Nothing
I thought I might post another one of my oldish fics here, to keep things moving an' all. It's kinda Warren/Katrina. At least, in my head it is. Hmm.
Anyway, there's no slash. That counts, right? ^_~
Title: Nothing
Author: Anna
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: No characters are mine.
Feedback: Yes please.
Summary: Warren remembers killing Katrina
Sometimes, it’s true, he scared himself. Sometimes he felt a tingling in the back of his neck and a barely perceptible blockage of his throat and he wondered why he was here and what he was doing. It never lasted long, but he found it interesting, when it happened, and he tried to pinpoint the exact loci of discomfort. His neck, check. Sour electricity charging his skin. Then his throat. Perhaps the ghost of strangulation, tightening around his vocal chords, making his breathing ever so slightly more laboured. There was a feeling in his chest, too, maybe a surge of diluted adrenaline. It diffused under his arms and into his biceps, making him feel momentarily weak. Weakness was an unpleasant sensation.
It rarely went lower than his thorax. Indeed, on the contrary, he could feel, deep in his gut, a certainty that he was on the right path. He felt his frustration buried in his belly and his desire for more, more than this, more than he could even see, he felt that burning in his abdomen like some kind of psychosomatic indigestion.
He laughed. Is this heartburn? Perhaps there was medication.
The lair was blissfully empty today. Jonathan and Andrew had ventured out for supplies, though, he admitted, times were getting dangerous, and he stayed behind. Neither of them had seen the jet pack blueprints yet, and neither of them would. He had them spread out before him. They were complete. He let his eyes roam over them, automatically searching out any possible flaws, and continued his internal diagnostic.
He thought perhaps some of these feelings had to do with Katrina. He felt strangely detached when he thought about her. He felt the heft of the champagne bottle in his hand and it was satisfyingly heavy. The cotton and polyester mix of that cheap maid’s uniform Jonathan had bought was shiny and vaguely unpleasant under his fingertips as he pushed her down. He could not quite remember the exact moment of killing her. He could recall a muffled crunching sound and a sudden limpness in her form, but no more detail of the death itself. The most dramatic moments in our lives, he mused, can often be marked by blankness. Was he so involved in the moment of killing her that the part of his brain that usually simply observed actually became part of the action, leaving nothing to take notes and file the memories away? Was killing Katrina one moment of completion, when his whole being was set in motion in this one act?
He had never experienced anything like it before. Not even sex came close. Total involvement is a rare thing.
He had been angry at first, he remembered that much. She should have succumbed, even when she came to, she should have seen that it would be good to be with him again. He had missed her. He knew that feeling, though he had tried to push it away. Hollowness under the sternum. Crazily poetic. Then again, chemicals in the blood came long before poetry. He could not allow her to get away.
Andrew thought it was a crime of passion. He thought that Warren, overcome by sudden grief at losing her, had, in a desperate attempt to keep her near him, accidentally killed her.
Andrew was wrong. Warren felt nothing but cold certainty that she would go to no one with her cries of attempted rape. No one would pin anything like that on him. He would never let her win, she should know that by now. The anger passed and clarity took its place. He saw Katrina on the stairs, having easily pushed past his diminutive sidekicks. The bottle on a table by the banisters. Heavy. Cold. And suddenly he found himself striding towards her and reaching out for her. All the time, he was aware of the presence of a weapon in his peripheral vision. She clawed at his face but he didn’t feel it. He dragged her down, he remembered his hand reaching over for the bottle, bringing it up over his head, high, so there’d be plenty of momentum - a physicality he was unused to - and then, blankness. Like memories wrapped in lagging.
He had been taken aback by his own coldness, when he stumbled back and saw the body on the steps, her limbs in oddly awkward positions that could only indicate death. It took a moment to process his own clinicism. He knew it wasn’t her neck that had broken. He knew he killed her. He just needed to buy time, think it through.
Get rid of her. It. Pronouns become difficult when the spirit departs. The thing on the stairs, get rid of it. Not so difficult, surely.
By the time he had laid out the plan, he had begun to feel frissons of excitement again. Warren could rise to the challenge. He was nothing if not resourceful. No one could outmanoeuvre him, certainly not this slayer. He’d pin it on her. Perfect.
Shame that hadn’t worked out.
Suicide, they ruled it in the end. He shrugged. It was enough.
The feelings had passed, the tingling skin and constricted throat. He found that with patience and something to occupy his mind, feelings often did. He discovered this after she had left him, for the first time, when the robot had come back. Katrina walked out and the vampire brought in a box, and in that box was his focus. He built a perfect slayer. He concentrated exclusively on her circuitry, her wiring, and the modelling of her skin, and when he was finished he found that he no longer cared that Katrina had gone.
And now here were his jetpacks. One had a tiny flaw, right there, where the oxygen would leak, causing a tiny explosion. Nowhere near enough to hurt the little guy - in moments of distraction Warren found himself almost tenderly pitying the kid - but enough to cause a rupture in the fuel injection system to one of the jets, sending the wearer veering in the wrong direction.
Jonathan was a sacrifice. They’d lost him the night he killed Katrina.
There. He thought that without even a twinge. He felt nothing.
He carefully folded the blueprints and stowed them behind the closet near his bed.
Just in time. He could hear the red shirts bickering on the stairs. He hoped they remembered the oreos.
Anyway, there's no slash. That counts, right? ^_~
Title: Nothing
Author: Anna
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: No characters are mine.
Feedback: Yes please.
Summary: Warren remembers killing Katrina
Sometimes, it’s true, he scared himself. Sometimes he felt a tingling in the back of his neck and a barely perceptible blockage of his throat and he wondered why he was here and what he was doing. It never lasted long, but he found it interesting, when it happened, and he tried to pinpoint the exact loci of discomfort. His neck, check. Sour electricity charging his skin. Then his throat. Perhaps the ghost of strangulation, tightening around his vocal chords, making his breathing ever so slightly more laboured. There was a feeling in his chest, too, maybe a surge of diluted adrenaline. It diffused under his arms and into his biceps, making him feel momentarily weak. Weakness was an unpleasant sensation.
It rarely went lower than his thorax. Indeed, on the contrary, he could feel, deep in his gut, a certainty that he was on the right path. He felt his frustration buried in his belly and his desire for more, more than this, more than he could even see, he felt that burning in his abdomen like some kind of psychosomatic indigestion.
He laughed. Is this heartburn? Perhaps there was medication.
The lair was blissfully empty today. Jonathan and Andrew had ventured out for supplies, though, he admitted, times were getting dangerous, and he stayed behind. Neither of them had seen the jet pack blueprints yet, and neither of them would. He had them spread out before him. They were complete. He let his eyes roam over them, automatically searching out any possible flaws, and continued his internal diagnostic.
He thought perhaps some of these feelings had to do with Katrina. He felt strangely detached when he thought about her. He felt the heft of the champagne bottle in his hand and it was satisfyingly heavy. The cotton and polyester mix of that cheap maid’s uniform Jonathan had bought was shiny and vaguely unpleasant under his fingertips as he pushed her down. He could not quite remember the exact moment of killing her. He could recall a muffled crunching sound and a sudden limpness in her form, but no more detail of the death itself. The most dramatic moments in our lives, he mused, can often be marked by blankness. Was he so involved in the moment of killing her that the part of his brain that usually simply observed actually became part of the action, leaving nothing to take notes and file the memories away? Was killing Katrina one moment of completion, when his whole being was set in motion in this one act?
He had never experienced anything like it before. Not even sex came close. Total involvement is a rare thing.
He had been angry at first, he remembered that much. She should have succumbed, even when she came to, she should have seen that it would be good to be with him again. He had missed her. He knew that feeling, though he had tried to push it away. Hollowness under the sternum. Crazily poetic. Then again, chemicals in the blood came long before poetry. He could not allow her to get away.
Andrew thought it was a crime of passion. He thought that Warren, overcome by sudden grief at losing her, had, in a desperate attempt to keep her near him, accidentally killed her.
Andrew was wrong. Warren felt nothing but cold certainty that she would go to no one with her cries of attempted rape. No one would pin anything like that on him. He would never let her win, she should know that by now. The anger passed and clarity took its place. He saw Katrina on the stairs, having easily pushed past his diminutive sidekicks. The bottle on a table by the banisters. Heavy. Cold. And suddenly he found himself striding towards her and reaching out for her. All the time, he was aware of the presence of a weapon in his peripheral vision. She clawed at his face but he didn’t feel it. He dragged her down, he remembered his hand reaching over for the bottle, bringing it up over his head, high, so there’d be plenty of momentum - a physicality he was unused to - and then, blankness. Like memories wrapped in lagging.
He had been taken aback by his own coldness, when he stumbled back and saw the body on the steps, her limbs in oddly awkward positions that could only indicate death. It took a moment to process his own clinicism. He knew it wasn’t her neck that had broken. He knew he killed her. He just needed to buy time, think it through.
Get rid of her. It. Pronouns become difficult when the spirit departs. The thing on the stairs, get rid of it. Not so difficult, surely.
By the time he had laid out the plan, he had begun to feel frissons of excitement again. Warren could rise to the challenge. He was nothing if not resourceful. No one could outmanoeuvre him, certainly not this slayer. He’d pin it on her. Perfect.
Shame that hadn’t worked out.
Suicide, they ruled it in the end. He shrugged. It was enough.
The feelings had passed, the tingling skin and constricted throat. He found that with patience and something to occupy his mind, feelings often did. He discovered this after she had left him, for the first time, when the robot had come back. Katrina walked out and the vampire brought in a box, and in that box was his focus. He built a perfect slayer. He concentrated exclusively on her circuitry, her wiring, and the modelling of her skin, and when he was finished he found that he no longer cared that Katrina had gone.
And now here were his jetpacks. One had a tiny flaw, right there, where the oxygen would leak, causing a tiny explosion. Nowhere near enough to hurt the little guy - in moments of distraction Warren found himself almost tenderly pitying the kid - but enough to cause a rupture in the fuel injection system to one of the jets, sending the wearer veering in the wrong direction.
Jonathan was a sacrifice. They’d lost him the night he killed Katrina.
There. He thought that without even a twinge. He felt nothing.
He carefully folded the blueprints and stowed them behind the closet near his bed.
Just in time. He could hear the red shirts bickering on the stairs. He hoped they remembered the oreos.