BtVS songfic: Flesh and Stone
Title: Flesh and Stone
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: If I owned anything in this I wouldn't be writing this disclaimer would I?
Distribution: If you want it, tell me where it's going before you take it.
Spoilers: Ummm. Kinda sorta almost maybe.
Summary: This is set in the future, and it's just a slightly angsty B/A reunion.
Notes: Songfic. What else do you expect from me? This is Martina McBride's new single "Concrete Angel". I don't know the album it's on but it's classic Martina angsting in the tradition of "Independence Day" "Broken Wing" and "Whatever You Say."
Feedback: Send it to scwlc@yahoo.ca
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It had been nearly a decade since she first met him. Eight years ago Angel had stalked her on the way to the Bronze, she had knocked him off his feet and fallen in love. Strange how quickly all those years had passed. It was as clear in her mind as though it had happened yesterday, and yet everything was different.
Some things were still the same though. She was still getting up to go to school and spending her nights patrolling.
//She walks to school with the lunch she packed,
Nobody knows what she's holdin' back,
Wearin' the same dress she wore yesterday,
She hides the bruises with linen and lace.//
She still hid herself from friends and enemies alike. Hidden behind her quips and a sunny disposition the real soul of Buffy Summers came out only when she was alone. In the night she would cry and let her broken heart out for a while as she remembered everything about him she missed. Sometimes it was memories of that first kiss that would
crack her shell, the way he was just as terrified she would hate him as she was certain he wanted someone older, more experienced. Eight years had passed since then.
//The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask,
It's hard to see the pain behind the mask,//
Her friends thought she was over him. Her enemies thought so as well. Spike knew, but then, he walked a strange line between friend and enemy. Even he found it hard to get past the determined wall of cheerfulness she wore to protect herself from the world. Her friends never wanted to see the truth and she hid it from them for fear of
loneliness. Angel and Cordelia had the two things that became her survival strategy.
He had told her one evening that "loneliness is about the scariest thing there is." He was right. Cordelia had been right too. One moment of unguarded truth in a janitor's closet and Cordelia gave Buffy the other piece of the puzzle. "It's better to be alone with people than alone by yourself." To keep her friends close to her, to be able to have people to be alone with, she hid the pain behind a mask of contentedness.
//Bearing the burden of a secret storm,
Sometimes she wishes she was never born.//
She had loved him and lost him again and again. Every time she saw him it happened once more. Not that the others knew about her repeating agony. They didn't know the number of times she wished she had died, had never come back, had never been chosen to be the Slayer. To them she was adjusted to the burden she bore. It never occurred to anyone that there was no adjusting, just a constant drumbeat of familiar pain until it became a part of her life to the point that she no longer remembered what it was like to live without it.
//Through the wind and the rain,
She stands hard as a stone,
In a world that she can't rise above,//
For some reason she was attached to the world that ignored her. She ran, she died, but every time she came back to that focal point on the Hellmouth. It got harder though. Every time she left and came back it was harder to resettle into the life she was coming to hate so much. The first time she died it was Angel and Xander who brought her back. But when she ran away, it was Angel and Xander who drove her to it.
Angel was there in so many ways every time she tried to escape. It was his memory that drove her to near madness in the absence of the reality. If he were with her, there on the Hellmouth, she would have been bound to it. He wasn't, so she tried to get away from the pervasive reminders that it presented.
//But her dreams give her wings,
And she flies to a place where she's loved,
Concrete angel.//
It was those infrequent moments of contact between them since he left that kept her from leaving. A visit to Los Angeles that lasted for a day and five minutes, an appearance in Sunnydale to taunt her boyfriend, the way he knew what she needed the night her mother was buried and how he knew just where to meet and just what to say when she returned from Heaven.
Buffy would lie in bed and close her eyes after she finished crying over him. She would imagine he was beside her on the bed and that his arms were wrapped around her. It was her meditation. Some people imagine green fields and blue skies, she pictured the man who kept her from loving anyone but him. Visions of dark hair, liquid brown eyes and pale skin would lead her into dreams that were torment and escape in equal parts.
//Somebody cries in the middle of the night,
The neighbors hear, but they turn out the lights,//
It was an agony her friends ignored. When she came downstairs in the morning Dawn would make jokes about Buffy having dreams about Angel and Willow would be determined to believe that Buffy was over him.
When Xander was there the tone of the conversation would be decidedly aggressive as he tried to turn Angel into a villain. She never felt capable of defending herself against these attacks, so she would just try to smile.
It never succeeded but her friends would ignore that too.
//A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate,
When morning comes it'll be too late.//
Her wanderings on patrol that evening took her through the cemetery that seven years before had been her and Angel's haven. They'd talked and laughed, kissed and made out there. It had been a sanctuary from the disapproval of others. The one place in her life that no one could object to his presence. This cemetery had other memories as well.
Her mother was buried here. Her mother who had many faults, but was the one thing in Buffy's life she had come to depend on. There was something comforting in the way her mother never quite knew what to do with a superhero for a daughter. It was so completely normal that Buffy had felt doubly devastated when her mother died. That last
connection to a world where she wasn't the invisible centre, ignored but relied upon had died with her mother.
Well, that wasn't quite true, Angel too had treated her as something other than the Slayer-buddy her friends saw her as. He treated her as the centre of his world. She had always seen that in his eyes. Angel treated her like a princess. A real one, to be spoiled and pampered, to have no responsibilities and devoted suitors. She missed having someone there to tell her it was okay to be a little selfish every now and then. She missed him.
She missed the way that Angel had always managed to take her destiny as the Slayer and make it into something not as scary, not as overwhelming. She paused at the place they had sat together the night her mother was buried and closed her eyes remembering the empty promise he had given her to stay for as long as she needed. In a way he had. She had needed someone that night to hold her and tell her everything would be okay without reminding her of her responsibilities. He had stayed and given her what she had needed that night.
He wasn't there tonight. She needed him now because where she was going, it was possible she wasn't coming back. It was no use to tell herself about duty tonight because duty was one of the reasons she was going. Not the most important one, but one.
//Through the wind and the rain,
She stands hard as a stone,
In a world that she can't rise above,//
She slowly turned past the tree where they had spent that night and continued on. Even now she would not let anyone see the pain she was in. Life was hard, and there was only one thing that had made her crack. Buffy carried the burden of the world's safety on her shoulders, carried the pains and griefs of her friends, Buffy was always strong for them and for others.
//But her dreams give her wings,
And she flies to a place where she's loved,
Concrete angel.//
Her one point of weakness was Angel. He was the only thing in the world that could drive Buffy to despair. Her suicide to save Dawn was not about Dawn, it was about Angel. It was about not having to relive a sacrifice made at too young an age. He was always the one thing in her life that, paradoxically, gave her both the greatest joy and the greatest despair.
Still, the joy always outweighed the sadness as far as he was concerned and when Angel was with her Buffy felt happier and freer than at any other time in her life. Because even when he was breaking her heart, she still lived him enough to take comfort from his presence alone.
//A statue stands in a shaded place,
An angel girl with an upturned face,
A name is written on a polished rock,//
Buffy turned into the small clearing and knelt before the tombstone that might well be her only mark on the world. Buffy Summers. She saved the world a lot. How little it said of the grief and heartbreak she suffered for six billion people who never knew who she was or what she did for them.
//A broken heart that the world forgot.//
She felt a presence behind her but didn't turn around. If she did she would be wrong. It was probably just Spike anyhow. The two felt similar enough to mistake one for the other, she lied to herself. "Come by to tell me how much I have to live for?" she asked.
"I came to ask you if you would give me something to fight for again." His soft voice brought tears to her eyes. She turned around and he was standing behind her, his eyes flickering between her and her tombstone. He realised she noticed what he was doing and smiled apologetically. "It's a little odd," he said, nodding his head in the stone's direction.
Buffy stood and swiped the grass from her knees. "Why should I give you something to fight for? Don't you have your son? And Cordelia?" She tried to sound casually inquiring and failed miserably. She sounded bitter and hurt. Which she was.
"Stephen hates me and he will never be my son." There was so much pain in him over that she wanted to take him in her arms and soothe the hurt. She stayed where she was. "Cordelia was . . . a mistake." He began to pace, running his hands through that artfully spiked hair. "I was so caught up in trying to be normal and human that I let people railroad me into thinking I was in love with her." There was a long pause as he stopped and they stared at each other. He suddenly frowned and asked, "How did you know? About Stephen and Cordelia?"
She snorted, "There is a grapevine these things go through. Wesley and Willow exchange emails, Cordelia calls to taunt Xander. Everyone in the freakin' world knows you had a son." Buffy took a couple steps away from him, her arms wrapped around herself, stopped and turned. "Why are you here Angel?"
"Because I was wrong about a lot of things," he said. He looked into her eyes and Buffy felt as though she were drowning in melted chocolate. Sweet and thick, oozing into every chink in her armour, she could feel his love in that gaze. "But mainly," he continued, "Because I need you."
"And what about me?" she asked. "Do I get a say in anything this time or are you just going to do whatever you want again and leave me to pick up the bits and pieces of my heart you leave behind?" Buffy was breathing hard, trying not to let out the sobs she felt rising, trying not to let him see how much she wanted this.
//Through the wind and the rain,
She stands hard as a stone,
In a world that she can't rise above,//
Angel cursed and crossed the little clearing and kissed her. Buffy let herself melt into the embrace. As they pulled apart a little she realised that somehow she had wound up pressed against the willow tree behind her, and Angel had slid his arms around her, ignoring the bark that had to be digging into his arms. "Buffy, I will never leave you again. The loophole in my curse is gone, I have no reason to stay away and I don't want to."
It was what she had dreamed of all those nights Dawn, Willow and her mother had ignored the sobbing emerging from her room. Those teary nights had given her the strength to rise above the daily waves of pain, but what would happen now? She couldn't be pathetic in front of him. It had been hard enough before, but she was too fragile now. As if he'd read her mind Angel said, "You don't have to be strong all the time with me Buffy. We'll take turns."
//But her dreams give her wings,
And she flies to a place where she's loved,//
Buffy just smiled and pulled him down into another kiss and let go. She would worry later about how furious Xander was going to be and what they were going to do about Angel's son. All that mattered was that he had come back and he wasn't leaving again. She felt the world fall away and suddenly remembered why Heaven had felt so familiar. Being with Angel was Heaven.
//Concrete angel.//
Buffy didn't have to be stone anymore and she rejoiced.
The End
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