"AMBUSH!!" Brin yelled, swinging his club at the nearest attacker. Lex
braced himself and rushed at another, hitting the back of their knees with
his fighting pole. The person fell to the ground yelling in agony and it
was only then that he realized the people all had crosses in their hands
and he paused before hitting the next one that ran at Raad. His father used
to keep crosses in their house. Hundreds of them, all with grotesquely
realistic depictions of Jesus on the cross, his face contorted with pain
and blood dripping down his body.
//'You are disgusting Alexander. You will burn in hell for being the little faggot you are. I'll teach you a lesson, Jesus had to suffer for us, and so will you.'//
Lex shuddered involuntarily and the hesitation gave one of the kids enough time to hit him hard in the back and he fell to the floor, pain shooting through his spine. He lay crumpled on the floor, the world spinning around him when he felt a hand roughly pulling his chin up to look at a face. The face belonged to a young girl with blue hair and sea-green eyes...*Like a cat* Lex mused, wondering why he wasn't worried about how whole body was beginning to feel numb.
"STOP!! STOP!! WE MADE A MISTAKE!!! THEIR HUMAN!!!" She yelled to the others. *Human? What else would we be?* Lex thought to himself, his mind foggy and unclear. He was vaugly aware of shouting around him and of someone running to his side,
"WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU PLAYING AT?!" A familiar voice screamed next to him. He wanted to say that he wasn't playing at anything but he realized the voice was talking to the cat-eyed girl who was climbing to her feet next to him. He felt someone drop to their knees in front of him and turned his bleary eyes upwards to see Devon's worried face looming above him, "Crow? Are you OK? Can you hear me? Godmmit Crow for once in your life say SOMETHING!" He shouted, hysteria tinting his voice.
Lex tried to answer...he really did, but it was just too much effort. Instead he gathered up the strength to blink at Devon rapidly. "Crow?? Alright...blink once for yes and twice for no OK?" Lex blinked once. "Good, now, can you feel your legs?" Lex frowned and blinked twice, still wondering why nothing was hurting...being hit in the back with a great big stick is supposed to hurt...right? "Shit...can you feel your body at all?" Lex blinked twice again. Devon's face went pale and Lex wanted to laugh at how 'Cool-as-a-cucumber' Devon was panicking...but he was just so sleepy..."CROW!! STAY WITH ME MAN!! CROW??" Lex tried to tell him that he was sleepy...but it was too late, and the blackness swallowed him up.
//"Where am I?" Lex asked, looking around the clinical white room.
"Hi sweetie...you're in hospital," Was that Mommy's voice? Lex turned his head and saw his mother smiling at him, tear tracks down her beautiful face. Mommy was always beautiful...she had pretty brown eyes and black hair just like Lex's...Daddy got mad that Lex looked more like Mommy than him...but then, Daddy got mad at everything.
"Can we go home now?" He asked his Mommy, knowing not to ask why she was crying...he'd given up long ago.
"No Lexie. We're going to go to Grandma's. We're never going back there, Daddy can never hurt us again," She said, smiling at him and running her fingers through Lex's hair and averting her eyes from the bruises all over his small face.
"OK Mommy," Lex whispered, satisfied at the answer. Mommy was here. He was safe when Mommy was here.
"Go to sleep Lexie...and when you wake up, you can be my little Lexie forever and we'll never have to suffer again. First, Mommy will go back and teach Daddy a lesson," She said, her grip on his hair growing uncomfortably tight. Lex nodded and shut his eyes...but not quite. He gazed at her from beneath his curtain of black hair, pretending to be asleep so Mommy wouldn't get mad. And then he saw how Mommy's face changed...her pretty brown eyes turned yellow, her teeth got long like the wolf from red-riding hood...and her face...it got all bumpy and horrid and Lex knew the thing in front of him wasn't Mommy anymore. She leaned in towards him and he closed his eyes, knowing from his experience in the past six years, that is you just kept quiet, it would end much quicker. Then the door was flung open and a woman who looked about Mommy's age rushed in and slammed something into Mommy's back. Then Mommy gasped and a single tear of blood escaped her eye and then...she vanished into thin air and Lex's hair was all dusty. He watched, paralyzed with fear, as the short woman with blonde hair put a pointy wooden thing into her pocket and glanced at him.
"Sorry kid. You'll be OK with your dad," She said, looking almost sorry for him.
"Who are you?" He breathed, proud at how brave he was being to question the lady who just made his Mommy turn into dust.
"I'm Buffy, the Slayer," She said solemnly before striding back out of the cramped room.Lex sat still for a few minutes before he felt a tear fall down his cheek and land in the pile of dust on the bed...he wasn't stupid. He knew he would have to go and live with Daddy now...Mommy was gone and she couldn't protect him anymore. //
"Crow? Please wake up...Crow?" Lex blinked a few times and looked around him...his whole body throbbed with pain and he felt as though he had gone twenty rounds with an elephant. He opened his eyes wider and found Emerald's anxious face looking into his. "Crow? Oh thank God you're awake. You've been unconscious for hours and we thought..." Her eyes welled with tears and she squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, trying to conjour up a smile but not quite managing it. This only caused her to cry more and Lex was at a total loss at what to do. He'd never seen Emerald cry...not once. And yet here she was, sobbing, her tears falling on his bare chest...wait...bare?
Lex looked down sharply, wincing at the pain but ignoring it. He cringed at the state of his chest, knowing his back looked even worse. No wonder Emerald was crying...look at him. He was disgusting, he was ugly. The raised scars on his body were like badges telling the world what a pathetic, unworthy creature he was...proving to Emerald that we wasn't worth her time. He only hoped she wouldn't dismiss him as harshly as Tai- san had.
He braced himself for the inevitable...waiting for the words that anyone who got close to him were bound to say at some point: 'Nobody cares about you, nobody ever did'.
"Oh God Crow...I'm so sorry, I didn't know about...about the scars...and then you got hurt...this wasn't supposed to happen. I'm supposed to protect people. I have to protect people...and I couldn't even help my best friend..." She sobbed. Lex froze, confused. Why was she saying these things? He was her best friend? He thought she only hung around with him in a mixture of pity and gratitude for saving Jade. "And you know what's worse? It was us that hurt you...it was the Slayers that hurt you...God it was me who organized them in the first place and now they could've killed you...all of you! How could I have been so stupid?" She said, her voice rising by the second. Lex frowned.
The Slayers?
"I wish I could make it up to you...and Brin....he's dead and it's all my fault. I'm the Slayer, It's my job to protect people, I should never have allowed that stupid tribe to try and help. I mean, who was I kidding? They have *no idea* how to handle this. And now you...and the prophecy..." She was no longer able to speak she was sobbing so hard. Lex just stared at her, wondering what he had done to deserve this. What had he done that made God hate him so much? The one friend he had was either part of some weird organization that had killed his mother when he was six years old, or she was crazy...he hoped it was the latter.
He just lay still, allowing her to let her tears and frustration out as he flexed his toes and moved his arms and legs around slightly, making sure he could move everything. He thought he would be able to stop doing this after his Dad died of the virus...but no, he'd never escape.
At first, he'd tried to be tough, not allow anyone to get too close in case they discovered what was really underneath the cruel mask he wore. He bossed the other people about, enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of being in control...then Zan and his baby had died and everything went spinning out of control once more. When he was at deaths door with the virus, he had confessed some of it to Zan. Not all of it mind you, he didn't want to push her away, but he told her most of it. About his Dad and nightmares...and then when she died, he was alone all over again. He had spent most of his time after that trying to numb out the pain with alcohol and had ended up scaring Selene...after Ryan threw him out, he had wanted to end it all. Seeing Selene's frightened and confused face had brought it all back. He was just like his father.
A worthless, abusive, drunk.
The only thing that had stopped him was the knowledge that he deserved this pain. That he had to live with it as his punishment. His father had told him all about purgatory, and how Lex was never going to get there because he was going straight to hell. But the more Lex thought about it, the more he wondered whether he was already in purgatory. A place where he had to pay for his sins through suffering before he was let into heaven...but that couldn't be right, because he knew there was no way he was going to heaven. He was disgusting...and he was a murderer. When he killed Zoot, he'd tried to convince himself that it wasn't his fault, that the bastard had deserved it....but that didn't erase the picture of Zoot's body lying in a strange angle on the floor of the mall, his head twisted to the side like some sick rag doll.
"Hey Emerald. Is Crow OK?" A voice snapped him out of his memories and he looked around to the tent entrance and saw Devon standing there.
"Yeah, he'd fine. Tell Jade will you? But I don't want her coming in here, it'll upset her...is that OK with you Crow?" She asked, seeming to suddenly remember he was awake. He nodded slightly, careful not to jar anything to much.
"I already sent Lynx a moment ago. Can I come in?" He asked apprehensively. Emerald sent a questioning look at Lex who sighed and nodded slightly anyway. Might as well let him see, he'd find out eventually anyway.
"Yes, come in," Emerald said. Devon came in and sat down and Lex watched absently as Devon's face went from worried to horrified. Lex shut his eyes, waiting for the disgust and the taunting.
"Oh shit. Crow...who did this to you? Look at these scars..." Lex opened his eyes and saw Devon swallow hard and set his jaw. His eyes moved up Lex's chest and Lex knew exactly what he saw. When he was a kid, his Dad had carved a freaky sort of symbol into his chest. It was a crude triangle with small circles carved on each point. In the center the word 'Corch'. At least, that's what people told him it said. His dyslexia was so bad he could barely make out that it was words at all...but his dad had never paid any attention to the teachers at school and eventually, he took him out of school altogether. He said Lex didn't need it, because he'd probably die before he could use any of the information he'd learn at school anyway.
"Crow, I have to tell you something," Emerald said quietly. Lex's eyes snapped up to her and he gulped. "I'm not sure how to say this so I'll just say it. Vampyre's and Demons are real. My job is to kill them. I'm a Slayer which means I have special powers in order to defeat the demons and the vampires so I can help people and save them. Now, recently, I found some old scrolls with some wacky prophecies written on them in a different language and Devon here has been translating them. He just finished a couple of hours ago...Devon?" She said, looking to Devon for help. He cleared his throat and Lex jumped. He had forgotten Devon was even there.
"Yeah, well, I'm not 100% sure because we don't have as many of the resources as we used to after Zoot burned so many of the old books but...as far as I can tell the scrolls prophetize a terrible plague that kills all the adults...within the fight for Power and Chaos, the chosen champion, The Slayer, will lose her way. And so the silent cursed one, the Crow, shall come to restore the balance. The Crow is strong, even though he has been through torture that nobody else could withstand, and only he can deliver us from the evil that has taken hold of the world. You are the Crow. It's no coincidence that you saved Jade...it was fate. You are the only one who can save us," Devon said, his voice that had been steady and toneless, shook with emotion and fear at the last part.
Lex could only blink.
If he was the savior of the world...then God help them all.
TO BE CONTINUED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, what do you think? Questions? Comments? I managed to incorporate a little of Buffster there, but don't go expecting more guest appearances...that was it for her part.
Thank you to everyone who reviewed, you guys are my inspiration! *blushes at how corny that sounded*
Hehe.
Raven
//'You are disgusting Alexander. You will burn in hell for being the little faggot you are. I'll teach you a lesson, Jesus had to suffer for us, and so will you.'//
Lex shuddered involuntarily and the hesitation gave one of the kids enough time to hit him hard in the back and he fell to the floor, pain shooting through his spine. He lay crumpled on the floor, the world spinning around him when he felt a hand roughly pulling his chin up to look at a face. The face belonged to a young girl with blue hair and sea-green eyes...*Like a cat* Lex mused, wondering why he wasn't worried about how whole body was beginning to feel numb.
"STOP!! STOP!! WE MADE A MISTAKE!!! THEIR HUMAN!!!" She yelled to the others. *Human? What else would we be?* Lex thought to himself, his mind foggy and unclear. He was vaugly aware of shouting around him and of someone running to his side,
"WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU PLAYING AT?!" A familiar voice screamed next to him. He wanted to say that he wasn't playing at anything but he realized the voice was talking to the cat-eyed girl who was climbing to her feet next to him. He felt someone drop to their knees in front of him and turned his bleary eyes upwards to see Devon's worried face looming above him, "Crow? Are you OK? Can you hear me? Godmmit Crow for once in your life say SOMETHING!" He shouted, hysteria tinting his voice.
Lex tried to answer...he really did, but it was just too much effort. Instead he gathered up the strength to blink at Devon rapidly. "Crow?? Alright...blink once for yes and twice for no OK?" Lex blinked once. "Good, now, can you feel your legs?" Lex frowned and blinked twice, still wondering why nothing was hurting...being hit in the back with a great big stick is supposed to hurt...right? "Shit...can you feel your body at all?" Lex blinked twice again. Devon's face went pale and Lex wanted to laugh at how 'Cool-as-a-cucumber' Devon was panicking...but he was just so sleepy..."CROW!! STAY WITH ME MAN!! CROW??" Lex tried to tell him that he was sleepy...but it was too late, and the blackness swallowed him up.
//"Where am I?" Lex asked, looking around the clinical white room.
"Hi sweetie...you're in hospital," Was that Mommy's voice? Lex turned his head and saw his mother smiling at him, tear tracks down her beautiful face. Mommy was always beautiful...she had pretty brown eyes and black hair just like Lex's...Daddy got mad that Lex looked more like Mommy than him...but then, Daddy got mad at everything.
"Can we go home now?" He asked his Mommy, knowing not to ask why she was crying...he'd given up long ago.
"No Lexie. We're going to go to Grandma's. We're never going back there, Daddy can never hurt us again," She said, smiling at him and running her fingers through Lex's hair and averting her eyes from the bruises all over his small face.
"OK Mommy," Lex whispered, satisfied at the answer. Mommy was here. He was safe when Mommy was here.
"Go to sleep Lexie...and when you wake up, you can be my little Lexie forever and we'll never have to suffer again. First, Mommy will go back and teach Daddy a lesson," She said, her grip on his hair growing uncomfortably tight. Lex nodded and shut his eyes...but not quite. He gazed at her from beneath his curtain of black hair, pretending to be asleep so Mommy wouldn't get mad. And then he saw how Mommy's face changed...her pretty brown eyes turned yellow, her teeth got long like the wolf from red-riding hood...and her face...it got all bumpy and horrid and Lex knew the thing in front of him wasn't Mommy anymore. She leaned in towards him and he closed his eyes, knowing from his experience in the past six years, that is you just kept quiet, it would end much quicker. Then the door was flung open and a woman who looked about Mommy's age rushed in and slammed something into Mommy's back. Then Mommy gasped and a single tear of blood escaped her eye and then...she vanished into thin air and Lex's hair was all dusty. He watched, paralyzed with fear, as the short woman with blonde hair put a pointy wooden thing into her pocket and glanced at him.
"Sorry kid. You'll be OK with your dad," She said, looking almost sorry for him.
"Who are you?" He breathed, proud at how brave he was being to question the lady who just made his Mommy turn into dust.
"I'm Buffy, the Slayer," She said solemnly before striding back out of the cramped room.Lex sat still for a few minutes before he felt a tear fall down his cheek and land in the pile of dust on the bed...he wasn't stupid. He knew he would have to go and live with Daddy now...Mommy was gone and she couldn't protect him anymore. //
"Crow? Please wake up...Crow?" Lex blinked a few times and looked around him...his whole body throbbed with pain and he felt as though he had gone twenty rounds with an elephant. He opened his eyes wider and found Emerald's anxious face looking into his. "Crow? Oh thank God you're awake. You've been unconscious for hours and we thought..." Her eyes welled with tears and she squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, trying to conjour up a smile but not quite managing it. This only caused her to cry more and Lex was at a total loss at what to do. He'd never seen Emerald cry...not once. And yet here she was, sobbing, her tears falling on his bare chest...wait...bare?
Lex looked down sharply, wincing at the pain but ignoring it. He cringed at the state of his chest, knowing his back looked even worse. No wonder Emerald was crying...look at him. He was disgusting, he was ugly. The raised scars on his body were like badges telling the world what a pathetic, unworthy creature he was...proving to Emerald that we wasn't worth her time. He only hoped she wouldn't dismiss him as harshly as Tai- san had.
He braced himself for the inevitable...waiting for the words that anyone who got close to him were bound to say at some point: 'Nobody cares about you, nobody ever did'.
"Oh God Crow...I'm so sorry, I didn't know about...about the scars...and then you got hurt...this wasn't supposed to happen. I'm supposed to protect people. I have to protect people...and I couldn't even help my best friend..." She sobbed. Lex froze, confused. Why was she saying these things? He was her best friend? He thought she only hung around with him in a mixture of pity and gratitude for saving Jade. "And you know what's worse? It was us that hurt you...it was the Slayers that hurt you...God it was me who organized them in the first place and now they could've killed you...all of you! How could I have been so stupid?" She said, her voice rising by the second. Lex frowned.
The Slayers?
"I wish I could make it up to you...and Brin....he's dead and it's all my fault. I'm the Slayer, It's my job to protect people, I should never have allowed that stupid tribe to try and help. I mean, who was I kidding? They have *no idea* how to handle this. And now you...and the prophecy..." She was no longer able to speak she was sobbing so hard. Lex just stared at her, wondering what he had done to deserve this. What had he done that made God hate him so much? The one friend he had was either part of some weird organization that had killed his mother when he was six years old, or she was crazy...he hoped it was the latter.
He just lay still, allowing her to let her tears and frustration out as he flexed his toes and moved his arms and legs around slightly, making sure he could move everything. He thought he would be able to stop doing this after his Dad died of the virus...but no, he'd never escape.
At first, he'd tried to be tough, not allow anyone to get too close in case they discovered what was really underneath the cruel mask he wore. He bossed the other people about, enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of being in control...then Zan and his baby had died and everything went spinning out of control once more. When he was at deaths door with the virus, he had confessed some of it to Zan. Not all of it mind you, he didn't want to push her away, but he told her most of it. About his Dad and nightmares...and then when she died, he was alone all over again. He had spent most of his time after that trying to numb out the pain with alcohol and had ended up scaring Selene...after Ryan threw him out, he had wanted to end it all. Seeing Selene's frightened and confused face had brought it all back. He was just like his father.
A worthless, abusive, drunk.
The only thing that had stopped him was the knowledge that he deserved this pain. That he had to live with it as his punishment. His father had told him all about purgatory, and how Lex was never going to get there because he was going straight to hell. But the more Lex thought about it, the more he wondered whether he was already in purgatory. A place where he had to pay for his sins through suffering before he was let into heaven...but that couldn't be right, because he knew there was no way he was going to heaven. He was disgusting...and he was a murderer. When he killed Zoot, he'd tried to convince himself that it wasn't his fault, that the bastard had deserved it....but that didn't erase the picture of Zoot's body lying in a strange angle on the floor of the mall, his head twisted to the side like some sick rag doll.
"Hey Emerald. Is Crow OK?" A voice snapped him out of his memories and he looked around to the tent entrance and saw Devon standing there.
"Yeah, he'd fine. Tell Jade will you? But I don't want her coming in here, it'll upset her...is that OK with you Crow?" She asked, seeming to suddenly remember he was awake. He nodded slightly, careful not to jar anything to much.
"I already sent Lynx a moment ago. Can I come in?" He asked apprehensively. Emerald sent a questioning look at Lex who sighed and nodded slightly anyway. Might as well let him see, he'd find out eventually anyway.
"Yes, come in," Emerald said. Devon came in and sat down and Lex watched absently as Devon's face went from worried to horrified. Lex shut his eyes, waiting for the disgust and the taunting.
"Oh shit. Crow...who did this to you? Look at these scars..." Lex opened his eyes and saw Devon swallow hard and set his jaw. His eyes moved up Lex's chest and Lex knew exactly what he saw. When he was a kid, his Dad had carved a freaky sort of symbol into his chest. It was a crude triangle with small circles carved on each point. In the center the word 'Corch'. At least, that's what people told him it said. His dyslexia was so bad he could barely make out that it was words at all...but his dad had never paid any attention to the teachers at school and eventually, he took him out of school altogether. He said Lex didn't need it, because he'd probably die before he could use any of the information he'd learn at school anyway.
"Crow, I have to tell you something," Emerald said quietly. Lex's eyes snapped up to her and he gulped. "I'm not sure how to say this so I'll just say it. Vampyre's and Demons are real. My job is to kill them. I'm a Slayer which means I have special powers in order to defeat the demons and the vampires so I can help people and save them. Now, recently, I found some old scrolls with some wacky prophecies written on them in a different language and Devon here has been translating them. He just finished a couple of hours ago...Devon?" She said, looking to Devon for help. He cleared his throat and Lex jumped. He had forgotten Devon was even there.
"Yeah, well, I'm not 100% sure because we don't have as many of the resources as we used to after Zoot burned so many of the old books but...as far as I can tell the scrolls prophetize a terrible plague that kills all the adults...within the fight for Power and Chaos, the chosen champion, The Slayer, will lose her way. And so the silent cursed one, the Crow, shall come to restore the balance. The Crow is strong, even though he has been through torture that nobody else could withstand, and only he can deliver us from the evil that has taken hold of the world. You are the Crow. It's no coincidence that you saved Jade...it was fate. You are the only one who can save us," Devon said, his voice that had been steady and toneless, shook with emotion and fear at the last part.
Lex could only blink.
If he was the savior of the world...then God help them all.
TO BE CONTINUED
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, what do you think? Questions? Comments? I managed to incorporate a little of Buffster there, but don't go expecting more guest appearances...that was it for her part.
Thank you to everyone who reviewed, you guys are my inspiration! *blushes at how corny that sounded*
Hehe.
Raven