Funeral
Part V

After the Vampire Slayer had left Wesley's apartment, Illyria did not transform back from the form of the shell immediately. Instead, she made her way into the bathroom, looked at the wreck of broken tile which had once been Wesley's bathtub and shower. Illyria knew the release that came from violence, the carthasis of destruction and of pain. She had felt it in that final battle. The Slayer, apparently, found it in her mentor's bathroom.
But that was not the reason Illyria had entered the small room. She turned to the mirror which stood above the sink, looked at her reflection in it. Or, more accurately, Winifred Burkle's reflection. The face of the shell. She transformed back into her own visage, or rather what had been her visage since she had escaped from the Deeper Well. She remembered when the mere sight of her features would send minions running, so great and terrible it was. But all of that was gone.
She watched intently as her own eyes, hair, and forehead became blue. This was who she was now. Illyria the mockery. Bluebird. A smurf. Babe the blue ox. Little Shiva. The blue meanie. She who had once been god to a god—
On a whim, she transformed again. Her forehead, hair, and eyes—now they all were green. Then red. Then orange. Yellow. Purple. White. Back to blue. All mere modulations of her form. But no matter what color, the same eyes stared out from behind Illyria's face: the eyes of Winifred Burkle. Illyria could not escape those eyes which stared back at her no matter how she altered her appearance.
The Shadowmen had all been fooled by Illyria's guise, had believed her to be Winifred Burkle. Even Faith, who had met the real Fred, did not see through the ruse. The shell's own progenitors did not. But none of that changed anything, did it not? Winifred Burkle was dead, her soul destroyed in the Fires of Resurrection. And Illyria, who now inhabited her body, was her murderer. She was like the demon which had possessed the corpse of the first of the Shadowmen whom had gone to Faith, the woman she had first called Watcher. A creature to be hated and despised by all who had loved the shell.
The Burkle personality—her mind, her soul—was gone. And now her body—the shell—belonged to Illyria. She had taken it, with the amoral lack of concern she had done everything she had ever done. Want. Take. Have. That had been the way of the God-king of the Primordium, shaper of things. But no longer. She was not a vampire, and not a god. She was a . . . human. Even though she had only thought the word, she could still feel a bad taste in her (the shell's) mouth.
"The first thing a Watcher learns," Illyria had heard Wesley say (she learned later that Watcher was the term that the Shadowmen now used to refer to themselves), "is to distinguish truth from illusion, because in a world of magicks that is the hardest thing to do."
Illyria let her leather garments dissipate, her features revert to Burkle. Which was the truth, she asked herself as she looked down at the unadorned shell, and which the illusion? Where was the line between the two? Or did the two just blend into each other? Where did the shell stop and Illyria begin? This was her form now, she decided. As much as she disliked the cold truth, she was the shell now; there was no longer any other self to which she could make claim. The shell was no longer Winifred Burkle, for she was dead. The shell was Illyria.
But Illyria was still alone.

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Requiescat in pace
1966-2004

A/N: I am thinking of writing a sequel to this piece in which Faith finds out Illyria isn't really Fred. But it'll be very different in structure and tone. This was never, even after I extended it beyond the single chapter it originally was, supposed to be more than an angst fic, without a real plot.

Also, this fic isn't over yet, boys and girls. Expect another chapter soon.

And since I'm here, and you're here, let me put in a plug for my epic, "Windows of My Soul." It's where my real attention is; this is only something I am writing on the side.