This sounds different than what I've written in the past, moctly becasue it's been too long since I've been able to write naything romtely good.

Hope this works.

Alexa- nineteen again, fearful and angry and tired and starved again. Tiny and useless and frail and nervous again. Dying again.

The world come back over her- swimming over her sight and catching the breaking point of her aging mind. How long ago? Could have been this morning. Could have been centuries past. She isn't sure anymore.

But the light is fading and everything is blindingly dark- reflected in the snow is her devotion to him- to what she'd believed so fervently that he could somehow become- a frail, disassociated idea. It had been stupid, really.

But the pain- that was the clearest memory, one that still haunted her dreams and seeped through into her nightmares. It had been red-hot agony burning through her skin and eating away at her chest. The knife, which she still carried out of a morbid kind of respect, had shot through her chest in a spur of crimson and she'd been left to die. Not just left. Abandoned.

Those last few, pinpointed seconds dragged on and on, her fingers clutched and sputtered in the fleeting moments of consciousness. It probably hadn't been pretty- she'd seen death and could imagine what hers had been like. There had been a fierce howl and obliterating pain, spare second for thought and a terrifying moment of comprehension. He'd seen it in her eyes- Malcolm had relished it.

"I died," he still whispered to her though the shrouded past. "Years and years ago. But the good Lord granted me a faithful prayer. He sent his angel down for me. All I had to do," His wicked grin scarred her fading vision as he snarled to her, immersed in her hair and muttering into her pale, blood-spattered neck. "Was seek out the little wretches like you. Kill them. Make them suffer. And send on their merry little way downstairs." His grizzly beard had nuzzled her china and all this dying felt like an eternity.

But eternity was yet to come.

Eternity was always and everything, nowhere and nohow, careful and conceited, immature and kind. Nothing made and logical sense in this rightside-down world.

Falling back into the thread of conversation, she put up her defensive smile and offered the ape-like barman a hefty tip.

"Let's just go." She glanced awkwardly at Dean, who frowned and caught the eye of the older woman sitting at the table all by her lonesome. She cackled and lifted her eyebrows, almost too knowingly.

"Cute little dear you've found." She nodded to Dean.

He nodded back hesitantly and shared an eye-rolling session with Alexa. "I mean it."The drunk sputtered. "You watch out for the idiot who come through here. They don't like your kind." She once again nodded towards Alexa, ending her battered phrase with a chuckled 'hiccup!'.

More to come. reviews are greatly appreciated.