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Karolina is all light. It's as if her powers have manifested her soul, her skin glowing the way her heart does, physically lighting up the world the same way she lit up Nico's, years before Nico ever even saw her glow.
She is beautiful in a thousand ways Nico can't even describe, in her soul, in her heart, in her sparkling eyes and the gold of her hair and that soft galaxy of light that can shine across her skin.
Karolina glows, and sometimes Nico isn't sure she deserves her, but Karolina chose her anyway, and that's the brightest thing of all.
She tries to tell her, wishes she knew how to say everything that's in her heart: you're the brightest light there is and you're the most beautiful person I've ever seen and I love you, I love you, I love you.
She thinks about Karolina's light, that light she thinks Karolina sometimes doubts, and Nico wants to shout from the rooftops that she's not scary, she's not wrong, she is perfect in everything that she is, and she should never have to think otherwise.
But she doesn't do that either. She just tells her. “The light inside of you... that warmth, that openness, that's everything that I like about you.” (Love, her heart whispers, but she's not quite used to saying that yet, not in so many words.) “That's what makes you who you are.”
Karolina smiles at her and Nico almost holds her breath because that's what she means: the warmth in that smile is like a sunbeam in a dark place, making everything shine.
And then Karolina kisses her, and it's everything, it's the whole entire world, and Nico feels like she's sharing that light, like she's part of it, and when she draws back a little, Karolina is shining, a soft myriad of colours playing over her skin, sparkling like a galaxy of beauty. She takes Nico's breath away, like she's holding Nico's life in her hands and remaking it with the utmost tenderness.
“Is this okay?” she whispers, and Nico doesn't know how to tell her that it's not just okay, it's everything, she means everything, and Nico thinks that she wants to share this light forever.
“It's more than okay,” she says instead, and their lips meet again. Even with her eyes closed, everything is still a blaze of light, of her hand in Karolina's iridescent hair and Karolina's touch on the back of her head and that soft glow spilling out to fill the room in all its brightness.
Karolina is no longer a sunbeam seen from a distance, she is real and here and now, and Nico is living in her glow, sharing in the brightness of her skin and her soul and her heart.
And in this moment, even in the darkness of the room, the darkness of the whole world... everything, everything is light.