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What will it take for you to accept me?
Never! Never in a thousand, no, a million years!
We have all that time and more. I can wait.
I won't be your puppet again! Not now, not ever!
Forever is a long time, Lily. I know; I have been there.
I will never be yours, False. No, Sophie Anderson.
But you are, Lily. No matter how far apart we are, I can hear you in my dreams. You are always in my heart. You are me. You can never escape me, not even till the end of time...
I am NOT you! I will never be you! Leave me alone!
Even when the stars fade and die, you and I will endure...yes, even unto eternity.
"No!"
She shot up from the bed, hand clutched over her chest. Over the phantom pain in her heart.
But there was no pain, no wound, nothing to even imply that anything but pristine perfection had ever existed. She had tested this personally the first night, and in the many nights to follow. As if in the grip of a peculiar madness, she had tested the fragility of the human body. Each time, unconsciousness and a pseudo-death. But every single time she would awaken, whole and perfect, untouched by whatever she had subjected herself to.
And in time, she had given even that up. It was a futile exercise. A meaningless pastime. Death had no meaning to her, not anymore. It was just a little sleep, a mere pause within the nightmare from which she would never awaken, no matter how hard she tried.
Outside of her, time moved on. She rose and greeted the dawn like an old friend -- her only friend in these endless years. The sun, that familiar disk, bloomed like a blessing over an unfamiliar landscape. For a moment, as she placed her fingers on the clear glass of the window, her vision flashed back to that other old, familiar landscape.
Rain, always the rain, in a forest that seemed to roll out endlessly. From her room in the upper floors of the castle-like mansion, the courtyard awash in grey, the marble angels of the fountain in a plaintive embrace, the rain creating the illusion of them weeping as the cup runneth over...
She snapped back to reality; out of that old dream, no, that ancient nightmare. 800 years... 800 years of tangled memories, a confusing mishmash of familiar faces and familiar ways, repeated over and over. Written and rewritten over by a fickle gardener, who wielded his power over them like a child at play, pruning and trimming with no care as to what they truly wanted.
As if the thought summoned him, she could almost feel him chuckle, deep within her chest. With strength of will born out of practice, she blocked him out, erecting great walls that kept him out of her thoughts. It was getting more difficult -- the more time passed, their bond had only strengthened, not weakened as she had hoped. She was of his blood, and that thought made her stomach churn again, the memory of having been tricked into drinking his blood for eight hundred long years. How much of her was him after all this time? The blood running in her veins...she had tried bleeding herself out more than once, in increasingly creative ways since any ordinary wound would close up in moments. No matter how much she had attempted to drain herself of his filthy influence, she could not free herself of him. Her body itself was changed, and when she weakened herself from her attempts, she could feel him searching for her. He would never give up, she realized this after a century or two. There was no one else like him, no guarantee that he could make someone else like her. Had not Snow proved that, by escaping him finally in death?
Snow... How many years has it been? She had forgotten the time, but she would never forget the face of her oldest friend. Yes, she had spent a good century untangling the mess False had made of her memories. Trying to sort through what was real and what wasn't had been deeply exhausting, but eventually she had managed to find her way through her mind's labyrinth, for those elusive images of the time Snow and her had spent together. Before False, before the nightmare, before the illusionary utopia where they had dreamt together for 800 long years, until they had been parted at last, by Lady Death.
Why did you leave me behind? How could you leave me behind!
If she had any tears left, they would have fallen now. But as time marched on, even those had dried up, and she stared clear-eyed out into a bustling landscape of soaring towers, their sharp edges reflecting the morning sun and cutting the light into refracting panels. Below her, the city was waking, a slow cacophony beginning to rise, like a grumbling behemoth protesting the morning summons. The stain spread out like a scar across a once pristine land, a far cry from the verdant forests that had once greeted her, stained grey even as they were by the everlasting rain. And the walls that surrounded her was not rough stone, but cold concrete, poured perfection over a skeleton of steel. Even the glass was different, tempered and double-layered, far tougher than the fragile blown glass of the makers of old.
Were she to reach even further, back into her beginnings, she could still remember the thatch that lay overhead, even as she snuggled into her best friend on cold winter nights, the older girl whispering stories the bard had been telling at the tavern, stories the two girls had been crouched outside the low wall to overhear, giggling into their hands at the oft-bawdy tales. Bricks of mud and wattle, fired strong to withstand the elements. But even those would crumble into nothingness, except in her memories.
They had been happy then, or as happy as she could have imagined herself being. That boring little existence, doomed to end perhaps after a mere few decades. Or was it blessed to end? An ending, that was what she desired. An end she would never reach, not now, not ever.
Her fist clenched on the glass, as if seeking to break right through. Would she die if she threw herself off the top of this modern skyscraper? All of a sudden, the weight of her memories fell with crushing weight upon her, her shoulders sagging as a sob rose within her throat. She didn't want this, she didn't want any of this! She just wanted to go back home, home to where Mama and Papa were, back to where Snow was just in the house over, back to when they used to run into the forest to pick berries, and braid flowers into each other's hair.
Her name. Their names. She shuddered. She couldn't remember what they used to be called. Those once dear faces in the deepest depths of memory, lips shaping words in a lost language, sound erased when they reached the crucial words: her name. Her true name. The only name left to her was the one her jailer had given her: Lily.
Lily, the flower of purity. The virgin flower, unsullied. Lily, who would be his forever...
It's alright, I will be with you. Forever...
His voice in her ear, intimate like a lover's. In the glass, she could almost see the familiar trace of his outline, bent over her. His arms, encircling her waist, his lips kissing the hollow of her temple, tracing down the shell of her ear. She could almost feel his breath on her neck, the memory of the first time he had bitten her still vivid in her partially recovered memories. She had almost loved him, once upon a time, back when she was still young and innocent...
No! She closed her eyes and shook her head furiously, banishing the illusion. The vision of him in the glass seemed to stare deep into her soul, a mocking understanding in his old, old eyes, before vanishing into the ether from which he came. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, too exhausted to sob. Almost too exhausted to fight him. It would be so easy to just give in, to let herself be caught in the honeyed trap, that illusion of eternity where they would be together forever...
No, it was no illusion. She could not escape him, not now, not ever. But she would never be his willing puppet again. She was not his toy. She might be of his blood, but she did not belong to him. He may proclaim to love her, but he did not understand love. That child of thousands of years, who sought only to possess, to own and discard at a whim. She had hated him, cursed him to be alone forever, that night centuries ago. But even that burning hate had faded as time marched on, leaving only an empty shell. She despised him still, but it was too exhausting to hate him. Forever, as it were, was a very long time, and she was starting to feel it wear down on her, and this was only just the beginning, horrifying as it was to even contemplate.
You pitiful man... Marigold's last words, before the flames had consumed her, scattering her ashes into the wind. That poor girl...she felt her heart clench, remembering the desperation with which Marigold had held her, the way the other girl had trembled whenever they came into contact. The possessiveness with which Marigold had latched onto her that day, seeking to own her the way False did. Yet she did not loathe Marigold as much as she did False. That poor girl was as much a victim as she had been, and her madness was but a result of his manipulations. She missed her. She missed them all.
Cherry, Rose, Cattleya, Nasturtium, Marguerite, Jasmine, Clematis, Mimosa, Sylvatica, Camellia...yes, even Silane and Lindou...
Not to mention all the other names, fallen by the wayside as False had sacrificed them to his experiments. She had found the old photograph, fallen under one of the bodies, while she was burying them, the last thing she was able to do for everyone. That old photograph from the beginning, the first class of the Clan, where Snow had been next to her. The beginning of the eternal Chrysalis, the nightmare that would continue on for 800 years...
She did not know why she kept the photograph. A memorial, perhaps, for the ones who had gone forever. She did not have the photos for the final class, before she had awakened them all from the dream False had forced upon them. But they would be carved forever onto her heart, the eternal requiem, as Snow had implied. The fate of those who could not die.
"I am to be your memorial, a testimony that you once were."
She whispered into the empty room. If their souls were listening, perhaps they would be comforted? Even though she herself was beyond comfort.
Don't forget me.
Never. Not until the end of time.
Maybe not even then.
Let's dream together, forever!