Ray/Lily + "I've missed you"
(I return to taking ancient prompts and twisting the heck out of them. This one takes place in the future of the TNF verse that has been banging around the insides of my head)
"I've missed you," Ray says.
Lily flicks her eyes up towards him. Things between them have been...different. Whether it was Caitlin or Frost who kissed her and him helping Nora have made feelings complicated. She likes spending time with him and she thought she was tipping into the 'like like' zone of her feelings around him before all of it. And that was before she gained a very unwelcome guest in Kasnia.
"You whine too much," echoes in her brain right on cue.
"I've missed you too," Lily replied, tuning out her parasite. "Sorry, things have been...complicated."
"That's a word for it," Ray agreed. "Mind if I sit?"
She waved her hand towards the empty chair across from her seat at the table. Since Kasnia happened, Lily had been spending most of her time working on a research project. Gideon had set her up in the lab to do work with tools from her time and she'd been spending most of her time in there. If she ever got it published whenever she left, it would be a nice accomplishment.
Deep down, she knew why she was engaged in doing lab work suddenly. It was called avoidance. So much had changed for her and Jax's powers after everything on Earth-38. They were stronger together, but he could now fly independently and create flame without the merge while she couldn't. Then Kasnia happened and Lily found herself in a strange predicament. Technically merged but not powered up at all. Probably because the passenger was a ghost.
"We don't know what this is, silly girl. That's what you should be figuring out."
"Sorry," Lily thought fast. "I thought my chair grated. I hate that noise it makes."
"Yeah," Ray nodded. "Hey, are we okay?"
"Leave now. I don't want to hear him ramble."
Ray pointed at himself and then her. "I've been worried about you lately. Things feel-"
He nodded. "Lily, you're a really great person. You're a friend. And I do like you..."
Lily stopped listening. A cold feeling crept up her spine and over her shoulders. The same feeling she'd felt in Kasnia after something invisible slammed into her. Before she'd come to discover her parasite and started fighting for control of her own body.
"What are you doing?" she said aloud.
"He's too annoying. We're going to leave."
Ray stopped talking. "I'm confused."
Lily shook her head. Her limbs felt tingly. No, not this now. "Not you."
"No," Lily thought this time instead of saying it aloud. "No, you're not getting it. Stay down. Behave."
She knew why her body felt weird. It felt like when she was in Jax's head- control stopped being hers. She couldn't stop herself from standing up. Lily tried to call out to Ray, but her vocal cords stopped being hers.
"I'm taking over," Valentina Vostak snarled in her thoughts. "And we are leaving."
