My Bloody Valentine
Chapter Three
By: Kristin

Slayers (c) TV Tokyo and some other people. The title comes from a WeiB song, which belongs to Koyasu and Project Weib. This story takes place after Slayers TRY.




love never dies
love never fails
love never ever fades away...
--The Real Folk Blues [See You Space Cowboy], Cowboy Bebop

There is a kind of pain that paints the world black.

Blood? No. It had to be all wrong. Blood was red... the color of mortality. Mortal existence, the subset of life that was defined solely by death. Distant memories that seemed millenia away faded into view at that train of thought; vague remembrances of a naive priestess surrounded by a temple filled with corpses. Funny that it was that particular image that she'd conjure up now, the one that began her part in this cycle of death and misery.

It hurt beyond physical pain when he ripped the magic into her chest. Maybe she was just fooling herself... fooling herself into dreaming of a world where both herself and him-- HIM-- where they could escape and live happily, without restraint, without pain. Where black and white and the Gods and Mazoku were nothing but far-off stories from a fantasy land.

He had asked her if she could have loved him.

Now THAT had to be irony, at its best, bitter amusement flooding her senses at the worst possible time. It was a question she had asked herself, even when he had died, emotions covered with a layer of ice over the years she had raised him. Something she'd tried to deny, which had become difficult, to say to the least, as he grew into a man she recalled very, very clearly from the past, who held a pain in his eyes whenever she looked at him that was more than she could bear. But no, it wasn't right, she thought she had managed to fall out of love--

Or had she been in love in the first place? Strange. Strange thoughts rising to the surface of her mind.

Did death hurt?

A childish question, but the hell with maturity. Why had she died, again? It seemed hard to recall, amidsts the haze of blood and the whirlwind of emotions. They say one's life flashes before their eyes when they die. Or was she already dead?

She thought back to life again, back to when her world revolved around one person.

Maybe. Maybe. Just maybe.

If only she could have-- if only--

Nothing.

Fade to black.

~~~~

The sky was lovely today. Birds sang, children skipped, and so on and so forth.

Check. Pause. Scribble down notes.

Filia had no time for sightseeing today, after all, though it was one of those rare days she was relatively cheerful, rather than her usual no-nonsense attitude. But all the same, distractions were unacceptable, and she about murdered a young boy who unwisely opted to poke her with a pointed stick. His mother seemed shocked at her behavior, especially since she was dressed so properly. A righteous holy glare of wrath silenced her.

Check. Pause. Restrain self from beating urchin over head with large, heavy club.

Alright, alright, she was a little more touchy today than usual, but who could blame her? She was anxious, she was nervous, but she wouldn't have traded it for anything. (Well, maybe not anything. She had a sudden craving for a hot cup of tea, dammit all.) It wasn't necessarily her assignment, but all the same, it was her first "real" time out on the job. Even if the older employees treated her like a rookie.

Which, admittedly, she was.

It wasn't like Real Estate was an easy job or anything.

She'd heard rumors about the particular piece of land they were going to try to sell; it was a place people jokingly called Wolf Pack Island. Some claimed it was haunted, but Filia brought it on herself to stop such nonsense through lectures about superstition until nobody opted to hang around her for very long anymore. Well. Their loss, after all.

She glanced at her watch.

Dammit all, she was going to be late.

Check. Pause. Curse and throw a fit later on.

Life was good.

~~~

to be continued...

back