Chapter 37: I’m No Good at Healing

The Temple, Three Laws

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Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day…

Lilith had no idea why that song was stuck in her head. She didn’t remember hearing all of it before, either, which meant that was the only line in her head, and it was annoyingly repetitive. This could’ve been solved quite easily if she’d thought to bring her earbuds. As it was, between the hustle and bustle of a hospital, the scent of blood, death, and disease, the weird tension and not-tension, and the song in her head, it was hard to concentrate on her homework.

It was probably her own fault for trying to do her schoolwork in a hospital, she supposed. Lilith was still looking for an opening to slip into Darrel’s room and wake the sleeping beauty up. It was way past time for him to be conscious again, but hey, what did she know, she supposed. He could sleep forever, she guessed, it wasn’t like his life was slipping away or anything. What a waste of time, sleeping was. There were times she was quite glad she didn’t have to sleep anymore, and this was one, when she remembered she didn’t have to sleep anymore, and what a waste of time it was.

As she scribbled across the sheet of paper in her lap, taking notes from the textbook to use in her term paper, she glanced over where the Charms sometimes sat. Lilith stayed well out of the way, but sometimes, it looked like Emilia was watching her through periphery. Of course, Emilia had a higher chance of recognising her, considering they’d spent a decent amount of time talking to each other.

Emilia told her not to come back, of course, but eh, Lilith still didn’t usually do what she was told. She didn’t like being told what to do, even from Vlad, and she’d tolerate a great many things from Vlad just because he was her sire. But he was decent. And cranky. And rude. But overall maybe a decent guy.

Yep, maybe that last bit was pushing it.

Lilith flipped the page of the textbook, squinting at the information on the next page, trying to decide if it was relevant to her paper. Sometimes, it was difficult to say what was useful information, and what was less so. As she scanned the page, someone sat down next to her. The scent told her it was Emilia, without looking up at all.

Apparently, Lilith had gotten very familiar with Emilia’s scent already. She wasn’t going to think too hard about that.

“What are you doing?” Emilia asked in a stage whisper.

Lilith giggled, looking up at her through her eyelashes. “My term paper, silly,” she answered.

Emilia released a very put-upon sigh. “You know what I meant.”

“Yes, I do,” Lilith answered mildly.

“So?” Emilia said, raising an eyebrow.

“So what?”

“Oh my god.” Emilia’s head fell backward onto her seat.

That was cute. That wasn’t a good thing to be thinking, either, so Lilith kept it to herself. “I’m going to fix it one way or another,” Lilith said. “Really, it’d be better for your blood pressure to accept that much.”

Emilia released another sigh. “Does the word ‘murder’ mean anything to you?”

“My kind are hard to kill,” Lilith answered, raising a brow. “Besides, it’s debatable whether my self-preservation instinct is fully operational. Most likely not. You get used to it.”

“How did you even get into this side?” Emilia asked.

“I have friends that work here,” Lilith answered, shrugging. “They pull strings for me from time to time. I owe them a few times over by now, but at least they’re not annoyed at me.”

Emilia looked like she was having trouble comprehending this level of stubbornness. Lilith was used to that, really. “I guess doing what others suggest is a good idea doesn’t cross your mind as a good idea…?”

“Sometimes,” Lilith says. “But I’m the one that messed this up. I’ll be the one to fix it. Finding another one of me at my calibre willing to do so is next to impossible and you’re already figuring out that fighting it with your science and your way of doing magic isn’t going to work. The persistence is admirable, really, these things just don’t work that way. It won’t take me but five minutes. That’s all I need.”

Emilia was quiet, watching her. Lilith couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking, but she was thinking pretty hard. “Fine,” Emilia said. “I should be able to get you around Minerva later tonight. Until then, please, go somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

Lilith raised an eyebrow, but she nodded once, gathering her books up. “How late?” she asked, standing up.

Emilia looked like she’d momentarily forgotten how tall Lilith was, and then stood up, too, to make the height difference a bit less dramatic. “Nine or ten,” she answered softly. “I think. I just need to get Minerva to come far enough away that it won’t be a problem if you do vampire voodoo.”

“It’s not voodoo,” Lilith said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s something completely different and more in line with older witchcraft-“

“You know what I meant,” Emilia said, rolling her eyes, and walking away. “Nine or ten.”

“I do know what you meant, but the eyerolling is amusing,” Lilith said, but then she smiled a little, turned around, and burst into black mist.

* * *

Now she had to figure out what to do in the meantime. She still had a decent amount of work to do for her term paper, but she wasn’t interested in going home. Caleb was spending a little more time with Morgyn anymore. They’d found Ezio passed out on the floor the morning before, but no one had any idea why. His heart wasn’t in distress, he was just unconscious for some reason. Last she’d heard, Drake was trying to figure out why, because Morgyn was a frantic mess.

She also wasn’t terribly interested in going to the library. She didn’t necessarily want to deal with people right now. Sometimes, just their presence was annoying, but at the same time, she liked being around them and meeting new people. Lilith tended to talk a bit with more or less everyone she came across, even if she ended up going away again later. Lilith could only handle interaction in short bursts. It was kind of weird, really.

Maybe she was just worried about Ezio and couldn’t think straight or something. She felt a little more irritable than normal, anyway. That could be why. Unlike most people seemed to, Lilith didn’t have very strong emotions. Most of the time, she hardly knew what she felt, if she felt anything at all. Her emotional responses were so faint and vague, they were difficult to identify as a reaction at all, and it was normal for her to brush them off as mere coincidence. Certainly, they never felt strong enough to seem like something that she was doing for a reason. Just, something that happened to occur. Most things she did seemed to be that way. Like she was here, and also wasn’t here at all.

Instead of spending too long trying to figure out where to go, Lilith had ended up heading for Forgotten Hollow. Vladislaus wasn’t the best guy in the world, of course, but he was still her sire, and he usually wasn’t too terrible towards her, at least. Lilith would never go so far as to call them friendly, or even remotely close most of the time. It was a perpetual state of tolerance for them.

Maybe they were more like siblings in a lot of ways. They mutually made one another’s lives hell, in a sense, but they moved on from it eventually. Unless it was useful for making fun of each other later, of course. If you weren’t going to rub someone else’s mistakes in their face then what was the point in knowing them, right?

Something felt off, as she got into the Hollow’s boundaries. Like the place was completely off-kilter somehow, and she couldn’t immediately identify what was wrong. Instead of thinking about it too hard and lingering in one place for what could easily turn out to be too long, she moved towards the centre courtyard and up the hill that led to Straud manor. As she got close to it, however, the feeling of wrongness became stronger and then, she smacked right into something she couldn’t see.

A barrier, she realised, as it shimmered to life long enough to repel her, and then disappeared again. Why was there a barrier around Straud manor?

She almost moved around it, to try and see how far it went, or if perhaps she could discern where it was coming from exactly, but before she made it very far, she heard a familiar voice. Lilith stopped.

“Ah, Miss Hell did say you’d make it here sooner or later,” Markus said. “You’re a bit later than I expected you to be, but I’m not surprised. It’s hard to form bonds with someone like Straud anyway.”

What was that supposed to mean? Well, never mind. He seemed to be implying that Lilith should’ve sensed something off through the sire-childer bond. Unfortunately, it wasn’t always that easy, and Lilith wasn’t sure if they were close enough to sense each other that way. There were sire-childer pairs that managed to feel almost everything the other did, seemed to operate in some ways as one person rather than two. Lilith wasn’t sure she wanted to be that close to Vladislaus of all people, anyway.

“You’d probably better go,” Markus said. “Unless you want to die next.”

“Next?” Lilith asked, raising her eyebrows.

Markus snorted. “Oh come on, you’re not that dumb,” he said. “You know what that means.”

Slowly, the light dawned. Though Lilith rather wished it didn’t. She had no idea what it was that went off in her somewhere, a burning feeling in her chest again. “Markus, you didn’t-” she whispered.

“There was just ashes left on the floor when Miss Hell and I got here,” Markus interrupted. “Don’t know what happened, exactly. Good riddance.”

The burning feeling became stronger, and then with a loud shriek, Lilith loosed a psychic bolt at him. It was strong enough it crashed into the barrier and almost damaged it, but then richocheted right back at her. Markus cursed under his breath and threw a bolt of his own.

And for once, Lilith did the smart thing, turned around, and ran. Halfway down the hill, a second psychic bolt chasing her, she stopped, turned back around to look at him, and burst into black mist.

* * *

It’d be painful, if it was any stronger than it was. It did make it difficult to breathe, somehow, and when she reformed in the living room of the apartment she shared with Caleb, it was badly aimed. The coffee table flipped over, crashed into the television stand, and sent the television to the floor. And then she made the mistake of backing up into a side table, and a lamp shattered on the floor.

The entire sequence was loud and jarring, and Lilith didn’t care. The burning in her chest was still there, something she couldn’t reach to get rid of, and she hated the feeling of it. Lilith hated the feeling of most things. The blond sat down right where she was, near the wall, in the corner, rocking slightly. From time to time, she had to blink her vision clear again, because she was crying, just a little, and she wasn’t entirely sure why.

Markus was stupid, and he was probably lying, even if it was on accident, because he didn’t know better one way or another. He’d made a snap judgement as he always did, and he was wrong, it was that simple. So why was she so upset?

Banging against the door sounded, and Lilith startled for once in her long life. She couldn’t make out what was being said, but she could hear grumbling on the other side of the door, and the voice was Geeta’s. The burning feeling in her chest got stronger, and Lilith stood up, just as Caleb made it out of the bathroom, crossed over to the door and yanked it open.

“What the heck is with all the noise over-” Geeta started.

“Just stop!” Lilith interrupted. “You will leave, me, alone, or the things that go bump in the night will rip your throat out, do you understand me?”

Clearly, Geeta had not been expecting that because she instantly went silent, staring in surprise, alarm, and clear confusion. Lilith didn’t give her the opportunity to regain her bearings, and simply slammed the door in her face.

Lilith hardly cared what she did after, turning back around, sliding to the floor behind the door.

It was only a moment or two, and then Caleb had knelt down beside her, reached over and took her hands in his. He didn’t say anything, and when her eyes met his, so unlike her own, her throat closed, and she moved to hug him. It was a temporary thing, as all things were. Eventually, she’d get past this and move on, but right now, the burning in her chest hurt, and she didn’t know what to do with it, as she never knew what to do with anything she ever felt.

Caleb didn’t ask questions. Instead, he let her cry, if that was what she was going to do, though Lilith could see it in the way he sat there that he didn’t know what to do with it any more than she did. It’d distressed him, as Lilith’s stronger emotions often did. It was something of a nasty cycle. Lilith bottled until there was no choice but to let it out, Caleb didn’t know what to do with her having feelings, and so she bottled some more to avoid upsetting him. That wasn’t what he’d want, she was sure. That didn’t sound like him, at least. But she didn’t know what else to do. The truth was, Lilith never really did know what to do with anything at all. She was just good at pretending otherwise.

“He’s gone,” she whispered. “Vladislaus. He’s gone.”

“Forever gone?” Caleb asked.

Lilith just nodded.

Caleb drew a breath in, readjusting Lilith somewhat so that he could hold her properly, without anything going to sleep for either of them. And she could see it, in his eyes, that he had no idea what to say. She didn’t know, either.

Finally, he shook his head. “Just let it out, Lilith,” he said quietly. “Don’t hold it in like you usually do.”

Lilith shook her head, her hands raising to brush her tears away. “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just, I just reacted, and I didn’t think about you.”

“Lilith no,” Caleb said, taking her hands. “Don’t be sorry for having feelings, it’s okay, to feel things.”

“I don’t like them anyway and neither do you,” Lilith said.

“What?” Caleb asked. And then, something seemed to click in his head, and he groaned. “No, Lilith, that’s not… you’re my sister. Of course I’m going to be upset when you are, that’s how empathy works. I don’t like seeing you in pain but, Lils I’ve always been happy that you let me see it. I want to help if I can. I can’t do that if you shove me out, please, don’t shove me back out again.”

Lilith stopped, watching him for a moment, because the idea was confusing, and yet in thinking about it, she could apply it to a thousand other things and suddenly, it made sense. It made perfect sense, and she felt stupid. Then, whenever there were emotions and feelings involved, Lilith felt stupid. She didn’t get them, maybe she never would. There was something seriously wrong with her, she’d known that for a long time now. This was just reaffirmation.

“What does it feel like?” he asked.

“Burning,” Lilith answered, and tapped her chest. “Right here. Sometimes, it squeezes.”

“It’s a heartache,” he said. “And maybe a bit of anger in there.”

The explanation truthfully only confused her more. She didn’t understand why she’d feel either of those things. Maybe it was best not to worry about it too much, right now. Instead, Lilith shifted around and leaned against Caleb’s shoulder. She didn’t have to make sense of it right now. Maybe, right now, she just had to feel whatever it was.

* * *

“I just don’t understand why I’m so upset,” Lilith said, idly stirring her tea. She’d calmed down some, by now, though it wasn’t gone by any means. She could still feel it smouldering in her chest somewhere. She’d decided, at least, that she still didn’t like the feeling of having emotions. They were too much, too overwhelming, too noisy, disruptive, she didn’t like them. Maybe Lilith had started shoving her emotions down to make it to the next step, to be able to keep moving forward even as she wanted to stop, but now she continued to shove them down because she didn’t like emotions anymore.

Caleb settled down beside her with his own cup of tea. He didn’t say anything at first, just stirring his cup, eyeing where the television used to be. It’d been utterly destroyed, but maybe later, Morgyn could fix it, if the blond was feeling up to doing so.

“Vladislaus… he’s your sire, Lilith,” Caleb said. “It’s not like you hate him, and, he’s your mentor, too. He taught you almost everything you know about being a vampire and living as one. I’d be more surprised if you weren’t upset.”

Lilith sighed. He was right, she supposed. It was probably just that she had a lot of frustration with her own habit of having feelings at all. That was what people were supposed to do, but Lilith didn’t like them. If she had a choice, she’d have rid herself of those pesky things a long time ago.

She wanted to be Kassander, Lilith thought. He was never bothered by anything, always a vision of grace and composure.

Oh. Grace and composure. Now where did she hear that before…

Now wasn’t the time to be examining her childhood traumas. Lilith set her teacup down on the coffee table, only slightly damaged with her terrible landing. “It’s not like we were very close,” she said. “Vlad and I tolerated each other, you’d think I’d be glad he’s gone, at least a little.”

“Well, not exactly,” Caleb said. “You know how the Embers tend to fight a lot, but they still really love each other?”

“Yeah?” Lilith answered, eyebrow raising.

“Sometimes not agreeing with someone, and finding a way to put aside those differences, they make your bond with each other stronger than you’d think it would,” Caleb explained. “Other times, it’s the fighting that’s how you show that you care, in a way.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lilith said. “Fighting is bad, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” Caleb answered. “If you’re fighting, you still care enough to want to be heard, rather than to walk away. That’s something, even if it doesn’t seem like it is. Not everyone that fights can work through their disagreements and see through their own pain long enough to see the other person’s. That’s when fighting is bad. But when you can release enough of your own anger and frustration to understand the other person’s point of view, you grow closer together, begin to build a bond that is nearly unbreakable. I think you and Vlad got there eventually.”

Lilith thought about that, for a moment. It sounded silly, now that she was thinking about it, but maybe… well, it was likely that he was right. He would know, of course, way better than she did. “He always drove me nuts,” Lilith said. “But I think I knew that his inaction wasn’t really inaction. He was teaching me how to do it without him, because he knew he couldn’t shield me from everything.”

Caleb smiled. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “You know, it’s almost like Vlad was the father that you needed ours to be, that he wasn’t.”

“I was always like this, huh?” Lilith asked.

Caleb snorted. “No,” he said. “When we were kids, you were quieter, and not, somehow. It’s hard to explain. You were more concerned about how other people saw you, what they thought of you. It’s almost like you were trying to become who you thought everyone else wanted you to be, but then realised at some point that whoever that was, she wasn’t you. The changes were a bit subtle, but still, they were there all the same.”

He was probably right. She was a headstrong person, tenacious and bold, if a little too much so at times. Lilith would call herself fearless, but there were things she was afraid of, just ostensibly they weren’t the right things to be afraid of. And now, with Vladislaus gone, she felt weirdly alone, in some ways. Caleb was still here, she still had her friends, too, but it wasn’t the same thing.

It would be strange to get used to him not being here.

Lilith reached over, taking her cup, and a drink of tea, before setting it back down. She then laid her head on Caleb’s shoulder. “I don’t know what to do now,” she said quietly.

“Sure you do,” Caleb said, taking her hand. “But you know, with him gone, Miss Hell will be making a power bid for the Hollow. She always did want control of it.”

Lilith snorted softly. “Not sure why it matters,” she said. “It’s not like I want control of the Hollow. I always hated it.”

Caleb looked unconvinced, but he didn’t argue with that specifically. “I know you do, or at least you think you do and whether you do or not is in the air. The point is, you’re his successor. Everyone knows that. You’re the one he wanted to take over after him. He told me once that you’re the right kind of delicate and progressive to be able to lead the Hollow forward into the present day. I don’t imagine his feelings on the matter have changed since then.”

Lilith released a sigh, standing up and pacing. She knew he was right about that. Vladislaus had made offhanded comments that seemed to indicate such to her before. At the time, her taking over Forgotten Hollow because he’d gone and died seemed like such a faraway event. Something that existed in a universe and a time that she’d never see, because Vladislaus was always going to be there.

But that wasn’t always how reality turned out, now was it? He was gone. Miss Hell was unlikely to care about that, and dive straight into a territory war, and if nothing else, leaving those that still lived in the Hollow to her nonexistent mercy went against Lilith’s values. Quite frankly, Vladislaus likely hadn’t pushed the subject because he knew this would happen and Lilith wouldn’t be able to ignore it, either because Miss Hell threatened the relative peace and wellbeing of those that lived in Forgotten Hollow, or because Lilith just hated Miss Hell that much, either or.

There were times Lilith almost hated him, and one of those times was now. But somehow, she couldn’t help being exasperatedly charmed by how well he knew her, as grating as it was.

“If anyone can take Miss Hell down,” Caleb said, “it would be you.”

Lilith stopped, looking over at him. “I don’t think I can lead. Or keep order the way he did, I’m not that kind of person.”

“I know,” Caleb answered. “And that’s exactly why you’d be a better leader for the Hollow than anyone else would. It’s time the Hollow learnt how to breathe.”

* * *

She had a lot to think about. How exactly Caleb could manage to spend so much time talking to her when Morgyn was a wreck right now, that Lilith didn’t know. Maybe that was just part of caring about someone, making the time for them when they needed you more than you needed to be upset. It sounded right in her head, kind of nice, too. To be able to let go of things to be support for someone else, even for a little while, but she’d established, even only in her own head, that she was a little too good at letting things go.

As it was, she’d lost the entire day by chance, talking to Caleb about Vladislaus and the future of Forgotten Hollow. She’d need to break that barrier around the manor, if she was going to take control of it after Vladislaus (and maybe she would, even if only to preserve it). But right now, it was time to finally be done with these silly spellcasters. She’d returned to the hospital, and was sitting in one of the waiting rooms, reading over a magazine. Sooner or later, either Emilia would find her, or she’d sense and go find Emilia, either one. At the moment, Lilith couldn’t be bothered to care which it was.

The woman would say she felt a bit better after crying on Caleb for an hour and having some tea, but, not really. It was more of an overall sense of hollow numbness. She didn’t think that was necessarily better. But it was good enough for right now. It would seem she had some internal reflection and analysing to do, given apparently she didn’t understand her own relationship with Vladislaus. Being completely fair about it, her relationship with Vladislaus was and probably always would be the weirdest one she’d ever had. He was something of an enigma, and to be fair about it, she probably was, too.

Lilith didn’t like complicated things, but tended to have exposure to a great many of them all the same.

Somewhere between the Chanel ad and this article about traits men found attractive in women, someone sat down next to her. Lilith glanced over the top of the magazine, finding Emilia sitting there, and then scooted backward in the chair.

“Imagine running into you around here,” she said, and then decided not to try making jokes anymore for a while. They sounded weirdly flat.

Emilia snorted. “Yeah, imagine that,” she said. “I think I can get Minerva away from Darrel’s room for a bit. I’m going to drag her off to the vending machines for a coffee. You should have a few minutes, and that’s the best I can offer.”

Lilith closed the magazine, setting it down on the coffee table in front of the chairs. “That’s the best I need,” she said.

“Good,” Emilia said. “You’ll need to wait a minute and not be where Minerva can sense you. I’m not sure how you’re going to get up there I guess, because you’ll have to slip past her because his room is close to it.”

Lilith smiled, and then burst into dark mist. Emilia loosed a startled gasp, as the mist seeped into the walls. And then she blinked once.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting that one,” she grumbled. “That’ll work.”

The spellcaster stood up, shuffled down the hallway. As she stopped next to Minerva, the two exchanged words for a moment or two, before Minerva stood up, and, seemingly annoyed, followed Emilia to the vending machines. The woman waved at the air behind her back as they went. Lilith slipped through the wall, following the sense of the spellcaster she was starting to recognise as Darrel Charm.

As she pulled back out of it and reformed into her physical form, she realised staying in mist form for that long had the unfortunate side-effect of being painful. She held her head for a moment, and then looked around. She shuffled over to Darrel, still out like a light as she expected, hooked up to too many machines, and held her hand out. She still didn’t know what her psychic bolt had done exactly, so it would take a moment to figure it out, but she’d better work quickly before it was too late and Minerva started something in a hospital.

But, as she got close, her psychic energy reaching for his, she could sense exactly what had happened. The tricky part was fixing it, because it’d been that way for a long time now. Well, if she just did this… his mind wouldn’t like it any more than everything else she could do with it, but it would perhaps not fight it as ferociously, and he should regain consciousness and function.

How were they keeping him alive anyway? Well, never mind. Humans, they were very tragically fragile, but also very easy to repair. The body and its varying functions weren’t what made things difficult.

The energy left her fingers, just as the door opened. Minerva walked in, glanced up at her, and looked surprised for a moment. Emilia, just behind her, very visibly winced. And then magic pooled in Minerva’s hands.

“I don’t want to fight you here,” she said, her tone low.

Lilith stood up straighter. “You won’t have to,” she said, and then burst into mist.

Minerva cursed, and as the mist leaked into the walls, Darrel loosed a grunt.

“Wait, Minerva,” Emilia said, her eyes lighting up. “Darrel?” she asked softly.

“Why is it so bright?” Darrel grumbled, one hand raising to his head, but it didn’t get there before Emilia claimed it in her grasp.

“Darrel, you’re awake,” she whispered.

“Can’t stare at you very easily if I’m not,” he said, smirking.

Emilia turned a little pink across her nose, but then moved over and wrapped her arms around him. The smile wouldn’t leave her face.

“I’ll go get your sister,” Minerva said, opening the door and leaving.

Emilia glanced at the wall, over Darrel’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispered.

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