For Twi's drabble challenge.
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Zoe counts on both hands the number of times it has happened. An untraceable message on the cortex, leading her to a shabby motel room on an outlying planet with a name not worth remembering. She leaves them all behind when she does it, especially Mal, because she's afraid one day he'll get this bu dui idea too and she have to use all her fingers.
She dumps the body in the incinerator and tosses the sheets and whatever else that's irreparably stained in afterwards. The gun is pocketed, to be resold on some backwater where they don't care about little things like serial numbers and licenses.
The note is pocketed, to be carefully read and then placed away with the others resting watchfully in a small brown tin.
The bodies she has seen and taken care of once had names; the signatures scribbled in despair at the bottom of the notes once had signifigance. They no longer do, and Zoe needs almost all of her fingers to mark the passing of each of her comrades--one every couple of months. Her heart grows harder and heavier with each senseless death, and the secret she is forced to bear, alone.
From the same thing...
Enough
It's high noon, but the thick curtains of Whil-A-Way Motor Inn room #104 keep the place pitch black, just how Wes likes it.
Faith looks over to where he's sleeping off his third bender in four days. It's like being with Mom, only with Mom, all she ever had to worry about was dodging cigarette butts and her Mom's lecher boyfriends, not making sure the shotgun's empty and all the knives are hidden.
Sometimes she thinks about leaving him a note--taking the car keys and the contents of his wallet and getting the hell out of whatever this is--but she still owes him for getting her out of Sunnydale alive. So she'll deal with the drinking. Besides, least when he's drunk, she gets laid. He won't touch her when he's sober.
She watches as he thrashes against the pillows. Even odds he's dreaming about that last fight, about having to chose between rescuing her ass and saving Angel's, about choosing her, thinking Angel could take care of himself. She gets up, stretches legs still stiff from another night spent trying to make it all up to him with her body, and just holds him 'til the thrashing stops.
Late and wrong fandom for the Sunday100. I couldn't get the image out of my head.
- - -
There he is: a darker heap in the dimness of an alleyway, black hair splayed across the dirty cobbles. Lost in a foreign land, beaten by soldiers who think themselves men, for committing no crime against them. Tokyo is open to all, but the army that uses it is not so forgiving.
I kneel by his side, assessing the wounds with an experienced eye. He’ll live, and with a few well-placed stitches there won’t even be scars—outside—but explaining what happened to the people who care about him isn’t going to be easy. Especially when even I don’t understand.
This is for that drabble challenge. I have some questions I'll post in the next post I make here. There are no spoilers in this. If you didn't see last week's Angel, Players and if you live under a rock, there's a casting spoiler for the next new BtVS, so I'll white font.
Guidelines: Two hundred words, motel, gun, note, M/F (rated PG)
Another dead potential. The note reads, "I am devoured."
Their clean up equation, now second nature: One performs a locator spell; three distract the clerk; two hide evidence.
Art.
Gift.
Bane.
Ashes to ashes…
One sheet-wrapped corpse, one dusty truck/hearse.
Warriors wield bleedin' stain remover? No. Blood stain remover. On rugs, it works.
He draws the motel curtains. Waiting, she dims the lights, but stains never disappear.
Like scar tissue, it fades.
She turns on the TV. War. Blood. She's mesmerized -- not by it, by memories, by death. His hand finds a pistol, not cold to his touch. It's compact, hard, lean. Like him.
Like her.
He fondles it.
It's colder than she'd be.
He raises it, cocks it. She doesn't notice, or she's waiting. He aims -- at himself.
Why?
It won't make him colder, there'll just be more stains to hide. He aims at her.
The pain sears soul now, not head - much more effective, really. Besides, this one might not go to Paradise. Can't do that. She's already tasted Hell.
He won't make the world any colder. Spike drops the gun. Faith shuts off the TV. Devoured by darkness long ago, for heat they forsake light.
Love it, Cindy. It's really nice and tight.
Now, what were your LJ questions?
Oh, thank you amych. With 200 words, it has to stay tight. I think that's a good exercise for verbose-me.
Also, what's drabble?
Plei, you evil, wonderful person.
Nice! Good ficcage, there, Cindy.
It's safe to assume that Faith is going to Sunnydale, especially if you're vague enough to not mention any specifics, so it's less spoilery with a warning.
If you are posting it in your LJ, use this tag
t lj-cut text="Title of Fic, Spoilers through AtS 4x15, Orpheus"
and then paste the fic below the cut tag.
There are no cut tags in comments, so when I posted it in Twi's LJ, I just used the subject line for my title and pasted the story into the comments box.
Isn't LJ spoiler font the same as here? Or you could use an lj cut.
That was really nice.
