Hickory Smoke

A/N - This is a cross-post work that I originally posted on Archiveofourown, all of the works I post here are updated first and foremost on that website and you can find a link to my works in my profile. This was for a fic-fight and is dedicated to my friend StopItLight. Enjoy.

She started to bake again. Niki didn't remember what it was- what light switch flipped on in her brain- that made her feel so drawn back to the kitchen. It had been months since the smell of cake batter and powdered sugar turned into the burning stench of gunpowder and the rough dirt above her sanctuary.

But ever since the world had left her in silence and her grievances turned from unceremonious revenge to blatant depression and overall acceptance, she found herself drawn back to her abandoned bakery in the ruins of L'manburg.

The kitchen in her bunker had provided her comfort at first. As time went on, though, the cavern she had made her home felt less like the warm forgiveness she'd sought and more and more like an unearthed guilt.

The guilt of her terrible actions.

The guilt of surviving.

The guilt of burning bridges and trees that if she hadn't, they might've healed on their own.

She had never gotten acceptable amounts of sleep since Doomsday and leaving the bunker didn't do her much help. Instead, she took to wandering through the seemingly abandoned parts of the server in the dead of night.

Sometimes she would have the pleasure of seeing someone she knew and was on friendly terms with and would wave to them or even engage in conversation. Sometimes she would see people that she would much rather avoid if anything. In the event of that happening, she would just go somewhere else until they left.

Then there was Tommy.

She would see him a good amount when she took her strolls, and although she wouldn't say that she actively avoided interacting with him, she never found it in her to come up to the kid that her best friend saw as his little brother.

The kid who crumbled when Wilbur died. The kid whose presence grabbed at her heartstrings and wanted to rip her heart out of her chest.

The kid who she tried to kill.

Sometimes, when he wandered the ruins of L'manburg she would sit behind the treeline and watch him. There was nothing ceremonious about what he did. He just walked over the glass barrier aimlessly, and would often slide under the cover of the ruins and other times he would go there and leave the barely covered gorge just as quickly.

Niki didn't think that Tommy ever noticed her gazing presence. After all, if they ever saw each other during the day, the boy didn't mention it to her. The two of them lived in a one-sided limbo just like that for a while. Late nights turned into long weeks and eventually months had past since Niki started Watching Tommy through the treeline.

With all that time, she had thought about herself and Tommy. About how cruel she was to him in the wake of her untimely heartbreak. How she turned a blind eye to how other members of the server treated him. How she teamed up with Jack and led him to where he should've permanently died- because god, she was so thankful that she was late. She didn't think she could start forgiving herself.

Because she hadn't given Tommy a chance to forgive her.

She had concluded- soon enough- that she didn't have to forgive Tommy for anything.

Because he did not kill her best friend.

Instead, he grieved with her. Even if the two of them weren't side by side, they grieved together for the same person. The same light of their lives. She was angry at herself, and angry at the dead. And that's what Wilbur was- dead. She couldn't blame someone who wasn't alive anymore, so she put it on the only person she could think of. The kid who was with Wilbur through all of his madness.