Time Explains Us by Erykah Miszti
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Chapter Seven: It's Almost Like
The nebulous masses of energy were comin' up, so the party was getting started….
Xxxxxx
Buffy groaned and lifted herself off the ground. Even with Slayer powers hitting the ground after jumping off a moving train was still damn painful.
As the immediate jolts of pain wore off she remembered William and began to look around for him. He was nowhere in sight and panic rose in her throat. What if he didn't make it off the train? What if he didn't survive the jump? What if he was lying somewhere in pain?
"Okay, Buffy." She told herself out loud. "Calm down. He'll have made it."
A sudden burst of laughter cut through her pep talk. She followed the sound.
The first she saw of him was a vague shape lying in the long grass by the trackside. He was on his back... and laughing.
"William!" She exclaimed and ran over, dropping to her knees as she reached him. "Are you okay?"
William lay there with his head back and his eyes closed, laughing like a mad man. Buffy's frown grew deeper. Great, huge laughs racked his body as he lay there.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" She demanded desperately, touching his shoulder to get his attention.
He opened his eyes and looked up at her, a huge grin lighting up his face and making him look very young. Another laugh bubbled up from him.
"Did that really happen?" He asked her, moving onto his side and resting on his elbow to face her. "The vampires and the demons…" Another laugh. "Jumping off a train!" He dropped onto his back again, laughing wildly.
"Yep." Buffy replied with a trace of a smile despite herself. "That REALLY did happen." His laughter was infectious.
He exhaled deeply to steady himself but was unable to hold back as he started laughing again. Buffy's smile grew wider as she watched him. He was adorable when he laughed. She'd never seen Spike laugh like this… she stopped that thought dead in its tracks, her good humour died with it.
William raised himself onto his elbow and looked at her again. He met her eyes and Buffy couldn't look away. His eyes burned with intensity, wild with delight and something that made a shiver of fear crawl along her spine.
"I've never done anything like that before..." He stated incredulously.
"Welcome to my world." Buffy replied sadly.
"No," He cut in, his voice showing his amazement. "That was... the way..." He struggled with his words, obviously fighting to steady himself. "I've always deplored violence as vile and vulgar... but that... you..." He took her hand and looked deeply into her eyes. Buffy was transfixed. "You were poetry… without a single word... and yet an infinite wealth of... of... it was almost like... almost like…"
He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes for a moment and then opening them wide. Fire and lights burnt in the blue depths and she was sure she could see all the way to his soul in that moment. Her breath caught in her throat.
"It was almost like dancing." He breathed.
Buffy's world crashed down on her. Then he pounced, grabbed her shoulders, moving even closer till he was only a hairs breadth away from her face. "Teach me." He demanded softly. "I want to dance like that." His pause was an eternity. "Please, teach me to dance." He whispered.
For a long time, or it could have been seconds, they were the only two people in the world. Then his words sank into Buffy's consciousness. For a split second she was almost tempted but something in his eyes stopped her
"No!" She exclaimed and backed up as fast as could. She scrambled to her feet and turned her back on him. "No. Absolutely not!"
She heard him scramble to his feet behind her.
"Why not?! I could help you fight these horrors." The wonder and delight were still there in his voice.
Buffy spun to face him.
"No." She stated but hard expression softened as she saw his crestfallen look. "William," She began, reaching out to touch his arm to make sure she had his attention. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and cut him off just as he looked about to say something more. "It's not a thing of beauty. You were right first time. Violence IS disgusting and evil. There's nothing wonderful in it, William. It's death and emptiness… it's not passion." She touched his face tenderly. "I don't do it through choice. I do it because I have to… because there's nothing else for me to do. But you… you have a choice."
"What if Angelus takes my choice away?" He stunned her by asking. "If you can't beat him and I cannot fight him… will I then still have a choice? Or will I be like them…? A monster?"
"That's not going to happen." Not this time, she added under her breath. "We're going to stay away from him."
"If we were to take the fight to him next time… confront him, fight together, we could…" She could see the delight in his eyes at the thought of a fight.
"No!" She exclaimed instinctively, then realised she'd said it too harshly. "No." She said again softly. "We are not going to fight Angelus... or Drusilla or Darla."
"We're going to keep running away?" His shoulders slumped. "What happens when he catches up with us? You said yourself that he'll follow us to the ends of the Earth…"
"We aren't going to fight him again." She insisted, unwilling and unable to explain to him what today had brought home to her, what she now understood without a doubt. If she fought Angelus again she'd have to kill him to protect William. She couldn't risk William's innocent life and yet she couldn't kill Angelus… that it would be killing Angel too. She couldn't kill Angel again… not even for William. She loved him. The future was a better place with Angel in it.
Buffy hardened her heart and her expression.
"This conversation is over."
She forced herself to look away, to look along the railway tracks in both directions… anywhere but at him. There was nothing for miles in either direction. Beyond the tracks were lush green fields stretching to the horizon.
"Now, we have to get out of here before they back up that train and come for us. It looks like we have some serious walking to do."
With that she started off for the fence that marked the division between the railway and the field. William stayed where he was for a long moment, watching he go. He sighed and followed her.
Xxxxxx
The minutes turned into hours and the morning turned into a warm and sunny afternoon. Buffy and William walked in silence across the seemingly endless fields. They were never more than a metre apart but they didn't say a word to each other. They were lost in their own thoughts.
William thought about his parents and the surreal idea that he would never be seeing them ever again. That was as strange a thought as the sun not rising in the morning. He pushed it aside for the moment. He would grieve later. For now, he needed to get to his sister to make sure that she was alright.
His thoughts drifted off to the girl walking beside him. She was very strange. There was something about her that didn't make sense. Perhaps it was her mannerisms, the odd way she had of speaking. He had put these things down to her being American, a native of the Wild West. Undoubtedly life on the Frontier would make a person tougher, or so he assumed. He'd never even been out of England before. But he read a lot. Sadly, his entire knowledge of the American Frontier came from the penny dreadfuls, which he would never admit out loud to having read at all. He wanted to ask Miss Buffy about her life in America. Ask if it was as full of adventure as it seemed. If the past few days in her company were anything to go by, he suspected that her life is very exciting indeed.
Watching her fight those demons had had a profound affect on him. In his mind, he could see her spinning and twirling, her movements spare and yet devastating to their enemies. She was like a force of nature and when she hauled the curtain open and allowed the light into the carriage it had seemed to set her hair aflame. It had transformed her into a golden goddess of purity before his eyes. She had shimmered with power and brilliance. She was truly effulgent. How could he had been fooled by Cecily's minor beauty and apparent brilliance. He had not seen true brilliance until he had beheld Miss Buffy's glow.
It was all having a very odd effect on his brain... and other parts. He wanted her, which in itself was a strange experience for him. He had liked young ladies before. He had fantasised about kissing and caressing young ladies, removing their clothes and touching parts of them that they did not allow the world to see. He'd felt the quickening in his blood and the embarrassing hardening of his flesh when they were in room. This was different though. The blaze of poetic passion that he thought he'd felt before was nothing to sensations this woman inspired in him. It was an inferno. He wanted to be enveloped by her so completely that he would cease to exist as a separate entity. He wanted to be one with this magnificent creature. He wanted to absorb her into himself. He wanted to be effulgent too.
And yet..
A thought stole into his mind as if from nowhere and he absently touched the bandage on his throat, tracing the wounds beneath. He was pulled back to the train carriage and a mist descended on him. Drusilla. That was her name. Ripe and wicked… like a sweet, rich plum. She called to him too. She was like the darkness itself. Enveloping him, moving with honeyed purpose through the pathways of his brain. Here in the darkness was a brilliant light. She shone with power, not the same power that Buffy embodied, no, this was something else altogether. His heartbeat was loud in his chest. He could feel his blood pumping. The bright day shrank away from him. He could feel her lips on his, tempting him. Power. Strength. She too was effulgent. She had held up a puzzle piece before his eyes. A piece that he knew instinctively could complete him. He just had to reach out and take it.
"You walk in worlds the others can't even imagine." She'd told him. "Do you want it?"
Yes, she had looked deep inside him and seen his soul. She knew him. He wanted her. He wanted to wrap himself in her dark warmth. Find that glistening heart. Taste the power she was offering.
No.
He stopped himself, not realising that he had also stopped walking.
She was a vampire. She was an evil creature. Hers was a false promise. He'd have to die to get that power. That wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't. He wanted the pure, clean power that Buffy had. She was truth and light. He wanted a sunshine princess, not a dark goddess. Buffy was goodness personified. She was on a mission of good and right. He wanted to be good and right too.
"What's wrong?" Buffy asked, snapping him out of his inner battle. "Is it your parents?" She continued softly.
"Yes." He replied. It was surprisingly easy to lie but he hated doing it. "They died because I'm weak and couldn't protect them."
"No." Buffy stated flatly. "That's not why they died. They died because…" Buffy paused.
She couldn't tell William why they'd really died. Mortimer had told her in-depth of the family's involvement with the Watcher's Council. William's father was a trained sorcerer and his mother was a witch. More than that Warren Castlemaine was a stubborn man who wouldn't have been afraid of vampires on principle. They had probably miscalculated the threat and gone home assuming that they could fight the vampires. They hadn't known who was pitted against them.
The fault lay with Buffy. She had never mentioned the name Angelus to them. In her favour was the fact that she hadn't known that she could trust them with the truth. It was also her fault that she had saved William from Drusilla. This was a chain reaction. Saving one innocent life had so far cost two lives. She hoped that it would not cost any more.
The fault also lay with Giles, who'd never told her that William the Bloody was from a Watcher's family. In Giles' favour was the fact that he probably did not know. The Watcher's were hardly likely to publicise such a disgrace through the generations.
Of course, ultimately, the fault lay with Angelus and his bloodlust. Buffy could find nothing in his favour, except that Angel was now serving his penance in the future. It was the worst feeling of all. She knew that she couldn't kill him now because of all the lives that depended on him in the future. It felt as if the deaths now were a tax that was being paid against a future promise of wealth. That was too much of a moral quagmire for her to cope with, so she had to put it aside in her mind.
"I'm sorry. " She said finally. "I don't know why they died. I don't understand why these things happen." She admitted honestly.
William smiled sadly and nodded slightly in agreement. He didn't understand either. He then did a very odd thing. He reached out and took her hand.
Buffy looked down at her hand clasped in William's. The gesture was strange… comforting. She looked up and met William's eyes. They were so warm, so trusting. Then there was that spark. The fire… the bit that reminded her of Spike… the something that scared her and brought back so many memories.
She was well aware that Spike was her nemesis. He was the one vampire she'd never been able to beat concisely. She'd never been able to take the final plunge and kill him. She missed those physical battles that had been replaced mostly by verbal ones. He was so much her equal in the "dance". She missed that.
"You want to learn to fight?" She heard herself say out loud.
"To fight like you do?" He asked incredulously. "But you said that…"
"I know what I said." She replied. "I didn't want to teach you. Violence isn't a good thing, William, but sometimes, in this world, we all have to fight to save what we believe in. It's only if it consumes you that you're in trouble." She smiled. "I think you can handle it."
"You trust me?" He asked, frowning. "Why? You hardly know me."
"I think you have potential." She smiled broadly. "Come on… let's get ready to rumble…"
"Excuse me?! Let's get ready to what..?"
"Fight, William. Fight."