Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in my posting—I've been travelling out of
state and only got my wits back together in time to bemoan the loss of ATS.
At least it went out with a bang—I couldn't be happier with the work
they've done on that show. So in the spirit of refusing to admit the
Buffyverse is over, here's chapter seven of my little take on that verse.
Hope you enjoy it—let me know what you think!
---The Protecting Veil---
--- Part Seven: Power ---
Crashing sounds of splintering wood and violence filled the night. But they were far away from this place—far away from the farm road cutting through the fields, away from the great house, away from the village clusters that were burning. The sounds were softened on the wind, distant, flowing out to the edges of the cornfields, where the overturned cart lay alone in the mud, with broken wheels.
Pulled out from the city by the hapless raiders, it had toppled and then been abandoned. Its cargo, stolen from the great convent on the hill, was scattered about, sorted through and discarded. Books lay open on the rain- soaked earth, stained pages rustling like the corn sheaves in the soft wind.
Footprints scattered all around, the only trace of those who had been here, who had broken through the chests. The mark of those who had snapped the locks with clumsy chisels—who had scattered through the arcane, magical draughts, and other, utilitarian cases of batteries and kerosene. An oil painting curled up against the corn, the canvas half free of its frame, and its brushstroke vision of sunlight playing on mountains stared up into the blackness of the sky.
Among the broken remnants, the memory of violence hung heavy and spectral. The smoke rose in the distance from fires, and the echoes of the crowds hung still in the air.
And on the edge of the road, half slumped into the tall stalks, a small, dark wood case lay splinted open on its hinges where it had been torn and forced open. And beside it, a small, green notebook lay sprawled in the earth, mud spattered over the cover and the edges of its pages. It lay silent in the soft breeze, resting where it had been flung carelessly. Its useless, indecipherable scribblings had been seized on, taken—misunderstood- - and then tossed aside for more valuable prizes.
---
When Buffy ran after him, out of the great convent door, through the fruit trees and arbors, it seemed surreal. Tinted on the edges with memories, clouded. It had been like this before. Their lives were entwined always with a remarkable, musical synchronicity.
He had chased her, when she had darted up from beside Anya's body, the unreality setting into dead panic. The others had watched her run, and he had bolted after, as he always had. But she slipped away from his grasp, out through the slowly swelling devastation of the Key, out into the slowly growing light. But morning hadn't come. The rain had slowed, and the light hadn't grown, and she had hardly noticed as she bolted through it all.
She wondered, sometimes, what had happened, after she had left them crowded around Anya. Giles, Xander... gone as completely as if they had fallen into another dimension. Just gone. Never to be seen again.
She should have stayed. She shouldn't have run. But it was a part of her nature—the part that pulled away from others. The Slayer walked alone. Always. It was a tentative dance—and she and Spike knew all the steps—he chased her and then she chased after. But it always turned in onto itself, and she would always run away again. The Slayer walked alone. It was part of what made her leave Spike's side, through these long years, only to come back when the woman in her softened again and they changed their places in the timid cycles.
She was chasing him now. He was caught up in it—the great swell of green light like a tide she couldn't see, rushing away from her and out into an ocean of unknowable things. And all that she could think was that he couldn't be lost—that she had to run after and aid him, hold him back before the edge of the world and know that if they could just preserve each other, that the world was not as lost as the darkness told.
They broke out into the village clusters of close pressing, tiny buildings. Their concrete walls rose around them like a church, and pressing crowds tried to push through the streets that could hardly hold two abreast.
And the street opened up into a tiny square, a juncture between this place and the roads that lead to farm fields beyond. It was choked with people, pressing on all sides, and she felt herself forced back and away from Spike in the throng. Spike stopped in place, a puzzled expression passing over him as he looked and forth. He'd lost the scent.
She pushed forward, straining by shoulders and arms, trying to reach him before she lost sight of him in the crowd. "Spike!"
He turned, and saw her drifting away. He lunged out and seized her wrist as she strained towards him, and they were not parted.
He pulled her forward and against his chest, but the intimacy of the gesture was lost to old familiarity and the immediate needs of the moment. They were jostled on their feet and pressed close to maintain balance. His hand slid down her wrist and his fingers entwined with hers. He looked down into her face, and spoke into her ear so she could hear him.
"There're too many—lost the trail."
She looked up into his eyes, and knew suddenly that this would be a long battle for him. He wouldn't give up until he had the book in his hands. And she knew she would be beside him through all of it, to watch his back. To make sure he wouldn't wash away in that green tide and become unknown to her again.
She squeezed his hand where she held it.
"Then we'd better keep looking," she said.
---
Tara stood uncomfortably in the chapel, the gothic arches tall overhead, her hands resting against the council table they had brought in long ago, when they cleared out the pews. The most powerful of the coven gathered here. She was allowed, sometimes to watch. But even through the twelve years, she was new to them in some ways.
Mei's guards cautiously stood around the barricaded door. They'd driven the insurgents out of this wing, and the growing silence told them the violence had moved elsewhere. Soon the crowds would calm again, and they could rebuild what they could of the balance of power here.
But it concerned her. The noise still carried, ghostlike, from outside. The smell of smoke seeped at the windows. The lights—the miscalculation. The mistake. Where they too quick to forget what had happened—to the world, to everyone? Would the world even want what they would offer, when technologies and governments met their grasp? Would they understand it at all or bat it away in confused anger?
Across the table, Mei stood with her people—her armed guards crowded around her. She pulled her hair back, the black strands spilling between her fingers as she worked them into a braid. Her hair tie had plastic, rainbow glittered balls attached to it. Pastel ribbons worked through the braids, soft and childish. Mei knotted them into place with a meditative quiet, a delicacy that reminded Tara how young the girl really was.
Then the girl reached down for her rifle.
It was an easy thing to forget.
Mei tossed another gun to one of her people, a tall, grave faced man at her right. The rest were preparing, who followed Mei everywhere and protected her-- their little Queen. The coven had decided—put the power to stop this in Mei's hand. But Tara wasn't sure it was right. It twisted in her gut. The girl turned and looked to Tara calmly, and seemed to know her thoughts. She spoke in gently resolute tones.
"We'll put it down. It'll be over, safely. Try not to worry."
She turned, and the group went out with her, trailing at her small ankles like a team of loyal dogs. The ribbons glittered as she moved, pulled tight in her hair.
"Try not to hurt them..." Tara spoke after them, uselessly.
---
They pushed through the crowd hand in hand, slowly and aimlessly wandering, taking in the faces and movements around them. An arm moved threateningly towards the back of Spike's skull, and vanished again with the strike of Buffy's elbow.
The world was violence—white noise. But it wasn't real to her. She felt like she was watching it from a distance, even as she twisted the attacker's arm back and sent him sprawling into the throng around them. Even as Spike threw a punch to a jaw that did the same. The world moved lethargic, like a reel filmed too fast. He shouldn't be able to throw that punch. He should collapse with the pain. And even before she asked him about it, even as she felt him tug her forward away from the man swinging at her with a makeshift torch, she knows what his answer will be.
She did it.
That's what he'd say. She did it—overpowered technology and flesh. Dawn did it, as Dawn does everything. And she found that this troubled her far more than his freedom. She believed in him more than the thing that drove him.
And these thoughts went suddenly dead as she tugged at his arm, pulling him to a standstill in the crowd. Someone ahead was screaming over the din, in a doorway, throwing herself to the ground.
"She--She's on me!" the woman cried out, falling to her knees, cheeks wet with tears. Her hands claws at her own cheeks.
"She's on me—oh God, she's here!"
As the pair passed, the woman lurched out and seized Spike's sleeve. Her voice came out deadly serious and terrified.
"She's... she's all over. She's in the owls... She speaks in the owls!"
Buffy squinted, touched his shoulder.
"Spike—"
She'd spotted something. The glint on the finger where it grasped, white knuckled, on Spike's sleeve.
She seized the woman's arm as she tried to back away through the doorway, pulled her hand up to eye's length. The woman stared into Buffy's eyes.
"She doesn't know you," she spat out, her tone sad and shaken.
The amethyst ring glittered there on her finger. Buffy pulled it off, and suddenly the woman started like a doll cut off its strings. Something over her face, and her face crumpled in confusion.
"Wait—" the woman whispered, confused, "Who are you...?"
Buffy responded by pushing in closer.
"I think you're going to want to tell me where you came by that," she said, calmly.
---
"Don't tell me you're starting up with that again, Ellie."
A small crowd had gathered in the corn sheaves, sorting through the leavings, out where it was safer, quieter. Ellie's brother picked up a book by its spine, the pages rustling in the air where he held them.
Ellie was crouched on the drying road mud. She reached into her pocket and pulled out three matches.
"I have to thank her," Ellie responded.
Her brother shrugged. He crouched down in the edge of the corn, and pulled out a box.
"She's a wood statue," he called back over his shoulder, rooting through the crate, "I don't know why you—oh these are only batteries. Mostly taken already, too."
Ellie struck a match and it flared bright against the night sky.
"She's not a statue," she said, somewhat exasperated from the long discussion that never seemed to really die between them, "It's just... it's like a symbol, Sam. She's... around though. She's real."
"Eh, she still looks like a statue to me," Sam responded, "I didn't take care of you all this time for you to just play with dolls."
Sam went down on his knees, pushing up the corn leaves. A glass bottle, broken, spilled a red, mystic dust on the ground. It wouldn't do, it was tainted. He needed something really special.
Ellie watched him, and her match sputtered out in the night. She took up the second and struck it awkwardly, trying to get it to catch even though it was damp. After a moment, it sparked with yellow flame.
She held it out to the wick of her little oil lamp, and the mud came alive with flickering light. It danced on the carved face of the painted, green girl, and she crouched down to watch it.
"Why are you picking on me, anyway— you know what you're trying won't work."
He pulled out some mud soiled texts. Spell books. But soaked through, dingy. No good.
"If I find something good enough, she will see me."
Ellie brushed her fingers against the flame. Behind them, others had started a campfire, and were talking, laughing, and singing-- waiting out the chaos out of harm's way. She looked into the wooden face of her goddess and hoped to find an answer there. She was worried about her brother. His desire for the woman had grown into something unhealthy.
"Even if she does—Sam you have to know... she won't love you... Not just for things. And... and all they care about where she is is who has control..."
Sam noticed the edge of a broken case, toppled on its side, and pulled it up. Empty. The lock was broken, and the hinges hung like broken bones.
"If she'd have me... if that happens, then it doesn't matter," he called back to her, reaching out with both arms, feeling beneath the obscuring corn stalks. And his hand hit something. A wired spine.
"Of course it matters! Sammy—you're worth more than—"
But he wasn't listening. The green runes moved past his eyes on the pages, and seemed almost to blur together, fast and fluttering like butterfly's wings. And in the ornate, spiraling patterns there were words in languages he did not know. The mud staining the edges didn't matter. It gleamed with its utter specialness.
And in among the pages, the drawings of flowers and characters unknown to him, a word jumped out, in clear, plain English. He stopped the page before it could turn, his hand running against the word as he read it aloud. The word rang back to him, chiming all around like bells.
"Power..."
And he knew he had his prize.
---
---The Protecting Veil---
--- Part Seven: Power ---
Crashing sounds of splintering wood and violence filled the night. But they were far away from this place—far away from the farm road cutting through the fields, away from the great house, away from the village clusters that were burning. The sounds were softened on the wind, distant, flowing out to the edges of the cornfields, where the overturned cart lay alone in the mud, with broken wheels.
Pulled out from the city by the hapless raiders, it had toppled and then been abandoned. Its cargo, stolen from the great convent on the hill, was scattered about, sorted through and discarded. Books lay open on the rain- soaked earth, stained pages rustling like the corn sheaves in the soft wind.
Footprints scattered all around, the only trace of those who had been here, who had broken through the chests. The mark of those who had snapped the locks with clumsy chisels—who had scattered through the arcane, magical draughts, and other, utilitarian cases of batteries and kerosene. An oil painting curled up against the corn, the canvas half free of its frame, and its brushstroke vision of sunlight playing on mountains stared up into the blackness of the sky.
Among the broken remnants, the memory of violence hung heavy and spectral. The smoke rose in the distance from fires, and the echoes of the crowds hung still in the air.
And on the edge of the road, half slumped into the tall stalks, a small, dark wood case lay splinted open on its hinges where it had been torn and forced open. And beside it, a small, green notebook lay sprawled in the earth, mud spattered over the cover and the edges of its pages. It lay silent in the soft breeze, resting where it had been flung carelessly. Its useless, indecipherable scribblings had been seized on, taken—misunderstood- - and then tossed aside for more valuable prizes.
---
When Buffy ran after him, out of the great convent door, through the fruit trees and arbors, it seemed surreal. Tinted on the edges with memories, clouded. It had been like this before. Their lives were entwined always with a remarkable, musical synchronicity.
He had chased her, when she had darted up from beside Anya's body, the unreality setting into dead panic. The others had watched her run, and he had bolted after, as he always had. But she slipped away from his grasp, out through the slowly swelling devastation of the Key, out into the slowly growing light. But morning hadn't come. The rain had slowed, and the light hadn't grown, and she had hardly noticed as she bolted through it all.
She wondered, sometimes, what had happened, after she had left them crowded around Anya. Giles, Xander... gone as completely as if they had fallen into another dimension. Just gone. Never to be seen again.
She should have stayed. She shouldn't have run. But it was a part of her nature—the part that pulled away from others. The Slayer walked alone. Always. It was a tentative dance—and she and Spike knew all the steps—he chased her and then she chased after. But it always turned in onto itself, and she would always run away again. The Slayer walked alone. It was part of what made her leave Spike's side, through these long years, only to come back when the woman in her softened again and they changed their places in the timid cycles.
She was chasing him now. He was caught up in it—the great swell of green light like a tide she couldn't see, rushing away from her and out into an ocean of unknowable things. And all that she could think was that he couldn't be lost—that she had to run after and aid him, hold him back before the edge of the world and know that if they could just preserve each other, that the world was not as lost as the darkness told.
They broke out into the village clusters of close pressing, tiny buildings. Their concrete walls rose around them like a church, and pressing crowds tried to push through the streets that could hardly hold two abreast.
And the street opened up into a tiny square, a juncture between this place and the roads that lead to farm fields beyond. It was choked with people, pressing on all sides, and she felt herself forced back and away from Spike in the throng. Spike stopped in place, a puzzled expression passing over him as he looked and forth. He'd lost the scent.
She pushed forward, straining by shoulders and arms, trying to reach him before she lost sight of him in the crowd. "Spike!"
He turned, and saw her drifting away. He lunged out and seized her wrist as she strained towards him, and they were not parted.
He pulled her forward and against his chest, but the intimacy of the gesture was lost to old familiarity and the immediate needs of the moment. They were jostled on their feet and pressed close to maintain balance. His hand slid down her wrist and his fingers entwined with hers. He looked down into her face, and spoke into her ear so she could hear him.
"There're too many—lost the trail."
She looked up into his eyes, and knew suddenly that this would be a long battle for him. He wouldn't give up until he had the book in his hands. And she knew she would be beside him through all of it, to watch his back. To make sure he wouldn't wash away in that green tide and become unknown to her again.
She squeezed his hand where she held it.
"Then we'd better keep looking," she said.
---
Tara stood uncomfortably in the chapel, the gothic arches tall overhead, her hands resting against the council table they had brought in long ago, when they cleared out the pews. The most powerful of the coven gathered here. She was allowed, sometimes to watch. But even through the twelve years, she was new to them in some ways.
Mei's guards cautiously stood around the barricaded door. They'd driven the insurgents out of this wing, and the growing silence told them the violence had moved elsewhere. Soon the crowds would calm again, and they could rebuild what they could of the balance of power here.
But it concerned her. The noise still carried, ghostlike, from outside. The smell of smoke seeped at the windows. The lights—the miscalculation. The mistake. Where they too quick to forget what had happened—to the world, to everyone? Would the world even want what they would offer, when technologies and governments met their grasp? Would they understand it at all or bat it away in confused anger?
Across the table, Mei stood with her people—her armed guards crowded around her. She pulled her hair back, the black strands spilling between her fingers as she worked them into a braid. Her hair tie had plastic, rainbow glittered balls attached to it. Pastel ribbons worked through the braids, soft and childish. Mei knotted them into place with a meditative quiet, a delicacy that reminded Tara how young the girl really was.
Then the girl reached down for her rifle.
It was an easy thing to forget.
Mei tossed another gun to one of her people, a tall, grave faced man at her right. The rest were preparing, who followed Mei everywhere and protected her-- their little Queen. The coven had decided—put the power to stop this in Mei's hand. But Tara wasn't sure it was right. It twisted in her gut. The girl turned and looked to Tara calmly, and seemed to know her thoughts. She spoke in gently resolute tones.
"We'll put it down. It'll be over, safely. Try not to worry."
She turned, and the group went out with her, trailing at her small ankles like a team of loyal dogs. The ribbons glittered as she moved, pulled tight in her hair.
"Try not to hurt them..." Tara spoke after them, uselessly.
---
They pushed through the crowd hand in hand, slowly and aimlessly wandering, taking in the faces and movements around them. An arm moved threateningly towards the back of Spike's skull, and vanished again with the strike of Buffy's elbow.
The world was violence—white noise. But it wasn't real to her. She felt like she was watching it from a distance, even as she twisted the attacker's arm back and sent him sprawling into the throng around them. Even as Spike threw a punch to a jaw that did the same. The world moved lethargic, like a reel filmed too fast. He shouldn't be able to throw that punch. He should collapse with the pain. And even before she asked him about it, even as she felt him tug her forward away from the man swinging at her with a makeshift torch, she knows what his answer will be.
She did it.
That's what he'd say. She did it—overpowered technology and flesh. Dawn did it, as Dawn does everything. And she found that this troubled her far more than his freedom. She believed in him more than the thing that drove him.
And these thoughts went suddenly dead as she tugged at his arm, pulling him to a standstill in the crowd. Someone ahead was screaming over the din, in a doorway, throwing herself to the ground.
"She--She's on me!" the woman cried out, falling to her knees, cheeks wet with tears. Her hands claws at her own cheeks.
"She's on me—oh God, she's here!"
As the pair passed, the woman lurched out and seized Spike's sleeve. Her voice came out deadly serious and terrified.
"She's... she's all over. She's in the owls... She speaks in the owls!"
Buffy squinted, touched his shoulder.
"Spike—"
She'd spotted something. The glint on the finger where it grasped, white knuckled, on Spike's sleeve.
She seized the woman's arm as she tried to back away through the doorway, pulled her hand up to eye's length. The woman stared into Buffy's eyes.
"She doesn't know you," she spat out, her tone sad and shaken.
The amethyst ring glittered there on her finger. Buffy pulled it off, and suddenly the woman started like a doll cut off its strings. Something over her face, and her face crumpled in confusion.
"Wait—" the woman whispered, confused, "Who are you...?"
Buffy responded by pushing in closer.
"I think you're going to want to tell me where you came by that," she said, calmly.
---
"Don't tell me you're starting up with that again, Ellie."
A small crowd had gathered in the corn sheaves, sorting through the leavings, out where it was safer, quieter. Ellie's brother picked up a book by its spine, the pages rustling in the air where he held them.
Ellie was crouched on the drying road mud. She reached into her pocket and pulled out three matches.
"I have to thank her," Ellie responded.
Her brother shrugged. He crouched down in the edge of the corn, and pulled out a box.
"She's a wood statue," he called back over his shoulder, rooting through the crate, "I don't know why you—oh these are only batteries. Mostly taken already, too."
Ellie struck a match and it flared bright against the night sky.
"She's not a statue," she said, somewhat exasperated from the long discussion that never seemed to really die between them, "It's just... it's like a symbol, Sam. She's... around though. She's real."
"Eh, she still looks like a statue to me," Sam responded, "I didn't take care of you all this time for you to just play with dolls."
Sam went down on his knees, pushing up the corn leaves. A glass bottle, broken, spilled a red, mystic dust on the ground. It wouldn't do, it was tainted. He needed something really special.
Ellie watched him, and her match sputtered out in the night. She took up the second and struck it awkwardly, trying to get it to catch even though it was damp. After a moment, it sparked with yellow flame.
She held it out to the wick of her little oil lamp, and the mud came alive with flickering light. It danced on the carved face of the painted, green girl, and she crouched down to watch it.
"Why are you picking on me, anyway— you know what you're trying won't work."
He pulled out some mud soiled texts. Spell books. But soaked through, dingy. No good.
"If I find something good enough, she will see me."
Ellie brushed her fingers against the flame. Behind them, others had started a campfire, and were talking, laughing, and singing-- waiting out the chaos out of harm's way. She looked into the wooden face of her goddess and hoped to find an answer there. She was worried about her brother. His desire for the woman had grown into something unhealthy.
"Even if she does—Sam you have to know... she won't love you... Not just for things. And... and all they care about where she is is who has control..."
Sam noticed the edge of a broken case, toppled on its side, and pulled it up. Empty. The lock was broken, and the hinges hung like broken bones.
"If she'd have me... if that happens, then it doesn't matter," he called back to her, reaching out with both arms, feeling beneath the obscuring corn stalks. And his hand hit something. A wired spine.
"Of course it matters! Sammy—you're worth more than—"
But he wasn't listening. The green runes moved past his eyes on the pages, and seemed almost to blur together, fast and fluttering like butterfly's wings. And in the ornate, spiraling patterns there were words in languages he did not know. The mud staining the edges didn't matter. It gleamed with its utter specialness.
And in among the pages, the drawings of flowers and characters unknown to him, a word jumped out, in clear, plain English. He stopped the page before it could turn, his hand running against the word as he read it aloud. The word rang back to him, chiming all around like bells.
"Power..."
And he knew he had his prize.
---