𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐓𝐘- a labyrinth sequel

𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘- 𝐒𝐈𝐗

𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐀𝐒 𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆. In his dream, he was standing in front of a boardwalk. At the edge of a dock, sat a woman in a white linen shirt, her brown hair cascading down her back. Nicolas would have recognized her anywhere, but it was that laugh that filled him with a familiar feeling of dread. It was the laugh that haunted him when he closed his eyes every night. He took a cautious step down the dock, then another. Until he was standing directly behind the woman, who still hadn't spared him a glance.

"Mom?" Nicolas said softly. The woman spun around, and she looked the same as she did the day she'd died. The day that Nicolas had come home from school and found her dead. She smiled at him in a way that made him wish all of this was real. It felt like a cruel twist of fate for his mind to produce such an ideal fantasy, only for it to be ripped away from him the second he opened his eyes again. He glanced down at his shirt, remembering the fact that his father had shot him. There was no bullet hole.

Is this what dying felt like?

"You're not supposed to be here, Nicky," his mother scolded.

Nicky.

What was once a term of endearment became something that his father used to taunt him. To belittle him. It felt like his own personal way of mocking his mother every time he used her nickname for him to insult him. Sometimes, over the sound of his father beating him mercilessly, he could only focus on the sound of that name.

Nicky. Nicky. Nicky.

"What are you doing here?" He asked her slowly. He glanced around as he tried to get a feel for his surroundings. It looked vaguely familiar, the same as the house on the shore that he swore he'd seen before, but could not remember. In the distance, he heard the faint cry of a seagull, drowned out by the sound of waves crashing against the shore. If he closed his eyes and breathed, he could smell the salt air that reminded him of a home he no longer recognized.

"Sit down," his mother instructed. Nicolas obeyed, and took a moment to really look at her. Gone were the dark circles and the sunken in cheekbones that he remembered. She had no bruises on her face, or her wrists, and she had this sort of glow around her that made her look like some sort of angel.

"Am I dead?" Nicolas said, dipping his toes into the water as he extended his legs out. The last thing he remembered before he got here was the sound of a girl calling out to him, begging him to hold on.

He knew that voice well. It was Aurelia. His Lia.

In those moments, all he wanted to do was tell her how much he loved her, the same way he wished he'd told his mother how much he loved her before she died. But he never got the chance to. He hoped he'd get the chance to tell her someday. Nicolas wished he could tell her a lot of things, starting with the fact that she'd saved his life and hadn't even known it.

"I'm not sure," his mother admitted. "That's not a choice I can make for you."

"You mean I get to choose if I want to die or not?" Nicolas probed.

"Not exactly," she corrected. "But you get to choose how badly you want it."

He wasn't sure if he had much fight left in him to begin with. All his life, he'd never tried fighting back, not when his father always came back with ten times more strength than him. Nicolas wondered if he wanted to fight at all. He was so sick of fighting, and he was so sick of that feeling of desperation that he was constantly aware of. Desperate for his father to love him, desperate to finally join his mother.