Edge of Sorrow, Heart of Truth
by feliciacraft
Distribution: No posting elsewhere without express permission please. No translations por favor.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter 9. Long Days of Labour, and Nights Devoid of Ease
Title is taken from the poem "The Day is Done" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in which the narrator says:
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labour,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
It was a rare Friday evening to find Dawn at Revello Drive, slaving away at her homework. To optimize for throughput she had devised a time-saving system of "divide and conquer." After assigning Spike the American Lit book report (by dangling the promise for a plate of the Bronze's spicy wings), she was currently tackling Geometry.
"What's the rush, Niblet?" came Spike's indolent voice from the vicinity of the TV. Over the buildup of an intense flourish of music, a woman screamed. Something roared back, an inhuman sound, poorly done. Dawn marched over to the sofa on which Spike sprawled like a star-fish, grabbed the remote from his outstretched hand in one fluid motion, and firmly hit power. The black-and-white horror flick from TNT's Friday Night Screamathon died with a flash and a whimper.
"Oi! I was watching that! Got all weekend, haven't we?"
"Nuh-uh." Dawn pressed The Great Gatsby into Spike's hand, still outstretched but newly remote-free. "Willow said I could sleep over at Janice's tomorrow night if I get all my homework done tonight. Bet she didn't anticipate my secret weapon." She shot him a meaningful look.
"Ya like her that much? Thought we were gonna continue broadening your comedic horizon with Monty Python's Life of Brian."
Dawn thought he almost sounded hurt. Silly vampire with the silly insecurity. She resumed her seat at the dining table, and turned the page to the next Geometry problem. "Oh, uhm, rain check? Willow surprised me with the sleep-over arrangement! Said that if I keep my grades up, there'd be more rewards. This is just a preview."
There was a delayed "Huh" from the living room, followed by silence. Spike being silent was Conspicuous with a capital C. Dawn could practically hear the gears grinding in his undead head.
Unable to resist, she craned her neck until the back of said cranium came into view above the sofa. "What?" she asked. "You think this is some conspiracy to get me out of the house for the weekend?"
He turned and their gaze connected for a second, then both of them burst out laughing. Dawn snorted.
"You've watched too many episodes of the X-Files, Bit! Bloody conspiracy theory. Nice of Red to take an interest in you for a change."
"Hmm." Dawn switched her attention to the next homework problem. Vertices of an octahedron. Eight. No. Six?
With both of them busy at work, the house fell silent. For a while, there was only the sound of a page turning every so often from him, and that of pencil scribbling on paper from her.
A sudden rustling, crisp and moving like a projectile, roused Dawn out of her concentration. Her head swimming with inverse functions, she barely registered a book flying across the living room to bounce off the wall with a dull thud, and Spike storming out the back door, his coat swishing behind.
"Hey! Was that my book?" She craned her neck to yell at him. All she got in response was the slam of the door.
"Melodramatic much?" Mumbling, she tiptoed to the book, her curiosity getting the better of her.
The book lay innocently on the floor, face down, the pages fanned out like a mess of leaves. The Great Gatsby from her American Lit class, just as she'd thought. "Huh," Dawn said to no one in particular, "Not everyone digs Fitzgerald's style, but I've never seen that reaction before."
Spike was a destructive reader, always curling pages, folding dog ears, leaving cryptic notes and cigarette ashes behind, striking through the occasional typo with decisiveness and penning in the error-free word with finality. "I'm not a bloody poncy book collector," he'd said when Dawn had called him out on it. He'd had the nerve to give her a lecture, after damaging school property. "A properly read book ought to look read, studied, pored over, lived. Not in unappreciated, untouched, sodding mint condition." He'd practically spat out the word "mint" like the worst offense imaginable.
So it was easy to track down where he'd left off. Especially—Dawn happened on it and snickered—as the page was slightly wrinkly, with damp ovals here and there. "Ugh, you'd better not have cried all over my book!" she shouted teasingly in the direction of the back door, then said under her breath, "Dork."
Hopping up a bar stool, she traced a finger over one vague oval, then scanned the passage underneath:
So he made the most of his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously—eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.
Dawn's heart thumped violently, and with the book tightly clutched in her hands—her knuckles white from effort—the words on the page jumped in sync with her pulse. She skipped ahead, leaping over phrases and whole sections, catching bits and pieces that grabbed her:
He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretenses...He had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe...that he was fully able to take care of her.
...He had intended, probably, to take what he could and go—but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail….He felt married to her, that was all.
"Oh. My. God!" She flew through the back door, knocking the bar stool over in the process, and sending the screen door into a brutal collision with the wall. With a trembling index finger inches from Spike's nose, she threw down her trump card of an accusation: "You...you slept with Buffy!"
From his perch on the top step, Spike blew out a smoke ring, and cast her a sideways glance. It could almost be called languid, as collected as a cool cat. Which, because Dawn knew better, meant that he was feeling anything but. "Suss that out all on your own, did ya?"
Spun, she searched her memories. Buffy was never good at keeping secrets; there'd be tell-tale signs. How had she managed to keep this under the covers? "But...when?"
He took a long drag from his death stick, then held his breath for the longest time, apparently lost in thought. And Dawn was struck by the fact that even now, mere memories of Buffy took his breath away, literally. When he looked up again with a glint in his eye, Dawn knew he'd been reliving a treasured piece of memory. His face was a distortion of bliss layered with despair.
She thought he'd spill the beans to her sympathetic ear then. It wasn't like he had many friends to whom he could pour his heart out.
But all he said was, "Not the kiss-and-tell type, Bit."
Dawn sank down next to him, searching his face for clues. "You must miss her." Well, duh, so she hastened to clarify, rather lamely, "Like, a lot. A lot a lot."
The light was fading, something that her fabricated memory of years of Sunnydale living compelled her to retreat inside for safety before day fell to night. Behind her was an entire vacant house furnished with no less than a dozen comfy chairs and sofas, yet she was cozying up to a chain-smoking chipped vampire on a back porch step, struggling with an offer of sympathy for, morbidly enough, the death of her sister. Her life was total absurd-o-rama.
Spike, on the other hand, was all distracted action with no hint of rush: flicking off the stub, patting down pockets for his Zippo, lighting up a fresh one, then crushing the empty pack into a ball—a series of uncomplicated moves all carried out with expert efficiency that together, still managed to take a while. Finally, he ran out of things to do.
"Well?" she prompted again, very softly. It was really for his sake, because he looked like whatever had caught in his throat was swelling rapidly.
His breath hitched as he said, "Desperately." He wouldn't meet her eye.
Something in his rigid body language told her he preferred to prop up the pretense on that last shred of dignity, so instead of giving him a hug, she awkwardly patted him on the shoulder. He neither flinched nor encouraged her, a dying cigarette dangling, unappreciated, between his fingers.
But the tension was gone from his jaw, and, well, the worn leather, surprisingly soft under her palm, felt oddly comforting.
There was hardly any view from the back porch, but they sat there, side by side, in companionable silence, until the rising moon, just a sliver shy of a full one, cast their merged shadow on the steps.
For a few seconds after Xander delivered his practiced plea for help there was only the sound of rhythmic clicking as Anya leafed through a stack of hard plastic containers the size of sliced bread, in which suspended bits of yellow and orange and pink, like fishing flies. What the heck? Xander skimmed the billing statement paperclipped to the front of the box: toucan feathers. He shook his head. This magics thing is clearly for the birds.
The sound cut out abruptly as Anya's fingers got to the end of the pile. She scribbled something in her notebook, then shot Xander a hard look. Not a good sign. He tried on his most innocent look and awaited the verdict.
"That's a really big favor you're asking, Xander. When did you become Willow's errand boy?"
He ignored the intentionally incendiary remark. He was a man with a mission. No way was he getting distracted. "Oh, come on, it's just one little phone call. Let Undead Boy play retriever with a demonic object, far away from here. Just for a couple of nights. What's the big?"
Anya had moved onto the next item on the inventory shelf, kneeling down to count a tray of glass jars of a milky lavender blue liquid. He sat down on his haunches next to her, and sloshed a jar with interest. The liquid reminded him of the blueberry milkshake he'd had with his burger for lunch, except that its consistency ran much thinner than milkshake. Another mystery item in the Magic Box's storage room.
"What's the big?" Anya's voice rose an octave. She put the jar down with a crisp "clink". "The big is my professional reputation! I'm dealing in magics supplies here. I can't afford to have my clientele think I don't know the difference between a Tak horn and an elephant tusk. Neither do I misfill my orders. You don't get repeat customers by being sloppy. You don't get new customers if you develop a reputation for being sloppy. Not to mention components for dark magic like the Tak horn are well out of the the Magic Box's target demographic." Her tone was dripping with disdain, as if a customer not properly catalogued would be a terrible sin and a mishandled shipment a crime punishable by death.
She stood up and scribbled in her notebook again, not bothering to look up as she said, "You can play messenger boy back to Willow. Getting Spike out of the way for the spell...she needs a better lie. I will not be a part of your incompetent deception. I'm good at what I do, always." She shot an icy look to Xander, clearly lumping him in with the labeling of incompetence.
There was no time to circle back to Willow, which would keep this to-do item from getting to-done. Keep Xander in the uncomfortable role of a ping-pong ball a little longer. A role he didn't particularly relish. He tossed the jar from one hand to the other, then back again. Fidgeting helped him think.
"How 'bout this. We come up with a new excuse, you and me. We're Team Xanya."
Anya chewed on her lower lip, and Xander wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her silly. Forget about the whole resurrection business, at least for a while.
"OK," said Anya, her tone cautious. "But only because Team Ander would sound stupid."
Score! Xander relaxed, tossing the jar high in the air with a flip of his hand. The extra energy sent it somersaulting, glistening pretty as a jewel as it caught a ray of the sunlight from the back window.
"And quit playing with the container of horseshoe crab blood. It's very expensive."
Xander's stomach did a turn, much like the glass jar fast on its descent. The jar hit his hands hard, and carried the momentum forward as he instinctively clasped it tight against his chest. It knocked him back. The upside? It jolted loose the rising lump in his throat, and forced back down the wave of nausea.
Quick reflexes? Check. Stomach for magics? Not so much.
Inhale. Exhale.
Willow was ready. Not kinda ready. Not ready-ish. Ready like the sun was ready to rise and set, like the moon was ready to wane and wax. She flexed her fingers, shaping the air with intent, and felt her Wiccan power course through her veins. Produced by nature, backed by life, drawn from within, and shaped into pinpoint focus via her will. All that power, as old as the universe, just free for the taking. It felt kind of heady. Ready and heady...and rhymey. Uh-oh.
Inhale. Exhale.
She was ready. She was born ready.
Timid, shy, geeky, helpless—that was her once upon a time, going along with the abuses of the world quietly, believing (in a secular sense) that the meek would inherit the earth. Now that she wielded the power, she was going to fight back, make things better, save the world. She might not have been chosen, but who said you had to be handed your destiny? If her destiny wanted to play a game of tag with her, then tag it was. Erh, or something like that.
Point was, Willow was ready to shine like a no-longer hidden jewel. She was going to impress everyone, big time. How did the Slayer prophecy go again? Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. Prophesied, set down and passed from generation to generation. Giles would recite the words like a prayer, sacred, ever-fixed, his voice gentle and smooth, as if afraid to disturb the underlying power.
But it was about to change. And she was about to change it. To turn the table on Fate by taking it by its demon horns—because judging by its actions? Definitely demon—and by embracing her gift, and daring to challenge the prophecy, the myth:
Into this generation a slayer would be resurrected, relinquished by Death: one girl in all the world, loved above all, such that her friends would rescue her soul from another dimension and restore her upon the land of the living. Buffy Anne Summers was the Slayer before, and would be the Slayer again. Ha, take that, erh, Death!
And grinning widely, Willow wondered how she herself would be remembered by the Watchers Council. From one generation to the next, the Slayer saved the world. Only one legendary, courageous witch by the name of Willow Rosenberg, has ever saved the Slayer by resurrection. Celebrated by covens worldwide, she—
"Personal delivery for one Willow Rosenberg! Veggie Delight, no onion." Tara breezed into the training room at the back of Magic Box, interrupting Willow's reverie. The newcomer balanced sagging paper plates of pizza in one hand, two cans of root beer in the other.
The warm aroma of cheesy goodness mingled with the sweet perfume that was Tara, awakening her hunger. In more ways than one.
Mmm, heady and bready. And still rhymey.
Dismissing her rhyme-o-rama mind, Willow relieved Tara of the soda cans. "Oh, delivery girl, I-I forgot my purse. However will I pay you?"
"Weeell." Eyes twinkling, Tara sank down on the floor mat opposite Willow, mirroring her lotus pose. She playfully ran a calculating eye up and down Willow. "I also accept kisses. From the right person. But you'd better be one heck of a generous tipper."
Willow switched onto her knees and pulled Tara in for a long kiss. Soft lips. Warm breath. Willow's stomach stopped doing its impression of the roller-coaster that had made her green with nausea at age ten. It made sense that Tara would calm her pre-spell jitters better than meditation.
They parted after a long moment.
"Was that generous?" Willow rested her forehead on Tara's.
"Mmm, very."
Willow reached to uncover the somewhat smooshed plate of pizza, but Tara's lips found hers again.
"You forgot"—Tara whispered, a bit breathless—"your change."
"Keep it," Willow kissed her back.
A squeal startled both of them, and they turned, in sync, to see Anya beaming from the doorway. Over the pizza boxes and other things stacked high in her arms, her eyes were huge.
"Oooh! I know this game! Xander's fond of it as well!" she said eagerly, as if thrilled to finally find common ground with Willow. "Except he doesn't accept kisses as alternative method of payment. He only accepts—"
"And with that"—Xander appeared on her heels, swinging water bottles and soda cans, as if resigned—"we're back on the doorstep of TMI."
Tara smiled politely and Willow picked up a slice of Veggie Delight to conceal a smirk.
"Oh, please," Anya waived away Xander's caution like shooing away an unwelcome trespasser. "I don't buy this blushing bride act of yours. You're never shy when you ask for—"
"Pizza!" Xander interjected. "I mean"—he coughed—"we brought you the rest of it."
Anya didn't miss a beat, as if Xander had never interrupted her. "Pizzas, plural. Left unchallenged, Xander would overeat past the obvious maximum capacity of his stomach. Then beg for tummy rubs for the rest of the evening."
Tara cleared her throat, disguising a giggle.
"And therein lies your mistake," said Xander, straight-faced. "You're reinforcing my overeating by rewarding me with tummy rubs."
"Huh." That got Anya thinking and therefore no longer talking, to Xander's noticeable relief.
He dropped down onto the mat. After securing two slices of pizza and folding them topping side to topping side into a makeshift calzone, he nodded at Willow. "How you holdin' up?"
"Super!" Willow chirped. Xander raised one eyebrow.
"Super duper?" she tried again. Now twice as convincing! Xander's other eyebrow joined its twin.
"Sweetie," said Tara in that covert tip-off tone she used when whispering to Willow that her bra straps were showing, "you're rhyming."
She hadn't realized that she had a tell. Good thing she didn't play poker.
Xander pulled out Willow's open notebook from under one of the pizza boxes. Mouth full of pizza, he squinted at a line and read, "The one I seek I do not fear—"
"Better fear the witch who came up with that spell!" Willow yanked the notebook out of Xander's hand and gave him a stern look. "Never recite spells with your mouth full. I learned that the hard way." She gave it a second thought and amended, "In fact, Xander, for you, never recite spells, period."
"Hey!" Xander protested, though he looked uncertain. "I thought it was a poem, what with your natural talent at rhyming."
"It's a loose translation of an ancient resurrection spell," Willow explained, eager to share a fascinating aspect of magic. "The Latin source was in verse form. I emulated the rhythm of the spell in English to retain the energy of the original." She took a bite out of her pizza and continued, "Because magic isn't chemistry, and poetry is not about meaning, you have to strive for the spirit for the spell. Power is not a formula derived from the words of the spell. The words are merely a conduit for your will. The funny thing about translation is"—she couldn't help chuckling—"novices always mistake verbatim for accuracy, and the potency ends up getting lost in the translation."
Xander looked like he might need a translator to decode Willow's explanation. "You're clearly no novice, oh Master Willow." He thought for a moment, then turned to Tara. "Does that make you the apprentice?" With a funny voice he continued, "'Always two there are, no more, no less.'"
Huh? She exchanged a look with Tara, who shrugged; no idea.
"Are you quoting some pop culture thing I have no way of being familiar with?" Anya piped up, her tone defensive. Still overly sensitive to innocent acts of exclusion. That-a-demon-turned-girl!
Xander scowled at each of them in turn, then muttered in defeat, "I am so under-appreciated. I need friends who get my jokes."
With an exaggerated sigh, he turned back to Willow. "You all set?"
Time to come clean. "More or less." She took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to keep her voice light and her tone even as she said, "Just need a little blood from each of you."
The unpleasant business of asking her friends for their blood now out of the way, Willow unravelled a thread at a corner of the sandbag and let the content pour out into a wide circle of protection large enough to fit four people inside. She sat down in the center to clear her mind and bless the space. Within the enclosure of the circle, the vibrations of the background energy faded from a shrill to a low hum in her ears. Low enough to tune out with a bit of concentration.
Low enough that bits of a hushed conversation made their way into her ears.
"Quit picking at it, Xander." Anya's voice. It continued, "I'm not going to band-aid your finger a third time."
"Did you know this spell called for blood? Human blood?" Xander spat out the last two words, as if he found even the words themselves distasteful.
Anya tut-tutted. "It was barely a trickle. Be thankful that it didn't ask a life for a life. And then some. Buffy was more warrior than all of us put together, and magic usually requires an equal exchange…" Her voice trailed off.
Xander continued, his voice as shaky as before, "I thought we were only here for moral support. I was prepared for the usual stinkin' herbs flumadiddle. You know, while not exactly top-shelf entertainment, magic can be pretty cool. But holy Las Vegas Batman, this is a far cry from Siegfried & Roy."
"You know I'm a little thin on American pop culture references." Anya sounded as if she was pouting. "I don't know how to comfort you when you stop making sense."
Willow willed herself to stop listening. She couldn't afford to question the spell, or the ritual, or the power coursing through her veins. Not now. Not after everything.
All day long she'd been drawing energy from the earth into her reserve, and with every pull the world had responded with a ready give. She had the distinct impression that while she prepared herself for the incantation, the incantation prepared for her. The elements yielded. The powers flowed into her like rivers to the sea.
A finality hit her sixth sense. This was meant to be. She was merely the conduit.
Resurrecting Buffy was destiny.
Willow couldn't see the sun through the square of frosted window, but she knew with mystical certainty that it was near sunset. She wondered briefly if it was what vampires felt, the call of the night, the surge of vitality. A full moon would rise tonight, marking the optimal time for rituals requiring significant mojo. She needed to seize that moment of transition, when the dominant energy of the sun yielded to the forces of darkness once again, when white magic and black magic converged to bend the division between worlds.
When Buffy's spirit might be called to cross over the boundary between life and death, against the natural current, and come home.
She nodded to Tara, who began setting four candles aflame and positioning them to each direction of Willow. The white tapers gave off a pale, flickering illumination, throwing everything into contorted relief. Tara's lovely face was a study of contrast in the candlelight, all wavering highlights and shadows. It took Willow a moment to realize that Tara was nervous, her body quivering in the quivering candlelight.
"Baby, you okay?" Willow reached out to put an arm around Tara. Her fingers grazed something hard and lumpy, something hidden in Tara's jacket pocket. It felt like…
Like the satchel Tara routinely used to carry ingredients for a spell-to-go. Lumpy because it was filled.
As if struck, Willow's hand shrank back. She stared at her girlfriend, suddenly tongue-tied. Tara had come tonight prepared to perform magic, a purpose she had concealed from everyone. But...why? Willow would be doing the spell tonight. It was her spell, and not to be territorial about it, but she'd been the one to locate the original incantation, translate it, piece together the ingredient list, and risk her neck to obtain every item on the list. Not to mention, she was the one with the power. She could feel the magic crackle between her fingers, just below the surface, ready to be channeled and directed via her focus.
Tara caught Willow's retreating hand and laced their fingers together. "Just nerves." She smiled reassuringly. "I don't want you to worry about a thing."
Tara was right, of course. The power of magic relied on faith. On conviction. On will. A flicker of doubt could undermine her ability to successfully perform the spell. Magic was a self-fulfilling prophecy, for both believers and nonbelievers alike.
But what had Tara planned? Why hadn't she shared it with her? Willow couldn't dismiss the sense of unease that had crept into her mind like a...creeping thing, wiggling deeper, clawing at her consciousness to pay attention to it, and to its mutinous message.
She shook her head, and visualized slamming the door shut on that part of her brain that harbored dangerous, elaborate thoughts of a treacherous nature. There was no time to get into this. As Tara continued the preparation with practiced ease, Willow made a decision to trust Tara, even if Tara hadn't trusted her enough to share. Once Buffy was back, everything would be fine again. They'd gotten into a depressive mood with the mourning, but it'd all end tonight.
She would see to it.
~ To Be Continued... ~
