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( 22 一 SUNSHINE AND COMFORT. )
Nico ran soothing a soothing hand up and down Clara's back, letting her cry into his shirt. His skin was cold and his shoulders were tense but Clara didn't mind. She kept her head buried in his shoulder, his arms wrapped around her.
They sat like that for a while, just sitting in silence until Clara's sobs subsided into the occasional hiccup.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Nico asked in his usual small voice. Clara wished she remembered what it sounded like at the start. Before scalpels and electric shocks had broken its resilience.
Clara sniffled, "It just all got too much. For a moment I just saw everything I should have had and everything I did have. It's not fair you know? I want to know if we did something. Committed some atrocious act that led us to deserve all this," she said.
Nico contemplated her words before deciding on something to say. "We didn't do anything, that's the hard part about all this. We did nothing to deserve how we've been treated. We aren't the monsters or freaks they claim we are. It's taken a long time for me to accept that Clara," He explained to her in a low voice.
But Clara knew she wasn't the same as Nico. She had done terrible things to people, and she had enjoyed doing it. The words Nico said, they applied to him, to almost every PSI. But not Clara, and not a lot of the other dangerous ones. In Clara's eyes, she almost did deserve how she'd been treated.
"Sometimes I wish I had died with all the other kids, maybe even get stomped out of existence like the other Oranges," Clara whispered. That wasn't something she'd ever told anyone. Sometimes she felt like she had to be some strong girl who had complete control over her abilities. But it hadn't been like that for a long time. She'd still hesitate before touching people sometimes. Wondering if that was the moment she slipped up again. If that was the moment she destroyed another life. Clara liked her abilities, but that didn't mean they liked her.
"None of this is fair Clara, what they've done to us, how they've hurt us... that's something that we're going to have to learn to live with. It's painful, but that's why we surround ourselves with people who love us. You being gone, that would leave a hole in the world, one that couldn't be filled," Nico said.
Clara could feel her heart melting at his words. People never told Clara that that she was loved, that she was needed. Even before everything, the only people that ever said it was Eli and her aunt. It felt good, hearing Nico say it.
After a long period of silence Nico asked another question. "Is there a reason all this was brought up?" Nico asked her.
Clara sighed, "Vida and I had a fight, we both said some pretty awful things," she told him.
Nico contemplated her words for a moment before speaking again. "I haven't known Vida all that long but I know that she cares about this team, you especially. I don't know what you fought about, but I think Vida needs to be cared for, just like the rest of us. She just doesn't know it yet. But, maybe give her a chance to calm down before speaking to her again."
