title: someday
author: vivian
rating: pg
disclaimer: They're not mine, okay? Good.
summary: post-Help... a short, basement thoughts piece.
distribution: bloody kisses and ff.net
feedback: Are you kidding? I'm feedback's bitch. <mailto:peroxideaddict147@yahoo.com>
a/n: Thanks to Kitt, my fabbity fab fab beta!

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She said it was worse when she was there.

She didn't know how loud the silence was in her absence.

Huddled against the wall, his eyes trained on a crack straight in front of him, he held as still as humanly possible.

How much time had passed since she had been down? Hours? Minutes? Days?

He didn't know. Too broken to attempt anything more, he just held. Held his thoughts in check. Held back the screams threatening deep in his throat. Held his knees in tense white hands. Held perfectly still while his mind gave up grappling with sanity.

If he stayed like this for eternity… maybe it would all melt away. If he could put off talking, put off eating, put off blinking for forever, the world would fade, and no one but he would be left in that tiny, tiny space, no one, no one but him. The screaming, howling, accusatory voices would stop, the jumble of people in his mind would die away to Silence. Blessed Silence.

He once asked her if he could rest. He should've known better. There was no rest for the guilty, no relief for the damned. And damned he was…

If you had told him a decade ago that he would end up crouching in a dank high school basement, insane, desperately trying to forget the pain, he would have laughed heartily and ripped your head off your shoulders. But a year ago, and he would have believed - he was already halfway there.

It was always about a woman. A promise to a lady; hurting the girl. Everything in-between. Too much for any man, for any beast, for the monster he knew he was to take. Sometimes he had just wished it all to end - but then she would flash across his mind's eye in a swirl of beauty and grace and passion and fire, and he would be lost once more.

From the first night, meeting in a shadowed alleyway, to the last, it had been nothing but pain. The pain of fighting, the pain of hate, the pain of love, the pain of loss, the pain of want, the pain of abuse. The worst; the pain of betrayal.

"You always hurt the one you love, pet." If only he'd known then… If only he'd known what was to come; they hadn't even begun. He hadn't know, neither of them had, and by then it was far too late for anything. No apology, no amount of love, not even the sacrifice of a soul could fix them now.

All that was left was a shell of a monster, a shell of a man with his spin flush against the cold cement wall, balancing perfectly. His blue eyes cold and empty, focused directly in front of him. Too broken, too tired, too afraid to move.

Just waiting for her.

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>

That night, she dreamt that she had rescued him from his fate, but the figment was long forgotten by the time night was over and she awoke.