Not Even the Sunrise
It smells like warmth. I had thought that it wouldn't, that it would take on the steel flavored cold bite of where it had been kept, but . . . no. It soaked her into itself, and it smells like the sunrise.
I remember the sunrise. I remember because of her.
I can smell the sunrise, before it comes. I told her that once, I think. I don't remember. It's . . . hard, lately, to remember . . . I can smell the sunrise, and it smells like her skin. Like her breath breathing my name and like her come warming and welcoming me further inside of her. It smells like her tears and like her sweat and like her skin in all the hidden places I was allowed to grace, allowed to prowl like a big dark-eyed cat. It smells like her blood, racing through me unexpectedly in whitehot fury.
Vympyres burn in the sun. Dead, unholy flesh goes up like kindling. No hope, no nothing. To me, the sunrise has always smelled like death.
And now I guess I'm right.
It was stiff, starched firm, at first. No longer. It's been cursed by so many passes of my hands that it's soft, soft like her hair and like her mouth and like me. I didn't mean to.
I didn't.
And now that it's soft and warm and feels and smells like her, I'm not sure what to do with myself.
I really didn't mean to.
But I never mean to.
I didn't mean to fall in love with her. And I didn't mean to sleep with her. And I didn't mean to kill her friends. I didn't mean to make her cry. Really not. I didn't mean to hurt her, and I didn't mean to leave her all alone on the Hellmouth all by herself, God, she's so little and I didn't mean to . . . I didn't mean to break her heart. And I didn't mean to hit her. And I didn't mean to make her cry.
I didn't mean to.
I didn't mean to kill her.
I never mean to.
Cordelia's mad at me. Just a little; mostly, she's trying to make me think she is. Really, she's worried, and she hasn't been more than twenty feet away from my bedroom door since I got home. The door's closed, and we'll both leave it that way, but I know. I can smell her; I can hear the soft rumble of her heartbeat, the whisper of the blood through her veins.
I can smell her tears, too, but I don't care.
Can't seem to care about much of anything. I can't get out of bed, and I haven't said a word in five days, but . . . I think that I won't. That I'm broken and won't be able to say anything again. I don't remember how the words go, how they're formed, the way to shape them on my tongue, with my teeth and lips. Some words, I don't remember what they mean. I know many languages, but I can't seem to speak a single one.
And you know what?
I don't care.
My arms hurt. My wrists and hands. I know there's a reason, but I can't remember what it is right now.
I think it's important, but I don't really care.
I think that maybe the sheet was white once. I don't remember. Fluorescent lights . . . make everything too bright for me, painfully whitebright for a creature that can see in the dark. I think maybe it was white.
It doesn't matter. I don't care.
It's not white now.
I am, still, I think. I'd check, but mirrors don't work and I can't move. The pain in my hands . . . I can't see my hands. Why not? All I can see is the muted world through the sheet. The one that may or may not have been white, but isn't now. I'm not sure that all that blurriness is from the sheet. Not fair to blame other people.
I do that a lot, too, I think.
My head kinda hurts now, too. I don't know if there's a reason for that.
Oh . . . sunrise interrupted. Something smells like metal and like rain. There's a noise, somewhere, someone whispering to me . . .
It smells like her. It feels like her.
"If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck . . ." she says softly. She isn't looking at me, but I look up at her for a long time anyway. It seems too bright again.
My hands hurt.
She looks far away, really far away, too far to touch, before she looks at me. "Or is it 'dyke'? I always get things like that confused . . ."
And she's here, sitting with me, but right now all I can think of is my hands hurt.
She looks at me for a long time, and I'm still looking at her without really realizing it. Without saying anything, she tightens her mouth a little and slaps me. It makes my head hurt more. Though not as much as my hands.
"That isn't yours," she says angrily, and I look down at the little bit of the sheet that's gripped tight in my hand. The rest, it's tented around us, and for a little while her toobright is softer.
"I'm sorry."
She shakes her head. She looks angry at me, real angry, not the kind of mad that Cordelia is. And I am sorry. I told her, but I don't really remember how to speak, I don't think, so maybe she didn't get the message.
"I didn't think you'd need it," I say. Maybe. I don't think I remember how to speak.
She laughs, and it hurts. It hurts, it's pounding in my head behind my eyelids and against my ears in desperate grating, pulling noises. "Of course not. Why would I need it?"
I think the sheet might have been white before.
Her arms are crossed and she uncrosses them. I don't know what she needs to do with her hands, but I still can't see mine. Maybe that's fair.
"Why'd you have to take the coroner's, too?"
And she's looking at me, her eyes hot and green and slicing through my unsound flesh. I don't remember the coroner having a sheet.
But it's hard, lately, to remember, so maybe . . .
And she smacks me again, across the face, harder than last time but in the same place, and I wanna cry because I'm sorry. I don't know what I did, but I'm sure it's everything and I'm sorry.
It makes my head hurt more and my vision almost goes for a second.
And then I'm colder and it's because the sheet's gone, and she turns to me with her arms still uncrossed from slapping me and she's wearing a white dress but there's something wrong with it, it's not white anymore, either . . .
She looks at me like I should say something, and so I look down again at my hands that I can't see, but instead of the sheet, I'm holding something else, something the color the sheet is now that it's not white only darker darkerdarker, the color of sunrise and death . . .
And I do cry now, because I have done everything. And because I'm sorry.
"You can have it back," I say softly, or not, but she doesn't even look at it. She looks at the dark, bloodstained whole gaping in the middle of her chest, and then she looks down at the crimson marring her dress, and then she looks at me and I swear her eyes are black.
"No," she says softly, and she shakes her head again, like my mother when she was disappointed with me. My father beat me, oft to within a fucking inch of my life, but I hated my mother's punishments more because she wouldn't look at me . . . as if I was such a disgrace that looking upon me would mar her, as well . . . and that's the way Buffy's looking at me now, only she isn't, not really, like me saying things to her, she is but she's not, her eyes are on me but I know she isn't seeing anything of what I am, and I cry some more and hold out my hands, the ones that I can't see, her heart very carefully cupped in them. I hold it out to her, waiting for her to take it and love me again.
"No," she says again, and she really does look away now, off to the side, and there's some discoloration where her neck was broken from her fall, an unsmoothness, and I want to touch it, and fix it and smooth it, but I don't because she'll punish me if I do and maybe go away from me again, and anyway my hands hurt too much to move and I don't know where they are because I can't see them . . .
"No, I guess it's yours, now."
"But . . . I took it from you."
She smiles sadly. "You ruined it a long time ago." She looks down at the hole between her breasts again, annoyed. "And now you've ruined my dress, too."
"I'm sorry," I say again, only not really, because I don't know how to speak. I don't think. My head hurts so bad I can hardly sit upright, I'm so dizzy and nauseous from the pain, but I can still see her. Too bright.
She shakes her head and stands up. She bends the tent and leaves it, the reddenedoncewhite sheet falling down and more around me as she goes, obscuring my vision further.
"Buffy?"
She stops and waits, waiting for my question.
"Why do my hands hurt?"
She's quite for a minute. "I love you," she says.
I'm not sure that's an answer, but she's gone now and the whispering's still here even though she's gone and that smell like metal and rain is so deep around me and Christ my hands hurt . . .
The water's red. It's crashing into the bathtub with sounds so loud I could swear it was the Niagara. My vision's not so good, because I'm underwater, I think, and the water's red so it's harder to see . . . I try to look at my hands again, to see why they hurt, but the water's so dark and crimson and smoky there that I can't see anything.
It doesn't matter. I don't care.
I think I killed the coroner. I don't care about that, either, for two reasons. One, I'm not really sure, because it's hard to remember things anymore.
And the second? Soon, nothing's gonna matter ever again.
Not the coroner. Not me. Not even the sunrise.