Chapter 24 - Dreams, Wishes, and A Litany of Hope
I'm dreaming. I know that, yet I can't remember anything else. I know that this is not living, but I have no memory of life. I feel like I'm floating in an endless sea. I'm aware of faces. Many faces, but three of them predominate. One, gives me pain. That face is trying to drown me, trying to destroy me. The details on that face aren't too clear, just the eyes. They're grey, pale grey, and filled with hatred, and glazed with pleasure at my pain. I'm drowning in the pain, and my safety, my deliverance lines in the other two.
One of those faces, is a child. A child growing to womanhood, but a child nonetheless. Chestnut hair, and blue, blue eyes. Heart-shaped face, filled with love, love for me. The simple fact of it is clear in those eyes, as clear as the hate in the grey eyes. She's smiling at me, not speaking, just watching me, just loving me, and the pain is lessened by her presence.
The other face is that of a woman. This face is the easiest for me to see, the one that remains in my mind almost constantly. Unlike the others, this face has a body. A body that causes my body to respond in ways that I know it shouldn't.
Her hair is blonde, her eyes seeming to vary between golden brown and olive green depending on her mood and her expression.
The expressions on that face are so many. She looks on me with love, and she looks on me with hate. The two emotions shift over her face, apparently at random. I see everything in those eyes, love, fear, hate, desire, longing, pain. Her pain is my pain. Her joy is mine too. Looking at her face is to know myself, to see everything that I am, and it's not a picture I want to see. It's joy and it's agony to see, but I can't tear my eyes away. The grey eyes are gradually being banished by hers, her body making me aware of the body that I know is mine, even if it doesn't make itself apparent except in its reaction to hers.
I know I've caused her pain. I know this, and it hurts, like a knife deep in my gut, yet when the pain is at its worst, I see her joy, and I know that somehow, I'm responsible for that too. It lessens the pain, makes it bearable. My feelings for her are .. inappropriate. I want to take her, to make love to her, but I know that I'm so far beneath her that to think of her like that, to defile her with my thoughts, it makes me an animal.
Even when my thoughts are at their basest, as I imagine, as if from memory, how her body responds to mine, she smiles at me. It's a sign of my depravity that I can actually imagine her smiling, enjoying .. things which she could never ..
Then the child returns. Younger this time, a babe in arms, in the arms of her mother, the golden woman, and she's looking at me with love, and I know this dream must be a lie. I could never deserve such love, such joy as to be part of their lives. I'm evil, I've done such dreadful things, but to imagine her like that, is depravity to outmatch everything else. She's an .. angel, to be worshipped, to be adored. To touch her .. is heaven and hell wrapped together. To know that someone touched her, to make her a mother, knowing that it could never be me, undeserving as I am, is pain again, but this time, the grey eyes are back, and they're smiling.
The face of my pain is complete now. She's taunting me, telling me that she'll never be mine, never belong to me. She's with child, but someone else's, someone deserving, someone who's not beneath her, someone who's not me.
*-*-*
The business of fighting evil continues around me. It's strange. I'm the Slayer, it's been my job to be at the centre of that fight for almost as long as I can remember, yet right now, it isn't part of my consciousness.
The only things that are part of my life right now are the man I'm holding, and the child within me. I can't bear not to touch him. It's as if it's the only way I'm sure he's back again. The time without him has been a nightmare which is still hovering in the background, because I'm not certain it's over yet.
He's here, his physical body is here, but that's all, for now. Jacob's words, telling me that his brain might have been destroyed, chilled me to the bone. The thought that the beautiful body in my arms may no longer harbour the man I love fills me with dread.
Unbidden, memories come to mind. They're mixed. The happiest are recent, and they're of the time we had together before he was taken. It's funny, if I'd had to guess the feeling I'd have had immediately before and after Dawn's leaving, happy isn't the word I'd have used. But that period seems to be the only one that truly qualifies.
Other memories are happy, of course they are. Childhood memories of mom, and dad before they split up, special occasions, they were happy, but it now seems that they were incomplete. It's only when Spike was there, loving me, with me allowing him to love me, loving him, that makes the happiness complete.
Sadness comes to mind too. The other times I felt my heart would break. When Dad left. When Mom died. When we lost Dawn. When Angel told me he was leaving. They're memories that no longer cause my heart to constrict, no longer leave me with dread, because I know I survived.
The possibility of losing Spike, that, I know I won't survive. I don't mean I'm going to die if he does, it doesn't work that way. Anyway, with the child I'm carrying, I won't allow it to happen. But, even if my body goes on, if my friends still see me daily, some part of me will die without Spike. It's as obviously true to me as my belief that I will die without oxygen.
I shake my head, trying to dispel the unpleasant thoughts. I force my mind to thoughts of our child. Our Dawn, our Zara. Somehow, she has been able to reach Spike in his dreams. I know she did before, and I think she's been visiting him while he was gone. I'm begging her in my mind, to visit him now, to talk to him, to make him understand how much he's loved and needed. Maybe she can show him the way home.
I don't know how it works. I mean, dream visits from a child in the womb? Not something I'd have taken seriously before, but somehow, I know it's true. It's not just that I've had them too, it's more that I know, or have some inkling now of Dawn's purpose, the purpose that Zara has to grow to fulfil.
Hard as it was coping with the knowledge that my sister was the Key, that she was wanted by a vicious Hellgod, and later, that someone or something was trying to kill her to prevent her fulfilling her purpose, it's harder still knowing that she's my child, mine and Spike's.
I resolve, yet again, to keep her safe. To make sure that she grows to become an adult, beyond the years of her being the Key. She deserves the chance to taste everything that life can offer, the bitter and the sweet, to live to see her children and grandchildren grown. And I'll fight with everything that I am to make sure she can. Except, .. except how can I without Spike?
I keep in my mind the fact that he's had blood. It healed me from an otherwise fatal demon attack, it'll heal his mind, bring him back. I've got to believe that.
His hair is so soft. I stroke it gently. I've never seen it so dark at the roots before, and it's only ever curly like this after a night spent together, sleeping and satisfying that ever-present ache for one another. It seems somehow wrong that it should be like this now, when I need him so much, in every way.
Even these thoughts, along with the proximity of his body are enough to start the heat rising within me. I push it away, that automatic response to him, but it's been so long, and it resists. It resists right up until my mind goes back to the beginning of the loop that it's in. What if he never wakes up? What if Spike is gone, leaving only the body I'm holding? The chill of such thoughts kills the other feelings so completely, that it seems they'll never be rekindled.
Dawn, Zara, talk to him. Lead him home to us, lead him home. My litany resumes, and I try to concentrate on it, to push all other thoughts from my mind, as the business of destroying evil continues around me.
*-*-*
The round of faces continues. Others appear, but their tenure is short, as if they're unimportant. There's a dark woman, with long, red-painted fingernails that move in front of her face, as if weaving a spell. There's a man, equally dark, his eyes filled with menace, and .. evil.
But then they're gone, and it's back to the others. The grey-eyed one is looking irritated now, as if things are no longer going her way. The child is pushing her out of they way, silencing her, telling me without words that she's wrong, that the vision that hovers in my mind, the golden woman and the child, is my future if only I grasp it.
The doubts remain, a long-held belief (from where?) that I could never be a father, the regret of that, something I hid deep inside of me, painful. But the vision doesn't recede, it's still there, and the child is repeating, as if to someone who doesn't understand the language, that it's mine if I wish it.
If I wish it. How could I not? To be part of that, to belong to a family, it's so much more than I deserve. That thought brings back the grey eyes, with a glint of triumph, and I feel the little confidence I'd built up recede, only to feel the blue eyes on me again, chiding me for stepping backwards. They're disapproving, but only insofar as a doting parent disapproves of an unwise choice made by a loved child. Now that's odd. How could a child look at me like that? I'm old. I don't know how old, it's just a feeling I have, a feeling of age without the accompanying wisdom. If the wisdom was there, perhaps I could sort out fact from fiction among my dreams.
The child is pointing to the vision again, to the woman who I know I love more than life itself, even if I can't think of her name. She's smiling at me, beckoning me to look at the child at her breast, to share the wonder of that new life. I feel that if I could just reach out, touch her, I would know if it was real, or a cruel mirage. I stretch my hands towards her, but it's a vision, insubstantial, something I can't reach.
Yet, as I look, the image is alternately fading and becoming clearer, and I realise it's doing so in time to my belief. It's as if, if only I believe in that vision, it can be mine, and there's nothing I could desire more.
Grey eyes return, looking concerned, as if she knows I've solved the puzzle, and a new barrage of sights assault me. I'm in a bathroom, and the golden woman is on the floor, pulling her robe around her defensively, looking at me with pain, .. and the vision recedes, becoming the faintest of shadows, as I'm once again reminded that I'm evil, filthy, obscene, a travesty of a man who could never father a child, could never deserve a love such as hers.
This is the most emotional chapter I've written in a while, and for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing, I hope it works. It's more or less a background chapter for the next one which will be back to moving the story forwards again.
Thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far, your comments are always welcome. And, any comments on this one are welcome too ….. (-:
