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The clock had stopped. For all she tried, it kept stopping. You had to remember to wind it everyday. She kept forgetting. Not on purpose, although sometimes, deep in the dark blanket of night, she was tempted to crush it. To smash its glass face, to tear off the hands and fling them far away. Still she wound it. When she remembered.

There had been a time, she thought when she'd carefully wound the clock up every night. Almost religiously. It must have been a long time ago. A lifetime or two. Possibly longer. She had gradually found other things to use her zeal on.

She saw her face in the mirror on the duchess as she put the clock down. The blur of white and brown that was all she could see without her glasses. The movement caught her eye, but she looked away quickly.

That action, its very automatic nature made her pause, and realise how long it had been since she'd looked in a mirror. Since she'd actually looked at herself. A glance at the steamed-over glass after a shower, a flick of the eyes at the duchess to see if her clotheswere straight.

All this to avoid the truth. The pallor, worse than that of simply spending every daylight hour working. The greyness under her eyes, not only from sleepless nights. The hollowness around her bones, from more than erratic meals, meals forgotten or, more and more frequently, avoided for lack of appetite or hunger.

Worst, she realised, and most of all the reason for her avoiding her own gaze in the mirror, her eyes. Deep, deep in her eyes there was a growing absence. And emptiness. It was hard enough, impossibly hard, heartbreakingly hard, to feel yourself dying by inches. To see, in the windows of your soul your very spirit laying down the fight, to know that somewhere behind your consciousness, that you had already given up was infinitely more terrifying.

So she avoided her own gaze, and used her sight along with all her energy on more important things. On her work. Even with that single driving passion, there were things she simply couldn't ignore. If her own smile and laugh seemed forced much of the time, then her daughter's was only slightly less so. Rahne couldn't help but see the changes in her, she knew. If there was any way she could have hidden the changes, she had tried it. Wearing long baggy lab coat, and glasses hid much, but she could feel the changes, and she would never assume that she could fool her daughter for long.

Rahne was too sensitive, in all kinds of ways, to miss the clues that gave away the strength of the disease's hold. She'd never been one to moan about life not being fair, but the look on Rahne's face, reflected the computer screen when she had worked all night again brought her closer than ever before. Yet she must bury that reaction, as she buried the blankness at the back of her eyes, and turn cheerfully to greet the smiling face of her daughter, both hiding pain behind masks. Rahne, while skilful at it was not nearly as good as her mother, with her decades of pain pushed ruthlessly out of the way of her diamond-hard will.

Still avoiding her own gaze, she pulled her shirt over her head, and tossed it towards the corner with the basket. She stepped to the side, and turned away, so even the reflected movement couldn't catch her eye. Unhooking the back of her bra, she noticed that it was nearly too loose. Another hook in tomorrow, and tighten up the straps. She seemed to be doing that a lot. Using a tighter belt-hole, tightening her watch-band. Avoiding thinking about it took her through the last of getting undressed and pulling the enormous nightgown over herself.

One of the worst things, of a multitude of circumstances which seemed to struggle every day to be the worst, was the kindness. Everyone seemed to be almost excruciatingly nice to her. She would never admit it to anyone aloud, but there were times she missed the Wisdom's presence. She missed the daily fights, the fights she could win. It seemed that now the only fights she fought were the ones that she was gradually losing, piece by precious piece.

She went over to the window, to close the curtains shutting out the invasive moonlight, and later the sunshine to allow herself those extra prized moments of sleep before her body rejected the sleep which never seemed to gain her any energy. For a second, before twitching the cloth folds into place, she gazed out over her home. The harsh edges from storms and nature gentled and smoothed by moonlight and failing night sight. In one shocking second, she realised that without going anywhere she felt homesick. That same moment brought her the calm inner conviction she'd been hiding even from herself to the front of her mind. She wasn't going to lose to the disease that was slowly taking her life away. She would win. With that quiet, unassuming, fleeting wisdom which seemed to well up from time to time, she knew that she was dying. Before she died, she would win. She would not, could not, allow any other person, any mother, any child, any loved-one die of this greedy disease. She would win.

With a flick of her wrists she pulled the curtains into place. In the familiar darkness she unhesitatingly made her way to her bed. She crawled in, tugging the heavy blankets around herself, and almost unconsciously hugging a pillow to her chest. Curled up on her side, she lay, inviting sleep in, listening to the gentle ticking of the newly-wound clock slicing up the silent nighttime seconds.

The End.

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