poi s'ascose nel fuoco che gli affina (The In a Dark Wood Remix)
verity
Written for Remux... Redux 8: Magic Eight Ball. You can read the original fic, "Sometimes the Truth is Worse," at her DW journal - carlyinrome [dot] dreamwidth [dot] org [slash] 12017 [dot] html
Parcae midwifed this fic patiently, providing all the Dante quotes and plenty of advice. Thanks, my dear.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Ché la diritta via era smarrita.
(Dante, Inferno)
When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.
(tr. Longfellow)
They've lost their quarry, and they could walk forever. Off the face of the earth. Into the mouth of hell.
Faith. Murderer, bad rep, sorta redeemed, good with knives. You know. The Dark Slayer? That's me.
(I look to my right. B's slowing down, getting tired. We got a few hours 'til sunrise, though. I want to keep on.)
I don't have to tell you about Buffy. B. You know who she is.
(Faith, let's go, she's saying now.)
We used to be two sides to the same coin, but that kinda doesn't work anymore, seeing as how there's so many of us. More like chosen couple hundred. Don't know the numbers. We're not so up on things like that anymore, B and I.
(Just a little further.)
B's kind of a loner. Me, I just tag along.
Paris seems like as good a place to get drunk as any. I hunt down some absinthe. B thinks that painting in the D'Orsay should be some kinda Nancy Reagan PSA, but the truth is that drunk's not pretty no matter how you try to dress it up. I'm not looking for Tinkerbell at the bottom of my glass, that's all I'm saying.
B looks skeptical and mildly disapproving when she opens the door, which is about what I expect. She doesn't even appreciate the fancy spoons I brought as a peace offering, even thought what B likes most is usually expensive tourist shit that she mails back to her sis every time she moves. Over her protests, I pour the absinthe over the sugar cubes she stashes in the pantry. She makes a face when she tastes it. It's kinda cute.
When we drink the world turns into a fuckin' snowglobe.
I used to be the wild one, but things change. Now I'm the slayer who spends her spare time getting trashed so I don't think about the old days and that whole redemption thing I'm supposed to working on, and B's the one who stays out all night and spends a lot of time polishing her weapons.
Even Angel had a team.
(Forest's getting thicker around us, has been for the last hour. Wonder if it's just luring us farther and farther in so it can swallow us up.)
Doesn't hurt anymore, when I dream about Wilkins, and I don't dream much anyway, at least not about him. He's dead and he was bad but he was good to me. Angel's a different kind of dead, the kind where it'll never feel real and the moments when I think he's out there will never go away. I like to imagine him watching over me, sometimes.
Usually after that, I help myself to a round of Jack or two.
(I pause for a moment, stretch my legs, wait a minute for B to catch up. Hungry. Even the forest in Beauty and the Beast had a fuckin' castle, I remember that part of the movie.)
Drinking's not gonna bring him back, I know. And it's not gonna make it hurt less.
(Good spread at that castle. The singing and dancing plates, though, they lost me.)
Don't want it to stop hurting, though. Don't want to feel alive in a world without him in it.
Guess that's one more thing B and I have in common.
B likes to pretend she is somewhere else (with someone else) when we fuck. That's all right. It's never gonna be equal between us, and I don't pretend otherwise. I pull her hair back from her throat, kiss her there. Trace her collar bones after I've dragged her top down her shoulders. Her eyes are open and fixed on the ceiling while I touch her. She never looks at me, even when she gasps with pleasure.
B, I say later, B, tell me about heaven.
She always gets huffy with me, when I ask her this. Used to ask her all the time, just whenever I was thinking about it. You'll find out later, she said sometimes, darkly. Doesn't say much, now, and I don't ask so much, either. Don't think I'm gonna pry it from her, after all this time, if it's something she holds so precious. I just want to know, where's she gonna be?
Because I sure as hell ain't headed there.
Angel got me like nobody else ever has, because he knew how ugly and hateful I felt inside. He'd been to hell, and I wanted to go there. Seemed easier, to die fast and die pretty.
Angel never did anything easy. So I've been trying, real hard, in case he's watching.
(It's getting lighter, a little bit; can see the sky above the trees, not just mess of branches and leaves and stars above us. Can't see B. She's still a ways off, behind me.)
We never did figure out just what happened in LA. Don't think B cares. He's dead, that's all, and gone longer, and that's enough for her. But I wonder about it a lot. Wonder if he stayed on the right path. Or if he got his shanshu and is off living in a little cottage somewhere pretending this was all just a dream.
(She'll catch up. I keep going.)
This is what I tell myself, when I think about that: if it's ugly and hard, it's probably the truth.
(I can see the leaves now, overhead.)
But maybe I just want to think that he'd never have left like that if he loved us. No.
If he loved me.
(And I can see the path in front of me.)
We're spread out all over the bed in a green haze, with our loose limbs and our wild hair. It's just like this, B says, with a sad little smile.
I smile back, same smile.
Poor B.
In the beginning – the second beginning, the one that matters – I used to get mad at B, for thinking her great love mattered more, for thinking that what passed between me and Angel was nothing. But I got over it, see.
(Faith, she's calling, but I can't see her. I have to keep going. Can you hear me, Faith?)
No matter how many of us there are, she's always gonna be the Chosen One, the first one, the best one. All of her fuckups are gonna be glossed away by the gentle hand of history.
(It keeps getting brighter and brighter.)
But all of my good moments are gonna be choices. And everything that happened, with me and Angel, that only belongs to me.
(Faith? B says, but it's hard for me to hear her now. Don't leave me.)
She doesn't need to give me her blessing.
(I can see where the light is coming from now.)
I have mine.
(Just a little further.)
The title, in English: "then he plunged into the fire that purifies"
(Dante, Purgatorio, XXVI)