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A post-issue #35 one-shot even if I still don’t know what it’ll be about
Elena looks down and sighs heavily, as if the air that hesitatingly leaves her lungs could dry the tears accumulating in her eyes. It doesn’t manage to.
She looks on her left, without raising her head. Zick is there, sitting on the edge of the bed, next to her. He closes up his fists and, even if she can’t see it, she knows he’s looking at her. He has seen the first tear rolling down her cheek under her big red glasses and doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know if he can touch her, hug her. And if there’s someone at fault for that it’s Elena herself. She pushed him away, consciously and cruelly, without notice.
But despite all of that, he saved her life again.
“I keep screwing up…” she whispered, to herself more than anyone else.
“What are you talking about?”
Elena turns her head and stares at him. She wants to hold his gaze, look him in the eye while talking, but the shame is too strong and her eyes slowly go back to the floor as her lips start moving.
“Eight years ago you saved me” her body tightens and she forces the tears to wait or get lost. “Not once, but countless times… But right now I’m talking about that time that changed us forever. You gave up everything for me, and I didn’t even give you a hug”.
“We were kids, Elena…”
She raises her hand, asking him to let her talk. Zick nods.
“Then I moved and even if it’s true that you were the one who cut off contact in the first place, I didn’t do anything to avoid it. I never suspected that something was wrong. I never even asked you. I should’ve talked to my parents, caught a bus or something. There were a million ways to get you back and help you but I didn’t do any of them”.
“But when Bombo told you you came immediately!”
“Yes, but how many years after? How many years did you pay for something that was partly my fault as well?”
Zick doesn’t answer. Elena thinks that deep inside he knows she’s right, but the truth is that he’s trying to figure out how to take her friend out of the spiral of self-destruction she trapped herself into.
“And now we’re here” Elena keeps going. “After all those years you’re trying to get your life back. You need my help and all I can do is treat you badly, I push you away and make you feel like a burden. I know I do it, I know it’s wrong, I know it’s not what I actually feel… and I still do it anyway. I’m also mean to Bert, Vanessa, my college friends… but specially to you. Because I know that with you I screwed up big time. I push you out of my life because I don’t want to remember it but that’s just another way of screwing it up and it becomes a vicious circle that never ends. I thought that leaving would be a way to break it, that I would come back with clearer ideas… but then I fell like an absolute idiot in that asshole’s trap and it only served to bury myself even deeper in the hole full of shit that I have been digging for all these years and that eventually became my life…”
Her voice breaks and she covers her eyes instinctively as she puts her head down. Zick rubs his forehead, as if that made it easier to find the words he’s looking for.
“Elena, what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense…”
“You still being here is what doesn’t make any sense!”
“Why wouldn’t I be here? We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Can’t you see that I’m a horrible person?! You’re my best friend, one of the most importan people in my life and the one I hurt the most! Can’t you understand that you would be better off without m–?!”
“Okay, that’s enough!”
Elena turns around, shocked after her friend’s shout. He’s angry, or most likely, frustrated. His eyes shine under his furrowed brow. Is he going to cry? She wonders how many times he has done it because of her.
“It’s about time that you understand that I…” he presses his lips together and his eyes look down for a second. Then he looks her in the eye.
“I would die for you. Kill for you. Do and give whatever it takes to keep you alive and safe. I have been an idiot, an asshole, made countless mistakes in my life. But if there is something I don’t and will never regret is giving all I had for you that night on Sinistro’s boat. And I would wander around alone and defenseless in all the parallel dimensions I had to if that meant I can see you sitting here next to me one more time”.
And finally, his shaking hand reaches her friend’s. She doesn’t need to see the thread that binds them to feel it.
“So stop trying to face everything on your own” he continues. “Remember all the times that I did it and you scolded me” he smiles. They smile.
“I look back and see how small we actually were back then, even if we didn’t want to acknowledge it. And I know that the only reason why the world didn’t eat us alive is because we were together. I might have saved you a thousand times but you saved me a thousand and one. You have always been strong for me when I needed it and I want to do the same for you”.
“I’m not strong…”
“You are, but at the moment you can’t. That’s why I’m here” he holds Elena’s hand between his, tightly. “And I’m not going anywhere”.
Elena smiles and lets the tears drag away the pain, even if she still has to walk a long path before getting rid of it completely. But she knows it will eventually disappear, because her friends are there for her. They have always been.
She lets go of Zick’s hand and slowly leans towards him. She lays her head on his right shoulder and wraps her arms around him. Zick sighs and hugs her with relief.
None of them knew how much they had been waiting for this moment.
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