Author Stana
Title A final turn around the dancefloor
date 12/9/01


Stana approached Shinji, keeping her step intentionally light, her face
clear and untroubled.

The spat of a few minutes ago, the vicious, name calling threats and
nastiness was troubling. Despite her seeming lack of concern now, several
things that he had said struck her heart and ached there. Most of all, his
denigration of Clip. Both she  and Clip knew what they were doing, what the
results were. She had not killed so much as agreed to his taking his own
life as needful. 

*I didn't think I would live either* she thought *right? I wouldn't have
consented to him dying just to escape....did I?*

Her mouth formed the word "no" but without sound. She hadn't expected to
live...whatever senses had possessed her in the Nachtmer had guided her hand
as surely as not. She could not have even guessed she would have survived
something like that. She hadn't wanted to.

Was that...weak? Was that the flaw Audion had seen? The desire to abdicate
it all in a final defiant gesture?

*It was not like we had any other options...* she thought *we were trapped,
and if Clip and I didn't act, we would not have been standing around
arguing.*

She bent over the boy, expecting to feel a memory of the heat that had
nearly blasted her off her feet before, but although the body was warm, it
was not blisteringly so. But when would he wake. If the power of Fire was
free here, wouldn't it rouse out its Chosen? If anything, the elemental
power was persistent in driving its handpicked avatars to whatever ends it
wanted. 

In the final consideration...she had decided that Audion had been
intentionally scorning her. His behavior had no other real explanation. He
had not been anything other then completely polite and staid since
inception. Even as she raged at him in the past, he had merely turned her
ire aside. But not this time. He had intentionally incited her to anger.
Such out and out emotion from him seemed... unnatural in any other context.

But then, this whole situation was surreal. And she could not claim to know
him any more than she had denied he knew her.

In the end, all she had as a weapon was her laughter, so she used it. In a
way, this situation was grotesquely funny. The world around them possibly
ending, Teri missing, R-2 missing, Shinji comatose, Lyr captured, and
apparently more ancient tools that could be dangerous if used against the
elementals, and all she and Audion could do were spat like two cats.

She still hurt, but she laughed at that pain. It was hardly new to her.

She had spoken her anger truly, without the goading self loathing of before,
but with just as much vehemence, but instead of twisting inside her,
poisoning her more, her venting had cleared alot of the illness. She
felt...relieved. It was that feeling that had caused her change in attitude.
That relief had proven more eloquently than any rage of words that she had
indeed changed. And it also impressed upon her that she would be ok.

If she managed to live that long.

So she gazed at her companions and masked the doubts. She was a creature of
doubt, she was one who lived off them, fed them, treated them to banquets of
reservations and possibilities. It was time for something different maybe.

Despite his accusations, Stana had been able to stand against whatever power
had invaded the temple. She had not done it alone...but it had been done.

It wasn't weak to need help, platitudes aside. It was not weak at all. She
would have to thank him later, when he was not being so insufferably smug.

If either of them lived that long.

Stana sighed, shaking her head, ghostly, Cheshire grin on her lips. She had
nearly died once, and survived. Every second she had after was borrowed and
blessed.