~When the Doctor had told them that he'd found a way to make them live forever, both Lily and Tommy had thought that was the end of the experiments. But it wasn't so. If anything, the amount of experiments increased. The Doctor excused this as, "Well, I need to find out the limitations of your immortal bodies now. No, there's still much more work to be done!"
   So the experiments continued on, pushing the limits of Lily and Tommy's small bodies. More often than not, they would both be left motionless and sore, not able to move for hours or possibly days. Sometimes waves of pain came with the immobilization. The Doctor wasn't as bad as before with the interaction, but he still didn't allow them more than an hour a day together. Thanks to their nightly visits, however, they  spent more time than that with each other, even if the Doctor didn't know. Because of the pain, they couldn't always go into each other's rooms, but there were times when Lily would leave the door in the wall open, and Schrödinger would go to each of them to comfort them. And when Lily left the door open, it was so much easier for them to hear each other.~

   ~It took a minute for Tommy to answer, but he did, eventually. "I'm still hurting, Lily," he called to her, his voice barely a whisper through the door in the wall. "And you?"
   "It hurts so bad, Tommy."
   "I promised you we're gonna get out of here one day, Lily. I haven't forgot about that. Okay? Just hang on, Lily."~

   ~He pulled his hand up, and to both of the kids' surprise, he had Schrödinger by the scruff of the neck. "Who brought this repulsive creature into my home? I hate cats!"
   Tommy and Lily just looked at each other, not saying anything.
   "So no one knows, huh?"
   "Don't hurt him!" Tommy begged. "Please don't hurt him!"
   "So, this is your abomination, eh? Well, speak up!"
   Lily stepped forward. She wouldn't let Tommy go down alone. "He's mine, too, Doctor!"
   "Lily," Tommy began, "what are you--"
   "Cats! Children! You're all horrible little monsters!" The Doctor dropped Schrödinger on the couch, and grabbed each of the two children by the backs of their shirts. "You're more trouble than you're worth!"~

   ~He bound their hands in fetters connected to chains, and chained those to the wall. He then left, with one last threat echoing off the walls in his booming voice: "You brats won't see daylight for the rest of your pathetic lives!"~

   ~She jumped, though she didn't get far, thanks to the chains. "Who's there?" she managed to call out. "Who are you?"
   It's me, Lily! Tommy! I discovered I can talk to you with my mind.
   Lily cried out. "I'm going mad!"
   No, you're not! I really am talking to you. And, listen... I have something to tell you. Those experiments the Doctor did on you-- they gave you powers! Go ahead, see what you can do.~

   ~Perfect. Come get me, okay? I think the Doctor's asleep.
   "Why come get you?"
   Lily, I'm finally making my promise come true.
   She didn't understand. "What do you mean, Tommy?"
   I'm taking you away from here.
 
   ~When the Doctor was well again, his next round of experiments wreaked havoc on Lily and Tommy's eyes.
   She didn't know why he was doing it, but the one thing she knew was that it deprived her of clear vision. After he had squirted the stinging stuff into her eyes, he set to work putting something else in them, doing one eye at a time. He held the eye open, so she wouldn't close it, and began to remove something from her eyes. Lily screamed in pain, the torture too much. He was taking her eyes. "Don't take my eyes!" she shrieked, over and over. "Don't take my eyes! I need them!"~

   ~When the door opened again, Lily heard someone fall down. She straightened up. "Doctor?"
   "Nah," came Tommy's voice. "Just me. Can you see, Lily?"
   "No. You?"
   "Black as night."~

   ~When she looked in the mirror to see if her eyes had changed color, she cried out in surprise. Her eyes were now a garishly bright gold. "You can probably see them in the dark!" she complained to Tommy.
   As for Tommy, his eyes were a lavish carmine color. Lily rolled her eyes at his exclamations of, "I got vampire eyes!!!", but he seemed genuinely happy about it. So she just kept her mouth shut. If Tommy was happy, she was happy.~

   ~These tests were much different than all the others. Lily hated all the other experiments, but these were especially painful. She and Tommy almost couldn't bear it. Needles were injected into their flesh left and right, producing drops of blood and irritated sores. Electrical shocks were passed through their bodies, fraying their nervous systems. They were given medicines that made them either fall asleep or have wild, colorful hallucinations. Many a night were spent with either Lily in Tommy's room, crying in his arms, or Tommy in Lily's room, crying in her arms.~

   ~Lily and Tommy looked at each other, then looked back up at the Doctor, confused. "Done what, Doctor?" they asked in unison.
   "Why, 'done what'! I've discovered the way to make you children immortal! You're both going to live forever. Well, unless you get some kind of terminal illness-- but, now, there isn't much chance of that happening, is there?"
   Lily and Tommy looked at each other again, blinking. Neither of them had ever seen the Doctor so happy.~
 
   ~On the rare days that the Doctor didn't feel well, Lily and Tommy could do as they pleased. Lily found it quite ironic, actually; a doctor who got sick and couldn't get himself better. Since there wasn't much he could do to stop them from gallivanting all over the place, they got to go wherever they wanted to. They got to do whatever they wanted. For a day or two, they were free children.
   Today was one of those days. If the Doctor didn't come to get one of them by about ten in the morning, which Lily could tell from the clock in her room, they were to assume he was ill for the day. It was ten-thirty now.
   Lily hopped up from her bed, and went through her and Tommy's secret door, with Schrödinger in close pursuit. Tommy was by the glass-covered window, looking outside. It was a fairly nice day out; the sun shone in the sky, the wind blew mildly, but not too hard... the only thing the outside was missing was a few kids and a cat to ply tag along the seashore.
   "Tommy!"~

   ~"Why don't we go out back into the Doctor's garden? You know, the place where he grows all those different colored flowers?"
   "That sounds nice, I guess. Do you know how to get there? I don't."
   "Oh, sure! When you're not with me, I go there all the time. And when the Doctor's experimenting on you, I go out there to pray for you."
   "Pray to who? Which god do you believe in?"
   Tommy shrugged, leading her and their cat to the back of the building, where there was obviously a door to take them to the garden. "Any one who'll listen."~

   ~Flower petals of a rainbow of colors swirled up around them as the wind picked up slightly. It blew their hair around their faces. Lily decided she liked the way Tommy's hair flew around his face, and Tommy decided he liked the way Lily's hair flew around her face.
   It was Tommy who finally spoke after a while. "You know, Lily," he commented with a sigh, "I don't really mind it here, as long as I'm with you. But... I wanna promise you something."
   Lily looked over at him, blinking. "What's that, Tommy?"
   "I promise you... one day, I'm gonna take you away from here. Away from all this. We can take these black roses with us, and when we get a house, we can plant them there." Tommy put his arms around Lily, hugging her tightly. "We're not gonna be here forever. I promise."~
 
   ~"This isn't science!" Lily cried out, feeling her already aching chest heave with more sobs. "This is madness!"
   "Be quiet, or I'll put you under."
   "I would like that better!"
   "Silence!" The Doctor held a scalpel to her throat. "You will be quiet, or I'll keep you shut up myself! I'll rip your vocal cords out in the most painful manner possible! I'll sew your mouth shut!"
   Lily did not want her mouth sewn shut, so she quieted herself. "How long are you going to take this time, Doctor?"
   "That depends on whether you're going to sit still for me or not." He was busy sharpening his shiny knife.~

   ~Lily walked in, and came to stand beside him. "The Doctor wants to see you next. What are you doing, Tommy?"
   Very gradually, Tommy turned around to face her. In his arms, he held a small white kitten. He looked up at his friend. "Isn't he pretty, Lily?"
   Lily gasped, and carefully bent down to pet the cat. "Oh, Tommy! Where did you find him?"
   Tommy held out the cat for Lily to fondle. "He was out on my window this morning, silly little thing. He's so tiny, Lily. Would you help me take care of him? He needs a home."
   "What if the Doctor finds out about him, Tommy? What do you think he will do to the cat? And us?"
   Tommy stroked the cat's fur, making him purr contentedly. "I don't know, Lily. But this little kitty needs somebody to take care of him, doesn't he?"
   "I guess. The Doctor wants to see you now, though. I can take the cat to my room and keep him there till you get back."
   "Okay, Lily." Standing up, Tommy placed the cat in her arms. "Make sure to take good care of him. Watch him everywhere he goes."
   "What are we going to name him?"
   "Hmm." Tommy scratched the cat behind the ear thoughtfully. "I read a book in the library once, and it talked about some guy named Schrödinger. I thought it was a cool name... could we name him that? Is that okay with you?"
   Lily nodded, going to her own room. "Okay, Tommy."~

   ~"Tommy, you don't have to keep smiling if you're hurting. I never do."
   "Uh." Tommy allowed his head to rest on her leg, clearing his throat almost constantly. He dropped the smile, breathing heavily. "Hey... hey, Lily? Can I ask you something?"
   "Sure." She rubbed in little circles on his back, looking out at the dark night landscape. It was very pretty... if they weren't trapped on this terrible island, it would be. "Ask anything, Tommy?"
   "Have you ever..." He interrupted himself with a cough, then continued as if nothing had ever happened. "Have you ever thought about leaving this place? What life would be like if we... if the Doctor just disappeared, and somebody found us?"
   "Sometimes."
   Tommy grabbed her hand, holding it tightly. "Then why don't we leave, Lily? What's stopping us?"
   "The Doctor. If we ever tried to leave..."
   "But Lily! What's really stopping us? If we went during the night, he couldn't stop us! What's keeping us here?"
   She didn't know.~
 
   ~When Lily wasn't being experimented on herself, the Doctor would take Tommy to be experimented on. Lily would beg him not to make Tommy shout or cry. The Doctor would always give her that sadistic smile, holding up his scalpel. "We'll see if he can take it, Flower," he would tell her, dragging Tommy off to the operating room.
   Lily would run to her own room, fast as her little legs could carry her, even if they began to burn with a horrid ache. She would race back to her room, and shriek herself. She yelled until the point that it hurt her throat to talk, and the vibrating of her vocal cords was too much for her to bear; until she was forced by her small body's limitations to stop. She would throw herself on the bed and kick at the walls. She bounced on the bed until it hurt her bottom, trying to creak the loose springs as loud as was possible. She dove into the closet, shut the door, and buried her face in a pillow, maybe even two, leaned her head against the wall, and pressed her hands to her ears. She sobbed, the tears making white streaks down her face, washing off the dirt, until she had no more tears left. But none of it worked.
   Nothing blocked out Tommy's tortured, eardrum-shattering screams.~

   ~Did she hate the Doctor for doing all this? Did she harbor malice against him for all that he put her and Tommy through? Of course... with every cell of her tiny body, she abhorred the man. He was sick and twisted, and ought to be carted off to the crazy corral. But her desire to keep Tommy smiling was far greater than her loathing for the Doctor.

   So she simply gritted her teeth and bore it for Tommy's sake. It didn't seem that he truly cared about it, past the screaming when he was being experimented on. He almost always had a smile on his face when Lily saw him. So Lily tried to do the same. She very nearly always smiled when she was with Tommy. He was her best friend, and her constant playmate when they were free.
   Lily often wondered why Tommy acted so much younger than she was; when, in reality, he was older. He was seven, and she was six. She wasn't sure how long she'd been on Kuro Bara, but she knew it was slightly longer than Tommy. She had lived here a while, being researched upon, and then Tommy had just shown up one day.
   Lily contemplated what life on the outside was like.~