Lemony did not hear her come in. He never did, in fact. She always had that stealth, that way of passing unnoticed even under the most scrutinous of eyes. It was her talent, and she knew it. He did not stop to look back at her, though. He was far too busy to do that.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" He inquired, not moving from his chair. He kept on typing even as he spoke. Time was a precious thing to him, and there was not a moment to waste when it came to this. She stood by the door, hesitant on whether to move any further.
The room was small and dark, and hot as hell. She could barely breath there, the air was heavy and smelled of imprisionment. She reckoned he hadn't left it in weeks. The typewriter's rhythmic sound echoed in the background of her thoughts. Tip, tip, tip.
The place was a mess, filled with papers. There were piles of newspaper cuts, files and photographs scattered across the floor, notes and pieces of evidence covering his desk. A microscope stood, abandoned momentarily, to his left side on the table, with a big piece of cloth fixed on its view. The desk was the only piece of furniture in the entire room other than his chair, and yet it seemed as if nothing else could fit in such an enclosed place. It made her claustrophobic just to think about it.
The table was opposite her, facing what had once been a beautiful window with a stunning view of the city. Now it was sealed forever, woods stuck firmly to the wall preventing any strangers from seeing through it. Tip, tip, tip.
"I needed to see you. Before you leave." She stepped on that last word almost accidentally, but could not help it. She was wounded.
Lemony stopped typing abruptly. He knew she would find out sooner or later, but he would have preferred if it had been later, when he would already be gone.
"Kit, I-" he started, but his sister interrupted.
"If what you wish is to express a poor excuse of an apology, please save it. I did not come here to seek explanations. I have had enough of explanations and apologies for a lifetime." She sighed, and tried to move closer. She gently pushed aside an old script of a famous opera and a highlighted article of The Daily Punctilio, and moved further into the room.
"I simply came because –"
She gasped. Now that she had completely entered his – office, she was provided with a better look of what surrounded her. And it was the left wall what had called her attention. A hand-drawn mind map had been painted over the cracked old wallpaper. In it, Lemony had pinned a thousand things, such as the ones that laid on his floor. He had joined them with arrows and lines making out confusing patterns, here and there he had stuck maps with various marked exes on them, and had even included notes to some of the documents. She nodded sadly.
"Because I want to say goodbye" She finished.
Lemony turned around to face her.
Dark circles had taken their place under his swollen eyes, and his look was quiet and tired. They most likely stung. Kit knew then that he had not slept in days. She could see, even in the dim light, that his hands were trembling from the effort, red and full of blisters. He looked starved, his cheekbones sticking out noticeably from his pale face, giving him a ghostly aspect. She had never seen him in such a poor state.
"My God" she whispered, covering her mouth.
"You do not know how glad I am to see you."
Lemony dedicated her a weak but honest smile. He looked old, much older than her. Nobody would have guessed he was the youngest of the Snicket siblings. Not by the way he looked. But then again, he was the one who had been through it all, the one who had experienced the most pain. The one who had lost it all. All, except for his siblings. And he was about to lose that, too.
Kit hugged him. A hug that would seem plain to any outsider, a simple hug. But to the Snickets, hugs were the only comfort in their misery, the feeling that they had someone they could share their sorrows with. Whenever woe striked them – and it often did – and they felt hopeless, like there was no way out, they would just hug each other. None of them would say a word, but for that moment, even if it was just a second, they felt they had a home, like they belonged somewhere. Like they were safe.
To have family members to share the horrors they had to deal with, all VFD members could agree, was the only little perk of their miserable lives.
"Can't you stay here, with us?" Kit asked hopelessly, for she already knew the answer.
"You know I can't. If they find me here and hurt any of you, I would never forgive myself. You are in danger as long as I am here. That's why I need to write this." He looked at his typewriter and his already-written 25 pages, then at his mind map on the wall. "I leave today, at midnight."
A tear ran down Kit's cheek, and another one, and another one. She sobbed quietly as his brother spoke, scarcely believing what was happening. She could not bring herself to believe that the world she was starting to get used to, a world of happiness and friendship and kindness, could crumble so easily and break into pieces in just a few days.
Now it would not be the Snickets facing the unknown anymore. It would not be the three brave siblings against the wickedness of the world, but each on his and her own, struggling to stay alive.
With one last good-bye, Kit turned around and faced the door to leave. She knew that, the moment she crossed it, she would never see her brother again. Gently, she pushed it open.
"You know what's the worst part?" Kit said suddenly, "That it never ends. You think that it will, because it has to end at some point, but it just doesn't. Nothing changes, and the pain doesn't stop. It's a series, a repetitive chain of events."
"It seems it won't end, and our misfortune will continue forever." Lemony agreed.
"Yes, so it seems," Kit nodded absent-mindedly, "Ours is a series of unfortunate events."