Ragged

Author: Ares
Written for Blood Roses August Rose Buds
For Deb who loves Buffy and Angel.

*

He picks at the edge of the cloth, pulls at it, and rolls it between long fingers. It is a little ragged, and like him, frayed around the edges. For all he has seen, all that he has done, you’d think he would have a better grip. Not so, not anymore. He worries at the cloth, works the edge and captures a thread that has escaped the weave. Without thinking he pulls it, draws it out until it is alone, vulnerable to his whim. His thoughts scatter, helter-skelter. The thing he fears threatens to devour, and does when he isn’t looking and he isn’t looking these days.

There’s a tremor in his hands, his fingers fumble at the thread, and the filament separates and falls away. Like him, it is broken, no longer whole on the floor. His breath hitches in his chest, a tight feeling that never lets go; it has been lodged there for a hundred years. He finds he cannot breathe. He squints at the cloth and then the thread. He lowers his face to the floor, his eye sheltered in the hollow between cheek and brow, and now he sees the thread looming large. He stares at it, fascinated. Sadness overwhelms him and a tear slides down his cold cheek. The moisture meets the stone, plop, so loud in his ear. Another follows and another, a thunderous waterfall until a trembling finger moves, and the wetness is no more.

The slavering beast is back, the stygian dark that howls inside, engulfs him. He is lost, drowning in memory, in sensation, in despair. Is this it, the end? His fate forever sealed? In the silence his screams do not make a sound. The tremors cease and his eyes lose focus. The world can do with him as it will; he cannot hear or feel it now. He is death, a corpse, inanimate. In his hand, forgotten, the scrap of ribbon stripes his fingers pink.


From her vantage point in the garden she waits. The sun cannot warm her. All feeling she has left is tied up in the man on the floor. No, not a man, but she loves him just the same. The breath she has been holding forever leaves her body in a shuddering gasp. Her small hands wipe the tears that fall down her face, and finally she moves.

Quietly and ever so slowly, she enters the mansion knowing that he will not hear. She does it all the same. He is dangerous, a wild animal, untamed, and fierce in his pain. This pain she put there and cannot take away. It will scar him, and he will live forever. The tightness in her chest will not abate; the thrust of a sword put it there and she doesn’t know if it will ever ease. She kneels beside him, takes in the blankness of his eyes, and sees his hand and the cloth there. All strength flies away and her bottom hits the floor with a slap.

Buffy cannot stop the tears that flow hot and salty down her cheeks. He has her ribbon. It feels as if his fingers, entwined in the ribbon, are clutching at her heart. Two people as strong as they can be broken like any other. Like those others, can the pieces be put back together? Maybe there is a chance for them after all. She stares at the silk, and hope blossoms.

The End
August 2006

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