isn’t meant for these things.
Gert leans back in her seat, letting go of Karolina’s hands to instead cross her arms across her chest.
Karolina feels like she said the wrong thing.
She wipes her palms on her jeans.
“That’s it though. He didn’t know. So he should have asked.“
The way Gert looks at her makes her feel small, she thinks maybe she is very naive for not knowing these things like Gert does.
Karolina just shrugs though, her shoulders feel heavy.
“We’re friends.“
like that explains things.
She knows it doesn’t but she’s run out of things to say, out of ways to protect Chase.
Gert’s eyes soften.
“Consent is important, K. Being friends doesn’t change that.“
Karolina thinks maybe they are not just talking about the Chase thing, and she remembers that while Gert had her own concerns about what happened between Karolina and the Lacrosse guys at the party, she never got that explanation from Chase.
She realizes what the dark circles under her eyes and the long silences and the starring off into nothing could mean to Gert.
She thinks maybe she should stop not knowing what to say and clear some things up.
Karolina straightens her back and folds her hands in her lap.
She looks Gert straight in the eye and for the fist time she sees the fear there, the concern lurking under the surface.
Her heart is suddenly very full for her friend.
“Okay, I know you are right. Chase kissing me like that wasn’t cool, and I didn’t like it. But Gert,“ here she pauses for a second because she wants Gert to really understand: “I really think it was just a mistake. Chase isn’t a bad guy, he isn’t like…“
Karolina takes a deep breath because it still isn’t the easiest thing to talk about; all the possibilities of what could have happened.
“At that party, with those Lacrosse guys? Chase saved me there. If he didn’t come in when he did… He stopped them and he didn’t even have to think about it, didn’t even waste one second contemplating what that could mean for him in school and with the team and everything.
He’s a good person.“
Karolina really means this, really believes it, not in a way that means that Chase’s mistakes are unimportant and that the things he did wrong should be ignored because of the things he did right; but in the end, what it comes down to is this: if she’d told Chase how him kissing her made her feel, how unwelcome that was, he would feel so guilty and he would realize that it was bad, not asking before, ignoring all her signals showing him she’s uninterested.
Also, she needs Gert to know that at that Party, she’d gotten away, that nothing happened, not really, that Gert can stop looking at her with those uncertain eyes, with that concern and worry.
Karolina is fine, would be, if it wasn’t for everything else.
Gert stares at her for a second longer, searches her eyes for something and when she finds what she’d been looking for she smiles, a small little thing, and the relief behind it is palpable.
Karolina remembers all the unspoken things between them, all those feelings they have for people they are sure are not meant for them.
She knows that Gert doesn’t see the way Chase looks at her, all the softness on him that he can’t hide.
Gert does not really belong in their little club of unrequited feelings, and once she notices Karolina will be all alone again.
Good thing she’s already mostly used to it.
They eat the rest of their food in silence, but it’s the easy kind.
Karolina thinks Gert may very well be her best friend at the moment, because of all the ways Nico can not be just her friend anymore, as hard as she tries.
She watches the other girl pluck the pickles from her sandwich and stir the straw of her milkshake.
Her glasses are askew, her hair a little messy and still so pretty, there is a small blob of mustard sticking to her cheek.
Karolina is really glad and very lucky, she knows, to sit here with Gert.
A few weeks back this was something she thought she’d never have again, sandwiches and milkshakes and the absence of expectations: to always be perfect and pretty and exactly what people want and need her to be.
How horrible it is, that she owes all of this to their murderer parents, that she is silently and shamefully glad of the way things turned out; sometimes, when things are dark (the night, her room, her head), she apologizes to Destiny.
She really wants her to be alive, she really wishes they could have stopped their parents, but if she had to choose: Destiny or her friends, Destiny or Alex and Molly and Gert, Chase and Nico, always, most of all, Nico, she is not sure … she never let’s herself think far enough to get an answer.
Every time Nico smiles at her she thinks she may have one already anyway.
Karolina is pretty sure, when she is honest with herself, that she is not a good person, that that makes her very very selfish.
She will learn to live with it. It’s a small price to pay, for having friends like hers.
After Gert pays the bill, something they don’t fight over since both their families have money enough for it to not be an issue, after they shrug their jackets on and gather their stuff, on the way out the door, she doesn’t look at Karolina when she asks her question:
“Do you wanna talk about Nico?“
Karolina stumbles in her steps thanks to all the weight those words hold: Nico means her feelings, her feelings mean her sexuality, her sexuality means church and her mother and not living up to a standard she’d been groomed for ever since her birth.
It is a very heavy question to ask, on a weekday afternoon with their respective car keys in hand, a few meters from saying goodbye.
Maybe that’s the reason Gert asked it: Karolina can clearly see the emergency exit, can easily find an excuse to leave right now, there are no corners she is backed into.
Her hands are shaking but it’s just them, they are all alone in the parking lot and no one is listening.
She thinks, maybe, any other day, any other time, in a universe where she can let her identity crisis be the most important thing right now, where these feelings she’s having are not overtrumped by killing and secrets and real life villains, she would have said yes, would have taken Gert up on her offer.
But with things being as they are:
she shakes her head. It may be a little frantic.
“No. I’m good, no. Thanks, but no.“
Gert nods, and Karolina thinks she probably understands: once she opens this drawer, the one with Nico’s name on it, she won’t be able to close it again, and then it will all be too much.
Things will come crawling up and she’ll drown under them, in them, surrounded by them.
She is not strong enough to deal with everything right now, and everything is Nico.
In Gert’s case, maybe everything is Chase.
Maybe that’s why Gert doesn’t ask again, and instead knocks her shoulder very gently into Karolina’s, and then turns and walks into the direction of her car.
It’s a goodbye that feels fitting for them: these small little touches they share when they can not find words, the affirmation that they are not alone, the promise to be there if needed.
Karolina thinks that as far as personalized handshakes between friends go, this is better.
()()()()
It is the third night in a row that she doesn't sleep, or it would be, if not for the heavy weight her head has become.
Karolina tries to distract herself by doing homework and by ignoring the glowing letters on her alarm clock spelling out 3am.
Up until two hours ago she had been listening to the voices of her parents, screaming at each other in their own special way, which had not much to do with screaming at all.
The cutting, snide remarks of her mother against her dad’s guilt tripping and exhausted scoffs, a fair fight, Karolina thinks, as fas as playing foul goes.
She had tried not to notice her name coming up more and more often, the worry they share over her being turned into ammunition against each other.
Her mother has too many expectations, doesn’t spend enough time with her, her father thinks.
Her dad is smothering her, wrapping her in cotton, doesn’t give Karolina the chance to confide in him regarding anything else than the superficial things, her mom snaps back.
They may both be right, she can imagine, but the thing that is making it hard for her to exist right now is the memory of her mother in a red robe, of the trust in Destiny’s eyes, and then the terror, right before dying.
It’s the tingling of her own skin whenever she’s near Nico, the painful twitches of her heart when she sees her and Alex together, the urgent and ever present need to be close to the other girl, to touch her, the guilt and shame she feels over it.
It’s the lack of sleep she’s getting, making her bones and brain tired, the never ending static noise in her ears, the cotton in her head, the lead behind her eyes.
Right now, she’s loosing consciousness over her physics formulas, all the numbers and signs swimming together and then all she sees are black dots, which turn into a sky full of star constellations.
A pretty sight, Karolina notices, while she’s floating over the city roofs.
The streets below her are mostly empty, except for seldom cars, creating a neon landscape with the streaks of color the stoplights leave behind, making the city look like one of the Elsa Bleda photographs she has hung up in her room.
Very dystopian, very eery, very much reminiscent of the liminal spaces Nico had told her about once.
Karolina herself is a glowing beam of light in the sky, her very own flashlight.
She notices her arms and legs, light as feathers, not being weighted down by everything going on in her head, like they had been for the last weeks.
Her body seems to know the destination even when she does not, and she lets herself be tugged along, the stars winking at her, flirting, almost.
She waves back.
There is a smile on her lips, she can feel it tugging at the corners of her mouth, and warm excitement in her tummy, right next to the claws around her heart, the ones that tell her something dark is coming, even while she feels nothing but pleasant anticipation.
The knowledge is there, in the back of her head: this is not a good dream. She’s not sure she has those anymore.
Slowly and silently she begins to recognize the part of town she’s in, the modern houses, glass walls and automatic gates, and golf courses instead of swimming pools in the backyards, and slowly the color seeps out of everything around her, loses it’s glow, until she is climbing into Nico’s bedroom window and everything is black and white.
Oh. She knows what is going to happen now.
But dream Karolina does not, she stares at dream Nico sitting on her carpet, books lying around her and lips curled to one corner of her mouth, biting the inside of her lips.
Nico, even in her dreams, is so beautiful she makes Karolina’s palms sweat and her heart stutter in it’s steps, but there is always something off about her.
She can never quite get her right.
Nico turns around, once Karolina is stepping out of the shadows of Nicos window, and despite the lack of colors the tear tracks on her cheeks, the red of her lipstick, these are all things Karolina can see, or maybe she just knows they are there.
It is her dream after all.
Nico smiles wobbly, swipes the back of her hand under her eyes, her voice is a quiet gust of wind in the room.
Karolina only now notices the deafening silence surrounding them, pressing down on them until it becomes harder to breathe.
“Hey Kar.“
There is no surprise to Nico’s words, maybe she’d been expecting her.
Karolina suddenly feels sorry for making her wait.
“Hey Nico.“ she says.
Nico pats the space next to her on the carpet and Karolina sits down there, their elbows almost brushing but still too much room between them.
She can see now: all around Nico, the books she’d been looking through, they are family albums, a smiling and happy Amy looking back at her from every single photo.
It hurts in a hidden part of her, wakes something she had shut away.
“Oh.“ she whispers, for lack of anything else to say.
Nico looks at her but she is smiling now, wide and unfamiliar.
Honest, but not Nico.
Her teeth are too white.
“Amy was always the pretty one, don’t you think?“
She doesn’t sound bitter, or sad, or anything else but curious.
She is also not really talking to Karolina, it seems, and more to herself.
Karolina shifts on her place on the floor.
“I think you are very pretty too.“ she says, blushing and quiet and half hoping Nico didn’t hear her.
Nico sighs, her eyes are sorry now, full of pity, it makes Karolina feel very stupid. Her chest aches.
“Of course you do.“
Real Nico, Karolina knows, would never be this cruel. Would never make Karolina feel this way.
But dream Nico changes from one night to another. Sometimes she strokes Karolina’s cheek with affection in her eyes and sometimes she sends mean words and cutting smiles her way and sometimes she ignores her completely.
It never changes the fact that Karolina will die for her, willingly and without remorse.
(Some nights, even, Nico asks her to. Presses a gun in Karolina’s hand and tells her to shoot herself, that it’s the only way to save Nico, even when there is no danger present.
Karolina always pulls the trigger, and it has nothing to do with heroics.)
Here, in this dream, Nico obviously knows about Karolina’s poorly hidden feelings for her, does not reciprocate them and has decided that they make her something to be pitied.
This is how she knows it is a nightmare: it calls upon her darkest fear.
Mrs. Minoru knocks on the door before opening, a smile on her face; what a surreal sight.
She looks at the both of them, sitting on the ground, still not close enough to touch, and Karolina notices the albums in front of them have turned into history and spanish books, pencils in their hands like they are just doing homework.
“I heard voices. I didn't know you’d be coming Karolina. Are you staying for dinner?“
her voice is very pleasant and warm, all things the real Nico’s mom is not, and somehow this version is scarier.
Karolina looks at Nico for an answer: this may be her dream but she is only a minor character in it, Nico holds all the power.
Nico looks back at her, musters her face, and then her shoulders drop a little, she sighs again, slightly condescending.
When she turns to her mom she is smiling.
“She’s not staying, mom. By the time dinner is ready this will all be over.“
Mrs. Minoru leaves and Karolina stares at the palms of her hand, laying turned up on her knees: black and white. She knows what Nico means with over.
As soon as the door closes again there is a loud rustling behind them that makes Karolina flinch before she turns around. Nico just keeps on reading her history books, pencil sticking out of her bun now.
Alex is stumbling out of Nico’s closet, clothes in disarray and hair messy, there is a flush on his cheeks and lipstick on his neck.
Karolina looks away.
“That was close. Your mom almost caught us.“
He sits down next to Nico on her other side, their elbows are brushing and their knees are too.
Nico hums.
“It’s fine. I heard her come up the stairs. You had enough time to hide.“
“You mean you had enough time to make me hide.“
Alex’s grin is crooked and cocky, it’s Karolina’s least favorite of his.
Nico rolls her eyes but Karolina can see she is not irritated. The both of them lean closer into each other, further away from Karolina.
Her heart is beating painfully, her throat feels like sandpaper. She feels so small.
Her lips are moving before she has a chance to stop them:
“Why didn’t I have to hide?“
Nico and Alex turn to her and they look almost surprised that she’s still there.
She wishes she wasn’t.
She can’t leave, there is still something she has to do.
Nico has that look in her eyes again, the pity and second-hand embarrassment, Alex just smirks at her in a way the real Alex never would: his eyes are hard while he does it and there is no warmth behind them.
Nico takes her hand, Karolina almost wishes she wouldn’t.
“Oh Karolina.“
her voice is a little too high, a little too mean, a little too much not the real Nico, but Karolina still can’t stop herself from staring at her lips.
“Don’t you get it. There is nothing between us to hide.“
“Oh.“ says Karolina, and suddenly her hand feels like glass: fragile and cold and easy to shatter.
She doesn’t know if she’s imagining it, but she can almost feel Nico squeeze tighter: trying very hard to break her.
This time it happens like this.
They are still studying when the window behind them shatters, thousand little pieces cutting their skin, raining down on them.
The sound of gunshots is deafening, the walls are littered with holes in a matter of seconds, they don’t stop coming.
Somehow, in between all this, Alex finds shelter under the bed and Karolina rolls to the side to crouch low behind Nico’s desk.
There is blood running down her face from a cut next to her eyebrow, her hands are a battlefield, black and sticky, her knees are not much better.
In the middle of the room is Nico, curled around herself, arms around her head and she looks so small.
Karolina’s breathing is ragged, it feels like fire is running trough her veins.
Her mind is an endless loop of Not Nico Not Nico Not Nico and it still takes her far too long to start moving.
Nico is looking at her from across the room, eyes wide with fear, tears running down her cheeks and Karolina can see her lips forming her name.
She is always most like the real version these few seconds before she may die.
Karolina is up and running the next second, dodging bullets all the way to Nico, which is impossible: she can feel them whizzing by her ear and hitting the wall next to her and grazing her arm.
Nico clings to her, the moment Karolina is close enough to throw her body over hers, she can feel the smaller girl shaking under her.
It doesn’t take long after that: the first bullet slams into her back, shatters her spine, she loses feeling over her legs instantly; it catches her so violently she gets spun around and then the second buries itself in her chest, just over her heart, almost at her throat.
She slides off of Nico slowly, painfully, leaving behind a streak she knows would be red if everything wasn’t still in black and white.
The gunshots stop then, it is silent so suddenly it makes her ears ring.
Karolina is staring at the ceiling and she notices then that she has never died in Nico’s room before; in her kitchen once, in her own home some, many times in a car or at school or at the mall. All public places.
She normally doesn’t get privacy like this.
Nico’s face is leaning over her now, her small hands pressing down on her wound, but Karolina knows: it is useless.
She can feel the warmth under her back widening, can feel the copper creeping up her lungs and filling her mouth, drowning her from the inside out.
It is a feeling she has almost gotten used to.
Nico has tears streaming down her face and Karolina wants nothing more than to lift her arm to swipe them away but she can not feel most of her body.
She coughs, weakly, and it makes Nico sob.
There are hands in her hair, getting caught in knots again and again but it’s a minuscule pain compared to everything else.
What she goes with this time is this:
1. “I’m sorry.“
Nico shakes her head, smiles at her wobbly but her eyes are focused on Karolina’s.
“It’s okay.“ she says.
Her voice is wet, Karolina can not imagine anything more beautiful as the last sound she hears.
“This was always supposed to happen.“
Nico lays a hand on her cheek, her eyes are only black, not dark dark brown like they usually are, and Karolina aches for the real version of her.
“Nico.“ she whispers.
It is only a breath, a gust of air, and afterwards her body is still, her chest doesn’t move.
It is always, in all the versions of her death, the last thing she says.
She wakes up the next morning gasping for air, and for a second she can not feel her legs.
It makes her tear the blankets off of her in a panic, getting caught in them and falling out of bed.
Her alarm is still blaring but she can not make herself get up to turn it off.
She curls her body up in a ball, wraps her arms around herself, tries to ignore the sun streaming in through the blinds, the sound of footsteps on their way to her room.
She can still see the pity in Nico’s eyes, the disgust hidden behind it, can still feel Nico’s palm on her cheek, the blood filling up her chest, all the choking and none of the air.
“this was always supposed to happen.“
the words echo around her head.
Karolina can hear her dad entering her room, can feel him kneel down next to her, his big, heavy hand on top of her hair.
He is asking her questions and she could not answer even if she tried.
She keeps squeezing her eyes shut: all the colors are too bright.
After a while she registers her dad leaving the room, the warmth of his body gone, leaving her shivering in her tank top and shorts.
It is not enough to make her move; she is still so exhausted from a lack of sleep and from dying and after every one of her dreams she finds it harder and harder to recover, her body feels weaker and weaker, heavier.
Her teeth shatter in the California summer.
“this was always supposed to happen.“
Every morning that she wakes up she feels like more and more of a failure.
(Her dad calls the school and says she’s sick.
She pretends to be asleep when he brings her breakfast and locks the door after he’s left: she can hear her mothers voice downstairs.
She can not feel safe with her parents in the house, she knows, and knows not, what they are capable of.)
()()()()
She stays home the day after too, and the day after, and on day four somebody knocks on her door.
Her head is still a little cloudy, she is still a little weak, a little guilty: they don’t really have time for her to be sick, to lay in bed, not with everything going on with their parents and their weird powers.
But it’s not really her fault, is it, that she feels so out of sorts.
Nowadays she is always a little nauseous, always a little on edge, like she is waiting for the inevitable to happen, like it is only a matter of time before she’ll have to do what she was meant to do.
There is a hook just behind her belly button and it is pulling.
Karolina spent those last days trying very hard not to think about any of that, not to think at all, and it has helped, a little bit.
She hasn’t had any of her dreams anymore, not a real one anyway.
Flashes from old ones, sure, and she can still hear dream Nico’s voice whenever she closes her eyes, but nothing like she is used to by now.
Her dad brings her soup and fruit cut into stars and hearts and magazines and he makes it so hard for Karolina to remember that she can not trust him, that he is not really the Frank she knows anymore.
Her mother is mostly absent, and Karolina resignedly imagines all the teenagers that could be on the way to losing their lives while she lays in bed in their seaside villa eating pineapple.
But back to the knock on the door:
The others had texted her, of course they had (she tells herself, is still painfully surprised to see that they care), and had kept her in the loop about everything going on.
Chase, living closest, came over the day before to bring her homework but she had pretended to be asleep then, breathing deep and heavy and eyes closed without clenching them.
She’s gotten good at it, born out of her need to avoid any and all conversation with her father.
So while she hadn’t been completely closed off from the outside, this is the first time she is actually about to be confronted with actual interaction.
She hopes, silently, secretly, that it is Gert or Molly or even Chase.
She hopes, of course, even more privately, that it is Nico, because she always hopes for Nico, even when she knows it will only hurt her now.
When the door opens she sees dark hair and dark clothes and dark lips and asks herself, then, if her prayers have been answered or ignored.
Nico is smiling but her eyes are not necessarily.
It reminds Karolina a lot of dream Nico, which makes her chest squeeze tight, but then again, dream Nico never looks this unsure of herself, standing in her bedroom like she’s never been there before.
Karolina smiles back, tries to ignore the old ratty t shirt she’s wearing and the way her hair is a messy pile on top of her head, her shorts that have holes in them.
Nico looks gorgeous, the way she always does, all cool and collected and stylish, and her hair is open and soft today, her eyes highlighted by dark red eyeshadow.
Karolina has missed her.
“Hey you.“
Nico’s lips twitch while she’s speaking, stepping further into her room and setting her bag down on Karolina’s desk.
The sound is too loud in her room, after days of silence, and it almost makes her flinch.
Nico notices.
“Hey.“
Karolina tries hard not to be weird, but she also can’t look Nico in the eyes while the other girl sits down in her plush desk chair, legs crossed and elbows resting on her knees.
The chair squeaks with every spin.
Karolina’s head spins with every whiff of Nico’s perfume that’s coming her way.
She feels a little bit like an addict reunited with her drug of choice.
Nico stops the chair with her feet, her black platform sneakers cooler than everything about Karolina is, her elbows resting on the armrests with a kind of faked nonchalance that is so unlike her it sets Karolina on edge.
Nico looks at her, all dark dark brown eyes. Karolina lets out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.
“So. You’ve been sick.“
It should have been a question but it isn’t. Everything about Nico being here feels very deliberate and Karolina is only waiting for the real reason to make itself known.
Her fingers have a hard time keeping still. They are tapping rhythms to the beating of her heart on her thigh. Too fast too fast too fast.
She nods.
“Yeah. Just your normal flu kinda thing. Knocked me out real good.“
Her voice is flat where it shouldn’t be, too high on other parts.
She is bad at lying mostly always, with Nico the hardest thing is that she wants to be honest.
That’s the complicated thing about being very enamored, very in love: Karolina wants to overshare, wants to tell her everything, knows Nico would be able to make it all better.
She is, in a way, already making it better now.
Her heart may beat a thousand miles a minute, her head may spin in circles, maybe her breath is coming a little short, but - her body feels lighter again, it is easier to move, she notices her grimy hair and sweaty skin, she wants to get up and back to things.
She feels more alive again. What a scary thought. The control Nico has.
Nico is still mustering her. There is no malice in her eyes.
Of course there isn’t, Karolina tells herself, this is not Dream Nico. (not dream nico not dream nico not dream nico. Says it three times so she believes it.)
“Did you lie to me?“ Nico asks.
Karolina is confused but scared.
“What?“
“When you said you’d tell me if something was going on.“
“I…“
“Did you lie then?“
“Nico…“
“Because Amy lied.“
“Oh.“ Oh. Of course.
Karolina feels very selfish and very stupid. There are so many things she keeps forgetting to think about. One of them: Nico lost her sister. Nico’s sister killed herself.
Their parents are murderers, there are superpowers and witchcraft, and kidnappers and dead teenagers but before all that, back when they where still only kids, when life was so so stupid, how she misses it, before everything happened, this happened: Nico found her big sister dead in her room and no one suspected anything and no one helped and there had been nothing Nico could do.
And Karolina is her friend, is supposed to be anyway, and she had forgotten that.
Nico does that thing with her mouth where she tries to keep the corners of it from tugging down, she’s gripping the armrests tightly with her midnight black nails, she’s not looking at Karolina anymore.
“Because Amy lied and then she was dead.“
Karolina stands up, after two seconds of silence (because Nico never talks about this, never mentions Amy, never mentions Amy and death and she looks a little bit like it’s taking a lot for her not to break from the inside out.) and she crosses the room.
Once she’s in front of Nico she sits down, right there in front of her, on the ground, in her ratty shirt and the shorts that have holes in them.
Nico’s hair is a curtain around her face. Karolina wants so bad to tuck it behind her ears, her hands are practically tingling.
There are many things she could say and do, too many mistakes she could make. She knows though, the biggest one would be to do nothing at all.
“I am sorry.“
It’s the first time she’s awake and says the words. Karolina almost expects bullets to come flying from nowhere, can feel her body tensing ready to protect Nico.
No, she tells herself. I am awake. I am so awake I can feel my whole body. The ground is cold, my limbs are still heavy, it is late in the afternoon, Nico came to visit me, Nico is here, Nico is …
She looks up, catches a glimpse of Nico’s face through her curtain of hair. Sees her eyes.
Nico is sad. She thinks. Nico needs me alive. She is not here to have Karolina die for her.
I am awake, she says.
“Maybe I did lie. I’ve just … so many things are going on and I didn’t want to burden you with my personal drama I guess.“
Karolina shrugs, looks down - it’s not the whole truth, she knows. But it may be enough to comfort Nico, to reassure her.
Karolina is not Amy.
Nico looks up a little, pushes her hair to the side in a messy unconscious move that makes Karolina want to smile so so bad, Nico is the loveliest human, really, but she can’t think about this now.
“You’re not …“ Nico rolls her eyes, huffs. Slides down to the floor in one graceful motion, sits across from Karolina.
“You’re a little stupid sometimes.“
“Ouch.“
Nico grimaces:
“No, not like that. Just, obviously you wouldn’t `burden me´. I’m your friend, I am here so you can talk about what’s bothering you. I thought you knew that. I know I can be brash and rude but …“
Karolina is already shaking her head.
“No! No. I do know that. I didn’t… ugh.“ She throws her head back. Nico grins a little. Karolina tries not to brighten too much at that.
“I didn’t not talk about my problems with you because of you, I did not talk about them with you because of me.“
“That sounds kind of unnecessarily complicated.“
“It is. Believe me it is.“
They are looking at each other, both are kind of smiling now, which is a good thing, Karolina believes, and it makes her chest feel lighter already.
Nico is a good friend, she really is, and it does hurt Karolina that she can’t talk about all these things with her.
But it’s like she said: it’s not Nico’s fault. It’s all her own.
Her feelings, her inability to push them aside, to ignore them, the dreams she keeps having that make it so much more complicated to function normally around Nico, around Alex, around all of her friends really - she can’t help but keep thinking “I’m not supposed to be here, this is not my purpose. I do not belong between the rest of you.“
At the same time though, she never feels like belonging somewhere as much as she does when she is with them.
With Gert and Chase and Molly, with Alex and Nico.
It hurts, to love a group of people so much, always believing that she will lose them. That she will have to leave them.
Nico’s eyes are still on hers and they are so soft, the prettiest brown, and Karolina decides to be a little bit brave for a moment longer.
“If I’m being honest, I wasn’t really sick. I was just overwhelmed I think. There is…there are a few things I am not handling my best at the moment, things about me that I have a hard time coming to terms with and I want to talk about them but I’m just not ready yet.“
Nico looks at her, her eyebrow cocked.
“You do know that I’ve seen what you can do, right? The glow thing. That cool rainbow shit.“
Karolina laughs. It sounds a little panicked.
“Yeah. That’s… eh, that’s not what I meant though.“
For a second it looks like Nico is going to ask, but then she takes a deep breath and leans back a little.
“Okay.“
Karolina’s relieved sigh is not even a little inconspicuous.
“I’m sorry if I made you worry. And I promise that I’ll come to you when I’m ready, really, but I think right now I just need to work through this on my own.“
Nico smiles at her again. One day this will be the cause of Karolina’s death.
“Well then. As long as we’re being honest: I guess I overreacted a bit. But …“ - here she inhales long and sharp, like she’s preparing herself for what she will say.
“But the way you’ve been so absent and then the not talking to anybody for longer and longer.
With Amy I didn’t see the signs, any signs really, maybe I was just stupid and too caught up in myself but I never even thought she’d…“
Karolina wants so bad to help with the way Nico’s voice cracks and with the way her eyes get misty. Wants to hold her face in her hands and kiss away the bloody imprints of teeth on her lips.
But she knows she can’t, knows this is nothing she can fix. Nico is grieving, will probably never stop grieving, but if she is talking about it Karolina thinks she may also be healing.
That doesn’t make it hurt any less when Nico’s hands start to shake.
“I didn’t want to make the same mistake again.
One day Amy was there and then the next she wasn't and I kept thinking how I hadn’t seen you for one and then two and then three days and what if the next day would be the one your parents would call my parents and tell them they found you dead in your bed and I would know then, I would know that I’d had a bad feeling but I didn’t do anything about it. So I thought I’d just come over and see how you were because I can’t do that again, Kar.
And I’m sorry if I made it sound like you had to tell me your secrets or something, that’s not it I just want you to know that you can…“
Nico is full on rambling now and her eyes are wet, no tears are falling but Karolina isn’t sure if that makes a difference because she thinks somehow, after all, deep down Nico is crying.
She has never seen Nico, who is usually so cool and collected, like this before but she thinks maybe it was a long time coming, and she thinks maybe somebody should have tried harder to talk to Nico about Amy.
Maybe she should have been that somebody.
But it doesn’t help to think about what could and should have been done.
Karolina is here right now, and here means on the ground in her room with a Nico that is falling apart in front of her, here means awake and alive, and there are no bullets to throw herself in front of and no fire to carry Nico out of and no car crash to save her from.
“Nico.“ she whispers.
Nico sniffs.
“Yeah.“ She whispers back.
“I’m going to hug you now, if that’s okay.“
The room is very quiet, but not quiet like her dreams are, not oppressing and choking. Karolina’s window is open and she can almost smell the sea breeze from here.
The air is hot but not humid.
It is, she notices for the first time, a really beautiful day out.
Nico nods.
Karolina folds her into her arms without worrying if she is touching too much and holding back too little.
This is not about her.
Nico presses her nose into Karolina’s shoulder and winds her arms around her waist.
Karolina turns her face into Nico’s hair, her arms encircling her shoulders.
They fit together so well, it is a tragedy really.
For a minute they just keep breathing like that, clinging to each other.
Karolina knows, without a doubt, that she could stay like this forever.
Karolina knows, without a doubt, that she is in love with Nico, completely and utterly.
She accepts that now. It is a beautiful thing, to love someone so wholeheartedly.
It is painful too, if you know you can not be loved back the same way.
Nico leans back, fixes her hair, smiles a wobbly, weak smile. Her cheeks are a little red.
“Thanks. I needed this. To know that you were not going to… to do the same thing Amy did.“
Karolina brushes a strand of long blonde hair from Nico’s shoulder. Fixes her eyes on Nico’s and can’t really look away then.
“I’m not. I wouldn’t. I’ll be fine Nico. We’ll all be.“
She smiles.
Karolina knows, without a doubt, that she can never tell Nico about her dreams.
Nico would never forgive her.
()()()()
End Part 1