Chapter 23: Chapter 21: Myself and I

Lilith sat down next to Raphael, giving the girl a worried look. “Hey, you alright? Carmen didn’t do anything weird, did she?”

Raphael started, as if she hadn’t noticed that Lilith was there. “What?”

“I was just wondering if Carmen said or did anything weird and making sure you’re fine.”

Raphael gave Lilith a conflicted sort of look. “No, I’m fine.” She was silent for a long moment, clearly struggling with herself over what to say. “Um…I’m…sorry.” She finally said. “I shouldn’t have attacked you, I guess I was just…I dunno, too caught up in wanting to be a hero to really pay attention.”

Lilith shrugged. “It’s fine, I get it. If I thought there was something fishy going on, I would want to take care of it too. More importantly, how are you doing? Do you need me to try and get you changed back? We’re in a stressful situation and I don’t want anything unnecessarily adding to that.”

Raphael shook her head. “Didn’t I already say I don’t care? Angels really don’t care about that sort of thing, so it’s not adding stress. Besides, if this is a punishment, then I…guess riding it out is the responsible thing to do.”

Lilith smiled weakly. “Perhaps, I just…worry. You’re just a kid, and I don’t want you to end up traumatized because of me.”

“That’s…” Raphael stopped talking, giving Lilith that same sort of conflicted look.

“I know.” Lilith replied sadly. “I probably already traumatized you, getting you dragged out here with me, I –”

“That’s not it!” Raphael said quickly. “Honestly, it’s not that big a deal, Kali will get us back in a couple of weeks and we’ll be safe until then. It was scary at first but now it’s fine, boring even. I just…” She trailed off then shook her head. “Look, can we talk about Carmen?”

A small knot formed in Lilith’s stomach. “So, she did do something.”

“No. Look…is it true that you’re going to end up ‘putting Carmen away’ like Carmen said you would?”

Lilith frowned. “I’ll be honest, I kind of want to, but I really just can’t bring myself to, not unless she does something really bad. It…well, it feels like she’s her own person now, and I don’t want to just take that away from her.”

“Carmen doesn’t seem to think the same, she says you two are the same person at the end of the day.”

“I…well, I dunno. I guess that’s up to her if she wants to think that, but personally I don’t, we’re just too…different. And now that she has her own body, I think she might as well be able to just…go off and live her own life if she wants to. I’ve sorta been keeping those thoughts to myself when we share memories since I don’t want to influence her, but I’ve been thinking it for a while now.”

“Have you…talked to her about it?” Raphael asked.

“No, things have been sorta crazy and…well, there just hasn’t been a good time.”

“Maybe you should.” Raphael suggested. “You two seem to be of differing opinions on the matter and I think that it’s probably important to be on the same page about it.”

Lilith sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll do it after we finish up here, whenever that ends up being.”

There was an awkward silence after that, eventually ended when Raphael spoke up again. “One…one more thing.” She said nervously. “Why are you being so…nice? I attacked you and was always rude to you so I…well, I just don’t get it.”

You are reading story The New Chimera at novel35.com

Lilith shrugged. “You’re what, ten? You were probably just trying to look cool in front of your friends, and I get that. You thought you saw a problem and you tried to fix it. Sure, it probably could have been done better if you just went to the teachers, but I can get why you didn’t. It’s really not a big deal.”

“I’m actually eight.” Raphael corrected. “Come to think of it, how old are you? It’s hard to tell with Perfect Chimeras.”

“Twenty-five, so…still in my prime, I guess.” To Lilith’s surprise, Raphael snorted, causing her to give her a confused look. “What? Did I say something funny?”

“Yeah, that bit about being in your prime. I mean, your prime is kind of a super long time. Like, I’m pretty sure it’s literally forever, you have access to every single anti-aging ability in existence.”

“Oh.” Lilith…hadn’t really thought of it in that way before, and it made her sad in a weird sort of way. She was probably going to outlive her friends and family, and that just felt…lonely. After a moment of reflection, she shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Why are you still here, anyway? It can’t be that exciting watching mom beat me in a fight over and over again.”

Raphael shrugged. “Well…Carmen was right. I’ve always wanted to know more about Perfect Chimeras, so this is a good opportunity to get more knowledge. Not everyone has this sort of opportunity, you know?” She paused, studied Lilith’s face for a moment, then, apparently satisfied, continued. “You can do some weird stuff, you know that?”

Lilith laughed. “You’re preaching to the choir, kid. You’ve got no idea how weird the past few months have been for me.”

---

“What’s up? Is it about Raphael?” Carmen asked, sitting down across from Lilith. She wasn’t sure why Lilith had asked her to meet so suddenly, so she was more than a little curious to find out what was going on.

“N-no,” Lilith stuttered, looking away, “it’s…about us.”

Carmen raised an eyebrow. “Just share your memories with me and we’ll talk about it, it’ll be faster that way.”

“That’s the problem!” Lilith said, almost wailing. “I can’t just keep going on like this!”

Carmen stood up and walked over to Lilith, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Get a grip! If I’m that troublesome, just put me away when I’m not doing other things. We’re not in a situation where I’m terribly useful, so if I’m causing you stress then just don’t deal with me. It’s not exactly rocket science.”

“No! No, no, no!” Lilith shouted. “I can’t just treat you like…like you’re a thing! You’re a living, breathing person with emotions and everything. You think, therefore you are! I can’t just ‘put you away’, that’s awful! You’re not just a tool for me to exploit!”

Carmen stopped, staring at Lilith. She hadn’t been expecting something quite like this but…well, knowing her other half, it made sense. “Ah, so that’s it. Let me guess, you don’t want to share your thoughts about this because you don’t want to influence how I think about it. Well I don’t have any hang-ups like that, so let me just put it like this. I am you.” She said, punctuating those last three words with a spike of her emotions.

“Like it or not, I will eventually return to you. As such, it’s ridiculous for you to resist communicating your emotions to me like this when it’ll happen eventually. At some point in the future something’s going to happen to this body and I’m going to, however temporarily, end up sleeping inside you again. Look, I’m thrilled to be ‘out’ more and would love to stay out more permanently, but all you’re doing by agonizing over this is–”

She was cut off, a window appearing in front of her. And, through another set of eyes, she could see as Lilith got the same one.

---