Disclaimer: Paramount and Grub Street still own them.

A/N: This is slightly different from what I've attempted before, and I can only hope it works! It's just a snapshot in time. Everything in the first person is Niles, the third person Daphne.

Feedback would be extremely appreciated. Please R&R at the bottom of the page or send to

Interwoven Stories

By Elaine

I close the door behind me for the last time, Maris's voice reverberating through my head. I take one quick glance behind me, an involuntary shudder running through me.

Across town, she looks out, dusk falling plaintively like a child. And she jerks her head around, instinctively, searching for something unseen.

I drive everywhere; nowhere. I'm not going anywhere because I have nowhere to be, nowhere to go. And the feeling is strangely liberating, the first taste of freedom tripping off my tongue.

She hasn't moved: still standing against the railing, her knuckles turning white from the cold. The only sound is her own breath against the hum of the traffic below. And she likes this time: the witching hour when the city shifts and changes.

It's the light that beckons me in. And I walk around the patisserie barely aware that all the food I choose has everything to do with her and not Maris. A smile crosses my face, a private joke obscuring me from the rest of the world.

She closes the door behind her, her padded feet walking silently across the room. She picks up the throw and wraps it around herself: cashmere against cotton. There's no-one else around and the silence is liberating.

I look over at the food sitting like another person next to me and the immensity of what I am about to do causes my heart to race. And I'm scared. Scared she won't want to see me. Scared that there will be someone else there.

She's sitting in near total darkness, the only light from the television set casting its shadows across the walls. If you look close enough, you would think that she was waiting for something: for someone. But she knows that no-one looks that closely.

The car purrs as I pull into the driveway. I cast my eyes about, seeing nothing extraordinary. The food pulls at me, the metaphorical weight of what I am about to do weighing on me.

She senses him before he even enters the lift, and she turns her head slightly, one ear to the television, her eyes on the door. She knows it won't be long now.

I stand at her door, staring at the numbers until they blur. And I haven't made a move: no indication to tell her that I'm there.

She leans against the door: smiling. She knows he's there, but he has to move first. He has more to lose than her, and more to gain.

I raise my hand, and knock: once. The door opens instantly and I realize:

For she has been waiting, and I have been waiting: precisely there.