Blood Clot
By: Severiona Black
Disclaimer: BTVS belongs to Josh Weddon, etc.
Authors note: If you don't know, it's about Cassie Newton, from the episode 7.04: Help.
She had always been special, she supposed, had always had this power, this ability, this knowledge. She would see things sometimes; fragmented images would run through her head, a muted movie with parts of the film missing. Most of the time the images would bleed together, her thoughts would collide, colors would whirl, and everything would become so muddled she couldn't make sense of it, couldn't understand what it meant. Other times they were clear.
Clear like the almost translucent brown stain spreading across Buffy's white shirt, the same as the blood in her dreams, slipping through her fingers; like the sand in the hourglass that marked the time till the end of everything that she had ever known. Clear, and obvious like the B Mike was going too get even though he was certain he knew everything (even though he really didn't know anything at all).
These images were bright, too vibrant, and she couldn't shut them out, she couldn't even try. Just like no one should have tried to help her, even though she knew that they would. Even though she knew it wouldn't matter, not in the end, not when Friday finally came.
She had liked Fridays once, had listened to that ridiculous song by Tori Amos, "I don't like Mondays," and wished that it could be Friday everyday. Now, she hoped it would never be Friday ever again. The irony wasn't lost on her, of course, and this made her laugh. So many things made her laugh now, everything about her life was so damn funny now, and she couldn't help but wonder when this had happened, when everything suddenly became stupid, pointless, and so completely ludicrous that all she wanted to do was laugh and laugh until she cried.
She suspected it had a great deal to do with the dream, the one she could only remember parts of. She could remember the bang and clatter of coins, big and small, bouncing off the cement, could remember the feel of tape over her mouth, marking her, scarring her, preventing her for getting help. But she had tried to help, and she could remember that too, the blond angel with the broken halo, who'd danced through her dreaming singing, "I can save you," over and over again, even though somewhere deep down she'd known that she couldn't (she never had been able to, not when it had mattered), knew that it was over before it had really began.
Mostly, she remembered the blood, the steady drip of crimson slipping through her fingers, the way it splattered on the wall, like one of her abstract paintings. She could hear it, as it hit the ground, could smell it in the air, along with the smell of death, and she wondered, momentarily (and that's what her life was), if it would make a difference if she knew it all, if she could undo it somehow, if she could stop the thin thread that held her alive from being cut.
And that's what everything was about really, her death, the end to her life. There would be no dances underneath the stars, no biology quizzes (god, she almost wished for them now), no wondering if Mike could have been the one. There would be nothing, just empty blackness, the absence of feeling. Someone had told her once, she remembered, that being dead was just like sleeping without dreams, and that had scared her, that she could close her eyes and in a split second centuries could pass. And she didn't understand it, how the world could go on when she wasn't there to see it, because surely if she didn't know it (didn't know at all) it couldn't exist could it? Surely she couldn't die, she wasn't ready, hadn't had enough time. But it was there, looming ever closer, floating towards her, mocking her. She didn't know how it would happen, she only knew when, only knew that soon she would feel it, the sharp pain, the blood clot, the end of her.
It wasn't fair really, wasn't right, and sometimes she found she didn't really believe it (didn't try). But belief made no difference to the truth, not really, and she knew this. She had seen the blood and soon all would be black, this, if nothing else, she was certain of, more certain than she had ever been of anything. She couldn't explain really, it just was.
Some things she just knew.