~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.~



Leave a Reply.