Title: Light the Way
By Ash (hi. :)
E-Mail: [email protected]

Feedback: Oh, how I love it... let me count the ways. No, we don't have that kind of time. *g*

Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, the song isn't mine. I own nothing and mean no offense.

Summary: A lighted window is a beacon in the darkness, but it comes with complications.

Notes: My apologies for my long absence... a few days spent in hospital, a lot more spent staring at the ceiling and wishing I had a wireless modem. *g* Anyway, this is a strange bit that came out of a request by Charibob. Hope you like it!

Willow sat alone in the dorm room she shared with Buffy, staring out at the darkened campus. From a distance the oblong square of light that was her window might have been any window, in any time. High in a tower it could have been a single candle that cast the inviting light, the glow a beacon to someone waiting beneath the concealing shadows of the trees.

No iron bars blocked the doors to Willow's room, no men at arms lurked outside to catch her in metal arms and force her back into her solitary room. She didn't move.

Her hand cradled her chin in a pose that might have stirred the imagination of playwrights long since dead. Her eyes searched the world around her blindly, seeing a world within and not the figure that darted quickly between the trees.

For a second, a balcony seemed to nestle against the institutional walls of the dorm, a sweeping thing of heavy stone and endless age. Ivy fluttered briefly into existence below it, ivy that could be crushed under eager hands and feet, ivy that could bear a lover upward as he climbed towards all there was of beauty in his world.

The balcony hung in the darkness for a bare moment out of time before disappearing back into nothingness with a whisper of sound like a harp gently stroked by the wind. Willow's eyes didn't see it as it faded away.

The man below her window could have seen, should have seen, would have seen if his eyes hadn't been fixed on the shine of a single window and the faintly seen reflection of a flame that might have been the organic fire of flame-bright hair or might have been a single candle set to light his way.

Willow didn't hear the creak of the dorm doors opening beneath her window and no one at all saw the stealthy figure that slipped between the doors and into the darkened corridors of the buildings.

Her eyes were focused on the artistically landscaped grounds of the campus, where the carefully planted trees seemed closer together than they used to be, branches weaving together into a blockade of twisted wood and rustling leaves. The moonlight traced the curves of the forest with caressing fingers, touching lightly on the pointed teeth of the great thorns.

Most of the lights in the dorm building were off. The few that were left cast golden circles on the floor and sent fragments of light to tangle in the silver curls of the man gliding down the corridors.

He moved with the silent grace of a thief or a wolf, his feet barely touching the floor. There was the suggestion of faint points around the ears that listened carefully for the first sounds of alarm. There was a wildness there that showed in the sly gleam of ice blue eyes, in the smile that played around the corners of lips stretched too tight.

In her room, Willow's mouth curved into a smile that echoed the wildness and cruelty in that other face. Her head turned, cold green eyes glancing at the door with feline anticipation in their newly silvered depths. She rose slowly from her chair, hands dropping to smooth the heavy satin skirts that fell into existence with her fluid motion.

Quick feet moved down the hallways, suits of armor rising briefly from the walls to sentinel his passage before melting into the walls behind him. Now he almost danced across carpet grown green as the grass of a sacred glade, now moved with stiffened legs and the half-heard clatter of metal rings.

Willow waited. The cold wind from the open window sighed in an icy kiss against her skin. Crystalline green eyes frosted over with innocent hurt as she looked at the door through which no one had come. The posters on the walls around her writhed in the semi-darkness, thickening and lengthening into pieces of heavy cloth that fell to the floor in yards of stories dimmed with time.

Now there was a knock on the door that resonated through the solid oak and shook the iron bars. And now there was a quiet loud as a shout that sang in wild trilling silences and told each of the other's closeness. The knob turned and the bolt rasped and the prison gate swung open without being touched by hands.

He looked at her.

And all of her was reflected in those wild eyes, reflected wide green eyes and slyly parted ruby lips. Reflected too the elegance of her gown and the bareness of her feet, nestled in the softness of the grass. He looked at her with hunter's eyes, gentle eyes, the eyes of a seeker that didn't believe he finally looked upon the object of his search.

She looked at him.

And saw the light gleam from armor half-forged out of air, saw the unsubstantial curves and planes of it wrap around him. Saw too the wild cast of those old young eyes and the subtle cruelty waiting in those firm lips, saw all of it with a matching cruelty and a growing joy.

He stepped into the tower room and now there was the lilting sound of far away music carried to their ears by the vagaries of a straying breeze. His eyes remained locked on hers, understanding and something else passing between them in that exchange of gazes. Identical smiles lent their faces a new, cold kind of beauty, the type of beauty that could be appreciated by eyes that gleamed like shards of ice.

With one more step, he was in front of her. Her hands lifted to lie like white doves on his shoulders, her head tilted sweetly to one side. His arms closed around her, his hands at the small of her back now touching satin, now flesh, now leaves and hair tangled with twigs and fairy knots.

She looked up into his face, the delicate fingers of one hand raising to rest now against the hard surfaces of his helmet, now the wind-tossed curls of his hair, now the slender point of his ear.

He lowered his head to hers and their lips met in a kiss that was a battle and a surrender and a victory and the bitterest kind of defeat. When his head raised again, some of the ice was gone from their eyes and a little of the cruelty from their smiles. Her breath came more quickly now, and his hands were fixed firmly around her waist.

They moved as one entity, eyes focused on each other's as they walked across the thick green grass. Both of their feet were bare, half-hidden in the living carpet.

She separated from him, lying down on the heavy quilts, now silken sheets, now velvet moss that covered the bed and flowed down onto the floor. She raised her arms to him, the bare skin gilded by candlelight. His eyes never left hers as he sank into her embrace, incorporeal armor fading into the air with a gleam like moonlight on water.

The vines fell from the ceiling and swayed in the air above them, and the only sound in the room was the faint whispers of distant music and the sighs of lovers in the dark. What little light there was picked out the faces in the tapestries that hung on every wall. Stories caught in fabric, shaded by dyes dark with age, stories of knights and princesses and faeries and princes, a thousand stories hanging on the walls of the room. And every face was the same.

All picked out by the light of a single candle in the window.

Odd, I know. :) Still, tell me what you think? All comments are eagerly, not to say obsessively, sought after. Like it? Hate it? Think I should write more? Think I should master the concept of grammar? All comments are welcome. *g*