::Requiem::
She's far too thin and like a razor, sharp and hard against the slash of ivory-light bequeathed by a sliver of a crescent moon.
She survives as she has for the past few years and it's a shame that the cold is nothing but a song in her that echoes faintly, without feeling or remorse.
Too many funerals and this is the last one she will ever attend, save her own, if indeed she does die. She lives and she shall always; it is a curse.
She kisses cool stone, polished and rough, if she presses hard enough it'll tear her lips and red blood like tears will flow (a river of sorrows), yet this is beyond her abilities.
There is nothing but the night and the fresh earth, ripped up and replanted to become a new kind of fertilizer, once delicately human and fragile, now ripe for rot.
Fingers colored like sun-bleached bone (she has fought too many nights and she has long ignored the sun), reach out to trace the name a final time. She finally remembers the reason why she has avoided this particular grave and she whispers nothing but a faint breath before she leaves the corpse.
The last traces of her connection to the mortal world are six feet under, buried and soon to be forgotten.
She is the last one left; now, there is nothing to remember.
Her mourning is over and it's time to embrace the night, never to end, and she walks away.
A Slayer's work is never done and this night is no different.
::Hymn::
She's not happy and her discontented frown crosses her face only once, once, to prove her point. Her body is restless and itches yet she remains perfectly still.
He smells like sun and life and when he returns to her (his face is tanned and skin soaks up the outdoors: fresh flowers and green, green grass and leaves), it's almost painful in a bright way. No one ever bothered to tell her that joy could hurt this much.
He tells her, he promises her, that any day now, she'll be a mother, she'll be something so much more, greater for she's carrying life, a life, their child. She has never dreamed, not even before the calling, that she'd be in this position.
She touches her rounded stomach, skin feeling far too stretched out on her small frame. Her fingers, not thin, are golden like the summer sun that warms her face as the cool breeze whispers delightfully of promises unneeded.
She has everything she wants.
She does not believe in anything anymore: she dreams of a bed of bones, of dark nights. Even in this summer splendor, she longs for winter and eternal things, like death so beautiful to behold it's horrific to see; it's a nightmare of wonder. She wants only to grasp it in her hands, once more, to become something unstoppable and endless, yet now, she cannot have that option.
He kisses her and his mouth is warm. It's a foul embrace, a violation of the memories of cold and secrets and a gloomy kind of love bred in death and not in life. She does not push him away, for this is his dream and to shatter it, to shatter the only fantasy she's allowed to have, she would not dare it.
In her dreams, he bites her and she dies.
She is grateful for those few moments as she touches her stomach to feel the baby kick. A life is stirring inside her and she cannot avoid it, so she must cherish the fleeting glimpses of what she gave up for him and her child.
Those dreams will end, yet she will not forget them.
He tells her he loves her and she breaks out in a blinding smile so false that even a flicker of worry crosses his face for a brief moment. She tells him that she's tired but refuses to go to sleep, she's restless with energy and cannot tell him the truth.
She wishes that she could be happy but she knows it is impossible. She has everything and to her, it's the worst thing in the world.
There's misery in perfection and she complains of the heat as the summer sun sets, a rose blush blooming across the sky, a vivid living thing and she cannot help but hate it for it is free and she is not.
::Lament::
She touches him while he sleeps and traces over scars that never heal no matter how much he feeds. He is a tormented beast and it was her doing that he has survived for this long.
It is a bitter sting, a cold regret, that this aching, between her legs, inside her heart, cannot be sated and she wants not for anything save to go on, to live but a while longer.
He once was in possession of that power, the ability to give her something to linger on in this cold place, yet it's broken and in his grief, he's shattered everything in his mind and rendered himself insane.
This does not stop her from vainly carrying on, from trying everything in her power to rescue Spike, at all costs. If she can save him, then she has not wasted her time.
If she can ignore the truth, then the lie shall be a miracle to touch, it shall be a grace like heaven itself: warm and peaceful. She longs for quiet still she does not sleep.
For there is nothing to be found there, only pain.
He wakes and eyes half-mad connect with hers and he begins his threats, half-hearted, defeated.
No, she will not trick him and she already came for him, rescued him, and she must touch his face for him to stop and he catches, not a breath, a hope in his throat because he has brought himself to this state, welcomed insanity in a fool's quest.
She sees nothing in his face that settles the battles inside and she caresses his face for just a bit longer because somehow that could make it okay, it could be okay if she truly tries this time.
Yet she does not see him as anything but a monster. Yet she does not see him as anything but a man trapped inside. There's a soul in there somewhere and it's become a twisted reason to let him stay, but she must for if he's lost, then she herself is lost as well.
He snarls at her and refuses to be tricked by her compassionate gestures, face reverting to the monster that she's allowed to murder and kill, that she's pardoned for all his sins.
She has failed him and she kisses him once, softly and gently for he deserves it even though she cannot return the love he claims to feel so strongly for her. It is like ashes on a rainy gray morning with church bells sounding nowhere for comfort to be sought.
His ashes explode over her bed and she curls up next to them, unable to grieve for a creature she loathes and can never love. Yet she weeps for no reason, other than her loss.
She believes in nothing.
::Benediction::
She's known nothing, never left Los Angeles and she has only had warm summers and calm springs and autumns that simply aren't to contend with.
Yet her spirit is restless and excitable, she's gone out every night, returning always before dawn, an instinct that's engraved in her very being.
She never catches their names, only looking for that particular something: a smile will do, or an accent, sometimes an attitude. They're always the same to her each night, a mystery and dark, for the moon's a better companion than the sunlight.
Each morning, before it's proper to call it a morning, she leaves their home, always their home, never her own, and walks down streets foolish for a petite woman to dare to enter in the unwieldy hours of the night. She does not care.
She'll go home, relax, perhaps sleep, eat, and go to the beach in the morning if the day's pleasant enough.
She stretches out in the golden blazing sun, her skin afire with energy, a lust that cannot be fulfilled. She's only twenty-one, but she's so much older.
No one bothers her as she bathes in light, a few men have tried in the past, yet she never speaks more than a curt request to leave her alone and she gives an air as though her very life is somewhere else, dark and secret.
How she wishes that it was just so, yet she will never leave the city and journey beyond, for she knows that danger lies there, waiting to entrap her.
The sun is fading and the loneliness sets on her, the skin soaks it up quicker than the bright rays and she frowns, for it is another night without sleep, she only catches brief moments in the hours called dawn, yet it enough for her to survive.
So she finds one tonight with dark hair and blue eyes, a contrast that perplexes her, because it's usually fair hair and sharp, bright eyes or dark with a brooding look. Now she has found a male with both and it keeps her interested enough that she pursues like a cat in the finest moments of stalking.
She goes willingly to his bed, writhes with him, enjoying the act for its simplicity and watches the night through the window afterwards. Alone in this stranger's home, she wishes she could stay out all night and never have to find someone again to make her feel, for she has everything that she could possibly want.
It means nothing to her.
She's playing a game, a hunting game, and no one's caught on, she's a fine beast and there's no evidence but a cleaned up corpse in bed by the next morning.
She is not disgusted, but calm and sings a morning chant to welcome the new day. She has no meaning in life but this: to kill before they do.
She does not believe in monsters, but she shall not ignore them in the dark.
::Atonement::
She knows that it must always come to this.
It must always be this way and she hates it, hates it for she cannot escape her destiny and she never wanted it to come to this.
Slayers were not meant to be a part of the world and she cannot have both, cannot ruin both with her vain attempts to prove otherwise.
They all call out, each in their own ways, the mantras, the begging, the pleas, the silent weeping, yet she walks on, continues on, her heart a steady thud resounding in the path she has chosen without her consent, only with her resigned acceptance.
She faces evil and doesn't even fear it.
The First grabs at nothing from within her chest, it tears away the fears, some ancient, others new, and fastens eyes identical to hers and says nothing she has not already anticipated.
She will not win, the age of the Slayers has ended and it is time for her to follow in her sisters' footsteps and die a third and final time, never to live, never to return.
She accepts this with a final parting gift, a weapon she swore, once upon a time, never to use and the screams from the First never end from her mortal ending to her immortal beginnings, to the corners of her soul and the center of her broken body, the scream resounds from inside and outside of her and she presses on.
It is frozen and fiery and the kiss is bright and dark.
For a Slayer must not believe in anything and can never offer solace, only a promise.
She loves with all her heart and it's a sick, twisted thing, rotten like a grave and breathing beauty like the first moments of life, and it does not kill her, it kills her instantly and she loves evil and hates good.
She serves good and fights evil.
The First finally has connected, has touched another being and cannot stand this girl of winter with the aura of dying life, a Slayer truest to the word. She is the last one standing: she has defied the laws of the universe and embraces the First like a loved creature, embraces the origins of evil wholly and without reason.
She never had anything left to stand for anyway, so she falls from the force of the blow, as though the cosmos itself stretched out and snapped back with a violent coil of power entering her, tearing her apart, visions collided and-
-She turns back to give Dawn a final look, the grave is silent as it begs her not to go, she wonders why she even thought that corpse once held meaning to her
-Angel tells her again how much he loves her and how he shouldn't have left her and she smiles with a bitter edge and is too spent to leave, naked flesh to flesh yet the warm body next to her is repulsive and she wishes he didn't love her at all
-Spike's ashes cover her from head to toe as she wastes away, lost and finally broken, broken by a monster that's claimed everything inside of her and she gave it all away because she needed to feel something, anything, and all that's left is dust
-She washes off cold semen and dried red flakes of blood, she always leaves in a mess to remember, for she has done a worthy cause and is proud of her work, even though she knows it will never end until she dies and she does not fear that truth
Now she falls again and again, deeper and harder, into the very nature of the being and the nature of destruction. Everything she has lost is torn out again; she does not cry out in grief, but in release.
Joyous, final, complete, and utter release.
She sleeps, forever, and does not need to wake from this deep sleep.
The End
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