Work Text:
The Price
copyright 1999, Grace Macy
There was someone in his apartment.
She was standing in front of his window, her back to the door, her stance both relaxed and tense. She was dressed all in black: leather, silk and lace over skin paler than the moon. Hair black as well, hanging straight down her back almost to her waist. The crow perched on her shoulder matched her perfectly.
The bird cawed as he entered, or perhaps the cry was a welcome to his own guide, who flew in to perch nonchalantly on the broken window sill and returned the greeting. Then, and only then, did she turn, although Eric knew she had known he was there even before he opened the door. Eric stayed silent, waiting for her to speak, drawn in by the image she created standing there. Powerful, beautiful, utterly inscrutable.
Her face was in its human mask, pale skin accentuating sculpted brows and dark eyes, high cheekbones and dainty chin, delicate mouth with perfect Cupid's-bow lips. She was perhaps 5'4", her frame slender and small-breasted; she looked like a china doll, delicate and fragile. Except that Eric knew she could break anyone in two if she wished.
"I'm Lilli," she said finally, her voice a soft soprano, youthful and yet older than time.
"Eric," he returned.
She nodded. They regarded each other for another long moment then, as if at a silent signal, the crow perched on her shoulder launched itself at the window. Eric's guide joined it in flight as it soared thru the empty panes. Eric looked a question at the woman.
"They like to visit," Lilli told him, and shrugged.
"We all do," Eric ventured, almost warily.
She smiled. "Yeah." Then the smile faded, leaving only sadness in its wake; it had never reached her eyes. "You've been around a while. Almost a year."
Eric frowned, watching as she started walking. Not towards him, but a seemingly aimless route around the loft. "So this is what, my physical?"
She glanced at him over her shoulder and smiled that same soft, distracted half-smile she had given before. "We're dead," she reminded him.
Eric shrugged. He was completely at a loss. It was bad enough that Hannah kept appearing, wreakig havoc, and then disappearing. Now this? <<I'm beginning to know how Albrecht feels. >> "So why *are* you here?"
Lilli stopped at a corner of the loft, in front of the bed, and slowly ran her fingers across the top of the foot-board. Eric stilled, knowing what she was doing, the images/feelings/memories she was receiving from that simple touch. He walked forward quickly, not wanting to share those joys and pains, his private grief; hell and heaven in one. Shelly.
His hand snapped out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her away from the bed and the reverie, and suddenly he found himself on the ground without even the memory of comprehension of how he got there.
Lilli looked down at him, her face that of a Crow, and lowered herself in an eyeblink to straddle his legs. There was nothing provocative or sexual about it; she just seemed to have decided to sit on him while they talked. Even with the Crow looking out through her eyes, she looked barely older than Sarah, he realized with a shock; certainly she was younger than Shelly. "No," Lilli said softly.
Eric blinked. "No?"
"No," she repeated. She tilted her head, bird-like, and regarded him solemnly. "I'm not younger than Shelly. Or you. I was. But I'm not now."
Eric swallowed, something cold moving through his blood. "Then how old are you, now?"
She blinked slowly at him, so bird-like now that Eric knew it wasn't a mere affectation. "Much older than you'd believe." Lilli sighed suddenly, and it was the sound of every sadness in the world. "Much older than I should be. I'm your nightmare, Eric Draven."
Somehow, he wasn't bothered that she knew his full name. All he could manage was to repeat her phrasing. "My nightmare?"
She nodded, leaning back casually on his thighs. "Eternity. Never moving on. Never rejoining the ones for whose sakes we came back to earth."
The chill settled in his heart and turned it to ice. "Why?" he heard himself whisper. "Why can't we go on?"
Lilli shook her head. "Not we. Me," she corrected. "You, my friend, are a different story. Or you could be." Eric frowned and she leaned forward, her weight shifting in ways that should have sent heat through him; instead, all his attention was concentrated on the dead shadows in her eyes. "Your friend Hannah and I are the same. We won't ever move on. But you can; you will; if you listen."
"I don't understand," he said. "Hannah . . . she can still redeem herself. She can't be lost forever!"
Lilli's smile returned, but there was something else there now; the echo of madness. "It's not about redemption," she said, and stood abruptly.
Eric watched her slide back to stand before the window again. Slowly, he stood and approached her. "If it's not about redemption, then what *is* it about?" he asked. "Why are we here?"
Lilli turned to look at him, the Crow gone from her face, and almost from her eyes. A moment passed, and he *saw* the change, the settling of a mantle of humanity that had been missing before. This time when Lilli smiled it was one of sadness again. "Forgiveness," she answered. "It's all about forgiveness."
"You mean forgive the people who hurt us?" Eric shook his head. "I don't --"
"Forgiveness," she repeated, her eyes intense as they captured his. "But not of them." Eric stared at her, not understanding, and she reached for him. Her hands settled almost gently on his face, cradling. And from that touch flowed memories that were not his own.
A woman. A man. <<Robert.>> A child. <<Susanna.>>
Laughing. A road trip. A broken down car on the dark highway.
"We should help them, honey."
"It's late. We'll call the state police when we get to the next gas station."
"We could just drive them to the next gas station. What if someone's hurt?"
A quick argument over it, but it's lost even before it begins. She persuades him. <<Like I always did.>>
They stop. Robert gets out, offering help.
Flash of headlights on metal.
A gun.
Blood.
Robert's face in the white shine of their headlights, his eyes wide with shock.
Blood.
Screams. Laughter from the men in the other car. Terror as they approach.
Keys in the ignition. Have to get the car in gear, and <<dammit dammit dammit where's reverse!? Robert, why didn't you let me learn to drive this damn thing?!! Oh god, god, Robert - my heart, my husband . . .>>
Laughter. Guns. "Get out of the car, bitch!"
No time. No time and "Susie, get down! Keep down, baby!" and <<drive! drive dammit stupid car dammit drive dammit God help us help us please!>>
Reverse, <<finally yes thank you god!>>, jerking away from the other car, back on to the road, just a few feet <<keep going keep going keep going>>
A shout. "You ain't goin' nowhere, bitch!"
Gunfire. Glass shatters. Pain in her shoulder, her back, warmth down her side. Wheel slips in her fingers and the car heads for the side of the road.
A ditch. Hitting the wheel hard, stars exploding behind her eyes.
<<Oh god, god please, please help us. Susie . . .>> "Susie . . . baby. . ."
"Told you you weren't goin' nowhere."
A scream from the backseat, "Momma!", then laughter and a fist crashes into her face.
A collage of images next. Terror and pain to rival Shelly's, send Funboy's troupe cowering in a corner.
Helpless. Furious.
<<don't give up don't give up don't give up>>
"Get away from me, get away from my daughter, you sick sons of bitches!"
More pain, more anger, helpless through all of it. Watching, bleeding, dying as they beat and rape and laugh. Always laugh.
Still that litany in her mind of <<don't give up don't give up don't give up>> along with <<I'll get you all of you sons of bitches bastards sick bastards I'll get you I'll kill you all kill you all kill you-->>
And then darkness. A rest, a chance, and she takes it. Can't stay there.
<<"Can't stay with you, baby. My loves. I have to go back.">>
<<"It's over, Lilli. Let it go. Stay here.">>
<<"I can't. I'm going back. I'm going to kill those bastards. Every one of them. I won't stop until they pay.">>
A bridge, light that pulls her through into the world of the living while her family waits for her beyond. No guide except her anger, nothing to stop her when she finds them. She didn't know the price until it was too late, until they came back as strong as her but far worse, darkness in body as well as soul.
Snakes.
Five of them. So many, so strong. . . But she stopped them. Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, until the last one was permanently gone.
And then she wandered, helping where she could, trying to somehow earn her way back into the light until she realized that that wasn't what the light was waiting for. Not redemption, not evening the scales. What Robert had said when she came back, what she had ignored, been unwilling to grant.
<<Let it go.>>
Accept that she couldn't stop them. Accept that she couldn't protect her baby, her husband. Wasn't her fault, wasn't her choice, wasn't her at all. She accepted it, but still she stayed, so she realized there was a bit more to it than that. Such a little bit, it seemed, but impossible for some, for a mother.
"Ourselves," Eric whispered, his eyes wide with shared grief and sudden understanding. Lilli looked up at him, her hands only hands now, cool against his skin as he blinked away tears. Tears for her, for Hannah, for all the lost souls he could so easily join. "To move on, we have to forgive *ourselves*." He paused, then, softly: "I have to forgive myself. For not being able to stop Funboy and his gang. For letting them hurt Shelly. For letting them kill her."
Lilli nodded and let her hands drop. She turned and headed for the door, her boots clicking softly against the wooden floor.
"I don't know if I can," Eric said.
She paused. "You will," she answered over her shoulder. "It may take a while longer, but you will."
"And Hannah?" Eric asked quietly.
Lilli looked at him. "What do you think?" she asked evenly.
Eric looked at her for a long moment, silent. He knew the answer; so did she. He didn't ask Lilli's fate. He knew that too. As if she heard him, Lilli nodded and continued to the door. It shut behind her with a soft click, accompanied by the flap of wings as a single crow alighted on the broken pane of the loft window. Eric's crow.
The two regarded one another for a moment, then the bird cawed and cocked its head in query. The man nodded and looked back at the closed door. The cars he had seen in Lilli's memories had been Model T's, new only when Bonnie and Clyde were trying their luck in the world.
Eric looked at the broken window and nodded again. He knew the price now, and Shelly was waiting for him.
**Finis**