Gods Eternal

Chapter Three

NICO

Her favorite part of the day, besides the tumble her and Nick had done in the kitchen an hour prior, was in the car on the way to work. No one really liked traffic, it was obnoxious and a large inconvenience to any working citizen. But despite the stop, go, stop, go flow of cars down every block, she found it – peaceful. It was just her, the soft sound of the radio, her freshly awoken senses, and a million unspoken thoughts flittering about in her brain.

Nico had moved to San Francisco when she had been thirteen years old... or was it twelve? She couldn't really remember, it had been such a hectic time in her life. But now, San Francisco was the only place on Earth she felt comfortable calling her home. Anywhere felt like uncharted territory of a world she didn't know much about. She'd glued herself to the city and never left.

The buildings, the bustles of people eternally having somewhere else they needed to be, something else that had to be done, and the nestles of life in every alley, store, and apartment, comforted her. She'd found she didn't like the silence. The quiet hush of her being alone, something she'd come to be used to in her childhood. Imaginary friends of isolation and anxiety a constant, unwanted companion.

Now the only time she was okay with being alone was in the car, on the forty-five-minute commute to a job that was only a fifteen-minute drive. If she was the only person on the road.

Her fingers drummed against the steering wheel, her mind far from the ground and her eyes untrained on the car in front of her.

She wondered what it was like if she was back home with her father. It wasn't something she thought of often. In fact, she shied and willed the questions away. She knew thinking about such things wouldn't do her any good, even be detrimental to her health. But today, she thought of it anyways. She thought back to her father, to her friends, to the people who had probably long since forgot about her in her eleven years of being absent.

For a second, so caught up in her past, she could almost taste, feel, remember everything about her home, about the people who had sometimes replaced those imaginary friends. Sometimes, she had wondered if they had ever existed at all, or if she had created them as a way to lessen the pain of her father and her bruises. But she knew they were real, a scar lining the inner part of her forearm amongst the plenty of ones caused by her father, told her that they had been real. And that she had abandoned them.

Nico began to frivolously curse herself, shutting off her radio as the tears blurred her eyes. Damn it, no, no, n-o. This was not h-e-r. She was not so sensitive. She had left fully aware of what she was doing. But that didn't stop the tears of utter guilt, or the scar on her arm almost burning with accusations under her shirt.

She wiped, smeared, clawed at the tears under her eyes until they were gone, a smear of foundation left in their wake. Nico noted to apply powder under them before she showed her face to her co-workers. She had a reputation to uphold, not only to the people around her, but to herself.

And it was with the raw side of past sentiments that Nico finished her drive, fighting herself eternally to put to rest things she had buried long ago. This time she locked them in a chest, bolted the opening, and promised to swallow the key deep within her resolve.

*****

Nico. Hated. Micah. She hated the bastard with every fiber of her damned being. If she never heard his voice, smelled his cologne, or even glanced in his direction again, it wouldn't be fast enough. Not when the piece of egotistical crap propped his feet on her desk, sitting in her chair. How he had gotten into her office without her permission had her making a mental note to have a sit-down talk with her assistance. A very long chat.