An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
When Karolina gets a text from Gert asking her to meet for breakfast, she doesn't’ worry. Sure, they’re right in the middle of the week and they live in completely opposite sides of town, so it’s not exactly something they do often - they usually prefer to hang out on weekends - but she figures it’s probably just some last minute wedding stuff, nothing out of the ordinary.
The thing is: Karolina’s life is good, and has been like that for a while now. She goes to a great school that she loves, she lives close enough to home to see her childhood friends all the time and she has the world’s greatest girlfriend by her side. There was a point in Karolina’s life in which she thought she would never be able to let go of her past, but now? Now she lives in the present, and the present is good, so good that she never catches herself looking back anymore.
(Well, never might be a stretch, but most days she doesn’t).
She spends the 40 minute drive to Gert’s favorite diner listening to the upbeat playlist she and Julie made together, not letting the heavy traffic get to her. At the very least she knows the place has good vegan options, and it has been such a long time since she’s had anything other than almond milk banana smoothies for breakfast.
Gert is already waiting for her when she arrives, an anxious smile plastered on her face. Karolina begins to suspect something is wrong, but tells herself she’s reading too much into it. Gert is getting married in less than a month, of course she’s nervous.
“Hey there, bride to be.” Karolina greets her old friend with a grin. “Let me guess: you’ve changed your mind and want me to be your maid of honor after all.”
Gert’s laugh seems forced. “C’mon, you know Molly would kill me if I even considered it. She says is her right as a sister.”
“Never thought I’d see Gertrude Yorkes defending nepotism, but okay, I get it.” Karolina jokes, trying to lighten up the mood.
“I know, right?” Gert fidgets with the pepper shaker in her hands, avoiding Karolina’s eyes as she speaks. Something is definitely wrong. “But there is a new development in the wedding department that I thought you should know about…”
“Just say it, Gert.” Karolina says softly. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
“I spoke to Nico last night.” She spits the words all at once, her voice trembling. “She’s coming.”
Karolina feels as if all of the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room, leaving her gasping for breath, and the fact that she is so taken aback by Gert’s words really is a testament to how much she has moved on. Not so long ago Nico would have been literally the first thing on her mind. Now, she hasn’t even heard her name spoken aloud in ages .
That name, along with all other Nico-related memories, has been confined to a neat little box pushed as far back as possible inside Karolina’s brain for so long it takes her a long moment to fully process what Gert is saying. Nico. Coming. Nico is coming to the wedding. Karolina is also coming to the wedding. Both Nico and Karolina are coming to the wedding. The same wedding. Therefore, Karolina and Nico will be at the same place. At the same time. In the very near future.
Gert shakes both her hands in front of Karolina’s face, trying to pull her away from her thoughts. “You look like your brain just short-circuited.”
“How did you even get her number?” She doesn’t even know why she asks that. Out of all of the questions running through her mind, it seems like a fairly unimportant one, but she’s probably not ready to handle anything more just yet.
“Well, Chase’s mom is married to her dad, so… It was not that hard to get.” Gert frowns.
“Right, sure.” Of course it wasn’t hard to get. Karolina herself probably could’ve found it too, if she wanted to. God knows she has thought about it many times in the past. Not lately, though. Not at all. “I had no idea you guys were still in contact.”
“We weren’t, Chase and I just called her last night. Neither of us has seen her in years. She never comes over, not for Easter, not for Thanksgiving, not even for Christmas. She tells Robert she’s spending it with Tina but…”
“She probably tells Tina she’s spending it with Robert.” Karolina completes the sentence without even thinking. It’s annoying, how even after trying so hard not to think about that girl, her subconscious still knows Nico like the back of her hand. Knows how she operates. Knows how she lies. “What happened? Why call her out of the blue like this?”
“We’ve been talking about it for a while, actually. She’s Chase’s step sister. She is - was - one of my best friends, and I know things aren’t exactly the same as they used to be but it just... felt wrong, getting married without her there.”
Seeing Gert talk so fondly about Nico catches Karolina by surprise. She’s so used to thinking about Nico as her past she sometimes forgets that she was important to everybody else as well. “So, how did that phone call go?”
Gert smiles a little. “Well, Chase guilted her with the whole step-sibling thing, and I gave her a whole speech about how, if it wasn’t for that one time in high school when she made us do seven minutes in heaven together, this wedding probably wouldn’t even be happening, so she absolutely has to be there to witness the patriarchal nightmare she put me into… And after about an hour of listening to us ramble in complete silence she just said okay in that dumb Nico tone she uses whenever she doesn’t want to talk about her feelings.”
Karolina knows exactly which tone Gert is talking about, and she catches herself picturing the way Nico’s nose must have scrunched up a little as she spoke, another classic sign of her discomfort when faced with emotional talk. She’s so distracted by the image in her head she barely notices Gert is still talking.
“...And I know this is a lot, specially for you, but I thought that maybe now that you’re doing so well and things with Julie are going great it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I mean, it’s been like, what, four years?”
Three and a half . Not that Karolina’s counting or anything. She nods along quietly.
“Maybe now is the right time to patch things up, you know? I mean, Chase and I miss her, and I know Molly does too. Even Alex probably does. Don’t you?”
Karolina can’t allow herself to even think about what the answer to that question would be, so she ignores it. “Is she coming just for the ceremony or…?”
“She’s coming for the Hostel thing, too. She said she’ll be here for the whole week.”
A week. Nico is going to be back for a week. Surely Karolina can handle having Nico around for a single week, can’t she? Definitely. Just seven quick days and then she’ll be gone and everything will fall right back to normal.
(Karolina had never thought her idea of normal would be one that doesn’t include Nico Minoru, but things change).
It feels like she’s been in the kitchen for hours, staring silently at her untouched cereal while she waits for Victor to wake up, Gert and Chase’s words still echoing in the back of her head. They’re getting married. How crazy is that? Back in high school she practically had to physically smash their heads together to get them to admit their feelings for each other, and now they’re getting married. And, for reasons she will never understand, they want her to be there. And how can she say no to that? They may not be in the greatest terms now, but for most of her life they were like family.
(But then again, Robert is literally family and Nico skipped his wedding without thinking twice).
Truth is, she misses them, all of them. Gert, Chase, Molly. God, Molly must be what, 19? It’s crazy. Part of her has always selfishly thought that Brentwood would stay exactly as she left it, frozen in time forever. Clearly, that isn’t the case. Gert and Chase are getting married, Molly is probably in college, Alex must be working on some groundbreaking AI technology and Karolina...Nico tries not to think too much about Karolina. She just hopes she’s happy.
As for Nico… she’s okay. It took a long time and an overwhelming amount of effort, but she’s managing, which is why she agreed to coming to this wedding in the first place. Finally, she’s ready to face the ghosts from her past. Or at least she thinks she is. But she definitely can’t do it alone.
“What the fuck, Nico, how long have you been sitting there?” Victor asks groggily as soon as he comes into the kitchen, his eyes barely open and his hair uncharacteristically disheveled.
“A while.” She shrugs. “I couldn’t sleep and I really need to talk to you, so.”
“You could just wake me up, you know.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Nico lets out a breathy laugh. “You’d kill me if I messed with your beauty sleep.”
“Fair point.” He smirks. “So, what do you need me for?”
“How would you feel about an all-expenses paid trip to Cali? My treat.” Nico puts up her best saleswoman attitude, even forcefully attaching a smile to her words like they do on really bad commercials.
Victor is definitely not buying it. “I’d say there’s a catch hidden somewhere… didn’t you, like, grow up in Cali?”
“That might have something to do with the trip, yes.”
He furrows his brow at her impatiently. “Just spit it out, Minoru. I don’t have all day.”
“A couple of old friends from Brentwood called me last night. They’re getting married and… they want me to come, apparently. So I need you to be my plus one. Please.”
“Your old friends, huh?” His voice is still reluctant but his eyes soften immediately. For the billionth time in the last three years Nico feels immensely grateful for having Victor Mancha in her life, even though she definitely doesn’t say that to him as much as she should. Talking about her feelings isn’t her strong suit, but she’s working on it. “I’ll think about it. When exactly would this little trip place?”
“About a month from now. We’d be staying there the whole week.”
“Whoa, a whole week? What kind of wedding is this?”
“It’s not a weeklong wedding, dumbass.” She rolls her eyes at him. “But Gert said that since our friend group has been sort of scrambled around the country for a while, they wanted to give us a chance to reconnect before the ceremony or whatever, so we’re all staying at the Hostel for a week.”
“Weeklong bonding trip? And you agreed to that? You must really miss these people.” Victor raises an eyebrow at her, amused. “Anyway, what’s the Hostel ?”
“It’s sort of an underground mansion thing on a mountain range near LA. Gert’s parents own it, we used to hang out there a lot when we were teenagers. It’s got a really beautiful view, I get why they chose to get married there.”
(Maybe Nico, too, had once imagined her own wedding taking place in the Hostel).
“Underground mansion, huh?” Victor eyes her teasingly. “Sometimes I forget how absurdly rich you are.”
“You didn’t seem all that bothered by it when I bought us the VR kit for your PS4.”
“ Ay, cariño , no need to call me out like that.”
She really hates it when he calls her cariño , but that’s not really a priority right now.
“So… will you come with me? Please?” She glares at him, pleading. “I need you there, Vic.”
“I don’t know, Nico...I mean, it’s a whole week. The kids…”
Nico already knew he would bring this up. It had been her first concern, too. “I already texted Carol. She says she and the rest of the crew can cover for us for the week. Plus, we’ll have our phones, and as you said, I’m absurdly rich. If anything goes wrong we can be back in New York in 6 hours.“
Victor is still not convinced.
“What about you, Nico? A week is a long time. Are you sure you’re up for it?” In a different time Nico might have been angry at him for questioning her like that, but she understands it now. She knows he’s just genuinely concerned. “Did you speak to Steve about this?”
“Um, yeah. He totally thinks it’s a good idea.” It’s not exactly a lie. Steve has said several times that he wants her to reconnect with her old friends eventually , but he definitely didn’t know she’s planning to do it within a month.
“Okay, then I’ll come. But only because I’m really curious to meet your super rich friends… specially the famous Karolina Dean.”
Nico’s stomach twists immediately. Maybe she’s already regretting this.
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