He was a surge of lightning tearing through the night she owned, rattling her ground like thunder, challenging her strength, bewitching her to hold on tighter.
She was fire possessing the threat to silence his demons, wrecking his walls, shattering...
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ARE YOU WITH ME nilu 0:00 ───|────── 0:00 ↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
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Nyx didn't know where to go.
She didn't know how long it had been since she had been standing in the same spot as before, gazing at the emptiness ahead with yearning, waiting for the boy she'd let go too soon to come back to her.
All along, she thought she knew how to make him stay, but she had it wrong.
Today, when the time came, her words had failed her. She couldn't find anything strong enough to make him see what she saw.
Even though Azriel had been the defeated one, Nyx couldn't help feeling like she'd lost the battle too.
"I was told that he was the toughest case to crack,"
A familiar voice guided her attention to it.
Jonah stood behind her with one of his shoulders leaning against the doorframe for support, arms folded.
"They said there was no solving it,"
Nyx frowned, "He's not a case. He's just a boy."
"A boy who's won so much but is too misguided by himself to see it." Jonah aided the girl's statement, adding a bit of truth to it.
Wanting to help Nyx get closer to what was hers, the man elaborated on what he had heard.
"Miss Rose told me that she didn't get anywhere with him, she couldn't find a way to, since he never gave her one. He would just sit in that chair for an hour with a face as dead as a lifeless soul. It was like he had no will to carry on as if he couldn't wait to just. . .get away from what might've been his only option for help,"
Gulping, Nyx stared at her blurry shoes before moving her glassy eyes to look at Jonah.
"She couldn't help anyone. Her will was as lost as his,"
"I didn't believe her," Jonah began. "It's impossible for someone to be breathing but not alive. Maybe you're right, she couldn't help him because she didn't try hard enough, maybe he didn't put in any effort either. Do you know what I think? I think that Miss Rose wasn't his person. Not everybody in this world can plunge us out of our horrors, no matter the pile of hands offering help, it'll never be the same unless it belongs to our person,"
Offering Nyx a small smile, he revealed, "I saw you two at the rink last week."
As the girl let the realisation dawn upon her, the man continued, "I had read your files not a day before, so I knew you on paper. Doing what I do, even a glance at someone is enough to unlock what they're hiding. You, Nyx, were exactly like described - a trickster, can do a fine job at masking her feelings. Azriel, though, was a stark contrast to what was written about him."
Nyx listened quietly.
There was hardly anything she could do apart from letting somebody else, somebody who was better at this than she was, guide her through it all for once in her life.
"That day, I didn't recognize a soulless corpse, no. With you around him, all I saw were a couple of real smiles and a boy who, otherwise lost, had finally found his haven," the counselor told her.
"You both know it, Nyx, you both know what you are to each other. While this may be your first time, it isn't his. I could be wrong, but from the way Azriel recoils so quickly from places he finds happiness in, he's done all of this before. He's familiar with most of this, and whatever it was - whoever it was - has left him scarred. He knows you're right, that you're it - but that's what he'd told himself about the person before too, and he was wrong back then,"
It took Nyx some soundless heartbeats for Jonah's words to sink in, so deep till they were coursing through her veins.
"How do I help him?" her voice quivered with helpless desperation.
Jonah's honey eyes radiated the warmth that mirrored his comforting little smile as he explained, "Sometimes, the person with a knife in their hand doesn't need to be told repeatedly that it's dangerous. Sometimes, they just need someone to hold their other hand, to embrace them for all that they are and all that they could be. The knife will drop on its own,"
"What do I do?" Nyx asked, wanting to do everything in her power to bring the raven monster back to where he belonged - at peace with himself - even if it meant burning the world down.
Unfolding his arms, Jonah stepped back into his office. "Hold his hand. Lead him to conquer his demons. He needs his person to be there when he comes back from a war he's been afraid of fighting."
Then, right before closing the door, his warm gaze smiled, "Be his light."
When he was gone, Nyx stood there and let the silence drumming in the lonely hallway climb over her. Before it could drown her, though, the girl had turned her back to all that she was scared of and had taken off in the direction she'd let Azriel leave.
