Kendra's mother had strong fingers, and it's the one thing she inherited from her. Everything else came from her father - a man she knew only by the chemical smell that came from his photographs. Her eyes, her skin, her hair - all that was his. Her hands were the only thing passed down to her through daughters of men who worked till they bled, the only thing she could count on when chemical scent faded.
She was careful about her hands, thus. They were a precious reminder of past mistakes, the only time she left her guard down. They were treasured and protected. She didn't care when He scowled at her for sparing her hands and fighting mostly with feet. This one thing was hers, and her mother's, and her mother's mother's, going back generations - strong hands passed down to the daughters of men who fought till they bled.
Her hands never faltered, never slipped, never ceased from their duties. Strong fingers gripped stakes, and she dutifully pounded everything scared and clean out of herself, under His watchful eye. Never once did he lay praise on her, always only another lesson, another set of lines and movement to save the lives of others, and maybe save herself.
It took twenty-six years for her hands to fail her. She knows it's old for a Slayer, but it's young for the girl she's just starting to become. It's young for a body just barely learning to talk without being spoken to.
And no one ever gives her a choice, it's not fair, and she can just here Him saying, crouched down in front of her telling her it isn't and that's how it's supposed to be because that's how it's always been.
She doesn't like this, though, the blood welling up in a delicious wine-colored curve along her smooth neck. Dripping into her hair, and the way she can feel everything pulling away from her. Slaying is all she's ever been, and know she knows it's all she ever will be, and Kendra doesn't like that either. And she wishes she could have noticed that sooner. That, there, the way her hands look lying flat, not fighting or fleeing. Not stabbing or snatching or twisting or twining, just flat and empty and deflated in a pool of her own blood and it takes twenty-six years and everything pure about her to realize that's it's not the hands.
It's the daughters of men, the fight that will never end until the world does, and maybe not even then. It's the end of her chapter and the time to give this strength to someone else. It takes Kendra twenty-six years, and everything that was ever good about her, and her last breath, and then Kendra realizes she doesn't mind.
*
Miles and seconds away, Faith Lehane wakes up and feels like she could conquer the world.