Burn Me (A Shatter Me Series Sequel)

Ten

She starts walking around the plants and watering them with the water can. It's the most surreal thing you could see. This girl, this ruthless soldier who could reduce them to ashes in a number of seconds, taking care of them. Watering them. Not for the first time I get the sense of home. As if outside of these private quarters she fights the Reestablishment, she is starting a revolution, she is conquering the world. And inside she waters plants and drinks tee. For a second I wonder if that's all she ever wanted - a home. A little garden. A friend. A family.

I wonder if she's fighting this war just so she could have it. Or perhaps avenge it.

I remember her telling me that the Reestablishment killed her family. I decide that there is no better time to dig into that subject.

"You never told... I never..." words are tripping in my mouth and falling off my tongue and they are lost, my sentences left unfinished. "You know everything about me."

"I have read all the files, yes." she doesn't seem to follow my direction of thought. "I think we cleared that a long time ago."

"What I mean is it's not fair. That you know so much and I so little."

"That is true." she turns to me, water can in hand. "But who promised you fairness. This world, this hellhole we live in, can offer you anything but fairness." 

"So you're not going to tell me? About how you got recruited by the Reestablishment?"

Her body tenses.

"About how you discovered your powers."

She grips the water can so tightly it bends.

"About your family?" I know I'm pushing too far.

But she relaxes.
She turns and faces me her face calm. As if a burden has been taken off her shoulders. I am waiting for the words to start leaving her mouth. I am waiting for the explanation, for the reason.

Instead she walks to a pot hanging from the ceiling.

"Come. I want you to see this." she beckons me.
I walk over to her and look at the small white flowers in the pot. Five perfect blooms with five perfect petals each. But apart from that they don't seem to be anything special.
Then she starts pouring the water on them. To my surprise they slowly start turning transparent until I can see perfectly clear right through them.
"What?" I am in awe.
"It's called Diphylleia Grayi. " she answers without turning her gaze away from the flowers.

The crystal-clear bloom are easily the most beautiful and delicate thing I have ever seen.

Sometimes you don't even know what's truly beautiful until you see it's most fragile side.

As we're still both hunched over the flowers she speaks again, so softly I strain myself to hear her.

"They died when I was 13." a ragged breath "In a fire. I was there. That's how I found out about my powers."

She walks to the window-wall and sits on the small bench in front of it. Normally, I wouldn't do it, but today I sit next to her.

"But you said the Reestablishment killed them." I press

"They did." a pause almost too long for me to bear "You remember what your father did to Seamus Fletcher's family, right?"

I stiffen all over. My face folds itself into a frown.

"How can I forget?" I know I never will.

"Do you remember why?"

"Traitors come from families of traitors." I repeat the words I've heard my father say so many times.

"Precisely. My father was a traitor. So he died. That was fair. But my mom, my sister - that was not fair.

The anger in her voice is palpable.

"You had a sister?" for some reason she had always struck me as an only child.

"I had two sisters. The older one, Hannah, was already married and gone. I can only hope she's alive because I could never find her. It was my twin that I watched burn while I prayed the fire would take me too."

"What was her name?" I feel like I shouldn't ask this but the question is already out of my mouth.

"Jasmine."

Confused is an understatement for my feelings at the moment. The silence stretches forever until she decides to explain.

"I thought if I took her name, then part of her would live on." the impossible sadness in her words does something I never thought possible. "I was the one who should have died that day anyways."

I feel like it has broken my heart.

"What is your name then? The real one."

"That's my real name now." she looks at me as if she's about to reveal the biggest secret of the universe. "But the name that I was born with..."

"...Lilith."

A/N

I am sorry I took this gigantic break. I don't want to make any promises about future uploads because I'll be a little busy and I've broken way too many promises. So I'll do my best and again, I am awfully sorry.

Eve