Meredith Delany (band_chicka) wrote in btvsal, @ 2010-03-01 09:17:00 |
|
|||
Current location: | Ash's House |
Current mood: | surprised |
Entry tags: | ash kowalski, mere delany, place: la |
Trying to Stop the Hurt
Who: Mere and Ash
Where: Ash's Place
When: Friday Night, Feb. 26th
Days had gone by. Days, spent doing nothing, except sitting in his living room. Not eating. Barely drinking anything. No activity at all, other than holding that small knife to his own wrist, weighing the sides of whether or not to end it. He was tired of hurting... but he was also tired of hurting others. He knew some of them liked to mock him for his emotional nature: Buffy in particular liked to tease him, as did Meredith on occasion. But he also knew that every time he acted like this, it hurt them all. He also knew that if he did this? It would hurt every one of them: Buffy, Meredith, Mac, Patience, Gwen... everyone who loved him. but he also knew one other thing: death's embrace would relieve him of the pain he felt, the hole inside him that Lucy's death had left. And right now? Sadly... that emptiness was winning out. He was at the end of his rope... the darkness was weighing too heavily on him... and as he felt himself miss Lucy more and more... miss that feeling of being loved, of being NEEDED.... he felt that this just might finally be the end.
There was a knock at the door. "Ash?" Mere's voice could be heard from the other side. "Ash, you've got to let me in." Buffy had practically ran to her after talking to Mac. Well, she had to first hunt Mere down and then talk to her, because Mere was still staying in a hotel room right now, hoping to be alone for a bit. Still, when Buffy told her about this, what Mac had seen, Mere had to act.
"Go.... go away, Meredith." His voice was different than last time. The anger, the malice... it was all gone. In it's place was something far more terrifying: the voice of a broken man, a man who'd, in some ways, already died in every way on the inside. "Leave me alone."
"Ash, please let me in." She wanted to be angry and scream at him like she normally would. He wasn't angry anymore, it seemed, so maybe force would have worked this time. Mere just didn't have the force left in her to do it, though. "Ash, you can't DO this! Think of how this will affect Patience! She could lose the baby over this." OK, maybe a little force was left.
"I'm sorry, Meredith..." he called out, shaking a little as he felt his voice tremble. "I have nothing left... I can't... I can't do it anymore. I'm not going to hurt anyone else, don't worry. I'm just.... ending ME."
She slid down the door as she felt tears start to prickle at her eyes. "You do have something left," she pleaded to him. "I'm not worth much. I'm not even human, but you have me Ash. You...you've always had me. You'll have me to my dying day." She started to sob. "If you can't go on, then neither can I."
"Meredith... you have forever to live. You have a career, you have someone who loves you. You don't need me. The only person who needed me... I let down. And I can't forgive myself. I... I just can't." There was a pulse, as it felt like, for a brief moment, the shield around the house almost weakened.
"Forever's a long time without the person you love, Ash," she pointed out to him softly. "I don't know if I can face that, to be honest. I don't want to face tomorrow without at least knowing that you're in it."
"Mere..." his voice weakened for a moment. "You don't LOVE me... not in that way, anyway. We bicker, we flirt.... but you can have the world. I'm the silly little 'emo kid', remember? I overreact to everything. And everyone thinks its funny, or silly... but she never thought I was silly, Mere. She looked at me... like I was the world."
"I don't want the world, Ash," Mere said. "All I want is you. I'm not in love with Devon. I wanted to be. I tried so hard. I did with Ben, too. I've never been in love with anyone but you."
"Stop it.... stop trying to... to confuse me... change my mind...." He was clearly wavering though... or at least getting very distracted. The shield around the house was actually mildly visible now, as he was struggling to even keep it going. "We did this before.... I... I never felt like enough for you..."
She could actually see the shield glowing lightly in the darkness now. "That was MY immaturity, Ash. It never had anything to do with you. You're all I want now. I think you're all I ever wanted and I just couldn't see that. Please don't do this, Ash." She was starting to have trouble talking because she was crying so much. "Please don't leave me."
"I just... I felt like I was worth something... I felt like my life had meaning.... and it's gone now.... you have so much more than you think... you don't NEED me..." He pleaded, trying to get her to stop, stop trying, stop hurting him, stop... making him waver. But now? The shield visibly dropped. Dissipated.
She reached up and opened the door so that she could see him, moving inside. "You are worth something. You're worth something to me. You're worth everything to me. Would I even be here if you weren't? I'm begging you, Ash, please stay with me."
He looked at her, circles under his eyes, face gaunt from not eating... and he could feel that she wasn't lying. That despite her attempts to always act so... snippy and cocky around him, that she really felt this way. He couldn't make her hurt the way he was hurting now... he didn't want ANYONE to hurt the way he was hurting. He finally let the knife fall to the floor, tears streaming freely down his cheeks. "It hurts... so... bad..."
She moved closer and hugged him to her, pushing the knife away. "I know," she said, holding him to her. "I know it hurts, Ash." She wanted to say that it would get easier with time, which it should, but that wasn't stuff to be said now. Right now all she wanted to do was be there for him.
"Mere... it hurts so fucking bad.... I just.... just don't wanna feel it anymore..." He wrapped his arms around her... all that power he'd been stockpiling to 'change time' starting to waver inside him.
"It's not going to be there forever, Ash," Mere said to him. "I know it might feel like it, and it might be there for a long time, but it will lessen with time." She didn't want to sound cold to him about that. She was sure that he had heard it before.
"Why are you saying you love me, Mere? To... to make me stop? To get me to calm down?" He really didn't get it... he truly didn't think she had it in her to love anyone, especially with the way she liked to act in public... which was like another Gwen, in some ways.
She shook her head. "No, it's not that," she said to him. "It's not that at all. Can't you tell when I lie?" Mere actually had no clue as to what he could do, or the limit of his powers, after all. "This isn't going to change if things get better for you. It's not going to change in a week or a month or in ten years. I'm always going to love you Ash. What do I have to do to prove that?"
Why did he do this? Was it because he loved her? Because he'd ALWAYS loved her, from the day she stopped him from killing Wells back in high school? Was it maybe even because he was just desperate to feel SOMETHING? No matter what the cause... he looked into her eyes, realized she was telling him the truth... and took her face in his hands, kissing her with every ounce of feeling he had left in him.
Mere really didn't care what it was. She kissed him back, with everything that she had in her. She just wanted to find some way to convince him, some way to show him that this was the truth, that she really meant everything that she had said to him.
He hated himself for admitting it... feeling like he was betraying Lucy's memory somehow... and it showed in his tone. Yet... so did the honesty. "...I love you too, Meredith. Always have..." and as he let her in, let his feeling out... that power began to seep out of him. But rather than channeling it, using it to warp time and space.... he just let it out.... and as he held her, it slowly seeped into her, funnelling through her like a sponge.
"I love you, too, Ash," she said back to him. She felt *something* going through her, but honestly didn't have a clue as to what it was. She honestly partially thought that she might have been a little buzzy high off of the feelings going through the both of them, but, if that was true, then wow was it a lot.
He just held her, trying to fight everything inside him: the feelings he knew he truly DID have for Mere, the feelings he still had for Lucy, the shame for what he'd thought of doing.... and the disappointment he felt for NOT having done it. Yet, through it all.... one thing nagged at him. Something felt different here. It was barely noticeable at first... but then different things sunk in. She felt... warm. Soft. And that thumping... was... was that a heartbeat?
Oh, that kicked in quick. When she realized what she was feeling, she actually pulled back, eyes wide. "Ash..." she started, voice shaky. "What the hell just happened?" She was breathing, like, ACTUALLY breathing, not just sucking in air when she wanted to talk.
"M-Mere?" He asked, eyes wide as he, too, was realizing exactly WHAT had happened. It was the 'why' and the 'how' that were eluding him. "What the hell...?"
"I...I don't know," she said. "I thinking I'm alive, Ash," she looked at him. "Did you do this?"
"I.... I don't..." Then it hit him. Like a right cross to the jaw, really. "Oh my god."
She looked at him. "What? What is it?" she asked him. Really, she was so freaked out right now that she really didn't know what to think.
"I was... I was going to change everything. The world. Time itself.... I was gonna find a way to bring Lucy back..." He was stammering a bit, trying to think of how to explain the ONE possible reason he had.
"So, you've basically been stockpiling magic inside of you?" she asked, not exactly getting what was going on, but seemingly understanding the general gist of it.
"Look... I think.... instead of changing the world.... I changed YOU. I don't... I don't understand how... but its all I can think of..." He was blowing this explanation, big time, but still.
"Maybe," she said to him. "I'm not sure it really matters, though." She looked at him and smiled slightly. "That just means that I can see you in the daylight again."
"That's the first thing you thought of? Seriously?" He couldn't help but laugh there, between sniffles. "You're HUMAN again, Meredith! Think about it!"
"What am I supposed to think of right now?" she asked him. "I gotta admit, it kind of seems...not real. I...I have a LIFE again, Ash. I'm not even sure what that means."
"Just... right now? Can we focus on the 'you just saved me' part?" He sighed, hugging her again. "Meredith.... please.... help me... make the pain go away..."
She hugged him back. "I think you might have saved me, too," she said softly to him. "I'd do anything for you, Ash, you know, except lift cars and junk because I'm pretty sure I can't do that, anymore."
"This... this hurt isn't gonna go away anytime soon, Mere. I don;t know if it ever will. But I know that... that I love you. No matter how horrible it makes me feel to admit it." He hoped she understood what he meant, about how he felt bad.
"It's going to hurt for a while, I expect that," Mere said to him. "You'll always love Lucy. You shouldn't feel guilty, though." Lucy would want him to love again. Maybe not exactly a few weeks after her death, but definitely she would want it to happen again.
That was the problem. Maybe in a completely different way than Lucy, but he'd never STOPPED loving Meredith. Which was what had made their friendship so... flirty, so combustible at all times. "How do you... I mean... do you feel ok? Are you all right?"
"I feel fine," Mere said to him. "I'm actually hungry." Well, she had technically eaten very little in over a year, so that was kind of obvious. "How should I feel? You kind of quickly forget what it feels like."
"Oh god..." he thought of something here... "Please tell me you didn't, you know, feed yet today?"
She shook her head. "I sort of came here as soon as the sun set, Ash," she told him. "Well, as soon as I could, anyway."
"Thank GOD...." he realized that, if she HAD? She'd be a living girl with basically a stomachful of blood. "No wonder you feel mostly normal.... the magic... had I used it the way I planned... it would have either shifted time and space together seamlessly... or destroyed it all outright. At least it looks like it worked right... just not how I intended."
"I would probably want to throw up if I had, wouldn't I?" God, the thought of it right now immediately turned her stomach. "Well, at least it didn't blow me up, you know. That's a good thing."
"I'm thinking if I'd have hurt you? Oh god..." he felt sick to his own stomach now, just at the thought. He was barely holding it together NOW.... but he had to feel that somehow... this was a gift. He'd been given HIS Meredith back. Not the vampire who to struggle with not MAIMING him even as they flirted with snarky little comments, but the sweet, LIVING girl she'd been back when he blew it with her in Sunnydale.
She hugged him to her again. "It's going to be OK, Ash," she said to him. She was actually relieved to be human again with him. She would never have that urge, no matter how much she wanted to push it away, to eat him. It's kind of hard to be with someone when you want to alternately kill them and turn them as well.
Now that he was calming down a little... processing everything that had happened since he went.... sort of crazy!mad!bonkers, something sort of hit him again. "So... me and Lucy... we really had...have... whatever... a daughter?"
Mere nodded. "She's a great kid, Ash," she said to him. "We're still a little...confused I guess as to how she's still here, but we're grateful for it. You barely ever used magic when she grew up, and I was like, the family body guard."
"Jesus." He realized just HOW different this all obviously was now. "Is it wrong that I... almost dont WANT to meet her?"
Mere shook her head. "I can totally understand feeling that way. You really don't have to meet her," she said to him. Especially since, to Mere at least, she looked so much like Lucy.
"Don't leave me, Mere..." he sort of just blurted out, on the verge of tears again. "She's gone... I'll never have her back.... without you? I have nothing... nothing at all..."
"I'll never leave you now, Ash," Mere said to him. Now she wondered if she should move in, or what. There was a lot to figure out now. So much stuff to work on.