They run into each other on the wrong coast, with the wrong people, and for a moment Nico is tempted to pretend she doesn't recognize the boy in front of her.
Unfortunately, the boys she's fallen for have a habit of haunting her. In this fucked up life of hers, even the dead rarely stay buried.
They run into each other in some back street, halfway through a stupid fight with some stupid villain who just so happened to pick her favourite coffee shop to destroy first (why is it always the coffee shops? what is up with that?). There's a flash of blue, and Nico thinks that maybe she's run into the Young Avengers again, but then she sees him, sparks flying from his mouth as he shouts at a bystander to stand back. He notices her after, and she had enough time to leave but she stands her ground, because she hates to admit that she's growing up, but she's also real tired of running away.
"Nico?" He twitches, like he wants to reach out. Or maybe she's being self obsessed. Maybe he just has a loose wire somewhere, something short circuiting.
"Hey," she says.
Then he does reach out, pull her into a hug. She doesn't resist, although she probably should have. Accepting the hug means accepting his invitation to another coffee shop, and then to rooftop nearby. They sit in silence, the drinks more for something to do with their hands, and Nico is so close to saying fuck this when he finally speaks.
"I thought you died?"
She shrugs. She can't really remember it. Just remembers the cold, and the anger, and Chase's pain. Her own pain is tucked deep inside her, healed wrong. She sometimes thinks that when they ran away the first time, she broke every bone in her body, and since then she's just been healing crooked and rebreaking, over and over and over again.
"It wasn't a big deal."
He laughs and sparks. Has he always done that? Is it a sign that something is wrong? Or was it just that he wasn't really laughing, before?
She doesn't like to think about how she has grown up, but there's no denying that the man next to her has. It makes her angry, even though it has no right to. She has no right to be angry about this anymore. And anything else she did have the right to be angry about was so long ago. She can hardly remember them ending, like the memories hadn't quite returned with her. She knows that happened, knows there are holes in her life that weren't there before her death. She doesn't know how to deal with this either, so she pulls curtains over the gaps and pretends they're part of the decor.
"Dying it isn't a big deal?"
She shakes her head. "Not for people like us."
She doesn't realize her mistake until he calls her on it.
"Don't let Chase hear you say that."
Chase. Right. Jesus, no wonder he wasn't speaking to her. She isn't even sure where he is now. Back with Karolina, Molly, Klara? Traveling around on that stupid bike of his, chasing memories? That's one of them who will never stop running.
She tries to act casual, takes a sip of her coffee. "You talking to him, then?"
He's staring at her. She's never been able to bullshit him.
"Yeah. We text. So do me and Molly. Karolina. They got Klara a phone, too, although she mostly uses it to take Instagram photos of plants..." More heavy silence. "They miss you. Am I allowed to tell them I saw you?"
Another shrug. Caring is just so much effort. Better to keep moving, leave the feelings behind.
"I think they'd appreciate knowing you're alive, at least."
This pisses her off. "I'm sorry, are you lecturing me about responsibility?"
He frowns, and in the light he is gorgeous, and she remembers that she used to love him. She can't remember why she stopped. It wasn't because of some redhead a hundred years ago. No, it was something in her. It's just another broken thing. "I'm not lecturing. I'm just saying it wouldn't hurt to shoot them a message every once in a while."
"Tell them you saw me, then. I don't give a shit."
"Liar."
She rounds on him, and her nails must have cut into her palm, because the Staff is in her hand. She wonders if she means to use it. She can't tell. "You're calling me a liar? You're a machine and a cheat. Everything about you is a lie!"
He flinches, and for a second, she thinks she did curse him. But no. Words don't need magic to have power. She hurt him, and part of her is glad. Another part of her is just so tired.
He doesn't retaliate. He doesn't defend himself. That's because he's grown up, and she hasn't. She's just spiraling. She can't look in mirrors anymore. All she can see is her mother.
She stands. Her coffee spills, but she doesn't care. He lets her get halfway across the roof before he turns.
"What happened to us, Nico?"
It's her turn to laugh, and the laugh is a dark thing. It rips at her throat as it leaves her, like her body's forgotten how to laugh without causing pain.
"I thought you knew?" Her voice breaks, and she distantly realizes she's crying. "I died."
She should leave. The door is right there. She's frozen now, though, trapped in a play she no longer knows the steps to. Victor gets up, approaches her, and there's no hiding her tears from him, he's too close. Closer than people dare to get, these days. For the second time today, he hugs her, but this one is personal in ways the other one was distinctly not. Victor holds her tight and has the decency to not comment on how she's sobbing into his shoulder.
"I wish I could hate you," she chokes out. "It would be so easy, I hate nearly everyone else."
"Do you?" He asks. If it had been a rhetorical question, she would have decked him. But it's not. He's honestly asking, and she can't lie.
"No. Sometimes. But I don't want to. I just don't know how not to."
She pulls away, and he lets her go, this time.
"For the record," he says, and with that smile, he's the boy she knew, and loved, and left. "I was the one that fucked up. You're not wrong about that."
"I know," she says.
"Of anyone, you have every right to hate me."
She shakes her head. "We were just kids." And now they aren't.
He nods, and pulls out an odd looking gadget, some weird cross between a walkie talkie and an electric toothbrush, or something. "Here. Um, I gave one to the Hostel, and I have one, and now so do you. It's... Like a panic button? In case you get in trouble, okay?"
She takes it. She also lets Victor put his number into her phone. Then she has to walk away, otherwise she'll stay, be trapped again by this boy and this old life that she doesn't fit into anymore.
She doesn't say goodbye. She doesn't believe in goodbyes anymore. But. "I'll call."
She means it. That's good enough, for now.