Title: Light the Way (1/1)
Author: Ash (hi. :)
E-Mail: ash_j88@hotmail.com
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!
______

Light the Way

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*