It was early, much too early for Niko to be awake in the first place (because what kind of person could possibly think eight a.m. was a reasonable hour to be awake?), and even more so considering he hadn’t even been out partying, but the frustration from his inability to fall back asleep had made him itch for a smoke and thus, he had made his way out of the building.
The older he got, the further away from home he seemed to move yet, here he was, in the big apple and running into his past, the one person he had once thought of as home. For a moment, Niko was certain that he had a stroke or a brain tumour, or just about anything because what were the odds that he would’ve ended up on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from their hometown yet at the exact same address as the girl he had been so certain he would marry a decade or so prior.
“Love?”, He found himself asking, turning his body to fully face her as he was processing the fact that, unless he was schizophrenic all of a sudden, she was indeed there. “What are you doing here?”, He asked her in Norwegian, more surprised than anything else, even as a tightness settled in his chest.
time didn’t stop for them. the countless romance novels she devoured as a child were wrong, she didn’t see the thousand blinding lights of fireworks when their eyes met after years later. no, her life has never been similar to a fairy-tale and time, in fact, is cruel. he comes back to her mind, scratch that, he invades it in waves, smothering her peacefully with each blow. “this is my home,” she mumbles in the language she hadn’t spoken in ages, startled by the strange her own voice sounds to her. a stranger. she feels like a stranger in her own body, standing next to another stranger. ironic how she still hears his laughter like its engraved in the depth of her soul. baby blues widen with desperation, anything to point out that this, whatever this is, not real.
“what are you doing here?” the weakness in her tone is enough for a year long self-hatred session, but what hurts her the most is how frantically she wants to stay by his side, to hold him in her arms. does she have any rights to feel so happy and sad, at the same time? love doesn’t know what to feel, or how to act, not when he stands there in all his glory, a total embodiment of her ever so recurring nightmare. she blinks rapidly, hoping the tears would just go right back where they came from, if that’s ... possible. “i don’t understand,” she says, almost pleading, not with him directly, but anyone who’s listening, slowly squishing under thew weight of his ghost. the baby steps she takes stops dead in front of him, close enough to reach out & touch his cheek, she thinks, right before her movement dies mid-air, holding it back with the last crumbs of self-respect she has. “how’s this possible?”
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