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Morituri Te Salutamus
by Annakovsky
There are two kinds of people in the... group, I guess. Seems like we
should have a name for ourselves, but we don't. Oz might say to me, "You
going to the library this afternoon?" but we're not, like, the X-Men or
the Thundercats or anything. The monsters call us the White Hats, but we
call ourselves nothing. In my own head I think of us as "We who are
about to die", but I never say that out loud.
Except once, the first time I thought of it. We were arming up in the
library and Giles said "Ready?" And I said "We who are about to die
salute you," you know, like a Roman gladiator, raising my crossbow in a
fake salute. It was a joke when I started saying it but by the end of
the sentence it wasn't anymore and Giles looked shaken. I never said
that again.
Anyway. Two kinds of people in the group. The first are the adrenaline
junkies or the hero wannabes. The ones who get off on the danger, or the
ones who have fantasies about saving the world. They never last long;
either they figure out that saving the world isn't as fun as it looks or
they get killed. Like that one kid - what was his name? You know, the
blond, nervous looking kid. Tucker's brother.
The other kind are the ones who've lost so much they don't care anymore.
Actually, they don't last so long either. None of us last long. But
these are the ones who show up after you see the obit for their whole
family, or after their best friend gets vamped and kills their
girlfriend or whatever. Most of us are in this category, though we never
talk about it. Sadness already hangs over the group so thick that it's
hard to breathe, so there doesn't seem much point in, like, having some
big discussion about it.
I don't know which category Mr. Giles fits into, exactly. He's sad, it's
true. But... he doesn't fit. I don't know why he doesn't just move -
it's not like he's a Sunnydale native, obviously, so he could just get
the hell out of here. He never talks about why he came. Though we're
glad he did, I guess. But what we do more and more seems to be like a
kid building a wall out of sand on the beach to keep the tide back.
The monsters went through a phase where they'd say "Resistance is
futile" when we'd rescue somebody - they'd hiss it out as they backed
away from our crosses. Guess they thought it was funny or something.
Very glad they gave that up - it was annoying as hell and also,
apparently, true.
Group has been getting smaller and smaller lately. We've never been big,
but in our heyday, there were nearly twenty of us. Now there are three:
Larry, Oz and me. Four, with Giles. I'm the last of the girls.
I will die soon. No one will mourn me much, I know - we don't get too
attached to each other anymore, not since the big massacre last year.
Like, last week Michael got his throat ripped out, and it sucked and
all, but nobody cried.
I never cry anymore, though I always feel on the verge of tears. I can
feel them all piling up in my head, weight behind my eyes, skin tight,
that stretched feeling. But I haven't cried since before I found Mom...
yeah. Since before.
The other day I was in the library with Giles, cleaning some of the
weapons after school. Thinking about dying, like I do most days. Don't
know if I have a death wish exactly, but when you know it's coming, no
matter what you do, there doesn't seem to be much point in thinking
about, like, who you're going to the Winter Brunch with.
So I asked Giles if he believed in Heaven. Because I don't know if I do.
And Giles looked at me like he was really seeing me, for once. I mean,
sometimes we have camaraderie, and I know he cares, in an abstract kind
of way. But usually he's pretty distant - none of us can afford to care
too much, after all. The reality is that we're not so much the White
Hats as the Red Shirts; the guys who die screaming in the first act. The
Charge of the Light Brigade. We who are about to die.
"Heaven?" he asked. He looked sorry for me, then, and sort of loving.
"Do you?"
I shrugged and said, "I believe in Hell." And there was another one of
those sentences that started out a joke and didn't end that way.
He took off his glasses, polished them. "Yes." He just held them in his
hand when he was done, looking tired and beaten down.
"So?" I asked, after he didn't speak. 'Cause for some reason I really
wanted to know what he thought about this, like it made a difference.
Like if he believed in it, then maybe it was true; maybe I could just
lean on his believing, not have to believe myself. Like if there was
someone here who could still imagine a different world, a better place,
then it might just be possible.
"Yes," he said. "I believe in Heaven."
I felt kind of choked up then, for some reason. My throat was dry and
the tears always hovering in the back of my head got closer to the
front, almost to my eyes. "Why?" I asked. My voice sounded shaky.
"Because I have to," he said. "Because if there isn't...." he trailed
off. We both stood there for awhile, looking down. "But there is," he
said finally.
And I believed him - stupid as it seems in the face of everything,
retarded as the image of puffy clouds and pudgy babies with harps is.
Because Giles doesn't lie.
And after that, I saw it, sometimes. Little moments where I could
believe in it. Like when Oz sits on the stairs with his acoustic guitar
and plays, sunlight flowing dustily down into the library, and we're all
there; when no one turns a page because we're all listening. When Giles
puts his hand on my shoulder briefly after a patrol, using the touch to
say he's glad I'm alive for one more night. When Larry is joking around
and gives me a big hug, spinning me until we're both dizzy. These small
snatches of happiness. Then I can almost believe, because it feels close
by.
Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you.
Hail Mary, full of grace. Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of
our death.
Hail.
end
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