Small,
spinning lump of lead, there, coming, so slowly, instantaneously, and there
is nothing in the world but that, everything in the world but that, and she
hears the report of the gun somehow after the bullet begins to spin toward
her, silver, gray, silent, screaming, so fast, so slow, and then so hot as
it bites--
She can
feels its path as it moves into her. Inch at a time, fire, ice, metal, blood.
Deep, lancing pain unlike anything she has ever felt before, and she has
felt pain in a hundred different guises.
This feels
like death.
She falls,
barely aware of falling, the impact of her back against the ground dull,
meaningless.
So deep,
so invasive, the penetration, tearing, lacerating, opening her up inside.
She isn't
afraid. Death is not unfamiliar to her, after all, and she knows with utter
certainty where it will take her. It is a wonderful place. She misses it.
She has just begun to put it all out of her mind and now it hovers there
at the edges of her vision, blue and white and pure. Beautiful. If she closes
her eyes, she will be there. Oh, so soon, only a few minutes away, as she
can feel the blood draining out of her, filling empty cavities inside her
where blood isn't meant to go.
So tired.
Strength leaching out of her, into the grass, into the dirt. She blinks,
her eyes heavy and slow. How much longer?
Voices.
Warren? Xander? She isn't sure. Her hearing seems muffled and hollow, as
if she is underwater.
She closes
her eyes. Everything on the insides of her eyelids is red. Blood-scarlet,
as if the wound in her chest has hemorrhaged into her eyes. Can blood move
like that?
It doesn't
matter. Not to her, anyway, as barely coherent thought fades into a purity
of sensation.
Butterfly
wings on her skin, a pale touch barely registering...no, not butterflies--angels--
People
see angels when they go to heaven, don't they? But she sees not angels but
Angel, and the feather touch isn't wings at all but fingers on her face,
on her throat, on her breast there, just where the blood bubbles out of her
body, where her life puddles, pulsing out of her--
It's
okay, it's okay, it won't hurt if I can help it I promise just hold onto
me let me give this to you--
Or is
it Spike, who has tried so often to touch her with tenderness, but she won't
let him--
Just
quiet down, pet, it doesn't always have to be just a fuck, you know, let
me touch you the way I want to touch you, luv, just let me give you that
one thing--
Something
inside her jolts. If orgasm is a little death, and this is the big one, then
she can take it, she can encompass it, she can feel it pass in soft, convulsive
pulsations all the way to her fingertips where she remembers exactly the
textures of Angel's cool skin, of Spike's bleach-roughened hair, and she
can give it all up, let it go and she can--
Not breathe.
Anymore.
END.
