| Title: The Third Page Author: Gillian Silverlight Distribution: My site, those that have permission already to post my fic, others please ask first. Disclaimer: They are owned by Joss and the WB, I just play with them Summary: Sequel to ‘Page 2’, of the “Pages” series. Rating: PG Lyrics: Jane Siberry “It Won’t Rain All The Time” The Third Page Angel walked slowly back into the mansion with the pages clinched in his hand. Spike had been pacing the floor, and from the look of the cigarette butts, he’d been chain-smoking as well. The blonde vampire looked as if he’d like to crawl out of his skin; while Angel looked even more pale than normal, haunted; like a man who had been dealt a mortal blow. Except that neither Angel or Spike were still mortal. They had left it behind them countless years ago when they were Turned to vampires. “You found more.” It wasn’t a question from Spike. He took in Angel’s countenance and the pages grasped in his hands, the tears on his face and knew. “Spike…I had no idea. I read the next page on my way back. You better read it. We need to read the rest of them together if they are anything like these last two.” Spike reached for the page with trembling hands. The words on that page couldn’t have frightened him more, even unread, than if he was reaching for a poisonous snake had he been human. As Spike read the page, Angel stood facing the fireplace, oblivious to the heat, as his hands shook. The tears continued to fall on Spike’s face as he read the words his love had written on that page, He’d glance at Angel every few sentences as he read. As the blonde vampire finished reading, he hung his head, laying the page on the table before him. In a voice slightly more than a whisper he asked the brunette vampire, “You have more?” Angel simple walked over and sat so he and Spike could share the next page as they read. ******************************************** ‘we walk the narrow path beneath the smoking skies sometimes, you barely tell the difference between the darkness and light do we have faith in what we believe?’ Giles always told me all about my purpose as a slayer. To fight the good fight as Angel would say, to save the lives of others. But what do I do night after night? I kill. As a vampire, what do you do night after night? You kill. Where is the difference? I can’t see it sometimes. Oh, I say that I kill the vampires and the demons because I’m protecting my kind, humans. But when the demons kill, maybe they feel like they are protecting their own kind. I know as a vampire, you kill to live, to eat. The steak I ate so long ago used to be alive. It was killed so I could eat. The broccoli plant was cut down and died so someone could eat it. Where is the line? Was Dracula right? Were you right? Am I really not very different than you are? How do I handle that? Does that make me more of a monster, or you less of one, or does it simple make neither one of us one? You see, that’s part of the problem, too Between loving Angel, and my feelings for you.. you’ve shown me that not all vampires are monsters. How many of the ones I kill each night might have someone they love or at least care about. What do you do when the Calling you have in your life becomes unclear? How do I know that what I’m doing is right? It has to be, or else everything has been an incredible cosmic joke on me. I feel like I’ve lost so much, so many people, my very future. We’re not suppose to have a future, or friends, or family or people we love. I know we’re not supposed to love a vampire, much less two. That’s the problem. One can be… odd, a joke from the universe, a special case; god, so many things it could be called. But two…. Then it moves into something else. We get back to that gray of who’s really a monster. Is it me, because I can love you two? Or because I can love you two and still keep killing those like you? ‘the truest test is when we can not when we can not see I hear pounding feet in in the streets below and and a woman cried and and the children moaned’ So I have to go on blind faith sometimes. I wonder what happens to the people I’m not there to save. I kill so many fledglings each night or in a week.. Where was I that that could happen to them? I can barely run on just faith sometimes with my life, with what is laughingly called my ‘job’. I don’t know how to do that with my heart. I can act on blind faith and risk my life when it involves slaying; but if it’s my heart involved, I can’t. I just can’t. What if I accepted you and something happened and you could kill again? My life would be in danger, and because mine is, then hundreds of other people would be in danger too. Or it was something like Acathala <Now there is a name I HATE!>, then the whole world would be in danger. It’s just so wiggy sometimes. I don’t know what to do and I can’t talk to any of my friends. Oh, they care about me, but they have no idea what it’s like to be me, not even Giles. You used to know better than anyone, but now….. ‘there is something wrong it's hard to believe that love will prevail’ I know people say that love will solve all. But we know that’s not the case, you and I. If it were, I’d be with Angel, or I’d be with you. My mommy wouldn’t be dead, Kendra wouldn’t have had to die. No love doesn’t solve everything. All I see that it does is make things worse. It makes things hurt more. All in the name of love, I hurt Angel, I hurt you, I hurt my friends. You hurt Angel, you hurt me, you hurt the people who might try to be your friends. Then we both lost my mom. I know it hurt you almost as much as it did me. It’s funny.. She hit you in the head with an ax, yet she still always liked you. Angel was always polite to her <We won’t talk about Angelus> and she never did like him, she tolerated him for my sake. ‘when I’m lonely I lay awake at night and I wish you were here I miss you can you tell me is there something more to believe in or is this all there is?’ It used to be Angel I missed every night. I missed him so badly I couldn’t move. I had to force myself to breath. It faded with time, but I found out when he was here for Mom’s funeral, I’ll always love him. Just like I know regardless of how you feel about me, you’ll always love Dru. I know you were willing to stake her for me.. but I know you’d hate me for that after a while. You may not want to be with her any longer, but she has a place in your heart always, just as Angel has a place in my heart always. I shut you out to keep from letting you any closer, to keep me from getting any closer. But I miss you. I’ll never tell you that, but here in these pages, I can tell you. It’s safe here where you can’t see. I never knew where I’d find you in the house, or when you’d be in my room when I woke up. I always yelled at you, but I miss you. I miss our fights, the insults, the constant bickering we did. I guess that makes me weird, huh? But no more so than loving a vampire, or two of them. I know if you were to read this, you’d pick up on what I’ve only just realized.. I keep talking about loving two vampires. I guess you were right at least in that. There is something between us. I do love you. And that’s why I have to keep all the walls between us, as many of them as I can cram in there to protect me from being hurt by you. Or even more important for me, to keep from hurting you any more than I have already. I should laugh, you know, if I could stop crying. I always got so angry with Angel for making decisions for me. Here I am making them for you. I guess he did teach me a few things. ‘last night I had a dream you came into my room you took me into your arms whispering and kissing me and telling me to still believe’ Did you know I dream about you a lot? Especially since the night you came to tell me about.. well about Riley. You come in my room, you hold me, you kiss me, and whisper in my ear, straight to my heart. You tell me to believe, to feel, to dare, to love. I remember Willow’s spell. I remember the feel of your arms around me. I remember the taste of your lips on mine. I almost wish she’d never broken that spell. If she could have fixed everyone else and just left us like we were…… ‘the very emptiness of the burning seas against which we see our darkest decides’ Do you feel as empty as I do without you? Someone said one time that our darker nature calls to us. Does yours still whisper in your ear, in your heart? What would you do if you didn’t have that chip in your head to stop you? Would your darker nature call you back? Sometimes my darker side does rule me. Like when I went to LA because of Faith. Or when I tried to kill her and feed her to Angel. But it wouldn’t let me kill Angelus. It never let me kill you. Is it my darker side that tells me I want you? I don’t know.. I just don’t know. I do know what I would like, since I’m talking about dreams. I dream about you holding me at night. ‘until I felt safe and warm I fell asleep in your arms’ Would you hold me and keep me safe? Let me fall asleep in your arms? I know you have no idea, but the few times I’ve been in your arms, I felt safe. I’ve never felt safe in anyone’s arms except Angel’s. But I do, I feel safe and sheltered and secure in your arms. God, I want you to hold me, but I can’t. When you came to kill me and I was sitting on the back steps crying because of my mom, you got so concerned and just sat and laid your hand on my back to comfort me. Why do you think I hugged my self? To stay out of your arms! I knew if I went there, I’d never want back out again. So my heart was safer if I got the cold lack of comfort from my own arms instead of the strength and love and safety that would have been in yours. See, because of that night I slept in Angel’s arms.. I thought I’d wake up there, held and loved. Instead I woke alone, scared, unsure, and finally frightened. What would you do? I don’t dare find out. ‘when I awoke I cried again for you were gone oh, can you hear me??’ Can you hear me when my heart cries for you? Can you hear my heart break? Can you hear the screams from fear? Can you hear how much I want you? But I sleep alone in my cold bed, no one to hold me, to keep me safe, to share my life with. I keep my heart safe now, but at what price? *********************************************** Angel looked up from the page he and Spike were reading together. The anguish and guilt that looked out of his eyes, and sat heavily upon his face could have wrung tears from a statue of stone. He looked at Spike, “I had no idea! Oh god, help me, I didn’t know!” “Angel. She was 17, you were her first love, the first man she’d ever been with. She was already insecure from her parents getting divorced and the way her dad made promises and never kept them. Joyce told me about that. Then, you know how Angelus is… and you loved her. He brutalized her when the most important thing was to feel that same love the next day.” “Right after she started college, she met a guy that talked sweet to her, like you did. Made her think he cared. He used her once, like you did; and then he was a human version of Angelus. He made her feel horrible about herself.” Spike looked at the floor, the fire, anywhere but Angel, as his voice clogged, thick with unshed tears. “I was angry at her because of Dru. I used that as a weapon against her. I used Angelus’s words against her. I don’t deserve anything except her hatred.” “Where is a vengeance demon when you need one.” Angel bemoaned. He was more than half serious. “So what do we do Spike? How do we fix everything we’ve done to her?” “Let’s finish reading and see if there are any more clues there. I hate to even bloody look at another word though.” Spike told his sire, weariness evident in every line of his body. “If we haven’t gotten anything else positive out of this, I know she still loves me and always will. I have no right to that. It’s keeping her from moving on, except possibly to you. And you know now that she does love you. Maybe it took this to get her to know it as well” “That’s a bloody rationalization, Angel and you know it! We.. you and me both, have hurt her horribly! We bleedin’ damned well know that too!” Spike was getting angry for the pain they had both caused her. The same woman they both loved more than their own life. Spike lit another cigarette before going back to the next page. Angel reached for one as well. Spike never said a word, just lit it and handed it to him. It looked like a very long night. Gillian Silverlight 4/18/01 |