'Cause if I just believe, then I don't have to see what's really there

Morgana loved going to the library. Or, well, the bookstore. Library?

…It wasn’t exactly clear. On this island, it didn’t really matter either way; the point was that books were available for consumption and beyond that, you could take them back with you. But they were free.

If she tried to work it out, she’d just confuse herself more, so she didn’t even bother; she just accepted that things were weird and different, and let herself enjoy reading.

To her credit, she realized the problem about 20 minutes in.

“Oh gosh!” She jumped out of her chair, her face going pale. “Nick!”

The frantic goth scurried across the library/bookstore and tracked down her date, her face burning with embarrassment. Nick recoiled, surprised by her sudden outburst. Morgana looked like she was about to cry!

“Is everything alright?” He asked.

“I… I’m sorry,” she stammered, feeling like a complete fool. “I didn’t expect… I forgot… …We’re just reading on our own!”

Nick stared at her. “Uhum, uh, yeah, I mean, it’s a library, so…”

“No, you don’t get it!” Morgana wailed, shaking her head frantically. “We’re supposed to be getting to know each other and having fun together, right? But… we’re not doing that if we’re just reading on our own, I mean…”

Nick paused to consider that. Now that she mentioned it, Morgana was completely right. “Well… I guess you’ve got a point,” he conceded.

Morgana sniffled sadly. “I… I was so focused on making sure you would have a good time, that I totally forgot… we’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves together…”

Nick gave her a gentle look. “Hey, come on, it’s fine,” he assured her. “Don’t even worry about it, Morgana. We can end things early if you want to, and do something else on your schedule.”

Morgana frowned. She didn’t want to do that, either. “Um… maybe… maybe not, then,” she said, backtracking already. “I think I’d rather, um…”

She scratched her head tensely, not sure what to do. She wanted to have fun with Nick, but she also wanted Nick to enjoy himself at the library… oh, how was she supposed to do both?”

“Could I maybe… watch you read, or something?” She suggested awkwardly. It was the best thing she could think of, short of Nick reading directly to her.

Nick stared at the goth girl, not sure how to respond to that.

“…I mean, I guess so?” He wasn’t convinced. “Morgana, I don’t think this is going to work.”

Morgana’s breath hitched and she froze stiff. Her eyes widened and she started to shake. “Wh-what? It’s not? What isn’t? Our date?! But-!”

“No, our date’s going fine!” He assured her, closing the book he’d been reading. “I mean the library thing.”

Morgana relaxed a hair, and bit her lip. “You’re… not having fun?”

“I like reading,” he assured her. “But that isn’t what I mean.”

“Then… what…?” She still didn’t understand what he was getting at. Desperation burned in her eyes as she searched him for some hint of what he was trying to make her see.

Nick bit his lip. “Morgana… the library is a really good idea for the two of us.”

Or bookstore, Morgana silently corrected him.

“I mean it,” Nick continued, holding up his book. “I could spend hours just reading here and enjoying myself. Same with you, right?”

Morgana thought back on the stack of manga she’d been looking at before (mostly erotic, but nothing she could do about that) and nodded slowly. “Yeah… but… we’re not together…”

That was the crux of the issue.

Nick could see where she was coming from, and that’s why he needed to help her understand that her issue wasn’t as much of an issue as she was making it out to be.

“A date idea like that, with the two of us just sitting and reading for a couple hours, that’s really great for the two of us,” he explained. “In fact, those are some of the best times that Mary and I have shared, when it’s just the two of us enjoying each other’s company and reading our own books together, like an old married couple.”

Morgana perked up when she heard that, but she also felt really embarrassed. “R-really…” she stammered.

“But… that’s because it’s me and Mary,” Nick said softly. “The two of us… we were close for years, even before we came to this island. We already had a routine that, once we smoothed out the rough edges, we could comfortably settle back down into.”

Even before they were explicit about their feelings for each other, Nick and Mary had been dancing around their romantic interest. Ask anyone who knew them back and school, and the assumption would have been that the two of them were seeing each other, and any lack of public intimacy would be attributed to Mary’s chaste and reserved personality.

Before Holly’s actions had derailed everything, they were practically a couple for all intents and purposes, and knew each other’s likes and dislikes, interests, and dreams very well. Hence, upon reuniting on the island and clearing up all the negative things and misunderstandings, they were able to resume their old dynamic and build upon it like it was nothing.

There was a history there- a history Nick and Morgana didn’t share.

“I would love to go on another date with you to the library,” Nick assured Morgana. “Just the two of us spending time savoring the moment, reading together, all that great stuff. I just don’t think that this is the date for that, you get me?”

Honestly?

Morgana understood.

It was a bit surprising, but for once, she got what Nick was trying to say without catastrophizing over it or overreacting or flying into a blind panic of misunderstanding and assumptions about what he was trying to tell her.

She nodded rapidly instead.

“I-I think I get it!” She blurted out, her eyes wide. “You’re saying, that, um, the two of us… we… we can get along together like this later, but… first we have to get to know each other… we need to be that close to start with, before we can, um, be really, really close… is that right?”

She hoped it was right, because she wasn’t even sure what she’d just said. She just looked at Nick with those big, round eyes of hers and hoped that the words leaving her mouth made some amount of sense when strung together.

Nick relaxed a little, which was a good sign.

“…Basically yes,” he said, nodding encouragingly. “I think the fact that we both like reading and can both get lost in books for hours is a sign that we’re really compatible together! But you were right about what you said before- today is about the two of us spending time together. And even if we were reading side by side… I don’t think that would really get us there, do you?”

Morgana smiled sheepishly at him and shook her head. “I don’t think so either,” she agreed. “So, um… sorry, I guess.”

“Huh!? For what? Choosing to go to the library?” Nick couldn’t believe she was actually apologizing for that. “Morgana, it was a great suggestion for the two of us. You were thinking about me, which is so sweet! It’s just not the right time for that idea, does that make sense?”

Morgana blinked, letting Nick’s words sink in for a moment. Then she nodded rapidly. “Y-yeah!” She agreed. “It does!”

She felt lighter now. Like Nick had given her permission to not feel bad. But there was something else nagging away at her, something that she needed to address first, before she could fully bring herself to relax and enjoy the remainder of their date together.

“Um… Nick…” she said slowly, looking sweetly up at him with those big eyes of hers. “There’s just, um… one last thing…”

“Yeah?” Nick asked, looking generously at her and waiting to hear what she had to say.

Morgana chewed anxiously on her lip.

“I… I really, um… I think I do… owe you one apology…” The shaky tone of the goth girl’s voice helped keep her Sotto Voce from triggering.

Nick was still alarmed to hear it, though. “An apology?” He asked cautiously. “For what?”

She kept chewing on her lip. Nick was worried she’d break the skin with how nervous she looked right now.

“Morgana?”

“…I wanted it to be like Mary!” Morgana suddenly blurted out, nearly knocking him over out of sheer ****.

Nick stumbled back, shocked. “Uh… excuse me?”

In an instant Morgana had gone from a sunny smile to nearly stricken with sorrowful tears. She was trembling like a leaf.

“I… the reason I went with the library was because Holly… she said that it would be a wonderful date for you,” she mumbled. “She said that you and Mary used to love going to the library together… that… that you had the time of your lives together… and I wanted that so badly…”

Morgana felt sick to her stomach. She was showing Nick an ugly side of herself right now, she knew that. And she hated it. But what else could she do? She’d wanted so badly for him to enjoy himself, but more than that…

“I… I wish I was Mary sometimes…” she whispered out, leaving Nick stunned.

He honestly didn’t know what to say. He just stared at her with wide eyes, while Morgana seemed on the brink of collapsing into nothing.

Tears welled up in her eyes. “You and Mary… you’re so… you’re so happy together… and I wanted that for me.”

It was why she’d tried to practice her cooking with Holly yesterday. It was why she had leaned on the impish girl for support and advice.

Maybe it was even why she’d started wearing her hair in twintails.

“Morgana, you… you want to… be Mary?” Nick was thinking in a completely different way. While Morgana was focusing on all the small actions she was trying to do to become more like the farmgirl Nick had married, Nick found himself remembering his last night with Morgana, where she’d sampled Mary’s milk and become such a different person. A person who was quite a lot like Mary herself, and just as doting.

It was kind of a twisted image in his mind.

“Mary makes you so happy… and… and I don’t know if I can do that as me,” Morgana admitted, looking down. “But I’m not Mary… I’m not…”

A tense silence hung in the air as Nick struggled to figure out what to say. How could he comfort the poor girl? She’d been so happy minutes before, but now she looked completely crestfallen. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t want their date to conclude on such a sour note like this! But he feared that anything he said would just make things worse.

I don’t want her to be like Mary, I want her to be like herself! Is that what she’s afraid of? That I want her to be like Mary? But no matter how much Nick knew that he had to keep Morgana from having these thoughts, he was paralyzed. Nothing he could think of saying would discourage her, as far as he knew. Morgana was just so…

Focused.

But before Nick could open his mouth and say something that may have been the wrong thing, Morgana spoke for herself.

And her words blew away any of Nick’s lingering fears.

“…It’s not that I want to be her… that… that isn’t it,” Morgana clarified, shaking her head. She didn’t sound fully convinced herself, though. “I just… I… I love… I like… I… …I don’t want to drink her milk again! So don’t worry about that!”

She spontaneously aborted her attempt to confess with the most out-there statement she could have made, leaving Nick stunned.

“Um… what?” Nick felt a little dazed himself. “Milk? No, uh, I didn’t think… Morgana, that’s not what this is-”

“I meant that I was trying to rush our relationship,” Morgana clarified, shaking her head so hard she nearly shook her hat right off. “By going to the library with you like Mary did, I thought that if I could do that, well… that everything would be fine. That the two of us would be a normal relationship… I could just make it so that it was all the same… like… like we were as close as you two were, and then… we could be happy…”

But she knew now it wasn’t that easy. She had been trying to skip to the end, but that wouldn’t work at all.

Nick was right. The only reason he and Mary could make a library date work was because they knew each other so well from before.

But even though Morgana knew so many things about Nick, that wasn’t the same as really knowing him as a person. They were closer now, yes, but not as close as he was with Mary.

“…Maybe I’ve always been jealous of her,” Morgana conceded finally with a sigh. “My first round here… you married her. That… it really overwhelmed me. I had just come onto this show… and I thought… I thought we would be happy together… that I had finally obtained my dream… and then suddenly you were married to her. And that’s when I realized that I wasn’t the heroine of your story… I… I was just walking into the middle of it. But you already had a true love… and it wasn’t me.”

Nick felt the pain in her words rip his heart to pieces. He stepped forward without even realizing it, his body moving unbidden to hug her.

Morgana’s eyes widened in surprise and she stared up into his eyes, stunned.

“N-Nick?!” She stammered, her face burning crimson.

“Morgana, I gave up that kind of thinking a long time ago,” Nick said firmly, shaking his head. “I kind of had to, given… how this show works.”

“Wh-what kind of thinking?” Morgana asked dumbly, still feeling disoriented by the hug.

Nick sighed. “The kind of thinking that tells us there’s such a thing as a ‘true love’ or any of that mess,” he grumbled. “Believe me, for a long time, I worked under the assumption that was the case. But… I’ve had some truly, truly awful experiences with love, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”

Morgana nodded a slow, sheepish nod. She’d done a lot of research on Nick, after all; she knew all about his tragic past with Dakota, and she’d come to learn about his other messed up relationships from Dawn and the other girls.

“I love Mary,” Nick said without hesitation. “But she’s not my only ‘true love’ since… I don’t think that’s even a thing at this point.”

The romantic in him wished it was. But he’d fallen for too many women to be able to claim it with a straight face. “I’m sorry if the timing of my wedding messed things up for you… I really didn’t even think about it.”

Morgana pulled away from him and started playing with her bangs, suddenly finding it very embarrassing that Nick was looking so seriously at her. “N-no, I mean… it… it’s fine… I was trying to hide it, so… it’s not like you can be blamed for not knowing, I mean…”

Nick shook his head. “Still. It must not have felt very good for someone else to take so much focus on what should have been your week for getting to know me.”

Looking back, a lot of their issues today stemmed back to that first week. If Nick hadn’t been so caught up with the drama involving Mary’s wedding (bad way to put it…) maybe he could have gotten to know Morgana a little better. And if that had happened, all this time she’d been on the island they could have spent building up their relationship naturally and organically, instead of trying to rush so much into this one date to catch up to where he was with so many other girls.

“…I really should apologize,” he said, feeling like there was no way he could say sorry enough. “I promise I’m going to devote more time to truly getting to know you, Morgana. Alright? To make up for my huge mistake.”

“It’s… it’s not a mistake though!” Morgana said, shaking her head quickly. “You just… it’s just… it’s a whole thing! Um… you know, with… with Mary… it’s MY fault a little, too! I convinced myself, that… that she was perfect for you, so… I just bowed out…”

She was bowing right now, in fact, bowing her head to shield her face from his view using her hat’s brim. Because if he saw how embarrassed she looked right now, she’d never be able to live it down she was pretty sure.

Right now, Morgana wanted to die of shame.

“Mary… she’s so pretty… she’s got such sexy curves… she’s so sweet… she’s the perfect woman… no wonder you overlooked her for me… no wonder she can make you happy in ways that I can’t,” Morgana mumbled.

Nick hated seeing her like this. She’d been so happy earlier, but now…

That terrible self-esteem of hers was rising up again, and he had to find some way to keep it in check. If only he could…

Wait…

“Morgana, I don’t know if you know this, but… you and Mary have a lot more in common than you think,” he said, taking out his cell phone. He hadn’t really had much use of it on the island, but there was one benefit. He had plenty of pictures from the old days. Now if only he could find the right one…

Morgana looked up at Nick with a curious, confused, and very doubtful expression on her face.

“We… we do?” She stammered.

“Yeah. Here, take a look.” Nick turned his phone over to her so she could see the picture he’d brought up.

Morgana just looked confused. It was a picture of a woman with choppy orange hair standing in a grassy field and waving at the camera with a big smile on her face. She was skinny as a rail and dressed in a frumpy white dress with a big cross hanging around her neck, resting on her nearly flat chest. But she looked so happy.

“I… I don’t understand,” Morgana said, shaking her head in confusion.

Nick had to keep himself from laughing. “That’s Mary.”

Morgana did a double-take.

“Wh-WHAAAAT?!” She exclaimed, nearly dropping Nick’s phone in shock. Then she clasped it tightly in her hands and looked at the picture again, trying to make sense of it.

Her head snapped up to meet his eyes and she frowned, confused. “But… but that’s… what? How-?! N-no way, that… that can’t be… can it?”

It didn’t make any sense!

“But she’s so-!”

“Cute, I know, she was adorable back then,” Nick said, taking the phone back before the drool from Morgana’s flopped-open mouth got all over it. “She’s still adorable now, of course. But if you were thinking that Mary was always a bombshell who dressed like that, well… she wasn’t. When I first fell in love with her, she was a regular girl just like you.”

Morgana was trying to process what she had just seen. It seemed completely impossible. Mary, the curvy redhead she envied, had once been even scrawnier than Morgana was now? She knew that Mary’s clothes were due to a transformation but she’d never really paid much attention to Mary’s other transformations before…

“So she… she transformed… to look like that?” Morgana mumbled.

Nick nodded. “And I love her regardless. It doesn’t matter how she looks, just like it doesn’t matter how you look. And just like how I came to love Mary so much… I’m sure I can fall in love with you the same way, Morgana. Alright?”

Hearing him say that… it filled Morgana’s heart with a hope that she’d never let herself truly believe before. Deep down, she’d always suspected that Nick wouldn’t like her as much as he liked Mary.

But maybe… maybe it was possible that he could, after all.

A small smile slowly widened across Morgana’s face, until she was beaming.