Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns Buffy, not me.
AN: Experimenting with a Hemingway-esque style of writing. So the run-ons are supposed to be like that. Plus, it's my first stab at present tense in a fic.
AN2: All song lyrics are from "Ben Franklin's Kite" by Something Corporate. I suggest you download the song, and listen to it while reading. Sets a nice mood.
part two
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Give me an answer
Why this cancer eats me away
How this restlessness
Could turn into a day.
I fear what comes first
The things that hide in the night
But I'm quaking, and shaking
Even now that it's light
- - - - - -
Patrolling had been...confusing. Confusing in little gestures she made, and the way she was concerned when a vamp kicked him into the tombstone and something cracked. The way she ran her fingers over his ribs to check for broken bones, like she wished his shirt wasn't there to separate them from his skin.
The darkness of the room eats at him like a cancer of the heart. When she was here, it was so bright. She was effervescent. Not at all like she was last year-last year he sucked the light out of her.
"Great love is wild and passionate. It burns and consumes."
"Until there's nothing left. Love that like doesn't exist."
His love almost destroyed them both. So why was it still there? Why does he still feel it? Shadows cast by the moonlight dance across the basement floor, and he feels so dead yet so alive. Maybe it wasn't the soul that confused him, maybe it was her.
He wants to rip these chains off the wall and run into the ocean. He wants to feel wind in his hair, and air in his dead lungs. He yearns to be something other than dead.
But he knows that she's the reason he's so human already-another confusing thought. And even after everything that happened last year...
"I'm gonna make you feel it-"
...he still wants to hold her and be with her and love her and have her love him back. But the soul tells him he's foolish, and the demon tells him too...but every cell in his body still sings for her. So which is the truth?
- - - - - -
And maybe you'll find me
On another lonely street
By the smell of summer,
after she rains
Maybe you'll loose me
All together in her heat
Let this humid air
Take away my pain
- - - - - -
She knows he's awake, chained to the wall in his cot, contemplating the shadows on the floor and the meaning of life. And there she is, awake, sitting with her knees pulled to her chest, contemplating the shadows on the floor and finding it impossible to drag her thoughts away from him. Away from how she cares for him so, and how she doesn't think she could go on breathing if something else happened to him. It was too hard when The First and its rotten Turok-Han had him. So then why did she act like she has feelings for principal Wood? Sitting there, on that couch with Spike, telling him how she wasn't ready for him not to be there...seeing his face when she had no answer as to how the principal fit in...she knows now that she can never have a normal life, with the principal or anyone else. She can only have the life she chooses for herself.
She knows what she has to do, and it scares her to death.
She slips out of bed and heads for the basement--like moth to flame, only without the burning. Each step brings a new thought to mind.
Does he still love me?
Is he thinking about me right now?
Is that wrong, if he is?
He tried to hurt me last year.
But why can't I let him go?
Now she's at the basement door, hand inches from the doorknob.
Do I love him?
Her hand drops to her side.
Do I love him?
The promise of spring blows through the crack in the kitchen window, and she thinks she does. Suddenly the door's open, and she's headed down the stairs.
He lifts his head, like he's not surprised to see her standing before him, clad in a tank top and yummy sushi pajama pants.
She steps forward, and unlocks the cuffs around his wrists so he can stand too. And now he's looking at her with wonder and love, with their hands touching each other's faces inches apart. Suddenly, he's not confused anymore and neither is she.
"I'm falling in love with you," she whispers against his lips before she takes them with her own. When he returns the kiss, she thinks she could cry because she's so happy. Then she realizes she already is, and so is he. And she thinks she's been so stupid, for wasting so much time not loving him, and tells him so. But he hushes her with his lips, telling her that time has no meaning when it comes to love. Another kiss tells her he's right. There is only love.
THE END
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(Ok, so I suck at endings. But maybe it's better that way.)