everybody's got a dark side || livolai

Nikolai normally did not want anything to do with fighting. He found it vulgar, intimidating, and just overall pointless. What couldn’t you solve over a nice game of pokémon while drinking hot chocolate and eating shortbread cookies? Probably a lot of things, but he pretended those things didn’t exist. Violence, to him, was never the answer. That philosophy was probably the reason why he got his ass kicked in battle all the time, whether it was against another camper or an actual monster. Thinking about battles made Nik touch his stomach, where there was a white line stretching far across his abdomen. That was a scar, a reminder of what happened to him on new years eve. He’d almost died, and in his girlfriends arms. Possibly if Nik had known better tactics and been in better health that wouldn’t have happened, but it did and he didn’t like to think about it. A lot of the things that happened in the past Nikolai liked to forget about. Like his time spent in the hospital because of his anorexia, or the bullies that had caused his illness. Currently, Nikolai was trying to forget about the reason why his legs were dragging him to the Arena, where he’d only been once or twice because of shorts spurts of motivation.

The cause? Livia Malcolm. Nikolai had seen her from a long distance hacking away at dummies, watching fake red blood get splurged all over her blonde hair and clothes. Sometimes he didn’t understand why she did these things. What the point of fighting a stationary object when your opponent was going to be moving all over the place trying to dodge your sword? Still, Nik guessed it was to relieve stress and anger than anything else. He understood that everybody had different was of relieving their stress levels. For instance, while Livia liked to kill fake people Nikolai liked to sit and read comic books in the attic of the big house. But that didn’t mean he had to like it, and he didn’t. Sometimes his girlfriend scared the living daylights out of him, even though Nik knew that she suffered from PTSD, and a lot of the things she did were a result from that. The both of them had some type of illness, and while hers was more mental his was more physical. But they didn’t really talk about it, seeing as it was also a sore spot for the both of them.

Being the nerdy, idiotic, but somewhat cute boyfriend that he was, Nikolai jogged over from his cabin to the arena, and when he arrived he was slightly winded. He still wasn’t at his physical peak yet, despite years of therapy and training. The wound he’d gotten all those months ago didn’t have a positive effect on him either. He registered that Livia looked shocked and a little scared when he approached, giving him a ‘hi’ as a greeting. While he focused on getting his breath back, Nik smiled at her. “That’s a nice sword you got there. Mind putting it down? Sharp, pointy, metal things are bad for my health because they could cut off my head."