Chapter 35
Freya
I cried until I didn't have any more tears left to cry. And when the tears finally stopped Cosimo took me back to the castle put me to bed and watched over me until sleep came like an old familiar friend. It happened in a blank I was awake one moment and then asleep the next. My mind didn't dream, everything just seemed to pause itself and I was okay being stuck in that suspension.
But that was all it was, a temporary moment of reprieve. A moment of not feeling anything and when I open my eyes all of this heaviness came back. I felt weakened by it as I sat up to see Cosimo leaning back in a chair fully awake watching over me with a thick leather-bound book in his lap. He smiled warmly with the rising sun at his back almost like it was giving him a halo effect. "How do you feel?"
"Better, at least I don't feel like I want to cry anymore",
"Then that's a success. I wish I could tell you I just got over all of my issues in a night. It took years, decades if I'm being honest", he said sitting up straight and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees towards me.
With a shaky voice and laid back down and looked over to Cosimo,"Can I ask you something?"
"Anything".
"Tell me I can do this. Tell me everything is going to be all right that I'm strong and capable. Tell me I can do it even if you don't believe it. Just for a second make me believe... I am all of those things", I whispered.
"You are strong and capable. Stronger than anyone gives you credit for even yourself. Everything is going to be okay, even if it doesn't seem like it is now. Life has a way of working itself out. And I do believe in you. I really do", I absorbed Cosimo words slowly taking them in like a lithium pill.
Thank you.
Even demigods and God killers need to pick me up every once in awhile. The world isn't fair, and if I could make it right for us I would in a heartbeat.I've seen them blacken the skies with our dead bodies. I seen their cruelty... I've been in their camps, their jails, the re-education programs. I seen us go from human beings to no more than dogshit on the bottom of their shoes.
I didn't know how to describe the pain Cosimo was feeling. I didn't know what to say. Cosimo was visibly shaken unable to look at me.
I reached out and took his hand and gave it a little squeeze before he gingerly kissed my knuckles,"I wish I could show you what it was like when these halls were alive. When there was more than just four of us in all of existence. I wish we could go back, God's I wish we could go back..."
"We need to go forward. We just need..."
I had no clue what we needed,"More of us".
"You'll always have me", Cosimo stated with a small sad smile.
"Until you don't need me anymore", I saud being too real. why was I telling Cosimo things that I kept buried so deep down in myself I could barely recognize them.
"I want family. I don't want to hide. I've been hiding the better part of a millennial. You're the only person on this Earth and in all the Realms I can be honest with. There's so much I can teach you. So much to show you. But you have to want it just as badly as I want to give it. Your mother did the best she could to raise you against impossible odds. But you're not a child anymore. Together we could do great things. We could save this world, we can have a fighting chance against everyone who wants us dead simply for existing".
"How?"
"I've been trying to accomplish that since... I don't even know when it started", he confessed.
