Judgement

[not_the_shell]

I was moving towards one of the enclosed spaces upstairs, when the newly-mortal thing shrieked below me.

"EVERYBODY COME QUICK!!! ILLYRIA KILLED GUNN!!!!!!!!"

"Fool."

Yet, they gathered. I stood apart from them upstairs, watching them mewl about, whispering so loudly it made my head ache. They believed...believed"No

Comments

[_fredless]

"EVERYBODY COME QUICK!!! ILLYRIA KILLED GUNN!!!!!!!!"

Everything that was being said ran away from Wesley and I the moment those words cut through the room. All those thoughts, spoken and unspoken...the honest ones and the ones still sprinkled with a deep doubt I have never known before...they left us.

I think that doubt must be the kind that only death can bring, and here we are again rarer and stranger than we ever were before, and who can we possibly ask....

Death.

Oh please don't let it be true.

Charles.

My feet ran just like my thoughts, tumbled and uneven, as I followed Wesley down the stairs...just a few steps behind. Then we reached the garden...

...and I saw. I knew. I shattered.

And I raged.

We were together again. We were together...as we should have never been apart..or in that place. Whatever the question behind the answer we were home. And maybe it didn't feel right. Maybe it felt broken and halfway and...not quite there. But we were together. And it wasn't until I stood there looking down at Charles

[not_the_shell]

I could smell the stench of despair floating across the wind before I even had to see her. IT. The Shell, before me, with a pathetic weapon of sorts in her hand. As if something so insignificant could destroy one as great as I!

Her eyes glistened as if about to fall to the floor before me in a hail of tears, yet she spoke to me.

"Why?"

"Why should you care?" I countered. "Gunn meant nothing to you... I know. Your memories are mine now, little one. The only one who mattered to you was your precious Wesley and you have him."

And I am unwanted, unneeded. My existence means nothing now, but I will be damned to the gates of Hell once more before they steal what little is left of this mortal coil from me!

I circled her slowly, watching her. She did not move. Wise decision. I could snap her neck like a twig beneath my foot if I so wished, and not a soul around me could convince me to stop.

"I saved his life, but you did not know that, did you? Yes, I saved him from torture, from worse... he is most like Wesley in that matter. This

[_fredless]

"Why should you care? Gunn meant nothing to you... I know. Your memories are mine now, little one. The only one who mattered to you was your precious Wesley and you have him."

I almost moved right then. I almost took the half dozen steps it would take me to reach Illyria...and brought the ax along with me. But somewhere inside me a single thread was tugging at at me...pulling me back.

For now.

I needed to think - about what she was saying, about what Illyria thought of me and everyone here. Because there could be something important there. I needed to study too. I know that Illyria looked like me, but was there anything left that was actually from me? The ankle I nearly broke falling from that tree when I was twelve, the arm I did break when I was eight. Was there any of that left behind...anything I could use

[not_the_shell]

"You're wrong about all of it. I loved...love all of them... So maybe... Wesley is the only one that matters to you."

My motions stopped and for one infinitesimal moment, I considered her words. Wesley had mattered to me - once. I had mourned his death, had shed human tears that were my own over the loss of his life, had avenged his murder.

But it did not matter any longer, for why should a God-King bother with mortals who would rather attempt to reduce her greatness to nothing than attempt to befriend her?

"Perhaps I once did," I answered her, "but that moment is long gone, lost to the winds of time when you were brought forward." And I became nothing once more, I thought angrily, my fists balling ever tighter lest I strike her down before I was ready to do so.

For I wished her to suffer as I had.

She dared to move closer to me so that I would catch her words... idiot. I knew already what she thought and wished, her words screamed in my skull and tore at my heart! One fist slowly rose upward...

"You're lying, it was your

[dark_wesley]

There really had been nowhere else to leave Gunn's body. I refused to think of it any longer as Gunn himself, as I'd done too much work at driving that concept out of my mind after we'd lost Fred. Laying what was left of an old friend-- a brother, really, no matter what had happened, and even because of some of it-- on his bed, I stood for a few long minutes, standing over him

[not_the_shell]

"I hate you for every last feeling that you tore away..."

Of course. Hate what you cannot possibly hope to comprehend; that is a lesson I learned all too well.

She was but a beginner.

I was ready to grasp the axe from her hands and fling it far away, so the useless weapon would clatter and the poor human before me would forever be reminded of her failure, when he came.

My head turned to face him as I felt... anger boiling to the surface of my skin, waiting to escape.

"What in the hell is going on? One body tonight is quite enough."

Why his words surprised me, I was unsure of. After all, had he not just spoken with the vampire earlier to once again murder me?

No... I would not allow that to happen... but I was weak, oh so weak... I had been raped of my powers and greatness until all that was left was something as pathetic as the mortals before me.

No.

I leaned closer to him and whispered, "Yes you are correct. One is enough... for tonightThen my palms were pressed flat against his chest to move him from me with all the