[MitS] 048. Aftermath

[ooc: backdated, elementof_risk  used with permission, though any mistakes are mine alone. Some mild adult content, so consider this your warning. :]


Dubai, mid-November.

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( It is, she thinks, a safe conclusion to assume that the job went well )

[PtM] 19.1: Leave Out All the Rest

When my time comes, forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed
Don't resent me, and when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory, leave out all the rest
Leave out all the rest

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I worry that I'm not enough.

I can't be the only one that thinks about it, can I? It's not that I'm afraid to die. I don't want to, but death is...I mean, everyone dies eventually. No one lives forever and...that's okay. I hope it doesn't happen anytime soon. I hope it's--that it doesn't...hurt, too much--

That's neither here nor there. It's not death I'm afraid of, it's not being enough. Not feeling within myself that I am, or was, enough. Not being enough for others. For the world. Not playing my part. Not knowing what my part was, what I was supposed to be. I worry about overlooking things, letting things, letting people, friends, relationships, moments slip through my hands because I was too busy paying attention to things that in the end mean nothing, and aren't important. I worry about misplacing that importance.

I worry about letting people down, and then I worry about letting myself down while I was too busy trying not to let others down. I worry about not touching enough. We sculpt the world, after all, every one of us. I worry that I won't leave enough fingerprints and indentations. I worry about not having enough time, and then about worrying too much about time. I don't want to run around, trying so hard to live that I do the exact opposite.

No one can be perfect, no one can be everything, not every life can be saved. I know that. I know that. That isn't what I'm talking about.

So many people worry about leaving behind some great legacy. Fame, notoriety. Family fortunes. Importance. Wings in hospitals and libraries. Making sure their name doesn't die with them. They have children and try to shape them into little copies of themselves, so that they can feel they've achieved some measure of life after death. That isn't want I'm talking about, either.

There was a girl, a Slayer. She died, miles beneath the surface, and she didn't even die under her own name. She died trying to buy time, to keep a horde of demons from flooding the Earth. Their leader beat her death, hoisted her like a trophy, and threw her aside like she was nothing. Only a handful of people and maybe a few pixies and slug creatures will remember her. And us, her sisters in arms, through dreams. We'll feel her memories as though they were our own, but we'll never know her name. That's gone, and so is she.

But she was so...sure. She was sure of herself, and her place, and that she'd faced everything with as much strength as she had. She knew she was enough. It was her last thought. No one had to know her name. It didn't matter.

She knew.

That's all I want. To know myself, and my name, and my place, and to feel that the choices I made and the things that I did, the battles I fought, the people I loved...that it was enough.

I could live with that. And die with it, too.

Just to be enough.