AUTHOR: Elektra
EMAIL: mydestinyfic@yahoo.com
DISCLAIMER: Nearly all the characters in this fanfiction universe belong to Joss, the WB television network and everyone else who holds copyright to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series and the Angel series. No copyright infringement is intended.
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RATING: Rated PG13.
SUMMARY: An unexpected encounter leaves someone wondering if they will ever be the same again.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story was written to leave you guessing. Did I succeed?
Have you ever had that feeling, like an itch you can't scratch? I felt it that night in the club. That's how I knew she was there. The irritating stretch and pull of hundreds of tiny nerve endings pulsating beneath my skin; they sang a symphony to her perfect, lifeless beauty.
There was a time when I would have relished the sensations burning through my flesh. This is no longer the case. Oh, I still savor the silken texture of her lips, the soft indentation where her spine meets her hips, the slight silver chain draped around her ankle, but I am no longer welcome to it. I have been ravished; every tiny essence of the thing I was has been erased. Everything I had is gone. I know that now.
So, where I once would have thrilled at the hunt of this eternal loveliness, I am now forced to watch from afar.
She stood at the edge of the crowded dance floor. In a sea of gyrating flesh, she was pristine, aloof. It was almost as though she weren't there at all. Her mind flitting and soaring with stratospheric thoughts so high above the din that she was transported.
For a time, I wondered at her ability to take herself wherever she needed to go. Her mind was so unfettered by the prison of modern thinking that she could do this one thing that so many others could not. I long for that ability. I long to lose myself in the face of the harsh reality that has become my life.
I say this like nothing has gone wrong before, but that is far from the truth.
I have been hurt before. I have struggled. However, I have never lived like this. I am truly alone in the darkness. There is no one here for me. In every direction that I look, no one understands me. Not even her.
She disappeared from sight as a hulking drunk behemoth stepped between us. Idiot. He was a fool to think he could penetrate the barrier she'd erected around herself. As he touched her, she turned her empty, bottomless eyes upon him. He shivered. Like an animal in headlights, he was afraid. I could smell it.
He stood there for a moment longer before he stumbled back into the fervent mass of arms and legs and thrusting pelvises. She was glorious as she stood there. A slow, feline smile spread her velvet lips as she watched him go. She too felt his fear and relished it.
After a moment, she turned her head and her eyes locked with mine. How long had she known I was there? My skin felt as though it burned with embers of a long neglected fire as her eyes stroked against the planes of my flesh. As her gaze returned to mine, I realized that perhaps I wasn't the only one who was lonely. The deathly stillness reflected in the depths of her eyes showed me a world that was just as empty as mine.
Perhaps we were more alike than I had thought. Maybe somewhere inside of her, she could find the strength to understand me. Perhaps she had the strength to see what it is that I have become and not turn away.
The moment was broken as a young female form bumped into me. Several expletives sprang to my lips as I felt the sharp edge of her high heel crushing down on several of my smaller toes. I looked down into a face that was still lushly rounded with baby fat. Her cheeks were delicately flushed from dancing and alcohol. I pushed her away from me in disgust.
Even before I returned my gaze to the spot on the floor where the object of my attentions had been standing, I knew she was no longer there. The small peaceful center of the whirling vortex was gone. The club felt like a living clichÈ without her there. The same high school band playing the same boring songs to a mob of juvenile zombies. Nothing changed while in its midst, not even me.
That was the problem.
Standing there in the middle of that room allowed me to stagnate. I didn't have to think. I didn't have to feel. If I really wanted to, I could pretend that I wasn't there at all.
I realized that maybe she wasn't gifted after all. Maybe she was just as screwed up as I am. The difference was, she wanted nothing to do with me.
The insight into my situation proved to be too much. In the raining crush of depression that followed, I made a decision that changed my life forever.
I left.
The scent of violets tickled my nose as I shouldered my way through the crowd. It was a scent I hadn't smelled in a long time. Like a beacon, it led me to the fire exit at the back of the club. I stared at the door with its garish orange lettering that read 'emergency use only' and defiantly pushed my way through it. Somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, I recognized the throaty screech of the emergency alarm. However, the sight before me quickly obliterated it from my mind.
She stood there in the darkened alley. Her arms were wrapped tightly around the body of the young girl who'd stepped on my foot only a short time earlier. Lifeless eyes stared at me from the girl's rapidly cooling corpse. Blood oozed from the tiny wounds in her neck and across her cheek, only to drip like tiny dangling pearls from her earlobe.
Her attacker moved then, closing the distance between us.
Momentarily I realized that she was taking quite a risk. The alarm still wailed from within the bowels of the club. It was only a matter of time before someone came to investigate. I wondered what she wanted. Did she wish to taunt me with the thing I could no longer have?
As she moved closer, I realized that her eyes were no longer empty. Instead, they held a strangely triumphant gleam. I suppose it was warranted. She had succeeded in making me acknowledge the silken bonds that had held me for so long.
The heady perfume of the death of the child in her arms could not mask the distinct aroma of violets that clung to my tormenter's form. It was her that I had been following. Somewhere inside of myself, I think I knew that all along. Just as I did not belong in that world, neither did she. We both belonged to the night, where things lay still and quiet.
I watched her shift the child, gently tipping back the girl's drooping head and revealing the pale expanse of her neck. They lay there before me in the darkness like an artist's tableau. Her deathly stillness the perfect setting for the jewel of the child's death.
Like a licentious Madonna, she looked up at me with unwavering eyes.
"Drink," she whispered into the darkness.
Rage burned within me. I was not some child to be tended.
"Take your pity and-"
The child fell to the ground with a dull thud as the woman grasped at the leather of my duster.
"I know what you are," she said. "I know what they did to you."
She clasped my hand against her chest. As I looked into her eyes, those nearly colorless orbs, I saw the steel lurking in their depths.
"Please. Drink," she said as she picked the child up from the ground, "for now."
The warmth of the child's blood danced across my palette as I lapped at her wounds. This was as it was meant to be. The memory of moments long past swept behind my eyelids. As I consumed the essence of the child's life, the woman's fingers wound their way through my hair.
"Drink," she said, "until we find a way to make them pay."