light of the moon — stella & nico.
May 5, 2019 14:45:55 GMT -5
Post by gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽♂️kaitlin. on May 5, 2019 14:45:55 GMT -5
n i c o t h o r n e.
The mirror is a liar.
His reflection is someone that he doesn't recognize, a boy turned man turned back into a boy with no scars to mark him as his own. Nico clutches at the edge of his sink so tightly that he's almost afraid the pretty alabaster white of it will crumble into dust, that at any moment his robotic arm will glitch and bring his entire world tumbling down around him. He stares hard at the person he sees in the mirror, then grabs the already too familiar bottle of brown liquor from where he'd sat it on the sink. He keeps eye contact with the boy he doesn't recognize as he takes one long swig, a breath, and then another, barely feeling the burn anymore.
He is a fake.
One day he'll prove it.
He turns away this time, and aloud to himself he can't think of anything else to say but "You're a coward." And maybe it's true. Maybe he's no longer himself, no longer the boy he was and no longer the man that he became, but some horrible and empty version that had all of their memories and none of their clarity. Fight for yourself, he hears Francis's voice say to him in the back of his mind. Fight this ghost.
But he can't.
Instead, he runs.
As he walks towards his front door, the bottle still in hand, he thinks about running beyond the fence again, maybe staying among the wild for the rest of his days, but he's tired. He is bone-deep tired, with a cavern of darkness where his heart belongs, and he can't find the motivation to run far, no matter how desperately he cannot stay where he is. He sits on his front step for a bit, takes another long drink and knows there's a chance he might not be able to get up, that he'll just sit on this step and die on this step and join the breeze on this step if he takes another long sip like that, but he's not sure that he minds. At least, not until he looks to the sky and sees the clouds among that deep blue of an endless sky, and maybe he can't fight the boy he's becoming for Francis, but he can fight the stillness. It takes only a glance down the street to make his decision, and Nico pushes up from his front stoop quickly as he can.
He sways slightly, and a drop of brown liquid sloshes out the top of his bottle, catches on the olive of his new arm, and for a second Nico still waits for it to short circuit, for this to be the final straw before giving out on him, but it's not enough, and it doesn't, and so Nico walks down the street until he's directly in front of his mentors door and does the only thing he can think.
"Stella," he calls, rapping on the front door a few quick times before stepping forwards and leaning his forehead against it. "Stell, please," he says against the wood, heartbeat slow but heartbreak throbbing. "I need a buddy." He swallows. "A drinking buddy."
