I did warn you this fic wasn't going to treat Lilly kindly. All downhill from here!
ForeverFictional: Yep! It's going to take about 14 years before she actually dies, but it's starting right now.
dragonsatdawn: For better or for worse, yeah, she's not gonna die just now. She's just gonna spend the next 14-ish years dying very slowly. :S
Glad you liked the Munce and Geckles! I feel like the show kind of steamrollered past the fact that actually Skull Sorcerer was right, Lilly did lie to them about the swords being magic. It really puts a dent in Lilly's "noble warrior" halo when you think about it, but they sorta sweep that all under the rug. But it gave me a very convenient opening to explore Lilly being a flawed character in her own right!
Would you believe me if I said the song is less messed-up than what I'm going to do to Lilly? X3 But yes. They keep all their angst in a large box labeled "Maple Syrup Recipes," in hopes that'll head off anyone searching for it. But I tracked it down. XP
Thanks much! And yes, more Cole coming right up!
JustRandom: It's not from MotM specifically! Not to worry, I'm just about 100% certain you'll recognize the purple reference. :3
Aw, that's nice of you to say. I promise I won't lie to you guys about any magic swords, at least. :P
I do love the mental image of a Dopey colony, but yes that's kind of creepy. XD
Woah, cool! For some reason the only scream I can remember right now is Vania's, but I don't doubt Harumi's must be pretty distinct.
Ah, it might not have been a reference, to be honest . . . Stone? What stone? ^_^''
MotM really kinda gave her a halo. She was this epic warrior who saved entire peoples, she gave Cole all this soulful advice about standing up to the cruel and unjust, she came off as the second St. George or somethin. And then along comes me and is like, "nahhhhhhh." :P
No no no, I saw Vangelis doing tasks, he's not the Imposter! :B
Adjective, I think? But aw, thanks. ^_^''
At least in later seasons, yes he is. XD Sometimes excessively so.
Oof. Good luck with all those tests then, hang in there. Thanks for the review!
Lilly recovered, although nobody could ever figure out what had been wrong with her in the first place. She could breathe now, at least. There didn't seem to be any lingering effects.
After that, most of the time, she stayed quietly at home and threw herself into being a mother. She wasn't bad at it. Giving her everything for Cole was easy. But every now and then, she would feel the creature scratching at the fringes of her mind, whispering. Always she would lock it out, knowing that letting it in would mean losing her mind, harming her baby. But every time the creature would whisk to somewhere else in her body and take its revenge there.
Every few months a new illness. Her lungs would fill with blood. Holes would suddenly open up in her viscera. Her heart would fly out of rhythm. She would lose the ability to keep any food down for weeks on end. A random joint would suddenly swell up, stiff and painful. Her veins would clot. Her nerves would die. Her muscles would melt off her bones. She developed complications in organs she didn't even know she had. Sometimes she wondered if every injury she'd ever inflicted on anyone else was now being returned to her.
The first few times, Lou was anxious and attentive. He fussed over her, stayed up all night worrying, spent every spare moment staying with her at the hospital. With time, however, as he realized that no doctor could pin down a diagnosis and his ministrations didn't cure her—nothing cured her—he grew indifferent. Then he seemed to even grow impatient. "You're delirious again? Now I'll have to miss rehearsal while I find Cole a babysitter. This is awfully inconvenient, could you at least try to have some consideration for the rest of us?"
If he didn't say it out loud, anyway, he was pretty clearly thinking it. He seemed to almost resent her sickness. He hadn't signed up for a high-maintenance wife.
Then there was Cole. They had originally sworn to stop fighting for his sake, but that went out the window quickly enough. If anything, he gave them more things to fight over. They both adored him, but they had diametrically opposed ideas about what was good for him. Lou wanted him doing ballet positions the second he could stand. Lilly wanted him to run wild and explore his world unfettered, nothing like the prison she'd grown up in herself. At first they at least tried to not fight in front of him, but soon it became clear that would basically require not being around him at all. They could not hold a conversation without fighting. They could not make eye contact without fighting. They had at least one thing in common, though, and that was that they were both proud, stubborn, and convinced the other one was a moron who deserved no concessions.
One day when Cole was about three, Lilly was recuperating in bed after her latest hospitalization. She heard an uproar in the front hall. Stumbling to her bedroom door, she found Lou marching Cole into the house, yelling at him all the while. He caught sight of Lilly and fixed her with a look that suggested this was basically all her fault.
"Could you at least teach this child some basic common sense?" he snapped. "I turn my back on him for two minutes and he goes straight into the mud!"
"He's three years old, what do you expect from him?" Lilly snapped back, angry that he would fault a literal toddler for wanting to play in the mud. How detached from reality could you get?
"Basic obedience," growled Lou. "I expressly told him to keep his clothes clean!"
"What else did you tell him, to file your taxes for you?"
"Oh, of course, you go straight to insults instead of taking any responsibility," sneered Lou. "I don't know what I was expecting."
The fight careened off into all the oldest, tiredest, bitterest topics. Cole swayed forgotten in the foyer, sucking one grubby fist and listening with tearful eyes. He was old enough to absorb the miserable atmosphere, but not old enough to feel like the fighting was all his fault.
Yet.
He was about four when Misako got pregnant in turn. She was of course a good bit older than Lilly, and the pregnancy was harder on her. Lilly did her best to support her old friend, although it felt so strange to be giving advice and reassurance to someone who had spent so long mentoring her.
She came to visit soon after the delivery.
"Ohhhh, Misako," she gasped, as soon as she laid eyes on the tiny blond being asleep in a bassinet. "He's incredible."
"I know, I love him," breathed Misako. "His name is Lloyd."
There were tears in her voice, though. Lilly looked up sharply.
"Misako? Is anything wrong?" Her heart seizing, she swooped over to grab Misako's hand. "Oh, there's nothing wrong with him, is there?!"
"No, he's healthy," said Misako. "Everything is fine."
"You don't sound fine." Lilly searched her face.
"It's nothing, sweetheart." Misako looked away as long as she could, but she knew that Lilly's gaze never left her. Eventually she could no longer feasibly hide the tears pooling in her eyes.
"It's really nothing," she said hoarsely, wiping her eyes hastily. "I'm just a little tired, that's all. It was a stressful night."
"There were complications?" said Lilly.
"Not for me." Misako smiled bitterly. Her gaze flicked to Garmadon, passed-out in a chair in the corner. Lilly's heart seized again.
"He didn't take it well?" she whispered.
"He was nervous I guess," Misako whispered back. "He took it out on the staff. He threatened basically the entire floor, screaming insults, overturning furniture, they called security on him—" She swallowed, struggling to compose herself. Her voice, when she regained it, was thin with rage and shame. "I was so afraid. I was afraid they would abandon me, because if the husband mistreats them why not punish the wife, she's helpless, and they would leave me all alone and I would die—"
"Misako," Lilly breathed. She didn't realize when, but she had grasped both of Misako's hands by now. She could feel them shaking.
"I hate him so much."
Lilly might not have even heard it if she hadn't been so familiar with the feeling herself. She swallowed and settled down on the edge of the bed, still squeezing Misako's hands tightly, and let her forehead rest against the older woman's.
"I know," she whispered. "I know. But you're all right now. Everything is all right."
She didn't know how to feel anymore. She thought of Garmadon's kindness from her childhood and felt sick at the thought of hating him. Of anyone hating him. But the venom had grown much stronger in him over the years, and she knew he was no longer the man who had cared for her. Or for Misako. Look what had happened to her and Lou, even without any venom worsening the picture.
Maybe men just changed when they married. Maybe women did too, just to be fair about it. But she was beginning to realize there was no surer way to start hating someone than to shackle yourself to them for life.
When Cole was almost five he started asking uncomfortable questions.
"Mommy," he said out of nowhere, looking up from a coloring book. "Why don't you and Daddy love each other?"
Lilly nearly dropped the vase she'd been dusting.
"Cole, baby!" she said reproachfully. "Why would you say that?"
"When people on the TV love each other, they don't act like you." Cole's lower lip jutted out in equal reproach. "They act nice."
Lilly felt her heart breaking. Suddenly she was reminded of her nine-year-old self struggling to come to grips with the endless disappointments of real life.
On the other hand, maybe it was better for Cole to learn this lesson early.
"TV doesn't do a very good job copying real life, sweetie," she said. "Those are just stories. People make them up to show how they'd like the world to be, not how it really is. In real life, love isn't like that. It's not all just being happy and saying sweet things, it's more complicated."
"Well, why does it have to be complicated?" said Cole petulantly. Lilly sighed.
"I don't know, honey. Real life is just a little harder, that's all."
"Well, I don't like it." Cole resumed coloring, leaving thick, vindictive orange marks on the paper. "I don't care. When I grow up I'm gonna be like the people on TV. I'm gonna be nice."
Lilly hung her head and didn't reply. She couldn't get that intense about crushing Cole's innocence, not at this age; she could only hope that he would adjust his attitude easily once the real world started smacking him around.
It did pain her to realize how close he was to the truth, though. Deep down she knew he was right. She and Lou hadn't loved each other for . . . a very long time. They were just each other's habit; they were just locked in a sick sadomasochistic cycle where they'd rather stay to keep hurting each other than go their separate ways. She had often thought of couples therapy, some kind of counseling, something to help them have a better marriage and not subject Cole to their daily (hourly) screaming matches.
Then immediately after she'd try not to laugh. Imagine, someone as insecure and haughty as Lou, who went into a cold rage if you questioned his tie choice, gravely listening to some simpering upstart telling him he was parenting wrong and should do it this way instead. He'd be on trial for murder within the week.
To be brutally honest, she wasn't sure she wouldn't attempt murder herself, in that situation. She had a lifetime's worth of hating herself, shrinking from any further wound to her heavily-scarred ego. The mere thought of having all her mistakes dissected and scolded, of being told that she was doing things wrong and screwing up her child's entire life, made her violently queasy. She would do almost anything for Cole, but subjecting herself to that . . . no.
Maybe that meant she just didn't love him enough. She wouldn't be surprised. She didn't know if she even believed in love anymore at all.
Just a few days later came the news that Garmadon was gone. The Underworld was one soul fuller.
Wu said he hadn't pushed him, and Lilly believed him. It only cemented her suspicions, though. If she'd been told there was only one instance of real love in the entire world, she would have known it was Wu's love for his troubled older brother. If he had fought Garmadon to the death, watched him fall into darkness, and walked away with this much quiet resignation to being enemies, there was really no hope for all the rest of them.
Misako cried, more out of habit than out of any real grief. Within a few months she had vanished, taking Lloyd with her. Lilly never saw either of them again.
Cole was about six when things fell apart in earnest. Lou came in yelling again.
"Do you know what your son has been doing now?" he demanded.
Lilly set her teeth. The frequency with which Cole suddenly became "her" son exclusively, you'd think she'd mastered parthenogenesis. Meanwhile Lou wasn't waiting for an answer.
"I just heard from his teacher, he's been wandering off during lunch to go hang around in the abandoned quarry near the school."
"Is that dangerous?" said Lilly.
"What?" Lou looked up, irritated at having his tirade interrupted. "I don't know, look. What I'm trying to tell you is, he's wandering off—"
"So what?" said Lilly. "Half the children go home for lunch anyway, it's not against the rules. As long as he's back in time—"
"Don't you even see this?" demanded Lou, sounding like the universe had wronged him personally by giving him so obtuse a wife. "If he was going home for lunch, fine, but the point is that he's not. He's purposely sneaking away from children his own age to go hang around some abandoned worksite."
"If it's safe and he likes it there, how is that a problem?" said Lilly.
"He's going to grow up an antisocial freak, that's how!" snapped Lou. "The teacher was already basically cross-examining me, does he run away from home as well, is he acting out, are there some kind of conflicts, like she was ready to cart me off to jail any second just because you've raised him to be abnormal—"
"Ohhhhh, so that's why you're taking such an interest!" said Lilly hotly. "Because it puts a dent in your reputation!"
"And how do you think his peers see him?!" Lou either hadn't registered the accusation or was simply pivoting to get around it. "How is he ever going to have any friends in life if everyone sees him as the strange loner boy who would rather go off to commune with rocks than eat lunch with children his own age?"
"Maybe there's nobody worth eating lunch with," snapped Lilly. "And why are you even surprised by this? Of course he'd want to hang around a quarry, he's inherited my powers. He wants to be around the earth. Why are you acting like that's some kind of crime?"
"So you want him to spend his entire life as an antisocial freak just to chase after some stupid element?"
"Ohhhhhh, you had better choose your next words very carefully—" gritted Lilly, feeling blood rush to her head.
"Why are you even encouraging him? Do you want him to take after you and your traitor father?!"
Just as quickly Lilly felt herself go very pale. There was a cold, seething, breathless silence. Lou swayed back slightly—from the shift around his eyes, it was clear he realized what he'd just said. Not that he quite got to the point of regretting it.
After a moment Lilly turned away, silent.
After that the fighting stopped. Nothing had really changed; they still couldn't hold a conversation without fighting, or make eye contact without fighting. But they didn't talk, and they didn't make eye contact.
Even though Garmadon was long dead and gone, Lilly was forced to remember the life she'd seen between him and Misako. Two actors on the same stage, acting out their own plays. Now she understood.
She'd been through a particularly bad bout this time. For a while there she'd honestly expected to die. She lay in the hospital bed, drained and apathetic.
There was a knock on the doorframe. She cringed, knowing who it must be.
"Yes?" she said, resigned.
It was indeed Lou. He looked as unhappy to be here as she was to have him.
"Hello." He nodded tersely. Lilly gave an equally brusque nod.
"How are you?" she said coolly. Internally she resented that she was the one asking that first. Who was in the hospital bed here?
"Everyone's alive, anyway." Lou didn't ask at all, actually. Typical. Basic human empathy didn't even know this guy.
"How is Cole doing?" Lilly swallowed, forcing herself to accept an unfamiliar vulnerability. "Can I see him?"
"He's been asking after you every day," said Lou, with no trace of emotion other than perhaps irritation. "I asked the hospital and they said today he could visit, if you feel ready."
"Of course I do."
Lou was quiet for a moment.
"I got a call from his school today," he said at last. "He got into a fistfight with another student."
He glowered at Lilly, silently conveying his suspicion that this could somehow be traced back to her.
"A fight?!" Lilly started up in bed. "Is he all right?!"
"Completely unhurt. The school is not happy, though." Lou's acidic tone made it clear that he didn't appreciate being left to deal with such crises. As usual, her sickness was inopportune.
"I'll talk to him," sighed Lilly.
Lou nodded and left without another word.
Sinking back in her bed, Lilly swallowed thickly, dismayed at how fatigued this simple conversation had left her. Her lungs burned and her heart ran shallow. How had she come to this? A once-proud warrior who spidered up mountains without thinking twice; now a frail, emaciated husk of a woman turning to dust where she lay. She thought back to the tender phrases and giddy love poems she and Lou had started out with; how had those turned to the cruelty and cold hatred they exchanged now? Did everything turn to dust in the end?
Maybe it was all the mind-creature's fault. Maybe it was Lou's, maybe he was just shallow and selfish after all. Or maybe it was her. Maybe she was simply destined to be the center of all the misery around her.
She coughed up blood again, and cried for her fading health, her past life crumbling away from her every day. The creature tore its tiny claws through her lungs, chuckling.
She was composed again by the time Cole arrived, after school. She felt her heart swell with joy when she saw him in the doorway, eager but nervous.
"Hi, honey," she managed. Blood sputtered up from her lungs again, but she managed to restrain it to a light cough. She didn't need to traumatize him the second he walked in through the door.
"Mom!" Cole dove to wrap his small arms around her. "I don't want you to be sick anymore, Mom."
Lilly swallowed, a bitter taste overtaking even the coppery flavor of blood in her mouth. She would never have wished the stress of fearing for a parent's life on anyone, much less her own son.
"I know," she whispered, running her fingers through his hair. "But we don't always get what we want, do we?"
She sounded so jaded, even to herself. Why sell such fatalism to an innocent child? He was only worried for her sake, she didn't need to take this opportunity to crush his beliefs in a kind world. Why burden a seven-year-old with full knowledge of his own helplessness?
And yet. She wanted Cole to know better than she had. She wanted him to leave childhood with his eyes wide open, prepared for life's cruelty. Not naive and ripe for disappointment, like her.
"Your father said you got into trouble at school." She changed the subject gently, hoping she had at least planted the seeds of preparation.
"Yeah." Cole's face clouded. "But it—it wasn't my fault! There's this kid, he's just—he's just a big bully! He's always picking on the little kids and—"
"And you got in a fight." Lilly struggled to keep the sigh out of her voice. She wasn't disappointed in him for resorting to violence, no. Lord only knew she'd committed enough violence herself. But she couldn't tell if she was overjoyed or dismayed that he had been fighting for someone else. How had he inherited her hero complex? How many hard knocks and disappointments was he destined to face before learning, as she had, that there was little out there truly worth fighting for?
She longed to be proud of him. She really did. But mostly she was just afraid for him. She knew exactly how much he was setting himself up to hurt.
"I'm sorry, Mom." Cole misinterpreted her sigh. "I promise, I won't fight anymore. I'll be good from now on. I'll make you proud! And—and—"
"Oh, Cole." Her heart broke and her resolve crumbled. "Don't you see? I am proud. I want you to promise me, Cole, that you will always stand up to those who are cruel and unjust. Always."
She asked herself why she'd said that. She knew herself too well; there was some ulterior motive. Who was "cruel and unjust"? Was it a passive-aggressive barb directed at Lou, still standing stone-faced in the doorway? The mind-creature, faceless, pointless evil that only existed to torment and could never be defeated? The world at large, maybe?
The only thing she knew was, she didn't mean it the way Cole undoubtedly took it. Standing up to the tidy cut-and-dry villains, the scheming oppressors, the obvious tyrants who cropped up like mayflies for noble heroes to brush away. If his life was anything like hers, he would run into precious few of those.
"I—I promise, Mom." Cole's voice was shaking. "Always."
Some part of Lilly wondered if he would remember this moment as a defining example of her goodness, of her bravery and nobility. In a lifetime of shame, perhaps her greatest: she let him.
She would never know the full backstory, though. She assumed the bruising on Cole's cheek and the receding goose egg on his forehead were left over from the fight. She didn't know that, while she'd been at her lowest point in the ICU, Cole had been dragged out to a recital and tasked with completing a dance move even the grand masters couldn't perform. Neither Cole nor Lou ever told her any of that had happened. She didn't know that between the public humiliation, the censure of his young quartet mates, and Lou's subsequent hours of vitriol, Cole's budding sense of self had been ripped to bloody tatters. He was a permanent failure now. A disappointment to his father. Not good enough; contemptible.
Maybe she would have grown worried that he'd started picking fights for the opposite reason, to pass his self-loathing off to somebody else. She would have been wrong, though. Cole really had wanted to protect his weaker classmates. But it was for more complex reasons than a simple desire to do what was right; instead he was desperately overcompensating. He was trying to build a new identity through heroics; a tough, noble one that could distance him from his shame.
He really was his mother's son.
A/N: Sure, I ruined that scene too! NO MERCY!
News flash though, Cole has yet to adjust to reality. He's a nurturing sweetheart for a reason. I guess if someone is really desperate to find some light of hope in this story, it might be that Cole turned out better than his mom, in the end.
I think maybe one more chapter? So if I may ask, could we all please pause and commemorate this one final moment where all of you don't hate me. }:B