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

[_fredless]

"Perhaps I once did. But that moment is long gone, lost to the winds of time when you were brought forward."

Something bitter rose up in my throat....jeaoulsy tinged with other things I couldn't quite name. It burned as I tried to swallow it all back down.

Illyria had cared for Wesley, and I couldn't shake the feeling that she somehow still did. My thoughts fluttered wildly, as I tried to decide if I knew this because Illyria was letting me just that far in, or because no matter how much we both wished it...she couldn't keep me out.

I pressed one hand deep against my stomach, sure that Illyria must have struck me just then...but she hadn't. My eyes widened when I realized it was only knowledge that had struck me so fiercely.

That string I felt from before...that thread? That was her. Illyria. We were tied together, and even though the connection was as knotted and twisted as it was, it was still there.

Why did it have to be there?

I didn't want it to be there.

I was still staring into her eyes....

"I did nothing of the

[not_the_shell]

She appeared uncertain of her next move, and then her words spilled forth like blood on the battlefield - beautiful in their anger and destruction.

Pity she was my enemy.

"It wasn't their fault. Not Charles or Wesley or Angel or Spike. It was mine. No matter how or why you ended up in my lab....I was the one who set you free."

I canted my head at her. Odd that she would accept blame, yet I sensed the truth. A smile crossed my features for a moment, then vanished into the air.

"You are correct," I whispered to her as my mouth moved ever closer to her ear again, telling her the truths she did not wish to know, did not wish to hear. "You set me free, therefore... I do not understand your anger. Nor do I see the previous logic where you blamed me for your death. As you can clearly see, as you so pointedly stated... it is you who is to blame. Not me."

She broke contact, the puny weapon between us a mirror of when Wesley had attempted to end my existence before.

"I don't intend to make it so easy this time."I would have laughed if

[_fredless]

"You are correct. You set me free, therefore... I do not understand your anger. Nor do I see the previous logic where you blamed me for your death. As you can clearly see, as you so pointedly stated... it is you who is to blame. Not me."

"Because I can," I spat back, surprised at the venom I heard in my voice...even though I knew exactly where it came from. "Because I can say the words...because I can feel them even though they make no logical sense. They don't always do. They are just there, inside me. And inside place you wouldn't know anything about because you ate it all away."

I shifted my eyes from hers, tilting them downwards to study the way the light bent and refracted off of the honed edge of Charles' ax. I twisted its handle... never loosing sight of the blade as I continued talking.

"You cut all of that out of me and maybe I shouldn't....no, I can. I hate you for it. I hate you for every last feeling that you tore away, even if I know it is useless to feel that way because you will never understand what it means. But I