Sang et Ivoire

By Holly

Chapter Thirty-One

The air smelled of rain and carried the tenor of chamber music. Calming, deceptive sounds of pleasant repose. It strived for the sensationalism of normality - serene and quiet. However, after a century of experience, he knew not to place faith based on sensory. Eyes were deceiving; scents were unreliable, and sound - ah, sound. Sound was the worst of all. A menacing opponent - it threw itself at walls while scampering down empty corridors, whispered false promises and distorted to shape itself as forbidden hungers, coaxing the impotent to hear what they desired.

Every fiber of his being stretched with pain, prompting him to scream in torment before lasting recollections came searing back. A flash of blinding white and it was over. Over...he was falling. Falling before he could be sacrificed. Falling before he could be saved.

The Gate of Abraxas had opened. He had raced to close it. He had failed.

His eyes squeezed shut, bidding the world away. Against black pits, he saw her lunge first, battling him with superior strength and speed. Winning against his deepest wishes. But they had both disappeared into the portal. He remembered falling.

All right, he thought. I hurt enough to know I'm still undead. The... William glanced upward, fighting to see something he recognized. The scene was blurry against his eyes, but the scent was so achingly familiar, a sharp pain sprang tightly across his chest. Old and abandoned - the crypt of his past. The crypt he had occupied what felt like centuries ago. Where they had shared intimacy after intimacy. The same Riley had detonated the day she told him it was over.

Buffy. Where was she? He tried to sit up but pain drew him back. If he had survived, she was alive as well. Willow and Angel would have taken him elsewhere. Something...

Giles's words came back to haunt him. The Gate will only close with a sacrifice of pure psyche... Abraxas seems to think that justifies the means. It would, of course, kill the carrier - but that is the material point. Something horrible retracted in exchange for something good.

At that, his eyes widened. Pure psyche? Did that mean...

He tested his resolve, forcing his mind to the darkest hour his demon had ever conjured. It was a path he never wished to see again. A plane he could not avoid. The thought of her squirming, kicking, screaming beneath him as he heard only what he wanted to hear. Saw only what would give him release.

A sharp pain engulfed his chest, and William expelled a jagged, agonized breath. No. The conscience was still there. The guilt. The suffering.

That meant...

Something significant fell within him. It was then he knew. Then that he understood.

She was gone.

It had hurt him before. Once upon a time, six years ago, when her voice filled his black heart with empty promises, false desires and misguided demands. His sight had betrayed him more than once. For what seemed like a lifetime, he thought he saw her as receptive. That his own could be repaid. Sweet retribution for the anguish his fallen heart forced him to endure.

Everything was different now. He had wronged her in the past; there was no doubt, but never without punishment. There toward the end, he found himself abused for repressions he could not have possibly initiated. Hated with such seething rage one minute and ignored the next. She had hurt him so many times. All thrust and parry. Kick and punch. Snap and pull.

The evidence was irrefutable. She had led him here. She had fueled his holy crusade. She had given him life after taking it so many times. She provided the reason to animate his useless lungs. Over and over again, she had gone to him to die. And despite her silent pleas that screamed for the release of inward torment, he was the one who fell cold, who underwent her stare, her bitterness, her biting tongue. Who knew how it felt to be hurt time and after time.

William's eyes snapped shut and a sharp pain jittered up his spine. In seconds she would enter, and he had not the strength to fight through the barriers and run. The voice housed deep within his cavity told him it was justified. That whatever she threw at him was minimal compared to the pain he inflicted. It was true on some level. Despite her frenzied blows, he had bitten her back. Every chance he got: a barb here, a reminder there, a punch when it didn't hurt so much.

But she was his Buffy. Loving her meant loving the hurt, the torment, the fire that raged despite numerous attempts to calm her screaming soul. Time after time, he willingly threw himself onto the flame, and she had resented it. Resented the evidence that a creature as dark as he could love where others in his place had proven it impossible a thousand times to their credit.

Everything was different now. Now he had lost her behind the fire forever. The silence whispered lies that he could have prevented it. Regardless of how incapacitated he was, if he had truly made an effort, neither one of them would be here. Instead, he had stood there - confined by spiritual resistance and will battling his darker nature - as breath was stolen from her body, her essence vacating to make way for a new sort of evil. A being he couldn't comprehend with powers he would never have. And it wanted justice. It wanted his head on a platter. Notwithstanding the knowledge that he deserved all of what was to come, every rational nerve in his body screamed that this was his last chance. There was time now - he could writhe and struggle and try to escape, but his weakened potency betrayed his will. There was nothing to do. Nothing to do but wait.

An ache harboring in his chest begged for a second futile gulp of air. With every useless intake, her scent lingered nearer. He knew she was coming and hated that he was powerless to prevent it. That he would lie here like the lapdog she had modeled him into. The consistent it's not really her, it's not really her played through his mind fruitlessly. Whether it was her or not, he knew he would not lift a finger to harm a golden hair on her head. He was here forever. Through good or bad, willingly doomed to endure the best of times and the worst of times. He would remain. To protect and watch after her, after her sister, to do anything she asked of him.

He had done this to her. It hadn't been his doing, his siring, but he was responsible.

After so many years committing atrocities with a song in his heart, to reflect the events accumulating the past decade with remorse struck as dark and unnatural. He had killed before - so had she. And that was the way it was, and the way he had accepted it. The inconvenience a conscience ruined the fun of plain and simple madness. And yet here he was. He would have killed to keep himself from falling behind the lines of tedium once, a time that did not seem so long ago. He had tried to kill her more times than he could count.

Things had been so basic then. Enemies were not supposed to love each other, but there was a sense of poetic beauty to the philosophy. The wisdom hidden by his willful ignorance screamed that life was simply that - hurting because you love. Hurting the ones you love because you love them. The simplest motives in history reduced to one conclusion. And here they were. They had bled together, wept together, fought together; exchanged hate, sarcasm, hurt and turmoil, kisses, love, and the promise that someday this crazy world might make sense.

It didn't. He was still here. Waiting to die again. Waiting for the minute that would be his final death.

Eyesight was returning but he didn't want to glance around. The room was home to him, or had been long ago. They had shared much in here - the atmosphere was her essence. He could smell it from a mile away. In those years apart, he thought of nothing else. The thrill of home was overrated. He had longed to return to this place with every fiber of his being, and it had all been in vain. Though blame for the recent turn of events could in no way be discarded at his feet, William could not escape the feeling of liability. The scorn of the deepest sort of guilt.

You hurt me to make yourself feel better, he reflected, unsure where such meditations originated. Thoughts running through his mind were so aged that he had long ago thought them dead and buried. With a futile sigh, he attempted to flicker his wrist, a finger, an eyelid, anything that would confirm his lingering willpower to move. Anything to encourage him to bound to his feet and run. Now. Now. Run now. While the chance was still alive.

William scoffed. His chest heaved with motion and sent a wave of pain crashing through his body. Bloody hell. Nix the entire escaping idea. Neither of us are alive...the chance might as well die, too.

A second wave overpowered him with heartbreaking awareness. The alien feel of inward torment shuddered through his broken body. Pain! Four years later, and he was still unaccustomed to the disclaimer the infliction of pain came with. Buy this one, kiddies. Side effects sold separately. It made him shiver to think he had at some point enjoyed this. A lifetime ago. Spike had been perverse. He had loved pain, fed off it. Every punch seemed to satisfy more than hurt. Amazing that so many things could change with simple consciousness. Love. Loving her was the most agonizing experience of his existence, but he welcomed it. Welcomed everything that loving her meant, even if she could never voice the return of his sentiments. Despite the moments of tenderness they had shared in the past, the confession of love buried within his throat fueled her rage, pumped through her like blood. He was a monster, after all. A shell of a man, and it was conventional knowledge that such creatures could not love.

He had loved, despite reasoning and logicality, and that changed everything.

She was coming.

That was all knowledge would allow. Not with the wind and tide that crashed behind the door. Soon she would enter, and all would change. He would see her for the first time since he allowed her to die. Really see her. The thing she was made to become. Cold. So cold. William was no stranger to it. Long ago his ability to differentiate the tone of separate seasons had abandoned him. Winter and summer were one in the same. That changed the first time he touched her skin and absorbed its warmth - alive - and he knew life would never be the same. Every day of his existence thereafter was a mocking attempt to reclaim what he lost.

What he lost was about to walk through that door. What he lost had once been pure; it was now a dark, evil thing. A reason his heart would have squealed in delight once upon a time, if only to find a mate as black as he. The layers of kindness he had often seen trapped behind her eyes would be replaced with empty nothingness of the worst sort. Nothingness could still hold something. Even nothing was something, in most respects. Not so with her. She had fallen in the worst of ways, and there had been no one to catch her - try as he had.

But she was coming now, and he could not avoid her. He would have to look into those eyes, those black pits of nothingness and know he created it. That he brought her to that lowly state, one way or another.

If I hadn't come back, if I hadn't come back...

The mantra was growing old. Rationality fought for a break. True, he did have a significant role in her transformation, but it wasn't by returning. He had watched her die once and couldn't bear the chance of it happening again. So he had protected her, fought with her, loved her, hurt her and left when it became unbearable. Now he was back and she was gone again, only this time lost where no one could reach her.

And she was coming.

A breeze flittered. Small, nearly indistinguishable, but existent. It carried only two meanings; someone was coming or leaving. The stillness of the sepulcher was disturbed, and he braced himself.

The affect of her actual entrance, though, was overwhelmingly reassuring. He knew her face anywhere, could identify it through a multitude of hundreds, could feel her eyes piercing him with that all-familiar glower. That was her face, all right. The face he had sketched a thousand times, had etched painfully tight in the back of his mind. The naked eye would never be able to decipher the difference; it took one who had been there to see beyond the fine print and through the lines. He saw, and his discovery sent roars of thunderous relief through his body. It wore her face, maneuvered in her body, spoke in her tongue, might act, portray, even feel the frontage of the woman he loved - but this was not his Slayer.

It was the eyes that gave it away. The eyes and her body language. The way she moved as though she wanted him, without second thoughts, hesitation, or remorse. Regardless of what had happened, what screams and confessions she had plundered, she had never looked at him like that. A sense of abandonment crackled behind her vacant gaze. Her soul that stank of such nobility - amidst confusion - was gone. Killed? Perhaps. She had died so many times; her spirit must have finally departed as well.

Grief overpowered him first, but it was short-lived. The image he had been dreading was standing before in the center of the room, mimicking him with her face, but it wasn't her.

It wasn't her.

That thought alone coaxed him from the pivotal edge of reasoning. It wasn't her. Whatever it was, it was the thing that killed her. This idle beast was no threat. He had to see. He had to see to gather the strength for what had to be done next. For what had to be finished; for his redemption and her release. William exerted a breath. He had to kill her.

Again.

Candlelight accented her skin with enchanting neutrality. Like she had so many times before, she flushed when she saw him. It was distracting; she wasn't supposed to flush now. The vestige made her look too alive for comfort, and he had to keep himself convinced that she was gone. Such a game was used to distract the weak-minded and those who saw only with their hearts without firstly considering the consequences. William was used to that; doing before he allowed his mind to catch up with him and scream, THAT'S PROBABLY NOT A GOOD IDEA! He could not afford to lose his wits now. She depended on him. She needed him. Needed him to be strong.

Needed him to kill her.

Like a predator seeking its prey, she stalked toward him, eyes blazing briefly with the sense that was so comfortingly not her that he had to suppress a sad grin of recognition. It would not do well to burst into tears.

His face was set in a glare to which she did not react. Instead, she circled the bed attentively, eyes never leaving him though his gaze stubbornly refused to abandon the incessant stare of straight ahead. Not a shudder ran through him, not a beat rippled across his skin. Much to his controlled surprise, he was steady in reaction, knowing a slip could set him back in the game. He was already too far behind to tread additional barriers.

Then she was behind him, prodding his face with hers, studying him as she ran her hand arms length across his shoulders, not eliciting even a sigh. A whimper. Nothing to acknowledge her presence. There she stood in silence, considering. He imagined her head tilted coyly to the left as her teeth gnawed thoughtfully on her lower lip. The picture tickled his mouth with a grin before he bade it away. No, no. Not Buffy, he had to remind himself. That was a Buffy-characteristic. The person behind him was not Buffy.

He decided to call her Porphyria. If she was not Buffy, she did not deserve her name.

Finally she completed her circle, moving to stand in front of him once more; a breathtaking vision of death. When she saw his response had not alternated, she grinned at last, crossing her arms in that wonderfully familiar patronizing fashion. "Hello, lover," she said.

An inward flinch exercised his pain. He did not respond - just stared ahead.

A visible fraction of distaste creased her brow. Silence would not do. With a sigh of air that was just as useless to her as it was to him, she sizzled forward, tempting his eyes to drop from hers, but he would not look away. And so in silence they stared. Power versus power. His previously sated muscles began to writhe.

When she could wait no longer, Porphyria scowled and began the final approach. On all fours, she climbed toward him, a slow, cat-like death march. She crawled over his languorous form until only a breath separated them, clearly displeased when she still received no reaction. With intent, she tried once more, emanating a steady breath onto his lips. He did not so much as blink. Growling, she set herself aside, claiming the cold spot beside him, kneading his collarbone with her nearest hand.

The iciness of her touch did him in. At last, she was awarded her coveted response - eyes glimmering like birthstones of avarice. The inner rational lodged within his cavity began to scream that he was losing again. Losing all semblance of control, if he had ever possessed it. No, no, he couldn't allow himself - but he did. It was inevitable. He felt her smile against his skin, persuading an arm to encircle her waist as her head found purchase against his shoulder.

Golden locks of hair tickled his senses, and he thought he was lost. William snapped his eyes shut to find the haven he had established for himself, but it was gone. All that was left was her.

"So silent," she cooed. "Don't you see? All is better now. Everything is as it should be."

No, luv. Don'-

"He woke her then, and trembling and obedient she ate that burning heart out of his hand. Weeping, I saw her then depart from me." The creature batted her eyes at him, another useless refrain to beguile. "Not departing here, lover. Isn't it time that I eat your burning heart? Hmmm? I will. Then you can stop pretending to live."

She knew. Bitter reality. The battle was over before it began. Porphyria raised her head as her arms encircled his, reversing their positions so he was cradled, however unwillingly, in her embrace. Tenderness. The false façade of tenderness. Never in life, never in their time together - at least not until the end. It was easy to lose his sense of awareness, but the voice was persistent in its accusations.

Not real! Not real! False face!

Destructive cycle. He had to break free. Then she was speaking to him, her voice heavenly as her body reverberated against his cheek. He let his eyes drift closed again, arm wrapped around her side unwittingly drawing her nearer. As he melted into her, she brought a hand to stroke his own golden hair. A wave through - he had never known such softness. The illusion of what he had striven for all those years ago was with him now, whispering things he once would have killed to hear her say. Once but not now. Now all it brought was pain.

"You waited so long, didn't you?" she murmured. "To hear me say it?"

William's eyes opened wide and he again attempted to struggle, exertions made in vain as she shushed him and brought him back to her shoulder. No good - this was no good. No good could ever come from this. If he thought he was behind before, there was no way he could win the game now. Not without destroying himself along with her.

It was elegiac in that sense. The inner poet rejoiced. Finally, something to break the years of silence. Something worth writing about.

"Shhh," Porphyria encouraged disarmingly, stroking his hair with everlasting compassion, however untrue. For a fleeting moment, the play seemed better than reality. "I'll say it now. You need to hear it once more. I'll make everything right again."

No no no no no! Unmask! Unmask!

When he attempted to fight again, when he sat up to look away, her strength overpowered him. She grasped his head and forced him to look at her - into those soulless eyes that were not Buffy. Into the face of the thing that killed her. The thing that used her voice now to make toddle things in her favor.

Damned if he let her-

"I love you."

The single utterance of the over spoken phrase should not have done him in, but it did. William's body quivered with release and he sank forward. Never before had she said it with such liberation. True, he had heard her voice the confession over and over since his return; releasing her burden with a heavy heart, as though she should be punished for her lack of insight and misplaced judgment. It was honest, of course. He had wronged her and she him, and they had known anything above hatred would only lead them into the fire. Yet they had persisted anyway, as the stubborn always do. At the time, he had been certain that they could subdue anything that stood in their way. They both had beaten death.

It hadn't been too long ago that she first professed her long-concealed feelings. When he returned and she found him, and they spoke at length about the past. About everything that had occurred before his departure. They had debated over the scorn, the fear, the angst, the heartache, the mistakes, the wounds that hurt still, even after so many years. And then, Buffy had turned her eyes downward before they could glaze over in tears.

"I bring up the past for a reason," she had said. "It reminds me of all the things I've done. The good and the...very bad. And every time I think of you, I know that I...I was too selfish. You gave me the fire back, and even though it was what I asked for, I hated you because of it. I was scared, and I ran, and I hurt you because I was hurting myself." Buffy had paused meaningfully, a single tear of solidarity skidding down her cheek. "I loved you then...and I still do...and I hate myself for it. I shouldn't...love you, I mean. After everything you've done, what I've done to you. You hurt me so much, but I still love you." A stomp of her left foot as she yielded to frustration. "Why? It shouldn't be like this. And I hate it! I hate that I can't stop. I hate-" And she broke down, sobbing into her hands as he offered her the comfort of an embrace, avoiding a similar outburst with futility.

He remembered what he had thought, and it was as true then as it was now. If there wasn't blood, there would be tears.

Such emotion had wracked her tone. Love was supposed to draw people together, not drive them apart. And still, the roller coaster rides he had endured in the past proved none to the contrary. Love was a lie; a joke they made for the movies. An intangible being that people spent their lifetimes trying to achieve; reaching, grasping, even touching from time to time, but never owning. Never holding. Unconditional love was nonexistent in his experience. His misplaced faith in the destructive cycle had allowed his overly broken heart to be used again and again...

And still, here she was, saying things she could not possibly mean. Uttering her confession as a release and not a prison. It had never given her pleasure. When she was at his side, all she could feel was sharp pains of self-disgust and remorse. And though it pained him, William had to see beyond what he wanted and what was true. The woman curled beside him might look and speak like her, but it wasn't. Once upon a time, he was accused of being in love with pain. He had been; perhaps he still was. He could have her now if he wanted, but he didn't. He didn't want her because it wasn't her. This...Porphyria wasn't the Slayer, no matter how well she had dressed up for the role and rehearsed her lines. It wasn't Buffy.

William exerted a breath as his body finally defeated its ailment, leaping beyond the bound. Then he was up, wrenching free from her grasp as he turned to look at her, muscles flexing as the strength returned. The face that was Porphyria looked back, smiled her deceptive smile, and leaned invitingly into the pillows.

The image made him growl, and the fire within exploded. Furiously, he lunged for her, taking a fistful of golden hair and wrapping it thrice around her throat. Her hands went to his wrists, and her superior potency might have succeeded in prying him away had he not straddled her waist, eyes gleaming with dangerous objective. An animalesque gaze he had not issued anyone in what felt like centuries burned his eyes, pumping his long useless veins with something blacker than hate. He had never before had the drive to kill as he did now. Kills in the past were committed quickly - without ceremony. For convenience and survival, to pass the time and worn off boredom. Now, he killed for release. Porphyria had locked his beloved away, and he would fight until he won her back.

Hold on her hair firm and unwavering, he growled once more before he tugged. He grasped and pulled, watching her writhe beneath him, the darkness of her pupils contradicting the tenderness he had felt not two minutes before. Fleetingly, he supposed her gleam was supposed to intimidate him, but it only fueled his conviction. She writhed, thrashing and kicking under his grasp, but he held resolutely with all his might. The more she struggled, the more determined his tug became. Cold hatred coursed through his trembling body, and he pored his rage, self-resent, and frustration into her. Cutting her off her - killing Buffy's murderer in sweet reprisal.

When the last was coming, he jerked especially hard, tearing the slightest bit of scalp from her head as her muffled gasps subsided and her body collapsed, motionless. The untamed glimmer in his eyes flashed dangerously. "That's bloody right, bitch," he muttered bitterly. "You let her go."

But the body beneath him did not respond. Red marks stretched along her neck; whispers of a thousand little fingers that sucked her life away. It was a sight he had seen often; had induced often; but the look was strange on her. The frontage of being dead. Lying there, breathless, pulseless, skin ivory white without blood rousing her cheeks.

It wasn't over. William knew resignedly death could not stop her. The past attempts were fruitless; there wasn't any reason that this time would be different. With a sigh, he leaned forward wearily and planted a chaste kiss on her cheek.

"We'll make things right, luv," he promised idly, entwining a piece of hair around his forefinger. "Somehow, we'll make things right."

For now, however, that was all he could do. Porphyria was gone, and return as she might, there had to be hope for Buffy. As the storm calmed, he rolled onto his back, bringing her with him. His body commanded him to run, but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Strength, in every essence, had betrayed him. There he clutched her for the remainder of the night, tightly, protectively. He nuzzled her hair, rested his cheek against her crown, and waited for the night to stretch into day.

"Make things right," he murmured as he slipped from consciousness. "Even if it kills me, pet, I'll find a way to make things right."

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