The Rebirth

Elena stared at her hands. She couldn’t quite believe what’d happened actually happened. Only the very faint white scars on her fingers and palms and legs reassured her- she really had been in a battle a week ago.
And there were monsters in the cities.
She knew it now.
She felt like she’d always known, but just chose to ignore it.
The fog was thinning around her. That was the only way she knew how to describe it. The fog of her perfect oblivious world was thinning and she was seeing what was underneath the veil.
And for the past week- yes, she’s been terrified. She hasn’t been able to go to sleep without the lights on. She refused to go to school for three days. And when she finally did get out of the house, she carried a small, just in case she needed to protect herself. (Which might seem a little psychotic, but she promised herself not to pull it out unless she was already halfway through an actual battle with a monster.)
And throughout that whole time, she pinched herself and hugged herself, knowing that everybody else would tell her she was crazy.
But she knew she wasn’t.
She knew.
She’s always known.
And it was now, after she witnessed a statue talk, that she locked herself inside of her room and stared at her hands, finally sick of being terrified and ready to start thinking.
And the options in front of her were very clear.
She could choose to ignore the world around her, as she did before, and attempt to forget, and have this crash down on her sometime in the future…
Or she can start preparing now.
The answer was simple.
.

.

.
Oddly, she wondered where the boy was.
**********
“We need each other.”
“I know.”
“Clearly we need each other. Even after four years, we’ve needed each other. That’s not going to change.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t need Bianca.”
…
“Nico?”
“I’m not sure that you should be the one to make that decision.”
“I’m not. You are. You don’t have to need her. You can decide not to need her.”
Nico was silent. Surprisingly, there wasn’t angry yelling in this conversation. They seemed to get that all out when Daniel showed up on his doorstep two weeks ago. But the tense feelings were still there.
They’d put off this argument as long as they could.
“I have to know that she’s not going to take up your life.”
“She doesn’t take up my life-”
“Don’t give me that load of-“
“Or, at least, she didn’t. She’s only been taking up my life for the past four years because you haven’t. That’s it. That was you. You were my life.”
It was Daniel’s turn to be quiet. Nico was afraid, for a second, and he raised his head up from his leaned position on the wall. His hair was growing out again, all scraggled and black. He’d need to get that cut.
Daniel was quiet, but… a good kind of quiet. A touched kind of quiet. His lips were pressed together, but a faint twitch of a smile played over them, and the golden gleam to his brown eyes became more noticeable. It was one of the things about Daniel that did change over the years- somehow, when he got happy, his eyes became lighter.
They’d been pretty light for the past two weeks.
“All right,” Nico’s boyfriend apparently decided, softly. “All right. This could work. But… you have to promise me that…”
Nico waited, his chest skipping, the hundred-pound weight on his shoulders lifting. His fingers itched. “Promise you…?”
“In time … if it gets too long, and things don’t work out… if she… There’ll be a day, a right day… where you’ll have to let go for me. Of her. Of the past. And it will be really painful. But you'll have to do it.”
Nico felt a drop in his stomach.
"Promise me."
Nico rubbed his hands together.
"Please."
And Nico sighed, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.
But he nodded, and smiled weakly as the other guy threw his arms around him.
He needed his sunshine.

Notes