Double Life: Nicky

A/N: wow, it´s taken DL so long to get to this....hahaha some light´s thrown into the mysteries that have been building in these years of writing this story. Since I had never used this type of time I feel like I should explain when this part happened in DL´s timeline: it happened after Nat didn´t show up with mii and the time in which Nat went to Burgeoys... 

Saku, your comment in the last post made me feel quite accomplished, specially the last part of it, what you said there, wow, perfect! haha -n the story you made for Nat/Ibsen was funny but great!

Also... I´ll miss you today >_<  b/c of that I think I´ll make it a double post... mmmm

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All the time since she´d been given the journal she´d been afraid to read it, she´d found out through the letter in it that she´d been an experiment gone wrong, it had hurt, she´d almost wished that she´d never gone to Ibsen´s home that night but she couldn’t take time back, however she´d been putting off the reading, only carrying the journal, it had been a heavy constant weight but it was scarier to think it might say more, it might say what Nat didn’t want to say, what she said she didn´t know and Nichole had been a coward, she hadn’t mustered the courage to read it, not a line, not a page, then, that Sunday, she´d been angry. What else could the woman said that she didn’t know, a broken experiment is all there is, that was the summary of who she was and so she had read and she had found out about Nat and it had been bad... she almost didn´t want to continue, she´d let a few days go by, trying to read the next but only managing to read the first paragraph, then the first two... she closed the notebook until after another few days she found the courage to read again.

You were my perfect child, the culmination of a life time work; you were more mine than you were your mother´s. You´re only seventeen but you´re really a dream that started in my youth, over fifteen years before you were even born.

I was in college, a young student doctor, my field: genetics, I was filled with great ideas, some very new and innovative, one of them not so acceptable by the standards and that’s why you were only a dream and then, lucky me, a young handsome man took notice of me, smart, clever, his friends were my friends, don´t imagine a romantic picture, please, when you´re in med school there´s no time for that but for long sleepless nights and in the lack of sleep comes the frenzy of having less and less filter in what you say, lucky us, we had much more in common than what we thought.

His dream was also my dream and it was our dream together through our school life. Towards the end of this, a few more joined in and his enthusiasm made our dream a project, one in which we started to work. We were five at that time, of them you´ve only left two: me and Alexander, pretty soon it´ll be only one of us.

Time flew by, Alexander was to inherit a whole lot of money and resources, a hospital, it was perfect, and our project grew. I won´t attempt to tell you all the many failures and difficulties we had in those fifteen and more years but I will tell you how our success came to be.

After fifteen years, a few of the original five were tired, convinced we were losing our time, and a lot of money was spent. We managed to convince them to stay but for one… he wasn´t spared in your trial, though, serves him well. But that was not the only major problem we  had, you see, we were basically playing God, trying to make a perfect child, stronger, better, with a better ability to heal, to learn and that is taboo, no woman would let us play with her baby like that and no woman would like to carry that child. We were smart, the most brilliant of our classes, we had managed to do convince them not that they knew the full extent of what they were doing, still, we had so many failures in that stage, there were miscarriages, blind kids, deaf kids, unfit for life and our volunteers were less and less… and then, a little luck for us, Miriam and Karl Duchenne came into the picture, they were perfect, so desperate for a kid.

 I wonder if they´ve told you that, your father had told your mom to adopt a kid but no, she wanted his kid, but she couldn´t make it and out of a coincidence he heard of us. He wouldn´t know who we really were, what we did but it was a lucky thing that he went to our hospital and not any other, their situation could be fixed but it was very expensive for him, an in-vitro baby is too expensive and for the poor Duchenne family it was impossible but Alexander had an idea, they could pay in kind, we were always in need for follicles, eggs, and your mom besides her difficulty of having children, was one of the healthiest donors. I wonder if Karl or Nati ever told you this and if they did, was it the right story? Well, I hope they told you how precious you were for all of us, fifteen by then, counting the most important assistants.

Your mother gave us great hopes. A boy was the first success or so we thought, the boy´s heart failed, how sad we all were but it produced an improvement, the next time not only you mother passed the first five months but two other assistants too, no heart problems and guess what? We were all thrilled to know that the second time Miriam was expecting twins, I bet you´re smart enough to know in vitro increases the chances of that, sad news on the fifth month again, one of the babies died spontaneously, she was perfect but for unknown reasons she didn´t make it. Miriam was so sad but so strong, for a month she was in bed rest, she was an active woman, it was such an endurance she had to go through. However, our perfect baby didn´t want to be born, not from her, not from other.

The twin, the one that survived was delivered in the seventh month, a couple of hours later he was gone, his lungs failed, blood had rushed there and they were not enough to take it, once again our improvement had gone wrong… we lost so many babies, so much time, so much money but we knew we´d make it, you see, in succeeding there´s a lot of tries, you only have to keep trying until you make it. We lived by that.  After a long wait, Miriam was ready to try again and so were the other assistants. There were a lot of hardships during that time but, finally, we had a baby to give to Miriam. We knew that time we had to make it, it was her last try, we couldn´t lose her like that.

Do you remember your real name?  Sarah Nichole.  Sarah was one of the doctors, one of us. Did you know that? That was why we started to call you Nicky, I wonder if they still call you that. Back to my tale, you, Nicky were the only one that survived, it was sad but one was enough, we had our perfect child, all of us happy and with new hopes, you were the key.

Did you know your parents were going to move out after you were born? Your mother liked this little town surrounded by woods but we couldn´t lose you like that. Alexander being the smart man he is convinced your parents of staying, of keeping you close under the pretense of you being in some program related to improving the way kids learn, your education would be paid, it is paid if you were who you were, but I’m getting ahead of myself, as I said, education, you were educated, trained from young age to see better, to hear better, to learn faster. We had given you the potential, we had to develop it and we did. You spoke so young, you achieved so much in your first year, your mother was delighted, we all were… No, not really, I guess you didn´t like it when Nati had to measure you or test you and you specially didn´t like needles.

We had a big party when you turned one, you and us. Your family didn’t have enough money to do something like that, do you remember that party? On that day, the crew talked about the possibility that your mother had to do with you being our only success, so we tried to convince her of having another kid but she wanted only you, and we let it rest for a while, we had time, and we had you.

 We tried to convince her for about three years, but our plans continued despite her negatives that every time were less strong.  You opened so many possibilities, you wouldn´t get sick. As a little girl you loved rain, do you still like it? You got out and came back soaked wet, we were worried, it was really cold but nothing happened, we let it happen again, you were always so keen on going on your own when something bored you or when needles time was near, you never got sick, believe me, we tried until you gave us a clue.

You were running away from Nati, Sarah was walking with petri dishes with viruses, we were trying to produce vaccines with that amazing immune system of yours, you and Sarah bumped, you fell and so did the dishes, you punctured your little arm with one of them, it got in about half inch in your flesh.. You got sick, really sick and then one day, you woke up fine, as if it hadn´t been more than a mere cold, and I assure you it was not.

At this point Nichole shut closed the journal, she was angry, this time she did kicked the wall of the place where she was. It was worse than what she had thought. It hurt her how everything had happened, how Ibsen spoke of her as a thing, as an experiment and of her mother as a mere vessel for their purposes.

She´d been hiding, moving from place to place since she left Burgeoys, she couldn´t stay still, she had to go, she´d always run to the woods when she felt trapped, conflicted, then she had ran to Ashley even though he never knew of her double life and lately, she knew, she´d been running to josh, doing her best to keep herself from hurting him yet making him the place to hide…

“You stopped being worried?” she raised an eyebrow at the sight of only two texts from him, all the while knowing full well that it had been her who had alienated hi m from her life. She saw his second text, the most recent one, she knew it was impossible but her chest tightened the way it felt when she touched her victims that familiar pain shot through her… She shook her head, her mind already working ways to reach him… to reach him without having to see people.

“Good bye, josh” she ended the call in which she had allowed the monster to speak. She knew she´d crumble otherwise, like she´d done in the woods at midnight when camping with his family, or at Ashley´s tomb or in so many other occasions. She tightly closed her eyes and then scrubbed a hand over her face, massaged her neck.

“I’m sorry I still hurt you” she whispered as she packed her laptop, grabbed her bag and left the place in which she´d been that day. “I never meant it” she said without a sound, only her lips moving; her figure just a ghostly shadow in the night.