Only after Lila had fled from his doorstep did Undertaker regret his hesitance in opening the door, berating himself for acting like a schoolgirl afraid of confronting her crush. He wondered if perhaps Lila had been some sort of mirage, as the water that came down the windows in a sheet may have caused him to just see what he wanted to see. He drifted back to his coffin, but found himself unable to enter. There was a strong pull like a magnet trying to pull him back to where she had once stood. Perhaps she was merely a mirage, but perhaps...perhaps she was real!
Lila ran and ran through the allies until the adrenaline that had given her new energy began to be filtered out of her system. She slowed to a stop and doubled over, holding her knees and "breathing" heavily. Things were spinning, her eyes were blurry, though if it was with tears, the rain that continued to fall, or exhaustion she didn't know. A part of her yearned to go back to the door, if only to just get out of the rain, but a larger part of her couldn't do it, couldn't go back so soon and face possible rejection.
The rain was falling faster, and the droplets becoming sharper. The rain hitting the roofs did, however, provide a sort of calming white noise, but she was getting more and more cold standing in the open.
She looked over to a dead-end section of the alley that would provide a modicum of shelter due to the close proximity of the two buildings, and walked slowly down it. It wasn't the worse dead end she could have picked, but certainly she wouldn't sit on the ground. She needed rest, even if it was just a little bit. Her head was pounding and blood was roaring in her ears. Walking to a dark corner, she hit her back against the wall with a light thump, and slowly slid down the wall, dress coat bunching up awkwardly behind her, as she settled into a crouch. She crossed her arms over her knees, buried her face in her arms, and within minutes drifted into an uncomfortable, light sleep.
Back at the shop, Undertaker had made a decision. He grabbed a long, gray trench coat that would keep his robes dry and his hat, which was sitting by the door, and nearly flung himself out the door, eyes scanning the area to decide where she had gone. He still didn't know for sure he had seen Lila, his Lila, but an invisible force was driving his heels, and he had no choice but to heed it. She would accept him, she had to! He longed to take the fast road, jumping and running over the rooftops for a better view, but he was too well known to risk being seen. That already but him at a lagging pace behind her, because she wouldn't care if she was seen, she didn't work in this sector any way. As Undertaker started his quick walk into the pouring rain, he could only pray to whatever god was there to listen that she had stayed in the city.
Sometime during Lila's light, uncomfortable sleep, the rain had stopped, and the clouds parted to reveal a hot, beating sun. From where Lila had crouched, she was also shielded from the heat, but the hot sun evaporates the water from her clothes, and caused a boggy feeling to stick to her skin, only adding to how uncomfortable she was
Undertaker, unknowingly, followed her trail almost exactly. He stopped to check every nook and cranny, and more than once he considered giving up and going home, back to the shop, and convincing himself he had merely been seeing things at the late, stormy hour, when he had already been thinking about Lila.
He had taken off his trench coat and flung it over his shoulder as he walked, the black robes really absorbing a lot of the heat from the sun. He was growing tired too, and he was nearly at the edge of his rope, about to turn back. The only reason he kept walking was an unexplained nagging force that kept him on his forward path. He stopped, and decided to turn back, when something, a small hunched form in a dark alley, caught his eye.
Keeping close to the wall in case it was some sort of animal, he crept down the dead end alley at the end of which something moved about. It felt the time crawled along at a snail's pace, but when he finally could see what was handled in the corner, he felt as if he was suffocating.
It was a numb with shock feeling, when he finally came upon the women in a terrible sleep, his hopeless, desperate search having actually paid off.
His gaze, though hidden behind his curtain bangs, was not lost on Lila, and after a few moments, she wearily lifted her head to look up at Undertaker, and the look on her face surely must have been mirrored on his own; shock, joy, disbelief, confusion. As she saw him, Lila immediately decided she was just seeing things on account of hunger and exhaustion, but when he took hold of her upper arms and helped her to her feet, to which she winced as her stiff limbs straightened back out, she realized that what she was seeing was actually real!
He was taller than she, so with the two standing at full height her head only came to his neck, so she looked up at him, and he looked down at her, and time seemed to stop for them in that alley. As if they were pulled together by a force, they embraced aggressively, she grabbing fist fulls of his black robe, face buried in his hair for a familiar smell, and he had his chin on the top of her head, one black-nailed hand splayed out on her back, the other tangled in her hair. It was in that moment that both of their fears of rejection were put to rest. He loved her as she had, and he loved her as he had.