It's been two weeks since Natalie started staying with them, and it has been an experience. This wasn't the first time she's stayed at his place for a prolonged period, and though circumstances back then were significantly more lighthearted compared to now, he couldn't say that the experience was great. Natalie was one of three people in the entire world whom he listens to and who could make him try things he otherwise would not do of his own volition.
Sound familiar?
Natalie herself was aware of this fact, and it made for some very uncomfortable memories the last few times she stayed at his house. As much as he loved his sister, she can be very overbearing and, dare he say, annoying when she wants to be. And as far as he knew most of the time she wants to be that overbearing and annoying.
This time, however, her current situation changed things, and while they both made attempts to keep their usual dynamic, they simply couldn't completely get around the elephant in the room, which is her condition. At least that's how it was for Stanley, who was not really able to properly focus without his mind drifting back to Natalie's condition and Ezraphel's progress in regards to it.
See Stanley wanted to accomplish two things when he invited Natalie to stay at his home. The first was that he genuinely wanted to make up for the months that he hadn't been in contact with her. It really hit him hard that he hadn't so much as sent a text to one of the only people he truly cared about in the world, and he wanted to make up for lost time. It's yet another reason why he couldn't just settle for his usual routine of locking himself in his office for most of the day even when he wasn't dealing with Ezraphel.
So for the past two weeks, his attention has been split between spending time with Ezraphel and catching up with Natalie. He couldn't say that the experience has been bad so far, and he's not even being sarcastic about it either. The worst thing to happen in terms of interaction other than Natalie generally pestering him was her interrogation of Ezraphel about her home life. Ezraphel caught on to what was happening, and he sensed her distress through their bond. He's never actually felt Ezraphel's emotions so potently outside of sex, making it a deliberate call for help on Ezraphel's part. Stanley had to come in and quite literally drag his sister away and ask her to get off Ezraphel's back with the questioning.
Surprisingly it worked and he was sure Ezraphel didn't use her magic to plant a suggestion. which was suspicious in and of itself, but hey, he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so the matter was put to rest.
The second and more important reason for inviting her to stay with them was to give Ezraphel more of an opportunity to cure Natalie. Yes, she said before that she couldn't, but through stubbornness and desperation, Stanley refused to accept it. At the very least, he knew Ezraphel to be intelligent and creative enough in her craft to be able to think of a solution to this. All she needed was time and access to the problem so she could attack it from multiple angles.
Fast forward two weeks later, and...
"I'm sorry, Stanley."
Ezraphel is an incredibly powerful, highly intelligent, and very creative woman with a natural talent for dark sorcery. She was also very whimsical especially in her younger years. Said whims caused her to learn many types of sorcery and magecraft from individuals who are both celebrated and revered in their field. Unfortunately, she never stuck around long enough to master them, causing her to be a sort of 'jack of all trades, master of none' when it comes to magic. To her credit she never really needed formal mastery of magic see her through most situations. With the proper motivation her natural talents made her create miracles.
This time, however, the situation is different. Pharmacomancy is one field of sorcery where you need to have extensive knowledge of magic, medicine, and anatomy, among others, in order to utilize it to its fullest potential. As it stood, Ezraphel only knew a few intermediary healing spells at the highest level. That wasn't going to cut it to heal something like leukemia. The fact that she's using demonic energy to fuel her spells meant there would always be a chance for corruption though it would depend on how much energy she would need to put into the spell
In Natalie's case where her blood carried the illness Ezraphel would need to basically cleanse Natalie's entire circulatory system. At that stage even if Ezraphel was a certified magi-physician corruption is inevitable and might actually be the preferred course of action. But that is just one of many what-if scenarios since Ezraphel wasn't a magic doctor by any stretch. At this time, in this situation no matter how he sees it the only way to save Natalie was to turn her into a Mamono. Deep down Stanley already figured this to be the case but he just wouldn't be able to reconcile with himself unless he explored all other options with due consideration.
So now that he recognized the solution, all that was left to do was to tell Natalie about it.
And that right there is the main reason why Stanley wanted Ezraphel to find an alternate solution. There were so many reasons why he didn't want Natalie to go down that inevitable route. For one, there was the timing, with them having only recently gotten through that whole ordeal with Amelia not too long ago. Then there is the fact that Natalie was his sister and someone he was the closest to until Ezraphel dropped into his life.
The thought of his sister becoming a Mamono and all the shenanigans she might get into because of it made Stanley both physically and mentally ill. And that's not even mentioning all the other ways she might become a pain in the ass. The past two weeks alone might not have been terrible due to a combination of factors, but there were more than a few times where he felt the need to brace the nearest wall and drive his head into it repeatedly until something breaks.
Yet for all the possible and potential trouble she could cause him as a Mamono, all thoughts of such are swept away by the current situation. As he left his office to re-up on some snacks he caught Natalie taking a nap on the couch. She does that from time to time and it wasn't the first time he caught her like this but there was just something about her in that moment that demanded his attention. So against all reason he approached her position on the couch and simply stared at her.
Natalie's symptoms weren't too obvious to someone outside the medical field but with Stanley's enhanced senses however, comparing Natalie as she currently is to the version of her from his memories, the contrast was rather stark. She was always on the slim side but seemed to have lost even more weight. Her hair seemed less vibrant and her skin was a shade paler making the weird red spots and bruising (that occur on a semi-regular basis) more apparent to his eyes. She seemed overall more lethargic, prone to taking naps that were fitful six times out of ten, and then there was the excessive sweating in an air-conditioned house.
After however many minutes he ended up standing there, it finally clicked in his head that Natalie was dying. Bit by bit, every single day, her body and health were deteriorating, and it pained him to see her like this. Despite this, he had hesitated for days, using all manner of excuses or just willfully ignoring the issue and procrastinating to the point where even Ezraphel, loyal, patient, and trusting of him, started to give him looks.
Standing here now, looking at her sleeping form, he was finally reminded of what exactly was at stake here.
As Natalie began to shift and stir, the hesitance resurfaced, causing him to walk away. He didn't leave her alone, however, instead going to the refrigerator to get her something to drink. So when Natalie opened her bleary eyes, taking a moment to reorient herself, the first thing she saw was him.
"Here," he said, holding out a bottle of water.
Natalie raised a brow "were you just standing there waiting for me to wake up with a bottle in your hand? I hope you weren't watching me sleep," she joked.
He had a smart comeback ready for her, but it died at the tip of his tongue when she reached out for the bottle.
"You're bleeding," he noticed.
Natalie winced and attempted to retract her hand; however, quick as a snake, Stanley grabbed her wrist before she could.
The cut was along her finger and behind a band-aid 'what the fuck?'
"Hey!" Her voice caused him to look into her displeased brown eyes
"When the hell did this happen?"
"Probably when I was helping Ez in the kitchen," she answered.
"That was two days ago, Nat."
"Yeah, I know."
"…"
"…you mind letting go of my hand?" he complied and at his pointed look, she waved him off. "it's just another symptom, Stan; don't worry about it."
"…"
Sighing Natalie got to her feet "I need to take care of this."
As she made to walk by him, Stan grasped her hand and said, "after you're done, we need to talk."
Natalie blinked, but whatever snarky or sarcastic comment she had died on her tongue at the expression on his face.
Natalie nodded slowly "alright."
He let her go and watched her leave and for a long moment he silently watched the area where she was last seen.
Then he broke the silence "that cut, you didn't forget to heal it, did you?"
Behind him, Ezraphel had an expression of discomfort as she fidgeted in place, yet she said nothing.
"As a matter of fact, she still has those bruises from way back when."
Ezraphel may not have been able to cure cancer, but she can certainly mitigate some of the symptoms with what she knows about pharmacotherapy. At some point, however, she stopped, and he had a pretty good idea why.
"Was this your way of getting me to finally do something?"
"I'm sorry."
He shook his head "don't...just…next time you catch doing something as stupid as this, can you nix the subtlety and just smack me upside the head?"
"Are you sure?"
"The stakes are way too fucking high right now for me to be screwing around Ez."
"If that is what you wish."
"Good."
Later…
Natalie returned with a water bottle in hand, finding Stanley and Ezraphel waiting for her in the living room. Even if she didn't already feel the tension in the air, just the grave expressions on their faces said that the conversation they were about to have would be something serious.
"Take a seat."
"Whoa, what's all this about? Is this an intervention?" She tried to joke, yet Stanley's answer only served to make her attempt fall even flatter than it already did.
"Something like that," he replied.
At that, Natalie lost her smile and sat on the couch, 'well, that's not foreboding.'
The tension caused her to be that aware of her mouth feeling dry, so she worked on opening the bottle to take a sip.
Meanwhile, Stanley was busy silently psyching himself up.
Note that when relaying information deemed too outlandish for the average person, it's important for the speaker to not only prepare themselves but also the recipient as well. The reason for this being that the speaker needed adequate preparation time to get the recipient in a certain state of mind to accept their words with any degree of seriousness or consideration.
"So Ezraphel is a Succubus princess from another dimension who fell from a portal into my backyard."
Stanley did not make any such preparations, yet his proclamation did not elicit the kind of reaction he was expecting, especially since he caught Natalie mid-sip of her bottled water. She did not do something as over-the-top as a spit take or anything similar. As a matter of fact, she seemingly didn't react at all, aside from making her sip from the bottle extra long. So long, in fact, that there was a stretch of awkward silence as she did so, after which she silently corked the bottle and placed it on the coffee table.
Then she pinned him with the most intense glare he's only ever seen at specific points in his life. It just so happened that these 'specific points' were circumstances where she was royally pissed off at him for one reason or another.
It was at this moment that Stanley knew he had fucked up.
"Are you fucking with me right now?" Natalie asked with all the barely concealed anger of someone who was very close to strangling someone. Homer-style
"I'm not fucking with you."
"Is this a bit?" She continued plowing through his words while getting increasingly more agitated. "Did you start doing tasteless bullshit 'prank' content while I wasn't looking?"
"This isn't a fucking joke!" Stan snapped, feeling more insulted about the accusation than he probably should be.
Natalie stared, then got to her feet "well, you picked a really fucking bad time to have a psychotic break, Stan!"
As the siblings devolved into heated bickering that seemed destined to escalate, Ezraphel stood in the corner of the room. Having been alerted to the emotions roiling off Natalie the moment Stanley made his confession and figuring that if she was anything like her brother (which she was in many aspects), she didn't want to be in the line of fire for what was about to happen. So Ezraphel wisely decided to gain some more distance from the oncoming confrontation and ensured her safety with some magical aid.
Unfortunately for the disguised Lilim, she underestimated the human's perception, as the subtle spell was broken when Natalie suddenly snapped her attention to her.
"You!" the word practically snarled, saw Lilim suddenly under the scrutiny of the other woman.
Ezraphel, not expecting the sudden address, momentarily froze like a deer caught in headlights. "Eh?"
"Is this you!?" Natalie demanded.
In that moment, Natalie reminded Ezraphel of Stanley so much that she let out an "EEP!"
"I swear to God, Ezraphel, if you messed with my brother's head." Natalie growled and made to advance on Lilim, looking as if she were about to pull a Brady and choke a bitch, only for her to be held back by Stanley.
"Knock it off!"
"Out of the way, Stan!"
She made to shove him away; however, rather than be moved, Stan moved behind her, wrapped his hands behind her in a bear hug, and bodily lifted her as if she were an oversized toddler.
"Ahh, what the fuck!?"
"Would you calm the fuck down?"
She didn't seem to acknowledge his words as she continued to struggle "how the hell are you doing this!?"
"Put me down!"
At this point, Stanley realized that this wasn't working and so looked to Ezraphel, who was also at a loss for words.
"Ez, do the thing!"
Once again, Ezraphel started. It took a moment for her to understand what 'the thing' was that he wanted her to do, and she naturally hesitated.
"Are you sure?"
"She's not going to listen to us anyway," he said, keeping her back, "unless you want to deal with-HRK!"
Any further words were cut off as Natalie's twisted her body enough to swing her arms around and get Stanley in a headlock.
"If you don't put me down in the next five seconds be prepared for the worst noogie of your goddamn life Stan!"
"For fucks sake do the fucking thing Ez!" Stanley yelled out with a tinge of panic.
Before anything more can be said, both siblings are suddenly enveloped by a bright violet light. They turned to Ezraphel's, whose form and the very corner where she stood were consumed by the light. As he felt Natalie's grip around his neck slacken, Stanley carefully lowered his sister down to her feet with a bemused expression. Natalie, for her part, could only stare in abject shock as a dark silhouette seemingly stepped out of the light, revealing itself to be the true form of Ezraphel in all her glory.
At this point, Stanley made his way to get partially in front of the woman in order to explain. However, before either he or Ezraphel can get a word in, Natalie once again surprises both with her reaction. Because after a hard, long stare at Lilim, Natalie's wide eyes rolled in the back of her head, and she wordlessly collapsed like a puppet with its string cut. Luckily, Stanley was close enough and fast enough to catch her before her body could hit the floor.
For a long time, the room was silent, with Stanley, at a genuine loss for words, looking down at his unconscious sister before wordlessly setting her back on the couch.
As for Ezraphel...
*SMACK*
"Ow! Da Fuq!?"
With a hand on the back of his head where Ezraphel smacked him, Stanley whirled around with a scowl, ready to lay all manner of curses, only to be confronted with the looming figure of his girlfriend with her arms crossed and a shockingly pointed glare of disapproval on her face. The look she gave him actually made him flinch as he realized exactly what the smack upside his head was for.
"Yeah, okay, I deserve that," he admitted with the kind of self-loathing of a man who realized just how much he fucked up.