TITLE: Anymore
AUTHOR: Remy (remytakesthestage@hotmail.com)
SPOILERS: Up to 'The Gift'
SUMMARY: Another, post-Gift, Spike piece. Short and angsty - surprise, surprise.
DISCLAIMER: Um, duh. If Spike was mine, he wouldn't be so sad. :::grin:::
FEEDBACK: I never get enough hate-mail... Seriously. :) Tell me it sucks if you think it sucks.


Fuck, he just wants to hate her. Reach into the dirt, dig into the earth, rip her apart. Rip her apart. All sinew and rope, pinkskin because he knows she isn't rotting, just killing. Destroying him from the grave. Like a cloud of smoke following the train, carbon monoxide and suffocation. Death by memories. He wonders if that's possible.

Sacrifice. He could go eternity without ever hearing that word again. She didn't know what sacrifice was. Giving up; a habeas corpus in the job description. That's not sacrifice. Fear, anger, weakness, balancing on a fingertip, like the curve of a coat-hanger, hooked, in between the grooves of the fingerprint; a boat in the water, swaying, trying to find solid ground. That's what she was. She killed herself.

And some nights he does hate her. He sits on the dirt mound in front of her pretty tombstone, throws rocks at the silver marble, spits on her ground, pulls up her grass, crushes her flowers. He yells at her through the six feet that separate them. Was leaving Dawn (him) alone and suicidal part of her plan? Was she that daft?

They should've jumped together. He thinks they should've jumped together.

Now he's all knots, tension-tied, muscles aching, 'cause she's pissing him off again. Stomps the ground, leaves miniature-mazes, indentions, from the ruts of his boot heel. Crushing cigarette after cigarette, soft fire and anger when it's over. He doesn't stay long.

And he's almost glad that he'll never see her again. She fucked him up real good; someday, someday she won't be able to, anymore. In that tiny, kind of scary place, he thinks about how bad things have gotten.

He remembers the sirens in the distance, across the street, ripping his wings off. Little white boys in little white suits, gonna bandage her up, make her pretty again. Parking on the curb, because they've never had to parallel park, before. He doesn't think she's pretty, anymore. Loading her up, not daring to touch, because fuck, she was cold and a sick purplish-blue hue, like the pretty parts of butterfly; driving her away. He remembers the sirens in the distance, across the street, loud and urgent and making that God-awful, seizure-inducing noise, grating his senses, numbing him like a bottle-full of sedatives.

He almost wants her back, just so he can fuck her up. Bloody and dirty and begging for something (she doesn't know what); kill her sister so she knows what it's like...what it's like to be left alone. What's a person supposed to want (do) when everything they touch is tainted and raped?

Died so the other could live; only left the other to die twice. A man in a tweed suit tells her to protect the world, as though it's hers, as though she can tear it apart if she wanted, take what she wants, love who she wants; a man with thick glasses tells her she's noble, and she believes him. She was a good little martyr; such a sweet girl.

There was a white tube, crinkled and too long, like the coil of a straw; he remembers: they slid it down her throat (didn't they?), past the place where her tonsils were, into her chest, where her dead heart was starting to discolor, and they had still tried to pump some oxygen into her, tried to make her breath, despite that she was cold. Her lips were white (like the milk of her eyes); he remembers when they were red.

*I hope it didn't hurt. I hope it didn't hurt.* The pebble clanks as it hits the stone, bouncing off the first "f" in her name and hitting the ground with an inconceivable thump. *I hope it doesn't hurt. I hope it doesn't hurt.* He feels the flowers beneath his shoe, hears the stems snap and the seeds crack. He thinks he left them there sometime last week, but he can't really remember.

And he knows pain is variable, like the pitch of a piano key, dependent on the tap of your foot; he thinks he saw her grimace, he thinks he saw her smile.