Fiction: Spirit and Voice

["rsand21266" <rsand21266@xxxxxxxxx>]

TITLE: Spirit and Voice
AUTHOR: rsand21266@xxxxxxxxx
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: From "Seeing Red" to "Grave."
DISCLAIMER: All characters save the title ones belong to Joss Whedon
and Mutant Enemy.
FEEDBACK: On request this is my first voyage into Buffy fiction.
Show no mercy.
DEDICATED TO: My digital muse; a special shot out to WillowX


First there was the blood.

There was the sea-breezy blue of the shirt swathed around the soft
bosom she had spent the day nuzzling, then the burst of raw tissue
and the red arterial spray splattering, unto her body, into her
mouth; she could still taste the bitter salt.

She watched her lover fall, her sleepy eyes close in final sleep, the
warmth she had so long been draining from the body. The body. That
was all that was left now, she was gone, swept away from something as
banal as a lead slug.

What had she done? What cosmic sin had she commited so grave as to
warrant this? The brightest light this world had ever witness
snuffed in a milsecond, what had she done?

Then she remembered.

Then the unclean spirit entered.

The spirit that only knew the raw flow of hatred, the spirit that
knew only the warm gush of blood, the spirit that knew no such words
as friend, family, lover.

The spirit that she had invoked the moment she drove the knife into
the doe's soft skin. The spirit that had watched her, that had
kept
silent for so long, that took hold of her, that whelded her talent
for its own dark designs.

It waited while she invoked the God of the harvest, it listened as
the Ra-spawned being gave its excuses and when the gravity of her
loss came, it flooded through her, churned her grief into hatred,
struck at the old one with the squall of that hatred.

She would have her revenge. It would permit her that.

She gathered her strength and it waited.

It waited as she passed over the faces that no longer called for
her. Towards the little man, the little man and his toy that had
brought so cosmic a sin.

"Bored now."

The kill was fast, bloodless, unsatisfying. And there the grief
remained. Greater grief, greater hate, a greater direction to bare
that hate.

"I thought you were going to show me what a slayer was."

The unclean spirit beheld the twice-returned woman. Something
stirred with it's host and the spirit turned inside, undid the
clasps
of her once too open heart, saw what was within, the clear diamond
drop of eternity and what it beheld.

It was almost driven out. It fastened the black wings wings deeper,
smothered the drop in darkness.

-Kill her. Kill her. She will never love you. You are foul; you
cannot be loved.

Still she could not finish. The killing strike could not be given.
No matter.

It watched as she battled the old mage, it watched as she tore his
strength from him, her body shook, her soul burst and she felt what
lived within her.

-Give me form. Give me form and I shall end the suffering.

Together they rose the temple, together they behold the long
discarded face it once wore. They began the incanation.

-Make me free.

Then the carpenter came. Without weapon, without hate, without fear.

"I love you."

-He lies.

They struck at him. He still stood.

He lies. He lies. Even if he loves you now, she never will. She
hates you. Where is she? She has abandoned you, as she has before.
Kill him now and then I will destroy her. I will shatter her soul.

"I love you. I love you. I love you."

-Kill him you insolent bitch. Kill him.

Then the power failed. He came toward her. She struck at him and
still he took her in his arms. The pulse of hate faded from her
skin, the rose-colored tint of her hair came again. The hate left
her and the grief came at last. She collapsed, but the carpenter
held her.

The unclean spirit left her.

-You are as unworthy as the rest of them, little tree. Have your
moment of redemption. But know this: she that you adore does not
love you and never will. Have whatever whore that will take you, but
she shall never love you.

But then came the one voice that silenced the spirit, the one voice
that sent its sinews quivering in terror and black rage.

-Yes she does, Dark One. She does and she will.

The unclean spirit fled, the clasp of an eagle's claw drawing
blood from its feathered skin.