Relativity. In reality, there were pieces there, little particles of something that made up all that nothing. Tristan could see them. Libby couldn’t.
She hated that.
“Stop,” said Nico. “You’re changing the air again.”
“I’m not changing the air,” Libby said. “I can’t do that.”
Tristan probably could.
“Stop,” said Nico again, and the vase shattered. The knife remained in his hand.
“Congratulations,” Libby muttered, and Nico tore off his blindfold, giving her a look of total agitation.
“What happened with Fowler?”
She bristled. “Why does everything have to be about Ezra?”
Nico’s shrugged. “I don’t like him.”
“Oh no,” Libby lamented facetiously. “Whatever will I do without your approval?”
“Rhodes. For fuck’s sake.” Nico tossed the knife aside, beckoning her to her feet. “Come on. It’ll be like the NYUMA game.”
“Stop,” she said. “I don’t want to play with you. Go find another toy.”
“What happened?” he asked again.
Nothing. “We broke up.”
“Okay, and…？”
“That’s it.” Like she said. Nothing.
“Uh,” said Nico. He had a particular gift for making one sound mimic an entire musical performance about the interminable nature of suffering.
“What do you want me to say? That you were right?”
“Yes, Rhodes, of course. Always.”
Fair. She had walked into that one.
Libby rose to her feet on the basis of her own agitated desire to stand. The significance of it being a response to her own volition and not Nico’s command felt especially relevant at the moment.
“You weren’t right,” she corrected him sharply, though she was pretty sure it didn’t matter what she said. Nico de Varona lived in his own reality; one that even Tristan couldn’t make sense of, probably. “Ezra’s not… unremarkable. Or whatever it is you always say about him.”
“He’s average,” said Nico bluntly. “You’re not.”
“He’s not av-”
She stopped, realizing she was focusing on the wrong thing.
“You make that sound like a compliment,” she muttered under her breath, and Nico made a face that was equal parts shut up and also, I said what I said.
“The problem with you, Rhodes, is that you refuse to see yourself as dangerous,” he told her. “You want to prove yourself, fine, but this really isn’t the uphill battle you think it is. You’re already on top. And somehow, you don’t seem to see the unfiltered idiocy of choosing someone who makes you…” He paused, considering it. “Duller.”
“Are you finally admitting I’m better than you?”
“You’re not better than me,” Nico replied perfunctorily. “But you’re looking for the wrong things. You’re looking for, I don’t know. The other pieces.”
She made a face. “Other pieces of what?”
“How should I know? Yourself, maybe.” He scoffed under his breath before oppressing her with, “Anyway, there aren’t any other pieces, Rhodes. There’s nothing else. It’s just you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Either you’re complete or you’re not. Stop looking. It’s right fucking there,” he informed her, snatching impatiently at her hand and half-throwing it back into her chest. She glared at him and pulled out of his reach, vandalized. “Either it’s enough for you or nothing ever will be.”
“What is this, a lecture?”
“You’re a fire hazard, Rhodes,” he said. “So stop apologizing for the damage and just let the fucker burn.”
Part of her was annoyed beyond recognition.
The other part of her didn’t want to walk into the trap of taking Nico de Varona at his word.
So, lacking a conceivable response, Libby glanced askance at the broken lamp and reconstructed it, replacing it on the desk.
Nico, in answer, turned the desk into a box.
Whenever Nico did any magic, it always unsettled her. He was vast, somehow. She never saw the details of what he was doing; if the world’s materials were strings with Nico as the puppeteer, they were unidentifiable. Things simply were and then they weren’t, just like that. She never remembered it happening, even if she stared. It was a desk, now it was a box, soon it might be a chair or a swamp. Probably the desk didn’t even know what it had once been.