---
The Protecting Veil
---
--- Part Four: The Demon in the Arbors ---
The rain sprinkled lightly against the leaded glass, throwing beaded, graying patterns on the floorboards. Buffy watched them as she sat alone in a silent corner of Saint Christopher's library.
She pressed her hand against the glass, and gazed down through the grey light that spilled over her splayed fingers. It played across her face—across the pale skin, and across the hairline scar running down her cheek. The small scar on her lip, curving up in a crescent. The ones that slid under her shirt, raking down her shoulder and collarbone like claws.
It played on the hazel eyes and the dark brown hair spilling in strands over them and down her shoulders.
The summer rain settled in over the vineyard outside, and in the pale, plutonian glow, she could see the swells of the hills in the distance. She could see the gathering vines, growing over their arbors, and the fruit trees in cultivated rows. She could see the hundreds of little concrete and clapboard structures outside Saint Christopher's walls, densely packed together with their narrow streets. It was some of the only new construction she had seen in her long journeys. They crowded around for protection and livelihood, like moss on a great old tree.
She could see the river, out in the distance, with mist rising off and into the darkening sky.
And she could Spike, far below her, sitting on the edge of a veranda, rain soaking his clothes as he stared into the arbors. Looking at him there, unchanging, still and quiet with the great well of silence he had discovered, she felt a wave of heart breaking warmth for him move over her again.
She could never understand it. How it had happened. Something cold, something strong and stubborn had broken in her when she saw that drawing of him, for the first time, so long ago in that snowy courtyard. Something about his persistence—his determination. The sincerity of his heart—these things—found in him—the enemy, the one who used to kill... these things, they were a guide to her. As long as she had him to come back to, she could go anywhere. She could be the Slayer. Be Herself.
Below her, he reached out, crouching, to stroke the wet grass. He never gave up. She found herself relying on that more and more as the years went on, and as they fell into a deep friendship of unexpected tenderness. It was simple, quiet sort of comfort that she found in him. Because he knew. He really knew, who she was. She could rely on him to hold her to that knowledge, to bind her to a world that needed her—that had come, against all odds, to need him most of all.
The soft rain blew against the window glass with a rattling music, and she rested her cheek against it, the coolness working into the skin there slowly. He was looking out, and she couldn't understand what he was seeing, save that it was the Light. The thing that he called Dawn. And the cold realization sunk over her again. She needed him, she knew it now.
But he didn't need her.
Not anymore. He had other resources, and the old desperation had fallen out of his love for her. She didn't know why it filled her with such cold sadness, such a sense of isolation as she watched him commune with a force she could not love or know.
—
Rain fell softly down his brow, and soaked through his clothes as he crouched in the grass.
The arbors were empty, and it was quiet. He could sense her, here. After days among the humans, in the crowds of the stone building, he'd missed the communion with her he could have in the silence.
And so he came out, in the growing dark and the rain, where no one would go. And he touched the ground, traced the patterns he saw there.
"I saw it," he said to her, "The notebook... saw it. Right and proper, like you said..."
But there was something about it that unsettled him. It was the same, without question. But the book in the dream had been covered in dirt and blood.
—
"He's changed."
Tara's voice was soft beside her. Buffy hadn't heard her approach. She didn't turn, but just looked out at him as she responded.
"We've all changed..."
Tara perched on the soft cushions of the window seat. They could hear the quiet whispers and footfalls of women through the bookshelves. She followed Buffy's gaze down to where he sat, hand out in the grass. Tara could see where the Key-Light played there, through his fingers, and wondered what it would be like to be so united with another Self—another consciousness. The demon diffused with pure Life. She couldn't fathom it, even after all the years she had studied.
It shouldn't be possible, and yet she now knew that the impossible was more a matter of mindset than actuality.
—
The air was full of the sound of rain, and the mist of it in the darkness. He brushed his hands against the damp grasses, and it tickled against his palms.
In a soft, organic rustling, the grass twisted up, as if it were aware, and wrapped around his fingers, twined there with them gently.
It was then that the sunbeam fell across them, softly and gentle as a whisper. The grass came alive with the jade colors of the morning light, and it washed over him in warm brilliance.
And when he looked up into it, he saw her, smiling and radiant, walking barefoot towards him, through the archways of the arbors.
—
Tara had watched Buffy trail away in thought. And so Buffy surprised her, then, by looking up at her intensely, staring into her face with a sudden directness.
"You look the same... are you immortal now?" she asked.
"It's different than it was before..." Tara whispered, as if it were difficult to speak of, "Things—they've become... more subjective, Buffy. Time's moving in a sort of broken circle, now. It's lapsing. I think I'm lapsing with it."
"What do you mean...?"
"I mean I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to be alive. I wouldn't be, I know it, if things had gone the way they were supposed to... The whole world is stuck in the day that Dawn—"
She broke off there, paused and rephrased.
"--That everything happened. Time's passing, but it's lost that linear reality... we're in an unstable world, Buffy. Dangerous. Full of very powerful magic. Anything can happen."
She reached over, touched Buffy's arm. Something cold fell over her face.
"And I can feel it... I can feel it coming for me. One of these days, that reprieve will end, and end fast. I'm not immortal, Buffy, no... I'm not immortal at all. I'm just waiting for the form it'll come in, someday..."
And a sharp noise of approaching feet made both their heads turn in that instant. A small, teenaged girl popped around a corner at full speed.
"Tara!" she called out, "Where did you say that the—"
The girl stopped, and looked at Buffy with dark brown eyes. They darted to Tara questioningly.
"It's ok, Mei, this is my friend, Buffy. She's been a few days with us, and will be staying a while..."
Buffy stared at her, the girl stared back.
After a moment of terse silence, Buffy turned to look out the window again.
—
She walked, the sunlight trailing in lazy patches through the arbor lattices. Leaves trailed in her hair and scattered on the ground behind her like a train. There were bells ringing somewhere in the distance, echoing brightly through the air.
When she offered her hand to him, it was trailing in blood. It stained the torn fabric of her purple, lace-edged dress. But she was smiling in a way that belied the sight. There was a dazzling glow around her like the saints in his childhood lessons. Sparrows played in the fruit trees around her.
When he took her hand, it was solid and warm, and she helped him up. And as he stood, he found they were in the Magic Box. Her notebook was open on the table. Giles' glasses sat next to the ledger. The training room door was open, and soft light poured in from it.
"Why are we here...?"
"You'll always come back here," she said softly. The glory was gone from her, and she was a girl again, in a hoodie sweatshirt and blue jeans. All was normal, so normal he had to cling to the memory that this was not as it appeared. That she wasn't a teenage girl anymore, that these floorboards and walls—these familiar smells, were only a part of their shared memory. Her eyes were too wise for her body. It was hard to take in, and she looked almost like she felt sorry for him.
He reached over to the table, picked up the notebook. It was soiled with mud and heavy blood spatters.
"What is this?"
She walked to the window, and threw open the blind. The light fell softly over them both.
"It's important..."
"Gathered that... what's it meant to tell us?"
"Where you're going. What you are. How you'll choose. That she'll fall three times, before the end..."
—
"Hey—" the girl said, leaning over the window, "That's a vampire out there..."
Buffy broke in then.
"How did you know he was a—"
"Why do we have a vampire?"
"That's Spike," Tara said softly, reaching out to touch the girl's hair. The girl looked like she could barely tolerate the touch, "He's a friend, too..."
"A friend?"
Tara smiled an affectionate smile.
"Yes, that's right." " But he kills people?"
The girl leaned over Buffy, trying to get a better view. Buffy shrank from the press of the girl's arm.
And suddenly, Mei pushed against the glass, throwing her weight forward. She was filled with a sudden, distant recognition of him, from the past. He'd been there.
Mei remembered him, the quiet, solitary figure below, from long in her past, from the mists of early, childhood memory.
But she'd never forget that night.
And he'd dragged the severed arm back from the mountain for proof. They'd nailed the trophy over the doorway.
"No—well, not anymore..." Tara said softly.
"But he used to..." Mei whispered, confused, "He used to, right? I mean... before?"
Buffy started up, walking briskly away through the stacks.
"We all used to do a lot of things before," she called back shortly.
The girl hardly seemed to hear, and darted out in the other direction, leaving Tara sitting alone.
—
Dawn walked back to him, touched Spike's arm. She left a bloody imprint there, though her hands appeared dry. The sound of wood shattering filled the air, and the stomping of feet on hollow boards. He could hear someone crying out in pain.
But the room remained empty, and still. The sound of a heavy blow striking flesh, and breaking bone snapping like ice. The crash of something falling heavy and hard echoed around them like some lingering ghost of the past or future.
Dawn turned to the window. The light was waning orange.
"Look," she whispered quietly, "The sun's starting to go down..."
—
--- Part Four: The Demon in the Arbors ---
The rain sprinkled lightly against the leaded glass, throwing beaded, graying patterns on the floorboards. Buffy watched them as she sat alone in a silent corner of Saint Christopher's library.
She pressed her hand against the glass, and gazed down through the grey light that spilled over her splayed fingers. It played across her face—across the pale skin, and across the hairline scar running down her cheek. The small scar on her lip, curving up in a crescent. The ones that slid under her shirt, raking down her shoulder and collarbone like claws.
It played on the hazel eyes and the dark brown hair spilling in strands over them and down her shoulders.
The summer rain settled in over the vineyard outside, and in the pale, plutonian glow, she could see the swells of the hills in the distance. She could see the gathering vines, growing over their arbors, and the fruit trees in cultivated rows. She could see the hundreds of little concrete and clapboard structures outside Saint Christopher's walls, densely packed together with their narrow streets. It was some of the only new construction she had seen in her long journeys. They crowded around for protection and livelihood, like moss on a great old tree.
She could see the river, out in the distance, with mist rising off and into the darkening sky.
And she could Spike, far below her, sitting on the edge of a veranda, rain soaking his clothes as he stared into the arbors. Looking at him there, unchanging, still and quiet with the great well of silence he had discovered, she felt a wave of heart breaking warmth for him move over her again.
She could never understand it. How it had happened. Something cold, something strong and stubborn had broken in her when she saw that drawing of him, for the first time, so long ago in that snowy courtyard. Something about his persistence—his determination. The sincerity of his heart—these things—found in him—the enemy, the one who used to kill... these things, they were a guide to her. As long as she had him to come back to, she could go anywhere. She could be the Slayer. Be Herself.
Below her, he reached out, crouching, to stroke the wet grass. He never gave up. She found herself relying on that more and more as the years went on, and as they fell into a deep friendship of unexpected tenderness. It was simple, quiet sort of comfort that she found in him. Because he knew. He really knew, who she was. She could rely on him to hold her to that knowledge, to bind her to a world that needed her—that had come, against all odds, to need him most of all.
The soft rain blew against the window glass with a rattling music, and she rested her cheek against it, the coolness working into the skin there slowly. He was looking out, and she couldn't understand what he was seeing, save that it was the Light. The thing that he called Dawn. And the cold realization sunk over her again. She needed him, she knew it now.
But he didn't need her.
Not anymore. He had other resources, and the old desperation had fallen out of his love for her. She didn't know why it filled her with such cold sadness, such a sense of isolation as she watched him commune with a force she could not love or know.
—
Rain fell softly down his brow, and soaked through his clothes as he crouched in the grass.
The arbors were empty, and it was quiet. He could sense her, here. After days among the humans, in the crowds of the stone building, he'd missed the communion with her he could have in the silence.
And so he came out, in the growing dark and the rain, where no one would go. And he touched the ground, traced the patterns he saw there.
"I saw it," he said to her, "The notebook... saw it. Right and proper, like you said..."
But there was something about it that unsettled him. It was the same, without question. But the book in the dream had been covered in dirt and blood.
—
"He's changed."
Tara's voice was soft beside her. Buffy hadn't heard her approach. She didn't turn, but just looked out at him as she responded.
"We've all changed..."
Tara perched on the soft cushions of the window seat. They could hear the quiet whispers and footfalls of women through the bookshelves. She followed Buffy's gaze down to where he sat, hand out in the grass. Tara could see where the Key-Light played there, through his fingers, and wondered what it would be like to be so united with another Self—another consciousness. The demon diffused with pure Life. She couldn't fathom it, even after all the years she had studied.
It shouldn't be possible, and yet she now knew that the impossible was more a matter of mindset than actuality.
—
The air was full of the sound of rain, and the mist of it in the darkness. He brushed his hands against the damp grasses, and it tickled against his palms.
In a soft, organic rustling, the grass twisted up, as if it were aware, and wrapped around his fingers, twined there with them gently.
It was then that the sunbeam fell across them, softly and gentle as a whisper. The grass came alive with the jade colors of the morning light, and it washed over him in warm brilliance.
And when he looked up into it, he saw her, smiling and radiant, walking barefoot towards him, through the archways of the arbors.
—
Tara had watched Buffy trail away in thought. And so Buffy surprised her, then, by looking up at her intensely, staring into her face with a sudden directness.
"You look the same... are you immortal now?" she asked.
"It's different than it was before..." Tara whispered, as if it were difficult to speak of, "Things—they've become... more subjective, Buffy. Time's moving in a sort of broken circle, now. It's lapsing. I think I'm lapsing with it."
"What do you mean...?"
"I mean I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to be alive. I wouldn't be, I know it, if things had gone the way they were supposed to... The whole world is stuck in the day that Dawn—"
She broke off there, paused and rephrased.
"--That everything happened. Time's passing, but it's lost that linear reality... we're in an unstable world, Buffy. Dangerous. Full of very powerful magic. Anything can happen."
She reached over, touched Buffy's arm. Something cold fell over her face.
"And I can feel it... I can feel it coming for me. One of these days, that reprieve will end, and end fast. I'm not immortal, Buffy, no... I'm not immortal at all. I'm just waiting for the form it'll come in, someday..."
And a sharp noise of approaching feet made both their heads turn in that instant. A small, teenaged girl popped around a corner at full speed.
"Tara!" she called out, "Where did you say that the—"
The girl stopped, and looked at Buffy with dark brown eyes. They darted to Tara questioningly.
"It's ok, Mei, this is my friend, Buffy. She's been a few days with us, and will be staying a while..."
Buffy stared at her, the girl stared back.
After a moment of terse silence, Buffy turned to look out the window again.
—
She walked, the sunlight trailing in lazy patches through the arbor lattices. Leaves trailed in her hair and scattered on the ground behind her like a train. There were bells ringing somewhere in the distance, echoing brightly through the air.
When she offered her hand to him, it was trailing in blood. It stained the torn fabric of her purple, lace-edged dress. But she was smiling in a way that belied the sight. There was a dazzling glow around her like the saints in his childhood lessons. Sparrows played in the fruit trees around her.
When he took her hand, it was solid and warm, and she helped him up. And as he stood, he found they were in the Magic Box. Her notebook was open on the table. Giles' glasses sat next to the ledger. The training room door was open, and soft light poured in from it.
"Why are we here...?"
"You'll always come back here," she said softly. The glory was gone from her, and she was a girl again, in a hoodie sweatshirt and blue jeans. All was normal, so normal he had to cling to the memory that this was not as it appeared. That she wasn't a teenage girl anymore, that these floorboards and walls—these familiar smells, were only a part of their shared memory. Her eyes were too wise for her body. It was hard to take in, and she looked almost like she felt sorry for him.
He reached over to the table, picked up the notebook. It was soiled with mud and heavy blood spatters.
"What is this?"
She walked to the window, and threw open the blind. The light fell softly over them both.
"It's important..."
"Gathered that... what's it meant to tell us?"
"Where you're going. What you are. How you'll choose. That she'll fall three times, before the end..."
—
"Hey—" the girl said, leaning over the window, "That's a vampire out there..."
Buffy broke in then.
"How did you know he was a—"
"Why do we have a vampire?"
"That's Spike," Tara said softly, reaching out to touch the girl's hair. The girl looked like she could barely tolerate the touch, "He's a friend, too..."
"A friend?"
Tara smiled an affectionate smile.
"Yes, that's right." " But he kills people?"
The girl leaned over Buffy, trying to get a better view. Buffy shrank from the press of the girl's arm.
And suddenly, Mei pushed against the glass, throwing her weight forward. She was filled with a sudden, distant recognition of him, from the past. He'd been there.
Mei remembered him, the quiet, solitary figure below, from long in her past, from the mists of early, childhood memory.
But she'd never forget that night.
And he'd dragged the severed arm back from the mountain for proof. They'd nailed the trophy over the doorway.
"No—well, not anymore..." Tara said softly.
"But he used to..." Mei whispered, confused, "He used to, right? I mean... before?"
Buffy started up, walking briskly away through the stacks.
"We all used to do a lot of things before," she called back shortly.
The girl hardly seemed to hear, and darted out in the other direction, leaving Tara sitting alone.
—
Dawn walked back to him, touched Spike's arm. She left a bloody imprint there, though her hands appeared dry. The sound of wood shattering filled the air, and the stomping of feet on hollow boards. He could hear someone crying out in pain.
But the room remained empty, and still. The sound of a heavy blow striking flesh, and breaking bone snapping like ice. The crash of something falling heavy and hard echoed around them like some lingering ghost of the past or future.
Dawn turned to the window. The light was waning orange.
"Look," she whispered quietly, "The sun's starting to go down..."
—