Thanks for all the great reviews!
DISCLAIMER: Sure I own Buffy the vampire slayer – same as the earth is flat and my teachers never give me homework! Same goes for Evanescence's songs.
This is basically Dru's point of view from the time when Angelus killed her family until she rises as a vampire. This last chapter is how she feels in her new life as a vampire.
The lyrics in this chapter are from "Imaginary" (the parts in italics and quotes are the actual lyrics).
-----------------------------------
Death Comes As the Beginning
"I linger in the doorway"
Not dead – but not alive.
"Alarm clocks screaming
Monsters calling my name"
The demons of my nightmares.
Now they have become the last and only family I shall ever have.
"Let me stay
Where the wind will whisper to me
Where the raindrops as they're falling tell a story"
I still hear whispered secrets inside my head, telling me of what may come to pass.
The difference is that now I'm usually believed – on the rare occasions when they understand what I'm trying to tell them.
"In my field of paper flowers
And candy clouds of lullaby
I lie inside myself for hours
And watch my purple sky fly over me"
I'm still there, locked up inside my mind. The happy little girl to whose childlike eyes the world was made up of a delightful wonderland.
"Don't say I'm not in touch
With this rampant chaos – your reality"
I had to distance myself from it – just because it was their reality it didn't have to be mine.
It doesn't mean I'm not aware of what is happening around me, but I can still pretend that it isn't real.
"I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge"
A world filled with the strong and the weak, divided between the predators and their prey. A fragile line separating them, that I was forced to cross.
"The nightmare I built my own world to escape"
Now I visit on others the pain and suffering visited on me. A part of me glories in their screaming, and is brought to life by their deaths.
And a part of me dies with them, the part that still cries at the memory of my family. What they went through. Because of ME.
And so I stay inside my mind, where I can leave everything behind me.
Except for the whispers. This will happen. And that. Someone coming. Who will change things. They've been saying that for a while now.
"Swallowed up in the sound of my screaming"
In my dreams my screams and those of my victims intertwine, become indistinguishable. Screams dancing in my head, wearing pretty dresses of bleeding velvet and black roses in their hair.
"Cannot cease for the fear of silent nights"
I dread being alone. I used to run from the two of them but now I am afraid they will be the ones to run from me, leaving me by myself. I need to be loved, or at least wanted. But they don't want me since I can't scream for them anymore. I'm just a broken dolly going to tea parties with Miss Edith.
"Oh how I long for the deep sleep dreaming"
I asked the stars playing on lakes what it is like to be completely at peace, and they told me I would find out for myself, but not for a while yet. First I will find peace of a different kind, the kind given by someone else.
"The goddess of imaginary light"
The light was taken away from me, and I was snatched back as I was about to reach it. I belong to the dark now.
Dark goddess. Yes, that's what he'll call me.
I'll be his dark goddess and he'll be my black knight.
The peace the world tore away from us we'll find in one another. And together we'll tear away the world's peace with wicked dragon's teeth, leaving burning scars wherever we go.
I'll find him soon. When I do we'll be together forever and a day.
And he will help me drag my imagined reality into the screaming world.
------------------------------------
This time it really is the end of Lost Whispers. The story continues in Spike's POV in my fic Everybody's Fool.
Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and review, it's always greatly appreciated! :-)