Lilah knows not to let his calm demeanour lull her. Years ago, she thought nothing could frighten her worse than her mother's shouts — sought someone the opposite of her. But his quiet comes at the centre of an even bigger storm than her mother's rage ever waged.

His eyes are on Lilah, as hers are on him. Neither pays particular attention to the new one —Luce— who sits unmoving, just at the edge of their peripheral visions. The fury that writes itself plain across the New One's features isn't noteworthy: it's not an uncommon reaction. It's why their Captor has Lilah stay outside of the cage, lest they direct it at her. What he —and she— should take notice of is how it fluidly shifts to fear. Or more accurately, an emulation of it. While this new one is acutely aware of her predicament and not completely without sense or feeling, all her other emotions sharpen, hone themselves into anger as she realises Death itself looms close behind her shoulder, once a constant companion but now a friend of a foe.

"Lilah." The captor speaks again. The same two syllables, this time dragged out, imperious and impatient. Both women bristle at his tone. While the new one reigns in her reaction, Lilah challenges him, steel eyes locking with his sable ones. Her gaze seems to weigh on him more heavily than his does on her; he shrinks slightly, broad shoulders tensing. When he looks away, his eyes find the puddle of vomit with a barely-perceptible curl his thinly-pressed lips. Then he turns to the New One.

As does Lilah.

Something must show on her face. A flicker of an emotion she fights to conceal. She tries to be nonchalant; refocuses on him with a passive impassivity that once would have fooled him, but not anymore. He remains fixed on the one spot in the room Lilah wishes were his blindspot: where the New One cowers. His posture rightens and the words 'got you' all but write themselves across his hardened features.

"Now, Lilah." Frozen beneath his gaze, the New One is as fixed on him as he is her. She's crouched at the back of the cell, at its centre rather than backed into the corner. Smart.

Lilah does not move. Will not even look at him. Just at the New One, who still stares at Christian wide-eyed like the mouse that —quite rightly— refuses to turn its back on the cat stalking it.

"One..."

This. Lilah despises him doing this. Speaking to her as one would an unruly child or a wilful pet. Condescension isn't his usual style, it only became part of his arsenal when threats and even harm became ineffectual — when he realised she would 'give as good as she got', so to speak. Besides, he promised to treat her as an equal—

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"...Two..."

The New One looks between the Captor and Lilah. She's working to shift position, millimetre by milimetre. Bringing her knees up to her chest, planting her feet firmly on the ground. As if readying herself to bolt if given half the chance. Either that or fight.

Don't, Lilah wants to tell her. Stay still. Stay quiet.

It's almost laughable, her want to warn her while actively endangering her herself.

"...Three."

She expects him to take measured, taunting steps. To play his game —which has become theirs, over the years— and see who is forced to concede first. No, not this time. There’s just the sharp clack of his chestnut wingtips' heels against the concrete as he strides to the cell, the unwaveringly stiff set of his shoulders and deliberate deafness to Lilah calling out:

"No."

Her stomach sinks. He’s not toying now.

Lilah scrambles to her feet. Haste makes her limbs uncoordinated, fawn finding footing on ice.

“No.”

He’s at the cell door. He regards the New One calmly, coldly through the bars. Reaches a steady hand into his left trouser pocket, where he keeps the key to the cell.

"Christian." She’s behind him now. Her own shaking hand grabs a fistful of his sleeve when he moves to unlock the door. He tries to shrug her off but she holds fast, desperately determined to keep the key from the lock it now rattles in—

"Christian."

—twists in—

"Please."

Silence.

The New One is half-standing, poised against the wall like an athlete with their foot braced on the starting block, hands curled to fists at her sides, nails biting crescents into palms. Her focus is on them both now, Lilah and the Captor. Christian.

Both stand frozen mid-action, neither having expected the plea to leave Lilah’s lips. Her grip on his sleeve is unrelenting, her own knuckles as white as his are as he grips a bar of the cage's unlocked door. He could open it now, take a few quick steps and do as he's done many times before. All her grip on his sleeve would bring would be a scrap of torn fabric in her fist and a mild scold for ruining one of his favourite shirts while the New One's corpse cools at their feet.

A corpse she can prevent, at least for a while.

"Please, Christian."

It's the unadulterated crack in her voice that does it — makes him twist the key once again, turn his back on the now locked cell door and walk with her at his heels to the stairs. The New One watches their procession uncertainly, uneasily, the catch in Lilah's voice playing over and over in her mind as it sinks in just how close to a visit with her former friend Death she came.

Two sets of footsteps ascend the stairs, their respective footfalls almost precisely in-time with one another. Christian works to restrains a smile while he and Lilah, still with a fist of fabric, reach the door at the top of the stairs. The unlocked door.