Fixing Nico [boyxboy / yaoi]

Ch 22 - Righting Wrongs

~ CHRISTIAN ~

I was shaking. 

The meaty, burly bodyguard's hands were clenched around my arms - he was holding me like a child, with huge hands the size of trash cad lids, and a face void of emotion. Bare. Blank. Cold. I realised, as his fingers dug painfully into the skin of my arms, as my weak chest rose in a frantic, unsteady up-down-up-down-up-down, that I was trembling. 

Like a little kid.

Like… Nico. Shivering in a stranger's hard embrace. Craving the mean grasp of another human.

I'd take… anything - after… after what I'd seen…

I inhaled sharply - pain erupted across my chest, my knees suddenly snapping into weakness as I collapsed into the bodyguard's unfriendly hold. I… I couldn't. I couldn't do it anymore.

The only way you could ever right your wrongs… is if you killed yourself.

Those icy words slashed, fluttered, echoed around me - a frantic, whirling concoction of the very words that felt as if they were literally ripping a gaping hole through my chest. Fluorescents spun around my in an ugly, brutal, primitive dance of power - a dizzying motion… they were whirling, spinning, dancing…

My throat was too tight, too tight to breathe. I struggled to gasp, like fish yanked from the serenity of water - surrounded by a ring of tired, hungry fishermen - I was ready to be devoured.

Kill yourself.

Nico's eyes had been flat. Black, clear and flat. Nothing, not even the slight glimmer of hope, a hint of sparkle, a glint in one eye, proved his existence. His eyes were dead, his skin as sallow and white as a corpse. Bruises, worse than I'd ever seen, ringed those empty eyes.

That was the thing - they were black, dark, void of everything they once held - there no more light, no more colours that flecked his irises like a kaleidoscope, weaving in and out the in numerous shades of purples and blue - more than that, crystal shards of amethyst and jade and sapphire, all gleaming from those eyes. 

All that was gone.

Nico… Nico was not Nico. Maybe his lungs were working, maybe his fluttering heart still pumped that crimson blood across his body, his little, fragile limbs - but Nico's eyes weren't silver, purple, blue and grey-green anymore… those cold eyes were empty voids of blackness, wells of nothingness. Like black holes, stripping the light from its surroundings, costuming the happiness and destroying it.

A boy may still be alive in that hospital bed, but I could see it - see it before anybody else could.

Nico Anderson had died.

What really replaced him was an impostor - the same body? Yes. But not the same soul… in fact, in those steely eyes that held nothing but blank emptiness, I wasn't even sure I could say any soul inhabited the body. 

The Nico I had know was… not this.

He was dead.

And I killed him.

An involuntary whimper escaped my lips - pathetically, I let my body sink deeming towards the ground, deeper down as the bodyguard grunted and grasped my limbs in an attempt to yank me quivering body back into action. 'Come on, kid,' he growled, anger biting through the command. 'Come on. You're not allowed to be here. We haven't got all day.' No.

'It's not my fault,' I murmured up at the man, eyes desperate, pleading - 'You… you have to understand… this isn't my fault. I swear.'

The bodyguard shot me a cold expression - 'Fine. Tell them that when you see them next - don't go barging into place's you're not allowed. Now, come on.'