Second Time Around: Pitfalls of the Mind
by bettyswollocs
As I stood there in the window a familiar feeling crept upon me. Watching every move that slender body performed, every ripple in her perfect muscles the feelings kept surging back. Feelings that I had successfully learned to deny or repress last time around. But not now. Now was different. I had been worn down by the passing years. Worn down by the constant battery of my physical and emotional selves until what was left, however strong it may appear was a mere shadow of my former self. Now I felt as if every slight emotion, every twinge of pain, of want of longing was evident through my transparent shell.

It was there for all to see. If they had only stopped trudging slowly towards their inevitable decline for long enough to look for it.

I loved her. And for each lonely day my dark beauty had been away my heart had ached for her.

From the outside it would appear that we were polar opposites. She the dark one. The one who did as she pleased, took what she wanted and trampled anyone or thing which got in her way. I was supposedly the light, bright, mummy’s little angel who fought the good fight and played the ditzy cheerleader. In truth however this role suited nothing but my hair colour, and then only after many a boots-bottle. Inside I was just as she. Dark and dangerous and longing to cut loose and become all that she was. But I didn’t. I restrained myself. I clung to the friendships I had built up, to the watcher I still believed I needed.

For I knew that if I did as I really desired, if I allowed myself to be drawn to her and to join her in her seemingly random pleasure-seeking journey then one day for sure I would be faced with the only thing in this world which truly scared me. Happiness. How could I, the slayer, be allowed to be truly happy? The only life I know revolves around calamity after calamity, pain after more pain. What was I without it? Meaningless? Worthless? No longer the slayer. Just a strong hapless idiot bumbling around the country with her girlfriend killing and drinking and whiling away the rest of her meaningless existence.

So instead I denied myself this. Denied myself the pleasure of loving this woman, my true other self, the one who may stand a chance of warming my heart, completing my soul. Instead I flung myself headlong into other relationships, Angel, Riley….even Spike, into averting apocalypses, into saving a world in which I didn’t even feel I belonged. All of these formed distractions. Something for my lonely mind to fixate on an excuse to give for my misery when sitting alone at three o clock in the morning crying into my cappuccino for things I didn’t even know I was missing. For a gap in my life and in my heart. A gap on which was indelibly inscribed the name…. Faith.


This story archived at: The Slayer\'s Fanfic Archive
The Slayer\\\\\\\\'s FanFic Archive - http://www.slayerfanfic.com/viewstory.php?sid=2467