BtVS songfic: Through the Darkness
Title: Through the Darkness
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I would be greatly surprised to hear that I own anything.
Summary: This is the third of what I’m calling my ‘Darkness Series’. It’s a sort of sequel to “Light in the Darkness” and “Heart of Darkness” Pretty much B/A. This one is done to Loreena McKennitt’s “Night Ride Across The Caucasus”.
Timeline: Somewhere vaguely in the sixth season, Connor won’t die in this because I don’t want to deal with that kind of angst. No real spoilers in this I don’t think.
Distribution: If you want it, tell me where it’s gone and take it.
Rating: G
Notes: I have one more of this sorta-kinda-almost-maybe series, then I’m done with it and will move on to other songfics, because they’re just so very addictive.
Angel had bought the CD because Buffy listened to it so often now. The bizarrity of the midnight ceremonies she indulged in with the druid wannabe’s still featured this CD more than most. On those days and nights when he couldn’t steal down to watch her dance in the firelight, he would listen and let his memories take him to be with her.
//Ride on
Through the night
Ride on//
As always, the rhythms of the song helped him escape with his memories. The pulse of the music exhorting him onward.
//Ride on
Through the night
Ride on//
He could almost hear Buffy’s voice in those words. Her constant encouragement for him to become something more than what he was. The way she had pushed and pulled him, resisting though he was, past the darkness his life had become and into the light. It was her example that had inspired him to get past the darkest moments of his life.
He had seen her despair when they had met again, but still her words gave him new strength. Even through the days when Holtz had stalked him and his son.
//There are visions, there are memories
There are echoes of thundering hooves//
Every day had been filled with reminders of the actions that had driven Holtz to his singleminded pursuit of Angelus and Darla. The chase that had created a perverted bond between the two vampires and the man whose life they had destroyed. Every night had been filled with the remembrances of those times of terror.
And yet, Connor’s small presence had mitigated the horrors of one past, and replaced them with the thoughts from another.
//There are fires, there is laughter//
Gazing at his son’s crib, Angel could also bring to mind those days with a different blonde woman. One who had returned joy to his grim existence. Buffy’s quick humour, the pleasure she took in life, and the myriad other things that made her uniquely who she was, combined with the tempered steel core of a slayer, had given her insight into his character that he himself did not have.
She had brought him peace and perspective, both things he frequently missed about her. There were a hundred ways in which she had given him those things, and still she had asked for little in return. That one thing she had asked, he could not give her. Now, as he surrounded himself in the island of calm those memories brought him, he craved the simple balm of her presence.
//There's the sound of a thousand doves//
*****************
Buffy leaned back as she listened to the CD she had borrowed from Winnifred “I now wish to be called by the Irish version of my name Findhabhair” Pinkerton. The girl was insane, but the songs usually helped Buffy sort through her head.
//In the velvet of the darkness
By the silhouette of silent trees//
Angel. That was where they would meet. Darkness surrounding him like a cloak, he hid in it, was part of it, yet the spark that made him more held him separate. Of late, Buffy had felt herself joining with that darkness. She knew why too.
Without Angel there to see the goodness in her, she was slipping. That darkness, so much a part of herself as the Slayer, held a call her friends could not understand. She had reached for the one who would understand the darkness, and had found Spike waiting. He understood the dark and the night, but he could not understand the light as Angel could.
Her friends, so much of light, did not comprehend her need for the silken feel of the night as it washed over her skin. Save perhaps Anya, but that was better left alone. Willow had touched the darkness within, but in her, the two were so stridently separate, all that had been achieved was a wrenching switch.
Her friends simply lacked the greyness that defined Buffy and who she was.
//They are watching, they are waiting//
They stared at her, expecting a miraculous recovery and return of the golden child who had become the focal point of their lives six years before. Shining and laughing, Buffy had hidden with far more alacrity then. Perhaps because of her own lack of knowledge about the coil of night entwined with her soul.
Her friends, who wanted her to discard all notions of the darkness within because to live life with the blurred lines the Buffy was would be too difficult. So she did not ask, and played the role as best she could. Even as she longed for his gentle understanding.
He did not demand, he did not gaze, expectant, as she struggled with her burdens. He had seen so much in his long life, that when he looked at the people around him, he could see past the threads to the tapestry.
//They are witnessing life's mysteries//
Her friends, caught up, even as she was, in the complications of their short lives, did not see the whole. They could only see the individual threads of their lives running side by side. Angel had transcended those mundane smallnesses, to show Buffy the grandeur she could not have seen alone.
******************
//Cascading stars on the slumbering hills
They are dancing as far as the sea//
Her presence sang to him from every corner of this city in which she once lived. Buffy’s tales of this place and that, his own memories of her in similar places, haunted Los Angeles. He did not dare to return to Sunnydale where her being was breathed into the very air. He went anyway, each time he left the small town becoming harder than the last.
//Riding o'er the land, you can feel its gentle hand//
Wherever he went she was there, tonight more than most. Tonight he was not avoiding the thought of her. He was openly revelling in the feelings she still inspired in him.
//Leading on to its destiny//
He still could not dare let the emotions she woke pull him too close. For all he felt as though fate herself had demanded they pass these trials for the strength of their bond.
******************
The voice of the singer was a sharp reminder to Buffy of Angel’s words at their last meeting. His troubles, so much more than her own, and he still had given her the impetus to continue.
//Ride on
Through the night
Ride on//
The words he had spoken to her so often before their lives had fallen apart. He had spoken them to her less often then, but still they persisted. Holding her up when her strength had otherwise failed. Bearing her when they had drifted apart.
The recollection of his face as he had said those words of encouragement held her together. The way his eyes had looked at her as though she were the only thing of any importance in the world meant so much more to her than any of the others’ platitudes and weak metaphors.
//Ride on
Through the night
Ride on//
Angel’s invisible presence through that desperate struggle that had become her life still did the things he had done before the winds of chance had ripped them asunder. She knew he had taken a piece of her heart with him when he left, and now, as it had then, that fact comforted her. It meant a part of her was always with him.
That alone let her press on.
*************************
//Take me with you on this journey
Where the boundaries of time are now tossed
In cathedrals of the forest
In the words of the tongues now lost//
Silently Angel pled with her to come to him. She had overcome the space of years between them, had forged a bond that had not been broken by time, torture or distance. She had created a shared destiny for them, and Angel would follow her on it to the end.
**************************
//Find the answers, ask the questions
Find the roots of an ancient tree//
Buffy sent a wish to the heavens for him to return. His wisdom, guidance and love were all she needed. Where he lead, she would follow. Until they reunited she would go on, as always.
//Take me dancing, take me singing
I'll ride on till the moon meets the sea//
Go on until they were through the darkness that consumed them both, and they had reached the other side.
//Ride on
Through the night
Ride on
Ride on//
Separate yet together they chose to continue.
//Through the night
Ride on//
Fin
Read the rest of the series:
Heart of Darkness
Light in the Darkness
Darkness Revisited
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