And don't you know that a love can't grow, ooh

“Here you are, Lady Carrington.” In the dining room of Carrington Manor, Octavia set down a chocolate cake in front of the chubby-cheeked brown-haired girl sitting at the head of the table. Nothing fancy or extravagant, just an elegant birthday cake she had made by hand, with eight candles.

“Yay!” The big-eyed Vivian Carrington chirped, licking her lips. “It’s chocolate! My favorite!”

She raised her head and looked out at all the empty seats in the empty room. Her knife and fork began to shake in her hands as her eyes watered.

“H-happy birthday… to me…” she sang, her empty voice echoing through grand hall.

Nick looked down at Vivian. After she lost consciousness, her connection to Dream Alley severed and he was able to regain control, shifting things around and asserting his own will, bringing them both to a park where he could wait for her to wake up. With her head in his lap like this, she slept blissfully, no longer suffering or causing suffering to others.

Received a Lap Pillow from Master! +1 VP

First! x2 Multiplier

Her tranquil visage reminded him of sleeping beauty, in a way. She stirred slightly, her lips quivering as she began to talk in her sleep.

“Nmng… ‘tavia no… gotta… wear the hat… ‘s my birthday, I said so…”

Her eyes snapped open and she jerked upright with a gasp.

“Ah! Ha… ha…” Vivian clutched her chest and began to pant. She didn’t even notice Nick sitting beside her, she just stared vacantly off into the distance for a moment as she tried to calm herself down. “So it was… just a dream…”

Nick remained perfectly still. Truth be told, he still hadn’t figured out what he planned to say to her. He’d been thinking about it ever since she passed out, but his mind still drew a blank.

Then, Vivian slowly came back down to earth. As her awareness of her surroundings grew she looked to him again, and bit her lip.

Their eyes met only for a moment- and then she snapped her head in the other direction and jumped off the bench.

Nick bristled, not sure if she was going to run or what was going to happen next, but she just stood in front of him with her back turned, not saying anything.

And since he had no idea what to say here either, it made for a very uncomfortable silence.

Then, finally, Vivian spoke.

He should have realized the first thing past her lips would be “I’m sorry.”

Nick couldn’t help but sigh.

“Vivian… just saying that isn’t enough,” he said as gently as possible. “An apology doesn’t mean anything if you’re going to keep making the same mistakes over and over again.”

“I know that,” she muttered, slumping over.

It was honestly hard to watch. All day Vivian had been vibrant and full of energy, taking him along with a big smile on her face. Seeing her like this, so glum and morose, it was as if someone had sapped all the life from her.

Even though Nick stood by his earlier statements, it still hurt to see her in this state.

“Vivian, I said those things because I care about you,” Nick said, not sure if he should reach out to her or not. Would she even accept his touch? “Because… you didn’t go too far yet. I wanted… I wanted to stop you, show you how much you hurt me, before you ended up doing something I really couldn’t forgive, okay?”

“…Yeah.”

Her hollow response burned his ears. Nick sighed and lowered his head. What could he say that would get through to her? Was there anything? Or had he been right before and this date… it was a complete wash?

Nick stood up, and reached out to the heiress. Even if he was still mad at Vivian, she needed someone right now. And the fact she hadn’t brought Octavia to her side with just a thought suggested she thought she didn’t deserve it. But she did.

“I’m not upset anymore,” he said softly.

“Liar.”

She turned to look at him, and for the first time he could see the struggle on her face. She was trying to hold it together, she really was, but her eyes burned with pain.

And that hurt him in kind.

“How could you just… be okay with it? After what I did?” Vivian lowered her eyes, her face burning with shame. “It was selfish, and stupid, and…”

“And it was thoughtless, too,” Nick interrupted her. She quivered slightly. “…But that’s all it was. A thoughtless prank by someone who didn’t know any better. You weren’t trying to hurt me, you were just having fun. And there’s a difference there. So it’s not like you did some horrible, irredeemable thing. You just need to do better next time, okay?”

She looked up at him. “…Next time. And what does that mean? You’re not seriously thinking… of continuing this farce, are you?”

Vivian’s memories were a little hazy, but she could still remember Nick saying that he thought they might as well end things here and now.

In her present mental state, she couldn’t really disagree.

“Vivian… what happened before, it was unpleasant. And what just happened… that was unpleasant, too, in a different way,” Nick said carefully, remembering the crushing feeling of despair surging through that dark pit. “But… it doesn’t have to be how things end. I’m willing to give you another chance, if you’re willing to.”

A tremor shot through the heiress. She hung on his words for a moment and he could see the struggle playing out on her face.

Then she shook her head.

“I don’t deserve it,” she rebuked herself. “I don’t, after… after what happened, I… just leave me alone, I deserve it.”

Where did all the boastful pride from this morning go? The woman in front of him was practically a different person from the Vivian he knew.

Maybe this was the real her, or a different side to her. Nick really couldn’t say.

What he did know, though, was that Vivian needed someone in her corner right now, and he was all she had. Even after what had happened, he still cared about her happiness. That hadn’t changed, even though the idea of a relationship between the two of them felt a lot further away now.

Nick reached out and cradled her shoulder with his hand, feeling her shaking in his grasp. She seemed more delicate than he remembered.

“I didn’t mean to…” Vivian said again, fighting back her tears. “I don’t know how… to... do something like this.”

She didn’t know what it meant to have a relationship with someone. For so long, all her interactions with people outside her family had been purely transactional. She did something for them, then they did something for her.

To have someone in front of her right now, supporting her, even after she’d made a mistake… it was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.

No, that’s not true. There was someone who had always been there for Vivian, no matter how badly she messed up. Someone who always saw through Vivian’s thoughtless words, and didn’t hesitate to rein her in when she needed it.

Octavia… you tried to warn me so many times, and yet I-!

Vivian raised her head and looked into Nick’s eyes. His anger had faded, and all she saw now was the kindness and desire to help that she had seen from him so many times before now.

“Can we… really start over?” Vivian asked, more to herself than to him. “How do I even start… to go back to how things used to be?”

“Don’t think of it as starting over,” Nick corrected her. “Because it’s not that. Starting over would just lead to the same mistakes as before. You learned a lesson. And it’s a hard lesson to learn. But if you want to change… you’re going to have to try.”

Nick knew from experience. He had made plenty of mistakes himself.

Vivian swallowed and nodded. “I’m trying…” she murmured. “I won’t do something like that ever again… no more pranks or jokes or… or anything… I swear…”

An ache throbbed in Nick’s chest and he bit his lip.

“Vivian, that’s not what I’m saying.” If she honestly tried something like that, he feared that even her indomitable will would collapse under the strain. “The problem isn’t that you joke around or play pranks on people. It’s that you haven’t been thinking about the effect your words and actions have on other people. A prank like that one… if it had been something lighter, something not so cruel… it might have gotten a laugh out of me. But you need to be aware of the impact you have on other people, alright? If not, then even without the pranks and jokes… you can still hurt someone.”

He remembered his own thoughtless words from the other day, and how they’d upset Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin. Without even knowing it, he’d struck a nerve with her due to her issues with her name. And that hadn’t been his fault, he hadn’t known that was a sensitive topic for her; even if she could speak, he doubted she would have been so forthright with that knowledge.

“…Even if you’re trying to do everything right and you have the best of intentions, you can still hurt people,” he said. “And it’s the fact that you always try to make it right that shows your best side, Vivian.”

“…Because I hate when people don’t like me,” Vivian pointed out, placing her hand over her chest. “Not because… I’m a good person, right?”

When Vivian knew someone didn’t like her, it was like a worm burrowing away in her skull. She couldn’t stand it. But that was different from trying to genuinely make amends.

“It’s going to be a long process,” Nick said, trying not to sound like he was patronizing the heiress. “I know enough to say you’re not a bad person.”

Vivian raised her head and looked at him in surprise.

“Nick…”

“I’m not gonna say we should forget about what happened,” Nick said firmly. “But right now… I think we should put it behind us, and try to move forward from here.”

Vivian tensed for a moment, then relaxed and unclenched her fists. “I’ll… try to do better,” she said. “I promise, I… I’m going to think about my actions more, and… try not to go too far.”

“You can’t **** a connection, Vivian,” Nick pointed out, nodding in support of her statement. “You can’t throw money at people to get them to like you. Joking around and being friendly can go a long way, but you need to make sure everyone is in on the joke.”

Vivian nodded back. That was something Kim had made abundantly clear in their previous clashes. And now… Nick was echoing her sentiments. Things she already knew were correct, but hadn’t given any serious thought to.

Now she had to. She didn’t ever want to see that face of Nick’s ever again. Or to see that face on other people she knew, for that matter.

I don’t want Octavia to hate me. I don’t want Nick to hate me! I don’t want anyone to hate me! I just… I just want everybody to be happy and have fun.

Why was that so hard for her? Why couldn’t she make everybody smile like she so desperately wanted to?

Why couldn’t she smile herself right now?

Vivian wiped her eyes and tried her best. To her credit, Nick really couldn’t tell. It was deeper than so many of her other smiles, containing so many emotions it was hard to get a concrete image of it.

But she was smiling, and that was the important part.

Even if it only lasted a moment.

“…You’re not going to ask?” Her face hardened and she gazed into Nick’s eyes. He could see the hesitation in her stare, her face was rosy with anxiety and doubt.

“Ask about what?” He played dumb.

“…That place. The darkness.”

Yeah. He kind of figured.

“No, I’m not.”

Vivian raised her eyebrow but otherwise her expression remained unchanged. “…Oh.”

Nick gave her as serious of a look as he could. “If I did ask, would you tell me?”

“…You said you wanted something real,” Vivian echoed his words back to him. “To feel a real connection.”

He nodded. “I do.”

Silence hung between the two of them.

“…But you’re not going to ask…?”

Nick shook his head. “If I asked right now, it would feel like compensation,” he answered her seriously. “Like you were telling me about it to make up for what happened at the hospital. I don’t want that to be the reason. When you’re ready, I want you to tell me because you’re really ready to open up to me about that.”

Another silence stretched through the air.

“…What if… I never am?” Her whisper just barely broke through the silence.

“Then that’s that.” Nick knew that if he wanted a real relationship with Vivian built on truly understanding the woman in front of him, then he would eventually have to know more about what he’d witnessed. Was that darkness a place from Vivian’s memory? A manifestation of her inner turmoil? Whether literal or metaphorical, one thing was absolutely certain, it was a part of her heart that he didn’t have permission to trespass within.

So he wouldn’t. Even if it meant that any relationship they attempted would be doomed to fizzle and wither away into a surface-level arrangement of convenience, he wasn’t going to trespass through that boundary. That place... whatever it was, it was a part of her. And Nick wasn’t ready to carelessly bring her back to that place. Not until she was ready for it herself. If he did... it would be just as cruel as Vivian’s prank in the hospital.

Vivian seemed to understand that, because a small smile returned to her lips and she relaxed slightly.

But she still pulled away from him.

“…So where do we go from here?” She asked.

Nick wasn’t sure how to respond. “Like I said, it’s not us starting over. Everything that happened, it happened for a reason. So all we can do is move past it, and try to rebuild a relationship. Whether we can make it work or not…”

His voice trailed off when he heard her giggle.

“No, I mean… where do we go from here?” She looked around the park. “We still have time left in our date, you know,” she reminded him. “And… I don’t know what to do with that.”

“…Oh.” Nick blushed, having misunderstood the heiress’s words. “Sorry, I… I didn’t… well, now I look stupid.”

Vivian winced, recalling her previous joke at Nick’s expense. She would probably do that a lot for the rest of the date, and the days to come- she had left a lot of sore spots with her thoughtless actions.

“That wasn’t too much, was it?” She asked worriedly. “The joke, I mean? About where we go from here? I wasn’t trying to… you’ll tell me if that was too much, right?”

Her voice cracked with fear and Nick winced. This had been his other concern.

Vivian, who up until now had been so bright and vivid and independent, was now walking on eggshells out of fear of upsetting him. It was like looking at a beautiful, elegant swan, who had her feathers all plucked.

That wasn’t right at all. That wasn’t the kind of relationship, romantic or otherwise, he wanted to have with the woman in front of him. He wanted Vivian, not a broken shell with a fearful, anxious **** smile.

“Vivian, relax,” he soothed her. “It’s fine. I’m not going to get upset over something like that. Nobody is.”

“Well they might!” Vivian’s eyes widened with alarm. “What if it’s somebody like Kim or Mary?! What if they… …No, I need to be more careful with my jokes, or just not tell them at all, or maybe…”

The heiress was unraveling right before Nick’s eyes, and it was difficult to watch. He reached out to her and took her by the shoulders, lightly shaking her.

“Vivian,” he said firmly, drawing her attention back to him. Only when he thought he had her full, unbridled focus did he finally let her go. “It’s fine. Really. You’re doing just fine right now. Just take it slow. A joke like that… is just a joke.”

She gave him a sheepish smile and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “…Yeah, you’re right. I guess… I just got a little carried away, that’s all.”

Nick shook his head. It only made sense that she’d be a little jumpy after what just happened. He couldn’t expect her to be back to normal at the snap of his fingers.

What had happened earlier today had left scars on them both. The previous game they’d been playing where Nick tried to get her to like him while she tried to get him to fall for her first, that was the last thing on either of their minds at the moment.

And right now, he felt like that was for the best.

I thought it would be easy to get her to fall for me. I tried to ignore her red flags because I wanted to get to know the woman I saw in her better. But we have a long way to go before either of us is ready to be in a relationship with the other.

As if to prove his point, Vivian started to look more uncomfortable the longer he stared at her. It looked so out of place on a girl who up until today had seemed completely unshakable.

“Is everything… okay?” She asked timidly.

He shook his head, even though he meant to say yes.

“It’s complicated,” he said gently. “I just finally realized that it’s going to be harder for us to start dating than I thought.”

He expected her to react poorly to that, given her jumpy state. But she actually relaxed a little when she heard him.

“Oh… so you thought so too, huh?” She said, sighing in relief. “I didn’t want… to be the one to say it.”

Vivian looked up into his eyes and tried not to smile. “I told you before, all this stuff… it’s completely new to me. I’m not that girl, and I never have been. So we can’t rush into things. And I still don’t know if I even want to.”

Her heart was cloudy and uncomfortable right now. And far more exposed than she liked. Nick could tell just by looking at her. And before she started going down the wrong path, he needed to redirect her.

“I don’t want you to try and fall in love with me to make up for what happened earlier,” he said firmly. “Don’t try and **** it. If it’s meant to happen, then it will. But you don’t owe me anything for today, okay?”

Vivian blinked, and her mouth twisted into a surprised “O” shape. Then her playful smile returned.

“Come on now,” she said, shaking her head. “You know me better than that.” She placed her hand over her chest and leaned forward, and it was like the Vivian he knew had completely returned. “I only do things I want to do. I wouldn’t even think of something like that.”

Even though her words said she had no intention of falling for him, Nick couldn’t help but feel relieved. She was still there.