Spider brought a hand up to his chest, stopping him as she stroked the area over his heart. “There now,” she said helpfully, giving her lover a little pat. “Can’t kill him yet,” she hummed a gleeful tone. “That’ll spoil the surprise.” She broke away from him, but still held his hands tightly. For a moment they looked like two normal people out for a walk in the park. “The birds will chirp on that day,” she started to sing the song, and her voice was odd. Still Asian, but now it had a British accent as well. “‘Your vows you’ve broken, like my heart...Oh, why did you so enrapture me... Now I remain in a world apart... But my heart remains in captivity!’” Then she broke off into her normal voice again, still singing the words to her own song. “The Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit, all lined up together... all six of them lined up in a row. And the bad man... and the right switch... and we’ll all be home for supper before you know it!”
Xander raised an eyebrow at her, stepping back slightly. “You... realize you don’t make any sense, right?”
“Sorry, scar tissue,” she smiled, nodding apologetically. She waved a hand over her face, and for a moment it became bruised and beaten in, full of holes. Like she’d been in... an explosion. And her robes... they were filled with blood, coming from the hole he’d put into the right of her abdomen.
Xander felt a pang of sympathy when he saw that. His lower lip quivered as he reached out, touching the stab wound tenderly and getting some of the blood on his fingertips. “Will you be alright?”
She smiled. “It’s alright. It fades, it all fades,” she assured him, reached out and stroking her fingers through his matted hair. “Just like the pain.”
He looked down at the ground, and suddenly he didn’t feel in danger anymore. He felt like... like he was in his mother’s arms. “I want the pain to stop.”
“Pain...”Genblade cursed, as he stroked his blade alone in the corner.
Spider turned and hushed him, then went back to Xander. “The pain is the key. It’s only begun, but you have to use it. You have to see it. It can help you, if you let it. Like today.”
Xander shook his head defiantly, cursing. “I didn’t need pain today. I needed power. My power.”
She shook her head in dismay, looking deep into him. “Pain is your power,” she told him with some amount of regret, then leaned in and kissed him, softly, on the lips.
His eyes snapped open and he lunged upwards in bed, gasping for breath. He reached up to pull the layer of blood from his face, but found that there was none there. He closed his eyes, the bright light assaulting his pupils and forcing them to dilate beyond the realm of human comprehension. His teeth hurt, but he didn’t quite understand why until he reached up and found that his jaw was still dislocated. He snapped it back into place with a quick twist, and felt the soft tickle in the back of his neck indicate that his healing factor had, in fact, finally kicked back in to repair it. Every bone in Xander’s body ached, and he welcomed the feeling of coolness that came when she dabbed a cold, damp cloth onto his forehead.
She was humming something, and for a moment he thought he was with Spider again, trapped in Engen. That maybe all this had been the dream and that he’d never really left that horrible place. He opened his eyelids again slowly and saw the face of Cathy Kennessy staring down at him, her beautiful features encompassing his vision. Her long black hair tickled the sides of his face as she leaned in and looked into his eyes... then snapped her fingers twice to see if he was alive.
“Cathy?” he groaned wearily, bringing a hand up to the bridge of his nose and rubbing it rhythmically. She said something in return, and he felt her warm candy-scented breath on his face, but the words weren’t audible. They came out as a low hum, sounding very much like one of the teachers on Charlie Brown. He furrowed his brow in utter confusion. “What?” he called out, even his voice sounding far away and underwater.
Holding his throat, he sat up. He felt an immense pressure deep inside each of his ears, and then a pop so loud he was sure someone had fired off a gun next to his head. “Ow,” he said more clearly, bringing a finger to one of the lobes and caressing the tender cartilage gingerly. He hissed in pain when he did, an electric surge coursing throughout his face. When he brought his hand back, there was condensed black blood dripping from his fingers onto his sheets.
“You okay?” Cathy asked, taking the damp cloth that she held in one hand to both his ears, dabbing them gently.
“Yes,” he replied sarcastically. “I always bleed from the ears when I’m okay.”
Her eyes looked down, scanning the sheets as more drops of blood started to fall and it became obvious that her efforts were futile. “You should lay back down,” she said, stroking the cloth along his sweat laden face.
He reached up to stop her, his hand missing her arm once and then jutting out quickly to grab it.
Her eyes rose up again to meet his and they let the gaze linger on for a minute.
“That tickles,” he said finally, tossing the cloth down on his night table. He heard
