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Twelve lies outside on the roof by himself. He quietly consumes the view of the night sky. The crescent moon and the billions of scattered stars. A light breeze sifts over his body, tentatively touching him.
Suddenly, it’s hard for him to breathe, he feels so cramped.
He’s scared. He’s so scared that he gets to stare at something this beautiful and breathe in the delicious, wonderful air, but have it all taken away from him any second. Any chance of him living until he simply drops from old age has been destroyed. It’s so unfair, and he really wishes he could do the same to the people responsible for ruining him and Nine and the others.
However he dies, he really hopes it won’t be due to the drugs. There are worse ways to have his life end, he knows that, and he could always do that , but he would rather not go out that way either. He just doesn’t want to succumb to them... He wants to defy them till the very end.
Twelve quickly composes himself as he hears soft footsteps coming up the stairs leading to the roof. He knows who it is before they even arrive.
“Can I join you?” a gentle, quiet voice asks. Pale yellow dances gracefully before him as he looks up.
Twelve sits up and moves over on the blanket to make room for Lisa. He pats the spot next to him and smiles when she sits down. “What’s up?” he asks after studying her face. She looks as distressed as he was feeling inside.
She doesn’t answer right away. When she finally decides to speak, she asks, “Why did you do that the other day?”
“What?”
“Hug me.”
Oh, that. It wasn’t as if Twelve forgot the incident, but he definitely was trying to forget it. Things, of course, hadn’t changed between them, and Lisa had never mentioned what happened until now, which made everything awkward for Twelve. He had obviously been rejected, which he expected, but it still made him feel weird. And her look of distress earlier made it worse.
“Oh… I… I don’t really know,” he responds weakly. “I mean… It was raining and you were out there in just a t-shirt and skirt. You looked cold.”
“Oh, I see,” she says. Twelve isn’t sure, but he thinks she sounds disappointed. He’s pretty sure though that he’s wrong about that. She sits there, back hunched and hair covering her face, for a while. Then her shoulders relax as she leans back and tilts her face up towards the sky. She sighs, sounding defeated. “I should go back, right? To my mother?”
Twelve’s heart beats faster at the suggestion. “What makes you say that?” He knows how Lisa feels about her mom, so the suggestion of going back to that witch makes him worry.
“I can’t leech off of you two forever…”
Twelve can’t say anything about how she wouldn’t be able to do that in the first place, so he keeps quiet. But he understands now why she mentioned going back to her mother.
With no answer, Lisa quickly points up at the sky and seems to change the subject, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Twelve nods. “The world is so beautiful,” she laughs, “I can’t believe I’m always complaining about how it should disappear. I’m absolutely wrong though. I’m the one who should disappear! The world has done nothing wrong, it’s just that I’m pathetic.”
“You’re not pathetic, Lisa.”
“I am so pathetic, and you know it! And Nine knows it!” she nearly shouts. It hurts Twelve to hear her say such things. She’s never said these things ever since she started living with them, but Twelve should’ve known that these feelings lingered in her. “You two have each other, and I have no one!”
That’s definitely not true. “You have us,” Twelve tries to assure her, his brows pulled together in concern. An idea pops into his head and though he knows he’ll probably be rejected, it’s worth trying. He reaches toward her. “Please know that, you have us.” He pulls her into a hug, and surprisingly, this time she responds by wrapping her arms around him as well. He can’t believe it’s actually happening, but he combs one hand through her hair and uses the other hand to stroke her back anyway.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she whispers repeatedly against his chest.
The two stay in that position the whole night. And by the time it takes Lisa to calm down (and Twelve too), both of them are asleep.
Nine finds them the next day, still in that position.