AN: Thank you to Enigma for breaking from the good old Jensen loving enough to make her beautiful M/W video 'Sweet Sacred Bliss'. It was valuable fuel for my muse!
Every night, it's the same dream.
She's lying on the alter. The sacrificial victim - the one who's lifeblood will renew us and welcome in the next generation. A thousand years ago, there would have been no need to bind her. She would have faced death willingly, surrendered herself to the Goddess. There would have been no wild fear in her eyes as she stared wildly at the descending blade, her mind unable to accept her fate.
But this woman does not take death so willingly. She cannot fight, but the heat in her eyes warrs a silent battle with the priestess above her just the same. Of course, it's futile to hope she'll be freed. And she's just beginning to realise this now.
I watch dispassionately from afar, but I can see her head turning slowly towards me as the ceremonial dagger plunges into her soft, firm belly. Ripping through skin, tearing the muscle, rupturing her womb so that she cannot bear children in the after life. In the moment before our eyes would meet, I have a sudden urge to laugh out loud. Not at her death, but at the bizarre notion of a spirit bearing children. My people adhere to the old ways, the beliefs of our ancestors. I don't dare to question the beliefs of my kind - they see my doubt and begin in turn, to doubt me.
My eyes return to the woman lying on the stone slab. She tries so to hold in the screams, her body almost convulses with effort. I can't help but feel a certain sense of pride as she tries to prove that she is strong and that she's worthy of being one of us. But never could she match our strength. She feels too much, she lives with passion - as her kind tend to do - rather than purpose, like us. I'm sure that if she knew of our true purpose on this world, the knowledge would rip her soul right out of her. The broken heart would undoubtedly kill her. That's humanity for you.
A whimper escapes and my head snaps forward once more. She has turned her head so that she cannot watch the final strike. And her gaze has fallen upon me. Now at last our eyes meet and I blanch to see that recognition has shadowed her pained expression. I am a cloaked man amid the mass of others, a spectator in the crowd. Yet she has found me. Her eyes then widen in horror. No doubt she realises who has betrayed her. All she has ever believed of me is ripped away. Now the face of the one she loves will be forever painted in the mask of death.
As the blade is wrenched out from her flesh, her body arches in pain. Agony causes her head to jerk away from my direction. I clench my jaw tightly to stop from wincing. For a fleeting moment can feel her pain. Or perhaps it's simply a fleeting moment of guilt ripping through me. Neither are feelings I'm accustomed to experiencing.
Once, I shared this woman's thoughts. Through her I experienced the kind of emotions that selective breeding has all but eliminated from my race. My people are superior to humans in every way. The sentiments of humans make them frail. We don't suffer such sickness of the mind. Our decisions are made by cold calculation. Sympathy is not present to stop us from taking the life of our enemies. For centuries homo-sapiens have hidden their various weaknesses behind stone walls and weaponry. But take these things away, and in their natural element a human is weaker than Rex. The family dog.
The Priestess raises her hand into the air once more, the sheen of the dagger's blade now hidden beneath blood as she adjusts her aim. But she doesn't yet deliver the final blow. Rather, she would revel in her victim's fear a few moments longer. My mind begins to whirl as I feel her pain and despair flood into me. Grimacing, I fight back such weakness and quickly glance to those around me. All eyes are riveted on the sacrifice before them, each mouth upturned into a thirsty smile. They too indulge in these waves of emotion like as if creatures starved. We should not crave the need to feel but silently - secretly within each of us - we do.
The woman lying on the alter is my wife, but this is not the way Wendy died. She died by my own hands, and I felt no remorse as I choked the life out of her. Only rage.
And so before the Priestess's dagger pierces Wendy's heart, the dream now takes a new turn. One much closer to the truth than what I've shared with you so far...
The force of my kick snaps the lock and sends the door flying back against the wall. She flinches at the impact and turns to face me, her eyes widen in fear as her mouth drops open in horror. A typical expression to wear when one realises the final few moments of their existence now lie before them.
Rage at my own sentimentality propels me forward. I rip the phone she clutches like a lifeline out from the wall, and send it flying across the room. Making an attempt at self-preservation, she picks up a paperweight and smacks it across my face. Even in her terror she tries to be strong. That's my Wendy for you.
I don't so much as flinch.
It's at this point she realises that she's not dealing with a crazed psycho of a husband, but rather a being unlike anything she could possibly imagine. A stranger that she had been married to for half of her life. Terror turns to horror once more.
She looks at me as if I'm a monster, and if at any point I had begun to feel hestitancy, that look would undoubtedly have erased it. I'm no monster. I prefer to leave such name tags to the transgenic scum I've sworn to destroy. She would never understand that I'm superior to everything else that takes claim to human form.
For a woman I claim to love, one may well be surprised by the jarring way in which I slam my fist into her face and send her flying onto the bed. As I remove my tie and begin to bind it around my hands, I even feel a smile twitch upon my lips. I wasn't bred to feel sappy human emotion. Love, laughter, joy, pleasure... it's so debilitating.
Look at her - lying on the bed, begging for her life.
If she hadn't allowed weak human sentimentality to bring her here, she could probably have lived to a ripe old age. But by going to 'Eyes Only', she endangered my entire race. Her inability to give up on Ray may well have brought us into the public eye. And then we too would be hunted. I was willing to let her slip through my grasp the first time, after all I did love her once. I cannot allow such weakness to effect my decisions again.
As the material wraps around her throat and her screams are reduced to a pitiful gurgle, I look into her eyes one last time. Blue eyes plead silently for mercy. Once upon a time, she believed in me. She loved me. And even now as she gasps for redemption, I know she loves me still. It's pathetic.
Her pleas cannot sway me. Nothing can extinguish the rage I have mustered up in order to carry out this task. My father allowed his feelings for my mother to cause his fall from grace. Through her, he developed affection for the entire human race. Already I have teetered too close to following his footsteps. Wendy has been allowed to live for far too long.
Drawing the tie tighter around her throat, I continue to stare at her with an impassionate mask. I force myself to watch as the pressure of strangulation causes her beautiful eyes to bulge. Death is truly an ugly thing. But I take pleasure in her death as my heightened senses share her pain, allowing me to feel at last. And when that vibratant vivacious light finally fades from her eyes, I know that I'm truly released from my father's shadow.
And there the dream ends.
Why is it that Wendy continuest to haunt me? Is it guilt? Lonliness? I hardly think so. But each night I lie in bed, knowing the dream will overcome me once my eyes close. And slowly but surely, I begin to fear sleep.
Wendy was my weakness, the one similarity I shared with my father. I allowed sentimentality to take the place of reason. I broke tradition. That's just how it had begun with my father - and that's why in the end, Wendy had to die. But the irony is that no matter how far I run, no matter how many other lives I take, I can't run from my own dreams. That look of hurt and love which I witnessed in Wendy's eyes during her final moments of life will haunt me forever.
My father allowed himself to be sucked in by sympathy for the human race. He allowed his love for my mother to turn him against his own kind. Because of his actions, he's forced me to endless try and claw my way out from shadow of his betrayal. The need to prove that my father's falsity is not a genetic failing has been my ambition for so long, I no longer remember what my driving force could have been it. I focus my waking thoughts on eradicating all signs of the obsession that drove my father away from the Conclave - and away from me. I've made this my personal vendetta so that I can prove my faith to both the Conclave, and myself. How Freudian that my life's purpose has been determined by my childhood.
But perhaps I am bad blood. After all, I too broke tradition. I allowed Wendy to live beyond the life span of a breeding host. And I let myself develop emotions my kind are not supposed to feel.
I loved her. Through her I had my first real taste of humanity.
Now having experienced only a Familiar's rage and hatred for so long, it's a concept I have come to crave.