Title: Live to Die

Author: Criss Moody

Email: wyoluvr@yahoo

Rating: R-ish

Spoilers: End of Season One Angel and all of Season Two

Summary: Darla thinks about mortality.  (or something like that)

Improv: sepia, wish, memory, revenge

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, bastard that he is, owns them all.  Big ol’ meanie.

Author’s Notes: Wrote this in about 15 minutes.  Not betaed.  Yeah, cheesy title. 

Feedback: Please, I always adore and appreciate it.

And these things I take as true:

The sun will set at the foretold hour;

Man is mortal;

Revenge is inevitably futile;

Memories fade;

Wishes do not come true;

I was dead before I was born.

At the moment I took my first breath, the squall of the newborn shocked out of me by the harsh cool air greeting my wet warm flesh, I died.

I screamed, I howled for the injustice of unwilling destiny.

Didn’t do me any good, doesn’t do me any good, but I still scream.

I slash at my flesh in the night, in the vulnerable places no one sees, watching the coppery red blood seep out, spread over the creamy whiteness, and dry into a range of sepia tones, a rainbow of my pain.

My room serves as the perimeters for my salvation; beyond them exists the uneasy madness of a world too much for my senses.  The sky hurts my eyes now, too blue, too real to handle in the blackness I have come to expect in me.

I search not for salvation, but for peace.  Rest from destiny, silence from bitter accusations, I seek the path of least resistance.  Outside myself, inside myself, I’m dead already.

I’ve been dying forever.

I accept that.  I fight to keep my head above the memory of hate, mindless in its intent; I strive for balance.  I do not love and I do not hate.

I do not feel.

Not here, not in this place where I have been condemned to seek redemption.

The world I never asked to return to revels in my agony, delights in the return to fleshly delights and suffering I fled at one time.  Once, I visited the sweetest of pains upon those I loved, finding the best revenge in taking what I wanted where I wanted it.  Now, my memories batter me into remembering that fate meant me to die, and fate will have its way.

Mortal, I died to live.

Mortal again, I live to die.