TITLE: You Could Have Been Me
AUTHOR: Minttown1/Amber
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: none
SUMMARY: "Take a look under here, where deprivation turns into decay..." A random encounter with repercussions.
ARCHIVAL: I somehow doubt my first tentative steps into a foreign fandom will receive any offers, but yes, just ask.
DISCLAIMER: Owned by my beloved GrrArrg monster, not by me.
NOTES: My very liberal interpretation of a folk tale assignment, twisted more or less into a BtVS songfic. Set either early in the series or entirely AU. Also, at the time I wrote it, I had yet to hear the word "unlife" on the series and thought I was being horribly creative.
~~~
He was scared, absolutely terrified. The panic tearing through his mind was a feeling he could barely remember before tonight, a sensation that somehow evoked memory of short trousers and games with the other boys. The afternoons then had been so warm. He missed the sun beating down on his skin and the heat that would radiate from his dark hair whenever he would finally retire indoors.
It was possible that he would never see indoors again, that this frantic, clumsy run might be his last action. He could hear her shoes hitting the earth behind him, white tennis shoes, closer with every step. A part of him argued that he should not even run, that he lost the very right to run at the same moment he lost everything else.
When this night was over, whether she caught him or not, she would return home. Home would have a soft bed with white cotton sheets, and he could picture her normally fierce eyes closed in a peaceful sleep. Sleep was fitful for him when it came, and it was never on a bed or in a house. The place he called home was unimaginable, the circumstances he called life unthinkable.
"Just stop running!" she called after him, seemingly mirroring his own thoughts.
"No!" Despite his consideration mere moments before, he refused to make it easy for her.
"Then die without honor," she shouted, "again."
He glanced back when she spoke and felt himself stumble. In the mere seconds it took her to take advantage he realized that he had no idea what was coming. This could be it, her standing over him and one swift movement ending it all. He could try to fight, try to rewrite fate, but more than a small part of him wished to avoid battle. He awaited her approach silently.
"What are you doing?" she asked, surprised. She stood over him, all but on top of him, her chest heaving.
His own remained still, even as he spoke. "Waiting."
The confusion in her eyes made him angry. She was so much less than he expected. "But you're supposed to..."
"What?" he asked. "Fight back? Clutch at this unlife?" He shook his head. "I am not my brethren."
"You're a monster, same as the others."
"You could have been, too." He watched her expression falter, some of the pride falling from her face.
"How close have you come, little girl? Surely no one hunts like you without a few close calls." He reached up to brush away the hair from her neck.
"Yes," she admitted, batting his hand away, "but none like the one you're having."
"Luck." He was surprisingly calm. This was nothing like last time. He only wished she would be quick.
Instead, she shook her head. "Luck?"
"Luck," he repeated. "I could never have been you. I did not possess the virtue or the drive. You could have been me, though, easily. A chance encounter, a small nick...
"We're both hunters, you know," he continued when she failed to reply. "Neither has a choice. I did not choose my path any more than you chose to waste your inevitably short life this way."
She looked momentarily vulnerable, then necessarily cold. "It's not a waste," she stated, "to rid the world of you."
Though what remained of his mind after all these years welcomed the release of a final death, his body sensed her intended movement and reacted. He grabbed her forearm and felt his nails dig in and the flesh break. She gasped in both pain and surprise, but her training took control and she pulled him back down to the ground.
A trickle of red ran down his pale cheek where his face had made contact with the rocks. She cursed herself for being drawn in by his words and raised her injured arm above his chest. He saw the traditional stake and realized that he did not really expect it would happen this way.
He watched as she thrust the weapon toward him. He tore his eyes away from the impossibly slow movement and instead stared at her wound. "We bleed the same blood," he remarked in wonder, feeling only momentary pain before the world vanished to nothing.
~~~
A young girl knelt beside a small pile of ash, watching as her tears fell. She had never cried at this before, had always been sure that what she did was right, but here was something that she knew compassion could never erase.
~~~
(Constructive criticism welcome. Why write but to improve?)