TITLE: Human Remains
AUTHOR: Mexx
DISCLAIMER: Not mine… you know the drill.
RATING: PG-13.
SUMMARY: Buffy considers her humanity.
FEEDBACK: Don’t make me beg. Seeing me beg isn’t pretty. But feedback would be nice.

I used to be human, I think. I can’t quite remember what I was. My memories are clouded by the blood, the violence and the bruises.

I remember my life before, before everything I knew turned to dust and everything I touched became dark.

I remember that the word ‘human’ meant very little to me. Yes, I was a human, but to me, that was all that there was. Humans, people, men and women. Nothing else. No demons or werewolves or vampires or incubi. Just humans, just people. Now I don’t think I’m even that.

I don’t feel human, waking up in a wooden coffin can do that to you, makes you think other than living. They call that dead.

I don’t feel like a demon either, can’t be, Tara said so. I don’t feel like a daughter, I haven’t got parents. I don’t feel like a mother, no one needs caring for. I don’t feel like a sister, Dawny is all grown up, fighting demons without needing me to protect her. I’m not a friend, I couldn’t save my friend from destroying the world, and I couldn’t stop my only other friend from feeling useless. I can’t be a lover, every relationship I have- with a demon or otherwise- ends in disaster.

I don’t feel any of the things that I would have once defined me as a human, as a person. Only the things that are present in the darker side of humans, the bits that people try to keep hidden.

I can’t be a human because I don’t have a role that any human being has. I kill, I hunt, I am. That is all.

There are bits of me, beneath the muscle and wedged between the bone, that are soft, like a person, like someone loved. But the years and the death have hardened those pieces of me, and the flesh around them has turned to dust until all that is left of me is slayer, dark and powerful and human remains hiding the girl, hiding the hunter, hiding the monster.

--finis