Captive of the Sun

When the end comes, there is no bright flash of light. There is no slow fade to black. Scenes and memories do not flood my mind. It is simple: one moment I am plummeting to the ground, surrounded by a seething mass of electricity, and the next I'm on the outskirts of a vaguely familiar room.

It's circular in shape, the walls and floor carved from white marble, with obsidian pillars spaced evenly around its edges. A small reflecting pool is set at its center; overhead, the "ceiling" swirls with a pale blue mist. Between the pillars, I can make out the shape of a few ornately carved doors...I have no idea where they lead.

Logic tells me that I'm not alive. I know that. Not even a Slayer could survive a fifty-foot fall. Then why....I raise a shaking hand to my face, feeling my features, fingering my blonde hair. It makes no sense, none at all. Why am I still here?

Then, as I let my hands drop and return my attention to the carved room with wide, disbelieving eyes, something clicks into place and releases a flood of suppressed memories. I nearly gasp out loud, one hand flying back to my mouth. I remember who I am. What I am.

I remember, and realize why the room looks so familiar. It's not the first time I've been here...nor, I know now with a renewed sense of anguish, will it be the last.

Pivoting back to the door, I stare at the letters etched on its surface: "B.A.S." Already they are fading as the portal between Terra and the Nethers is cinched shut. I don't want to go back, for I know it will eventually end exactly the same way...still, I reach out as if to catch the initials, to hold onto them for a second longer. They slip through my fingers and disappear completely, leaving nothing but smooth, polished oak.

"Welcome home."

The voice is tinted with an unfamiliar accent, but even so, I know it is him. I turn away from the door that holds my past life and raise my eyes to meet his face.

He's leaning against one of the pillars on the far side of the room, still in his last form - and I realize that the accent wasn't as unfamiliar as I once thought. I saw him before on the mortal plane, shortly before his Sacrifice, and he looks exactly as he did then: blue eyes that dance with mirth, neatly trimmed black hair, and an assortment of mismatched clothing drawn from all different decades. His lips are curved in a smile.

"You waited for me," I whisper, feeling a smile tugging at my own mouth as I step closer.

"Always. You should know that by now." He quirks an eyebrow. "Remember, we're in this t'gether, love. I'd never leave ya behind."

"And...." I chuckle as I eye his mortal form, the polar opposite of his true one. "You didn't change."

His grin takes on a sheepish quality, and he shrugs. "What can I say, I got kinda fond of it." He ducks his head and peers up at me through long black lashes. "I'm surprised I didn' recognize ya when we met down there fer the first time."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn't recognize you either."

His smile fades and he moves across the floor, skirting the reflecting pool and stopping only when we are inches apart. Slowly, hesitantly, he reaches out to cup my right cheek in the palm of his hand. His thumb traces a spot beneath my lower lip, while his familiar-not-familiar eyes shine with quiet love.

"I missed ya," he says softly.

"I missed you, too." Both my hands fold over his. He pulls me close until our foreheads touch, and his right hand rises to caress my other cheek. The kiss we share is simple and chaste, yet beneath it runs a current of longing and desire borne of our time apart.

I break away after a few seconds and lay my head on his shoulder, wrapping my arms around him as I exhale and close my eyes. He has no pulse, no heartbeat, but his skin is warm through the fabric of his shirt - a strange paradox I've never truly been able to accept. I breathe in the scent that he has still kept, that is so uniquely him - autumn and spices and the faintest trace of sandalwood - and the soul-wrenching love I'd suppressed for twenty years comes bubbling to the surface.

"I don't want to leave," I murmur, blinking back the liquid that spills from my eyes and blurs my vision. "I don't want to go again. Can't they let us rest, just for a little while?"

"We don' haveta go right away." His breath is soft in my ear, and I relax slightly. "But...you know we don' have a choice, darlin'." He begins to recite the sentence, handed down to us many millennia ago, trying to hide the way his voice cracks with sorrow. "'For the crime o' treason an' cowardice, you shall live out yer lives as eternal heroes.'"

I pick up where he left off, knowing the words just as well - and hating them just as much - as he. "'You shall exist only to protect the innocent and uphold the laws of chivalry.'"

"You shall die young, sacrificin' yerselves fer the greater good."

"'And each time you shall be reborn, to repeat the cycle, until your atonement has been reached,'" I finish, my throat blocked with a solid mass of grief. Once more, silence becomes our companion.

"But hasn't it been long enough?" I burst out suddenly. "I mean, we've been through so many lives, the both of us, and saved so many people - and I'm so tired of it! I want to live like a normal person, grow old, have kids, die and finally rest instead of going back to this hell - " My voice breaks, and I realize I'm gulping for air and on the verge of hysteria.

"Shhh, shhh." He pulls away and presses a finger to my lips in an attempt to quiet my sobs, though his own eyes shine with tears as well. "I know. I want it as much as ye do. But it's not our decision, ya know that."

I nod, though every part of me is screaming against the unfairness of it all. "I know," I whisper bitterly.

"An' ya never know, maybe next time'll be the last time."

I can't tell him that I've said the same words to myself, time and time again, only to be crushed by sadness when I return to the Nethers. His face is full of an almost childish hope that, though I know it's only for my benefit, I can't bear to take away.

"Yeah," I say, embracing him again. "Maybe next time. It can't go on forever."

If I say it enough times, maybe I'll come to believe it.

But for now, all I can do is cry silently in the arms of the man I love, waiting for the Powers to cast us back onto the mortal plane in this neverending game of torture.

~finis~