BtVS songfic: Heart of Darkness
Title: Heart of Darkness
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don’t own the character, I don’t own the song the only thing I own is my whacked-out brain.
Summary: Oh look! I did another story set around a song. Buffy’s musings set to “The Mystic’s Dream” by Loreena McKennitt. It’s not what you think either.
Notes: Ooops I did it again! These songfics are really addictive. I just hear a song, and poof, I got fic. It’s melodramatic and poorly written, but at least it’s not bothering me anymore. Comments, questions, complaints? My e-mail is scwlc@yahoo.ca.
Buffy had long ago given up hiding her enjoyment of the pseudo-pagan culture practised by the girls with henna tattoos and spice racks who all thought they were sisters to the dark ones. Willow had, at first, bemoaned her friend’s lack of taste, and Giles had been horrified by Buffy’s blatant disregard for the facts in her guilty pleasure at painting herself blue and dancing around with people who had no clue about the powers they thought they were calling on.
She was in it for the fun of prancing about to new age gibberish. Once the others understood she hadn’t lost her mind in a spiritualistic quest for enlightenment through chants calling on deities and powers that didn’t exist they left her alone. After all, if Buffy wanted to risk being arrested for indecent exposure who were they to argue?
So the Slayer had joined up with the so-called wicca group Willow had left in disgust. Menstrual power blood thingy be damned, it was fun! When they had started fundraising to go on a trip through the British Isles Buffy had gone along because it was a cheap trip to a foreign country. So she had to spend a couple nights worshipping at ley lines or something, she was going to see some neat sights, and she’d heard about some really cool clubs in London she wanted to visit.
It was a blast. A week into the tour saw them in Ireland, or a badly pronounced ‘Eire’ as their (hem hem) coven head insisted on calling it. Much to the amusement of the locals.
In Galway they stopped for one of the insane rituals Winnifred “My name within the coven is Gwenhwyfhar” Pinkerton insisted had roots dating back thousands of years. Mostly, they had roots dating back to Winnifred’s freshman year when she took a course on the occult. But hey, who was initiate Buffy “your name must reflect your inner self. I name you Finvarra” (wasn’t that a guy’s name?) Summers to argue?
In spite of the tales dating back to the eighteenth century of a mad ghost who took revenge on the whole village, but especially his family for wrongs done to him in life. Despite the fact that all those tales spoke of a tall man with dark hair and the face of an angel as the mad ghost.
It was no surprise Buffy was thinking of said ghost when the background music for the ritual was turned on. The haunting words echoing across the empty field they had taken over for the evening’s dancing and rites.
//A clouded dream on an earthly night
Hangs upon the crescent moon//
Her eyes closed as she waited for her turn to dance under the moon, Buffy thought of Angel. She used to wait for him by moonlight. They would patrol and hunt together, and sometimes they would stay out all night, Angel just barely making it home before the sunrise.
//A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn//
He was so beautiful, never more so than at that twilight moment when they could briefly pretend he could stay to see the sun for her. That his undying body and soul were like hers, and that he was not ageless and unchanging, but ephemeral. Human. Finite.
She could see standing stones nearby and again marvelled at the power and determination to move them to the positions they had held for centuries. Angel had grown up around them. Had he ever looked at the stones and wondered about the architects of their placement?
//Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones
It's there that my heart is longing for
All for the love of you//
She stared at the sky, the flickering bonfire making her think of the divides between them. Distance, time, history, even nature came between them. Standing beneath the open sky, firelight dancing on the side of the monolithic stone in the centre of the field, all she could think of was how much the night was a part of them both. How much the night made them a part of each other.
//A painting hangs on an ivy wall
Nestled in the emerald moss
The eyes declare a truce of trust
Then it draws me far away//
She had found an old family portrait the other day as she hunted through the ruins of an old townhouse the locals believed was haunted. No one actually said as much, but the tales were told to all the tourists and Buffy had yet to see anyone not give the old house a very wide berth.
It was of Angel, an older man and woman, and a young girl. Buffy assumed them to be the family Angelus had murdered after rising. Looking into his eyes, she had seen something inexplicable that drew her closer. They were insolent and practically snapping with life. The artist was truly excellent. Yet there was an emptiness in his eyes that made her wonder about the man he had been. This was done before the death of his family, what had made him so sad that she ached to take the younger version of her love into her arms to comfort him.
She had felt like that once before, when her father had taken her, Mom and Dawn along with him on one of his business trips. They had gone to Egypt and while Hank had been deeply involved in contract negotiations his wife and children had gone to a museum. Buffy had taken one look at a painting on the side of a small mummified boy’s casket and had begged her mother to take him home with them.
//Where deep in the desert twilight
Sand melts in pools of the sky//
Something about that distant memory connected to this moment on the rolling green hills of Ireland. For a moment, Buffy could smell the dry, hot air of the desert. The desert that the First Slayer had drawn Buffy to in her dreams. That desert that was so much a part of Buffy’s self and psyche.
Angel had always understood that. This primal feeling that could not be redirected into modern ‘acceptable’ outlets. Standing with the darkness surrounding her with a quality so different from the dry sand that she could feel pulling her she could feel the pull in Angel’s blood. So similar, yet so different from her own.
//Darkness lays her crimson cloak
Your lamps will call me home//
While he was a creature of cold winds and sea brine winging its way across hills and valleys of lush verdancy, she was of heat and a dryness that sucked the moisture from the body. They were complete opposites. Opposites but for the night. The moon their light, for they were both creatures born of darkness, no matter the power that orchestrated their origins they held that in common.
//And so it's there my homage's due
Clutched by the still of the night
Now I feel you move
And every breath is full//
It was now Buffy’s turn to join in the dancing, and she did feeling the darkness flow through her. Night was her time, and she felt no shame in admitting it. The dark did not always hold evil, for if it did then she must be evil too. It was his as well, and though a more sinister darkness lay within him so too did a darkness to match her own.
Sinuously moving, Buffy felt, for a moment, a kind of ecstasy rush through her at this reverence to the time that was hers.
//So it's there my homage's due
Clutched by the still of the night
Even the distance feels so near
All for the love of you//
The slight tingle she felt at his presence registered and Buffy lost herself to the moment of connection. An ocean apart and still the dark united them.
All things pass and Buffy noticed the subtle lightening of the sky that heralded the coming of day. She knew the signs far more intimately than her fellow dancers. They had not spent year becoming intimately familiar with the levels and qualities of night darkness.
//A clouded dream on an earthly night
Hangs upon the crescent moon
A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn//
Still, she could feel the ebbing of his presence even as the music wound to its close. The last traces of him faded as the diurnal animals began to move in preparation for the day. The girls packed their things and headed out to their rented bus. Buffy took a moment to pause and glance back at the remnants of the fire from the night before.
//Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones//
The local people were carefully not talking about the insane Americans who had danced around in the middle of the bloody night dressed in bedsheets. Winnifred was putting on airs about the success of the spirit calling the night before, whatever that meant. Adorable little critters were bouncing around like a Disney cartoon and everything was just sparklingly sunny.
//It's there that my heart is longing
All for the love of you//
She longed for his darkness to return.
Read the rest of the series:
Light in the Darkness
Through the Darkness
Darkness Revisited
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