Music of the Spheres
By: Aurorarose13
If you sit still enough, listen intently enough, you'll hear it. Don't move, breathe, think, sigh, or you'll lose the sound. Try your hardest not to exist, and the melody will come to you in waves as surely as the ocean lapping at the shoreline. Believe, and the Music of the Spheres will penetrate your soul.
That's something I picked up from Xander once.
I remember the night he told me about it. It was the night before he left with Anya for New York. I'd been itching to say goodbye, but I couldn't figure out quite how to do that after close to five years of friendship. It wasn't like this was just a vacation of some sort. No, they were leaving for good, and how was I supposed to cope with that? I guess, looking back on it, it wasn't the end all, be all of either of our existences, but it was a huge deal at the time. This was the closing of our nightly cahoots. No more patrolling together. No more of those longing glances Xander would occasionally (though by that time rarely) throw at me. With Xander gone, most of the vital life of the Scoobies would leave with him.
But I tried not to think about it when he showed up at my door with a bouquet of flowers for Dawn and me. He smiled the usual Xander smile as though nothing was going to happen the next day. "M'ladies," he said, bowing his head and offering the flowers. As I placed them in a vase then gathered my gear, Xand chatted with Dawnie for a bit. I heard bits of conversation, snippets of sentences at any given time. "No, New York will be great…" "Sure, you can visit…" and the heart-wrenching, "Of course I'll miss you…" Standard phrases, yet so out of place.
Finally, once I had finished all that I needed to, Xander looked expectantly at me and we bid goodnight to my sister. Outside seemed even more foreign than the living room. I was in my front yard with one of my best friends, and yet I felt so alone. Xander may as well have already left, for I felt a dark absence by my side that may very well never again be filled by him. "Patrolling?" he asked, glancing over at me.
Looking back at him with a smug air, I retort, "What else does a Slayer do?"
"I can tell you what she should do," Xand smirked.
"And that would be…"
The devilish grin widened, and I could tell with my Slayer Sense what was coming. "Me, naturally."
I sighed heavily, but it was a happy sort of weariness. "How many times do we have to go through with this, Xander? You're too good for the likes of little old me."
"This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I'm married to Anya, does it? Because if it does, I can assure you that Anya is very, very, very open to sharing. Did I mention the word 'very?'"
"Oh, I'll just bet she is…" I trailed off. This was the game we'd played for many years. The ridiculous bantering back and forth. All this nonsense about sex between us. I'd mentioned it to Willow once, and she had the gall to bring up some garbage about UST—unresolved sexual tension. I'd read the fics; I knew perfectly well what she was shamelessly insinuating. I tossed that out with yesterday's trash.
Xander stopped me as the cemetery loomed over us. His gaze was overwhelming, almost too strong for me to handle at that moment. "Why are you suddenly so quiet, Buffster?"
"Huh?" I asked through my jumble of thoughts. Deep in my own subconscious, I had nearly forgotten Xander was with me, and I had fallen into complete silence.
"We'll be fine."
"Come again," I ordered in my typical confused voice.
He slowed to rest on Principal Snyder's headstone. "You're worried about Anya and I moving to the Big Apple, aren't you?" Trying not to appear surprised, I casually shrugged my shoulders. "Don't hand me that indifferent shrug crap; I can see right through you, Miss Summers. You think you'll never see us again." I sat quietly, staring off at an old mausoleum worn by acid rain and fierce Californian pollution. I pretended not to hear what he was saying… Because I didn't want to hear it. "Yes, there'll be some worms—"
At last I burst from my silence, blurting out what I feared most. "It's not the worms I'm worried about, Xander! It's the undead worms."
It was his turn to look bewildered. "Undead worms? Never heard of those before. Do they have fangs, too? How about furrowing brows to look all mean and scary?" Xander's voice dropped an octave, and he waved his hands menacingly before me.
"Don't be such a jerk," I snapped, punching him in the arm, which in turn knocked him ass-over-elbow onto the grass.
Standing up and rolling his shoulders to act tough, Xander smiled at me again. He resumed his seat on the tombstone, tossing his soft hair back and staring up to the heavens. With a slight wave of his hand, he motioned me over to the seat next to him. "Come here, Buffy. I want to share something with you that I haven't even shared with Wills."
"If you've shared it with Anya, I don't want it," I joked, sliding into position beside him.
He dismissed my comment immediately—much to my great surprise—while his gaze never wavered from the starlit sky. "Hear that?" he questioned, breathing so lightly I could barely see his chest move. I couldn't hear a single thing, not even his heartbeat. I shook my head, finally, after minutes of straining. "Of course not," Xander laughed, "and you won't until you believe."
"Hear what, and believe what? I don't understand." I threw my stake up in defeat.
"The Music of the Spheres, Buffy. It's so beautiful. When you hear it, it's like listening to another person's soul. And if you concentrate on that person and nothing else, you can be in tune with her soul. You can be one entity at the same time. You can wallow her darkest moments or delight in her perfect flaws. You can love her from afar and feel true happiness while doing it." Xander seemed so convinced about this Music of the Spheres. Back and forth he swayed to the distant, unreachable song that only he seemed to hear.
I still had no clue what the hell he was talking about. "I still have no clue what the hell you are talking about."
All at once, the chain of notes had been severed, and Xander's head whipped around to catch my eyes. For the briefest of nanoseconds, I heard a breath-taking song, but it faded instantaneously with nothing to remain but a curious memory in my head. "Someone once told me about this theory called the Music of the Spheres. Apparently, some grody old scientist of back in the day hypothesized that the universe is made of harmonic scales or something, and when the planets spin they make a sound like a finger tracing the rim of a glass. It's so delicate and spectacular that supposedly only God was meant to hear it.
"But I've been taught something else, something that allows me to hear that Music where ever I am at night." His eyes burned within mine, and I found I could not look away even if I had wanted to. I wanted to hear this Music. "You have to believe in the sound. You have to trust without a doubt that it exists, or you will never know the magnificence of the Music."
"Xander, I must warn you: you're starting to sound like something from Andrew Lloyd Weber or something."
Xander's gaze grew dark, as though it cut him deeply that I had dismissed him so quickly. "Buffy, this is important. I don't want to lose…" He paused as he obviously fumbled for the correct words. "…what we have. I don't want to fade from your life or your memory…" I almost cried. Xander was as scared as I was about his moving.
To allay his apprehension as well as my own, I asserted, "I could never forget you for all that anyone had to offer me."
But Xander kept rambling. "But I will. With this distance, it won't be long before another Scooby is recruited, who'll take my place in the workings of things." I wanted to protest, but I couldn't; my mouth wouldn't work anymore. "And you'll be here on the Hellmouth thinking I've long since been gobbled up by New York. We'll talk less and less until the fateful day that will mark our last phone call. We'll say goodbye one evening and not know it's permanent. And we'll always hover by the phone and say, 'Today's the day I'll call.' But neither of us will because of the stupid pride that tells us the other person dialing at that very moment. Our faith in each other will be gone—our faith that keeps us informed that neither of us would ever pick up and go and forget so quickly.
"That's what the Music of the Spheres is all about, Buffy, not some kiddy fairytale or nicety to smooth over the cruelness of life. It's about believing in something so blindly that we'll do anything to hear it again, even dare to hope. We need that faith that'll we'll always come back for each other. Without that, we're already dead."
He paused, his eyes calmly washing over me. I basked in the enlightening stare until he broke it with a hearty bellow of laughter. "Boy, what the hell did I take today?" Xander inquired, feeling his head for lumps. "That thoroughly wigged me out." Impulsively, I hugged him, squeezing him as close to my body as I could. "Ca…n't breth!" The sound like helium being released from a balloon encompassed the pair of us as Xander inhaled and exhaled slowly.
"Sorry," I blushed.
Once Xander had captured his breath, I stopped and listened for that Music. My ears began to burn, I ached so hard to hear it. I stared and stared and stared at the stars, begging with all of me to be granted one minute of the song. It was then I remembered that Xander had said to imagine another person and try to tune in to his soul. I envisioned his adorably obnoxious face on the black canvas above me, and eventually the white fragments of diamonds connected into a very rough image of Xander. With each speck that added further detail, another note, fragile and humming, would pile on top of the next. When I completed my image, a slow song murmured in my head, sweeping in a great arch. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard. It was as though the deft hand of God had crafted every single note to be extraordinary. I gasped at the first crescendo, and Xander instantly knew I had tapped into the Music.
Abruptly, I ducked and rolled off the gray stone, spun around and shot back up again, staking a gruesome vamp and startling my companion. "Everything waits to show itself until you're ready EXCEPT vampires," I mumbled rather bitterly. And Xander beamed proudly at me.
That's been the last smile we've shared. The next day, we drove Anya and Xander to the airport, shared hugs and kisses and farewells, then came home to a disturbingly quiet Magic Box.
Xander calls me every weekend now, more often if something big is happening in his life or Anya's. That will never be enough for me though, but he insists that it has to be. At the end of every single phone call, he says, "Keep on listening to the Music, Buff. The song is there, and so am I."
So here in my empty windowsill, legs dangling out the side, I sit every night and listen faithfully for that melody that brings Xander home to my heart.