kordifm: Thanks for the review! Huh, given that he ended Season 13 still viewing Lilly as a hero, maybe he never finds out. Or if he does, maybe by that point he'd had so many good experiences with Earth that his views on it don't get tainted as much as Lilly's did.
dragonsatdawn: Thanks for the review! Yeah, they're not having a great time back there. We'll see how this last chapter goes. :)
JustRandom: Oh no, you ran out of WiFi? Man, it's weird. I only learned a couple weeks ago that limited WiFi connections were even a thing, and since then I've heard it in like three different places. Weird how things always cluster like that.
Yeah, Ninjago touches on a lot of suuuuuper dark themes. I feel like a lot of children's properties do, at times. They just don't have as much liberty to dwell on them as fanfic authors do.
It's weird, I was actually taught that stories are supposed to be as dark as possible. Good literature isn't allowed to be happy, according to modern experts. :P
I certainly don't mind if that's the conclusion people get from the story! I think I was mentioning to someone else, if this story was told from Lou's point of view, Lilly would probably look like a really bad irresponsible parent and Lou would be the one who was sympathetic and at least trying.
Oh dear. I do? XD
I hope you guys have good flood insurance, then? :P
Dunno if even a therapist would help Garmadon by now. Sometimes people can't be helped. Especially when evil venom is in the picture. :S
Nope! The purple reference goes here, in the final chapter. :)
Hope that history study went well! Thanks for the review.
Also, regarding your request! I haven't forgotten about it. I've thought about it often. This was going to be my last weekend free (plus Monday), and I thought I could maybe make a last-ditch effort and write the one-shot now. But so far there have been a ton of unavoidable demands on my time, and I'm not sure how it's going to shape up. I'll still try, but fair warning, I think the mints story might end up falling through. :S Sorry . . .
ForeverFictional: Thanks for the review!
Dying was not the way she'd expected. She had thought she would either pass quietly in her sleep, or be violently, acutely aware of the transition. Like a nightmare; suddenly your eyes open and you realize it's morning.
But no. She felt herself dying, for eight long hours. She receded into her body, unaware of doctors and nurses checking her vitals, of Cole squeezing her hand and trying not to sob.
It was cold inside her soul. The landscape was bleak. Lilly felt sluggish, heavy; like it was time to close her eyes and sleep. She tried to look down at herself, but there seemed to be nothing there. She didn't feel this was unusual. Somehow it made sense that she wasn't present physically.
With some effort she looked around. The sky was dark. Nearby towered an indistinct, flickering mass of teal. It was the mind-creature, in something like a physical form, yet Lilly couldn't have told you anything about what it looked like. Maybe four legs? Maybe a tail. From the corner of your eye, you thought you saw something very distinctive; when you tried to look at it more directly, there was only a glowing teal blur.
"It's time, Lilly."
Lilly groaned and closed her eyes.
"No."
It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation. She'd been on death's doorstep often enough.
"This time I'm taking you, Lilly. I'm tired of waiting. If I can't have your mind, you will give me your body."
"Go to hell . . . " Lilly tried to get up and prepare to fight, but she felt like she couldn't move. She couldn't figure out where her body was.
She looked around despairingly for someone to help. Through blurred eyes, she thought she saw two figures in the distance. Like in a nightmare, the figures shifted, and suddenly they were close by. With horror she saw her father, his face grim. Hatred bubbled up inside her. He had the gall to look at her with such disappointment? He was the source of her lifelong shame.
Next to him stood a woman she had never met, with frightened eyes.
Lilly looked away, shivering, but everywhere she turned there seemed to be new faces, pressing in around her. Garmadon, his eyes red. Wu, blood trickling from a scarred cheek. Tang and Mila whom she had abandoned, looking at her with faces twisted in silent grief. She saw a field strewn with scattered bodies, as if there had been a battle here; but every gored carcass she recognized as someone she had killed herself. She saw Griefbringer's mangled form, flesh rotting off its bones.
She saw Lou, cold and stony-faced. She called out to him, but he refused to look her way. All the forms around her were silent, pitiless. Was there anyone here who would help her? With her lifetime of hurting everyone around her, was there anyone who even wanted her to live?
"Close your eyes, Lilly," purred the creature. She felt the teal form looming up behind her, waiting for her to succumb. All she had to do was let go. Let it take her. Why not?
She thought of Cole. Her child, whom she had already failed so many times. If she could dismiss the impact on everyone else she knew, she still could not make herself believe that her death would not devastate him. Was she going to fail him in this way, too?
Clenching her teeth, she steeled herself. She felt the creature's claws sink into her, trying to drag her away. For Cole, she resisted.
It was a hard eight hours. She felt her mind decaying, felt the creature's influence spreading.
Finally she felt herself slip away. It must have been death. She no longer occupied her own mind. Her consciousness drained away into some crevice outside of her.
The funeral was quiet and small. Lou was ramrod-straight, his lips pressed into a tight line. He resented that the universe could snatch away his wife when he hadn't given it permission to. Cole . . . nevermind Cole. Nobody else did.
She was under the ground for three days. Somehow, even detached from her body, she felt the rain pattering above her. Her element settling, cool and loam-scented, welcoming the tiny roots of grass snaking their way down.
On the third night she began to dig. Her hands shivered where the mortician had folded them; they came alive and began to scratch at the coffin's lid.
It was a small graveyard out in the countryside. No one was around to see when the earth over one of the graves began to heave, and a ragged living corpse crawled out.
Lilly—that was being a bit generous with the name, but what else could you call it? It was her body—crouched at the edge of the torn earth, clawing dirt from her hair. With empty, restless eyes she studied the hole she had dragged herself from. What was this? What did it mean?
She looked down at her hands. She clasped and unclasped them, experimented with arcing her fingers. She had never had hands before. She had never stood, never walked. Her body had, but the consciousness driving it hadn't.
Her head angled back. The breeze carried an unfamiliar scent. A sudden overpowering longing seized her, and she knew where she had to go.
Before leaving, she summoned something buried deep within her, something locked away from consciousness. But still useful. The ground responded to her will, and she smoothed the grave over, replacing even the sod layered over it. Nobody would ever have guessed it was now vacant.
Then, swaying to her feet, she lurched towards the edge of the graveyard. She followed the scent on the breeze; the call of the Cursed Forest. It was late at night, so she met only one person along the way. The next day they dug his grave not too far from hers.
The forest was home. It was good to be home. She no longer looked the same as her fellow-spirits, but they accepted her back as one of her own. It was a simple life, worrying only about sleeping, roving the night, slaking the occasional thirst for blood. Sometimes she caught uneasy flashes of disconnection—what was she, who was she? This wasn't the way she had always been. Where had she been before?
Sometimes the name "Lilly" would fall into her thoughts out of nowhere, and she would suddenly feel sick and sad. Sometimes, in the midst of lapping at the neck of her newest victim, she would suddenly be hit with a pulse of incredible disgust, and would choke mid-swallow. When she slept she would have strange dreams of a man, a boy, painfully familiar. Her husband. Her child. She would miss them so much, in that moment, she didn't know how she could go on. She would wake up and the memories would fade in seconds.
Once, while prowling the forest, she came upon a strange pattern of stones on the ground. Sandstone rubble was tumbled amongst the undergrowth, thickly overgrown with weeds. This had once been a building. A red sandstone castle.
She tilted her head, her nostrils flaring, her eyes flickering over the scene. It meant nothing to her.
The years passed. She didn't even realize when her Earth powers slipped away, passing to her son. She had no knowledge that he was estranged from his father, that he had new friends. That he was training under her lifelong friend, fighting her childhood mentor, teaching the infant whose birth she'd celebrated with Misako. She didn't feel the earth responding when the Devourer shattered free, or the ground opened up to release the Stone Army, or when Nadakhan began ripping her element to shreds.
She still had flashes of longing, though. Her old soul was the passenger now, but sometimes it could be just as persistent as the mind-creature used to be. She didn't let herself forget: she hadn't always been like this. There had been someone else, someone she had cared about very much. She was not where she belonged. It was a rare day that she wasn't restless.
One day there was a disturbance. Someone had entered the Cursed Forest; a large group, seemingly.
The other spirits of the forest swarmed anxiously, like a lost colony of bees. They had no fear of numbers—the more tender new flesh, the better—but these people were armed. They carried charms and spells against dark spirits. Not only that, they carried a great number of physical weapons, nets, and traps. They must be hunting for something.
The chirpy telepathic chatter of the forests' spirits ran through Lilly's mind. Was this a search party, looking for someone who had blundered into the Cursed Forest and been killed long ago? Had some nearby villagers decided to try exterminating the forest's cursed beings? The sheer calm purposefulness of this invading party made the forest spirits anxious. They must know something.
Gradually the collective decided to go and watch the hunting party more closely. They would assess their skills, figure out if they were a threat. Then, most likely, they would swarm in to devour them.
The cluster of spirits dissolved, each whisking away into the underbrush, slinking towards the noisy group of humans trampling their forest nearby. Lilly went too, unafraid.
They came across the hunting party. Most of the spirits broke off to circle, rustling through the treetops as they sized up the newcomers. Lilly spied from behind a tree. A strange seizing feeling appeared in her chest, the same one she sometimes got while she was killing a victim. These were people. They looked like her. She had once been one of them. She was conscious of her heart hammering against her ribs, and realized queasily that the other spirits did not have a flesh heart like hers. These people did.
The hunting party had slowed. One of the men in the lead had faltered, looking around anxiously.
"Did you feel that?" he asked. "I swear it just got colder."
"Oh, can it, Maroni," groaned one of the other party members. "You coward."
"But don't you hear that?" persisted Maroni, fearfully eyeing a nearby tree. "The leaves just started rustling something fierce!"
"Well, Maroni, sit down and let me explain to you about this little thing called wind," snarked somebody in the back. Some of the other laughed roughly, while others exchanged weary "who the hell invited Maroni, anyway?" looks.
In the middle of all this, one of Lilly's fellow-spirits decided to pounce. It was one of the Viras, the ones who preferred to go for the internal organs. Shooting down from the treetops, it plowed into the one called Maroni, merging with his body in a flash of light. Maroni went down with a scream, blood spurting from his mouth and nostrils.
"Damn!" howled the party leader, along with a lot of stronger curses. There was chaos for a second; then somebody yanked out a glowing green amulet and whipped it towards Maroni. As soon as it made contact with him the Vira leaped from his body, grievously wounded. As Maroni gasped and retched on all fours, recovering his own body, the Vira whirled above him in an agonized mist before dissipating, dead.
The spirits around Lilly went into a frenzy of their own. Few magic charms could kill a Vira.
"They're out there all right!" barked one of the search party members. "Get back to back!"
The humans all huddled in formation, squinting out at the surrounding woods. Various charms and magic spells burst to life in their hands as they prepared for the next attack. Another Vira made a furious sally towards the party, shrieking vengefully. The human closest to it yelled and fired off a pulse of some glowing magic. The Vira died faster than the first had.
The spirits were in a rage now. They frothed in a wild circle around the party of invaders, screaming. The treetops tossed as if a hurricane was coming through.
"How many are there?!" yelped one of the humans. Their eyes were all wild with fear, horrified by the continuous pulsating barrage of screams. Some were covering their ears.
Among the spirits, only Lilly stood silent, oddly unmoved. She gazed at this trembling conglomeration of flesh and bone. She had been like them, hadn't she? Why wasn't she feeling the usual satisfaction at their fear? Why did she feel pity instead?
The leader bellowed something that Lilly couldn't hear over the spirits' screaming, and suddenly all the humans began to fire off spells, hurling pulses of magic into the roiling mass of forest ghouls. Many took hits. The screaming peaked, a note of agony weaving alongside the rage. The swarm scattered, panicked. A few more shots, and as one the spirits fled, scattering into the woods. Never had they met a group of humans so formidably equipped against them.
Lilly stayed. She had slipped out from her hiding place, and stood with both hands still pressed to the tree trunk, gazing at the chaotic knot of invaders who had inflicted so much damage on her fellow-spirits. Somehow she didn't resent them for it. She was fascinated.
While the humans were still pulling themselves together, there was a sudden crashing in the undergrowth. Lilly flinched, uneasy at the size of the approaching being, but still unwilling to flee.
A gigantic hulk of a man came wallowing through the brush, snapping branches every which way. He seemed to be a human, but he was at least five times the size of any normal one. Lilly caught her breath.
"Ey!" he boomed, in a deep, almost jovial voice. "What was all that noise hereabouts? Did you find the spirits?"
"To hell with you, Killow. Only show up now, why don't you?!" snapped the party leader. Killow drew back, insulted.
"I would watch my tone if I were you."
The party leader was opening his mouth to retort, when somebody else suddenly yelled. Everyone whirled to face him; Lilly realized, with a jolt, that he was pointing at her.
"That's her! That's the one!"
Panicked, Lilly turned and fled. The party of humans roared after her, crashing through the undergrowth. She was much more at home in the forest, she should have had an easy time losing them—and yet. Maybe she wasn't truly motivated.
Somebody's hand caught at her arm. She yanked away, gasping. A weighted rope whipped out in front of her and tangled around her ankle. She went sprawling, kicking and struggling, trying to free her leg. Already leather-scented bodies were piling on top of her, seizing her other limbs.
"Careful with that, do you know how many she's killed?!" somebody snapped.
Baring her teeth, Lilly gave a final twist, wrenching herself nearly free of the hands grasping from all sides. She'd show these people a thing or two about killing—
Then the giant one, Killow, lumbered onto the scene. Before she could get over the shock of seeing him up close, his hand had closed around her waist. His thumb met his fingers on the other side.
"Gotchu!" He smiled bemusedly, as if this was all a mildly puzzling but still entertaining farce. "Huh! Right nasty little witch, aren't you?"
Lilly hissed, her eyes flaming—then somebody finally achieved the presence of mind to pull out his tranquilizer gun, and within forty seconds she was down.
She awoke in chains. The scent around her was damp and moldy, but also industrial; she was no longer in the forest. She blinked groggily, trying to adjust her vision to the dark.
She became aware of vertical bars around her, looming even blacker against the general blackness. They had her chained and caged? A part of her was only angry about being restrained; another part, one that hadn't spoken loudly in years, was hot with humiliation.
She lay in silence for a while, trying to sort herself out. She felt torn in two. The spirit owning her body strained back towards the Cursed Forest, but meanwhile the vestiges of her human soul were stirring at the familiar scents of human civilization. The part of her that usually felt restless suddenly felt at home instead.
Eventually her ears pricked up at the sound of voices. There were metal doors slamming, footsteps.
"It really isn't safe, you know," someone was saying petulantly. "You weren't there. You didn't see how she fought, you didn't see what those spirits did to Maroni."
"I'll be quite fine, I assure you," said a second voice. Lilly started. It was a female voice; unexpectedly high and light. Timbre-wise it sounded like a little girl. Tone-wise . . . she couldn't place it. There was a certain imperiousness to it, a lazy expectation of being obeyed. It was fastidious and elegant, as if every word was being carefully enunciated. Then there was something else that made Lilly's skin crawl. How long had she been separated from civilization, that a little girl's voice frightened her?
She saw increasing light in the distance, illuminating dank tunnel walls. Then the two figures came around the corner. One was a rough-looking man carrying a torch; the other was a little girl. Twelve or thirteen at the very oldest.
"Oh, you're awake!" she chirped, as she saw Lilly shifting defensively. "You poor thing."
Lilly watched through the cage bars, her eyes flicking.
"The key, please." The girl held her hand out to her escort with that same imperiousness. When he gave her a nervous look, she said, a little more sharply, "That's an order!"
"Be careful, Miss," mumbled the man, reluctantly dropping the key into her palm. He watched the girl's every move as she stepped forward and opened the door to Lilly's cage. Lilly watched her just as closely, motionless but tensed in every muscle.
Chained like this, defenseless, it unlocked a lot of primal attack urges. All of that on top of her natural bloodlust. Every fiber of her being was shrieking to look at this little morsel, so small, so delicate, so incredibly tender. Kill her. She should kill her.
And yet. She only sat, her eyes glinting in the torchlight.
"Hello, ma'am," said the little girl pleasantly. She had the nerve to sit down across from Lilly, and somehow she didn't pay for it with her life. "I'm so sorry we had to restrain you like this. A lot of my . . . associates were panicked by your violence earlier. But you're not going to hurt me, are you?"
Lilly lowered her head, eyeing her visitor in silence.
"I also apologize if you were close to the spirits we attacked in the forest," continued the girl. "They attacked our party first, I'm told. And as you can see, my associates were well-equipped to defend themselves. Ancient magic! Very effective. Sometimes it really does pay to make an acquaintance with tea shop owners older than Ninjago itself." When she half-smiled, the torchlight flickered briefly on pearly white teeth. Lilly squinted, distracted by the glitter and almost lost among the girl's oblique references.
"But that leads me into the next topic," continued the girl. "I've heard about you. You didn't always live in the Cursed Forest. You were once a normal human being, weren't you?" She gave a light, bubbly laugh when Lilly squinted at her, startled. "Don't look so surprised! You're actually quite famous among the locals. The horror of the Cursed Forest, the evil spirit with the human's body, who lures innocents into the woods and then kills them and drinks their blood."
Lilly hung her head, suddenly ill.
"Some say that the Cursed Forest itself created you, to use as bait." The girl tilted her head, watching Lilly's reaction. "But I don't believe that. I think you were just unlucky. I think you were once like me. Am I wrong? Did you once have a name?"
Lilly's tongue flickered over her lips. Her lungs heaved as she tried to remember how to sync her breath, her throat, her lips, her tongue. She had done this before. But what was she even going to say? She had no idea what this girl was talking about, no recollection of—
"Lilly."
Her voice, hoarse with years of disuse, didn't sound like it belonged to her anymore. At the same time she recognized it. It had been her own.
"Lilly?" The girl tilted her head the other way, thoughtfully. "Oh. What a pretty name!"
Lilly didn't respond. Her stomach was churning with a sudden overwhelming confusion. Where had "Lilly" come from? How did she know that word? Had she been that? Was that the voice in the back of her head that made her so restless, so ill-at-ease in the Cursed Forest?
"Well, Lilly, that gives us a wonderful start," said the girl. "I'm going to see if I can find out who you were. And then I'm going to help you."
She stood up, leaving the cage. Giving Lilly a significant look, she left the door unlocked. Then, with a smile, she was gone.
Lilly curled up in the corner, her manacles biting into her cheek as she laid down her head. The dark room seemed to spin around her.
She stayed in torment till the little girl visited again. It must have been quite a while. Over those few days, she had turned the word "Lilly" over and over in her mind. She had started to dredge up those scraps of dreams from the forest. The man and the boy that had plagued her and filled her with pain. Did they have something to do with "Lilly"?
The girl did come back. She waltzed into the cage looking very pleased with herself.
"I think I found who you were!" she said, settling down across from Lilly again. "I searched for records of everyone in Ninjago named Lilly. I found death records and photographs from someone who looked just like you." Her eyes strayed up to Lilly's hair, which was matted and full of burrs. "Well, more or less. Anyway. Does the name 'Lilly Brookstone' ring any bells? . . . "
Lilly's breath quickened. She heard her pulse hammering in her ears.
"Oh, so it does?" The girl was watching her closely. "Then what about . . . Lou Brookstone? A son named Cole?"
Lilly swallowed heavily. Her dreams were flooding back.
"Where . . . are they?" she croaked.
"They're alive and well," said the girl gently. "Lou has mostly retired from performing. Cole is a ninja now. He works with a close team of friends, and has saved Ninjago multiple times. He carries the elemental power of Earth." She tilted her head in that quizzical manner she had. "That was yours, wasn't it?"
Lilly ran her tongue around her lips, her eyes on the floor. She was shivering with long-repressed memories.
"You miss them, don't you?" said the girl softly. "I understand. I want to help you."
Lilly eyed her.
"Why?" she finally managed. She remembered how the world worked. Nobody would just pluck her from the woods and offer to help her for no reason.
"I know how you feel." The girl sat back, clasping her hands around her knees. "I know what it's like to lose your family."
Some silence. Lilly continued to glower dubiously.
"You're not a sentimental one, are you?" The girl laughed ruefully. "All right. I do hope for something in return. I was hoping, if I helped you, you would help me as well. Remember, your ferocity in the forest was legendary. And when I looked over your records, I found your life was full of heroic acts. You were a warrior. One of the most noble, most powerful. I would be honored to have you on my side."
Lilly squinted at her, uncertain. Her mind was still full of chaos. Her husband. Her son. She ached with longing.
"Well," said the girl at last, standing up. "Think about it."
As she turned to leave, Lilly started up. The speed with which the girl whirled around betrayed how frightened she really was of this feral, half-crazed shell of a human.
"How?" Lilly asked. The girl stared at her for a moment, her breath still fluttering. Then she smiled.
"I'm so glad you've decided to take the deal," she said. "Tomorrow you'll be with your family again."
Lilly thrashed her way through the night. She couldn't find peace. Half of her was screaming to simply go free, go back to the forest. The other half was crying out to stay, to regain her old life. She kept thinking of Cole. Her son had friends. He had saved the world. She wanted so much to see him.
Some people came by early in the morning. They washed her down with a hose, hacked off great patches of matted hair, and left her with only a long thin ponytail constrained to the top of her head. That was all the hair that was salvageable. Lilly snarled and struggled through most of the process, until they finally rearranged her chains, stringing her up from the ceiling by her wrists to hold her still. She still spat and cursed at them the entire time.
The little girl came back later.
"Oh, you look much better!" she said. "Goodness, though. I see you were giving my helpers a difficult time."
Lilly, still hanging tiredly from her wrists, eyed the girl in fear. Had she angered her benefactor? What if she withdrew her offer?
The girl was smiling wryly, though.
"Well, I did say I respected your ferocity," she said. "Now then! Are you ready to begin the process?"
Lilly hesitated, then finally gave a guarded nod.
"I'll explain the whole thing to you." The girl reached for a flask she had been wearing on her belt. "You remember, my acquaintance in the tea shop knew plenty of ancient magic that worked against your spirit friends in the Cursed Forest. She also happens to know of a special tea that can cleanse dark spirits from a human body."
She poured from the flask into a cup, and held the murky, sour-smelling liquid up for Lilly to see.
"This is the tea," she said. "All you have to do is drink it. Whatever spirit is possessing your body will be cast out. You will go back to your old self. I will let you go, and you'll be able to go home. Will you do it?"
Lilly nodded eagerly this time.
"And after that, will you fight for my cause?" said the girl a little more sharply. She took a step back, keeping the cup out of reach. Lilly nodded again, wildly, straining against her chains.
"Very well then." Smiling, the girl stepped forward. "All yours."
She held the cup to Lilly's lips. Lilly threw herself into drinking it, liquid slopping down her chin. It tasted oddly sweet, almost like something you shouldn't be swallowing.
After the cup was drained, Lilly fell back and waited. She felt her heartbeat speeding up. Breath shallow, she waited for the confusion and primal instincts to clear away.
Instead she was met with a racking wave of pain. Her insides felt like they were searing away. She tried to double over, but the chains didn't permit her. Teal and red screamed across her vision.
Her mind began to rearrange. The creature's influence did not disappear. Instead it merged into her, well and truly; rather than using her body, it came to own it. Its thoughts became her thoughts, fusing with scraps of her old self. Her intellect returned. Her speech returned The bloodlust remained. Her memories, the precious few she'd managed to cling to, began to shrivel like paper in a fire. Parts of her brain seemed to wipe clean and come back as something entirely new.
Her body was changing as well. She felt her skin become stiff, slick like vinyl. She could no longer bend her fingers; she watched with horror as their color drained away, leaving the flesh a cold gray. Slowly it darkened, leaving her body a shining, unnatural purple. Her joints creaked; her body convulsed. She couldn't move, couldn't think. She threw herself against her chains again and again, screaming for mercy.
The process finally ended. She hung limp from her wrists, her hair cascading in tangles over her face. She was a mutilated vestige of her old self.
"You're going to sleep for a bit," said the girl, unruffled. "When you wake up, you'll be free to return to your family." She gave a short laugh. "But good luck remembering them."
"Don't let them see me." The sob guttering from her throat was not her voice. "Don't let them see me like this."
"You don't have to worry, I promise." Her benefactor chuckled again. "You're entirely unrecognizable, trust me."
Lilly struggled to heave herself up, but succeeded only in rattling feebly against her chains.
"I suppose a name change would be advisable though, just in case." The girl's voice was thoughtful now. "Although it's a pity . . . Such a fitting name for such a beautiful flower."
A finger snaked underneath her chin, tilting her head up. She tried to meet her captor's eyes, but she was starting to fade away. Black spots were already flooding the edges of her vision; her eyelids were fighting their way closed.
"Oh, I know!"
Her eyes slipped closed, her past evaporating.
"We can call you Violet."