Okay, I swear I wrote this Interlude a few weeks ago, and didn't actually have any plan to post this in conjunction with Christmas. That's just a happy coincidence. For those of you who have been wondering about how Lilly acts with Lila...well, there's this (She's also had a bit of time to get used to the madness).

Interlude

December 24th, 2008

Lilly opened the door to peek in on her daughter. She had been uncommunicative for three days. Lila told her that she was working on something, and she needed Lilly not to distract her. It was hard for Lilly. Sometimes she felt like she lost her daughter with her husband in the traffic accident. She buried her husband, but her daughter was still here, forever changed.

Lila spent all her time tearing old electronics apart and reassembling them into other things. One of the first things she had done was reprogram their internet router. Now, according to Lila at least, their internet activity couldn't be traced. Lila's paranoia about being outed as a parahuman seemed to have plateaued for now. For the first month, she'd been obsessive. She had one of her few freak outs when Lilly suggested going to the Protectorate for assistance. Her follow-up suggestion of a psychologist was likewise shot down. Apparently, there were reporting requirements if the parahuman might be a danger to others. Lila assured her mother that any psychologist would absolutely find her a danger to others. That revelation hadn't made Lilly feel any better.

Lilly's concerns only increased when Lila showed her how Lila had turned her small savings into several million dollars. Lila assured her that Watchdog would not be able to trace any of the transactions, since they fell outside the Watchdog search parameters. Lila hadn't explained what those parameters were, just that that her stock trades, and other unnamed activities, hidden behind a shield of legal holding companies that Lilly didn't even know existed, wouldn't trigger them. Her daughter explained that she was going to need all the money she could get if she was going to save the world, her obsession since she triggered.

Lila was currently working on something the size of a small flashlight. She hadn't bothered to explain to her mother what it was, just that it was a necessary step. Whatever it was, Lila had torn apart a microwave and three DVD players to get the parts she needed.

The camera connected to Lila's, now greatly modified, computer turned to focus on Lilly. That was Lila's VI, or virtual intelligence, that she called SANDI. Lila wrote the computer program while she was still in the hospital, taking up all the spare memory in her iPad. When she actually came home, Lila began modifying her computer to be able to run the program. According to Lila, SANDI would learn and become more life-like over the next few months but wouldn't be able to achieve sentience...something that Lilly hadn't worried about until her daughter mentioned it.

Lilly watched as whatever her daughter was building neared completion. Lila dropped the device into a glass filled with rubbing alcohol, then surprised Lilly when she turned to face her.

"Mother," Lila said woodenly, "do you think you can make that home-made hot chocolate? Maybe we can sit in front of the fire on television and eat cheese and crackers and drink hot chocolate?"

Lila so rarely asked for food anymore. Since the accident, she claimed she no longer needed food to live. She did like to taste things occasionally, though.

Lilly smiled. She would take whatever bits of normalcy she could get at this point. Lila had figured out just last week how to turn her powers down. When she made her body more human, she could taste again. "Regular or mini marshmallows," she asked as always.

Her daughter didn't actually smile...she didn't really smile anymore...but the sides of her mouth turned up in the beginnings of a grin. "I'm not a barbarian," Lila responded as always, her face still wooden, "mini."

Lila turned and walked to the kitchen. Their apartment wasn't huge but wasn't tiny either. She worked as an actuary, freelancing for several insurance companies. Her husband, Henry, had been a successful insurance agent and investment advisor before he died. Between their savings and Henry's life insurance, they were comfortable. Henry had been, if anything, over-insured. She and Lila wouldn't have to worry about money for a while...ever if she accepted that Lila could pay all the bills. Lilly would much rather have her husband and daughter back than the money.

Lila had always been a daddy's girl. After the accident, she just seemed to drift further and further away. Her husband and daughter had a million little 'in jokes' between them, fishing, holidays, flying kites for god's sake. At times Lilly felt alienated, like all she had was mini-marshmallows. Lila used to laugh when she said it though.

Lilly walked to the small kitchen and started some milk on a low heat, pulling out some cheese to cut. This Christmas hadn't been easy. Henry always took Lila to see the mall Santa for pictures, even though Lila always protested that she was too old for that, she still dressed festively to accompany her father to the mall. This year, Lila was firm that she was too old for that and refused to dress for pictures. As far as Lilly knew, she hadn't even put shoes on since coming home from the hospital. Granted, in the first few days after the accident, Lila tended to shred shoes and clothes alike.

Cheese taken care of, Lilly pulled out a packet of Lila's favorite crackers, then grabbed a chocolate bar for the milk. The pot of milk was just getting hot enough, so she broke the bar in half, then into squares, dropping half the squares into the milk and putting the other half with the cheese. She took the tray of cheese and crackers and placed it on the coffee table in front of the television, then tuned to a channel displaying a crackling fireplace, playing Christmas music. She grabbed a couple of pillows from the couch and dropped them on the floor. That was about as normal a Christmas Eve as she could make it.

As Lilly walked back toward her daughter's room, she heard an ear-piercing shriek come from that direction. Lilly dashed down the short hall to her daughter's doorway, to find Lila laying on the floor, face splattered with blood.

Lilly was shocked. Lila didn't bleed anymore. She could be shot, and it wouldn't leave a mark. The only way she could be hurt was for Lila to turn her durability down herself...something Lila only recently realized she could do. Lilly rushed to her daughter's side, looking for the source of the blood.

It was all coming from her daughter's eye socket. The accident that killed her husband ripped Lila's left eye from its socket. It had healed quickly, but left a one-inch cavity where her eye used to be. Now that cavity was filled with a metal cup. Deep in Lila's eye socket a green light blinked at her.

Lilly wiped blood away, but more still seeped out from beneath the intrusive metal. "What did you do Lila?" Lilly whispered as she cried, holding her daughter.

She needed to call an ambulance she realized. It wasn't a thought that she had in relation to her daughter since bringing Lila home from the hospital. She was basically invulnerable unless she didn't want to be. She laid her daughter's head gently on the floor and started to dash toward the phone, only to hear Lila speak, "S'ok, mother," Lila said, sitting up. "I'm already healing."

Lilly rushed back to her daughter's side, dropping to her knees beside her. "WHAT DID YOU DO, LILA!?" she screamed at her daughter.

Lila turned her face in her mother's direction and reached up on her desk, pulling the small device she had been working on out of the glass of alcohol. As Lilly watched, she pressed the device into her eye socket.

"LILA!" Lilly shouted, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

"Mother," her daughter responded softly, "I built myself an eye." The device in her daughter's eye emitted a soft red light, making Lila look like The Terminator. "I couldn't install it if I was invulnerable, or it wouldn't seat in my eye socket," Lila said, as if that explained everything.

Lilly was speechless. Her daughter had just mutilated herself. She knew from her research that this was part of being a Tinker...an obsession to building things? She just didn't expect her daughter to hurt herself.

"New rule," she finally managed to say. "NO INSTALLING ANYTHING INTO YOUR BODY WITHOUT ASKING!"

"Mother," her daughter responded, "I'm only missing my eye. What else would I need to install in my body?" As if that would banish Lilly's worry.

"It doesn't matter," Lilly replied, hugging her daughter tight against her chest, sobbing. "It's a rule now. If you break it, you're grounded." Lilly realized how dumb that sounded, threatening to ground your daughter who never left the apartment anyway.

"Is the hot chocolate ready?" her daughter asked.

Lilly began to cry from the stress of it all, hugging her daughter to her chest.

"Lila," Lilly said through the sobs, "this has to stop. You can't just keep doing these things. You have to let me in, let me know what you're doing."

"If you promise to listen to me, I promise to tell you from now on, Mother," Lila responded. "But answer me honestly. If I told you that I was going to install a cybernetic eye in my head, would you have let me?"

"Absolutely not," Lilly responded without thinking.

"And that's why I didn't tell you, mother. If I am going to make my plans a reality, I'm going to have to do a lot of building. I can't do it all hampered with only one eye. I honestly thought about installing a dozen eyes, but I knew you would go crazy if I did that."

Lilly began sobbing again. Lilly thought nothing of mutilating her body as long as it furthered her self-imposed mission of SAVING HUMANITY. They couldn't even get through a Christmas Eve without disaster.

"Lila, something has to change." Lilly said still sobbing. "I know you think that you're okay, but I'm not. I'm trying everything that I can to reach you, to get you to listen to me. None of it's working. I wish you could use your brain to understand other people. If you could just understand, we could go from there. I don't know how I'm going to manage." At this point, Lilly was talking to herself more than her daughter. "No matter what I do, every time I think I'm starting to understand you, tell me about how the end of the world is coming and only you can save it...or mutilate your body with a mechanical eye. I can't handle this anymore. I just wish you could understand."

Lilly, still holding her daughter in a tight hug, looked into her daughter's face. She could almost see the thoughts flitting across the girl's face. She never stopped thinking. She was slowly losing the only thing she had left to the same accident that killed Henry. Not directly, but as a result of what the accident had done to her daughter's mind.

"Oh," Lila said, her body suddenly jerking, still held in Lilly's arms. Then a longer, "OOHHHH!" before she suddenly burst into tears. "I…I….I…," Lila stuttered having some kind of seizure in her mother's arms.

"LILA!" Lilly shouted. When there was no answer, she shook her hysterical daughter, shouting, "Lila, what's wrong."

"I…I…I….I….," Lila continued as she cried tears streaming down her right cheek.

Lilly had no idea what to do. Her daughter hadn't cried since the accident. Even before she got out of the hospital, when she heard of the death of her father, the girl hadn't cried. Now she looked like she was having a complete breakdown.

"Lila," Lilly said, trying to remain calm, "what is happening. You need to tell me what's happening. Do I need to take you to a hospital?"

"One," Lila said suddenly, "one, one, one," she repeated, slowly calming down, her tears and sobs draining away.

"What's happening, baby? What's going on?" Lilly asked as her daughter appeared to calm down significantly.

"I did what you said, Mom" Lila managed to stutter out.

Wait a minute, Lila hadn't called her 'Mom' since the accident. It was one of the first changes she noticed. She was Mother now, no longer Mom, "What did you do, Lila?" Lily asked again trying to remain calm.

Her daughter looked her in the eyes and said, "I did what you said, Mom. I made my brain think about understanding other people. I'm so sorry. I've been terrible. Dad died and I left you all alone." Tears continued to flow down Lila's right cheek.

"What, EXACTLY, did you do, Lila?" Lilly asked trying to get her daughter to focus.

"I've been using my brain to solve problems," Lila began. "All my brain is always working on fixing humanity. I didn't know that I could use part of my brain for one thing and another part for another. I didn't even notice before. I thought that if I could, I would use half my brain to try to understand you. Then it just happened. Half my brain was thinking about nothing but everything you've gone through since the accident. How dad died and you had to do everything alone. I didn't help at all...just worrying about everyone else's problems except yours. I should have helped you. I should have at least cried with you. I'm so sorry, mom. Fifty percent was way too much and all I could do was feel bad about every way I failed as a daughter. I had to turn it down to one percent. Forty-nine percent of my brain isn't even doing anything right now. It's like it's onstandby."

"Oh, baby," Lilly cried, hugging Lila tighter.

"I'm really sorry for not being a good daughter, mom," Lila continued. "I'll try to do harder."

Lilly took a deep breath. "Maybe just keep a couple of percentage points in understanding people, from now on, okay," she said. "But not too much." After a second of thought, she added "That goes for everything else too. You don't have to use your whole brain all the time. Maybe keep things to around fifty percent for everything."

"I think I can do that," Lila said and after a pause she said. "Do you think the hot chocolate is still hot?" she asked.

Lilly laughed through her tears, "If not, we can make more. Still, no more eye experiments," she added.

"Okay, Mom," Lila responded as Lilly carried her daughter to the living room.

Maybe it would be a Merry Christmas. She had her daughter back.