The room was dark and cool, and the cape obscured most of his features. The candle left burning seemed to run consoling light over his hair and tightly closed eyes. He slept. The features under the cape were tranquil and weary, but peace seemed to grace the face of the fallen angel.
Done and done, and now he looked for her. That same flat plain...and Lina sat near him, at his side, looking over the horizon. She's smiling at him. And it is the only thing he cared about anymore. But the rage had burned out and died, so he could breath easily again. Hunger nibbled at his weakening body, but he didn't notice anymore. All it felt like was a long slow fall into sleep.
In his dream he saw smiling golden eyes looking at them, and a gentle hand taking his own, then the sharp slide of a blade across his wrist. He turned to smile once more at Lina, and found she was gone, his life running hot and red over his arm. The eyes pulled the blade across his other wrist and panic clouded his clear decision. Just as panic began to scream wildly, Gourry felt it, under his skin, the burning tickle, and he looked to where he escaped his body.
The.. slashes at his wrist.. fingers quested, seeking exit, and he recognized the deceptively small digits.. perfectly formed and feminine, and in the dream they were the only thing that surprised him. Gently he grasped the warm flesh that was in his own, and began to pull. One long arm to the elbow, and the flesh under his hands was heated and alive. Evil, evil, hated hope seemed to regenerate from it's ashes as the unseen hands began to help him in the steady tug. There was no real pain; just his tearing flesh, a dull burning stretch giving life and existing only to be ignored. And through his splitting skin, a new figure was pulled free, springing in life from his body, and still together, he and the golden eyes pulled. The pulling was a tickle and he tried to strangle hope.. die, death, no more, but the limp figure became more and more of a person, and finally was freed from her fleshly prison. In his bleeding arms she was placed, new and frightened and silent, but the weight was real, and the breast heaved with life, and ..oh.. God....
Lina. Lina. Lina. In my arms at last... The joy was a blossom of fire that raced in veins up his heart to consume bitter ashes, giving his pain death and his death life. She was breathing; the only music he ever really yearned for. Her heart was beating; the one tempo that gave his stride balance. She cracked her sleepy eyes and... looked at him..... Lina's eyes opened then.. Confusion cast a carmine glow, and then.... she smiled... and he was glad just to have her to hold her close again... peace.
The smack of a bird flying into the window startled Gourry from his dreams. For just a moment, even though he KNEW this was the one fragment of time you could trust the least, the pillow was smooth and warm under his head, and he could feel Lina beside him. And then.. he woke up completely, opened eyes in the soft morning light and Lina was still dead.
He turned his face into his pillow and sobbed quietly.
Rolling onto his back he felt the disturbingly hot tears roll across his face to sear the back of his unsuspecting neck. Then came those terrible sobs, the sort that triggered your gag reflex until all you could do was choke as your tears burned you. A gag turned into a cough, and he cried all the more. "Oh God.. Lina.. how long is this dying going to take?" Selling everything in his life to follow his friend and lover and other side. Just... wanting to be near her, really. Besides, Lina would need a protector in the next world. She was waiting for him. He knew it.
Amelia leaned against Gourry's door, her poor tortured head trying frantically to come up with a way to reach him. Her hair fanned out between splayed fingers as she absently scratched at her brow. Yelling at him had done no good. Pleading with him had been a false hope; a sad smile, and the whispered comment "But I'm so tired, Amelia..." It haunted her still, and she was starting to wonder if doing this was right. She knew justice to be absolute; she also knew that her own human short-comings had a tendency to not understand the question.
"I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all."
-- William Goldman, The Princess Bride