Disclaimer: BtVS Belongs to Joss Whedon.
Author's Notes: In the silence of the whisper, it will be known.
And again, works in progress can be found at : .com/FanFictionFederation/index/
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He could feel it there, resting comfortably against his ankle. The familiar, reassuring touch of worn, weathered hide and the feel of hard iron, warmed by the contact with his skin. A blade, jagged, and ugly in appearance, dark and horrid in purpose.
And as he sat there, staring across the slowly descending count of the bomb, staring into already dead, but seeing eyes, he couldn't help but feel a measure of contentment that should it end, here and now, it would have never found it's use fulfilled.
"I ain't afraid to die. I'm dead." Jack O'Toole declared with a simple assurance, smirking back at Xander as he held the massive knife with a familiar ease.
"Yeah, but this is different." There was a calm assurance in his voice as he stared back, knowingly into Jack's eyes. "Blowed up isn't walking around and drinking with your buddies dead. It's 'little bits swept up by the janitor' dead, and I don't think you're ready for that."
"Are you?" Jack shot back, as he saw the first flash of uncertainty gnawing behind those once dead eyes.
A smile, curled over his lips and he stared back. "I like the quiet."
There was nothing but calm in those eyes, a simple acceptance that sent a chill down Jack's spine as for a moment his eyes flashed to the bomb and widened in sudden realization. He was out of time. The knife was practically thrown away as he lunged away, and with a sudden, desperate force, ripped clean the green wire from the bomb.
"Good boy."
For a moment, Jack slumped, sighing in relief before he turns his head, staring back at him as he struggled to regain some measure of his control as he spoke again. "I don't think I wanna be seeing you around campus anymore, Jack."
Jack couldn't keep his eyes on his, feeling the strength just draining away as his face fell and his eyes met the floor. It took only a moment for him to turn away from Jack then. To quietly and calmly walk away through the doors that shut so easily behind him.
For a moment, he almost faltered, almost fell, but still he stood again, strength rising up before he straightened up, then Xander Harris stepped forward.
Giggle.
It echoed, faintly through the air, a sudden, airy, feminine sound. A child's sound, bouncing across the shadowed halls and rippling through the distance. A sound of joy and promise to be found in the darkness.
Instantly, he stood, just a little straighter, his dark eyes flashing open and quickly flashing around him. Silence now, but still he could feel it, the uneasy edge to the air, shattering the serenity he'd held only moments before. Fingers deftly slipped down, his body bowing as his hand in one fluid, familiar motion caught the hide bound hilt, and drew it up.
The next instant, it seemed to vanish, disappearing up his sleeve as he slowly glanced around.
Giggle.
He could feel it, echoing around him, dancing with the shadows that suddenly seemed just a little thicker. Ignoring the way they seemed to be shifting, almost writhing in ways that just weren't possible. Ignoring the way the seemed to eat up every single sound by the solitary steps of his footfalls, echoing in a way far, far too grand for what they could honestly release.
Giggle.
Another break in the silence, but still he paid it no head, forcing down the way the hairs on the back of his neck seemed to rise up. Fighting down the sudden, pounding pulse of his heart, leaping through his chest. Struggling to keep from letting the pure, black fear from coursing, thick and glistening through his, too small to contain it, veins.
He could feel the way he'd hastened his steps, and took another, slower, deeper breath, forcing it from his body, forcing himself to relax, forcing himself to calm. Fear wouldn't help, not here. Here, giving in, surrendering to it meant something else, and death would be a kindness compared to it.
Only, that calm control melted as he saw the double doors, half frozen in place in front of him, a gaping maw giving witness to a scene that sent a sudden sinking sensation, gripping tightly into his heart. With a sudden, surge of trepidation, his hand reached out, gripping onto the waiting edge of the door. A door that a part of his mind noted, felt unnaturally cool, and hot all in the same instant, as he slowly pulled it back.
And before him, the gaping maw of hell revealed itself in all it's hungering glory. The world around it, frozen in a state of churning chaos. Bodies, friends, demons, call caught, trapped in a moment, an instant in time around him as he slowly stared from face to frozen face, caught etched with the madness of desperation written on them..
"Mmm... such a beautiful sight, isn't it, little Al-ex-an-der?" Each little syllable of his name, drawn out, as if tasted as the words rippled through the otherwise stagnant, unmoving air. "All madness and chaos and uncertainty... Mixed with that heady sweet taste of oh so delightful terror."
It was a child's voice. A woman's voice. A mother's voice. A crone's voice. All those things, mingled into one as it slowly filtered through the air. Innocent, arrogance, confidant, wise, and vicious.
A voice that had haunted the dark corners of his dreams, where even his nightmares had feared to tread.
"What do you want." It came out harsher than he meant. Angrier too as it broke past his lips and rolled like an uncoiling serpent through the air.
"Want?" A pause, a pulse of so many, many things he couldn't begin to categorize them. Things he couldn't even comprehend as they fell past those phantom, unseen lips. "Such a curious word that... Al-ex-an-der... So full of things that turn upon themselves and run, round and about, over and over again."
"And that's why you're here isn't it?" It wasn't a question, they both knew that, even as the air giggled once more as the jaded rush of anger flitted through his words and he could feel the way it danced like a fire fly through the night all around him, giving him a brief, flickering flash of brilliant light calling out it's location, only to grow dark again and flit away an instant later.
"Mmm, why I'm here?" The question turned back against him, pulsing through the air as it turned and sudden stared back at him.
A sudden thought, flashed then through his mind, and with a slow, deliberate motion, he turned once, fully around. A full circle made, before he stared forward again. Straight into the only other pair of seeing eyes in the room.
"Do you know?" She was dressed in a deep, deep rich velvet, colored a shade any royal would turn with envy to possess, and yet, straddling so close to the depths of shadow. A dress, trimmed in lace, a shade darker than blood, and a shade richer than murder. A child's dress, hung on the elegant frame of a girl child of an age he couldn't tell.
"I asked, didn't I?" He met her eyes, a shade of black that so quickly bled into a bloody crimson, before swirling into violet hue that just as quickly, settled into an simple, electric blue where it stayed, seemingly content for the moment.
"A question, hmmm?" Pale, alabaster flesh drew back, as steel-grey lips fell to the touch of pure, snow driven white, glistening like the first, freshly melted flakes. "Are you asking me... a question, Al-ex-an-der?"
"No, I simply asked." It was a denial that would seem almost playful if it wasn't caught with the edge of anger and fear, with the fear almost winning against the bare constraints of control he held against it.
"So you did." She agreed, before moving, polished black shoes, plain and suddenly heels as the girl was suddenly a teen and slowly stalked around a particular frozen form, studying it with an oh so keen interest. "So, this is her, then is it?"
"Are you asking me a question?" He threw it back, almost word for word as his eyes flashed in their depths, burning with a sudden black, mirthless flame.
"Are you?" She countered, just as easily, as her finger slipped out, and slowly traced down the edge of her jaw. "Mmm... The one who stole you from me. The Slayer who took my Knight... and made him shine."
Silence met her as she stared down onto the blonde girl's frozen features, before following the way the moment offered a glimpse of fear, concern and suddenly shifted, appearing crouched down, as a crone, lightly hovering over another figure. "And yet, she throws her heart to this... Your Anointer, your namer, your thorn and your shadow. And she never knows how he failed where you couldn't."
The words, clutched in his throat, forced into a silent death as he refused to rise to her bait, refused to give into her jibes. He forced down the heady pulse that tore into him. He fought down the anger, the pain, and the resentment they both knew bubbled through his veins.
No, he wouldn't surrender that control, that calm. Not to her, not so soon after it had been won. So, instead he hung in silence, watching, waiting.
And then,she was at another, fingers wrapped about the waist, chin resting on the shoulder as her suddenly motherly face rested against the one etched in pain, fury, fear and defiance. "Or, perhaps this one? The one crying out into the dark? I can smell you on her... in her. She bears the touch of Winter in her blood, did you know that? Begging, craving to let loose."
When he again, held his tongue, she smiled, sweetly, motherly, hungrily back at him as she lightly trailed a finger down her cheek. "Could you taste it in her? As you entered her gates... opening herself to you... Surrendering to you, could you feel it? Even if she couldn't, even if she wouldn't, hmmm?"
She laughed then, suddenly the child once more before she almost skipped through the air, walking on the impossibly stilled air until she caught her wrists behind her back and peered down at another figure. "Mmm... Oh, how little do they understand. How little do they know. This one... She thinks she knows you. She thinks she can protect you. She thinks she understands what lurks in the dark."
A finger lightly turned through the frozen locks of auburn hair, strumming them like an instrument beneath her fingers. "If only she knew... Foolish, tainted little vessel. Already gone, festering and rotting. All the way down in her insides. You tried to warn her, but she wouldn't listen, would she? Just like the others, she just wouldn't see... And now Nimue's path calls her, and she walks it with wide, inviting, open arms."
He raised his head, jaw set and dark eyes firm as he met her eyes with his with out flinching. A blink was her only response, his silence seeming to feed the curiosity flashing in her eyes. And then, the Crone stood behind another, a soft cackle on time worn lips.
"This one though, serves no purpose, not now, and only in time." She paused lightly running a finger down one arm of the cringing figure before chuckling once more. "He means so little to you, cares nothing for you, sees nothing but the harlequin, painted and colorful as you dance in their court." There was a sudden flash, then she could feel her lips, cool and warm all at once pressed behind his neck. "You never danced for me... Now did you, Al-ex-an-der."
"You have enough fools in your Court as it is." It slipped past his lips, sudden, sharp and acidic as it tasted air, and he could feel the way her teeth brushed against his neck even as he struggled not to flinch.
"True... I suppose. But they were bells and whistles. The world itself, ripples with their passing, and I can hear the way everything they want screams out with such force... They try to hide it all from me..." She chuckled then, drawn back a moment, eyes glittering winter gems. "But you... you wore everything... plain and honest. You, my dark, traitorous little deceiver. My true little Winter Knight."
He almost balked at the purring affection in her voice as she spoke those words, the way she purred them, free of any anger or resentment, feeling the sudden, swelling fear sinking down his spine, as his stomach plummeted. Then, she pulled away, tearing the icy warmth from his flesh as he watched her, swift, and fleeting as she flitted between the veils until at last she stood, again in the form of the Mother, wrapped so casually against the final figure. Fingers playing down the blood slick face, glistening with sweat down to the broken length of his arm.
"And at last, we come to the prodigal. The fallen, the redeemed, the father and the fool." She lightly patted the man's cheek, almost fondly before she turned her head back at him, before chuckling ever so lightly. "Such an interesting little collection you've found yourself with, little Al-ex-an-der."
Silence again as he stared back at her, unflinching even as he felt the cold terror rushing down through his stomach. "The deal…"
"You should know, words and worlds are tricky, tricky little things." She chuckled softly, slowly, throatily as she slowly shook her head. "They can end… so easily, while no one notices… And in so many ways… not to mention, you never specified which world."