Disclaimer: Nope, not mine, but it was a pleasure to borrow them.
And now I realise where we stand; how she is destroying me and I destroy her. We are each other's fury, each other's nemesis, and we are each other's lives. We are strangely dependant.
I am her slave, but also her tutor, and her patron.
As she is mine.
I move from where she left me, going to my desk and pulling from the drawer a shotgun, which I load quickly and efficiently. I place a pen in my shirt pocket.
Call to action comes through the wireless. I must progress, I must achieve, I must face it down and bring about the light, and place my self in her dark.
We are incompatible, and yet we are bound.
And dear god, I sound like her. I really am losing my mind.
She is my Fred. She can be my Fred, and I want that. But simultaneously she isn't. She is Illyria. I can't do this…I can't live through anymore lies.
This is the one thing I cannot let myself become.
"Wesley".
Ah, see, she hasn't gone, she has merely been waiting outside, and now stands in the doorway, neither in the room nor out. How very metaphorical.
I gesture at her with the shotgun, but she does not move.
"You are confused" She states… I look at her, really look at her, studying everything she is, everything that lives beneath, and everything that was just starting to emerge into the light.
"As are you".
"Do you love me?" It has no underlying desire for one answer over the other. She is a God, and does not understand requiesited love, only worship.
"I love you both" I abruptly realise. Concealing the truth only leads to more pain.
"Is that adaptation?"
"Possibly. Or insanity" I muse.
"And that is what you advised for me?"
"Yes".
"It is still a human attribute"
"I am human"
She frowned, perplexity marring her beautiful face.
"But I am not".
"No".
My mind spun a little, but the ground felt more stable. I could see again. She was destroying me, because I needed to be created anew. I wouldn't make it any other way. Perhaps I had been wrong about her. Wrong, yet again.
"When the earth is destroyed, will you still love me?"
"I will always love you" I respond, and the words are treacle, both sweet and sickly.
"Then perhaps, one day, my experiences will be more than informative. Perhaps, one day, I will feel and understand"
I dropped the shotgun to the floor, but it struck a book and its fall was broken. It lay, prostrated, a dumb shell or machine.
"I was going to kill you" I tell her.
"I am aware"
"I thought that the way you make me feel was wrong, that it was sick and unnatural. I didn't think I could live like that, I couldn't let you do that to me"
"But now you perceive that it isn't so."
"It's called adapting" I say honestly.
And then she gave a smile, a smile that was not Fred, not Illyria but some land in between.
"I understand"
"You do?"
"Yes"
Her next words came gently, with thought.
"And I think, perhaps, you should find me a name"