TITLE:  "Shadow of a Girl"  (1/1)
AUTHOR:  Serena
E-MAIL:  reeni928@aol.com
SUMMARY:  Cold.  Lost.  Fragments.  Buffy.
IMRPOV:  #29 -- century -- unleash -- ground -- melt
DISCLAIMER:  <snort>  Numfar, do the dance of ownership and get these lawyers 
off my back.  Lyrics are from the Dave Matthews Band song "Grey Street."
CONTENT:  Buffy.  B/S.  Angst.
PAIRING:  B/S; brief, vague B/A reference.
RATING:  Hard R.  Sex, but not explicit.
TIMELINE:  Future but not all that distant.
SPOILERS:  Oh hell, consider everything from 'The Gift' on spoiled, with 
hints at spoilers for upcoming episodes and arcs.
DISTRIBUTION:  My site (eventually), Improv, Pamela, Shayla, anyone else who 
wants it just has to ask.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  I don't like the idea of Buffy and Spike.  I understand how 
it has come to be, I understand what it is.  I do not want to see it 
explored.  I get rather violent when they start making with the tonsil 
hockey.  But, in an attempt to reconcile myself with what I will be seeing in 
the coming months, I tried my hand at this.
FEEDBACK:  It's like sex; not important unless you aren't getting any.
DEDICATION:  To Joss, because his show feels different to me now.  I don't 
think I like this new feeling, but I'm in too deep to stop now.

*~*

she thinks, "hey!
why do i live to this?
i'm latest on life
how did it end like this?"

she said, "i pray
but they fall on deaf ears
i'm supposed to take it all on myself
to get out of this place."

but soon the wrongs in her heart fall
and then she rode the light in
oh, the pain now seems it's over
and again she sees the pain
and then the colors mix together to grey

*~* 

Slithers through erect stone and cool grass to her destination, a force 
unknownunwantedunseen propelling her forward.  It is times like these where 
she gets lost again and it is too much and she longs for the restraint of the 
ground.  No more soaring.  Head is pulled from clouds and pushed under dirt, 
where the air does not stir and she can lay with closed eyes and crossed arms 
and let the stillness wash over her until she becomes it.  Still.

But she moves now, runningstandingstillweaving through the past she leapt 
from and the future she dreads and the present she has been returned to.  A 
warm breeze wraps itself around her, swathing her, but all she feels is the 
chill that lurks beneath as it creeps over pale skin.  Tauntsguidesfollows as 
she pushes her way into stone and faces her distraction. 

Black and black and black and it is comforting in its obscurity as she bares 
herself.  He mirrors her, revealing pale flesh and cold muscle and he is 
hardleansmooth as she spreads herself for him, waiting for the intrusion.  

Trying to remember and trying to forget, she got lost somewhere in 
between...but there is no lost here.  Only found.  Only certainty.  Tangible, 
the softness beneath her and the coolness above her and the hardness inside 
her and shivering she molds around him.  Darkness envelops them and she 
cannot see, only feel, and it pleases her to.  Just.  Feel.

He is cold...but she is as well, cold with little icicles clinging to her 
insides, an empty pit of frozen emotionsorganstruthsblood that will not melt. 
He does not feel warm as he pushes into her, as he invades her ice with his 
own, and the seed he spills is lifeless.  Like she once was.  Dead.  
Unmoving.  Unfeeling.  Painless.  He is dead, and she wants to be dead, so 
she invites him into her body, lets a corpse lay between her thighs like she 
has before, hoping for an end.  She just wants it all to end.

But it doesn't, and she is stuck in a world that is unfamiliar and harsh and 
dark to her, cold like her, and she should fit in more but she can't smile 
like she used to and it takes so much longer to get out of bed now and 
sometimes she even forgets to breathe.  Breathing means living and if she 
wants to die she should just stop and it will all go away.  

She is never free.

And so she walks the earth clutching her dead heart inside her still chest, 
praying the skin won't peel away and leave her wide open so they can see the 
ice, hoping everyone will just be able to SEE and UNDERSTAND and let her go.  
She wants to go back to that warm place where she was swaddled in light and 
peace and softness.  This place is not warm.  There is no light here, only 
darkness and pain and it never ends.  Never.  Ends.  There is never peace 
because she is never allowed to rest.  

The dead have always surrounded her, it was only fitting that she become one. 
Now she is nothing but a walking corpse herself, lifeless flesh hung on 
fragile white bones and rotting innards that are frozen to the touch that 
walks and talks and sometimes forgets to expand and contract her lungs.  
Never was it a chore, always just instinct; reflexive.  

Now she is aware of each breathe, wishing desperately it is her last.  She 
begs for that final elusive death, an escape from the cold.  Numb, she prowls 
the night like the predator she was born to be, searching out her victims 
with ambiguity.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, but never peace.  The 
things she kills at night are shells like her, but they have already moved 
on.  She cannot.

He is cold, like her.  Like *he* used to be, the first and only time *he* 
slid into her on that rainy night centuries before.  *He* is not here now, 
but the other is a fine replacement.  Understanding she does not want.  She 
only wishes to feel again.  Fire will not melt her and she is frozen, forced 
to slide through this mockery that is life and be solid, always.  Ice is 
solid.  Ice will do.

If she could only forget, maybe she would thaw.  Maybe her organs would come 
to life and her blood would pump again...bloodredblood.  She does not bleed 
anymore.  There is no more living crimson seeping from between her thighs 
because she has twice invited the dead inside and if she insists on staying 
dead there is no need for life.  He slides in and slips out and stabs her, 
impales her but it never hurts.  Hurt.

She never stays.  They share kisses and ice and fluids but never, never 
stays.  Rolling away, curling up and wishing for death and remembering to 
breathe -- always to BREATHE, in and out, in out, in out, 
inoutinoutinoutinoutinout...as he moves into her body, so does she force 
stale air into aching lungs and wonders if this is what drowning is like.  
Always pulling away, pushing back, wanting more but more is never enough and 
no matter how much he fills her she is still empty and it kills her a little 
more each time.  Perhaps that is why she goes back.  If only it would do it 
for her, if only this would end...

But it never does.  She rolls away and the icicles shift and prick her belly 
and her fingers and toes are starting to turn purple because she can force 
herself to draw air into raw lungs but she can't move blood.  It is powerful, 
able to make the dead rise once more, laced with ancient magicks and little 
white cells and tiny pieces of her soul.  But it doesn't flow like it should 
because the tiny veins have shrunk with the cold and her heart is just too 
tired to pushpushpushbreathepushbreathepushpushinoutinout and it is too much 
effort.  Not worth it.  Too much.

He doesn't notice, and if he has he does not speak of it.  He has her now, 
has her weak and vulnerable and so cold and so deadnotlivingempty and he does 
not want her this way but he will take what he can get.  Her thighs are soft 
and she spreads them willingly, lets him kisslickcaressfuckthrust so he does 
not complain.  There is nothing he can do.  He loves her, even this shadow of 
a girl, even this cold thing that lays with him but never stays.

Sometimes, though, he wishes she were warm.

Flesh collides with flesh and they move through the days restlessly and meet 
at night hungry, he for her warmth and she for loss...and she has to tell her 
heart to keep beating but it gets so hard when there is nothing for it to 
beat for.  This will pass, as everything does, and soon her hunger for him 
will change from the raw gnaw in the pit of her pink stomach to a fleeting 
memory.

This will pass.

It will pass as she does through the long days and even longer nights, 
drifting as though a feather on the breeze.  Pushed, pulling, begging, 
thrusting, breathing, numbing, unleashing, chilled, screaming, needing, 
trapped, wishing for a place anywhere but here.  Anywhere.  But.  Here.  Here 
there are memories of innocent kisses and musty books and jelly doughnuts and 
torn clothing and bloodstained sheets and death and perfume and mommy's soup 
and graveyards and betrayals and clanking swords and sisters in battle and 
glasses and helicopters and coffins and souls and magicks and screams and 
silence and 
lifedeathbloodsweattearslovehateinnocencefleshbonebreathingliving.  Living.  
She is not.  Living.

She should be.  The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and she never 
questioned it, but now she wonders why it bothers to come at all when it does 
not warm her like it should.  The sun does nothing but burn her translucent 
skin.  She forgets to put on sunscreen and her skin blisters and burns and 
still she does not feel it because the ice remains, overpowers, consumes.  It 
seeps through her pores and slides down her spine, skin slick with cool 
sweat.  His sweat.  Hers.  Theirs.

Leaking now, their treacherous passion slides down her thighs as she rises on 
unsteady legs, wondering how such fragile bones can support such a heavy 
burden.  He watches as she slides first one dainty foot and then the other 
into her jeans, hiding her freezing warmth and the truthliesdelusionsregret 
that seeps into the material as it slips down her thighs.  Large sweater to 
stay warm in, hair piled up on her head, spilling onto her cheeks like honey 
as she steps into sneakers and he can't for the unlife of him remember why he 
is reaching out to her.

A look at the outstretched hand as she straightens and smoothes the cashmere 
around her fleshbonebody and a brief freeze, as though she is contemplating 
it.  It passes, as it always does, and she is turning around and moving to 
the door at a snail's pace.  Tired feet lift and fall, one in front of the 
other, stepstepstepstepstepstep and carry her away from that dark, cold place 
that feels strangely comforting.

Dark.  Cold.  Shiver, cross arms defensively to block out the frost because 
she is weak and might invite it in to burrow deep beneath skin and blood and 
tissue along with the ice and then everything goes black because she forgot 
to breathe again.  For a moment she is still, blood trickling through brittle 
veins and the stillness overcomes her.  

Centuries pass but it is only moments.  Chest lurches.  Heart aches, for 
peace or air, which she is not sure.  Eyes squeeze shut and she fights it, oh 
how she fights as it burns, flames licking at her lungs, spreading through 
the sinew of her muscles and the stitching of her cells and she gives in 
because it hurts.  Always hurts.

Air.  Sweetly stale air, laced with death and broken promises and it mocks 
her as she is filled with it.  It permeates every cell and for a moment she 
wishes for an explosion, to burst apart at the seams so she may hack up and 
rip out and scratch the ice that lives and grows inside of her.  Lungs expand 
and contract and breathing is such a chore.  Not worth this effort, too much 
pressure on a body that deserves rest.

Unsteady at first, legs gather and limbs collect and a push against the 
Mother from which she came and whom she wishes to join again, standing with 
fistfuls of grass and dirt still clutched in her white hands.

The air hurts as it storms through her system and she has to remember to keep 
breathing because breathing is living and living is what she is.

Fists unclench, Mother falls, and she begins to walk.  She does not know 
where she is going but she will end up where she is supposed to be.

For now, she just has to breathe.  In and out.  Expand and contract.  Push 
and pull.  Breathing.  Living.  Push the ice out.  Keep it from spreading 
like the cancer it is, each tendril claiming another bit, conquering every 
part until she becomes too cold to move.  Joints lock and limbs stop and she 
is frozen in the middle of a sea of corpses.

She never thought joining them would be so hard.

--END