| Title: Empty Garden Author: A. Muse Email: [email protected] And in the cracks along the sidewalk nothing grows no more Who lived here He must have been a gardener that cared a lot Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop And we are so amazed we're crippled and we're dazed A gardener like that no one can replace --Empty Garden, Elton John |
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Staring at her face, I just knew. Of course it was Buffy. Why else would Willow be here? But her expression, the look of sheer sorrow was almost too much for me, as the heart that no longer beat within my chest broke once more. For a moment, I wanted to turn and run. I wanted to hit something and scream. But then, I just wanted to cry. I felt the tears form in the corner of my eyes and I wished like hell they were warm so I could feel the heat and the sting. Anything other than the emptiness, the death that coursed through my body. I was still here. Buffy wasn't. As I took a heavy step toward Buffy's best friend, the telephone started ringing in the background. The sound shot through me and threatened any shred of sanity that I had left. Why now after I had taken heart in hope again? Why now when I needed all that was good to keep me on this quest? Why, when I had given it all up just to... No. I shook myself violently as the phone continued to ring. Monster! It's what I was to even once consider myself and what I'd lost. But then, how could I help that? Buffy gone. All that was good and light and real. The Powers vision to me of a future to believe in. Now gone. And the anger overtook me as my mouth opened and I screamed. "Cordelia, please!" Princess or no, I needed the phone to stop ringing. I needed silence and solitude. I needed to bury myself and grieve. But a voice stopped me. A voice that carried over the silent air in the room as the answering machine beeped. "Angel... Angel, it's me. I need ya to pick up." The Slayer's voice sliced through me. "I need ya to help me get outta here. Something... I can't explain it. Something's happened. I can feel it." I start shaking my head as I hear Faith's pleading voice. She wants my help to get out. My help. How can I tell her I don't have it in me to help anyone. Not now. Not when I need to put my energy into feeling this loss. But her voice goes on. Faith begging. Faith trying to explain. Faith finally saying. "Angel, it's B..." *** The sun has been out for five days. Five days of bright, cheery sunshine and I find myself cursing Mother Nature's inability to grieve for the girl that saved her. I curse the people of the world who go about their daily lives without a thought to the girl who made those lives possible. I curse my inability to stand in that same sun and mourn where the world can see my pain. They need to see it. They need to see how much it hurts when someone like Buffy is taken from us. Not just me. Them, too. They can't realize... none of us can realize what she's done. I'm not entirely sure what's kept me from swallowing my own fear of the unknown and taking that short walk into the sun. It would be so easy... so easy to tell the Powers to fuck off and find some other warrior of the light to heed their call. To find some other schmuck to keep taking and taking every sting and bite they have to give. There are just so many tests one can take and pass. I had been so close to failing. So close to giving into my darkness and that was just a few weeks ago. Now it's so dark that I can barely see my own hand in front of my face, let alone a future in world that doesn't have Buffy. "Come on, Angel. Let's get outta here. Sun's coming." Her voice is distant, yet I know she's next to me. She had felt it. Faith had felt it the moment Buffy's heart stopped beating and her soul took flight into a world away from this one. And I envied her. I envied her and hated her for feeling it. Why hadn't I? No one had loved her the way I did. Why hadn't I felt it? Why hadn't I known that it happened? But I knew. Faith always had a piece of Buffy that no one else did. Two Slayers. Sisters in a fight they should have fought together but couldn't. I knew that was the work of the Powers as well. Two Slayers coexisting. It wasn't in the natural order. But leave it up to Buffy to break all the rules and decide not to die. Not to die. But God, she was dead now and my urge to run and scream returned yet again. For the thousandth, millionth time that night. "Angel, please. We can come back tomorrow night and the next night if ya have to." "Just a few more minutes, Faith. Just a few more." I looked at her, standing before me, casting a shadow between me and the moon. "Tell me again. Please." I watched her eyes cloud over as her head bowed till her chin met with her chest. I heard the heavy sigh that escaped through lips I knew to be pursed. But I didn't care. Faith had the final link. The link no one else did. I needed it so badly and this was the only way I could remotely get it. "It was kinda, a normal dream, ya know? Normal for me, anyway. Loud voices, yelling. Darkness and chaos. Blood. I could see B, a lot of stuff with B. Parts with me, parts before and after. There was me in her body and the jolt when we switched. But I could feel myself in her and looking out from her eyes. I could feel how afraid she was and yet, how she forced herself to push into it and fight and keep the only piece of herself that still connected her to this world. Her body and her mind screamed inside of me and I could feel her desperation as it just kept getting darker and louder." Faith's voice catches for a moment and I think I can see her trying to correlate Buffy with her own face-off with death. "But then, I don't know, she just stopped. Something inside of her clicked and there was light. A calm overcame her and she flew... her heart, soul, everything she was just flew. I woke up clutching my own chest, but somehow..." She choked as she moved out of the light of the moon and settled next to me. She looks at me with eyes as big as Buffy's had been and I have to fight myself not to just take comfort anywhere I can find it. In her. In my own eternal death. "You don't know how lucky you are," my words are firm but without blame or condescension. "I'd give anything to have what you do." "I ain't got nothing, Angel." "How can you say that?" I ask her, feeling so much of me giving up with Faith. "You have her last moment. You have her peace." "But not her forgiveness." "Maybe her peace is forgiveness." Faith shook her head. "Can't be. Because I'll always know that it should have been me. And I don't mean I shoulda been the one that died. I couldn'ta died for that... that was B's and only hers. But..." her voice trailed off and I tried to understand what it was she was saying. "I don't understand." She shook her head then. "It doesn't matter. What I mean is just who I am and why Buffy and I never could have fought together. Never could have saved the world together. Her peace is what I gotta live up to now." I squinted at her as dawn's mist began to swallow us. I knew what she meant and somehow, it gave me the strength I needed to stand. "Come on. Let's get outta here before I find myself blowing in the wind." I held out my hand to her and she took it. She'd always take it from there, no matter which way I decided to go... |
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