FIC: Bound, G/E, NC-17, Bondage, Part 3/3 (Epilogue)-Angst This Part
Epilogue:
It was ridiculous he knew, but he needed the hope the visits gave him. They were less frequent now, but he still had to come and walk through the forest to the clearing where it had all taken place. Now though, there really wasn’t a clearing. It was filling in, reclaiming the land as part of the forest.
When it had first happened, four years after that night so long ago, he’d come nearly every day. Now, more than two decades had passed, and it had been almost a year since he’d been there last. Still, he had to see it, and make sure it was still there, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t forget. But today…he hadn’t planned the visit, the emptiness had just gapped wider than it usually did. Today it had an edge, a primal longing telling him he needed to come.
He wondered if Ripper had felt it as he had. That horrifying, tearing, blinding pain with each swing of the axe.
Ethan remembered that feeling of being wrenched apart as he was ripped from his sleep. When he’d first realized it was the feel of the green being torn bit by bit from him, shattering their bond, he had thought Ripper was dying. He still felt the feel of falling from the bed to the floor, gasping in agony. It was only as the last few threads were cut that he realized the bitter truth. Ripper had made the choice he’d threatened. Their bond had gotten too dark, he’d said after Randall had died. He no longer wanted it, any of it…but Ethan had never thought he was serious enough to take the final step. That night, Ripper had proven him wrong.
The next morning, he’d found it. It had been a sloppy job, but in the end, Ripper had most certainly achieved his goal, separating their oak from the miserable stump that remained. For a while he’d wandered around it, dazed, not really believing. He found the axe, handle adorned with blood, smudged to show where the fingers had gripped it in its final swing. It indicated just how desperate Ripper had been. Ethan silently wondered if he’d even noticed the skin growing hot, chaffing, and finally smearing off with the heavy labor.
He’d cried then, feeling the gut-twisting pain of the weeping stump as the last of its sap continued to run to the surface. He even tried to heal it somewhat, and seal it off so he couldn’t feel the tree crying out its loss, but his efforts were largely in vain, and that night he headed home, casting darkly until he was too exhausted to remain conscious.
But the following morning had come, unstoppable, just like all those before it and found him still a part of the world, forced to live through it. He’d originally thought to follow Ripper, demand his return, entice him back, anything, but he realized there was no point in that. The only way it could ever be the same was if Ripper chose to come back on his own. ‘My bonds in thee are all determinate,’ he remembered even now, bitterly. Determined by Ripper himself.
Ethan had looked up the whole of the sonnet not long after and recalled the wry irony he’d felt when he’d read the rest of the words. Interesting, to say the least. Almost as if he had foreordained the final result. No, there had been no way of forcing Ripper to come back, especially in the immediate aftermath of the break.
Instead, he’d stayed around, and, for reasons he couldn’t explain, he found himself returning every few days to the site of their broken bond. It was on the seventh day he noticed it-the tiny green shoot that grew out of the stump, pushing forward with new life.
Now, in the present, Ethan heard the footsteps approaching crunching on the autumn leaves before he turned to see him, but he knew who was there. He’d felt him approach, and, anyway, given the urging of the powers that he had to be here today, of all days in the months that had passed, he wasn’t terribly astounded. It was unexpected, yes, but not surprising.
“Hello, Ripper.”
The footsteps through the forest stopped, “Ethan?” the voice asked incredulous.
“Yes, though I must admit I never quite envisioned us meeting here again.”
“No. You’ve slipped the grasp of the Initiative, then. How unfortunate.”
“Indeed. Though, really, Ripper, I think you’d know me better than that. You knew I would, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But it was a nice little fantasy while it lasted.”
“I didn’t even make it to their little secret base in Nevada. Amazing how easily magic works against those who don’t believe in it.”
Giles snorted slightly, but was silent as he took in the area that had once been their clearing. Ethan watched him intently, curious to see what the other man’s reaction would be when he saw.
Eyes wandered the ground as Giles looked for it, knowing that it had to be nearby, unless twenty and more years had rotted it away entirely. But, though there was deadfall, he couldn’t seem to find anything that bore the marks of an axe. Then he saw it-the slender tree with the deformed base, and his eyes wandered up the trunk, opening wider when he noticed the symbol scarred into its side. “Good god!”
“Are you really so surprised?”
“It can’t…” he trailed off as he put his hand to his chest, unknowingly reaching inside for what was dimly there.
“You can’t tell me you haven’t felt it. That bit of me still in you. You didn’t kill it, Ripper. You only did a very good job of trying.”
“Why?” the voice demanded, cold and flat with silent rage as the hand gripped his shirt.
Ethan forced himself not to react as he maintained the sneer in his voice. “Why what? Why didn’t I kill it, you mean? Snuff out the last connection to what we shared?”
“You! You grew this…this thing.”
He looked affronted. “I did not. I only watched it grow, gave it a little water every now and then, maybe, but hardly more. Do you really think I could have done more without destroying it? It was a fragile thing. My magic is not, as you well know.”
“You marked it.”
Ethan sighed and put his hand on the fist that held him. Slowly, the fingers uncurled and relaxed. “I did not. It…it appeared there about four years ago. It was how I knew where you were, Ripper, and what you were doing. As the tree grew stronger, I could use it to see you, and so I did. I saw how you became the very thing you hated-rigid, and quite frankly, Ripper, rather boring. One of them.”
“I like to think I’ve done better than that,” came the reply, defensive.
“Perhaps. Though I have to say, it pained me; it really did, the way you betrayed yourself. You let the magic grow weak, almost dying. I’ve felt the spells you’ve done, but you do so few, letting the witches do them for you. Even as the Fyarl demon, you had to wait for me to undo it. Are you afraid of yourself, perhaps?”
The hand released him entirely, and Giles glanced away, turning to avoid him. “I purged it, Ethan. My last great spell was to forget how to use the magics. It was too dark, too corrupted, and it would have corrupted me.” Then he caught himself, and let his anger show again slightly. “Seeing as how you’ve gone down that path, you wouldn’t understand.”
Ethan barked a laugh. “You’re right. I don’t. But I’m hardly evil. If you think that, you’ve been hanging out with that Slayer of yours too long.”
An indefinable pain flashed across the other man’s face before he shoved it aside and answered. “No, but you’re an irresponsible annoyance.”
“Well, granted.”
Neither spoke, and both silently examined the tree, inexplicably drawn to it, as the few leaves of fall hung from its branches, whispering in the slight breeze. Then, Ethan took the advantage to dig deep within, seek out the bit green that still resided inside, and caress it, swirling his own magic around it and drawing it out.
“Ethan!” the voice cracked sharply. “Stop.”
“You don’t want it, Ripper?” Ethan asked rhetorically. Then he asked the question that really interested him. “Then why are you here?”
The eyes darkened a shade, and Giles hesitated, uncomfortable. “I just…I needed to see. To remember.”
“She’s gone, isn’t she?” Ethan asked, flicking his eyes back to the tree, suddenly understanding the sorrow that he’d felt in the connection over the past several months.
“Yes.” The admission was soft, a whisper just loud enough to be heard, but laced with pain. “Or rather, she was.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
“Her friends; they were misguided, but they brought her back.”
He felt his own mind spin at the horrifying possibilities. “No…”
“Oh, it was a clean spell,” the Watcher explained bitterly. “Unfortunately, they didn’t bother to check where it was they were saving her from. She’s broken, now, Ethan, and I…” he glanced away. “I don’t know how to make it all better again for her. She wanted me to, but, well, I think my presence was only doing her more harm than good.”
“If it’s any consolation, Ripper, I’m sorry. I truly am.”
“It was,” he paused searching for the words. “It was unfortunate; in the end, she died of her own choice, saving her sister…and the world, really. Buffy deserved her peace.” Giles waited until Ethan made eye contact again before letting himself speak further, this time his voice tinged with pride. “She defeated a god, Ethan. A god.”
Ethan’s eyes widened slightly. “Impressive. She always was a bright, amazing girl, though.”
“She was. And perhaps will be again, in time.”
“So now what do you intend?”
Giles sighed. “That seems to be the question. I’m afraid I haven’t exactly made myself well-liked around the Council the last several years.”
“I recall,” Ethan said, referring both to his own observations and sources, as well as what Ripper had spilled out to him that final night of drinking before he’d woken up a demon. “They don’t want you back, then?”
“I rather doubt it.”
The silence grew long again, and the shadows shifted as the day wore on, but it was companionable, and neither found they minded it overmuch.
Finally, Giles approached the tree and tentatively touched its bark. Remembering the way to let his magic flow across the surface, he did so.
Ethan could taste it, and reveled in that small reaching out after so long, but said nothing, afraid to scare him off, until the hand dropped back down, ending it, and he heard the sigh. At last he spoke. “It’s still there, Ripper. It could easily be remade as strong as ever. One small spell, that’s all it would take.”
“You would still claim me? After everything? Even as I am now?” the Watcher asked, genuinely curious, not really sure what answer he wanted to hear. The one he got, however, was exactly the one he expected.
“Always. The harder question is, would you ever do the same?”
END: 07/24/04
If you’d like to read it for yourself:
Shakespeare Sonnet #87
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.