FIC: Sequel to Eros: Terminus

[Mad Hamlet <Mad-Hamlet@xxxxxxx>]

Disclaimer: All this belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy
Inc.(Grrr..arrgh)


Drain Brameged Inc. Proudly Presents
A Mad-Hamlet Production


Yet the Laws of Terminus Were Sundered


The ground here is always ashes. The sky itself is ashes as well. 
The only things of note here are The Road and The Door. 

That was until recently. 

A short time ago a girl came. She did not walk The Road and go to The Door.
She sat by the side, in the ashes, put her head in her hands and nothing else.
I've watched her since then. Sometimes she lifts her head and looks around
forlornly, before going back to watching the insides of her hands.

Most of the time, when she is not looking about, she cries.

She's not the only one here of course. I'm always busy. Others come and walk
The Road to The Door and then vanish forever. They don't see the girl, and she
doesn't see them. This is because I wish it so as they do not have buisness
with her, nor she with them. 


She waits. 

I know what she waits for, there is little I do not know. I know how much
every tree grows in a day, I know all the directions the wind takes, I know
all the patterns of the waves in all the seas. 

So of recently the status quo is now as follows: The ground of ashes, the sky
of ashes, the Road, The Door and The Girl.

It's her hair that gets my attention occasionally. It's the only color here.
A dark, dusky hue of red. Other than that everything around is grey. Even her
skin. All that is here is Grey.

I know colors; being there at the Begining I know what they looked like fresh
and new, and when I am there at the End I'll see them old. Still, having only
memory and prediction is different to having them actaully be here with me. 

Others are on The Road.

A group of them are coming down, among them is a young woman, her hair tied
up in a bun, being all grey as most of her ilk are I do not know the color.
When the redhead first arrived she too was all grey. When she stepped off The
Road though, turning away from the Door, and sat down to wait, her hair became
red. This newest arrival looks like all the others though: Grey, placid,
accepting. 

She stumbles along listlessly behind another one; an old man who's step makes
him seem younger than his companion. He is practically skipping down The Road.
In contrast the young woman takes one heavy step after the other. Being
dragged along like something on a tether. 

I've seen it all before. Some come eagerly, ready to pass beyond The Door and
continue, others fear it, trying to fight against the pull though none get
far. Actually that's not quite true. On rare occasions one comes along and
takes a few steps toward The Door only to turn around and go back the way they
came. 

Wordlessly the young woman stops. Without a complaint the others behind her
move around her stationary form, The Road is very wide if it has to be, and
continue moving toward The Door; still being lead by the happy looking old
man. 

The woman doesn't move. She stares at the spot where the redhead sits. She
cannot be looking at the redhead as I do not wish it so. Still, she studies
that spot like she knows something should be there. She continues to stare at
the space the Redhead occupies. If I allowed it, the young woman would be
looking directly at the Redhead. 

After a time the Redhead herself looks up and turns her eyes to the space
where the young woman is standing. Again, if I allowed it, they would be
seeing each other. I do not allow it, despite this they continue to stare into
what is, to their eyes, empty space. 

No one has spoken here in a very long time. The place is heavy with the
silence yet this means nothing to the woman as she opens her mouth and speaks.


"Willow?"

I must intervene.

I enclose the woman, taking elsewhere, creating a small pocket with similar
properies of the Sphere she left behind. The sky and earth are still ashes.I
copy the ways of her sphere, not the appearence. Having done so her grey fades
away. Her hair is a dirty blonde color. I was right. 

Good.

As 'real' becomes more so other colors leech slowly back, her clothes takeon
real texture and appearence, her wounds start to bleed again and pain makes
itself felt. She falls to her knees with a stifled groan. 

I appear before her. I do not care for it very much. It is exceedingly
diffilcult for me to keep a form for very long. I feel..contained..limited.
Less than my self and office. 

"You are Elizabeth Anne Summers." I say letting her see me.

I know how much pain she is in, I know how she died. It was violent and now,
with my influence willingly lessened that aspect of her reality is reasserting
itself. 

"Buffy." she groans out between clenched teeth. "Friends..call..me Buffy."

"I am not your friend Elizabeth." I reply.

The pain stops, not because I care for her feelings, it's just very
diffilcult to carry on a conversation if someone cannot speak. I could take
what I want to know directly, it's easier this way. 

She visibly relaxes as whatever agonies she had fade away; the sensations
pass, her wounds still bleed. 

Opening her eyes slowly she looks up at me. She studies me silently.

"Enemies call me Buffy too." she finally says.

"I am not your enemy." I say flatly. 

She's silent a moment more. Still crouching on the ground, resting her knees
in the ashes, she turns her gaze away from me deliberatly;an attempt at
dismissal. Her attention turn to the wounds she bears. Large gashes running
horizontal across her chest expose to the outside what normally is not. I
watch her eyebrows raise in first horror, than curosity as she examines, for
the first time, her own heart. Literally. 

She pokes it.

It doesn't move.

I watch her as she examines it.

It doesn't move.

After a time she says quietly, "I'm no doctor but I'm pretty sure something
like this should be fatal."

"It was." I say instantly.

She nods. Takes the news well.

She sighs. "That would mean you must be-"

"You are seeking out Willow Rosenberg." I interupt her.

Her train of thinking is shattered. I watch the thoughts in her mind splinter
and flitter away into the ashes sky.

I see panic and fear, warring with love and desire. Guilt wrests control away
from her. Still on her knees she sways slowly in a wind that does not exist. 

I wait. I'm patient.

She licks her lips, as she forces some semblence of order upon herself. 

"Do," she pauses. "Do you know where she is?" 

The tone she uses is both afraid and hopeful. 

"She is here." I reply. "She waited for you."

I grow tired of this form and change.

"I have watched over her." We say. 

Elizabeth Summers stares at the two of us now before her. One on either
side.

"She waited for me?" She asks despite our having said as much a moment
before.

"Yes." We reply. 

"That whole time?" she asks again.

"The period of time between her death and your own." We reply. 

We are children now. We havn't taken this shape in a very long time. 

"It was years though." Elizabeth Summers protests. "How could
she...the..light. Why didn't she.." she flails about for a word. "Finish?"

"Time moves-" I begin from myself on her left.

"Differently here." I finish with myself on her right.

Two is good, less limiting but I still feel uncomfortable.

I surround her with many. Our voice is a chorus now. 

Elizabeth Summers turns her head slowly around looking at all of my faces. 
My young faces, my old faces, my first faces and my last faces. She looks at
them all, turning slowly on her knees, perhaps looking at what she percieves
as her enemy, perhaps looking for escape. It does not matter, there is
neither. We are all around her. 

"The years passed instantly?" she asks hopefully.

"No." We cry. "The time between her death and your own passed like an
eternity."

Shock takes the strength from her, bleeds it away. She falls, slowly, with
the power lost she slides through the still air like a leaf falling. Her arms
comes up to arrest her fall but they too are weak and cannot support her. The
blood from her wouds still pools around her, briefly. The ashen ground is
thirsty.

"An Eterinity," our chorus echoes in this shell similar to the Sphere. "Isa
very long time. Imagine a ball of copper floating in a void. It is the sizeof
your world. Every thousand years a feather falls from the void to brush
against this copper orb. Think of the time it would take for that ball to be
ground down to the size of a pebble."

Being more 'real' she now has regained the ability to cry. Her tears made
manifest, not just a feelings locked within but now having physical expression
once more. This is done so at our will, we made this pocket from her sphere
and allow this. The ground drinks the tears as readily as her blood. 

"Th,that's an Eternity?" She whimpers.

"That is the first day." We sing back to her. 

She attempts to hide from our choir; lying in the ash, arms wrapped around
her head as if to ward off what she now knows. Covering her ears, her face,
her eyes, her tears. She no longer wants to feel, to hear or to see. 

We take her back to The Road. 

The Door is open wide now. The call is at it's strongest. Elizabeth Summers
is pulled to her feet by it and takes a step toward The Door. 

"No!" She screams. "No, please! She's here. Willow is here I know it, don't
take me from her, don't take me from her now!"

Another step.

"Yes." I reply again, one once more. "She is here. She waits. She will join
you soon. I will send her on after you."

"Willow!" Elizabeth Summers screams. Arms reaching back, reaching to where
the Redhead sits, still holding her head in her hands.

"Willow I'm sorry!" Another step.

"I was scared!" The blonde girl, now grey again, calls out. "I was so scared.
Scared I didn't deserve more. Scared of being more afraid. I'm sorry Willow,
please!" 

She wants to cry, to mourn at this percieved injustice. She cannot as I have
revoked 'real' and she is once more bound, and grey, to the limitiations and
demands of The Road. She can scream though. 

She is nearly at the threshold, becoming more insubstantial as she nears The
Door.

"I love you!" Elizabeth Summers screams. 

The Redhead, Willow Rosenberg, hears her.

I did not allow this. 

I watch.

She steps upon The Road.

"Buffy?" I hear her speak for the first time. She is on the road, yet her
hair...

It is still red.

Neither can see the other, Willow is looking about frantically. "Buffy! Where
are you?"

She is at the threshold. 

"Willow!" Elizabeth Summers cries out. Her arms are reaching back, back down
The Road, toward me, toward the Redhead, toward the Sphere from where they
came.

Her feet carry her through The Door.

"Go." I say. "Others are waiting as well."

Her face, a mixture of terror and despair falls across the threshold gone
from even my sight. Her hand reaches back and flails briefly about the air
slowly being dragged through the door and across the thresh-

Willow grabs it. 

I am surprised. That's never happened before. I know I certainly didn't allow
it.

"No!" Willow shouts. She braces herself and pulls. 

It is at The Door where my knowledge ends. What lays on the other side I am
not sure. I do know it's ways though and when Elizabeth Summers begins to
reamerge from it I am fairly sure that this is now how things are meant to
work.

I think.

Her other hand free, still half across the threshold, her torso back on this
side, while the rest of her still on the other, Elizabeth Summers reaches out
and Willow takes her other hand, and pulls again.

Slowly, slowly, she emerges, her feet once again resting solidly upon The
Road. They are in each others arms. Saying nothing, making no noise, or
sounds. Just resting.

Behind them I see The Door swing shut. Almost. It never closes entirely. It
will not. Not until I myself cross it.

They seperate and look at each other. Elizabeth Summers raises a trembling
hand and lays it against Willow's cheek.

She says nothing at all.

Reaching up the Redhead covers the hand on her cheek with her own, her eyes
never leaving Elizabeth Summers'.

"I forgive you." she whispers. "I love you." she adds at the end.

Elizabeth nods. My influence is complete now, they are on The Road and yet
she cries. Her tears fall to rain upon the surface of The Road. The Redhead's
own join in the cleansing of The Road. 

Murkey grey fails where there tears fall. The clean white grows, spreading
across the surface and whiping away all trace of ash. The Road is pure again.
It has been a very long indeed since the last time. It will not last but in
the interim...

I appear before them.

Willow looks up at me. "Hello." she says politly.

Summoning the existance of an arm and a hand I point behind them. "Go to The
Door." I say.

Willow glances over her shoulder at The Door, Elizabeth Summers' head resting
against her shoulder, than the Redhead turns back to look up at me.

"Why?" she asks.

That gives me pause. "It is your place now." I finally say.

Again the Redhead glances over her shoulder at The Door. "What's through
there?" She finally asks.

"Endings." I reply.

She thinks about that for a moment. 

"No thanks." she replies with a shrug.

I move closer to them, "You will go." I intone.

Elizabeth Summers says nothing; her arms are wrapped about Willow's waist.
Head resting against the Redhead's breast, eyes shut. 

I move closer still, adding more to the self to tower above the pair.

Her eyes snap open and she too looks up at me.

Intresting. I see her will fold itself out of the fractured remains that she
had been a moment before. It is formidable. 

"The lady said no." the blonde growls at me. 

Blonde. Her hair is blonde now.

Her denim jacket is blue, her jeans a darker blue. Her boots are black and
shiny, reflecting the light of The White Road. The Redhead's sweater is pink,
with a red rose in the center of her chest. Her dress is a dark, cool,
midnight black as well. 

They are real.

I have no power over them.

I move aside.

Without a backward glance, hand in hand, the two of them march past me, and
away. As their presence lessens the White begins to change back. The Road
before them is still white, but as they pass by, it begins to change back to
that flat, neutral grey I know so well. Soon the two of them are beyond my
sight.

This is very odd. 

I am curious. I have not been curious in a ... a while.

Some have come upon The Road very, very briefly and than turned away to
return whence they came. Never, in my memory, has any come away from The Road
and The Door after being away from their sphere for so long. 

I do not know what will happen. 

I am going to find out.

I move to their Sphere, where they will be when they finish walking on The
Road.

	

I find myself in the middle of woods. At the base of a large tree I see the
two of them asleep. The morning sun is at the horizon, warm light sweeps
across the ground. A ground not made of ash but of yellow, red, and brown
leaves that reflect the morning light back into the sky. A blue sky. 

I stay and watch the two of them, alive and breathing. Elizabeth Summers
rests with her head in Willow's lap. The Redhead's fingers tangled in blonde
hair. Both are caked with dried blood, their faces, clothing and hands.  

I watch them sleep, and breath. I watch them be alive. I watch the line of
morning light slowly crawl across the leaf covered earth toward them. 

With a quiet cry and a great gasping of breath the two of them awaken.
Elizabeth Summers sits straight up, tearing her hands from the friendly clasp
of the Redhead's fingers. If she feels any pain she doesn't protest. Willow
too lurches away from the trunk, bolting to her feet eyes wide in panic.

The Redhead standing and Elizabeth Summers still sitting upon the earth they
look about them. Taking in their surroundings carefully, they are afraid. They
look everywhere they can, to the tree, the sky, the sun, the earth, the
leaves, they see it all around them. When there is finally nowhere else to
look they turn to each other. 

Elizabeth Summers stands up, automantically brushing caked leaves and dirt
from her clothing. Willow is clasping her hands in front of her, their eyes
never leave each other. 

They both speak at the same time.

"Willow I remember everything!" The blonde says forcefully.

"Don't you dare tell me your forgot." The Redhead says, shaking her fingerin
the blonde's face.

They pause.

"What?" Elizabeth Summers asks.

"What?" Willow asks.


Again an akward silence.

Moving as one they step into each other's embrace, their eyes closed but they
know the way, the path is carved into each other. Their lips meet, hands slide
up the others back to get tangled in mussed and oily hair. 

A lesson then.

I borrow matter from one place and more from another. Shaping it by my will I
leave my gift at their feet. Lessons work best when remembered.

Being in this sphere forces me to take a form, and that form works by rules
that I do my best to ignore as they make me feel uncomfortable. Now these
rules instruct this form and whisper to me.

'This is good', They tell me. 'This is right.' 

It is best to go along with the rules sometimes. I do not struggle against
the pull of form and rules of this Sphere. 

I watch them kiss.

I smile.

So.

That's what happens when they turn from The Road and The Door. I look foward
to the day when they return. I will watch for them.
	
Their kiss ends. They pull away slightly to look at each other in the morning
light. The cool air dancing around them, causing the parts of their hair
sticking up to flutter slightly. 

"I.." Elizabeth starts to say. "I..had the wierdest dream Will."

"So did I." Willow replies. 

One last exercise of will and my gift rolls across and, in defiance of the
rules, up the slight incline they stand upon. It bumps into the blonde's
foot.

"Ow." She says and glances down.

Bending over slowly she picks up my gift in a trembling hand. 

"Buffy? What is it?" Willow asks, her eyebrows raised in worried curosity. 

Her face pale the blond silently holds out her hand. The sunlight glistens
and bounces off the shiny, polished surface of the copper ball resting in her
palm. 

I return to The Road and The Door. Most find their way, some do not, some
return to their own Sphere, some move willingly across, others are pulled. I
am there for all of them. Mostly to watch, sometimes to guide. I am there, I
am always there.



In that Sphere from whence came my short time companion a year passes. Again
curosity moves me and I go across to find them again. It is the day a year
later. They sit in their dorm room at their college. They sit on either side
of a small table in the middle of the room. Willow upon the right, Elizabeth
Summers on the left. On the table, directly in the middle, resting on a small
metal tripod sits the copper ball. With a trembling hand the blonde picks up a
long black feather that lay in her lap. Smiling at the Redhead across from her
she gently strokes the length of the feather across the surface of the copper
ball once then sets the feather aside.

Willow smiles warmly and, standing up, reaches over the table with both hands
to pull her other to her feet. 

I leave them then. 

The lesson has been learned. For the second time in my existance I have been
there, not for an ending, but a begining.

A Begining.

END


	
Authors Notes: Terminus, like Janus and Eros, was a Roman god. The God of
Borders, Bounderies and Limitations in fact. Also of property.


There is only one thing that can damn me.
That can send me down in a swirling maelstrom of fire and pain.
And it is not the word of Man.
And it is not the lessons and rules of the Church, hypocrites every one.
And it is not the words of God, nor the judgements of Angels.
And it not a fair tribunal of my 'peers' that can find me guilty of crimes
immortal.
No. 
I can only be accused, judged and damned by my own Soul.
And I would never be so betrayed.

Mad-Hamlet