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Ficlet: Demons
This was written last month for the demons challenge on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
b7friday. I have been slack about cross-posting. About 620 words, set in season 4.
Demons
It is at night when you are alone that the demons come.
It is then that Servalan feels the sharp ache of loneliness. Oh, for someone to confide in, to discuss her plans with, to trust. There had been one possibility: Avon. He had said he wouldn't last a week, but it might have worked out. No, probably not. He might be her equal in brilliance and deviousness, but can anyone ever be trusted? She reaches out as if to take another's hand, and clutches the black satin sheet, faint lines between her flawless brows.
Avon lies awake, staring up in the dark. It is now that the uncertainty comes back. What did Servalan do to him when he was in her power on Terminal? Is there something implanted within him that betrays his movements to her? There has to be some explanation for how often she is there. He has been betrayed too often by those he trusts; is he inadvertently betraying those who trust him?
He really is a spare part, isn't he? Vila huddles under the covers, wrapping himself in spurious comfort. He doesn't matter. He isn't needed. Dayna replaced him on the neutron blasters when she arrived, the Scorpio doesn't even have weapons, no one has asked him to open anything lately, and all he ever had to offer was his skill. He sometimes wonders if there's something vital missing in him, something that makes him impossible to like. Let's face it, Gan liked everyone, and Kerril only did because she didn't know him. Vila needs something to hold on to, and it looks as if the only candidate is a bottle.
Dayna dreams, and in her dream, Servalan is there, beautiful, poised, cold, and smiling. Her troopers raise weapons, but Dayna can't move. Her feet are glued to the ground, her gun too heavy to lift, and when she opens her mouth to yell in fury, no sound emerges. She wakes and sits up in bed, breathing hard, then gets up, setting the lights to low, and moves around her room, turning, feinting, punching until she is sweating and tired enough that she might not dream.
Tarrant sometimes wakes to find his door open. Has he sleep-walked? He did sometimes as a child, but now he's almost too afraid to acknowledge the possibility to himself because of what he might be doing. He knows a lot about mental programming through uncle Dev, and there in the dark he often wonders if his decision to leave Space Fleet was really his. Are there hidden commands he still obeys? Is he the reason Servalan always seems to turn up? He's afraid of what might be hiding in his head.
It is at night that Soolin remembers the screams and sees the flames. She tries to overwrite them with the dead faces of her family's killers, but it doesn't help. Revenge isn't what it's made out to be. It's necessary, it brings a certain satisfaction, but it will never take away the pain and the loss. She lies awake thinking that she has made the mistake of liking her new companions, and tries to convince herself that she doesn't.
The faces crowd the dark. Blake always vaguely thought of the masses as faceless, only those he met as being individuals, like the Decimas, or the System slave. But they have faces, and he sees them in the night: gaunt and starving, bloodied, or drowned and bloated, all of them staring back at him in accusation. He didn't destroy Star One, but he had every intention of doing so when he went there, and even though he justifies it in the daylight with the victory against the Andromedans, the guilt lies heavy.
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On another note, Happy Birthday! Am I still catching the end of the day in NZ?
And how can you consider yourself cut off from the world down there if you're getting a visit from Justin Bieber *snort*
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He's rich; he can afford the travel, and in style. My sister just got back from Israel (it was this year in Jerusalem for her) but she had to sell her car and borrow from friends to get there.
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Your icon intrigues me. It seems to be a veil revealing a face, but there's a crucifix there. Is it from an image I don't know?
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The icon is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's Angel's chest the imprint is from a silver cross that touched his skin. One of my favorite Buffy icons and one of the very few I kept around.
Anyhoo loved your story! Nicely done. :)
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Then your icon is very appropriate! I've only seen one season of Buffy but I bought all the DVDs second hand a while back and should get back to them.
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