Reflections

A Slayers Songfic

 

            She stood quietly on the cliff, looking down over the seemingly endless fields below, noting absently that the river almost looked like a stream from this distance. Was that how the lives of others would eventually look to her? Would she become remote, detached?

            No, she couldn’t! Could she?

            But how couldn’t she?

 

Many times it's repeated,

The melody of the soul

The listening emotions begin to cry,

wandering around...

 

            She’d forgotten a crucial fact of her life. She dealt in Nightmare Magics. She was practically immortal. It struck her, a cold cruel blow, one morning out of the blue when she went to visit Amelia after a wild two years of blasting bandits.

            Amelia was older.

            Sure, she was barely twenty-two, but the bounce and exuberance of sixteen was tempered, a more sedate woman in place of the girl that she first trained in magic.

            Amelia was older.

            But Lina hadn’t changed.

 

There is a destiny we see sometimes,

Between yesterday and today

We leave the day "today”, and we cry....

 

            Year after year, Lina dreaded the visits, watching Gourry age, watching Amelia’s brunette hair go white. She started to understand why Zelgadis didn’t visit, why he didn’t seem to care.

            It terrified her.

 

We lost the love and we rest and find it

It kindly smiles while it's soul is burning

without noticing

 

            Gourry was gone first, and Lina spent three years in mourning. No bandit was safe within a 3 mile radius of Lina Inverse. The countryside beyond Saillune had never had a longer peaceful period than when Lina took over as the head of Saillune’s Royal Army in Gourry Gabriev’s name.

            When Amelia died, it took the spirit out of Lina entirely. She resigned her post and virtually vanished from the world.

 

There is too much to live today,

All the things make me go off task

There is a kindness inside

so I must get it out

 

I want to find the real me,

inside myself and stare at it

Little by little it changes,

The future of me

 

            And there she stood, at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the river that looked like a stream. She hadn’t heard from Zelgadis in over twenty years (he had at the very least, shown for Amelia’s funeral…) she hadn’t had any companions for thirteen…

            The river looked like a stream.

 

I give up and keep away

The thought is hard and never erased...

Even the imagination of dreams,

are simply put away

Between the hopeless and giving up

it's too deep so I start to cry

 

            She stood at the edge of the cliff, watching the river, wondering what to do with her life. It was disconcerting, immortality catching up with you when you least expected it.

            So what was she going to do?

            It came down to that, didn’t it?

            She sighed, wrapping her arms around herself, staring out over that river. The absurdity of the moment struck her, and she swore softly. They’d never have believed it. In all the chaotic years running around the world together, not one of them would ever have dreamed that she’d live to see a moment where regret would color everything and she’d relate herself to a stupid river.

            But there she was.

            And there was that damned river.

            And she was alone with it.

 

The guys who have no dreams tell me to look

at the reality which chases after me

To bump and to injure, dodge them carefully

 

It's better to live clumsy than easy,

I want to be and live myself

The love inside the coldness, if I can find it

 

            She shook her head and turned away, still looking down. She’d keep going, that’s what she did, right? She’d been alone before… she’d manage yet again.

            She looked up, expecting to see a hazy shade of blue sky along the horizon beckoning.

            Instead, she saw a crystalline blue of a different shade.

 

The gears in my head slowly takes in time

I find the space for myself which I was looking for

 

            The river forgotten, she walked away from the cliff and down towards her friend.