Disclaimer: I do not own Kill Bill or any related characters or scenarios. If I did, I doubt I'd be posting this here. Also, I'd drive a really nice car.

I wrote this story today while sitting under a tree, appreciating the peace and joy of a southern spring. May such days occur more often. It's a from-memory revamp of something I wrote several years ago, which was thoroughly unpublishable. I hope this version meets with everyone's approval.

There had never been anything more satisfying than the feeling of the katana slicing through Black Mamba's slender neck. The blade sang out its perfect, bell-clear tone, resonating through Nikki's hands, up her arms and to her shoulders, and into that part of her that could feel nothing else but the years' long yearning for this moment. There was a thump as the dead woman's head hit the floor, the louder thud of her body collapsing, the clang of Hattori Hanzo's steel on bloody linoleum. The head rolled to a messy stop against the far wall. Nikki let her katana ease down from its natural guard.

She had won. She had finally defeated the woman it had become her life's work to kill. And it had been easy. Not just physically, although it had been that. The Black Mamba was a woman pushing fifty, a woman who had gone too many years without trying to kill anyone, or expecting anyone to kill her. The old skills were still there, but buried under too much normality to come quickly to the surface. So, yes, it was easy for a girl who had trained for it every day since she was four years old to kill her.

But it had been easy easy. Nikki had thought she might feel something when she confronted her mother's killer. She should have felt the fear that had struck her at the age of four when she saw her mother collapse with a knife in her chest, or the rage and pain that had boiled up later, the sense of justice she had felt the first time she handled Cottonmouth's samurai sword, or the heady anticipation that had come before her first kill. But there had been nothing, only the singing of the swords, as if this kill had been no more personal than any other.

Nikki cleaned her sword on Black Mamba's white blouse and sheathed it in a beautifully fluid motion. The dead eyes stared at her. She met them unflinchingly.

"You said you'd be waiting. I still felt raw about it. You should have been waiting." She scuffed her toe in the mess of red and gold on the floor, and got no response.

Something should have happened. This didn't feel right. It didn't feel like it was over.

She turned to go, and stopped short, heart in her throat. There was a girl there, young, blonde, and harmless, eyes wide in a face round with baby fat, expression blank with shock, trembling.

Was this what Black Mamba had seen in her?

"I..."

"You killed my mom?"

"I'm sorry." Nikki shook her head. "I'm not sorry I did it. But I'm sorry you had to see."

"Are you going to kill me?" The very question Nikki had been too afraid to ask. She swallowed hard.

"Only if you get in my way."

XxX

The emotions only hit her later, when she looked in the mirror in her anonymous hotel room and saw her mother's face.

Jeannie - Vernita - Copperhead - had always been so strong, every inch of her pure muscle, every movement filled with hard purpose. As a child, Nikki hadn't understood. She hadn't known that no amount of soccer coaching could have put that much firmness into the arms that hugged her every night before bed. She hadn't known that it was more than luck that sent her mommy dancing just out of reach of every accident, when another person would have been hit. She had never seen more than a pretty trick when her mother had broken off chopping vegetables to twirl her knife in the air as skillfully as any circus performer. She hadn't yet learned that not everyone had eyes that could, for no obvious reason, flash so angry and yet so full of regret.

Nikki had her mother's eyes. She had never noticed before.

"Stupid girl," she said. "You have no business holding a Hattori Hanzo sword."

"It was my mother's, the finest ever made."

Nikki turned without surprise to face the girl who had invaded her room. B.B. still looked as frightened and harmless as ever, but her shock had passed, and she was pointing her katana straight at Nikki's heart.

"Put it down. You don't know how to use it."

"I know enough!" Tears of fury sprang to B.B.'s eyes. Suddenly, Nikki felt very tired. After a lifetime of hunting and hating the woman called Black Mamba, all she could do was parrot her words to a little girl who had lost her mom.

"You may not realize it, but your mother had it coming." B.B. wilted just a little. She looked like such a child, playing dress up with her mommy's sword, though she was older than Nikki. A little less than seven months older, as Nikki had read long ago in the old journal her mother had kept locked in a safe in the attic.

Would Copperhead have done anything different if she had known, that day at Two Pines, what she had discovered just days later?

Your mother had it coming.

"Put the sword away, B.B. You're no warrior, and I told you I would kill you if you got in my way."

"No." The sword was shaking in the young girl's hands, but her stance was firm. Nikki took a breath to center herself, and drew the katana of the Yakuza queen.

"Attack me, then, and die."

The swords flashed in the air, and flashed again, not just singing but screaming their fury. Steel clashed against steel, and blade bit into flesh. There was blood and sweat and cries of pain, and the sound of the downstairs neighbor knocking on the ceiling with a broom. And the battle was over almost before it had begun.

The sister swords were left indifferent. Three times now they had met in the cause of vengeance-three times, and never again. Never again would the swords be taken up against each other. There was no one left to fight. There was no one left who cared for revenge. At last it was over, and the swords could rust in silence.

But, though the story of the Bride had reached its bloody end, the world would never be free of its violent and ugly things. The swords wouldn't rest forever. They would rise again, wielded by new hands, and taste again of that sweet, cold revenge.