Negative Space
Dawn knelt beside Andrew, watching helpless as he writhed and floundered and then rather quickly sank into shock. Around
her, people fled screaming and panicked, but she heard only the aftersound of her voice calling his name over and over and
over again.
Color faded from the world. Blood pooled around his body, spreading in a slow widening circle – an outline of black under the
colorless fluorescents above them. His eyes slipped closed. In a matter of seconds, the hue of his lips drained from shell pink
to pale gray. At last, his grip in her hand slackened.
Dawn brought his cool fingertips to her lips. “Andrew, no,” she whispered. “It’s not true. Oh, please. It’s not true.”
The lights sputtered and flickered. A handful of people raced past her, stairway bound. One of them, a balding man in a gray
wool coat, knelt beside her, urging her to follow. He said, “Here ya go, luv. Gotta get out. Power’s out across the grid. The
whole city’s…”
Angry tears dashed from her eyes. “Get out,” she said.
“’s all I’m saying. Power’s out, see? Let’s go…”
She twisted her fingers into the sleeve of Andrew’s sweatshirt. “Get out get out GET OUT!”
Every fluorescent bulb in the station burst, showering them with silver sparks. The man backed away, gaping like a beached
fished, then bolted, leaving them alone in the dark.
A tense moment passed before emergency generators shuddered to life in the tunnel behind them. The steady electric thrum
dulled the sound of her heartbeat, her breathing, the pulse of the street above. Pallid, inconstant light filtered down from
iron-mounted fixtures, turning the platform into a study of contrast – black, white and emptiness.
Seeing his body traced in blood brought a memory: High school art class. She couldn’t remember the teacher, or the name of
the boy who stood beside her, the boy on whom she’d had a major crush, but she recalled his hazel eyes, and the teacher’s
words, clear as raindrops on a windowpane.
“Remember, we’re not drawing the object,” the teacher had said. “We’re drawing the negative space around the object.
We just draw the edges, and then give me a sense of the spaces around. The space in-between.”
The boy had said, “Yeah, what’s that all about?”
Buffy appeared then, with the news of their mother’s death. Dawn had called her a liar. Had hit her. Had collapsed.
“No. No. It’s not true. You’re lying. Please, it’s not true!” The same denial. The same powerless despair.
Dawn felt a sticky wetness on her hand. She raised it to find his blood on her fingers. She smeared the blood and it spread
like ink across her fingertips. Her breath caught with the promise of an idea. Negative space. Space between.
She thought, Not powerless. Not this time.
Dawn dug her nails into her palms hard enough to prick the skin, bringing her own blood to mingle with his.
“Don’t leave me,” Dawn choked out. “You hear me. Not yet.” She gripped Andrew’s shoulders and with a rough, quick
movement, she dragged Andrew’s body across the platform to the curved wall behind them.
“Sp…gles,” he gurgled in protest.
The wall was wide expanse of white tile.
Dawn dipped two fingers into his blood. “It’s not true. Not yet.”
And she began to draw.
Rachel guided Giles inside before his legs buckled beneath him. He collapsed in an ungainly heap in his swivel chair and caught
himself with one hand on the table’s edge.
She heard footfalls on the stairs behind them and turned to face a young red-haired woman and a man in an eye patch. She
took her father’s withered hand in hers and gave it a firm squeeze before turning to meet them.
“Giles!” the young man shouted. He sprinted from the base of the stairs, knocking Rachel aside. “What have you done to
him?”
“Xander,” the redhead said, stepping around him. “Don’t go all Incredible Hulk. Give ’em some space.”
“Willow,” Rachel said, and was pleased when she reacted with confusion. “We don’t have much time. We just escaped from
the airport. The whole city’s locked down. They think it’s a terrorist attack…”
Willow’s face hardened. “What happened to him?”
Giles blinked a few times and craned his head in Willow’s direction. Annoyed, he said, “I am sitting exactly here. When did
you arrive? You were in Hell when we last…” and then Giles trailed off, his eyes hazy and slightly unfixed.
Xander pressed his fingers together. “As we were saying: What happened to him?”
“He said they were wights,” Rachel explained. Against her palm, Giles’ fingers twitched. She rubbed her thumb along the
back of his hand to calm him. “Wraith-like creatures. Gatwick’s overrun.”
“Is it permanent?” Xander asked.
“Well, the police had cordoned off …” Rachel’s eyes welled with tears. “You mean him, of course. That, I don’t know.”
Xander scratched his head. He looked past Willow and leveled his one eye on Rachel. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Rachel Greenspan,” she said. “Of the Boston Greenspans.”
Xander and Willow stared blankly at her, until finally Xander said, “That clears everything up. Thanks.”
Giles inhaled sharply. He reached for Xander, and they saw that his left arm had been withered to something resembling beef
jerky. His fingers hooked into a claw-like talon around Xander’s wrist.
“Leave her be, Xander,” Giles wheezed. “There’s more import…”
Xander recoiled from Giles’s ruined hand. “Uh, Willow?”
Giles paused, and for a moment they thought he had zoned out again, but he leaned forward in the chair to peer at the
accumulated stacks of papers and scrolls left behind in research central. He rifled over loose articles and clippings with his
good hand, sending them a-scatter like a clutter of leaves.
“Parchments?” Giles muttered.
“Mr. Giles,” Rachel said. “Are you all right?”
“Pages, parchments, articles, maps…” Giles said in a rush. “All of them dated, painstakingly referenced, but what was he
after? What was he after?”
“Giles, sit down,” Rachel said, looping her arm over his shoulders, steering him toward the chair. “We need to talk with
Willow and…”
Giles shrugged her off, tottering dangerously as he did so. “Hellmouths. Of course,” he said. “But where? More importantly,
how?”
“Giles. Listen to the woman. Women. Just sit,” Xander said. He tried to strongarm Giles into the chair, too, but Giles pushed
him off with surprising forcefulness.
“He knew it. He knows,” Giles went on. He pulled himself along the table, shoving books and articles to one side, revealing a
broad map of the world. “Where is he? How on earth?”
Willow looked at Xander. Both thought it likely the wights he’d encountered at Gatwick had withered more than his left
hand.
To underscore their feelings, Giles began to laugh hysterically. Chuckling madly, he said, “Boy’s figured it out. I mean,
clearly. Clever. Clever lad. What does it mean? What does it mean?”
“Mr. Giles,” Rachel said. “Mr. Giles, please.”
“Is he here? Can he explain this?” Giles said. A bit of spittle beaded in the corner of his mouth. He rounded on Xander and
tried to push past him. “Andrew? Come down here? It’s all in black and white, but what is the connection? The unifying
force… Unifying. Andrew!”
“Mr. Giles,” Rachel said again. He brushed her aside, stumbling into the entry hall.
“Andrew!”
“Dad,” Rachel said. Giles stopped. His shoulders drooped. His body listed sideways like a tree about to tumble in a storm.
Xander caught him, eased him into the chair again.
“Dad?” Xander asked.
“You’re his…” Willow began.
Rachel wiped her forehead with a shaky hand. “Daughter. Yes. And a member of the Watcher’s Council. Where is Mr. Wells?
We must speak with him.”
Xander’s lip curled into a sneer. “About that.”
“He’s gone.” A girl appeared at the top of the stairs, her blonde curls like a feather-cap around her face. She crossed the
landing to the handrail and then rushed urgently down the steps.
She shot a cold glance at Xander and said, “Andrew left this morning. Dawn went after him. Are they in danger?”
“I’m afraid it’s rather desperate,” Rachel said. “You are…?”
The girl extended a hand to Rachel. “Maya.”
Giles made a startled noise. Wobbly though he was, he sprung from his chair and managed to pull Rachel behind him.
“What in Heaven’s name is he doing here?” Giles shouted, gesturing with his shriveled hand to the figure at the top of the
stairs.
Rachel knew who he was. Even before he spoke, she knew. Thellian. A vampire. The vampire.
Rachel noticed two things at once. First, she saw how Xander, Willow, and Maya involuntarily angled themselves to face
Thellian as he glided down the stairs to join them, moving the way plants always do when facing a source of light. Rachel
struggled to focus, but found the task difficult in Thellian’s presence. Second, she noticed the three wooden crates in the
entry hall: one open, one splintered to kindling, one sealed and silent and waiting.
Thellian rounded the banister and joined them.
“Ah, Rupert,” he said, his voice inviting like the strains of violins warming up for a symphony. “Welcome home. You’re just
in time.”
Dawn could not recall the specific details of the doctor’s face, nor could she frame the exact corridor of the hospital in
which she might find him. At the same time, she knew it didn’t matter. This was negative space, not detail. She could feel
around the subject in the dark, calling it to focus in her mind, until second by agonizing second, she had the vague idea of
form.
As Dawn drew, the white tiles grew translucent, like frosted glass. She exerted her will, channeling it into her fingers, into
the blood, and found the medium surprisingly yielding to her efforts. Soon she felt herself fully absorbed, her fingers darting
and shaping, adding perspective, adding texture, until soon the outline of a stark hallway emerged. Into the hallway she
painted gurneys, a nurse’s station, a pair of undefined figures in the background, running to open a pair of double doors the
size of slabs.
Speculation soon transformed to fact, and Dawn knew what she saw was real. The connection in her mind sent a shock like
lightning down her spine. She funneled energy to her fingertips, feeling for the doctor’s shape in the foreground. Behind her
eyes, she felt an odd twinge, a resistance, exactly like when the poles of two magnets repel each other. Dawn knew that
feeling –the doctor was resisting her contact. In spite of herself, she laughed. She’d found him.
Dawn hazarded a glance at Andrew. His eyes were closed, and he was dreaming. Dawn lifted his fingers to her lips again,
quickly, breathing in the living scent of him. With a grim smile, she returned to her work.
The doctor attended to Giles’s first, and then Buffy. Dawn recalled the slickness of his oiled black hair. She committed it to
her drawing. She recalled his glasses - Buddy Holly horn-rims. Dawn drew the rumpled lab coat, the name tag above the
pocket slightly askew: Doctor Chapman, M. D. S.
At that remembrance, Dawn felt a swooning sensation, like the ground shifting. She bore past it. She added more detail – the
doctor’s patchy black beard, his long, straight nose, his sympathetic yet stern blue eyes. She drew the clipboard tucked
under his arm.
Sounds flooded her mind now. Footfalls padded by thick-soled orthopedic shoes. A loudspeaker calling indistinctly. People
shouting, crying, begging. The light grew brighter around her, an ice-white halogen radiance. Her nose filled with the scents
of ozone, urine, astringent, blood.
When the tingling began in her fingertips, she knew it was close. She stooped to grip Andrew’s arm with her left hand as she
continued to press her connection with the doctor.
In a reeling instant, her perspective shifted. She saw through his point of view - jogging down the corridor, dodging aside to
allow a gurney and a swarm of doctors and nurses pass him. Part of a song swirled in his head, repeating over and over –And
it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time. As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and
409...
Yet he resisted her contact. She felt his agitation. She felt his distraction. She felt the headache pinching behind his brows.
He paused at the nurse’s station, took off his glasses, massaged his eyes.
A young black nurse hurriedly passed him another chart and said, “It’s a mad night, Kelly. Best strap in.”
Dawn heard him say, “Seems this whole damned town’s gone flipping acorns. Dr. Wallace is here already?”
“That’s right.”
Dawn sensed the time to push.
“Please let this work,” she prayed. And then, she stepped forward.
She felt something like tearing thick, wet cardboard. In the next moment, they crossed from Clapham Junction to Parkside
Memorial. She stumbled, feeling like the earth lurched beneath her. The doctor turned, bound for the ER, but unexpectedly
found Dawn in his path, with Andrew curled at her feet, an extraordinary amount of blood caked into the sleeve of his
sweatshirt.
The doctor nearly tripped over them. He gasped, incredulous. “How the hell did you get here?” he exclaimed.
In her relief, or perhaps because of the strain of her efforts, Dawn sank to her knees. She held her bloody palms up for the
doctor to see, as if they provided an explanation.
Recognition lit up the doctor’s eyes. “I know you,” he said, helping her to her feet. “I remember your sister.” Then he had
his arm around her, guiding her to the desk, where he called for assistance.
“It’s all right,” he soothed her. “You’ve done best, bringing him in. We’ll take it from here…”
After that, things grew hazy and confused. Nurses lifted Andrew onto a gurney, and he’d screamed so loud it brought fresh
tears to Dawn’s eyes. She tried to hang on to him. She tried to keep up, but they bustled her aside in their haste to help him.
In the end, she stood aching and alone in the corridor, his blood on her hands.
Even then, Dawn knew the truth.
“I’m the Key. Always the Key,” she whispered, understanding. “I know what I have to do.”
Dawn knelt beside Andrew, watching helpless as he writhed and floundered and then rather quickly sank into shock. Around
her, people fled screaming and panicked, but she heard only the aftersound of her voice calling his name over and over and
over again.
Color faded from the world. Blood pooled around his body, spreading in a slow widening circle – an outline of black under the
colorless fluorescents above them. His eyes slipped closed. In a matter of seconds, the hue of his lips drained from shell pink
to pale gray. At last, his grip in her hand slackened.
Dawn brought his cool fingertips to her lips. “Andrew, no,” she whispered. “It’s not true. Oh, please. It’s not true.”
The lights sputtered and flickered. A handful of people raced past her, stairway bound. One of them, a balding man in a gray
wool coat, knelt beside her, urging her to follow. He said, “Here ya go, luv. Gotta get out. Power’s out across the grid. The
whole city’s…”
Angry tears dashed from her eyes. “Get out,” she said.
“’s all I’m saying. Power’s out, see? Let’s go…”
She twisted her fingers into the sleeve of Andrew’s sweatshirt. “Get out get out GET OUT!”
Every fluorescent bulb in the station burst, showering them with silver sparks. The man backed away, gaping like a beached
fished, then bolted, leaving them alone in the dark.
A tense moment passed before emergency generators shuddered to life in the tunnel behind them. The steady electric thrum
dulled the sound of her heartbeat, her breathing, the pulse of the street above. Pallid, inconstant light filtered down from
iron-mounted fixtures, turning the platform into a study of contrast – black, white and emptiness.
Seeing his body traced in blood brought a memory: High school art class. She couldn’t remember the teacher, or the name of
the boy who stood beside her, the boy on whom she’d had a major crush, but she recalled his hazel eyes, and the teacher’s
words, clear as raindrops on a windowpane.
“Remember, we’re not drawing the object,” the teacher had said. “We’re drawing the negative space around the object.
We just draw the edges, and then give me a sense of the spaces around. The space in-between.”
The boy had said, “Yeah, what’s that all about?”
Buffy appeared then, with the news of their mother’s death. Dawn had called her a liar. Had hit her. Had collapsed.
“No. No. It’s not true. You’re lying. Please, it’s not true!” The same denial. The same powerless despair.
Dawn felt a sticky wetness on her hand. She raised it to find his blood on her fingers. She smeared the blood and it spread
like ink across her fingertips. Her breath caught with the promise of an idea. Negative space. Space between.
She thought, Not powerless. Not this time.
Dawn dug her nails into her palms hard enough to prick the skin, bringing her own blood to mingle with his.
“Don’t leave me,” Dawn choked out. “You hear me. Not yet.” She gripped Andrew’s shoulders and with a rough, quick
movement, she dragged Andrew’s body across the platform to the curved wall behind them.
“Sp…gles,” he gurgled in protest.
The wall was wide expanse of white tile.
Dawn dipped two fingers into his blood. “It’s not true. Not yet.”
And she began to draw.
Rachel guided Giles inside before his legs buckled beneath him. He collapsed in an ungainly heap in his swivel chair and caught
himself with one hand on the table’s edge.
She heard footfalls on the stairs behind them and turned to face a young red-haired woman and a man in an eye patch. She
took her father’s withered hand in hers and gave it a firm squeeze before turning to meet them.
“Giles!” the young man shouted. He sprinted from the base of the stairs, knocking Rachel aside. “What have you done to
him?”
“Xander,” the redhead said, stepping around him. “Don’t go all Incredible Hulk. Give ’em some space.”
“Willow,” Rachel said, and was pleased when she reacted with confusion. “We don’t have much time. We just escaped from
the airport. The whole city’s locked down. They think it’s a terrorist attack…”
Willow’s face hardened. “What happened to him?”
Giles blinked a few times and craned his head in Willow’s direction. Annoyed, he said, “I am sitting exactly here. When did
you arrive? You were in Hell when we last…” and then Giles trailed off, his eyes hazy and slightly unfixed.
Xander pressed his fingers together. “As we were saying: What happened to him?”
“He said they were wights,” Rachel explained. Against her palm, Giles’ fingers twitched. She rubbed her thumb along the
back of his hand to calm him. “Wraith-like creatures. Gatwick’s overrun.”
“Is it permanent?” Xander asked.
“Well, the police had cordoned off …” Rachel’s eyes welled with tears. “You mean him, of course. That, I don’t know.”
Xander scratched his head. He looked past Willow and leveled his one eye on Rachel. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Rachel Greenspan,” she said. “Of the Boston Greenspans.”
Xander and Willow stared blankly at her, until finally Xander said, “That clears everything up. Thanks.”
Giles inhaled sharply. He reached for Xander, and they saw that his left arm had been withered to something resembling beef
jerky. His fingers hooked into a claw-like talon around Xander’s wrist.
“Leave her be, Xander,” Giles wheezed. “There’s more import…”
Xander recoiled from Giles’s ruined hand. “Uh, Willow?”
Giles paused, and for a moment they thought he had zoned out again, but he leaned forward in the chair to peer at the
accumulated stacks of papers and scrolls left behind in research central. He rifled over loose articles and clippings with his
good hand, sending them a-scatter like a clutter of leaves.
“Parchments?” Giles muttered.
“Mr. Giles,” Rachel said. “Are you all right?”
“Pages, parchments, articles, maps…” Giles said in a rush. “All of them dated, painstakingly referenced, but what was he
after? What was he after?”
“Giles, sit down,” Rachel said, looping her arm over his shoulders, steering him toward the chair. “We need to talk with
Willow and…”
Giles shrugged her off, tottering dangerously as he did so. “Hellmouths. Of course,” he said. “But where? More importantly,
how?”
“Giles. Listen to the woman. Women. Just sit,” Xander said. He tried to strongarm Giles into the chair, too, but Giles pushed
him off with surprising forcefulness.
“He knew it. He knows,” Giles went on. He pulled himself along the table, shoving books and articles to one side, revealing a
broad map of the world. “Where is he? How on earth?”
Willow looked at Xander. Both thought it likely the wights he’d encountered at Gatwick had withered more than his left
hand.
To underscore their feelings, Giles began to laugh hysterically. Chuckling madly, he said, “Boy’s figured it out. I mean,
clearly. Clever. Clever lad. What does it mean? What does it mean?”
“Mr. Giles,” Rachel said. “Mr. Giles, please.”
“Is he here? Can he explain this?” Giles said. A bit of spittle beaded in the corner of his mouth. He rounded on Xander and
tried to push past him. “Andrew? Come down here? It’s all in black and white, but what is the connection? The unifying
force… Unifying. Andrew!”
“Mr. Giles,” Rachel said again. He brushed her aside, stumbling into the entry hall.
“Andrew!”
“Dad,” Rachel said. Giles stopped. His shoulders drooped. His body listed sideways like a tree about to tumble in a storm.
Xander caught him, eased him into the chair again.
“Dad?” Xander asked.
“You’re his…” Willow began.
Rachel wiped her forehead with a shaky hand. “Daughter. Yes. And a member of the Watcher’s Council. Where is Mr. Wells?
We must speak with him.”
Xander’s lip curled into a sneer. “About that.”
“He’s gone.” A girl appeared at the top of the stairs, her blonde curls like a feather-cap around her face. She crossed the
landing to the handrail and then rushed urgently down the steps.
She shot a cold glance at Xander and said, “Andrew left this morning. Dawn went after him. Are they in danger?”
“I’m afraid it’s rather desperate,” Rachel said. “You are…?”
The girl extended a hand to Rachel. “Maya.”
Giles made a startled noise. Wobbly though he was, he sprung from his chair and managed to pull Rachel behind him.
“What in Heaven’s name is he doing here?” Giles shouted, gesturing with his shriveled hand to the figure at the top of the
stairs.
Rachel knew who he was. Even before he spoke, she knew. Thellian. A vampire. The vampire.
Rachel noticed two things at once. First, she saw how Xander, Willow, and Maya involuntarily angled themselves to face
Thellian as he glided down the stairs to join them, moving the way plants always do when facing a source of light. Rachel
struggled to focus, but found the task difficult in Thellian’s presence. Second, she noticed the three wooden crates in the
entry hall: one open, one splintered to kindling, one sealed and silent and waiting.
Thellian rounded the banister and joined them.
“Ah, Rupert,” he said, his voice inviting like the strains of violins warming up for a symphony. “Welcome home. You’re just
in time.”
Dawn could not recall the specific details of the doctor’s face, nor could she frame the exact corridor of the hospital in
which she might find him. At the same time, she knew it didn’t matter. This was negative space, not detail. She could feel
around the subject in the dark, calling it to focus in her mind, until second by agonizing second, she had the vague idea of
form.
As Dawn drew, the white tiles grew translucent, like frosted glass. She exerted her will, channeling it into her fingers, into
the blood, and found the medium surprisingly yielding to her efforts. Soon she felt herself fully absorbed, her fingers darting
and shaping, adding perspective, adding texture, until soon the outline of a stark hallway emerged. Into the hallway she
painted gurneys, a nurse’s station, a pair of undefined figures in the background, running to open a pair of double doors the
size of slabs.
Speculation soon transformed to fact, and Dawn knew what she saw was real. The connection in her mind sent a shock like
lightning down her spine. She funneled energy to her fingertips, feeling for the doctor’s shape in the foreground. Behind her
eyes, she felt an odd twinge, a resistance, exactly like when the poles of two magnets repel each other. Dawn knew that
feeling –the doctor was resisting her contact. In spite of herself, she laughed. She’d found him.
Dawn hazarded a glance at Andrew. His eyes were closed, and he was dreaming. Dawn lifted his fingers to her lips again,
quickly, breathing in the living scent of him. With a grim smile, she returned to her work.
The doctor attended to Giles’s first, and then Buffy. Dawn recalled the slickness of his oiled black hair. She committed it to
her drawing. She recalled his glasses - Buddy Holly horn-rims. Dawn drew the rumpled lab coat, the name tag above the
pocket slightly askew: Doctor Chapman, M. D. S.
At that remembrance, Dawn felt a swooning sensation, like the ground shifting. She bore past it. She added more detail – the
doctor’s patchy black beard, his long, straight nose, his sympathetic yet stern blue eyes. She drew the clipboard tucked
under his arm.
Sounds flooded her mind now. Footfalls padded by thick-soled orthopedic shoes. A loudspeaker calling indistinctly. People
shouting, crying, begging. The light grew brighter around her, an ice-white halogen radiance. Her nose filled with the scents
of ozone, urine, astringent, blood.
When the tingling began in her fingertips, she knew it was close. She stooped to grip Andrew’s arm with her left hand as she
continued to press her connection with the doctor.
In a reeling instant, her perspective shifted. She saw through his point of view - jogging down the corridor, dodging aside to
allow a gurney and a swarm of doctors and nurses pass him. Part of a song swirled in his head, repeating over and over –And
it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time. As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and
409...
Yet he resisted her contact. She felt his agitation. She felt his distraction. She felt the headache pinching behind his brows.
He paused at the nurse’s station, took off his glasses, massaged his eyes.
A young black nurse hurriedly passed him another chart and said, “It’s a mad night, Kelly. Best strap in.”
Dawn heard him say, “Seems this whole damned town’s gone flipping acorns. Dr. Wallace is here already?”
“That’s right.”
Dawn sensed the time to push.
“Please let this work,” she prayed. And then, she stepped forward.
She felt something like tearing thick, wet cardboard. In the next moment, they crossed from Clapham Junction to Parkside
Memorial. She stumbled, feeling like the earth lurched beneath her. The doctor turned, bound for the ER, but unexpectedly
found Dawn in his path, with Andrew curled at her feet, an extraordinary amount of blood caked into the sleeve of his
sweatshirt.
The doctor nearly tripped over them. He gasped, incredulous. “How the hell did you get here?” he exclaimed.
In her relief, or perhaps because of the strain of her efforts, Dawn sank to her knees. She held her bloody palms up for the
doctor to see, as if they provided an explanation.
Recognition lit up the doctor’s eyes. “I know you,” he said, helping her to her feet. “I remember your sister.” Then he had
his arm around her, guiding her to the desk, where he called for assistance.
“It’s all right,” he soothed her. “You’ve done best, bringing him in. We’ll take it from here…”
After that, things grew hazy and confused. Nurses lifted Andrew onto a gurney, and he’d screamed so loud it brought fresh
tears to Dawn’s eyes. She tried to hang on to him. She tried to keep up, but they bustled her aside in their haste to help him.
In the end, she stood aching and alone in the corridor, his blood on her hands.
Even then, Dawn knew the truth.
“I’m the Key. Always the Key,” she whispered, understanding. “I know what I have to do.”
 |
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 |
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 |
 |
And It Came To Me Then
That Every Plan Is A Tiny Prayer
To Father Time
As I Stared At My Shoes
In The ICU
That Reeked Of Piss And 409
And I Rationed My Breathes
As I Said To Myself
That I'd Already Taken
Too Much Today
As Each Descending Peak
Of The LCD
Took You A Little Farther
Away From Me
Away From Me
Amongst The Vending Machines
And Year-old Magazines
In A Place Where We Only Say Goodbye
It Stung Like A Violent Wind
That Our Memories Depend
On A Faulty Camera
In Our Minds
But I Knew That You Were A Truth
I Would Rather Lose Than To Have
Never Lain Beside At All
And I Looked Around At All The Eyes
On The Ground
As The Tv Entertained Itself
'cause There's No Comfort In The
Waiting Room
Just Nervous Pacers
Bracing For Bad News
And Then The Nurse Comes Round An
d Everyone Will Lift Their Heads
But I'm Thinking Of What Sarah Said
That "love Is Watching Someone Die"
So Who's Going To Watch You Die?..
What Sarah Said
Death Cab for Cutie
That Every Plan Is A Tiny Prayer
To Father Time
As I Stared At My Shoes
In The ICU
That Reeked Of Piss And 409
And I Rationed My Breathes
As I Said To Myself
That I'd Already Taken
Too Much Today
As Each Descending Peak
Of The LCD
Took You A Little Farther
Away From Me
Away From Me
Amongst The Vending Machines
And Year-old Magazines
In A Place Where We Only Say Goodbye
It Stung Like A Violent Wind
That Our Memories Depend
On A Faulty Camera
In Our Minds
But I Knew That You Were A Truth
I Would Rather Lose Than To Have
Never Lain Beside At All
And I Looked Around At All The Eyes
On The Ground
As The Tv Entertained Itself
'cause There's No Comfort In The
Waiting Room
Just Nervous Pacers
Bracing For Bad News
And Then The Nurse Comes Round An
d Everyone Will Lift Their Heads
But I'm Thinking Of What Sarah Said
That "love Is Watching Someone Die"
So Who's Going To Watch You Die?..
What Sarah Said
Death Cab for Cutie
.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Time Is Running Out
Primal
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Time Is Running Out
Primal