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| a.connor a.doyle a.lindsey a.oz a.spike a.wesley a.xander a.other three.somes het.fic character.study |
| Title: instant Author: Spirit Rating: R Setting: Post-'The Gift' "From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity." - Munch ~I dreamed about the rose once. Plucked it from between her thighs and brought it to my lips, tasting it, licking the edges as it dripped onto my tongue. No morning dew, no spare tang as the thorns pricked my flesh, tore my lips open. Just a rose, dead as soon as I severed the roots, wilting in my hands and when I covered it with my fist, it was gone. Death should mean more than one mythical flower, vanished. Looked at Willow and saw her tears, spilt for a girl she knew briefly, minutes compared to knowing in Hell. Remembered her face longer than her name, whispered breath of blonde hair whipping past cheekbone, lips slanted at the side as even tiny teeth that filled a too big mouth grinned at me. I could pull her skull from the mire of a thousand and know it. See the lines of her face, flesh stripped away, inch by inch, torment over once and forever. Saw Willow crying and said her name. Whispered it so they would know, so that I wouldn't hear Wesley's solemnity as he reminded me gently that she is gone. Where is she now? Body naked and empty of even her breath, cheeks sallow and that tincture of pink denuded finally. Hair growing in the grave they dug, wisps settling round her shoulders before they eat her eyes away. Closed to skin and to mind as it rattles in her head. She will not wake in horror to the worms, sneaking past her face, across her cheeks, nuzzling into dead flesh and starting to consume as she tries to rise. Wiggling, wriggling, promising to eat and eat and become the vampire made whole in earthly form. Split, multiplied and who sires the maggots to be eaters of the dead? Watched Willow and smelt the salt on her cheeks, trickling down as they do always, death and more death in her path. Gods falling beneath her feet and her friend broken inside. She came to live, to bring the dead together for one last hurrah. Passed on the responsibility and gave the walking corpse the news of the one who lay still. Sniff of those who no longer breathe and why would I be one of them? I am not, cannot become human except in the abstract. And as the salt drips onto her shirt, marring its flawed perfection, I do not wish to. Become something I once managed to escape, fingers clawing in the dirt for anew life, a new challenge. Eternity to live, untainted by Ireland or all that she couldn't offer me. Woke up in a rosy flecked bosom, drank sweet nectar from a thorn-less wound and became something terrible. And was I rescued from that by something new? Did God finally give me an avatar I could believe in; rest my fangs until they no longer grew? A chance to be beautiful and decay in a swollen lap while the world moves on. She lived, I loved. She died, I learnt the ecstasy of relief. Only thorns remain.~ -end Feedback |