BEFORE NIGTH AWAKENS
By Sickle Sword
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Disclaimer: Oh, boy. Now I have to write the disclaimer AGAIN! Can't you just, dunno, see the previous chapters and see that I don't own them???

A/N: Thank you people! I mean it!

Nemesis' Arrow- Thank you- see, when I get reviews, my fingers feel better and write (wink).

AK8 - Oh, wow, Sweet! No one ever told me before about anything that I wrote SWEET! Thank you so much. . didn't think I had it in me to write romance. . .

denna5- (Smiles warmly and chokes with embarrassment) thanx...

Queen Isa- Regret to say but no, it's not C&B fic, though I considered it for while but then my muse interfered and invented a plot that hardly consist her so. . . however, this chapter was written especially for you!

Tami- Thank you so much! Here I'm updating! see, I'm quite obedient...

It should have been me who had told him the truth, even when I didn't know what the meaning of the truth is, for I have lived in a lie. I should have held him close to my arms and closer to my heart and even when he chose to go away, I should have followed. It should have been me who died. Not him.

Chapter 3: Angel

You wake up every day to see the eyes of an angel glaring at you in your inner eye and for the first time in your life, you wake up with a smile. While the world scatters around like the old puzzles you were never able to complete, you ignore everything, none of it matters. Only to meet her every day, see her smiling like in the day you first met her.

At the beginning she ignored you. That was the best time of your life, hiding in the shadows, engraving every movement of her angelic face in your mind, intercepting her figure. You learnt so much about her already. When she's sad she never shows it, only the tip of her brow is twitching in sorrow, lamenting for the dead she was ordered to kill. And even though you know her part in the massacre, you don't hate her. You can't.

And then slowly, like water dripping from a stone, coming the bridging words. You ask her small things, kind words that you are hoping unfolding within their simplicity your heart.

"Would you like an apple?" you ask her and see her smiles, taking the fruit from you, and with it- your heart. You belong to her, and when her teeth are touching the delicate flesh of the fruit, you see in her eyes the willingness. She is yours as well.

You are hiding, though. Always hiding. This is dangerous being found near assassin when you are your brother's relative. You have envisioned his anger many times when you defied his words while gathering the strength you didn't have in the first place, and you don't want to see it coming on you again. For it fears you, and this time, you are not scared from your destiny, but from hers.

But it's also rewarding, in a way you never thought possible. The hole that was always in your heart and that you never knew existed, is now filled. Overflowed, even. With love. You have purpose now for living- seeing her face and touching her fingers with burning desire, this is all that matters. Hearing her ringing voice in your ears, brushing near you like rain in the desert, welcomed, needed and being swallowed with passion.

When you are alone, finally together, away from the world, this is your time. Then she tells you about herself, about the past she can't even face in her nightmares, but she says it's easier now, when you are near. And about the future she couldn't see before, and neither could you, but now the pieces are matching together. You know you have what to expect to, you know why you have survived after all.

"I will never forget his face" she is crying at your ear when she tells you about the first witch she was forced to kill. And even if for a split of a second your mind begs you not to be so naïve, that she is a killer, she maybe even killed you mother, you ignore it. For the past doesn't matter anymore, only the future, and your future is with her, and now she is hurt. Not because she is a killer, but because she's human, because even in the stone heart of hers, there are emotions left. And that's exactly why you love her so much. Yes, you love her. More than you thought possible. And for the first time in ages, you know it's alright.

"So don't forget. Make it be your present to him, that he will be remembered" you give her the same advice you have given yourself, hoping that the mutual shadows will go away finally when they see they are not needed anymore, this is new era.

"He was so alone, so afraid. He hid under the bed" she smiles sadly, tears running freely down her cheeks and you want so much to wipe them, but you resist because you know that affection will not be welcomed now. She is too angry now, about herself. "He thought it makes any difference where he was. Like if he hid, the monster will not come out from the closet. But that exactly where I was- in the closet, and I came out and took him nevertheless. And his brother, father, sister, grandmother . . . they were all gone. By me. I killed them, Chris, I killed them!"

"But that's not who you are anymore, you are a new person. You don't kill innocents anymore"

"Is that what you think of me?" she asks, new fear in her eyes "I kill, Christopher. Every time your brother wants me to. I'm ASSASSIN, that's what I do."

"Not because you want to" you try to comfort her and lose the battle to the reasonable part of your brain and hug her. The comfort your body offers leads to her devastation as she falls to your arms, hysterical, mumbling over and over "but I do, I do!" .Until there is silence, and after that the tears are gone and you dare to hope that one skeleton from her closet was finally set free.

()

The next night you find her on your door, flushed and embarrassed in her nightwear, like the rebuked child you guess she is.

"Can I come in?" she asks and you don't know if to smile or cry.

"Of course, what's wrong?"

"I couldn't sleep. Nightmare" she says and comes near, sounds so small and fragile. So close you can see tiny freckles on her nose, and you smile fondly. You love her, you really do.

"Come in" you offer and when you see the panicked expression on her face you soothe her trembling lip "I'm not going to hurt you". You find it ironic that you will need to say that to her, but, is it really? Isn't everything is just an act, to enable her to survive?

In that night you don't sleep a lot. You learn about her demons. You learn that her mother was a Phoenix, too, and that she was never prepared her to life. That she thought that something was wrong with her because she felt so bad while killing, while others weren't. And while she talks, you look at the most beautiful woman in the world, and question why fate has been so cruel to her and made her who she is. If she has been born in another time and place, her life would have been better. But then again, so were yours. So were you.

She tells you about her brother. You didn't know she had one, and she only shrugs. It's only natural to her that nobody would know about that, for it is personal, and privacy has to be maintained. She tells you that he left when they were young and that she had never seen him ever since, but she learnt that he died in another worthless battle for someone he didn't give a damn about. Just like she was going to be killed one day, if she's not careful. And even if she is. You kiss her, asking her not to speak abut it, but even when saying it you feel your hypocrisy as you also know that this is what going to happen to her. Whether you like it or not.

She tells you about her father, the mortal who left her mother after she was conceived, and whom she hates. She tells you about the fireflies she wanted to become when she was young and the wings she could not get when she learnt she's a demon, and demons can't fly. She tells you about the flood that took her mother becuase mortal forces couldn't and when dawn arouses and her figure relaxes in her sleep, you know she is going to be alright.

.

It is the last day you see her before she goes to a week of hunting, finding herself new demons to shadow her new founded peace.

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