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Rating:  PG-13
She Is Always My Girl
The room was dark and the air barely moved.  It was another hot St. Louis night.  I watched her walk around the now empty room.  She had been through so much, ghoul attacks, psychotic witches posing as shifters, at least two council visits, and quite a few attempts on her life.  She was tired and it showed.  There were circles under her eyes so dark they looked like bruises.
I ached for her.  I know that she didn't know that, but I knew it.  She was so strong, or at least that's the way she appeared to others.  I, for one, knew that she was still that lost and frightened eight-year-old little girl.  The little girl that still woke up at night crying for a mother that would never come for her.
	Her ritual for bed was the same for as long as I've known her.  A shower because she couldn't stand to get into bed on clean sheets if she herself wasn't clean.  Then she would don an over long tee shirt and comb her hair.  She didn't want to struggle with the knots and tangles of it when she got up.  She looked my way fondly and my heart melted.  She was feeling lonely and vulnerable again.  I couldn't say I blamed her.  If I'd had the same life I'd feel that way too.
She shuffled over to where I was sitting.  She stroked my head.  I relished her touch.  If I'd had a voice I would have told her as much.  If I'd had lungs I'd have been holding my breath.  As it was there was nothing I could do, nothing but be there for her, like I always was.
She lifted her hand off my head sighed harshly and walked over to her bed.  She put her gun in its usual spot in the headboard.  She pulled the cover back and sat lightly on the edge of the bed.  Her shoulders began to tremble, then to shake.  She was crying again.  I wanted to go to her, but I couldn't, she had to come to me.  That was the way our relationship worked.
I watched as the tears flowed freely down her face and the loud snuffles as she tried to be as quiet as she could.  She didn't like to let the others know that she had been crying.  She had often confessed to me that she was afraid of letting them down, but she didn't know how she would, just that it was an overwhelming fear of hers.  She confessed all of her deepest and darkest secrets to me and I never told any one, until now that is.
I watched helplessly as she cried.  She sounded like she was crying out bits of her heart.  It sounded as if it should hurt, and who knows maybe it did.  She pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her head between them.  I think she was hoping it would muffle the sounds of her cries.
I waited patiently as her cries subsided and became just the heavy breathing that said she had cried all she was going to tonight.  Again she came back to where I was.  She rested her hand on my rounded shoulder, her hand sliding down, stroking my arm.
Slowly we made our way to the bed.  Her soft footfalls the only sound in the room. Well besides the hum of the air conditioner.  I sat in the middle of the bed waiting, waiting for her.  She crawled in, cuddling up to me, and let out a long breath.  That I wished that I could echo, just so that she would know I enjoyed this time with her as much as she did.
Her voice was barely audible, but I could hear her.  I always heard her.  She is always my girl.  She was saying her prayers.  They weren't normal prayers.  She had adapted the serenity prayer to fit her lifestyle.  "God, grant me the speed to slay all the enemies trying to kill me, the power to protect those in my care, and the courage to shoot them if they cross me."  She gave me a small squeeze at the end of the prayer as if to say, "You're included in those I protect."  She didn't need to say it because I already knew it.
I knew it because she had cleaned me when I'd been hit with a spray of unholy fluid out of some zombie.  It had stunk to high heaven, but I'd never said a word.  I'd watched as some of my friends had been covered in the gore and fluid.  I'd watched as she had valiantly tried to save them.  I'd watched the tears gather in her eyes as she realized that she wouldn't be able to save us all.  And that was her biggest fear.  That she wouldn't be there when she was needed most.
We lay there in the silent room.  Her cuddling me and me wishing I could cuddle her right back.  I could feel her relax and knew that she had finally fallen asleep.  I hope that her demons didn't follow her into her safe haven of sleep.  I knew that occasionally that it did happen.   I stared out from behind tiny plastic button eyes and soft down stuffing.  I wished my girl a restful night's sleep.  She is always my girl.