Something that made her happy. Something that made her happy. The problem was, it was hard to think about something that made her happy when she was so filled to bursting with such pain. She tried, though, tried remembering things that did make her happy. And finally, as she began to relax against Mantis' shoulder, she was able to bring something to mind.
It was simple, really. Angel, of course, made her happiest but he wasn't an option now. What she did with him, though, was. Helping people, really and truly making the world a better place one less victim at a time, was ultimately the reason she kept on fighting even when there wasn't any fight left within her.
The smile on the face of a mother when her child was saved from a possession that would have ended both the child's life and likely hers as well. The relief expressed by a teenager who was yanked from the literal fangs of a vampire mere moments before meeting death with no blood left in their body. The joy of each and every man, woman, and child who came face to face with creatures they neither understood nor knew how to defend themselves again, who were staring head-long into that frightening abyss of the end of existence, yet who walked away because someone had dared to do what was right and help them when no one else could, or would.
It was the world that kept right on spinning, day after day, year after year, when it should have stopped so many times over. Knowing that, although most of those who lived on this planet would never know her name and would never know the difference she made, it was okay because at least she had made a difference and that, really, was what mattered in the long run.
Finding that happiness within her, she clung desperately to it. Tears slipped, unrealized, from her closed eyes. Her shoulders shook and her heart simply screamed at the injustice of what was happening because it wasn't Mantis' pain to bear yet she couldn't, just couldn't, hold on to it anymore. And so she let it go and allowed the happiness of her true purpose in this life to offer her a beacon of hope that slowly began to grow until that was all that remained. The tears continued but they weren't tears of sorrow any longer. They were tears of joy and they were a long, long time in coming and, once realized, would mean almost as much to her as the man who was responsible for finally allowing them to fall.