your eyes don't shine like they used to
show: Young and the Restless
central character: Lily Winters
notes: I started this last October. At the time, she was dating Billy and the relationship was going through this contrived disintegration that made no sense to me. I don't even like that pairing, but I was annoyed. So, here it is. I've given Lily a large world with people to interact with while still navigating the ups and downs of her relationship. It's just her changing, growing, evolving, forming relationships and examining who she is – with Billy, and without him. This is just Lily growing, changing and evolving. She's new, but the same person too.
disclaimer: I don't own anything - just own my own characters and the plots came from my brain. Everything else is the property of CBS, Sony, and the Bell Family. This isn't being done for any money whatsoever. Just an exercise in imagination and being done for entertainment. The title is a song lyric from "Enemies" by Tedy. Give it a listen if you want.

i. sometimes, i think i can fix us

Hiring Cleo as her executive assistant was the best and worst decision Lily ever made.

Cleo was the first to arrive, battling morning sickness and the last to leave even as her body changed over months. Cleo Stevenson was sharp, her organizational skills almost a superpower. She was a sweet person, supportive and logical like her Aunt Liv but a little rough around the edges and protective of her in a way that reminded her of her mom. But Lily was sad because Cleo's presence in the company couldn't contain her role. To nobody's surprise, Cleo was due for a promotion.

Cleo was fashionable, too, even with maternity clothes.

When Lily needed to juggle meeting after meeting, Cleo made her schedule cohesive even blocking out for walks and breaks. Fresh air. Coffee. A walk and the space to be with someone she cared about, or if she wanted, alone. She wanted to ask what the thought process was behind her schedule, but when Lily caught up to her in the elevator all she could do was thank her.

Cleo beamed at her, hand resting on her growing baby bump.

"Why are you even thanking me? Just because you're doing so much for everyone else, it doesn't mean someone can't look out for you, too," Cleo sighed, as the elevator stopped on the third floor. Her glossed mouth twisted in a slight frown. "This child is punching my bladder and I gotta yell at Finance."

"Cleo, be gentle with that department," she warned, good-naturedly.

A laugh escaped the woman's lips, her dark eyes glinting with mischief. Her brown skin was radiant, her eyes dark but warm and kind except when they took on an assessing, sharp glance. Only then could Lily see Cleo's mind working. She was tall, willowy and usually wore heels, adding to them. As her pregnancy progressed, Cleo's footwear became more comfortable. Today with her bright red wrap dress and bright gold accessories, she had bedazzled Converses of the same colour that Lily found cute, really. Cleo's frame reminded her of an Amazon warrior, imposing and stunning.

"You and I both know I won't be," Cleo replied, and moved to step off. She turned around and called her name. She stopped the elevator door with a manicured hand, her nails painted black and silver. "Lily?"

"Yeah?"

"You know you can hang out with me anytime, right? Henry will understand."

—

Henry was Cleo's boyfriend and they met a Chancellor-Winters mixer. She wasn't even going to attend until Lily had shown up at her house, picked out her outfit and stayed downstairs until Cleo appeared downstairs, all dressed up with her makeup done. She knew what the heaviness of losing a parent felt like and saw it rest on Cleo's body and how she stopped smiling, and how her assistant disappeared during lunch breaks. Cleo used her lunch breaks to sit in her car and cry and sometimes, Lily found her and didn't reprimand her for showing up after her mother had died unexpectedly the day before.

She missed her dad especially in moments when she needed guidance and she missed her mother in moments where Lily felt alone. Cleo swore, apologized profusely in the middle of broken sobs and Lily sat in Cleo's car as she hyperventilated in the driver's seat. Lily gently shushed her, rubbing small circles on her back, the way her mom had done. Then she had called Billy to lead an afternoon meeting because Cleo was in no condition to drive home herself.

She had seen this in prison: women who were murderers, substance abusers, those who fell through the cracks of the justice system and had no safety net. In prison, family background didn't matter. Money didn't mean anything. Those 23 hours a day stretched on forever no matter what someone had on the outside waiting for them. She saw women who had potential and wanted to be better, learn something even though it was old. Lily wanted to teach in a new way to shake up her own monotonous prison routine, and give these women something like hope. It was healing for her to teach in that small windowless prison classroom twice a week and hoped it was healing for these women to discover things whether it was for the first or hundredth times.

The best moments in her prison cell, Lily realized in hindsight, was the teaching. It was in the lessons in which they rearranged the chairs in a circle and shared stories. In those stories, Lily discovered lessons of her to take with her. So, that's what Lily did. She gave Cleo the space to tell her stories about her mom, what she was like, and allowed Cleo to be honest with her emotions and feel them. And, in turn, Cleo thanked her by getting out of the house for the first time in three weeks for a mixer. Henry was a sweet guy, a little reserved but had an interesting career in robotics that made him such a great fit as a potential client for Chancellor-Winters. Maybe even a subsidiary for their research department in the future if the timing was right. Cleo's boyfriend was an even more interesting person: a French mother who designed and happened to know of her mother, and a Japanese father who built robots to advance medical research and ran one of the largest electronics firms in Asia as a whole.

Henry never grew up in one place and even attended schools in Paris, Switzerland, and London. He spoke with an accent that she could never place. But he was a good person, from what she knew, and watching him with Cleo made Lily smile. Their romance was a whirlwind once but hey, she was a hopeless romantic. Sue her.

It was good to watch someone else be happy and perhaps, take a little credit for it. Of course, Lily was happy. She was feeling supported in her role with a great time behind her. Her family had shrunk considerably, broken by betrayal, but still, she would carry on. Mattie and Charlie were seniors in college at schools on opposite ends of the country, but she wondered how she got so lucky. Mattie was studying pre-med at Stanford while Charlie found a niche in filmmaking at NYU.

She couldn't help but think about it. With all of her blessings and good fortune, Lily couldn't help but notice her home – the home she had created with Billy – was a little colder these days. The spark was there. She still felt it and Lily still wanted to protect it and keep it burning. These days, it had simmered to cool embers and the warmest thing Lily felt was her coffee in the morning.

—

Lily nodded, oddly touched by the invitation. "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Cleo smiled softly. Lily watched the elevator door close, Cleo's long braids sway every confident stride she took and her gold hooped earrings glinted under the office's fluorescent lights. The elevator doors closed shut and it felt like forever, watching the lights change with every floor the elevator passed. Billy needed to go and she would never hold him back from discovering what his passions were. Her boyfriend was a wanderer, unable to sit still and seemed to thrive in organIzed chaos. She had watched Billy grow and leave his destructive tendencies even though Lily knew he was an addict. Her father lived and died as a perfect (in her eyes, he was the most perfect person and set the standard for parenthood) man. But alcoholism plagued him, falling off the wagon every so and often but finding the strength to get on. She knew of her father's pull to alcoholism and saw addiction up close.

Billy was a good person even though, at times, he didn't believe himself to be. Lily saw it. She saw it in the way he loved his children. She saw it in the way Johnny bantered and joked with him. She saw it in the way Katie looked at him like he hung the moon and helped her run her lines for the Halloween showcase. Lily saw it in the way she would late nights working and he would bring her another cup of coffee, plant a kiss in her hair and leave her to work while she had momentum. Lily felt lt when he made love to her and then he held her in bed pressing a kiss to the curve of her shoulder while tracing lazy patterns across her skin. They'd lay there, her legs intertwined with his and they'd talk about nothing and everything at the same time. Trade corny jokes and she'd attempt to teach him French until they came to the conclusion that Billy was pretty bad at it.

But Billy was very good at saying Je t'aime. He whispered it against her mouth like a sacred prayer repeatedly and made love to her again until the Genoa City morning sunrise came up.

—

Halloween was coming up and Lily realized something ironic as she stepped off the elevator and walked to her office. The man that had been so present, so there, so alive, was now a ghost.

Only this time, Lily wasn't running on grief, and pain.

She was running on realism, hindsight, and a sense of awareness so strong, it physically hurt.

—

Despite the additional cup of coffee from the break room and the sugar boost from the red velvet cupcake, Lily yawned in the silence of the office. It seemed to echo and emphasize how quiet it was when everyone left. She had let everyone in the office leave 30 minutes early with the stipulation that they all show her their costumes in the morning. Selfishly, it was because she couldn't really take part. When Lily felt her world develop uncertainties that terrified her, she couldn't indulge in a night of playing pretend. The twins were too old for trick-or-treat and they hated when she would dress them alike. Abby had been sweet enough to send her pictures of Dominic in his costume, and it made her smile for a moment.

She wanted more than anything to go to Katie's Halloween show but it was more Billy and Victoria's thing as parents, and it would feel like an intrusion. Katie was a creative child, quite talented too. Performing wasn't just a childhood phase, but something Lily watched the girl throw herself into. When Billy came home excited and full of fatherly pride and explained how this nearly 8-year-old child had taken Little Red Riding Hood and flipped it on its own head, she was amazed. Of course, getting to know Katie's creative mind and watching it unfold up close, was a feat, but watching Billy light up and the real treat. My girl's going to be the most adorably terrifying werewolf ever, babe, he told her beaming.

That conversation had been two nights ago before she had gone into this foreign holding pattern. Instead of finding him in whatever chaos was happening, Lily floated past Billy in surface-level conversation. He left the condo before she woke up. Like the night and so many others like this one, she spent more late nights at the office. Forcing herself to sort through one spreadsheet and another internal memo with IPO related things, Lily let herself operate on autopilot. A sharp knock on the door shattered the quiet and she placed a hand over racing heart. She took in deep breaths, her rational mind telling her a monster hadn't decided to take up residence in some corner of the office or under her desk.

It was just Greg. Greg was tall, lanky and soft spoken. He was an observer, always somewhere in the periphery of things. With a photographic memory, he was never the type to walk around with anything to take notes with. If he did have something in his hands, it was going to be an iPad. How he managed to do his job in IT and work toward a Ph.D in engineering was beyond her. A look of concern flashed in his hazel eyes and he played with the strap of his messenger bag, apologetic.

"I scared you."

"No. You didn't, Greg. I just thought…" Lily trailed off, shaking her head. She waved a hand, dismissively and turned her full attention on Greg. She knew of his little quirks, his habits, being on the spectrum and having his office configured in a certain way. Lily felt the goosebumps on her arms through the material of her dress. "Do you need anything?"

"Um, no. I'm just headed out. My Halloween plans consist of writing my dissertation with Amityville Horror as background noise. That's a special kind of horror," he told her with a half-smile. He went into the dark brown leather messenger bag Greg always carried and slid a folded white card on her desk. "From Billy."

—

Lily couldn't help but be curious. She closed her laptop, her attention on the card on her desk.

"Oh."

"I assisted," Greg confessed, bluntly. "He cornered me in the elevator. I agreed. He promised to never do that again, or I was going to explain Einstein's theory of relativity to him in painstaking detail," Greg explained, and shrugged. Greg became serious, but not enough to concern her. In the midst of Billy's surprise, Lily was still aware of this tightrope she had to walk. Some days, it felt like she was walking it en pointe without ballet while being asked to pirouette.

Right now, at this moment, Lily felt grounded. He was always the one with the sense of adventure, the person who made winging it the greatest thing in the world. While she was practical by design, Billy's idea of making things up as they came along was a shot of adrenaline she got swept up in. It gave her hope and validation that maybe he was alive, and she hadn't lost him.

Lily opened the card, unable to keep the smile away from her face. She recognized the quick strokes of his hand writing, complete with the slight smudges that came with being left-handed.

Greg continued. "He asked me, as a man, if I thought he was a bad boyfriend."

"He did?"

"Yes. Out of respect for your personal life and the work done here, I'll refrain from responding."

"I appreciate that. But what if the question was asked in hypothetical terms, what would your answer be?"

Greg stared at her with a thoughtful look in his face, and his brow furrowed. Lily saw the gears in his mind. He lightly chewed his bottom lip, and played with the strap of his messenger bag. The silence in her office stretched out so long, Lily planted a smile on her face, but felt terrible she had possibly overwhelmed Greg and put him in a terrible position.

"I'm sorry, you don't have to–"

"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!" he spoke over her, reciting the quote. She was vague familiar, recalling that her dad had recited it during her battle with cancer. Everything was terrifying, her future unknown. Her mother's absent was felt more acute at this time when Lily wanted more than to be a mother herself.

Battling cancer and making the near impossible uphill climb to motherhood was complex. When Lily pressed her hand against Mac's swollen abdomen and felt her children kicking against the palm of her hand, she knew. Everything was suddenly simple and the details of her misfortune didn't matter. The simple facts were this: she was inching closer to remission and these two little blessings would call her Mommy.

Lily let go of the threads of this memory in time to hear Greg continue speaking in the present. "Thoreau said that. Hypothetically speaking," Greg placed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "I can simply say that Billy is searching for a point of reference. Once he finds this, things become simple. However, this response is hypothetical, and based on no preconceived notions."

"Of course, because it's hypothetical, right?"

"Happy Halloween, Lily," Greg said finally with a rare chuckle, and a two fingered salute. He turned around, her office closing shut behind him. She heard his steps fade away until she was in the silence again.

"Lily, roses are red. Violets are blue. Would you grant me the honour of having dinner with you?"

With Greg gone, Lily was left alone again.

There wasn't the silence fueled by loneliness anymore. It was the silence of knowing her tightrope had changed into a long winding road that would lead her home to him.