title: The Body
author: cheebs!
email: chbkamen at optonline dot net
rating: R
pairing: W/T
disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, yadda yadda yadda.
spoilers: s6, from Seeing Red onwards
archive: Improv. Anyone else, please ask. :)
Dedicated to Kate Bolin and insomnia, my muses for this piece.
improv # 49 - Stephen King title
------------------------------------------------------------
That horrible day still haunts her.
It haunts her during waking hours, and the scent of meat
cooking turns to that of burning flesh, incinerated in the
blink of an eye.
It haunts her in her dreams, with soulless eyes and terrible
silence and the blood OH THE BLOOD just comes and comes and
becomes an ocean to drown her. She wakes just before she is
dragged under, gasping for breath she never lost.
She wakes screaming, and for a moment they are /his/ screams,
as a tiny piece of metal forces its way through, painfully,
slowly. Then reality sets in and with it, loneliness. She
knows now how it can drive someone to change their true
nature, cover it with hair dye and leather and all in black
of course, because it screams danger and dangerous people
don't get hurt, they do the hurting.
She thinks of her, sad eyes and pillowy lips all done in
black, and wonders briefly if kissing her would have felt
like kissing Tara. She's certain the taste would have been
different, cigarettes and old pizza instead of summer fruits,
but delicious and female all the same.
Her thoughts shift and, for a moment, their faces overlap,
black and brown and blonde and blue, chiseled and cherubic,
hard/soft eyes but always soft soft lips. It dissolves, like
a cheap television effect, and her love's face remains,
imprinted into her mind's eye for all eternity.
The image is all she has left now. Soon, too soon, she will
no longer be able to remember the details. Even now, the
smooth honey of her voice is harder to hear, too nasal to be
right and sounding in turns like Buffy and Dawn. She barely
recalls the exquisiteness of her skin, silken and scented
with Craft and love. But she recalls how it felt to hold her,
soft curves filling her arms, pressing against her, covering
her with femininity her body lacked.
Another thought shift, and she remembers the last time she
held her beloved, eyes vacant, lips slightly parted as if
awaiting a kiss. She begged for her life, and was rebuked;
"human death by human means," she was told, and unable to
accept. Anger was all she had left, and she became vengeance.
Now, she does not even have that. But she has her memories,
and her nightmares, and they keep her alive. She will not
become yet another corpse rotting away beneath this cursed
town.
~end~
8/21/02
author: cheebs!
email: chbkamen at optonline dot net
rating: R
pairing: W/T
disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, yadda yadda yadda.
spoilers: s6, from Seeing Red onwards
archive: Improv. Anyone else, please ask. :)
Dedicated to Kate Bolin and insomnia, my muses for this piece.
improv # 49 - Stephen King title
------------------------------------------------------------
That horrible day still haunts her.
It haunts her during waking hours, and the scent of meat
cooking turns to that of burning flesh, incinerated in the
blink of an eye.
It haunts her in her dreams, with soulless eyes and terrible
silence and the blood OH THE BLOOD just comes and comes and
becomes an ocean to drown her. She wakes just before she is
dragged under, gasping for breath she never lost.
She wakes screaming, and for a moment they are /his/ screams,
as a tiny piece of metal forces its way through, painfully,
slowly. Then reality sets in and with it, loneliness. She
knows now how it can drive someone to change their true
nature, cover it with hair dye and leather and all in black
of course, because it screams danger and dangerous people
don't get hurt, they do the hurting.
She thinks of her, sad eyes and pillowy lips all done in
black, and wonders briefly if kissing her would have felt
like kissing Tara. She's certain the taste would have been
different, cigarettes and old pizza instead of summer fruits,
but delicious and female all the same.
Her thoughts shift and, for a moment, their faces overlap,
black and brown and blonde and blue, chiseled and cherubic,
hard/soft eyes but always soft soft lips. It dissolves, like
a cheap television effect, and her love's face remains,
imprinted into her mind's eye for all eternity.
The image is all she has left now. Soon, too soon, she will
no longer be able to remember the details. Even now, the
smooth honey of her voice is harder to hear, too nasal to be
right and sounding in turns like Buffy and Dawn. She barely
recalls the exquisiteness of her skin, silken and scented
with Craft and love. But she recalls how it felt to hold her,
soft curves filling her arms, pressing against her, covering
her with femininity her body lacked.
Another thought shift, and she remembers the last time she
held her beloved, eyes vacant, lips slightly parted as if
awaiting a kiss. She begged for her life, and was rebuked;
"human death by human means," she was told, and unable to
accept. Anger was all she had left, and she became vengeance.
Now, she does not even have that. But she has her memories,
and her nightmares, and they keep her alive. She will not
become yet another corpse rotting away beneath this cursed
town.
~end~
8/21/02