Title: "When We Come To It"
Author: Rebecca Bradstreet
Rated: PG-13
Archive: Sure
Summary: Lily makes a choice for herself and the future.
Warning: Talk of a murder, and a demon.
Disclaimer/Notes: This is an entirely original piece of fiction. It's my effort at continuing these characters from a dream I had about them. Lily, Chris, and the angel are my creations. Of course Lily bears a passing resemblance to me, Chris looks like James Horan, and the angel bears some resemblance to Peter Wingfield. ;) This was written in response to a Board Challenge so it isn't beta'd. All mistakes are my own.
"When We Come To It"
Rebecca Bradstreet (c) 2001Lily watched the bunny from a distance, hoping it wouldn't notice her. She knew if it sensed her it would run. For all the time she'd spent trying to lift a penny, or make herself look the way she did when she first met Chris, Lily was still a ghost that was frightening to look at. She still looked like the murder victim she was. Her clothes were stained with her blood, and though she had no great gaping wounds she had more than enough wounds to make it plain she was the shade of a dead woman. Worst, in her estimation, was the fact that she was still short and plump. Lily thought as a ghost she should be tall and gaunt.
"It's going," a voice seemed to whisper to her on the wind, as the bunny did indeed retreat from the clearing she had been watching it in.
"Gone... I wonder when Chris, or I will be," Lily said, thinking of how she and Chris should be gone -- would be gone sooner or later.
"You can go now. If you want to," the voice answered her, and this time Lily was sure there *was* a voice speaking to her. There was a voice speaking to her and it wasn't Chris's.
"Go where? And why? Chris is here," Lily said, glancing around looking for the voice.
"Home. You've touched Chris -- changed him. You don't have to stay here with him." Lily found what she assumed had to be the source of the voice. He was hard to look at, not like Chris's demon form, looking at him didn't make her head hurt. Looking at him made her want to weep. He was beautiful, and if Chris's demon form was an absence of light, then his form...the angel's form...was a perfection of light.
"But I do have to stay here with him. I love him," Lily told the angel, wishing she could cry out all the pain and frustration she had gone through realizing just how much she loved him.
"You will stay here with him?" The angel asked, and Lily took his tone as further proof of what he was. There was no surprise, anger, or reproach in the tone, only gentle probing of her decision.
"He's dying. I don't remember much of how it felt, or how long it took, but I'm sure that's what he's doing each time I look at him. I won't leave him to die alone." It wasn't the only answer Lily had to the angel's question, but somehow she didn't feel like trying to explain, even to the angel, how a part of her was a part of Chris. She wasn't wholly dead -- wouldn't be wholly dead until Chris died.
"You want to be here for him -- look after him. It's a good thing," the angel told her, reaching out, and brushing her hair back behind her ears. His touch gave Lily a jolt. She felt his light and warmth pour into her -- through her from his finger tips.
"That's not what everyone thinks. I'm not sure it's always what Chris thinks, but I won't let him send me away, anymore than I will leave because you tell me I can." Lily was afraid that maybe she'd said too much, but standing before the angel, feeling his warmth on her and in her, she couldn't hold any of it back.
"It is what you think, and I think, and He thinks," the angel smiled, stepping in very close to her so that Lily felt his warmth not merely as a force pouring into her from his finger tips, but one washing over her just as if she had stepped from some shade into the noonday sun.
"Chris thinks it's good?" Lily asked, though in truth she had little doubt whom the angel had been talking about.
"Him too," the angel laughed. Lily was grateful that she couldn't blush any better as a ghost than she could cry.
"are you just here to tell me I can leave?" Lily asked.
"Not exactly," the angel answered. He stepped away from Lily, and motioned for her to follow him to the walking bridge over the brook. She followed, uncertain of his intent, but trusting him because of what he was.
"Look down, Lily. Look at your reflection in the brook." The angel pointed down at the brook's still surface. Lily looked, and gasped. It was her reflection that stared back at her, but not the translucent bloodied one that she had been avoiding looking at in the house. The Lily that looked up at her wasn't one she'd ever quite managed in life. It was slim, healthy, even lithe. Its hair wasn't sneaking out in wisps from a big black hair band. The Mirror Lily's hair hung loose and wavy about her shoulders. Best, to Lily's thinking, it had no glasses, no thick ugly frames to make it look bookish in any dress.
"Is it really my reflection?" Lily asked the angel, she was too afraid to take her eyes from the reflection, and look to see if the changes in it were ones the angel had wrought in herself.
"It is your reflection Lily. That is the Lily that has come all this way to stay with a dying demon." Somehow Lily was surprised the angel didn't make demon sound like a dirty word.
"He is a demon. He can't change what he is, anymore than he can give me back my life, but he is also the man I love, and he would give me back my life if he could." There, she'd admitted not just to loving Chris, but that she loved him knowing he was a demon.
"He can't change what he is, but you have. Chris is a dying demon, but he is also something new being born." The humor in the angel's eyes made Lily blink.
"Something new being born?" Lily repeated numbly.
"Yes, he will die, and he will live. And you've chosen to stay, and be his guardian and guiding light. Still sure you want to stay instead of go home?" The angel asked Lily, as he stepped away from the railing on the bridge, and walked back to the spot Lily had been standing in when he appeared.
"I'm staying. I don't know what Chris is becoming, but I can't help thinking of a quote from a movie I use to like, 'Mermaid, witch, or unicorn, no name you give her could surprise or frighten me. I love whom I love.' I love Chris, and if he is going to need a guardian and a guiding light for sometime to come, who better than the woman who loves him like that?" Lily smiled at the angel, and realized some of the warmth she felt inside her was her own.
"Who better." The angel agreed, saluting her and vanishing from her sight. Lily stood for a moment more in the clearing, wondering if Chris would see the change in her, and wondering if the change went beyond her appearance. Then she headed for the house.
Chris was tired, and he hurt. They weren't either of them sensations he was use to, but Lily gave him the names to the sensations, and promised that she had known both of them when she was still...still amongst the living. He wondered where she was. Chris was sure Lily couldn't have faded away without his knowing. Somehow they were linked, not just by their feelings for each other, or what he'd done to her, but by something Lily had done to him when she was still alive.
"Chris?" Lily's voice rang through the house. The sound made him freeze. It was Lily's voice, he knew it like his own, but it was clear and sharp like it was coming from a living throat, not whispering through phantom lips.
"Chris where are you? Chris?!" The worry that crept into the clear sharp voice made him answer.
"Here Lily! I'm here!!" He called levering himself up off the couch despite the protests of his joints and muscles.
"Chris!" Lily burst through the door to the living room, and he had to squint to look at her. Lily's ghost form had always had a glow to it, a gentle phosphorescence that made her stand out in a dark room, but now she radiated light that pierced his already sore head.
"Lily, I don't know how your doing that, but can you please turn it down?" Chris asked weakly, waving at her glow.
"Oh. I'm sorry Chris." Lily said, her glow dimming with the flick of a mental switch. She'd opened the front door instead of walking through it, studied herself in the mirror in the hall she'd always hurried past, and she was sure she wasn't a mere ghost anymore.
"Chris, it's going to be all right. From now on everything is going to be all right." Lily told him, reaching out and touching his cheek lightly.
"Your solid. I mean you feel solid." Chris said, looking just as puzzled as he sounded.
"Look over my shoulders -- over my head." Lily smiled at Chris, the pride and mirth bright in her eyes.
"Wings, and a halo...oh Lily...Lily...don't say it." Chris shook his head from side to side, trying to grimace but breaking out in a smile.
"If you don't want me to I won't. It isn't for me, or it isn't just for me. It's a gift for us. You're *changing*, and you're going to *need* me." Lily's smile dazzled him all by its self. He loved her, and she was more beautiful then he'd ever imagined her. It took him a few moments to realize just what she'd said.
"I'm changing? When? Into what?" He asked.
"I don't know Chris. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." She answered him.