“By the by, why on Earth did you say that?”
Alexei watches Kata’lana linger behind him in the corridors. Her stature is so small that he thinks she could melt into her lab coat and still be able to function as an able bodied mammalian would. The way her hair puffs up at the strangest angles reminds him of a puffball mushroom; alone, malleable, and would rather be left to fester on the forest floor.
She shrugs. “Felt right.”
“Hm."
"My mind is open."
He regards her offer with hesitancy before shaking his head. "I am not wont to delve into the inner thoughts of my allies."
"You read Lili Wang-Rosales' memories without her permission earlier."
Another hum. Alexei stops in front of an intricately carved door. "Lili is not an ally. Not yet.”
It’s Kata’lana’s turn to hum in discontent. “It’s not good to lie so easily to prospective allies.”
“Nor is it well to reveal our weaponry to our enemies so soon.”
His assistant says nothing at that. Indeed, Alexei’s plan has been coming together rather well. He’d told Ysh’vanna’s crew that he couldn’t control his ability, but the opposite is very much true; mind reading is about as involuntary as holding his breath beyond the scope of his lungs. It is unnatural to delve into someone’s mind, much as it is unnatural to scratch into his skin until he’s clawing bone. But his victims don’t have to know that. He has shown them his 'weakness' and fostered trust from misinformation.
"Why don't you trust the overseer girl?" asks Kata'lana.
"She has an unchecked aptitude for violence. The memory that I managed to glean from her earlier… was unsavory to the senses, to say the least. I wish I hadn't seen it."
Being well aware of Lili's origins as an overseer herself, his assistant only nods and continues down the corridor. He'd told her most of the things he knew a few days prior, but he'd kept some parts of Lili's story for himself. There are some things better left unsaid, and the truth behind how she obtained her power is one of them. That being said, her memory had come to him in broken pieces; he's still unsure as to why killing Ava had led to Lili's awakening as an overseer. Perhaps it had been the nature of Lili's actions that proved her worth to whatever higher divinity dictates their existence.
Alexei watches Kata'lana's fuzzy head disappear down the flight of stairs to her laboratory. Then he places a shaky hand on his study's doorknob.
He shakes his head and pinches the bridge between his eyes. He's an overseer, for fuck's sake. He's fended off dragons the size of buildings, has taken the most devastating of blows only to live to tell the tale—the sawtoothed scar that runs down his back can attest to that. He's seen murderers before, and Lili's story is a sad, yet common tale. To mercifully kill your best friend and question your morality afterwards is like a green leaf blanching in the wake of autumn; for Humans, who have survived the apocalypse and beyond, it is expected to have some sort of terrible past behind you. This is their legacy now.
Alexei eventually makes it behind his desk and into his plush chair. With a sigh, he sinks into the leathery material. A half-drunk glass of green absinthe stands on his table, and he downs half of it.
It stings, but it doesn't sting as much as Lili's memory. He shuts his eyes and sees the knife in her clammy hands again, the sneer from her friend, the way her weapon had thunked dully against bone before cracking through and piercing the heart. Again, it's not an uncommon image—he's gleaned far gorier memories from the scummiest of criminals—but it's her afterthoughts that stick with him the most.
He shuts his eyes and relives her memory again. The sneer, the crack, the plunge. He resets it before his terrible revelation each time, as if he’s in self denial of Lili's true character. He doesn't want it to be real, because she's so normal, so timid, that it's easier to forget what she is and pretend that nothing has changed. That Lili Wang-Rosales is a normal, perfectly sane, Human being.
Alexei does in the end. He lets the memory play out fully: Lili is kneeling, and her hands are caked with blood. Her friend lies dead against the wall. Alexei flinches at the sudden onslaught of emotion; he's drowning under the guilt, choking on the despair, and flailing in the dread of what he's done, of what Lili has done. The cost of seeing an individual's memory is that he must relive the moments as his victim does, and Lili's memory comes heavily laden with only the rawest of emotions.
And then there it is: underneath that patchwork of guilt and shame and terror and dread is a single glistening pearl of emotion. Alexei shuts off the memory quickly, takes another deep gulp of absinthe. He clicks his glass thumb into the table a moment after; he absolutely can't trust Lili, and this is proof. Her slash of a smile as she hacks away at the neck of her best friend during her final moments is undeniable, cement-heavy proof. If Lili Wang-Rosales had stopped there, had not sunk her blade into the tender skin of her friend's neck after mutilating her chest, it would be fine. But because she hadn't abstained, it's gone all wrong. Because of that pearl of emotion, that damned, glistening, bloodied pearl.
Because deep down, she had enjoyed every single moment of her sad, vile act. And Alexei knows that her bones, her very heart, yet aches for more.