Fortunately, not a lot of people were in, meaning I could go to Birgit’s room without any issues.

Getting in was the hard part. Not that there was any security or anything like that. I just didn’t know whether or not I was ready for whatever our confrontation would be. Then again, I probably never would be. I could only raise my hand, knock on her door, and hope for the best.

And so I did. And Birgit answered. It didn’t look like she recognized me. She slightly squinted her eyes–lord, I’d forgotten how icy the blue of her eyes was–looking at me appraisingly.

“Can I help you?” she asked with a slight annoyance. She was wearing a grey hoodie and black leggings.

I couldn’t help but smile. “Alexander Adamos. You were looking for me?” Maybe it was everything I’d been through, maybe it was the fact that I remembered everything we’d been through, but I felt a certain ease whenever I was talking.

“Come in.” She gripped the door tighter. The temperature dropped and I went in with a hand on one glove, just in case.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“Who are you?” she asked bluntly. “And why does your damn name keep popping in my head?” She was getting angry, and the temperature was getting lower and lower.

I let out a deep sigh. “It’s going to sound crazy. Honestly. And you probably won’t believe me.”

She’d believed crazier stories that I’d told her. But that had been different. We’d known each other then. She, for reasons I still couldn’t comprehend, had loved. Had trusted me. Now, I was just a name that popped into her head.

“Try me.”

I clenched my hands. “We trained together. We were friends. We-we loved each other. And I-And because of-because of some crazy, mad, just insane stuff, we lost each other. Our memories. But now I remember, and it looks like you do, too.”

“You’re crazy,” she said, looking at me like she genuinely believed it. “You can’t just forget something like that!”

“You didn’t want to come here and lose your friends. Even now I’m willing to bet you’re scared that you’ll be alone since everyone here seems to be, as you put it, ‘caricatures of assholery.’ I can go on. Talk about your family, but-”

A blast of ice interrupted me. I barely managed to dodge it as it slammed into the wall, covering up the room’s window.

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“Birgit-”

“Shut up. Just-just shut up.”

I pushed too far. Her family was a sore point that was a level all on its own. Even when we were at our closest, she didn’t talk about it too much. I just knew that her mother was Lady Flame and her father was some bigshot. She also didn’t seem to have too good of a relationship with her brother, but that was just taken from seeing how he had acted.

“I have flashes,” she said eventually. “We watched WPW together didn’t we? The night that the Atlantis results came out?”

“You were feeling down. It seemed appropriate.” I took off one of my gloves, shattering the ice. Thankfully the window was fine, although it looked like they’d need new blinds.

“I wanted someone, anyone, to love me,” she said quietly. “Something that wasn’t theirs. I couldn’t-I couldn’t be alone. Have my life revolve around them and what they wanted. If I was alone, I’d break. I’d become what they wanted and I’d die before I became that. Their perfect little daughter, walking their perfect little path. Become everything their failed little son couldn’t be.”

I was at a loss for words. On one hand, it hurt, knowing that she was going through all of that and I never knew. We both wouldn’t have gone through the summer without the other. To not be alone. But this went deeper than I expected.

This was her whole life, and I had no idea. Our whole relationship was just, it was just an escape. An escape from her parents. An escape from their legacy.

“You didn’t know that, did you?” she smirked at me. “I think back to my time in Greece. It always felt incomplete. For days I’ve been having these flashes. It was almost like another life. I never had a face. But there feelings there. Feelings I can’t quite place. I hoped that there was something more there. But there wasn’t.”

I stepped closer. She looked at me, her eyes wide, expectant.

“I didn’t know that, no,” I said, and even I was unsure as to where I was going with this. I was just laying my thoughts out, hoping that she would understand. “But I know you’re a good person. And that you’re-you’re irritable, but you’re also sweet when you want to be. I know that, despite whatever your parents say, whatever you even might say, you’re already walking your own path.”

“But what if I don’t know what that is?” Her voice was small. I didn’t even need a whole hand to count the amount of times I’d heard her like this.

“If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you’ll figure it out,” I said with confidence. “I don’t know what’s next, but what I do know is that when we’re together, at any capacity, we’ll figure out a way forward.”

And she laughed at that. “I just-why, why do I believe you?”

I shrugged. “My impeccable charm?”

And she laughed harder. We had both changed. It was a few weeks, but we were different people. Just having her memories altered seemed to be enough to change Birgit. She was still the same, but I could see that she was also different. And I was different as well.

But this was so familiar. To both of us. I knew that too.

“So what do you say?” I asked her after a while. “Will you help me take out the bastards that did this to us?”