Feb 19, 2007 20:55
There’s so much…too much. And I’m not even sure I should be writing it down.
Though I hear there are some who have made it a habit for longer than there have even been Watchers.
Watchers, Christ, what a cosmic joke. The observed of all observers….
Now I’m the one being watched, but not with good intent, not with help and the comfort of tea and books and stuffy, safe platitudes.
Watched like an insect, pinned under glass. Which way will I jump? What will I do next?
No wonder Giles wanted me here to tell me in person.
I’m - not human. Never was. It’s a miracle, given my profession, my chosen paths, that I never found out before that night in Sark’s hands.
I can’t die. Well. I can. But I’ll come back - a permanent, doomed revenant, oh God, it doesn’t even sound better written down!
To keep me dead, decapitate me. Was that why Justine’s knife failed? No….no. I didn’t die. Then.
This would have been triggered sooner, if I had.
Immortals. Immortals, watched by another branch of our damnable Council, and I never knew.
I never knew.
But Giles did. He wouldn’t tell me how he had this information, but - he could tell me enough.
That there will, in the end, be only one of us remaining. That I’m condemned to a life - if that’s what this is called, now - of battle, of fighting. If not because I want some great, unknown prize, to be the last one standing, then simply….to survive.
I wonder if Rudyard Kipling knew of us? ‘If you can keep your head….’
I think Giles has already chosen his candidates for survival. I’m not among them. I know that much, could tell it from his voice. He was more concerned as to what this revelation would inspire in me.
It hasn’t inspired much.
I just feel - lost. Anchorless. As though any second now, this terrible unreality will be unreal, I’ll wake up, and -
I can’t think like that.
I’m not supposed to say anything, people aren’t supposed to know - is Giles completely oblivious to everything, then, to the most basic needs of existence?
Does he truly think I was going to lie to anyone - he told me to stay with Spike or Angel at all times, did he think that I wouldn’t have let them know the truth, after that?
I don’t know whether I can tell Angel, of course. He suspects, naturally, he was the one who told me how ‘wrong’ my blood was. He suspects something. But he won’t have even the faintest inkling of this…
Apparently I need a teacher. I don’t want one. I don’t want anyone near me except the ones I know I can trust.
Spike.
Xander - and I’ll thank every deity going for him, because he’s the one person keeping us sane, right now.
Illyria. Good God, Illyria, who’s starting some kind of relationship with Xander that I don’t even care to think about too carefully.
She was the instrument of my fall, once. Now she’s one of the few people - yes, people - that I hold dear.
They feel like the only reality in this whole strange half-life.
I can’t do this. I can’t - resign - myself to what I am.
And there’s something going on with Spike, something that’s making him grimmer than ever and trying so hard not to withdraw from me, to deal with whatever it is…
He’s trying so hard to put me first, so very hard, and succeeding, my God, is he. But I’m worrying about the cost to him, I’m not in any state to try and help, not yet, and I need…
I don’t know what I need. That my skin ends where it should, that I’m alive, really alive, not some…monstrous hybrid from a fairy tale.
I don’t want this. I never wanted this. I was never designed for it, I’m not -
I’m not Angel. I’m not one of those whom Giles admires. I’m -
Angel was right. I’m wrong. Intrinsically, utterly wrong, in every breath I take.
I wonder. If I asked, if I said, out loud, what I really want, would one of them do it for me?
Would they take my head?