***

Slayer -

Just to let you know I'm leaving town. I would have stopped by in person but we'd just fight, and you wouldn't want to hear, and it's getting old.

Wish I could say it's been fun, but it hasn't. I won't go into the things you've done and said, they're not the real problem. That's just you.

The problem is what it's done to me. I was doing pretty well a year ago. I felt as if I was part of something that mattered. I was doing it for you, but at least I was doing it. And then when you were gone, I kept on, in your memory. And funny to say this, but I enjoyed it. Helping your pathetic friends, a couple of years ago I never would have cared. But it made me feel good, filled in the time, and I could tell myself you would have liked it, if you'd known.

Then you came back, and this, with us, started. And right away things went downhill.

I was hopeful, at first. I thought you had to feel something for me or you wouldn't be doing this, and eventually you'd admit it. But it just got worse and worse as time went on, and if you ever felt for me you never showed it.

And the good stuff I was doing before you died, and when you were gone - it felt as if there was no point doing any of it anymore. I couldn't tell myself that there was anything you'd like, if I did it. Because there was nothing about me you liked at all. Didn't seem to matter what I did. You didn't even see me.

I could feel myself starting to believe the things you called me. Felt like you were treating me like a thing because maybe that's all I was. Nothing I'd done made any difference to you. I could feel myself sliding back into the Big Bad because it just didn't seem to matter anymore, and you thought I was there already anyway. You still do.

But you know, been there, done that. The thing about being the Big Bad? It's dull. I was enjoying myself with your friends and Dawn last summer. What you want me to be, what you think I am, it's no fun at all.

It could have been a lot better than this. I thought we could be - whatever. Something we aren't, anyway. Friends. Working together. Not what you wanted though, was it.

It took me a long while to realise that you'd never think well of me. But I do get it now. Slow, but I get there. And as long as I'm around here, I'm going to feel you expecting me to set a foot wrong, expecting me to go bad. And the pressure's going to start to get to me, and one day ... who knows.

So I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but I can't be around you, because - who'd believe it - you're a bad influence. I don't want to go where I've been going since we started, where I'll keep going, as long as you're around to expect me to go that route.

So I'm going, I don't know, somewhere else. Where I can be someone else.

All the best. Say goodbye to your sister for me. Sorry it didn't work out.