Chapter Text
It is moments like these that remind the group that they aren’t prepared for everything like they care to believe.
What had happened many years ago left a crack in their structure, one easily masked and ignored. If no one brought up Nico, no one had any reason to think of what went down. It was a simple task for most of them, but Molly had other plans. While the rest of the runaways chose to block thoughts of their goth friend from their minds, the younger girl chose to reach out and keep in touch. Eventually a bond was formed, one that no one had a say in and one that would ultimately throw a wrench into their illusions of grandeur.
Five people sit at a table in the Wilder’s home. Just a couple of moments ago they were enjoying some drinks, and reminiscing about old times until Molly dropped her bomb. The name none of them dared to say, thrown out there in the midst of laughing. Gert figures she should’ve seen this coming. After all she was the one who knew how close Molly and Nico had gotten over the past couple of years, but even she didn’t expect this.
“So you invited her?” It’s a simple question, but the feelings behind it are loaded, and everyone knows that as the words leave Karolina’s mouth.
She feels light headed the more she thinks about it, wishing she was at home with her girlfriend, Xavin, but instead she felt like Molly just punched her in the gut. In five years, many things could happen. Things can get better and things can change, but only if you’re there to pick up the pieces, which Nico was not.
It’s Alex who seems to hold the most anger, aggressively getting up from his seat to find something to drink. He moved on long ago, but the resentment and betrayal he had felt as a teenager came back quickly. “I don’t want to see her.”
“This is ridiculous! It is my graduation, and I want her there.” Molly has had enough. Letting out a frustrated sigh, she starts pacing around the room to relieve tension. “I know what happened.”
That’s enough to make everyone look at her. The truth is, Molly was younger than them, so when everything happened their senior year of high school, they didn’t tell her.
“What do you know? How do you know?” Karolina is panicking. She may have always been out and proud, but if this information was just out there being spoken about then she had an image to protect, her parent’s.
Chase stands up to walk over to Karolina in an attempt to calm her down, but she just holds up a hand to stop him. This isn’t some minor thing to get over. She didn’t just get a low grade on a test, or break a nail. This is everything she had pushed aside, buried deep down to never think about to never talk about, resurfacing all at once, and it was becoming too much to handle.
Gert knows the signs of a panic attack, and she is quick on getting to Karolina’s side, pulling her to another room while making sure no one is stupid enough to follow them. Right now the last thing this Dean needs is an audience.
At five in the morning, an alarm starts going off. Nico groans as she rolls over to turn it off. This is something she has done everyday for four years now, but still can’t get used to. In high school Nico only got up early enough to get ready for school, definitely not to go for a jog before work. She used it as a way to clear her head since she started college, and now working for her parents, it’s something she requires.
She’s lived in Boston since she left California for school, but everyday she goes outside, she is still reminded of home. Despite having made a new life for herself, there are constant reminders of what she left behind. No longer does she have a close knit group of friends, just people who come and go without much significance. And yet, she’s happy. She’s doing great for herself until the bomb is dropped.
Molly’s text came through right as she walked back into her apartment. It was just a short and sweet text inviting her to Molly’s graduation, but the implications ran much deeper. Since she was 17, Nico had yet to return to California. Whenever her parents wanted to see her, they had to make the trip out to Boston because she wasn’t ready to face what she had left behind. The mess she helped cause, but didn’t bother sticking around to clean up.
Of course Nico still felt guilty about how everything went down, but she wouldn’t take it back. Teenagers or not, the feelings she felt then were stronger than anything she had ever felt which is why she didn’t exactly move on. There were hookups here and there, but nothing where the tech genius let herself feel anything more than sexual attraction.
Nico considered coming up with an excuse. Saying she has work or some charity event going on, but she had already used so many excuses with Molly causing her to miss most of the woman’s adult milestones, but she wouldn’t risk missing another one. She quickly typed out a text to Molly letting her know that she wouldn’t miss it for the world before alerting her parents that she would be coming to town.
Losing Amy broke the Minoru family. Her parents threw themselves into their work and left her to her own devices. The runaways became her family, and in the end she lost them too. Yet moving away seemed to bring her parents back to their senses. The thought of losing their last child woke something in them that had been dormant for a long time. But Amy’s name on her wrist kept her from forgetting what it cost.
Maybe going back is Nico’s chance to fix things, or to get closure. Some say not to open old wounds, but this was still brand new to her.
There have been very few times when Karolina’s anxiety has taken over her mind and body completely. The first time was in second grade. A day that started off as any other until it came time to go home, and her parents were no where to be found. Luckily the Yorkes were friends of the Deans and took her home with them, but it didn’t stop her from panicking. Their oldest daughter, Gert, turned out to be an amazing asset to have that day, somehow knowing exactly what to say to get Karolina to start to relax, and the rest was history. Yet, this was different. After all, she’s had anxiety when it’s come to matters surrounding Nico, but this wasn’t that. It was something else entirely.
Image was an important thing to the Dean family, but not so much Karolina. What mattered to her was not being gossiped about as if she were a tabloid waiting to happen because of her parent’s star status. What Molly knew, or claimed she knew, was something kept very far from public eye. So much in fact that only Karolina and Nico knew the exact truth, while Alex knew enough. And it was his knowledge that caused everything to go wrong in the first place, so he wasn’t a likely suspect to go spreading things around which could only mean that Nico said something, but why?
“Nico told her.” Gert’s simple statement packed a punch. Why would Nico tell Molly something that she fled the state to get away from? “None of us would tell her what happened, so she reached out to Nico, and she said she had nothing to hide.”
“Nothing to hide? Isn’t that why she left, to hide from everything instead of being honest?” If this was the world’s idea of a joke, Karolina wasn’t laughing. Secrets will ruin you, and they did ruin something so amazing to Karolina that she has never fully recovered from it. All Gert can do is shake her head.
“Molly said she’s different now since something happened to her in Boston, but she wouldn’t say what exactly. Something about it not being her story to tell, but it sounds pretty big.” Gert couldn't hide her annoyance with the fact that her own sister wouldn’t tell her what happened, but her feminist side knew it would be wrong if she did.
From that point on the girls just sat there thinking about everything going on. Gert was pretty sure she knew what happened to cause Nico to leave based on the reactions and hostility of Karolina and Alex, but the last thing she was going to do was push someone to talk about something when they weren’t ready, even if it had been years. And Karolina just couldn’t stop thinking about what seeing Nico was going to be like.
It’s like Karolina didn’t know how to feel.
In the past five years she thought she had moved on. She managed to go on dates and be happy, even if it never felt entirely right. In fact, she had a current girlfriend that she had been dating for a few months though it definitely wasn’t a perfect match. But the thought of seeing Nico again had her heart skipping beats, picking up speed the more she thought about it. The reaction not entirely based on happy feelings, but they were there, just surrounded by pain when it came to the girl who had broken her heart. It took so long for her to repair things with Alex and no one knows what her return could do to the group.
Nico didn’t waste any time booking her flight back to California. She knew if she did procrastinate chances are that she wasn’t going to end up going back, and she couldn’t stand to disappoint Molly now. It’s been two days since Molly invited her back, and now she’s about to get off the plane and meet her parents for the first time in since they visited her for Christmas.
“We’re happy to have you home.” Happy. A word, a concept, an emotion that altogether used to seem foreign to Tina Monoru, but in recent events had become something more lively.
Robert embraces her tightly before taking her bag to walk to the car. They talk about work and minor things before Tina lets it drop that Pride is having a big family dinner tonight. “I know it’s a lot, but everyone sounded excited to see you when I said you would be there tonight.”
Everyone. Nico knew that her mother meant that the PRIDE parents were excited to see her, but couldn’t help but feel happy thinking Karolina would be happy to see her after all that she had done. She missed all of her friends, she really did, but Karolina was never just a friend to her, and that much was obvious to anyone who paid enough attention.
“It’s okay, I’m excited to see them too. Just nervous about being back around everyone. It’s been a while.” Mostly she was nervous about two people in particular. Not ones she had hurt, but their parents. Nico Minoru was going to have to face her entire past, including Leslie Dean and Catherine Wilder. Her parents never told her how much they knew, not that they knew everything themselves, but it’s been hinted at.
The drive home wasn’t a long one, and her parents had some business to attend to before dinner that night, so Nico decided she would take it easy before then. Climbing into her old bed, a familiar smell wafted through the room, lulling her to sleep.
There’s a couple of hours between now and dinner, so Gert, Molly and Karolina decided to gather at their regular coffee joint to mentall prepare themselves. While Molly is over the moon with excitement at getting to see Nico again in person for the first time in years, Gert is busy trying to reassure Karolina that it was going to be just fine. For clarification, Karolina did not believe her.
“There’s no reason to be nervous, Kar, Nico is just Nico.” Molly explained, her tone completely go lucky, as if there wasn’t any reason to be panicking.
That’s the thing, Nico was never just /Nico/. She was a mystery begging to be solved, a soul wanting to be seen, a person seeking to be loved, and that’s what Karolina tried to do. Nothing was right about what they did. Emotionally it was perfect, the pair was on cloud nine when they were alone together, but the timing was wrong. The situation couldn’t have been worse, and it drove a wedge between them, one large enough to send Nico to Boston.
“I guess you’re right.” Karolina muttered softly. She knew it didn’t sound believable, but it was the best she could muster up.
Gert decided to try to lighten the mood with a funny story about something dumb Chase did, none of them noticing someone walking to the front counter.
“Can I get one espresso to go?” Nico asked groggily. Regretfully, she rose from her nap before deciding a nice cup of coffee would make her feel a lot better before dinner. Though right now she didn’t look prepared for anything but a shower. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, held together by a chopstick she found lying around on her old desk. She wore a pair of old tennis shoes and track shorts with a Gibborim studio shirt that was hanging in the front of her closet. Something about wearing that shirt just made her feel safe.
Sitting at a table nearby, Nico decides to message Molly about tonight.
‘I’m excited to see you, Mols.’ She really means it. Molly was pretty much the only real friend Nico had anymore, and it meant a lot to her to be invited.
She’s about to get up to check on her coffee when she hears the most beautiful laugh she’s ever heard, Karolina’s. She completely misses the fact that her name was called, too busy enraptured by the sight in front of her.
Karolina is just as gorgeous as Nico remembers. Her skin is glowing, there’s a smile so wide on her face from whatever Gert just said, that Nico instinctively smiles back until she notices they’re looking at her. The smile drops from Karolina’s face and is replaced by shock.
“Nico?” The barista calls again, clearly not having it with this wait time. It’s enough to break the spell they were under, and to send Nico flying towards the counter and out the door. Hopefully seeing Karolina at dinner will play out differently than it did just now.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back. That’s all Karolina can silently pray for as she watches Nico walk towards the door to leave. If she doesn’t care then she won’t look back, right? But she does. One hand holding her coffee and the other on the handle to leave, Nico turns around and stares right into Karolina’s eyes as she steps out. Fuck.