They’ll be gone soon. That thought seemed ever present the more Lily looked in the mirror. Rose’s mirror. Clutching the porcelain sink with a grip tight enough to make her knuckles match in hue, the tears continued to fall as the faces flashed through her mind in rapid synchronicity. Rose. Kit. Fox. Gillian. Eros. Cossette. If they don’t die, they’ll leave you. Everyone leaves you, Lily. And do you know why? It’s because you have nothing to offer them. You’re only pregnant because Fox sees the two of you as separate entities. At least Lotus is stable. You can’t even go into a clinic without having a panic attack. You can’t-
“Lily dear,” Rose’s voice snapped Lily from her private war, causing her to sniff abruptly and whirl toward the door. Locked. Rose couldn’t enter. Small miracles. “Y-Yes mamma?” She tried her best to call back steadily to the woman who’d been taking care of her since the trauma in Dr. Mauro’s office, since her… break. “There’s tea ready and I left you a few cinnamon rolls, too. Is everything all right? You’ve been in there for some time.” “Yeah,” Lily replied, a definite lie. “Yeah, I’m all right. Really feeling Lukas move around, that’s all. I’ll be out in a few minutes.” With a murmur of consent, Lily listened to Rose’s retreating footsteps before looking at her reflection once more.
Broken. So broken. There was nothing there worth fixing, left for nothing more than the trash to be incinerated later. Why did it all turn out like this? Locked away in a private bathroom, sobbing in the corner as everyone she’d already lost came back to haunt her. Her best friend, before she came here, took her own life for reasons she wouldn’t give. No note, not a word. Just a few empty bottles and a loaded gun. Her grandmother, taken by cancer, eaten alive by what could have been cured had it been caught in time. Her new friends in school, just some time after earning that scholarship, turned foul and cold. Each one, turning their backs on her, one right after another. Without a reason why, just… gone.
Then after, with him… Adrian. Lily stared at her fingers, once broken, now slightly disfigured. Her legs bore scars of him cutting wherever he chose. Her head… how many times had she been strapped to that table? She shuddered, the scar on her scalp prickling from the memories. And his gift of reuniting her with the corpses of her parents in that rotting cellar, keeping her caged for days without food or water as she could do nothing but look into their cold faces and weep. Lily clamped a hand over her mouth, to muffle the strangled, screaming sob that threatened to rip from her throat. Adrian only took her from that cellar when she was too delirious to even speak, let alone see properly.
Lights hurt. Scars around her ankles and wrists from too tight restraints to keep her from leaving were prominent as ever, lightning bright against pale skin. Getting out of there was a mystery even to this day. Was he away? Did she sneak out? She couldn’t remember. A black period until she found he had family in the area. Family that she wasn’t aware of, that he might not be aware of either. Graves. Only two that she’d been aware of: Michael, or Kit, and Gabriel, otherwise known as Fox. She had to get a warning out, to stay away from Adrian. Finding herself at the steps of one Rosalin Alder, Lily was able to pass along a warning well enough, only meeting Kit at the time. But Kit… that sweet, sweet man, couldn’t stay away from family. It was her own fault, really. If she had never said a word, had never shown up at his door, he never would’ve been… It’s all my fault. Kit was poisoned and it’s all my fault. Why did I even come here?
Another black period. The embossed logo of one Dr. Psyche Mauro. Maybe Adrian could have found help, so she went inside. What she found was another thing altogether. Curiosity that broke her completely, left her screaming and shattered. Everything is my fault. Lotus was her strength, but even that was slipping from her grasp. No comfort, no concern, no one there. She was a burden, a weight that everyone else had been carrying, eager to remove the chains and be done with it. It wasn’t worth it.
Lily continued to sob on Rose’s bathroom floor, holding her swollen stomach as the tears fell like rain. A kick. Baby Lukas would be coming soon, but after that… after that, who would want her to stay? She was in the way, everything was her fault, a replacement at best on most days and an annoyance on others. “This is all I am now.” A soft, broken whisper. “This is it.” Once the baby came, once everything was in place, then no one would need her. Then they’d be gone.
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
2087
romaincrisis
andulkaphoto
