Fiction

Pairing: Shalimar/Jesse
Genre: Deathfic
Rating: PG-13

Sympathy's wasted on my hollow shell
I feel there's nothing left to fight for
No reason for a cause
And I can't feel your voice
And I can't feel you near
Lost in the darkness of a land
Where all the hope that's offered is
Memories of being taken by the hand
Sarah MaLachlan - Lost

"There isn't anything about you that I don't find beautiful." I told her one night (as you do to those you love unerringly and to whom you are trying to explain your love in mere words) as she brushed her sunlight blond hair in long strokes. Pulling the short waves taut and long only to have them release as the stroke finished and spring back into place. A small gesture that had me immobilised, thought suspended.
It was an untruth, of course, not that I knew it at the time. There was one thing - only one, of that I was sure - about her that held no beauty for me.
It wasn't the curve of her body in my arms, or the soft touch of her skin. (I held her close, carrying her gently so as not to jog her.) It wasn't her weight in my arms. (Her face was open upwards, as though taking in all the wonders of the velvet night sky, though her eyes stayed closed.) Not her face. It wasn't her light cheeks, coloured so red at the slightest embarrassment. Not her chocolate brown eyes battling for supremacy over my own. (How I loved those battles, an excuse to hold her eyes for hours on end.)
I stumble on an exposed root and her arm slips loose from her side - exposing a length of forearm and wrist to the moonlight.
Dear god it was not her arm, the creamy skin exposed so. Times when a kiss on the open side of the wrist spoke louder than the lips. Speaking as it did of the night to come or nights past.
And it was not her lips, full cherry red lips that laughed or smiled with that smallest movement and showed pain or anger with the same. (How oft it was a smile struck me for a moment and I paused, thinking of her smile.) Now that was a thing of beauty and no mistake. Rarely moving from her face, its brightness could cure the saddest of hearts. Only when it was missing did we know to truly worry. The slightest grin, a twitch of the cheek, a startled spark, and an outright laugh. No, it was not her smile that lacked beauty.
A movement beside me caught my eye; but it was only a cat, the true feline, and her ancestor. It prowled through the forest, knowing the true beauty of freedom. She used to prowl as the cat does now. Stepping through the woodland as though it moved aside under her feet, making way for her alone and closing behind her.
As she was, the cat is a thing of beauty, but as with the weight in my arms I know there is one thing, such an unpredictable thing that denies the black wraith's beauty.
I hold her close as the helix comes into view. Not too long now and we will be home. I lay her down on the cold metallic floor and mourn the lack of contact. I sit beside her still form, strangely unable to move without the warmth of her body. Even now as that warmth is fading.

Your death, my dear, my beloved. That is the one thing. Beauty falls before its own power. All alike we fall.
And your beauty is lost from this world into the next.
May I see you there soon.