"Thank you for saving me." I sit up and tell Lilith. I don't think she will believe it but I'm being genuine. Her eyes look sad but she still gives a trademark smug smile.
"Of course. Who else could do it?" She performs a mock shrug. "The cat?" She struggles to hold back a laugh, or at least pretends to. She clearly isn't in as good a mood as she'd like to seem.
"He's as good a place to start as any I guess." I sigh in frustration. "Allister shot me in the head." Gold dust floats from her wings, creating tiny piles on the otherwise clean floor.
"I'm well aware." Her voice is sharp, like a silver knife to the throat.
"You were there. You saved me then as well. That's why I have this." I indicate to the new yellow section of my head. "Didn't know you could do that.".
"I'm a woman of many talents." To demonstrate her point a large amount of dust swirls around her. And in a few seconds she's at least a foot taller than me. I end up leap to the other side of my bed in surprise, unintentionally hitting the wall.
"Holy shit!" I yell without thinking. "Why stay so small if you can do that?!" She just blinks, her shiny black eyes scanning me like she doesn't understand something.
"For the cuteness factor, duh." As if that's the most obvious answer in the world.
"How much more have you been lying about?!" I didn't mean to yell. I wanted to stay calm and try and dissect everything. But clearly that's not in the cards for me right now. Lilith flies upwards because of my telling but ends up hitting the ceiling because of her increased height. She ends up falling to the floor and rubbing her head. Before all of this I would have rushed over to help or apologise, but I just keep yelling. "You lied about your powers! You tried to take over the city! You knew about Louhi this whole time." I violently pull on my hair. "Shen died! My friends might be dead! Why didn't you tell me anything! I could have stopped this if you'd told me!" Tears mix with the dust on the floor, creating a shimmering gold liquid. "Once you knew who I was you should have brought me in!" I'm not the bad guy here. I'm not going too far. I'm allowed to be this angry, right?
"Not exactly a fun topic of conversation." She mutters under her breath. When Lilith looks up to see that I'm not getting any less angry, she stands up and sighs. Seeing how much taller than me she is makes me take a step back. I can't help it if she's intimidating! "But I don't want to talk about it. I'm sorry." She starts to make her way to the door.
"W-what?! You can't just leave! You need to tell me what you know! What else can you do?! How do we stop Louhi?! Are you really one of the heroes?!" I hesitatingly follow behind her. With how hard she's shaking I know she can hear me. "Please just talk to me! I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you can't keep being nice to me then up and leave! If you can help then you have to!" I finally reach out to her and grab hold of a wing when she makes it to the door. All of a sudden I get flung across the room. "Argh!" The pain isn't the worst I've felt but it's still pain. The room and I assume boat start shaking as Lilith slowly turns around to look at me. What looks like a yellow exoskeleton starts to creep up her arms and neck. Pink flames leak into the air from her angry eyes. Her teeth sharpen and her frame grows bulkier.
"Don't… tell me… that I need to help!" She takes a single stomp towards me and it feels like an earthquake. I try not to but I can't hide my shaking or the terrified look on my face. I can see it, the fire inside of her. It's like a pink star, burning and blazing brilliantly at an intensity I doubt I could ever match. There's barely any being siphoned off from the planet because she doesn't need it, she's become like a second planet. Lilith was always known as the number one, but we were underselling her, she could reduce this planet to dust with the kind of power she's carrying. And she's pointing it at me. I reach to my side to grab my wa- oh, of course. But then the shaking stops. The hiking monster Lilith was becoming begins to fade back into the relatively more human woman I know. The black and yellow armour retreats back into her body and the fire disappears. She looks at me like I just kicked a puppy. Her lips quiver as a result of the uncontrolled tears. She kneels down slowly in front of me and slowly reaches her scarlet hand out. I instinctively flinch and she immediately pulls back as if burned. There's nothing else but us for a single, terribly long moment. That horrible moment inly ends when her sobs reach a new level. "I-I'm sorry! P-p-please don't b-be sc-scared!" She looks terrified. I want to reach out, to help. But that just won't happen, I'm too scared, I'm justifying her own fears. Instead I just sit there like a coward and watch one of the most powerful women I've ever met have a mental breakdown, sobs moving to laughter before too long.
"Lilith…" I don't know what i was going to say but it doesn't matter.
"Hehe… I've been so stupid. Of course this was going to happen." She furiously runs at her eyes, trying to erase the evidence of sadness. Several cuts appear and disappear as she get more overzealous. This time when she goes to leave I don't stop her. I just sit there and try to figure out when everything went wrong.