Usual Disclaimer, I don't own any of these characters, you
know the drill.
Around him,
life continued. Cars sped by the window, the rubber of their tyres sometimes
squealing on the road, their horns sometimes beeping in anger or desperation.
People still walked down the street, the faint traces of lingering perfumes
clung on to the air. The trees still rustled gently in the wind. The stars
flickered across the sky, frozen there like the wounds of stigmata. Sparse
clouds meandered their way gently across the sky like clumps of grey cotton
wool. Shops were shutting up for the night, bars and clubs were opening, people
were living. But reality stopped with him.
The room
was filled with a sense of unreality. The white walls, although solid and
steadfast, seemed to close in on him at every opportunity. The faint murmur of
voices passing the outside of the closed door reached him like a thousand
garbled messages all rolled into one. The gentle persistent beeping of the unit
next to him did little to comfort him. He could hear the steady dripping of the
thick liquid in the bag next to him, supported by a feeble metal stand. Various
drawers held various implements and drugs and the differences between life and
death.
He stared
at the brainwave monitor with one last lingering hope. Still nothing. The line
was flat, no curves, no bumps, no nothing. She was gone, only her shell lived
on. There was nothing he could do. The fight had taken everything, her friends,
her sister, her life. She had saved the world again, and only he knew it. But
this time it had finally taken her.
For a long
time he stared at her peaceful face, her closed eyelids, the outline of her
mouth. How he loved her. He brushed his hand against her cheek, hoping for
something, anything. But nothing came. Death was her gift, he knew that now.
The release from the pain of her life. Silently he begged her forgiveness for
what he was about to do, and somewhere he knew he had it. Let me go, her soul
whispered. Let me go. His hand shakily moved to the controls of the life
support machine. "I'm sorry," he whispered, as he gently removed the plug. He
waited. The bleeping of the heart machine slowly faded until he could only hear
one continuous bleep. But there was nothing from her, no final struggle, no throes.
The Slayer was beaten.
He laid a
final kiss on her forehead. The nurses arrived, bustling to remove both him and
her from the room. He was not needed here now. He was needed elsewhere. Resolve
suddenly filled him and a realisation of what he must do, what he needed to do.
He left the hospital quickly, driven by a strength he had not felt in years.
His car flew down the freeway, his hotel soon looming over him. Home.
But this
was not Home, he realised. Home was in her arms, not in some building. Mulling
his thoughts over he climbed to the roof of the hotel. Three minutes, no more
than that. The sky was already tinged with blood, the birth of the day
imminent. The world would continue. Day would always turn to night, and night
would always turn to day, she had seen to that. The strongest Slayer in
history, the saviour of the world, lay dead, and yet only he mourned her. But
not for long. Soon he would be with her, wherever she was. Finally the first
shards of splintering sunlight crawled above the horizon, and he was crippled
by the pain. It didn't matter, nothing mattered. His clothes began to melt into
his skin as he was engulfed in flames, but he could no longer feel it. He could
hear her, calling to him, welcoming him. Home. The last flakes of his dust
spread in the freedom of his last sunrise as his soul left him to join her.
Nothing else mattered.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Together in Death.
