500 words, Post Not Fade Away Ats season 5. PG-13. The aftermath of the battle through Illyria's eyes. Character death.
Home
The battle is over. That much, Illyria knows. She remembers the
utter quiet when the slaughter stopped, and the streets running red
with blood. But everything else is a blur. How, for example, did she
arrive in this room? Whose bed is she in? Why does she hurt so…
“Hey, now. Calm down, Blue. You’re just hurting yourself.”
The white haired one lays a hand on her forehead, holding her down, and
she scowls at his audacity. How does he dare touch her, let alone think
that he can restrain her when he is nothing but a half-breed and she is
Illyria. She is shaper of life and giver of death all at once, god and
king, she is…
She is… dying.
The concept is absurd, as foreign to her as compassion or failure. Yet
she remembers, kneeling and crying over the dying shell of a human. She
remembers being unable to save his life, and playing a charade for him,
because she could, because he wanted her to. And she remembers the
voices of the two half-breeds – there is the dark one, sitting in a
corner, looking as though he is mourning already. She remembers their
voices, murmurs as loud as shouts, discussing her shell’s survival as
they carried it. Discussing how, soon, they will be the only two left.
“No.”
The word is painful even to pronounce, and it seems to linger in the
air as the two vampires look upon her. Her pet has placed something
cool on her forehead, and it feels good.
“No,” she repeats, catching his eye, and notices for the first time the
long cut that runs across his cheek. His face is clean, but his hair is
matted with blood so dark it seems black.
“No, what?” he asks, an eyebrow raised.
“I will not die.”
He doesn’t answer; doesn’t even look at her. Instead, he throws a glance to the other vampire. Illyria glowers.
“I will not!” she says again, wanting her voice to be loud but finding
out that she can barely speak. Exhausted, she closes her eyes, but she
refuses the lure of sleep, just like she refuses to fear. She simply
refuses it, and says it one more time.
“No.”
Silence is heavy on the room, and it makes Illyria hear the beat of her
shell’s heart all too clearly. It sounds… different. The wrong kind of
different.
“You won’t die,” a calm voice rises in the room, and she struggles to
open an eye and look at the dark vampire. “Old ones like you don’t
die,” he continues, and she wishes he were closer, his voice is too
faint. “They go home rather than die. And that’s where you’re going
too.”
In the dimming light of his fallen kingdom, Illyria can’t see Angel anymore. She can barely see Spike’s sad smile.
“Home?” she murmurs, and somehow it’s not a grandiose palace that comes
to her mind before it turns dark, but a small house down in Texas.
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The characters and names used in these stories do not belong to me. All copyrights remain with Fox and Mutant Enemy. No profit is made from this fanfiction.