Rating: PG
Summary: Grief continues for all.
Disclaimer: Nothing legally belongs to this author.
Spoilers: The Gift
Improv #17: ragged - decade - invent - cascade

Note: I was nudged forcefully with a long sharp stick to get on the Buffy's
Dead Bandwagon. Resulting short effort below.

Impotence of Woe
By Tinkerbell
-----

*Grief tears his heart, and drives him to and fro
In all the raging impotence of woe.*
The Iliad of Homer. Book xxii. Line 526.


>^<^>^<^>^<

The younger sister of the most recently fallen Slayer has two vampires.

They take turns, the vampires do, coming to her back door in the very still
midnight, inventing a reason for coming, shifting their feet nervously and
hoping that this time won't be the time she turns them away.

The blond one is more confident, swaggering into the kitchen and opening
cabinets until he finds the one with the mugs, taking the milk from the
refrigerator and dumping it into a cup filled with cocoa powder. Clunks it
into the microwave, waits for the beep.

He perches precariously on a long-legged stool with his steaming drink,
ignores the girl's shake of her head at the habit he picked up from her dead
mother, and asks where the mini-marshmallows are.

"Giles didn't buy any," the girl says, and the blond vampire doesn't believe
her but pretends to. He watches the girl through the cascade of steam.

He drinks his hot chocolate in the house of the dead Slayer, with the sister
of the dead Slayer, and doesn't think once about the dead Slayer until his
treat is finished and his stomach is nicely warm.

"You been gettin' on at school?"

"No," she says mutinously.

The vampire knows that the child is hurting and doesn't care. All he knows is
that to be here is lessening his own distress. To be in this house is
soothing to the gnawing, twisted pain, and he knows he will return tomorrow
night. And the night after that, and for all the subsequent nights, until he
is not welcome in this house any more.

He knows there will be a night when a spell will be cast and he will not be
invited in.

***
There is another vampire, different from the first in looks and demeanor.

The Slayer's sister willingly lets him in, though she avoids the haunted,
dark eyes that follow her beseechingly around the kitchen.

For this vampire, the girl retrieves a bag of blood she keeps hidden in the
butter compartment and warms it, setting it gently on the counter before him.

He doesn't drink it, he never does, but he places his hands around the
steaming mug and absorbs the warmth until the blood has gone cool and a
translucent skin covers the top of the crimson liquid.

The girl talks in a low voice to him for the duration of the visit, hoping
that perhaps this time will be the time that her words will head him off at
the pass, maybe this time will be the time that she can distract him with
conversation about the inanities of her daily life.

It almost works. Each time, the dark-haired silent vampire gets up from her
kitchen table and heads toward the door and the girl bites her bottom lip and
hopes that she will be safe this time.

Almost works.

At the door, the vampire with a tattoo on his back and a rend in his heart
stops with a hand on the knob, and the girl doesn't want to see his shoulders
shaking with grief, doesn't want to be responsible for calming him and easing
his agony when hers is still so very, very fresh.

But she does it.

The Slayer would have wanted it, so the Slayer's sister does it, putting her
hand on his arm and urging the weeping vampire to turn so that she may
comfort him again.

And the large man lays his forehead on the shoulder of the small girl and
lets her hold his hands and murmur small, ridiculous things in his ear until
he thinks that he can pick up his soul and leave this haven until the next
time.

***

The Watcher listens from the stairs each and every time. In the morning he
tries to dissuade the girl.

"You don't have to humor them."

"My sister would have."

"They would most likely kill the other if they knew."

"My sister wouldn't let them touch each other."

"They are not allowing you to grieve. They are both being incredibly selfish."

And the girl pauses at that, thinks it over. The Watcher notes the
similarities to his beloved Slayer in the wrinkling of her brow, the nibbling
at the side of her ragged nail. Notes that she appears to have aged a decade
in two months. Feels another stitch in his heart tear open.

"No," she finally says, "no, I don't think they're the selfish ones for
coming here. I think I'm the selfish one for letting them."


~End

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