Relinquished (OliverxReader)

(barbara)

I can't really remember the day I met Y/N, but I can remember how I felt when I did. I had mixed feelings. A human girl helping out the people who were torturing us every single passing day. But when I looked at her, I didn't feel any sense of betrayal. I felt remorse, I felt fear emanating from her. She was terrified, just as much as we were. She helped them because she had no other choice. She helped them because she wanted to survive. She was only a child, she didn't know what to do. Unlike Cislo, Zazie, Vincent, and I, she had nobody there to guide her, she only had herself. She only had herself and she turned out better than I did. So when we left her, when we left her in the world that might've torn her apart before we were ever going to see her again, I couldn't keep it together. I felt like I had betrayed the girl who did her best to take care of us all those years ago. She was my best friend, without her, I'm sure I would've ended up someplace else, probably dead. I didn't get to say goodbye before we left, and I didn't get to say thank you before we left, so when I heard we might've been able to return, I was so happy I was finally going to get that opportunity. Yet that day when we arrived, that day I saw her lost and afraid, that day I saw her with that demon, I didn't know what to feel. I was confused but I was also at peace. Y/N might've lost herself but she found herself once again. She got to become a girl with no memory of loss. She got to be happy. I wasn't even mad that she didn't want to talk to us, to even be near us, I was at peace with that. She didn't deserve to get taken away, but I'm okay with that. At least she was happier than she ever was. So when I found out she couldn't even be happy without her memories, she couldn't live in peace, in retirement, I was disappointed. I was angry. Why couldn't this world let her be happy? Why was this world so cruel to her? She didn't deserve any of it.

As I bust the door open, my nostalgic bat with nails hammered into it laying loosely on my shoulder, I wasn't expecting to see the girl who saved me on the floor, at the bottom of the stairs, in a light blue dirty-torn-up nightgown, her features illuminated by the moonlight. I didn't expect to see her so helpless.

I couldn't even move as I stumbled into the room, my bat slipping out of my grasp as I stood there limp. "Y/N," I managed to whisper. I couldn't even hear myself. Her hair was so messy and tangled.

This was the first time I'd seen her face, without her mask, without her demon costume. It was just her, just like back then, when I first met her. She'd grown so much since nine months had passed, her hair was so long the tips spread on the floor. Looking at her face with the light from the moon, I could tell she'd gotten more mature. But what I also noticed was how skinny she'd gotten, how sunken her cheeks were, and how small and frail she looked sitting on that floor.

I saw my vision go blurry. "Y/N," I whispered, finally finding the strength in me to help the girl so broken and discarded on the floor. I skidded to a stop and dropped to my knees right in front of her.

She recognized me immediately, something in her eyes sparked as they met mine. She recognized me but she couldn't find the words. "It's me," I whispered, the tears finally breaking through. "I'm here, Y/N. You're okay now." I knew she needed to hear that. The look of defeat on her face said that. So when she heard that, she started crying as well, not in sadness, but in relief.

She leaped into my arms and she cried against my shoulder as quietly as possible. "I'm here," I whispered, rubbing her back slowly. "You're safe. You'll never have to go through this again, I promise you."

In the corner of my eye, I saw a little girl appear from behind the stairs, also dressed in a dirty nightgown, with bright messy yellow hair, and tears brimming in her yellow eyes. Y/N must've spotted her too because she pulled away from me and held her arms out towards the girl who ran to her and started crying as well. Y/N held her as she cried, smiling, relieved. The little girl she was holding was human. And she was so little, she looked like a child. How could we have missed her? Has she been here this whole time? Does Zagren have a supply of humans?