Fic: The Soul Lies Down (1/?)
Title: The Soul Lies Down (1/?)
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~1,300 this chapter
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death. (A sequel/companion to Angearia's Fin Amour)
Notes: I read Fin Amour a while back and was incredibly moved by it. But I was also fascinated by the imagery and symbolism in the desert scene (not to mention, devastated by the ending). My brain wouldn't let it go, so I started to write this. I'm fairly certain you'll need to read that fic first, so if you haven't, run don't walk! And if the ending makes you sad, well... sequel, here ;) I'm posting this here, now, in the hopes of gaining some momentum with the next chapter. I'm currently going through IVF and it's sapping my energy so that writing has slowed to a snail's pace. I'm also hoping to connect with what's left of the LJ spuffy crowd, so if you're out there *waves frantically* HI! If there's anywhere I can pimp, please let me know :) You can also read this story on Elysian Fields if you prefer that format. I will upload to AO3 when it's complete. Many thanks to Yavannie82 and Angearia for beta work, ETA: and Bewildered for the retrospective and very thorough beta <3
The Soul Lies Down
by The Moonmoth
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
each other
doesn't make any sense.
- Rumi
1
Under a Crescent Moon
I was born under a crescent moon in the California desert, in a patch of scrub in the shadows between dunes; my mother’s screams answered not by soothing word of female wisdom, but the rage-filled death howls of the man who swore to protect me (not a man not a man not even a man - that’s enough from you Xander Harris you know what I meant.) Under the pitch of night as a god sought to kill me, I came into this world cradled safe between my mother’s thighs, loved, in that moment, by two beings beyond all else. And that moment, dreaded by the woman for all the months she had awaited it, was both the beginning and the end, a tangled ball of yarn pulled from both ends towards past and future. Despite all trepidation, she loved me instantly, with such magic as mother nature imbues; he, who loved me from the first moment he knew of me simply because I was hers, lay bloody and maimed in the sand, a handful of seconds from the final swoop of death’s leathery black wings (what an irony, his own leathery black wings were my swaddling clothes.)
There’s magic in deserts. You get it in all the quiet places of the world, where the air has time to settle undisturbed by human passage. My mother knew this, instinctively if not outright, from the ritual she herself had undergone, in a place not so far from here. Mystical gyres collect spirits, currents of power swirling in slow whorls. My conception was not intended, magic gone wrong and unwelcome. Wrong womb, wrong moment, history takes a sharp wrong turn. But she told me, later, how she saw the mountain lion and nodded to it in passing, making her peace.
So I lived, he died, and my mother wept with a wellspring of feeling as foreign as another land. And I, key, god-hunted, daughter, entered the world wailing in the manner of such things as my mother’s tears and the man’s (yes alright I know) blood and the life-giving fluids of the womb soaked into the sand. An auspicious place. Easy to find.
If you know how.
If you’re looking.
*
As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death.
Uncle Xander said… he said mother must have told me of it, once, and the image imprinted itself on my subconscious. Although he didn’t actually say imprinted. Or subconscious. But anyway I’ve never thought my imagination was good enough for that.
Sometimes, I think I somehow got caught in that moment, that carousel of life and death. A part of him and a part of me, forever watching the other out of the corners of our eyes across some mystical axis. How else, the dreams?
It’s not like I knew what I was, then.
*
Not like now, that I know how to look. Oh yes I’m looking now, looking and looking. Time has stopped obligingly, pausing at my request to examine the scene of the crime. Not unused to gory carnage, the sheer organic destruction still unsteadies me. I have never seen a body so broken as his.
The god has him by the throat, held dangling in the air as though his body, white and frail, is nothing more than paper. It’s not a bad analogy, ripped and bloodied and dying as he is. Her golden blonde hair stands around her head in a crown of curls, eyes caught wide and malevolent. Their gazes are locked, hero and villain (the one heroic act he ever did in his whole sad existence - I’m sorry, sweetie, but it’s true.)
(Doesn’t that still make him a hero?)
Amazing how little this god has made of his strength, when the pile of dead knights at the bottom of the ditch speaks in fanfare to his prowess and his promise. Carefully, I pick my way down the dune to examine them more closely, hike back up with ghastly curiosity satisfied. Walk around the tableau of god and man (it just sounds better, okay?) His right arm ends at a ragged stump. The smell of blood is almost overwhelming. Only half his face works as he twists a demented death leer at the abomination in red, caught in the act of spitting blood in her face.
He is dying, gruesome, defiant to the last. I feel an unexpected surge of pride.
I thought I was ready for this moment, but I never could have been.
Never mind that now. Pressure is building, the sand in the egg-timer waiting to resume its flow. I’ve taken as long as I should.
Fading out I let time spill back in, and continue to watch as a newborn’s wail catches a thermal and soars high above us all; the look of gleeful triumph in the Beast’s wide eyes, of resignation in the man’s (I’ll come clean in a moment, just let me finish first.) She crushes his throat like an old soda can before tossing him aside just as casually; unconcerned - correctly - about what he can do to her now.
Perhaps she should have taken a moment to finish him properly, but she can smell her victory, so close, and besides the dawn is coming (damn right.) See, this man is not a man but a vampire, and though Glory’s glory will never come to pass, the dawn for which I was named will end him just the same.
And I, key, daughter, she of the mystical connection to temporal portals and interdimensional doorways… I’ve come to stop it.
*
You might wonder, at this point - and fair enough - why? It’s a loaded question, so many of them are, and unpicking our way back through the three-dimensional tapestry of this story to get at the heart of the matter is no easy thing, even for me. (See what I did there?)
If we start at the beginning, I could tell you: there once was a vampire called Spike who fell in love with the slayer. Not terribly informative, and besides, you knew all that already.
Skipping to the middle, when I’m about ten years old, Auntie Anya will realize: blood calls to blood. Uncle Xander will be horrified and try to deny it, but it’s there plain as day on my face for anyone looking.
There isn’t really an end to speak of. The world ends, of course - what’s new? - but that’s the beauty of time travel. Perhaps I’m the only one left right now, who knows? But it isn’t really the end until I fail. And I won’t fail. There’s a field, you see, out beyond right and wrong.
So what do these things have in common, then, this beginning and middle and Mobius-not-an-end? Spike the vampire, who lies barely-conscious in the sand as the desert sky lightens to deadly shades is… (where’s Andrew when you need a lame-o nerd moment?) But no. Blood calls to blood, that’s all I can say for now, in this moment, with my own infant wails hastening sunrise.
No one knew until later.
Next
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~1,300 this chapter
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death. (A sequel/companion to Angearia's Fin Amour)
Notes: I read Fin Amour a while back and was incredibly moved by it. But I was also fascinated by the imagery and symbolism in the desert scene (not to mention, devastated by the ending). My brain wouldn't let it go, so I started to write this. I'm fairly certain you'll need to read that fic first, so if you haven't, run don't walk! And if the ending makes you sad, well... sequel, here ;) I'm posting this here, now, in the hopes of gaining some momentum with the next chapter. I'm currently going through IVF and it's sapping my energy so that writing has slowed to a snail's pace. I'm also hoping to connect with what's left of the LJ spuffy crowd, so if you're out there *waves frantically* HI! If there's anywhere I can pimp, please let me know :) You can also read this story on Elysian Fields if you prefer that format. I will upload to AO3 when it's complete. Many thanks to Yavannie82 and Angearia for beta work, ETA: and Bewildered for the retrospective and very thorough beta <3
The Soul Lies Down
by The Moonmoth
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
each other
doesn't make any sense.
- Rumi
1
Under a Crescent Moon
I was born under a crescent moon in the California desert, in a patch of scrub in the shadows between dunes; my mother’s screams answered not by soothing word of female wisdom, but the rage-filled death howls of the man who swore to protect me (not a man not a man not even a man - that’s enough from you Xander Harris you know what I meant.) Under the pitch of night as a god sought to kill me, I came into this world cradled safe between my mother’s thighs, loved, in that moment, by two beings beyond all else. And that moment, dreaded by the woman for all the months she had awaited it, was both the beginning and the end, a tangled ball of yarn pulled from both ends towards past and future. Despite all trepidation, she loved me instantly, with such magic as mother nature imbues; he, who loved me from the first moment he knew of me simply because I was hers, lay bloody and maimed in the sand, a handful of seconds from the final swoop of death’s leathery black wings (what an irony, his own leathery black wings were my swaddling clothes.)
There’s magic in deserts. You get it in all the quiet places of the world, where the air has time to settle undisturbed by human passage. My mother knew this, instinctively if not outright, from the ritual she herself had undergone, in a place not so far from here. Mystical gyres collect spirits, currents of power swirling in slow whorls. My conception was not intended, magic gone wrong and unwelcome. Wrong womb, wrong moment, history takes a sharp wrong turn. But she told me, later, how she saw the mountain lion and nodded to it in passing, making her peace.
So I lived, he died, and my mother wept with a wellspring of feeling as foreign as another land. And I, key, god-hunted, daughter, entered the world wailing in the manner of such things as my mother’s tears and the man’s (yes alright I know) blood and the life-giving fluids of the womb soaked into the sand. An auspicious place. Easy to find.
If you know how.
If you’re looking.
*
As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death.
Uncle Xander said… he said mother must have told me of it, once, and the image imprinted itself on my subconscious. Although he didn’t actually say imprinted. Or subconscious. But anyway I’ve never thought my imagination was good enough for that.
Sometimes, I think I somehow got caught in that moment, that carousel of life and death. A part of him and a part of me, forever watching the other out of the corners of our eyes across some mystical axis. How else, the dreams?
It’s not like I knew what I was, then.
*
Not like now, that I know how to look. Oh yes I’m looking now, looking and looking. Time has stopped obligingly, pausing at my request to examine the scene of the crime. Not unused to gory carnage, the sheer organic destruction still unsteadies me. I have never seen a body so broken as his.
The god has him by the throat, held dangling in the air as though his body, white and frail, is nothing more than paper. It’s not a bad analogy, ripped and bloodied and dying as he is. Her golden blonde hair stands around her head in a crown of curls, eyes caught wide and malevolent. Their gazes are locked, hero and villain (the one heroic act he ever did in his whole sad existence - I’m sorry, sweetie, but it’s true.)
(Doesn’t that still make him a hero?)
Amazing how little this god has made of his strength, when the pile of dead knights at the bottom of the ditch speaks in fanfare to his prowess and his promise. Carefully, I pick my way down the dune to examine them more closely, hike back up with ghastly curiosity satisfied. Walk around the tableau of god and man (it just sounds better, okay?) His right arm ends at a ragged stump. The smell of blood is almost overwhelming. Only half his face works as he twists a demented death leer at the abomination in red, caught in the act of spitting blood in her face.
He is dying, gruesome, defiant to the last. I feel an unexpected surge of pride.
I thought I was ready for this moment, but I never could have been.
Never mind that now. Pressure is building, the sand in the egg-timer waiting to resume its flow. I’ve taken as long as I should.
Fading out I let time spill back in, and continue to watch as a newborn’s wail catches a thermal and soars high above us all; the look of gleeful triumph in the Beast’s wide eyes, of resignation in the man’s (I’ll come clean in a moment, just let me finish first.) She crushes his throat like an old soda can before tossing him aside just as casually; unconcerned - correctly - about what he can do to her now.
Perhaps she should have taken a moment to finish him properly, but she can smell her victory, so close, and besides the dawn is coming (damn right.) See, this man is not a man but a vampire, and though Glory’s glory will never come to pass, the dawn for which I was named will end him just the same.
And I, key, daughter, she of the mystical connection to temporal portals and interdimensional doorways… I’ve come to stop it.
*
You might wonder, at this point - and fair enough - why? It’s a loaded question, so many of them are, and unpicking our way back through the three-dimensional tapestry of this story to get at the heart of the matter is no easy thing, even for me. (See what I did there?)
If we start at the beginning, I could tell you: there once was a vampire called Spike who fell in love with the slayer. Not terribly informative, and besides, you knew all that already.
Skipping to the middle, when I’m about ten years old, Auntie Anya will realize: blood calls to blood. Uncle Xander will be horrified and try to deny it, but it’s there plain as day on my face for anyone looking.
There isn’t really an end to speak of. The world ends, of course - what’s new? - but that’s the beauty of time travel. Perhaps I’m the only one left right now, who knows? But it isn’t really the end until I fail. And I won’t fail. There’s a field, you see, out beyond right and wrong.
So what do these things have in common, then, this beginning and middle and Mobius-not-an-end? Spike the vampire, who lies barely-conscious in the sand as the desert sky lightens to deadly shades is… (where’s Andrew when you need a lame-o nerd moment?) But no. Blood calls to blood, that’s all I can say for now, in this moment, with my own infant wails hastening sunrise.
No one knew until later.
Next