Title: Teclo
Author: Scynneh
E-mail: scynneh@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: No, if I owned them, there would be changes, and that's all that I shall say for now.
Improv: Wishverse fic
Rating: R, dark thoughts and themes which would not be portrayed in enough detail on television.
Spoilers: The 'verse that Joss dreamt up. No Buffy. At all. Anywhere. And I haven't looked.
Author's Notes: I think that this Improv was nicely challenging, and my mind floated away- this is what came back. I felt somewhat limited in a few areas, so if something does not make sense, assume that AU has taken control. When I read Maayan's story yesterday, I realized that we were on the same wavelength and this thing jumped off what I thought it would be. The title is from a Polly Jean Harvey song by the same name.
April 2001

I don't need a hero, 
I don't need a soldier,
I did when I was younger,
But now I'm so much older...
                    -Concrete Blond

   Unquestionably Satanic enjoyment as she twisted and gestured wildly, graceful and alluring, but with a definite edge to her actions, making her all the more interesting. Luminous tension of morality smothered beneath feathered death, and left ferociously regal. 

    Preference was laid out with a turquoise shirt long-sleeved, which might have been a distant ocean wrapped around her slim torso, and the leather skirt that went past her knees and moved with her as she performed to a rapt audience had its own animation, life that made a skinned thing live.  Short red hair stuck out as random as a haystack, juvenile, and yet curiously sophisticated at the same time.  Her lips moved to words that might have been childish nonsense, if there was not blood on that painted flesh.

*
Something that baffles me is the ability of humans to feel guilty about enjoying themselves.  I know what I want and what makes my blood drum with the beat of a dead heart.  

    William Penn was a character.  He had the sense to realize that his little area held a minority that would never be a majority, and so he let everyone in that needed a place to belong.  And Pennsylvania was big enough that several groups of nutcases could be thrust in that area and so long as there was some distance between the camps, nothing really drastic would happen.  

    After a time, diversity by isolation would fail and the crowding produced nasty things.  Mr. Penn believed that the Indians were descendents of the lost tribes of Israel and he liked to go out among the natives and talk to them in Hebrew; after which, he would write in his diary: 'Crafty fellows, pretending not to understand a word of what I am saying."

    There is a grave mistake made when a population chooses quantity over quality.  Such an error has occurred in Sunnydale; where prey was plentiful it is no longer.  The two-legged treats used to hurry home for supper, not rush away from lamps on corners that only illuminated their fragility; I should know, I was one of those poor throwbacks.

    But, in a war situation, it's numbers that count.  Man for man, the Germans were, and I must be careful not to say this in the American Legion Hall, better than us, it's true.  Now the vampires are multiplying like the a virus.    Is evil like a virus?  Use the same method on it time and again, until finally, it becomes immune and mocks the efforts of the faithfully obtuse and devotedly unoriginal.

    I ask these things, and no one listens.  Well, my lovely canine does, the ever-faithful slave to my pain, yes, he cannot help but take in what I offer him.

    History and truth change annually, if not more often, and I have my own new rule with each new sunrise.

    The Master is insane.  No toys for him; longings that go unsaid as he watches me with his Grandchilde, flick of long, ragged nails over my hair, the glances at pitted immortal flesh that should be verbalized, but won't, for the pride of a ruler.

    It doesn't make a damn bit of difference if Caligula decided to make his horse a Senator- which he did.  It doesn't really have an impact on day-to-day lives.

    I still hunt friends that consider me damned, and twine my fingers in those of a lover who does not conceal his desires. And then at night, I rip away shreds of dignity and forge a new love for myself.  Iron is not just for poking people with anymore, nowadays, it can be pounded into the shape of a bond which I do not understand, even while I make new patterns on ancient flesh that I crave above me.

    He has said that another should have come, rescued us all, but no longer do those lies or misguided prophecies tingle at my spine, and unease has vanished altogether.  We are cemented with mortar of tears and hatred, of our captors, both identified and anonymous.  And I know what I scrape away in search of, shoring walls, and stripping others to foundations that will not long stand.

    If God cared enough about his creations to sacrifice his son to them, then the ultimate proof of one's love should be complete self-sacrifice, even death.  What then, should be required of a demon?  Mere obedience was dull and contrary to the base desire for dominance, or however one carefully phrased my wanting to strike out on my own and be freed of males who always 'knew best.'

     The future is like a mud puddle. Clear until one stirs the debris, and then nothing is certain.  I hold one boot over the water, contemplating whether contact should occur now or ever.

    Down among the living stones I can think, of what I want from someone who has not been sedated by servitude.

*
I awoke and did not know how long I had been sleeping.  The touch of an ethereal being above brushed my head and back in the gentle touch of a mother encouraging her reluctant offspring to rise.  The supposed Dam in my circle was new, freshly Turned, and given to fits of violence that made themselves loudly known on skin that had only recently healed the tiniest amount.  A cough rumbled in my chest, my newest acquaintance reminding that it wasn’t about to surrender the field so easily.  Another inhalation, and I decided that each party had reached a temporary truce.  

    That established, I turned gingerly to face the female whose hands must have sent me out here, in an expanse of memory and wonderment to breath air which did not stink of pain that would go unattended by anything other than the same hands from which the agony had been given out. The offerings from this one were not much better, the same as a hideously sweet ice cream piled on cones of sugar grafted with thoughts of hot sunny days and sand gritty in sandals and sweaty delights that added up to embraces and companionship of only droplets of seconds.

*
Days were something like insanity, and he knew this one, Hope intimately.  She was seen in the glow of sunlight that slipped that lacing of bars on his windows, and smiled at him, golden hair and unshakeable dedication to the Rights of All.  Even him.  All is lies, he whispered at every turn.  She would return with tears dried to urge him on, bid surrender for later greatness.

He thought of his life in terms of a rather poorly inked comic book: angles and shadows, which were done in pencils, by a rushed hand.

Things were off in his world, buildings melted into puddles of concrete goop and terrors fleshed out laughed at his troubles.

And she was always there in his mind.  To him, it was an endurance test, but the other, He was fond of She.  He was a mentor who observed the new princess going her noisesome sessions with hot metals and viewed them as something to be encouraged and funneled in the directions that would do the most to cause displays worthy of ancient blood rites.

Whenever those test of young cruelty became overwhelming, that light borne creature would appear to sooth what no longer wanted her touch.

Yet that haunt had no power here.  Idealized forms of purity could hold interest better than the dead ever could, but the dead was all that had endured, and that meant something more- to last.   Imagination twisted things, moving in minutely ranging circles, aimlessly binding with dust motes to be thoughts.   Naive, the optimist had stayed overlong one eve and She had found them together.  And She wasn’t alone.  When night came, He awakened to try and gain his freedom, and this new vision was not welcomed.  They found Hope, and she was delectable.

Grin like that of another demented daughter who ailed in distant lands; a father chafed at not being able to strike at those culpable, and this one peered with eyes that Saw into shadows so thickly shot with decay that they stank and folded around that visitor.  She laughed, sounds tinkling shells that sawed through skin and defenses, but still was pleasing to hear for the strange notes. 

    Her words had saved him from having to pretend to care about the lecture, so tiresome it was, duty and needs, order of possibility, and things that made him ill.  He knew something had been messed up, maybe Fate had been caught with her skirts up as she lay in the bed of Chance’s truck, whatever cosmic coupling of things were responsible, a deviation of monumental proportions by all measurements led to this crumpling.

He looked down at his hands; their chains were not a barrier to movement,  no struggle was needed to break them, at the threading of fine veins under skin, which would never know lividness or oxygen loss, or even long for that simple action of vitality.  Fingers curled, he knew that they were drained and his cheekbones were steepness on the landscape of his face.  Where had once been lean strength and a brutal threat, had been replaced with whipcord readiness, and tense sinews laid sparsely over bones that pushed upwards to create a hint of vulnerability where there was only intractable resolve.

He rose to his feet, stretching, the links of captivity falling at his feet.  Felt an expression familiar in its joyfulness spread across his face, and knew with a look at the Childe that its effect was the same.  

A flexing of wrists rubbed to bloodied knobs also gave to him what he had expected, and he brought his fingers to chapped lips, a contented sound rising in his chest as he tasted the gobs of flesh coating his nails.  Then he spared a glance for the swaying youngling, noting the niche where her throat had curved, a place to be enjoyed again as the flesh knitted itself together, a built in sewing machine was her alabaster skin in its speed.  So he repeated his action, admiring the sweep of his hand and spurt of crimson that followed.

The wench couldn’t have looked more surprised if he'd hit her over the head with a tray and proclaimed himself to be the God of irrepressible ecstasy.

*
The dog was dead.  Flattened like some pastry made of meat and bone smashed down to improbable stillness by and enormous palm, an anthropomorphic embodiment of emotion, Rage.  Its nose was bulbous and flushed with the drinking shine that came with the territory.

But whatever the reason, barring well-known moral lessons for tykes, the canine was dead, dipped in the deadly ice of time.  Or hit by the tire of Destiny’s car.

*
Virtue is hard to find, but dressing virtuously is a step on the road to 'self gratification and success.'

Fin