Baby, I said, it's all in our hands
Got to learn to respect what we don't understand
We are fortunate ones, fortunate ones I swear

-Indigo Girls

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Part 23: (P)reparations

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Treading as quietly as she could manage, Lilith crept along one of the many curved hallways of the Great Library, her back to the shelves and her hands out to either side, her fingers sliding along the spines of the books as she moved cautiously forward.

She had originally come down here following a hunch, but once she heard the echo of steps other than her own, she realized that something was amiss. She knew Eve's footfalls by heart, and this was most certainly not her.

Eventually, the alien footsteps stopped, and based on her current location, Lilith could guess their destination. After taking a deep breath, she gritted her teeth and charged.

She ended up startling the intruder just as he was pulling a book from the shelves, and before he could react, she had tackled him to the stone-tiled floor, leaving the book (that book, of course), to teeter on the shelf before falling with a soft whump.

Within seconds, Lilith had him pinned beneath her, both hands around his wrists and her full weight against his hips. "You," she scowled. "I should have known it was you. What are you doing here, Aaya?"

"Once again finding myself straddled by a powerful woman, it appears," Aaya sighed. "Your favored position, if memory serves?"

Lilith felt her face heat up. "How do you know about that?"

"My dear goddess, I've been cleaning up after you since practically the beginning of time. You learn a few things over the millennia."

With a growl, Lilith got up off of Aaya and went to pick up the book. "So, you want to tell me why you were messing with this, of all books?"

"Perhaps I'm just taking a personal interest in things?" Aaya smiled as he clambered to his feet.

"You're up to something, aren't you?"

"Usually."

If her hands hadn't been full with the book, Lilith would have been sorely tempted to slap that smirk off of his face. "You're messing with Hazuki-chan again, aren't you?"

"Again? Whatever do you mean, again?"

"Don't play dumb with me. Something's different about her now, and I know you're involved somehow."

Aaya let out a long sigh, and his expression softened. "Lilith-sama, esteemed Keeper of the Great Library... have I ever, in the history of creation, done anything to truly harm your worlds, or their inhabitants?"

"No," Lilith admitted, grudgingly. "But the idea of you taking a 'personal interest' is anything but comforting."

"I always find myself drawn to a story," Aaya shrugged. "And you must admit, with the number of Eve's kindred living within these pages, the potential for stories has increased by several orders of magnitude. Can you truly blame me?"

"If I want to."

"And anyhow," Aaya went on, "shouldn't you be the one taking a personal interest in this particular book at this particular time?"

Lilith narrowed her eyes at the seemingly young man. "What do you mean by that?"

"Hmm, I seem to recall a promise that needs to be kept?" he said, putting his head to one side and staring back at her. "A promise extracted from you, but a promise nevertheless?"

She almost asked how it was that he knew about that, as well, but with Ken-chan always acting as his eyes... "That's none of your business, you little interloper. Now, get out of here! I may not be able to permanently hurt you, but I can still have lots of fun seeing just how much I can manage to!"

"Ah, hostility then?" Aaya sighed. "Very well, goddess. I shall depart."

Aaya took one step sideways and vanished into nothing, but not before he gave her a last wink and a Cheshire-Cat smile. "For now..."

Lilith stood there for a few long moments until she was satisfied that he had departed, then set the book containing Hazuki and the others back upon its shelf.

Her fingertips lingered on the spine, and she felt for a particular Souma presence within.

"Damn it," she growled.

With all of three days before the cultural festival (and with it, the opera), Chikaru was not at all surprised to see that Sayuri was not even bothering to tie back her hair anymore, instead letting it hang loosely around her shoulders.

Today, Chikaru and her exhausted assistants were touring the backstage area in preparation for that evening's technical dress rehearsal, and here in the wings, at least, Chikaru was able to give some good news to her beleaguered Vice-President. "They were able to set it up for us this morning," she said, indicating the large flat-screen monitor mounted to the wall just offstage. "This is directly tied in to a camera pointed at the orchestra conductor's podium, so anyone standing here will be able to follow the baton and sing without being seen by the audience." She turned on the monitor to demonstrate, and it lit up with a picture of the unoccupied orchestra pit.

"Oh, that should be nice," Ayame nodded. "Don't you think, Sayuri-chan?"

"It'll help," Sayuri acknowledged. "I talked to the chorus last night, and we had a few of them who feel confident enough with the other parts that they'd be willing to join in from here. They'll lose some sound since they'll be singing from the wings, of course, but every bit should help at this point. I just wish now we hadn't separated the chorus rehearsals the way we did, so that everyone would be at least a little more familiar with each other's parts."

"We kind of had to, Sayuri-chan," Ayame reminded her.

"Indeed," Chikaru agreed. "We were already pushing things with the administrators, asking for as many formal rehearsal hours per student as we did. Still, it's nice to know that some of them enjoyed the music enough to cross-learn parts of it on their own."

They stepped out onto the stage, which was dark apart from a single tall lamp standing at center (a theater tradition, Chikaru had learned, though she was not certain of its origin). Tonight, one way or another, they would have a more solid look at where they stood. Tonight there would be orchestra, and lighting, and microphones, and stage crew, and... well, everything except an audience. Chikaru let out a brisk sigh and heard it echo faintly back to her. "Well, my dears, are we ready?"

Neither of the other two said a word, so Chikaru tried something else. "Or at least as ready as we're likely to get?"

"I think it's going to be fine," Ayame ventured. "Amazing things can happen once the adrenaline kicks in."

"Now if only we had an epi-pen to give to the Étoile," Sayuri said under her breath.

"Sayuri-chan," Ayame sighed.

"Actually, there is one last thing," Sayuri went on, reaching into her skirt pocket to pull out a folded sheet of paper. "Mizushima-san gave this to me earlier."

"What is it?" Chikaru asked, taking the proffered note.

"Her suggested lyrics for a fourth verse to the Major-General song."

Chikaru unfolded the paper and read it.

She read it again.

She read it for a third time, still wondering if her eyes might be playing tricks on her. "She's not serious..?"

"She seemed pretty serious to me," Sayuri shrugged.

"We can't possibly allow it," said Chikaru, shaking her head.

"At this point, I honestly think we should just let her," Sayuri said with a somewhat grim smile. "At least that would give the audience something else to talk about after it's over."

"But she could get in trouble for this," Chikaru insisted. "Sayuri-chan, as the music director, you could get in trouble for this."

"Hmm, I suppose. Such are the hazards of being a satirist, though, don't you think?"

Chikaru re-folded the paper and handed it back to her Vice-President. "I'm sorry, but I'm putting my foot down. You have too much riding on this, Sayuri-chan. I'll find Mizushima-san and tell her so myself.

"Hey, don't hold back on my account," Sayuri frowned, with just a touch of heat in her voice. "I'm surprised at you, Chikaru. This is just the sort of sh!t-stirring that you're famous for."

"Perhaps," Chikaru frowned in reply. "But it's not about me, now, is it?

Kaori looked up from her textbook as she head a knock on her bedroom door. She waited for the usual call of "Kaori-chan?" from Miyuki, but to her surprise, it did not come.

Puzzled as to who else might be knocking, she got up from her desk, padded over to the door, and pulled it open, only to have her blood run cold as she saw who was standing at the other side.

"Good morning, Kaori-chan," said Lilith, giving her a somewhat strained smile. "May I come in?"

"Of... course," Kaori replied, stepping back to allow entry to the goddess who had once been her sister.

While she was not what anyone would describe as tall, Lilith still had to duck slightly to allow the Hat of the Keepers to clear the door-frame. Once inside, she took a brief look around. "My, my. This is all very 'guest room,' Kaori-chan. Barely a hint of your personality anywhere."

"Yes, well, I never quite felt comfortable settling in, seeing as I had no idea how long I'd be staying."

To Kaori's surprise, Lilith actually looked a little amused. "May I sit? I need to talk to you, and... it may take some time."

"Please," Kaori replied, indicating the "reading chair" which Miyuki had added to the room a few weeks prior. She was still not certain she actually wanted this conversation, but given that Lilith had been polite enough to ask to sit, not to mention polite enough to knock rather than simply materialize in the room, Kaori felt that it might be best to see where this led. She reclaimed her own seat at her desk and regarded the other woman with half-hooded eyes. "So... have you come to take me away?"

"No, not yet," said Lilith, shaking her head, "but this is... tangentially about that."

"Very well, then."

A few long moments passed before Lilith spoke again. "Before I get into the meat of things, let me start off by saying that I owe you an apology."

Kaori blinked. This, she had definitely not expected.

"Now... you may not be aware of this, Kaori-chan, but when we were last in your birth-world, you committed a grievous sin against me."

"When I hit Eve?"

To her surprise, Lilith gave her a tiny smirk. "No, it was a little bit after that, when you tried to extort us by threatening to use your untrained abilities to rewrite your own world."

Kaori had no reply to this. Lilith's voice was still conversational enough, but it was obvious that things could go pear-shaped in a hurry, and Kaori found herself tightening her grip on her chair.

"Let me make something very clear, Kaori-chan," Lilith went on. "At that moment, you were threatening one of my books. I would have been completely within my rights as Keeper of the Great Library to end your existence right then and there, and no one, not even Eve, would have been able to stop me."

A longer, thicker silence followed. "Then... why didn't you?" Kaori asked at last.

"For several reasons, really," Lilith replied. "First of all, it would have broken Eve's heart. Secondly, it would have done much the same to me: as much as you may not believe it, Kaori-chan, I truly enjoyed being your sister for all those years."

Memories of her lost past flickered through Kaori's mind's eye, along with the startling thought that she was not the only one who remembered them after all: the goddess sitting before her did as well.

"Along with that, though," Lilith continued, giving the much younger girl a sardonic smile, "I didn't do it because that was exactly what you wanted me to do, and I have my reputation as a contrarian bitch to keep up."

Kaori swallowed hard, but said nothing.

"I have many rules to follow as a Keeper," Lilith went on. "Along with that, though, I have many rights as a goddess. The rules are firm, but they also leave us wiggle room. If I were acting by the letter of the law, I would have struck you down where you stood that day. Instead, I used that wiggle room and chose another option."

"Out of mercy?" Kaori asked her.

Lilith shook her head. "Quite the opposite, actually. If I had wanted to be merciful, I would have ended you, and only we would have suffered at your loss. Instead, I gave you what you asked for - I wrote you out of your book - but I left you alive to see the consequences of what you were threatening." She paused. "It wasn't pleasant, was it?"

"No," Kaori replied, feeling a roil of emotions deep within, but not daring to let them surface. Not yet.

"It has since been pointed out to me that my actions were on the vindictive side," Lilith continued, "and in retrospect, I can see the truth in that. I had to do something to answer the threat. As a Keeper, I should have erased you, but as your sister, I wanted to spare you, and a goddess, I wanted to teach you a hard lesson about what you are now. So for that, Kaori-chan, I owe you an apology."

"Wait," said Kaori in a tight voice. "Are you seriously apologizing for not killing me?"

"As ridiculous as it sounds, I am," Lilith nodded. "I acted out of a weird mix of sentimentality and vindictiveness rather than doing my job. Which, finally, brings me to the here and now."

Here, Lilith stared directly into Kaori's eyes, and the younger girl found that she could not force herself to look away. "I made a promise to someone," said the goddess, "that I would forgive you for your unknowing transgression and find you a new home. The thing is, I didn't make that promise to you, and that means you still have right of refusal. If you still wish for it, Kaori-chan, I could belatedly do my duty as a Keeper, and finish what you asked me to do that day."

A silence fell as Keeper and Souma-touched mortal stared one another down, but the voice that broke that silence belonged to neither of them. "Well, I do hope you realize that if you tried to hurt her, you'd have to go through me first."

Kaori tore her eyes away from Lilith to see Miyuki standing in the open doorway, arms crossed, shoulder leaned against the frame, her pose the very picture of nonchalance. "Miyuki-san!" she gasped, looking rapidly between her host and her guest. "How- how much did you hear?" she asked, suddenly worried for the older woman's safety.

"Quite enough," Miyuki nodded, after which she turned a friendly smile to the Keeper. "You must be the Lilith I've heard so much about. Any friend of Kaori-chan's is welcome here, of course, though I would hope it goes without saying that no one will be 'ending' anyone in my home, if I have anything to say about it."

"Hello, Miyuki-chan," Lilith nodded, giving her a soft smile. "It's... actually very nice to see you again. But as it happens, Kaori-chan is the only one who has anything to say about it."

"Ah, but one moment, please," said Miyuki, holding up one finger. "Now, I may be an ignorant mortal here, but it sounds as though you're condemning Kaori-chan for breaking a rule that you did not warn her about, regarding a power that you gave to her in the first place. Forgive me for this comparison, Kaori-chan, but that sounds like handing a baseball bat to a toddler in a china shop and then getting angry when she breaks something. That hardly seems fair."

"Unfortunately, 'fair' does not always apply when you're dealing with the potential loss of untold trillions of lives."

"Perhaps, but as the ones who gave her the means to do that damage, with no set of instructions to go with those means, wouldn't you and your sister goddess share some of the responsibility?"

"Which is why I'm here," Lilith smiled, though irritation was clear in her voice.

"Wait, let me make sure I've got this absolutely straight," Kaori said in a low voice. "You're leaving it up to me, now? You're giving the choice of life or death back to me, after you originally left me alive just to spite me?"

Lilith bristled. "As I said, there were several reasons other than that. And it wasn't to spite you: it was to teach you some respect for this power you have now."

"So you're ceding the decision to me?" Kaori went on. "You won't change your mind and decide it for me again later? My word on the matter is final, in spite of these past transgressions?"

"You've been cleared of all charges, and you have my word on that."

Kaori found that a bitter smile had come to her lips. "Well, then, I think the decision should be obvious."

She held the silence for a while, enjoying the idea of keeping Lilith in suspense, but then she glanced at Miyuki and saw the stricken look on her face. At that moment, she realized that the decision was anything but obvious to the woman who had taken her in during her darkest moments.

"I'm going to stay alive as long as I possibly can," she said, directing this at Miyuki, then locked eyes with the goddess. "Just to spite you."

For a short but satisfying moment, Lilith looked completely gobsmacked, but then she let out a bark of laughter. "That's the sister I remember. So be it, then."

Kaori chanced another look at Miyuki, and saw that while her nonchalant pose had not changed during any of this, she had now closed her eyes and was biting her lower lip.

"Now then," Lilith went on. "It may interest you to know that in the time since you came to this world, a significant number of your Souma sisters have been very keen on looking out for your well-being, up to and including one of them committing another act of goddess-extortion on your behalf." She paused and visibly pondered this for a moment. "Well... mostly on your behalf, to be fair. I think there was a little bit of a dominance-play going on there as well, but that's not important right now. The point is that each and every one of the sisters you met that day at Shizuma's vacation house has asked either me or Eve when we're going to find you a new home and a new life, and even tried to use divine favors to make that happen."

Now it was Kaori's turn to be gobsmacked. "They... they what?"

"Every one of them is looking out for you, Kaori-chan," Lilith nodded. "To be honest, I couldn't figure out why: none of them knew you in your original world, after all, and they didn't owe you anything."

Kaori had been thinking much the same thing. What was she to them?

"Now, as I think you already know, the Tamao-chan of this world has the same kind of Souma as you. What you don't know is that after she helped perform a service for the Great Library, we owed her a reward, and she asked me for lessons."

"On how to use the power?" Kaori asked.

"No," Lilith smiled. "On how to avoid using it unwisely."

Kaori nodded. That sounded sensible, just like the Tamao she remembered from her own world.

"It wasn't until the first of those lessons, though, that she told me why she chose that as her boon: it was because of you."

"Me?" Kaori gasped. "But... how? Why?"

"It was the way you described how it felt when I pulled you fully from your world," Lilith explained. "That was when she truly realized the scope of what Maker Souma can do, so she asked for my help before she could make a mistake like you nearly did. So you see, Kaori-chan, your threat to your book ended up having an unexpected positive effect going forward."

"I... I had no idea," Kaori whispered.

"Another reason I came here today," Lilith nodded, rising to her feet. "I believe you're in contact with Tamao-chan, yes?"

"I am."

"Well, I'm going to continue to give her the lessons she asked for. I'll leave the rest to you. I'm sure she'd be happy to return the favor you did for her, even if it was done unknowingly."

Lilith turned and gave Miyuki a polite bow. "Thank you for having me in your home, Miyuki-chan."

"It was my pleasure," said Miyuki dryly. "Though I would appreciate it if you used the front door next time. Or at least allowed me to hang up your hat."

"Sorry, the hat stays," Lilith smirked. "Well, Kaori-chan, I'm glad we had this little chat. I'll be in touch."

The room filled with a brilliant green, and Lilith vanished from sight.

Kaori took a deep breath, quickly realizing that she probably owed Miyuki a bit of an explanation, but when she looked up, she saw that her host had come into the room and was standing beside her chair.

"Stand up, Kaori-chan," Miyuki said in a soft, slightly broken voice.

Confused by this, Kaori did so, only for Miyuki to wrap her arms around the smaller girl and pull her into a tight embrace. "Mi- Miyuki-san?"

"Kaori-chan," Miyuki said, very close to her ear, "I am well aware of the fact that the day will come when you leave, and that I will likely never see you again. As difficult as it has been, I have made peace with that unfortunate truth. That being said, I will thank you to never, ever scare me like that again."

"Miyuki-san," Kaori whispered, reaching to hold the achingly familiar woman in reply.

They were out of time. Even Chikaru had to admit it.

The night before the festival found the Lulim president holed up in a rehearsal room along with Sayuri and Amane, desperately trying to wring out some cram practice time for the Étoile. The final dress rehearsal had ended earlier in the day, and the news had not been good: even with a microphone, Amane's vocals were shaky at best, inaudible at worst.

As the Sergeant of Police, Amane was called upon to sing in a total of three numbers, including the finale. The second of those (a call-response song between the Sergeant and the chorus of police) could still be cut even at this eleventh hour, and Chikaru felt herself on the verge of making that hard decision, as much as she hated to do it. The other two, however, had to stay, so they were trying to focus on those, turning this last-minute practice into an endless repetition of the same lines, with little change in the Étoile's ability to hit the right notes with anything resembling confidence. Sayuri would demonstrate the line on the piano, Amane would not quite get it, Chikaru would offer assurances, rinse, repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

In the end, it was Amane who snapped first.

"Don't you get it yet?" the Étoile growled after another botched melody line. "I can't do this! Just drop me from the cast, and one of you go on for me. Say that I got last-second laryngitis. Say that I got hit by a bus. I don't care, just do this without me!"

"Étoile-sama..." Chikaru sighed.

"No, don't you 'Étoile-sama' me," Amane scowled at her. "I'm not you, Chikaru! This may come as a surprise, but we're not all like you! We can't all keep up with you and your whims!"

Chikaru bit back on a reply, deciding that she would take her punishment.

"We could have done a play," Amane ranted. "Just a normal play, like everyone before us has done. But you don't operate like that, do you? Everything has to be different! Everything has to have your stamp on it! Far be it for Minamoto Chikaru to do something ordinary, even if that means putting the rest of us through Hell to get there!"

"That's enough!"

Along with the shout came the clatter of the rehearsal piano's bench hitting the floor, and both Amane and Chikaru turned to see that a furious Sayuri had risen to her feet, and was staring daggers at the Étoile.

"Sayuri, please," said Chikaru.

The Lulim Vice-President shook her head, but her eyes never left Amane. "No, Chikaru, not even for you. I don't care if she is the Étoile; I will not let her speak to you like that."

For her part, Amane looked stunned, so Sayuri took a step closer and went on, her voice now dangerously low and tremulous. "Do you want to know why Chikaru decided to do a light opera, Étoile-sama? The real reason?"

"You don't have to do this..." said Chikaru. Let me take the heat. Please.

Sayuri ignored her and went on. "She's not doing this for herself! This isn't some kind of ego trip! She did this for me and Ayame! This was her gift to us before we graduate next spring!"

Amane blinked, still in apparent shock at the outburst from Chikaru's normally quiet assistant. "I... don't understand."

"Of course you don't, because she didn't tell you. Here's the thing: Ayame and I are trying to get into a prestigious conservatory, so we can go on studying music and dance and theater, but they won't even look at us unless they have a demonstration of our work. Chikaru got wind of this, and being Chikaru, she completely scrapped her original plans to do a 'normal play,' like you would have wanted, and gave us this opportunity to maybe, just maybe, take an otherwise impossible step closer to our dreams. Don't you dare talk to her like she did this out of selfishness, or out of ego! I will f*cking fight you first!"

"I..." Amane managed, completely aghast, but that was all she could get out before Sayuri continued.

"On paper, Chikaru is the Director, but she's been ninety-five percent hands-off. She's letting us do this our way, and she's set it up so that we'll get all the credit if it succeeds, and she'll take all the heat if it fails. But! There is one place in particular where she overrode my decisions all along, and that concerns you, Étoile-sama. If it had been up to me, you would have had an understudy from day one, and we'd be going with that understudy tomorrow. Chikaru didn't allow that, though, and do you want to know why?"

She took another step closer, until she was standing almost nose-to-nose with the seated Amane. "It's because Chikaru, for some reason I can't for the life of me imagine right now, believes in you."

For a while, nothing more was said, then Sayuri stepped back and bent down to right the fallen piano bench. "So, you can give me a thousand demerits for mouthing off to the Étoile now, if you want. Whatever. I think I'm beyond caring at this point."

"Amane," Chikaru said then, "while I perhaps would not have used such colorful language to say it, Sayuri is telling the truth. I was the one who insisted that we keep you in this role, because no one knows better than I that you can command the stage when you need to. For all your reluctance, you did it in Carmen, and I still believe you can do it here."

The Étoile ran both hands over her face, then gave Chikaru an exhausted, almost helpless look. "That's just it, though: In Carmen, I didn't have to sing."

Even as part of her mind searched for the next (probably empty) reassurances, another thought suddenly dawned on Chikaru with such force, and such clarity, that for a moment she forgot to breathe.

Could it actually be that simple?

"Sayuri, Étoile-sama," she whispered, "I think I have an idea..."

Next: Festival (no, for real this time!)