Lilium

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Four

"So this is where we part ways, huh?" Lilith found herself asking. Dawn was settling on the town at last, the first hints of its light stretching over the horizon. The two of them stood on the corner of a street that Lilith didn't know, surrounded by houses she didn't recognize on a hill on the far side of town. On a normal morning, Lilith thought she could've found peace in the sight. But not now.

Rei nodded, slowly, her forearm trapped in the palm of her other hand. Though she moved several times to fix her cracked glasses, she never met Lilith's eye.

"Yeah," she replied. "I guess so."

Lilith raised her hand to the sky, turning her arm this way and that. Thick black veins ran across every inch of her body, pulsing with their own life in tune to her heartbeat.

"So... I'm like what Oliver became?" Just his name formed a lump in her throat.

"What do you mean?" Rei replied in a thin voice. "What he was, or what he died as?"

"What he was." Lilith dropped her arm to her side. "I'm a supernatural... thing now."

Rei shrugged. "I guess you could say that. Corrupted humans are... well, not 'special', but they're... different. You have a foot in both worlds now, never quite fitting."

"Is that why the people in the coats wanted to kill me?

"Part of it." Rei sighed, only now meeting her gaze. "You weren't supposed to happen like this."

Lilith frowned. "Wasn't I?"

Rei sighed. Messed with her glasses again. Sighed some more. "I don't know how to answer that." She took her glasses off and tapped them with a long fingernail. "But look. All I know now is... You have to be careful."

Lowering herself to the ground, Lilith asked, "Why?"

"Well..." Tap, tap, tap. "You're a half-breed. It easy to..." She sighed again. "It's easier to end up like Oliver did, when you're already this fucked up." Then she replaced her glasses, screwing up her nose and blinking several times.

Oliver... How can she say his name so easily? Lilith fought the tears that welled in her eyes away.

"I know. It hurts to hear his name, doesn't it? It hurts to talk about him, to see him... to know that all of this happened."

Lilith turned her head away. "It was all for nothing."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe this was supposed to happen." She scratched the bridge of her nose. "You'll want to go into hiding," Rei continued. "For a long while. Until you can hide all of... That."

"Does it ever go away?"

Rei shrugged. "Most don't live long enough to find out." She knocked the tip of her shoe against the ground. "Lilith... I didn't mean for this to happen. Any of it."

"I know."

"I tried to keep him away – honest, I did. For both your sakes. I knew this would happen." Her voice cracked as she spoke, but she continued. "I guess it was inevitable."

Lilith wrapped her hands around her knees. "Did you love him?" she asked.

"Yeah."

Lilith nodded, staring out into the road. "Me too." She gave a dry laugh. "I thought he was gone for good and then... there he was. Like he hadn't died in our house, in our tub." Eyes screwed shut, she forced herself to go on. "And then I saw him die. Again."

"I know." Rei swallowed. "I'm sorry."

"I am, too."

Neither of them said a word for several moments. Then, "You can't see your friends anymore," said Rei. "At least... they can't see you."

The thought set a rock in Lilith's stomach. "So what do I do, then?"

"What any of us try to. Survive." For a fleeting moment, Rei's hand was on Lilith's head.

"Can... I ask a question?" Lilith asked as Rei's touched subsided.

Rei cocked her head to the side. "Hmm?"

"Why did he do it?"

"He's done a lot of things, Lilith."

"Right." Lilith gave a dry laugh and the words caught to the back of her throat. "I..." Her voice came out strangled and weak. "Why did he kill himself?"

Rei recoiled. "I don't..."

"Don't give me that. You had to have known. You said you loved him, right? So he must have loved you, too."

"Sometimes I wonder if he really did..."

Lilith ignored her. "He had to have told you why... why he left me... why he'd leave me alone like that. All he left me was the shrapnel, miss Rei. I want to know why the bomb went off."

Rei pressed her lips together and folded her arms. The silence stretched between them until Lilith thought she would snap. Then, "He was sick, Lilith. Just like you are. But it was a different sort of sick. He." She paused. "He was easy to manipulate. Abraxas knew this. But Oliver also had one thing you didn't: knowledge. He knew what road this Scourge was taking him down and he knew he had to stop it.

"And so, before Abraxas's influence could sink in... he took the lesser of two evils. He killed himself."

"Why didn't he say anything...?"

"Lilith, do you really think you would've understood?"

"I..." Lilith blinked tears out of her eyes. "I guess not."

Rei pat the top of Lilith's head again. "Exactly. He did it because he wanted everything to stop... I don't think he saw this being a possibility. No one did."

Then her touch was gone and so was she. It was just Lilith, sitting on the curb, staring into the road. The sky was lighter when she looked up at it. After several moments of staring, she set her forehead against her knees and began to sob.