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[Text]; k A AA T THeer E ARE toO MAy STars [Text]; THEyregONNA AEAt ME???

[Does not text back; oh my god he's so adorable when he's drunk]

#nicohall #i am so sorry for her she's going to sit there and cry quietly into her scones with clotted berries and jam #answered

✉~

Send ✉ for a half-asleep text

[Text]; fu ck are you al ive right now

#nicohall #lAU HG Ing aT PA In #answered

From the way he's standing and the from just seeing what's sitting atop his head, she can already see that she's failed. "You're wearing the helmet," was all Kat could bring herself to say, vehemently staring at the metal sitting upon his head. "—you've changed."

She was so much worse. She was sick, though she told no one of the long nights where she sat with a bottle and a needle filled with lithium trying to fix herself. It wasn't worth it. Everything around her is crumbling to her feet already; an inheritance that was already nearly burned down to the ground before the director even recieved it, like her mind. Nothing was there anymore. He wore his helmet like a trophy, an embellishment of his pain and suffering, an artifact stolen from a more broken man before him. It was no longer Nico Hall, lord of the library, prince of perject pasta and puns, but a destroyed and wretched soul barely stumbling along, trying to find his way into brightness, who had his back to her. It's one of those days.

You wouldn't believe the amount of people from the old days that she encounters, who have changed such an impossible and inexplicable amount that they might as well have been that way from the start. The only qualm she had with this fact was that she had known him for far too long to be able to let go that easily—he'd been next to the Director in times that no one else wanted to be. But I guess time eats away at the bad times, too. "So have you," he chastised, and for one dull moment, she is convinced that this is nothing but gentle banter between the two. Like the good ol' days, when everything was black and white and good or bad. Not like this. Never like this. "Time does that to people; funny, isn't it?" Van Lofen said nothing. She is no longer that naive, and he only just begins to accept this—and it shows in his voice when he speaks again. "--could've saved her, Kat. We could've been a family." The words are bitter on his tongue. You used to call me Kitkat. She was 31 and he was her right-hand man, one of her only tethers to a daughter who refused to carry her mother's name any longer. They were both sick and tired of the world around them, both old souls trapped in young bodies, and his broke in two when Elvira was stolen from them. But then, and only then did she alone began to realize that Ellie was never hers to begin with anyway. With the girl's absence and a heavy heart, she severed her tether, and did the one thing she could never seem to mess up. She ran. And the two became three.

"We would have been unstoppable." It's a story she's heard one too many times, the constant what if's colliding with her like waves against a sinking ship. "No, Nico." She does not cry. She was 9 when she learned that crying would get you nowhere—only 9. Instead, her heart drowns in her tears and her chest begins to ache. She shook her head at Nico. He angled towards her at last, eyes searching for forgiveness but finding none. "I loved you, Kat." He swallows then, and his eyes sink into an icy nothing as he attempts to shove the truth down her throat, but she's already turned away. "I loved her—she was our daughter--" "No. She wasn't yours, or mine, or even Widow's—she didn't belong to anyone." When she turns back to look at him, Nico has one clenched fist by his side, two broken trees behind him. "Just—just come home, Nico." But he says something then, something that only further reminds Kat that he is no longer the man he used to be. "Home," he echoed, taking a step towards her. "There is no home—you were my home." "Then stop doing this. Throw down the helmet and come back." He almost considers this. Oh, sweet, sweet irony. "...it's too late." "It's never too late." As estimated, Nico Hall reached up to remove the infamed helmet, only hesitating when he began to comprehend that he was no longer the same man, and that this may not be the right choice—when he heard the click-clack of an assault rifle behing loaded. His hand moved to deflect the shots but Kat had already moved and the last thing he heard was a foreign syllable being shouted before five-nearly-precise bullets finding their target... but missing their mark. Up, down, up, up and to the right the bullets went; all except one missing Kat before her hands grasped the metal and removed the helmet. And then she f e l l.

The week before, she had watched him and ordered a strike, one that was never delivered. The week before that, he'd murdered his 6th person in two months—murders that had seemed erratic at first—until she realized that he was killing people that had any involvement with Kat's Red Room program, or Ellie's death. However, this week, she'd only ordered a few snipers to watch her back while they talked. Communicating with your-old-friends-turned-villains, like communism, is so much better in theory. She thought she could talk him out of it. She was wrong. Too bad her snipers weren't Hawkeye and Black Widow, because they failed to realize that they'd missed by a small margin, and lost something much bigger. And she lay bleeding on the pavement, head pounding and only seconds away from oblivion. He kneeled next to her as she drowned in blood and pain, offering his shoulder for her, because now, it's his turn to refuse. He doesn't exactly realize it, but the bullet is sitting in his hand, hot, and covered in her blood. "N-no... Kat? Kat, no--" She struggled to speak again. "--you used... to call me—Kitkat."

"Just say the word. Say the word, and I'll be gone—and you'll never have to see me again."

"Why didn't you say the word—why didn't you let me die?" "Because—everyone deserves a second...chance. It's your life—your decisions—it's never too late to change." His hands were shaking and sticky, coated in a crimson substance while Kat went paler and paler. "No, no—it wasn't supposed to be this way." "No, why—won't you—understand," she sounds more angry than scared; she's not thinking straight, but Nico can't even tell. "It was—always going to be this way." Kat's attempting to compose herself again, but her thoughts are scrambling out of her grip and landing here and there, blurred from frustration, why won't he understand that it was always supposed to be this way? The more she stares back at him, the more she begins to see that Nico—he's gone, so far gone that she doesn't know who he is, and she feels nothing but anger and confusion and why did I think I could fix this— —she doesn't even have a name for him anymore.

It all burns away, like the empire that she never quite had under control. The helmet rolls away from her grip, and it sits in the dirt away from her. She is caught between the ground and his shoulder, and she can no longer seem to breathe without it hurting her chest, blood soaking the front of her shirt and gluing it down. Nico can't believe he's crying now—no, why did this happen again—so many things, so many things he could have done that he failed to do. "Sto—mi dispiace tanto, Kitkat." "Solo Nico mi poteva chiamare tale," a bit deliriously, she rests her head against his chest. "You are not Nico, you're Magneto, and I--" And he's suddenly even more sorry for all this, because everything burns—the prospect that he just got her killed. The shooters hover in the background, but he doesn't move. He sits in cold nostalgia and rage, so much rage. Where is home now? He held on to her, long after she was gone, and maybe not in his arms, but he held on, and he did not let her die gently into the night, he raged, raged against the dying of that beautiful light. She made a joke once. That he was Magneto—and he could have taken the name, but she called him Magnico and those two dorks laughed over it for the longest time, but that was back when they were young and free and nothing seemed to matter. Back when Kat knew he was going to change, for certain. Maybe for better, or maybe for worse, but there was nothing she could have done about it either way.

In spite of all these deficincies in their relationship, the mistakes, the betrayal, the blood that had been split, Magneto only seems to remember everything that was good, and this becomes a problem, even five years after Kat moved on. He'd been followed, down every valley and over every hill until he'd found the place. Their place. Nico Hall removes his helmet, then, and it clatters onto the sand before slowly rolling away. They say that every atom in our body once made up something as beautiful as a star, so maybe she never left. Maybe she just went home. "We became something. Something that was never really defined—but hell, it was something." Standing there, with his helmet on the ground and head up towards the sky—towards her, he exhaled and grinned, watching his breath float up towards the skies. "I ruined it before you could, mia stella. It wasn't ever your fault—I messed up independently. And I'm so sorry." And they came for him. All at once, what's left of SHIELD, the Avengers, and they're past begging for Nico to just come back because they're not like Kat. But he doesn't fight back. He waits for the shot to arrive. At least he's home now, and perhaps this time, they'll be better for each other.

#nicohall #for u my bae #otp; they shine for you