What Friends Are For

Learn from Your Mistakes

Norma stood in the doorway of Lily's room, thinking back to the day she had first arrived here at this house. Lily had been furious with her and would only speak in another language. Maybe that was why she hated when she did it once she had gotten comfortable here. To make things more complicated, Lily was completely convinced the fire that left her an orphan wasn't an accident. Norma had only rolled her eyes at these 'ridiculous' theories, but now regretted it. Staring at Lily's empty bed, she remembered something that her sister had told her long ago when she ran into particularly difficult trouble. "Learn from your mistakes, Norma, or you'll never understand what you got wrong!" Back then they where talking about schoolwork, but Norma found herself thinking about this as she eyed Lily's files. If she had shown interest in Lily's thoughts back then, she might not have been in the hands of a terrible villain now.

This was just enough to get her to open Lily's files, and read the secrets that had been passed down through family to family, find out the disguises once used by Very Friendly Delegates were used by the likes of Olaf. Trevor Shade was still alive like she suspected. Everything she tried to hide, everything she made to seem look coincidentally collected in her library, Lily had seemed to uncover.

But she didn't know about the history between Norma and her sister. Norma twisted around her ankle and for the first time in a very long time, looked at the eye on her ankle that she had been saving up to have removed. Now, it just didn't seem worth it with a nephew renewing VFD as though it was a library book and a niece with a talent like her mother. She looked up at the picture of Olaf, and with a shake of her head and flick of her wrist, found herself looking at a throwing knife instead.

"Learn from your mistakes indeed. Lily needs to know the truth." Packing up some equipment she thought she would never have to use again, she decided to learn from her mistakes. Last time she had jumped to help and almost got the man she loved killed. This time, she was going to wait from the shadows and then get Lily back safely. If she hadn't left her mask at the Shade island house. She was going to have to make a little trip first.