I do not own Silent Hill.

Once Lilith was finally still, Pyramid knew she had fallen unconscious, but held her still for a few moments longer, his imagination showing him all the different things that might have happened to the girl. When he could stand it no longer he took her into the bathroom and laid her in the tub, allowing the water to wash away the blood. Her blood. It was a lot of blood.

Ghost propped himself up on the side of the bath, his face and muzzle matted with bits of red where he'd tried to comfort his mistress. Groaning, Pyramid jerked a rag off the shelf and put it under the water. 'Here mutt,' he told the dog, 'we don't want her waking up and seeing any more blood. Filthy k-9.' He scrubbed Ghost's face, a process neither of them particularly enjoyed, but both endured until no evidence remained.

As he transported the freshly cleaned, limp girl to her bed it dawned on him that she was nude, but he didn't seem to have the energy to care. Which was very unlike him, but there wasn't enough energy to care about that either. He laid her in the bed and pulled the blankets up to her chin. Ghost hopped up on the bed and curled up beside her. Pyramid grabbed his sword where it leaned up against the wall and stood at her bedroom door, keeping watch. Keeping watch for what, he didn't know, but it occupied him. He didn't know how long he had been standing there before she finally showed back up.

"She is still asleep," Alessa pointed out.

'Indeed.'

"We should wake her. Question her on the ordeal."

'No.'

"We need to be prepared if this happens again. We might not be so lucky next time- she might not come back." Alessa stared at the sleeping girl, "why do you care so much?"

'Apparently, I have no choice. This is what you asked of me.'

"Since when do you really give a damn about what I ask of you?"

'When not doing so meant going back.'

"It is a dark place, even for our standards." Alessa paused, "That's where she went, isn't it?"

'Are you afraid of spending an eternity there?'

While watching the steady breath of life cause Lilith's chest to rise slowly before deflating, Alessa responded, "yes."

'Good. Because you should be.' The air in the room was heavy, memories coursed through Pyramid Head's mind and imagination ran through Alessa's, even though she was smart enough to know that whatever she could imagine was nothing compared to the reality of the pit.

"I haven't seen any of your handiwork at the hospital lately."

'I've been busy.'

"Too busy for that?" Alessa sounded skeptical.

'Yeah.'

"Do you care for her?"

'Obviously. She'd be dead otherwise.'

"That isn't what I mean."

'I haven't cared about anything in a long time, Alessa.'

"I know."

'Why do you care?'

"We've been together for a long time. I owe you much, but there are some things I just cannot give you. It will be different when we get back. It will be how it was," she told him. "That's what I've been doing over there, you know. I've been trying to find a way for this thing to be over with. I went too far with that girl- with her soul. I don't want to be here anymore either."

'So you finally admit you fucked up. Fine. I do want to go back, but I have no desire to return to how it was.'

"This is the end of your loyalty?"

'It's been centuries, Alessa. You no longer hold anything over me. I'm not sure you ever really did in the first place.'

"It was what you wanted. I gave it to you"

'I don't want it any longer.'

Alessa was silent, trying to find the words she should say, but they eluded her as they sometimes did. She had known this day would come, but she had no intention of embracing it. "The only thing worse than the pit is being alone."

'I'll take my chances.'

Alessa couldn't help the rage and the disgust that bubbled within her as she looked at the girl. She couldn't find anyone who even knew who she was or what the Old Ones would want with her. The closest she had ever come was the cult that ran amok around this pitiful town and that was less than helpful. It was punishment, she knew, for messing with things she shouldn't. Yet there was so much hatred inside her she could think of nothing but strangling the red head where she slept and gutting her stupid dog. But that would be the end of her also and Pyramid too, not that she was very pleased with him. He had become overly attached. More so, she believed, than he was letting on. He wasn't himself. And now he wanted to leave her, after everything she had done for him.

"Fine," she told him before turning away.

Pyramid grabbed her before she could disappear, 'I'm not ungrateful. But I don't owe you anymore.' Her arm was too small in his hand. He hated her new body, but imagined she hated it even more. What was once a strong and terrifyingly powerful demon was now trapped within the body of a young girl, forever to be mocked and reminded of what she had done. He almost felt bad for her. Almost.

Alessa just stared at where he gripped onto her. It had been a long time since he'd touched her. So long. They used to be close. Very close. But one day he just…shut it down. Shut her down. Long before Silent Hill, before her new, pathetic vessel. Alessa jerked away and disappeared and with no clear destination in mind she ended up in Pyramid Head's little torture chamber. It was quiet, no one bound or gagged or gutted. No raped, mutilated corpses on the floor. It was nothing like the chambers he had back home. He would lock himself away for days partaking in the agony of his victims, their sweet song of screams sometimes echoing up to her own chambers. He could make them sing like no one ever could. It was all those centuries in the pit, she knew. So many years of being tormented in ways even she could never dream of, until he turned the knife back on them. He never talked about it much himself, but Alessa could still remember the first whispers of him. They had made him The Offer. The Offer was something they only gave to a select few who had…potential. They would put down the knife if he would pick one up. He agreed, of course, as anyone would and he certainly didn't disappoint. Rumors of his terrifying brutality became legendary. One day, though- and she remembered it clearly because that was the day she knew- one day he rounded up everyone who had put the knife to him and completed slaughtered them all. Nothing like it had ever happened. It was then on that he was referred to as The Executioner. After hearing the news, Alessa knew he was the one she'd been searching for and so she made him a deal. She would release him from the pit if he would stay with her. And they'd been together ever since. Yet, they had never been the same.

Alessa sat in the chair in the middle of the room, her fingers gliding over the scratched wooden arms. She knew they were different. She was who she was because she had always been that way. But Pyramid Head had been twisted and morphed into the beast he became. He had been something different once, but it had been so long neither of them even knew what that was. She had tried to find out for him, at one point in time, but her searching never yielded anything. His first memories were of the pit and if she couldn't complete her mission they would also be his last. And hers. At least they would be damned together. Then he would be stuck with her forever, like he had promised. She wondered if there was really anyway it could be done. Or rather, un-done. She really doubted she could bring Silent Hill back to its old self and if they were to go to the pit anyway, why not kill Lilith? At least then she would have a bit of satisfaction.

She curled her small body up into the chair. She wasn't lying when she told Pyramid that the only thing worse than the pit was being alone. She could face the pit if they were together. It didn't haunt her nearly as much as the eternity she'd spent in utter solitude before him. Alessa closed her eyes and did something she had not done in a long time. Sleep.

Lilith opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, unmoving. Had it all be just a bad dream? She sat up, clutching the blankets to her bare chest. She felt exhausted, like she hadn't slept in ages. Pale light flooded through her window, ashes falling softly like tiny snowflakes. She placed her palm to her forehead and closed her eyes. She remembered what happened and she knew that it had happened, yet the memory seemed so far away, so distant, that it felt like a dream or like it happened to someone else. She lay back down and continued to stare at the ceiling. She felt different. She felt hollow and empty. Like a big chunk of her had be removed. Had she died? Lilith didn't think there was really any other way to explain it, but her mind refused to believe it. She was here, right here, she couldn't be dead. But then again, they say ghosts don't know they're dead. Maybe she had been ever since she got here. She stretched her arm up, reaching towards the sky as if she could grab the answers and pull them down to her. But there, right there, on the back of her right hand was the truth, glaring at her in the face. A small cut she got from tending the rose bush in her backyard. A cut that hadn't healed or scared over, a little red gash that hadn't gone away, despite the fact that she had suffered worse since being here and some of those wounds you never would have known existed. Lilith curled up on her side and saw a familiar figure in the doorway. "Can you take it off?"

Pyramid Head turned his attention toward the girl and walked over next to her bed, "what?"

"That thing on your head. Can you take it off?" He didn't respond. "What color are your eyes? Do you even have eyes?"

Pyramid didn't understand why any of that really mattered to her at the moment. Perhaps she was delusional. "Black," he told her, "they're black."

"I guess that kinda figures," she responded. "I still have this cut on the back of my hand from the day before I woke up here," she held it up to show him, "my hair doesn't grow. I don't have periods any more. And I don't know why I never noticed any of that until now."

"It's this place," he told her, "it hides things from you. What happened to you allowed you to see."

"I remember burning," she said, "and then darkness and then I woke up in this room and I couldn't move," she pulled the blankets tight around her as if it could shield her from the memory. "What happened to me? Did I die?"

He was silent for a long moment, "I don't know," he finally said. "You went into the Other World. I don't know how, but I think you went to the pit."

"Is that Hell?"

"Yes. The deepest part. Souls are sent there to be tormented for all of eternity."

Lilith curled up into ball, wondering what she ever did to deserve this, "why," she asked, "why?"

"I don't know."

"Will I go there again?"

"Probably."

Lilith shivered, the blood in her veins freezing over. She didn't deserve this. She'd always been such a good girl. Granted, she hacked a guy's head off once, but that wasn't really her fault. It was this place. It was him. "You were supposed to help me," she hissed. "You said you were going to protect me and you didn't."

"There wasn't any way I could have-"

"You're a liar. This is all your fault. You and that stupid demon bitch. I don't want to be here. I didn't ask to be here. I don't deserve to be here. I don't know what you think you're going to do to me-"

"I'm going to help you."

"Like you helped those nurses? It wasn't hard to put together, you know. I just didn't want to believe it. But like you said, getting my skin peeled off and eaten and being gutted and violated really opened my eyes. I don't care what happens to you or Alessa. You aren't going to hand me over on a silver platter so you can save your own skins." Anger sparked inside Lilith like she had never felt. She was different now, she had lost herself and she didn't care. This wasn't right and she refused to be punished for crimes she didn't commit. "I trusted you!"

There was heavy silence in the room as Pyramid decided what to do. He thought perhaps it was best for him to leave, but he didn't want to. He stepped forward "Lilith-"

Lilith wrapped herself up tighter and filched, throwing up an arm as if to ward off an attack, "stay back!" she screamed.

"I won't hurt you."

Lilith tried to hold herself together, she tried so hard, but she couldn't stop the tears that poured from her eyes or the lack of oxygen that suddenly seemed to occupy the room as she gasped, "you don't know what he did to me," she cried. "is that what you do to them? Is that what you would have done to me?"

Pyramid stood in silence. He knew the answer to her question and he didn't want to admit it. But the answer was yes. Yes, he would have raped her. Yes, he would have torn her apart. He would have played with her, tormented her until he was bored and then he would have thrown her away like trash. Just like his countless other victims. He told himself that he would have never done it to her, but the truth was, he would have. He even thought about it, imagined it for a long time after their first encounter. Cold hands reached inside him and wrung out his insides as he realized that to her, he was nothing more than another monster. She was afraid of him. He had tried very hard for her to see him differently. It had seemed so important, but now he didn't even know why. He was what he was- a monster until the end. But it didn't matter. He still wouldn't let anything happen to her, not again. If it came down to it, he would go back to the pit in her place. She would not suffer the way he suffered. Even if she hated him, even if she made him feel like he was being torn apart from the inside out, he would do whatever he had to do to protect her. Always. "Lilith," he said evenly, "I'm not going to let you go through that again. I will take your place before I let that happen. I'm not going to let anyone throw you into the pit. If you transition again, I will go with you, whether you want me to or not."

"I don't trust you," she said. "Please go away." Pyramid didn't have anything more to say to her, so he left. He didn't know how he could make her trust him. He didn't have anything he could give her, there was nothing he could really think of to do. So he just left her be.

Lilith got out of bed, feeling empty and cold. She got dressed, slowly, her movements were mechanical. She looked in the mirror but she didn't see herself. She didn't see anything. The more she sat still, the emptier she felt. She had to keep herself occupied. So without much consideration, she grabbed her backpack and her sword. "Stay here," she told Ghost. He whined in protest, but she wanted to be alone and she knew she would worry about him if he was with her.

She set out with a leisurely pace, daring anything to come near her. She noticed that the monsters had become less interested in her as they had been when she first arrived. Maybe she was turning into a monster herself. Lilith rounded the corner into an old ally and stopped. She had discovered the library a few days ago. It was so boarded up that the only way she was able to get in had been through the fire escape and then opening a small window in the basement to let Ghost in. She left the ladder down when she would leave and barb wire carefully covering the window entrance. But the ladder was up, the metal carabiner clip she used to hold it up to ensure no one followed her was in place and it looked like the wire had been cut.

Lilith had a bad feeling about this, but she also felt mad. That library was hers. She found it first. She cleared it out. She claimed it. How dare anyone try and trespass into her haven? She couldn't reach the bottom rung of the ladder without help and there weren't any trash cans or barrels in the alleyway. She grabbed the ladder hook she hid behind the dumpster and hitched it onto the bottom rung. She jumped and grunted as she tried to haul herself off the ground enough to reach it, but dropped back to the ground. She scowled and tried again, this time she managed to grab onto the rung and pull herself upwards. She was able to get her knee propped up which allowed her pull herself up. She grinned in triumph as she grabbed the hook and sat it on the platform to retrieve later. Quietly she slipped through the window, noticing that the wire hadn't simply been torn away, it had been cut.

She dropped down onto the second floor of the library, drawing her sword. It was a big, open space with mazes of shelves. The second floor stretched all the way around the room, overlooking the ground floor. Lilith made her way over to the old spiral staircase, leading down. With her sword drawn, she crept through the mazes, but saw no sign of anyone. But as she neared the back of the library she heard it from inside one of the private rooms. A voice. Her voice.

That room was where she had been documenting and collecting a database on Silent Hill and someone was in there touching her things.

She opened the door quietly and saw a figure pouring over her papers, their back towards her. It looked like a man with short brown hair. But to Lilith he was an intruder. She raised her sword.

"Ah, Lilith Mason, I was wondering when you would show up."

"Who are you?"

"You have some very fascinating observations here," he said, ignoring her question, "though somewhat lacking. I think I could help you with that."

"I will not ask you a third time," she hissed. "Who are you?"

The man turned around with a wolfish grin and threw his hands up, "The name's Vincent."