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There was no time.
She had made it back to their new home in the Lavender Beds, surrounded by the nearby waterfront and the rustling of the overhead trees with their bright leaves casting shadows over the infamous lavenders down below...and the scene brought her no peace. No serenity. The blonde leader of the Free Wings strode to the front door of her estate and slipped inside as quietly as she could. She could heard some voices down stairs, but she didn't stop to mingle.
She moved down the hall before getting to her own cramped quarters away from all the other rooms and everyone elses' abodes, shutting and locking the door behind herself. Mikh'a was with Sarameda, Ado was toddling about the house with the others...
Good. She could prepare.
Tying up her hair in a tall ponytail, Lili made quick work getting what she needed in her room. There was nothing besides a bed, a dresser, a chest, and Mikh'a's little wooden playpen in the corner by the door. She flung open drawers, grabbing vials and papers that she had tucked away prior in preparation for the inevitable coming of this day. Not looking behind her as she tossed them onto her bed with no rhyme or reason to this madness.
It was halfway through going through the drawers that Lili realized she was crying. Fat, salty tears slipping down her face and along her jaw before tainting the collar of her shirt. She'd wipe them away quickly, nearly sobbing with frustration that she was even crying in the first place. He had gone through this often enough, right? He always came through, didn't he?
But...his parents...what his brother...
The look on his face when they got back from the town of his birth.
Her frantic movements had stopped as her hand lingered over something unfamiliar in her drawers. A shirt that obviously was not her own though she did slowly bring it to her nose for a tentative sniff. It was a simple white shirt...but Twelve, it smelled like him. Was his. In a matter of hours, or even a day or two...well. It wouldn't be him. It would be something else. Something dark and alien and strange and straight from the Void itself.
Her sweet, compassionate, loving Locke would be a monster in a matter of hours.
And it broke her heart.
Lili wasn't aware how long she was on her knees in front of her drawers just clutching his shirt to her chest, but it was only a few minutes in real time. In her head it had felt like hours before she managed to drag herself upright and continue packing.
The last few weeks with the salve she managed to procure from him showed her a side of Locke she hadn't seen before: more confident, more happy, more at ease. He was more quick to smile, to laugh, to be open. Of course, he was still shy and gentle natured but...
It was different.
Different because she got to see the real Locke Rinannis. She got to see the man beneath the aetheric taint and the haze of the potions he always had to take. Beneath the negative emotions that were more instilled at the front of his mind from said taint was an even more beautiful heart and soul then she had seen before. All she wanted to do was protect it and keep it safe. And most of all...
Find a way to save him.
Not worrying about packing more then two things of clothing in her small travel sack, she hoisted it over her shoulder and strode out of the room while wiping at her eyes.
