(no subject)

[awesome_lilly]

It was the night after New Year’s, the hour after the late night crowd had finally gone to bed and before the early risers were up. Lilly sat in the bar with a cup of Bailey’s laced with coffee, staring out the observation window. There wasn’t really a better background for serious moping than the apocalypse, after all.

The front door opened, and Lilly glanced over idly, expecting some newbie she’d have to give the speech to. The tall weathered figure stepping through the door with a look of amused resignation on his face was not exactly a newbie, though.

For a second, Lilly could only stare. A second after that, coffee, moping, and apocalypse had been utterly forgotten in her mad dash to the door.

“Ro!” She threw her arms around him, hugging him fiercely. “What up, sai?”

“Lilly.” Deadpan. Lilly let go to punch him on the shoulder.

“I haven’t seen you in like, four months because you were supposedly gone forever and now you’re here and all you can say is ‘Lilly’?”

“How are your tricks?” Polite, but with the hint of a… twinkle in his eyes? Lilly decided that was impossible. Gunslingers didn’t twinkle.

But then, gunslingers also wore guns, always, and Roland… wasn’t.

“Holy fuck, Ro,” she said, completely ignoring his question. “Where’s your gun?”

“Laid it down at the base of the Dark Tower.” He could have just as easily been saying he’d left it on his other gunbelt. Lilly gaped.

“You made it to the Tower?”

“I always make it to the Tower,” Roland responded, and this time the flash in his eyes was definitely not a twinkle. “Only this time, I found what I sought.”

He glanced around the bar, faded blue eyes landing on a framed wizarding photograph above the bar. The not’twinkle returned.

“Eddie got it framed. Good.”

Lilly followed his gaze, smiling.

“Damn straight. He did that right after you left.” She paused, biting her lip. “He’s gone, Ro. They all are. Eddie, Susannah, Jake, Koosh, Susan… and Alain. They’ve gone on to the clearing.”

Roland just nodded, looking unsurprised.

“You’re still here.”

Lilly smiled crookedly.

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

She managed to keep all but a trace of bitterness out of her voice.

(When my daughter is sixteen, you still will be.)

He looked down at her and smiled, a little.

“Would you sit and hold palaver with me, my dear?”

Lilly smiled back at him, more happily than she’d done in months.

“Course I will, Ro.”

Roland escorted Lilly to a back booth and placed an order with a passing waitrat. The rat returned a moment later, bearing a tray with graf, tequila, and a bowl of pistachios. Roland lifted his glass to Lilly.

“Here’s to a taste of the old times.”

“A taste of the old times,” Lilly echoed and clinked her glass against his. They drank, and Roland leaned forward.

“I’d hear what’s happened to you since I left, if you’d speak of it.”

Lilly shrugged.

“There isn’t that much, really. I nearly went insane from changing the past, went to the Dreaming to fix it, nearly got seriously fucked up by Nyarlathotep but managed to get away and get sane.”

She smiled at him suddenly.

“You helped, you know.”

Eyebrow. Fingertwirl. Lilly continued, smiling.

“I was running from the wolf and you, or a version of you that the Dreaming and I created, gave me a little shelter from the storm and enough time to find the other Lilly, the one with the key.”

She grinned.

“You look pretty good in a Hawaiian shirt, Ro.”

Roland snorted.

“You dreamed a version of me with a Hawaiian shirt?”

“And busted flip-flops,” Lilly added, grinning more. “You were a Parrot Head, Ro.”

The eyebrows draw together.

“You dreamed me as a can-toi with a Hawaiian shirt and flop-flips?”

Fucking Milliways.

Lilly laughed loud, her head thrown back.

“A Parrot Head is what they call Jimmy Buffet fans. He’s basically a professional beach bum and singer. Cheeseburger in Paradise, you ken?”

Roland in his life was more likely to eat cheeseburgers in hell and nearly die on beaches, but he nodded anyway.

“And since then?”

Lilly’s face sobered.

“Not that much, really. It’s weird, Ro. I saved my brother, and I talked to the other me… she’d gotten some of my memories, enough to know about ka and discordia, and she’d grown up to be director of corporate social responsibility at Kane Software and was generally doing what she could to kick Discordia’s ass.”

She shrugged.

“I was happy about that and about Duncan. It felt like I’d done what I was supposed to, and that maybe… maybe I was done now. Only my door never changed. Not even after… Alain and everyone left.”

Roland ate pistachios as she talked, his eyes never leaving Lilly’s face. She stole some of his pistachios when she finished.

“Listen to me, Lilly,” Roland said. “For I would have you hear me. I would have you hear me very well.”

He took a sip of graf.

“I breached my Tower and I climbed to the very top and there, this time, I found the Lady Morphia waiting for me. My tale is nearly told, and there are only a few more steps to the end of my path.”

His (shooter’s) eyes are intent on hers.

“I’m not here to stay. I have been granted a favor by my Lady. For all that I was raised to walk the long miles and face the darkness alone, I was given the chance to have company on the path to the clearing, if I could find it at Milliways.”

He smiled, one that Lilly had never seen on his face before. Warm and open and… peaceful.

“Would you walk with me, Lilly?”

(come come commala)

Lilly stared at him, speechless. It doesn’t last, of course.

“You mean… I can come with you? To the clearing?”

Roland nodded.

“Yes, if you would, but we leave now. My time here is short.”

Lilly was silent for a moment. Part of her protested that it was too soon and too fast and she owed people goodbyes… but she’d been saying goodbye for months now and she thought they knew that. She nodded.

“Yeah. Let’s go. I just want to leave a note first, so people know.”

She moved to the bar, spent a moment scribbling a note.

What up, sais? An old friend came into the bar and offered me an escort to the clearing. It’s a limited-time offer, so I’m taking him up on it. I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye, but you know I love you all and I will throw you truly kick-ass welcome parties when I see you all in the clearing again to make up for it. Love always, Lilly.

It took her a moment after she finished the note to give it to Bar, but she did. One last request and she returned to Roland, smiling not-so-innocently and carrying a small silver bell.

Roland eyed it. He knew he was going to regret asking this.

“What’s the bell for, Lilly?”

She gave him a sunny smile.

“I was thinking, Ro. You, or sorta you, showed up to help save me in the Dreaming, and now you’re taking me on the path to like, Heaven. I’m starting to suspect you might be my guardian angel.”

Roland did not facepalm. He might have wanted to.

“As for the bell,” Lilly continued, smiling brightly, “well, there’s a saying in my world that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.”

She shook the bell hard and looked expectantly at his back. Nothing happened. She shrugged, undaunted.

“Oh, well. I’ll bring it with us, maybe you’ll get your wings along the way.”

Roland Said Nothing, very eloquently. He held out his arm to Lilly and she took it.

And so it was that Roland Deschain of the line of Eld, gunslinger of Gilead, and Lilly Kane, DeadNeptuneCaliforniaEarth2005, set out on the path to the clearing.

(Death is before me today)

CODA

The hands of ka know no mercy.

Neither do the hands of Lilly Kane.

“God and the Man Jesus, Lilly! Stop poking my shoulderblades to see if I’ve grown wings yet.”

“Fine.”

Pause.

“So are we there yet?”

“…no.”

Luckily for Roland, the path to the clearing is not a long one.

Luckily for Lilly, Roland isn’t carrying his guns.

The peace of the clearing doesn’t start till you get there, after all.