THE DREAM CATCHER

34. NICCÒLO

It's her. It's Eden I've been loosing my mind thinking about since when Valentina said she was gone. Right after I realised where Vivienne has put her and set Diego on the ground I broke off running. Nothing could have prepared me to find her there. In the white ray, shot but alive. Barely. I was willing to run for hours, reach the mental asylum and set it on fire. Meanwhile, she found me herself. I have no idea how she escaped. Why she is dressed in Realiser's clothes. But I never doubted in her survival abilities and her abnormal intelligence. She always found a way to escape. She did this time as well. I don't know who should I thank for keeping her alive but I know I will worship this being forever. For bringing my woman back to me. The situation is so unrealistically unbelievable I can't do nothing but stare at her, trying to find out if I'm hallucinating or not. I try so hard not to put a bullet in my brain seeing her in such pain. She is covered in blood from the feet to the top of her head. Her clothes ripped and shattered, her hair a mess. Her leg pierced through. She looks wild.
,,Niccòlo..." She whispers once again, her voice slowly drowning in sorrow and death.
I say nothing while pressing my forehead to her flaming hot one. She's got a fever. And after a while, when I hear her breath finally calming down I grab her weightless body in my arms and take her out of here.

Seeing her sleeping calmly in my bed must be the best thing I've ever seen in my life. I'm sitting quietly at the corner of my own bed, not daring to even close my eyes since I took her in. Five days. She's been sleeping for five days. I woke her up couple of times to give her some water and something to eat. But we didn't exchange a word. I also managed to dig out a chip they implanted in the back of her neck, allowing them to trace her. I crushed it and flushed it down the toilet. They'll not find her anymore. And they'll not hurt her. I'll make sure of that. Taking a bullet out of her flesh was the worst part of it all as I had to give her sleeping pills. I had to swallow every bit of my humanity to do so. But I didn't have a choice. The Borderland staff must be looking for me everywhere since I left the fight I was supposed to carry on. But I don't occupy my mind with such nonsense. They can even cut me in half as long as I know she's safe. And they are probably dying to do so. I watch her dirty, covered in sweat face. Her peaceful face. She will probably rip my throat for it but I had to take her all soaked in blood clothes and lay her in my bed only in the underwear. Only then, when I realised her from her costume her body took its original form. And I can't take my eyes of her, can't stop thinking of how beautiful she is. And can't prepare myself for what I have to tell her. She'll hate me for it. For the truth. But there's no other way. I've been preparing for this for five years. But I couldn't be prepared for catching feelings for her. It's going to be much harder that way.
I hear muffed mumbling as she finally opens her sleepy eyes and tosses on the bed. A sly smile breaks into my face, no matter how hard I try to fight it. I wish I could wake up to this view everyday.
,,Niccòlo?" She says quietly after her gaze met mine. The moment she saw me her eyes widened to the size of football fields.
,,You're finally up, amore." I say as quietly as I can, though I can't hide a relief in my voice. I was scared she won't wake up at all. And I would make the world pay for it.
,,Where am I?" She says scanning the surrounding, scanning the foreign to her room. And then, when she looks down at the blanket that tightly covers her almost naked body her voice rises. ,,And where the fuck are my clothes?!" She screams sitting up, pulling the blanket higher, almost covering her face.
,,Don't worry." I say as I move on the bed closer to her. ,,I didn't strap you naked. Only half." I just can't help teasing her, can't help joking a little. The situation is so serious it needs a little cheering words. But she doesn't seem at all amused. Her thick brows frown angrily.
,,Where am I?!" She screams with fury which covers her fear. I can tell she's scared and is pretending to be confident. I spotted, that every time she feels uncomfortable she cracks her fingers. Now I can hear her torturing them under the blanked.
,,Do you remember anything?" I persuade to ask.
,,Everything until I collapsed in front of you in the outskirts. Where..."
,,You're at my place." I interrupt her before she will send pillow towards my face. ,,I gave you food, water and some sleep." I say trying to appease her, like she doesn't appreciate what I've done for her. She doesn't but I don't care. She can even take my eyes out if she feels like it.
,,Thank you." She says, now more gently. Cracking sound tells me she's embarrassed.
And there's the silence. She doesn't say anything, nor do I. We just look at each other, reading our eyes, reading our unspoken words. The relief that flooded my body when I found her is incomparable to anything else. I can't manage to tell her the truth. It will break her heart and I'm too selfish to do so. I'm a coward. So I decide to play a little. Until there will be no choice but to tell her.
,,So, what happened?" I ask knowing exactly what did happen.
My step father did a lot of horrible things to me. The only good thing he gave me, inadvertently, was a psychometric ability. It was a cause of my many nightmares, breakdowns and runs away. But reading people as soon as I touch them led me to her. Allowed me to remember her. When I touched her for the first time in the bar images started appearing in front of my eyes like a flood. We were kids again, hiding in the catacombs, running away from our lives and our destiny. And even though I remember, she doesn't. And I am too much emotionally disabled to tell her about it. To tell her that we know each other well. That ever since we met I lov...
I have to burry this fact deeply until it's the right time. That may never come.
,,I run away from mental asylum." She says almost whispering, like she was worried this confession will scare me, will cause me to throw her out or check her in the hospital again. I just nod at her in answer, trying desperately to hide the fact, that I'm pretty familiar with this story. More than familiar. When I touched her shoulders when she came up to me two days ago, all of it displayed in front of my eyes. It filled me up with so much fury I barely resisted the urge to drop in for a visit to the asylum and gut everyone who had even a slightest participation in her pain.
,,Aren't you scared of me?" She says, still pinning me to the bed with her divine gaze. I let out a muffed laugh.
,,Not at all amore." I say scanning her face. And despite her question, despite how unbearably painful it is for me, I know the situation is opposite. I should be asking if she's not scared of me. Her eyes say it all. And I can't bare the fact that she's looking at me like I'm a thread. I don't even have to touch her and read her to know that she's scared of me. And it breaks my heart in million pieces.
,,I have to tell you something." I start of trying to sound confident in which I fail miserably.
,,And what is it?" She says too quickly, like she waited for me to say it.
,,I want you to know, that all you saw I was doing was not an act of violence." I swallow harshly. ,,Not every part of it."
,,Is that so?" She asks cynically. This question must have been scratching her tongue for so long. She tries so desperately to trust me. I can feel it.
,,Yes." I can't afford to say anything else. My throat is dry as a desert. But I feel like I owe her an explanation. ,,You know, the drug you took..." I hesitate seeing her hurt look in the eyes ,,you were forced to take, the dream catcher." She nods and it's a sign for me to continue. ,,You may not realise that, but in the suburbs it's like a plague. So many people overdosed it's hard to keep up with cleaning bodies. It's a mayhem." I swallow a lump in my throat fighting desperately not to say too much. ,,And..." I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do. I'm lost in my own words. Only the truth will save me. ,,One person I was very close to lost their life because of it." I hear her shallow breathe. ,,So I promised to stop it. Stop the hell this drug is turning people's life into. Those people where dealers, very aware of the death they sentence their clients for. I'm just... cleaning."
She isn't saying a word. She just looks me dead in the eyes in disbelief. I can't gather my thoughts, I can't say anything more. This girl is destroying me.
,,How do I know you're not lying? Maybe you just say that to justify your actions?" She says, almost whispering but her tone reveals that she is hesitating weather she believes me of not. She is confused. She is scared that what I say it's true. And I hate the fact that it is.
,,I can show you."