Chapter Text
Since the day they met, Elizabeth Rhodes and Nicolás de Varona were inseparable, even if they wish they were.
Two sides of the same coin, one could never come without the other. And, the fact was that Nico could not live without her—
—No.
No, because, even if given the choice, he would never live without Rhodes.
He'd kill anyone who expected him to live without her, he'd fight to keep her flame alive, and it just felt right to have her by his side.
And nothing felt right without Libby here.
Of course, these weren't things he wanted to openly admit to anyone. These weren't even concepts he could grasp when she got taken; he thought it was just the shock, the absence, the guilt of not being able to save her when she was taken just minutes after their last conversation.
But then a week went by without any trace of her.
Then, two.
Four.
Two months, then, and still.
Nico knows her. She would've cracked something, anything in their atmosphere to let them know where she was. He knows her shape in this universe, and so, he felt her absence.
...Her absence. That was when he realized just how much he wanted her back, he recalled.
He realized that, despite lighting every part of his soul on fire, he could not sense her. He could not see her, could not hear her, could not feel her magic.
Nico couldn't sense Libby at all.
His safety net, his undeniable other half of this crazy, stupid game of knowledge and power and wormholes and time and thought and everything, everything, nothing—
Libby Rhodes was his anchor, and now, she was gone.
She had disappeared, and Nico felt her absence so heavily that it felt like a part of him was gone, too.
"Nico."
The sound of Parisa's voice broke him out of his thoughts. "Instead of another month of moping, can you focus, please?"
Nico began to recall where he was and what he was doing, then, as Callum mumbled, "Your thoughts must be as loud as your yearning, then..."
No use denying it to a telepath and an empath, but, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Tristan tilted his head, his face neutral but his eyes saying, You don't even need to be an illusionist to see right through you.
"I'm focused!" Nico exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "More focused than any of you, I can imagine."
"Possibly," Reina sided with the three, "but we're not the ones bending the table when we zone out."
Nico glanced down at his hands. While lost in his thoughts, it seems that he had created a hole in the table, stretching out the building blocks as if it were rubber towards the floor. He said nothing as he lifted one finger, and the table was how it was.
But his mind, his thoughts, his emotions remained, and it seemed the mind-and-soul could sense it.
He felt Parisa's presence in his mind before she spoke. "We're going to find her." Her voice was unwavering, and certain.
"Hopefully," was Callum's addition, though, and it shattered any certainty Parisa hoped to create. Her eyes narrowed at Callum. "What? False hope can destroy a human faster than anything else could. I would know."
"We're going to find her," Reina said finally, and the group's eyed turned to her. Reina wasn't the type to speak up much about situations, less likely to feel for them, but something about her tone indicated certainty. Positivity of sorts. The slight twitch of Callum's eyes confirmed it. Then, a little more relaxed (relief?), Reina added, "We're gonna find her, because you want to find her, Nico."
Tristan did what seemed close to a snort. "How romantic."
Although the Society had given up a majority of their efforts (especially seeing as the most powerful humans in the entire world couldn't even feel her presence), the five continued to search.
Tristan jumped where he could, through time and dimensions — but it wasn't as effective without Libby's guidance to go farther. Parisa couldn't hear her thoughts no matter where she went, and Callum couldn't feel her "jittering anxiety and unquenchable hunger of ambition", as he would say.
Reina stood by Nico's side, sparring with him to relieve his stress and offering the endless knowledge she was able to get her hands on to help him with his projects. Nico wasn't even completely sure if he was researching the right things, but Reina - in her Reina way - pushed him to continue researching, continue trying. She gave him the energy to keep going, to make explosions of new portals and worlds and dimensions, to bend space and gravity and anything physical that he needed. Tristan was there, too, at times, as the three brainstormed ideas for Tristan to jump, jump back, but nothing.
"Fuck!" Nico cursed, and the walls of his bedroom bent in respond, the air vibrated with his anger. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"
He threw the book against the floor, then turned it into a ball, then kicked it, then turned it back into a book. Then, Nico screamed, cursed, and did it again. He did it until Parisa knocked on his door and told him to shut up, until Callum knocked on his door and told him to calm down, until Dalton came and told him to stop fucking with the building, because his magic was leaking.
A leakage, that's what Tristan would call it. And the only way to turn it into a smooth, controlled stream, would be for Libby to be here.
But she wasn't.
For someone who claimed to hate her, it was driving him insane.
"Rhodes," Nico finally muttered to nothing in particular. The air, maybe, or the atmosphere, just in case she could feel him the way he once did with her. "Rhodes, Libby, if you can feel me. Do something. Anything."
Her stupid bickering and her constant anxious talk, the twirling of her hair when she was nervous and the smug smile when she won their petty little games. "Please," he missed her, he embarrassingly, undeniably missed her, "Do something to make it easier to bring you back."
Something. Anything.
Nothing.
Like always... nothing.
Nico drew in a shaky breath.
The day you are not a fire, he had told her, is the day the earth will fall still for me.
And until the day Nico found Libby, it would continue to be unmoving.
His world, had stilled.
Where are you, Rhodes?