lirazel | Fic: Nightlights

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Fic: Nightlights

It's my birthday! I'm celebrating Hobbit-style: here's my gift to you.

I'm convinced that my internal sense of balance prompted me to write this because it's the antithesis of The Silent Stars Go By. Oh, y'all, it's dark and weird and very Season 6. I wrote it in pretty much one sitting and had no idea where it was going, and though I like the end result, I'm still not sure that it actually went anywhere, so I'll value your opinion.

Title: Nightlights
Fandom: Buffyverse
Characters/Pairings: Buffy, Buffy/Spike
Time: Season 6, post-"Gone," pre-"As You Were"
Genre: Angst
Rating: R
Warning: Gratuitous use of Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale." He would hate me for the way I've cannibalized his poem. Also, a reference or two to Byron. Clearly, no one should let me anywhere near the Romantic poets.
Disclaimer: Those characters you recognize? Don't belong to me. The quotations you recognize aren't mine either. Whenever the writing gets really good (or really ostentatious, depending on your perspective), you know I'm borrowing from Keats or Byron.
Summary: "There's nothing tender about the night." Buffy is not the slightest bit in love with easeful death.

When she was a little girl, her mom stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling above her bed.

Buffy sat cross-legged in the middle of the lacy-and-ruffled comforter, all pigtails and pink socks, neck craned back all the way so that she could instruct Mom on the exact position of each star. She’d never been an exacting girl, really—some days she liked to get her Barbies all dressed up just perfectly for a party that she never enacted; other times she left the dolls a mess of slick blonde hair and tanned plastic limbs on the floor. But the stars—for some reason, they mattered. She created her own constellations, outlines like dot-to-dots she did back in kindergarten (she always liked those better than word searches or paint-by-numbers), like the pictures she made out of her chicken pox (Mom got really mad to see the lines darting across Buffy’s skin, orange magic marker zigzagging from one itchy spot to the next—tight lips and one of those typical Mom-sighs revealing just how unimpressed she was. The oatmeal-bathwater was stained slightly orange that night).

Years later, patrolling in graveyards on cool nights when the stars stood out sharp and precise against an ice-slick sky, on humid nights when the stars wavered and tumbled against the undulations of the darkness, she thought maybe it was foreshadowing, her obsession with those stars on the ceiling. Maybe it was the Slayer-potential softeninghardening her heart so that she fell just a little bit in love with nighttime, to make it easier when destiny came a-calling.

She’s still not exacting, but she can’t help but look for patterns (how could she live in this world otherwise? God does not play dice with the universe, Giles told her once, and though she’s pretty sure that wasn’t a confession of belief in a personal higher power, she clung to the words: how could she get up each morning if she didn’t believe that?).

Because she loved those stars on her ceiling as other girls might love a stuffed animal or an imaginary friend. She whispered her secrets to them—at first out loud; later, a bit older and more self-conscious (coolness is such hard work, and never more so than in middle school), in her mind. Or was that prayer? She doesn’t know the difference.

The neon-glow stars were a shade closer to green than to yellow, a really ugly color if you thought about it objectively (she never did). Unlike the real stars (she learned this much later, during the years when she got better acquainted with the night than she was with daytime—oh, the irony, suntanned California girl, with your blonde-from-a-bottle, your body made for a bikini, you look like the definition of fun-in-the-sun, the muse inspiring a Beach Boys song, and here you are, night after night in a graveyard, the setting for some heavy metal music video they showed at midnight on MTV in the ‘80s, and somehow the tan never leeches from you skin. Oh, you know the irony well), her plastic constellations never moved—every one a true north.

She cried the night after her first slay, hearing her parents’ raised voices. She didn’t cry again, not for months of slaying and broken dishes, screamed accusations or (worse still) fierce, under-the-breath hisses of Keep your voice down—she’ll hear you!

No, she didn’t cry again till, in a room empty but for carefully packed and labeled boxes, she climbed onto the top of her bare mattress and reached up to pull down each star, one by one, leaving behind darker dots where the sticky tack had been.

Then she collapsed back onto the mattress, cheap plastic stars scattered around her, and sobbed.

(She didn’t recreate the stars in her new room in Sunnydale. Mom nodded understandingly, saying something about growing up and putting childish things behind you.

But it wasn’t that.

After the stars fall down, what can you do?)

She’s always been positive that there’s something significant about her love of those cheap plastic stars (patterns again, see? She can’t help it, tracing them during long nights on patrol). Some deep meaning behind how they stole their light from something real, instead of generating light themselves the way real stars do (she thinks of stars burning themselves up till they collapse into black holes and finally have the chance to take something back from the universe—gulping down anything that comes near, forever and ever, bottomless and insatiable). Some significance to the fact that her stars never moved in those days when her world was simple and straightforward, black and white punctuated by glow-in-the-dark stars. Something insightful about how she feels that her life in L.A. was just a dream, barely real, and Sunnydale is all there’s ever been—a contrast between those plastic stars and the real ones that wink impassively above her now.

She’s just not sure she wants to know what that meaning is.

(She has bad luck with prophecies, oracles, spells. Still, she can’t seem to get away from them.)

Fast-forward.

January, 2002. Restfield Cemetary, Sunnydale. Inside her head, she talks to the stars.

Kendra, the Primitive, Angelus, Faith—they all reminded her, again and again, that the Slayer is alone.

And yeah, it’s true in a way. She’s the one that has to make the hard decisions—finds herself half in love with easeful death waiting in the Master’s fangs, in Glory’s portal (every Slayer has a death wish. Even you)—has to shove the sword through the heart of the not-man she loved (death is your art)—has to claw her way out of her grave (you’re just a little bit in love with it). All alone.

(Breathing in the dirt of her own grave, she left the search for patterns behind her. Chaos and chance—that’s all she can believe in now, because it’s kinder than any pattern that could have led her to that moment of being ripped out of heaven.)

But that’s to be expected. Even Buffy Summers, with her own special brand of Slaying (new and improved! Call now and get family and friends, absolutely free!) would never dream of denying that.

(She got to forget for a little while, with Willow’s Lethe-wards, a draught of forgetfulness, that vintage cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth. But then it all slammed back into her again, with the force of a hell-god’s fist.)

No, it’s not the aloneness in the big moments that gets to her.

It’s the every~~day~~night aloneness, punctuated at random intervals by assistance from her friends. But they don’t belong out here, not really, and they go back home to their beds and wake up with the morning sun and know that that’s where they belong.

Her tanned skin mocks her, a mocking juxtaposition against her nighttime vigils.

Night after night, she goes out under the stars, alone.

But here comes Spike.

And he said she has stupid hair? His is ridiculous, moonlight white against the dark of leather and sky. Angel, he knew how to do things, head to toe darkness—that’s what a vampire should look like. Everything he wore was well-cut and fine without looking overly expensive. Angelus was always a proper vampire, and even Angel can’t shake that attention to the rightness of things.

Spike just looks like a biker wannabe, though he’s built too small for that (shhhh: don’t tell him; he thinks he’s bigger than Riley, than Angel. You can tell by the way he walks). But it’s that ridiculous hair that really gets to her.

In the diffused light of day—in his crypt, at her house, in the Magic Box—the paleness of his hair just emphasizes the whiteness of his skin: he looks anemic, like one of those Romantic poets who sat around moping and scribbling, then got consumption, saw spots of blood on their handkerchiefs, and died young, always making awkward bows (youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies).

But in the dark, the moonstarlight reflects off his ivory skin, catches in his bleached hair and she just doesn’t know what to do with that.

She can accept the irony of her beach bunny appearance, but the way he melts into the darkness and defies it all at once?

That petrifies her.

(She doesn’t want him to teach her how to do that, to be both. Shedoesn’tshedoesn’tshedoesn’tshedoesn’t.)

He’s really playing up the whole creature of the night thing, isn’t he, what with the candles and the “decadence” (he actually uses that word—what a moron) of the oriental rugs. Whispers in her ear that she belongs in the dark with him, that she walks in beauty like the night, that all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.

She wishes he would shut up about the belonging in the dark. It doesn’t mean anything that he thinks that she does, just as it doesn’t mean anything that her friends (and that damn first Slayer) all believe that she burns with light (love).

(This is her new pattern this year: rejecting patterns.)

She told him, that day when she forced herself to walk out into the full sunlight, that the world was too hard and bright and violent. She thinks maybe he interpreted that as meaning that her Heaven was as dark as his version would be.

Stupid vampire.

Heaven wasn’t dark or bright, hard or soft, violent or peaceful.

It was the middle way, a balance she’s never known.

(All that’s best of dark and bright….)

The one thing she’s willing to admit to herself about being with him is that she likes the picture they make: her golden skin, his ivory in the candlelight of his crypt.

It’s kind of beautiful.

Out of the corner of her eye (Spike is moving in her—the holy dove was moving too, or something like that—God, she hates that song), she catches a glimpse of a battered book. She tangles her fingers in his white hair, arches her back, neck craned back all the way till she can see the title and recognizes the copy of Keat’s collected letters and poems.

She gasps as he withdraws (comebackcomebackcomeback) then plunges back inside her again (goawaygoawaygoaway), yet still manages to roll her eyes.

Sure, she liked her poetry class in college. Yeats and his widening gyres and blood-dimmed tides. Donne, all God and sex and how he never saw the discrepancy between the two. Dorothy Parker’s sarcastic And I am Marie of Roumania.

But Keats was an idiot.

There’s nothing tender about the night.

(She doesn’t let there be.)

(Now, post-death-number-two, she’s learning that there’s nothing tender about the day, either.)

Darkling she listens as he calls her soft names in many a mused rhyme, to take into the air his quiet breath, pouring forth his soul abroad in such an ecstasy.

Except that he doesn’t have a soul.

Fitting that the soulless vampire is the one to sing the Slayer’s high requiem.

They’ve been going at it (fucking, she calls it; making love, he said once, and she laughed at him till tears rolled down her cheeks. It was the first time she’d laughed out loud since she came back. He never said it again) for so long now that all of the candles have burned out (but here there is no light).

Shadows everywhere, sliding like velvet across their skin, but there’s a single crack of moonlight shining from who knows where that gets tangled up in his ridiculous hair, making it burn white in the darkness.

His eyes glow gold in the dark.

In the daytime, she feels like the world shines so bright around her that no one can make her out, like the way a faraway bird disappears once it flies over the disc of the sun, only to reappear again, a dark blot against the blue on the other side.

At night, she melts into the darkness without a ripple to whisper of her passing.

She’s invisible either way.

She can see the stars, even when they’re indoors.

(This is not some deep revelation about how she takes light with her wherever she goes. It doesn’t make her special or unique. It doesn’t even prove that she’s crazy, though she half-expects that she is. There. Is. No. Pattern. Here.)

Spike can see in the dark, she whispers to the stars. That’s why he’s the only one who can see me.

They don’t answer back.

(Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

First of all, Happy Birthday ! And wasn't it nice of you to bring a gift for us.

They’ve been going at it (fucking, she calls it; making love, he said once, and she laughed at him till tears rolled down her cheeks. It was the first time she’d laughed out loud since she came back. He never said it again) for so long now that all of the candles have burned out (but here there is no light)...Spike can see in the dark, she whispers to the stars. That’s why he’s the only one who can see me...They don’t answer back.

Gah, such beautiful angst and what a perfect snapshot of Buffy at her lowest point. Everything is wrong in her life including her way of looking at past events and people.

Thank you!

I'm really glad you enjoyed it. It's so different tone-wise than anything else I've written, and I was really trying to get to the place she was at in Season 6, so I'm very relieved that you thought it worked. Thanks muchly!

Beautiful!

Your young Buffy was sort of Drusilla-like, with the stars and the dolls...except that she didn't blindfold her dolls, did she?

Thanks!

And yeah, I was kind of going with the Drusilla thing, especially with the line about seeing the stars while she's inside (which Spike brings up in "Selfless," in addition to the classic "But I've named the all the same name...") because I've never really seen any exploration of their similarities. I'm glad you picked up on it. And no, Buffy would be one to let her dolls see, mostly definitely.

Your icon is from one of my favorite shots in the history of the show. Way cool.

That was very beautiful, nicely done.

Thanks! I was unsure, so I'm glad to know you enjoyed it!

am much too afrizz to do say anything much than

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, M'DEAR. May you get to know us as well as you should like and grow to like half of us half as well as we deserve, okay? Okay.

And, considering you rock, I'm sure this fic rocks, but
a.) I've never watched Buffy
b.) afrizz, srsly.

THANK YOU! It's always great to hear from you, especially when you come bearing Lord of the Rings quotes!

Haha! Two excellent reasons to pass it by.

How are you?

You write sososo beautifully. I absolutely loved Cutelittle!Buffy dictating the positions of the stars, and her evolution in L.A. and then Sunnydale and then--SPIKE. You really captured how he just didn't fit into her preconcieved notions.

And oh, Buffy. She was so sad during S6, it just broke my heart. As did your fic. Marvelous.

Thank you sososo much.

You really captured how he just didn't fit into her preconcieved notions. Exactly. That's what I most adore about their relationship. Angel was like this ready-made tall, dark, and handsome mysterious stranger who just stepped out of a fairytale...and here comes Spike, who she never saw coming and never could have imagined wanting and they end up together--end up loving and respecting and caring for each other--despite their own expectations. There's so much more meat to their story, I think.

Sorry for the ramble. Thank you once again for your incredibly kind review. It definitely made my day.

Mmm, nice. I do think the younger Romantics fit very well with BtVS. So she'll go no more a-roving, so late into the night?

Lovely use of the images to create a prose-poem exploration of her soul. I love the idea of the glow-in-the-dark stars in particular.

Ha! Yeah, there's nothing the slightest bit, say, Wordsworthian about anyone on BtVS, but the younger Romantics with their extreme emotions slip right in. Like a musical episode or something.

So she'll go no more a-roving, so late into the night? Well, I think it takes her a good long while to figure out that the night is made for loving, so...probably.

Thank you so much. I was laying in bed staring at the stars on my ceiling (remnants of my childhood that I never took down) and the whole thing just exploded from there, so I'm very pleased that it worked for you.

The entire section with "after the stars fall down" was just gorgeous.

I liked this bit, too:

(she thinks of stars burning themselves up till they collapse into black holes and finally have the chance to take something back from the universe—gulping down anything that comes near, forever and ever, bottomless and insatiable).

And even though that's one thing Buffy doesn't explicitly tie back to herself, it resonates as deeply as all the things she does.

Thank you so much for letting me know which parts in particular worked for you. I always appreciate that.

And even though that's one thing Buffy doesn't explicitly tie back to herself, it resonates as deeply as all the things she does. Good! I wasn't sure. I wanted that implication there, but I didn't think Buffy was self-aware enough at this point (this is pre-"Dead Things," in my mind) to pick up on it herself.

Thanks for taking the time to review!

Beautiful, thoughtful, poignant. Many wonderful lines and a true portrait of Buffy's dark fascination with Spike, the dichotomy of his darkness and light (and hers), her despair and self-loathing. Excellent work.

Thank you so much! Those were all the things I was going for, so I'm so pleased to know that it worked for you. Thanks for taking the time to review--I appreciate it!

But in the dark, the moonstarlight reflects off his ivory skin, catches in his bleached hair and she just doesn’t know what to do with that

This Buffy is so changed. No patterns. Alone even with Spike.

A moving and sad piece.

I was really trying to get to the place where she was during the heart of S6, and you're right, she is so changed. Thanks so much. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Happy Birthday! You do write Buffy so well. No one else gets inside her head as well as you do.

Thank you for the birthday wish and thank you even more for the compliment. I can't think of a better one. It made my day!

This was excellent. And, for an angsty season 6 Buffy, surprisingly hopeful.

Thank you so much!

And, for an angsty season 6 Buffy, surprisingly hopeful. No matter how dark I try to go, I can never seem to get away from hope. But I really do feel like that hope was there all along in the person of Buffy--she's so strong, and I never really doubted that she'd find herself again.

Thank you for reviewing!

There’s nothing tender about the night.

(She doesn’t let there be.)

Oh, ouch.

Well, once again, I just love this to bit and pieces. You write such poetic prose! I love all the dark/light imagery and how each is contained in Buffy and Spike in conflicting and confounding ways. And I especially enjoyed your exploration of the irony that a quintessential California girl has been destined (doomed?) to a life in the dark. I mean, of course I know that part of the whole point of the character is to juxtapose this fluffy little girl against her identity as a savior, but you've come at it from a different place. I adore your Buffy.

Thanks for this. You should have birthdays more often. ;)

I am so glad you liked it. I value your opinion very much.

You write such poetic prose! Well, I do try, but do let me know if I ever go overboard, won't you? I don't mind a bit of violet, but I'm trying to stay away from the purple, if you know what I mean.

I love all the dark/light imagery and how each is contained in Buffy and Spike in conflicting and confounding ways. That's exactly what I was going for. I get very frustrated when people blame one or the other of them for everything in S6 and whitewash the other's actions--they were both so clearly at fault but there were also moments when they both tried so hard.

I mean, of course I know that part of the whole point of the character is to juxtapose this fluffy little girl against her identity as a savior, but you've come at it from a different place. Good. I didn't want to rehash anything, but it's always been such a fascinating set of imagery for me.

I adore your Buffy. I'm so glad! Me, too. Even when she's at her darkest place, I always want my love of her to shine through.

Thank you. Ha! I keep having them and being so surprised at how quickly time is passing all of a sudden. Which may sound silly considering that I'm still young, but everything seems to pass by so quickly now!

Anyways, thank you, as always, for your encouragement. I appreciate it so much.

Gorgeous, poetic language and beautiful, sad, yet uplifting story.

Thank you so much! I'm so pleased you liked it!

Heh heh I try to imagine how Buffy must have looked like - (Mom got really mad to see the lines darting across Buffy's skin, orange magic marker zigzagging from one itchy spot to the next - tight lips and one of those typical Mom-sighs revealing just how unimpressed she was. The oatmeal-bathwater was stained slightly orange that night)

And this No, she didn't cry again till, in a room empty but for carefully packed and labeled boxes, she climbed onto the top of her bare mattress and reached up to pull down each star, one by one, leaving behind darker dots where the sticky tack had been. sounds like it has a deeper meaning, like taking down your dreams.

Loved the twist / including the stars, Buffy thinking so much about this.

Heh heh I try to imagine how Buffy must have looked like Ha! It makes quite the picture, doesn't it?

sounds like it has a deeper meaning, like taking down your dreams. Yes, indeed. So glad you picked up on that.

Thank you, as always, for your kind words! I'm so glad you liked it!

This is beautiful. The picture you painted of her dictating the placement of the stars and playing with her Barbies cleverly mirrored Dru's fascination with stars and dolls.

Her patrolling and musing feels like a waking dreamscape of Buffy's harsh life. You captured her Season 6 detachment beautifully. Her relationship with this strange vampire isn't what she expected, though she's loathe to admit it.

I loved this: The one thing she’s willing to admit to herself about being with him is that she likes the picture they make: her golden skin, his ivory in the candlelight of his crypt.

It’s kind of beautiful. It reveals that she knows there's a lot she's in denial about in their "relationship." It's kind of beautiful.

This was nominated at the Spuffy Awards, and I'm playing catch up before casting my votes.

Thank you so much! Yeah, the Dru-parallels think was not intentional at first, but it ended up being too obvious to ignore, so I ran with it the teeniest bit. They're not two characters I would think of comparing, so it was kind of fun.

Her patrolling and musing feels like a waking dreamscape of Buffy's harsh life. Yay! That's exactly what I was going for, so I'm so glad to know that you felt the dreaminess of it.

Thank you so much! And thanks for taking the time to read it before voting; that's so dedicated of you!

God, you write so pretty. Your prose is all shiny and lyrical and nifty. And the best use of parenthetical asides I've ever seen.

Lovely job. :)

Oh, thank you so much! I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

And you said you were bad at this feedback thing! When, in fact, you are delightful at it! This comment made my day!

This is lovely. The thread of the stars, of Buffy becoming invisible and destined to live in the night, of losing her way and being found in the darkness by Spike. Beautiful.

You know, I always think your prose is beautiful, but this piece here feels like a superconcentrate of Lirazel's prose.

This was really beautiful. Poetry.

Gosh, I am in love with your writing. Every single thing I read just seems to be getting better. This one was perfect in capturing her inner turmoil during Season 6. Wonderful job.

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Fic: Nightlights

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Fic: Nightlights

Re: Fic: Nightlights

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