~Part 1~
He was obsessed. No, that word was an inadequate description, to say
the least. He was beyond obsession. He had allowed himself to be engulfed
in the madness of it. The need to rectify this terrible wrong had imbedded
itself in his mind and taken over his very being. It had become far more
than a simple psycho imposed obsession, those were nothing. Those were
easy to explain, logical even in their crazed manifestations. But mostly
they were unavoidable and unconscious. A subconscious need to do something,
uncontrollable no matter the circumstances. This was controllable but with
her death he had lost the strength he needed to combat it and he had simply
become it. He was possessed.
He closed his eyes and, like a permanent picture show playing in the screen of his darkened eyelids, he saw her. Always her. Always red and bloodied and dead but still the most beautiful creature that he could ever have imagined. Even in the harsh pallor of the death she seemed to shine in his minds eye. She had been a glorious being, had she been ethereal in nature he would not have doubted her ability to outshine even the brightest of angels. This was all that she had been a brilliant occurrence of purity and unrelenting kindness that he had never before encountered and was sure never to be blessed with in his dank and lightless existence. Even when they had tried to keep her down she had shone, when the world threatened to swallow her in sadness she shone, when all that she had was herself and the secret admiration of an enemy, she shone. That was she. It was in her. Embedded into the very fiber of her DNA, a torch that burned still in the lifeless recesses of her being.
He had lived in and out of shadows for the better part of his life and
in her presence he had seen the sun and the warmth that it had for centuries
denied him. In her presence he relived the sunrise and sunset with
every instance that she entered and departed. She had that power. Even
in the
small, fragile, crimson haired body that had been chosen for her. It
could not contain her and he was the only one that had realized it.
And he hated them for that. All of them. Every living, breathing being
that had ever been in her presence and failed to recognize her. Every ‘friend’
that had failed to be the anchor that she so desperately needed. But most
of all he hated himself for being a coward. For hiding behind his demon
mask while she dwindled away before him. He was the most to blame. More
than the pathetic wolf, more than the sappy goon, or the twitty, little
slayer. They did not have in them what she needed. But he did, still
carried it inside of him as if she were breathing before him instead of
the
lifeless corpse that lay on the cold slab in the cemetery crypt. But
he had been afraid. Afraid that she would only see the demon in him, that
she would over look the man, much older and wiser than he was ever given
credit for. But he had done that; he had only shown her that part of him.
Not the part that he truly wanted her to see, the one that held a love
for her the likes of which he had never felt before.
Had she known that he watched her in the night: that she did not walk
alone. That when she cried he held her in his arms, if only for a dream.
That as she slept he watched her only to be taken by the gentle stirrings
of her breath. If only she had known that her smile gave him enough sunshine
to last for an eternity in the darkness. But she hadn’t. He had loved
her from a distance and lost her in an instant.
And now all that consumed him was the need to make it right. He had spent over a century bringing death out of need, out of hunger, out of revenge and anger. And now, now all he wanted to was to give his life to save hers.
So he wept and raged and roared at the loss of her. Then he turned to the only god he had ever known. He crashed to his knees and pled with a god that had long ago forsaken him. And still she lay there cold and still. So he cursed him, the God that had turned a deaf ear to him. He cursed him, and the angels and even the heavens themselves for not giving her to him.
Then came clarity.
He saw things as if they had been in front of him all along and someone had suddenly snapped the lights on for him to see. He knew what he had to do and time was running out so he prepared himself to go to the only place that he knew to find the information that he was looking for.
He grabbed his duster that had been hanging off the back of the only
chair in the small crypt. He put it on and rushed to the door, once there
he
paused and turned to her once more. <I will make this right>. Then
he rushed out into the dark night towards the watcher’s house.
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