Disclaimer/Notes: I do not own Slayers, Slayers NEXT, Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, Angel, Gargoyles, or the X-Men and no profit is
being made from this fanwork.
The sort of, not really sequel to "Conversations beyond the Edge of the Galaxy."
So the idea for this started when I was watching Slayers with my
roommates and I realized I wanted to write a story about Zel, but, like another show with the word 'slayer' in the title, I didn't care
overmuch for the rest of the cast of the show. So I borrowed Spike, and added a couple other people to make the story work.
TIMELINE: This is the Spike from Angel, meaning he has a soul (...plus the semblance of mental stability). The others don't really matter so much... but Talon is from later in the series- I'd say during the World Tour arc- Zel from the end of NEXT, and Nightcrawler... eh, heck if I
know. I'm not really keeping up with any X-Men timelines at the moment,
but definitely NOT from the movie.
While I think this story isn't quite as tight in the plot department as "Edge," I'd appreciate any comments, particularly in the area of characterization. Oh, and I'll Romanize "Zerugadisu" any way I damn well please, so no comments in that area are desired...
Rated PG-13 for mild language, alcohol usage, and mild adult themes.
"Dancing where the stars go blue
Dancing where the evening fell....
Dancing through the underground
Dancing little marionette
Are you happy now?"
--The Corrs
Somewhere, just at the edge of the universe, there is a place. It is a place separate from the worries and cares and the rules of the usual, everyday life. The wise know this; they know to leave reality at the door. But always there are the uninitiated- new faces at that door- and the wise love to teach.
A man is standing, the late afternoon sun falling over him as he raises his hands to it, spreading his fingers and lifting his face so that his entire body is caressed by the light. A casual glance would not allow the glancer to call this man human; his appearance seems to be the very definition of what the Christian mind would call evil. If any such thought even enters his head this day he doesn't seem to mind it. His eyes are slitted with pleasure against the warmth of sunlight as the orb before him sinks lower in the sky, casting his shadow long behind him so that it falls upon the trees, the thick forest of them reaching almost to the edge of the cliff where he now practices his sun worship.
There is a noise behind him and his head turns in curious welcome. Another figure steps out of the closeness of the trees. Bewildered by the sudden openness, the figure pulls the hooded cloak covering his head closer about him and squints at the man standing near the cliff. "I didn't mean to disturb you," he murmurs as he realizes there is someone else there, and he moves to step back into the darkness.
"You are not disturbing me." The man turns from the sun to smile at this newcomer, the gesture baring pointed teeth. "You are most welcome to stay and enjoy the sun," the man continues, his long, slender tail curling around his legs. "Though," he grins at the newcomer's obvious discomfort as he gestures broadly with a three fingered hand, "I understand if you wish to seek other, less startling climes." His expression is slightly self-deprecating, but resignedly so, as if the observation he makes is an old one that has long outlived any deep emotions tied to it.
The cloaked figure stands, apparently frozen in indecision as he takes in this other man; this man who stands in the bright sun wearing nothing but loose cargo pants, bare-chested, no attempt made to hide himself. Dark blue fur covers his skin, his ears taper to elfin points- his canines are just as pointed as he bares them in good humor- and his eyes are a glowing yellow. Hesitantly, the cloaked figure takes a step out, away from the shadowed forest. He raises a hand, as if to ask something of the dark, furred man who stands before him, but he can't seem to get his lips around the words. The skin of that hand is pale and strangely colored, and the dark man narrows his lambent, golden eyes as he divines a different meaning behind the discomfort he had assumed he knew the source of. He drops easily into a crouch, resting his chin on his drawn up knees as he favors the cloaked figure with a deep look. "My name is Kurt," the dark man says, his voice smooth and soft, welcoming; the tone is one he has used before- with skittish children who have just discovered they are not what they once thought they were, and have just realized that the world will never again be the same.
The figure raises his hands and, hesitating a moment, grips the hood of his cloak in both those hands, drawing it back, away from his face. "I am Zelgadis," he says. His voice is soft and just as hesitant as his actions, and as he looks up, meeting glimmering eyes with his own, Kurt can see that this action has been met with fear in the past, and, worse perhaps, revulsion. To Kurt there is nothing fearful in the face before him; he has seen many faces, from grotesque to gorgeous, and he long ago learned- if he ever needed to learn it- that the physical has little to do with the spirit. He takes in the rough, stone-like skin, the wiry hair, but even more, the tentative way the other man stands and the hunger in his eyes. Zelgadis opens his mouth to speak further but a rustling in the shaded brush interrupts him. He is on guard almost instantly; Kurt turns toward the sound lazily.
Someone else steps out from the forest, and Kurt wonders idly if there is some sort of contest going on, to see if each of his visitors could appear even more inhuman. The newest comer spreads his wings as he clears the trees, startled to see others here and ready to engage in fight or literal flight. Kurt rises from the casual crouch he's dropped into and spreads his hands toward the newcomer. "Welcome!" he says brightly, throwing the other man off with his courtly bow, executed with perfect poise. "What brings you here this fine day, stranger?" Zelgadis looks as though he is sympathizing with the newcomer's look of startled alarm.
"I... got lost in the woods." The newcomer's rounded, catlike ears are flattened back against his catlike skull as he glances- with slitted, catlike eyes- between the two figures before him, as if wondering whether or not he should consider them foes.
"Ah," Kurt says wisely, "another new one." This comment earns him dark looks from both of his new companions, but he only grins, his face a mask of impish glee. "If you'd been here before," his gesture includes not just the cliff, but the entirety of the world around them, "you wouldn't get lost. That you found me means you need something from me." He frowns slightly as he starts to lecture, enjoying his role as storyteller a little too much. "This place... that is the way it works. If you don't know how to work it, then it works you, if you... how you say, verstehen sie?" He is pacing back and forth now, gesturing, his slender tail with its arrowhead shaped tip echoing his gestures to add emphasis. He pauses, turning to the newest comer. "What is your name, stranger?"
Wing muscles curve in tension, fingers curl into fists, but he answers shortly, "Talon."
"Ja." The dark, furry, three fingered man bows again. "I am Kurt." He gestures to his stony companion. "And this is my friend, Zelgadis."
Zelgadis can't seem to decide whether he should be angry that this puckish stranger presumes to offer his name to another stranger, or shocked that one he so recently met should claim him as "friend."
Talon glances between them, the tension relaxing from his shoulders. "What is this place?" he asks, folding his arms over his chest as he turns to the sunlight, lifting his face to it like a friend long unseen.
"That is the question!" Kurt leaps onto a boulder, perilously close to the edge of the cliff, and raises his arms again to the sun, spreading himself to the warmth. His eyes are closed as he murmurs, "This..." and his grip on this foreign tongue slips away again and he finishes, "das est Himmel."
The words mean nothing to his listeners, even though they feel they could understand if they just listened a little bit closer, but the tone with which he utters them... Talon closes his own eyes, spreading his wings to capture the sunlight as memories come to him- childhood moments mock-wrestling with his sisters, the warmth of belonging he always got from his family and recently from a different kind of family, and a pale, slender woman whom life has forced to become strong and how she is warm like this when she is in his arms. Zelgadis shyly, glancing at his companions, closes his own eyes and holds out his hands to the light, and it fills him, and he thinks of a girl whose passion reminds him why he still tries to live this life and who holds these hands without fear.
Kurt's eyes open, and he stands blinded in the warmth for a moment before he turns to his disciples to see if they are faithful in their own worship. He smiles to see them, to see the wonder that loosens the firm, hard lines of their faces as they remember joy.
"Kurt! Mate, what the hell you got going on here?" a new voice comments, a lone figure coming into view walking along the cliff's edge rather than through the forest, not really watching his steps as he glances between Kurt and the ball of fire in the sky. His long duster flows around him in the wind that come up along the rock face and he swings a bottle of whiskey in one hand but the most striking thing about him, to this group, is that he looks... human.
"Spike!" Kurt calls to his friend warmly, leaping down and going over to greet him, their greeting a small exchange of blows as two fighters familiar with each other test new moves. "It is good to see you," Kurt says as he breaks away, grinning impishly again. He jerks a thumb toward the sun as he rests his other hand on a hip reprovingly. "Cutting it a bit close, are you not? You almost missed it."
"Yeah, well I'm here ain't I?" Spike drops down on the ground, seating himself without pretense. "Who're these jokers?" he says, taking a drink from the bottle before using the mouth of it to indicate the pair watching him with expressions verging on disbelief.
"You... are human," Talon observes, his eyes narrowing, before Kurt can make introductions.
Spike guffaws, disbelief and humor warring on his face. His hair is bleached an unnaturally pale color, and looking at the harshness of it Zelgadis wonders if it would be as rough as his own to the touch. A scar threading through his eyebrow warns any he meets not to underestimate his slight frame, but Spike sprawls back on the warm grass carelessly, as if knowing that there is no threat to him here. "Christ, they are nubes aren't they?" He drinks from his bottle again, offering it belatedly to Kurt.
Kurt takes the bottle, admonishing his friend in a tone of long-suffering, "Language, please!"
Spike grins. "Sorry," he says, obviously not, but Kurt seems to accept this gesture as he drinks from the bottle. It's an old routine, an easy exchange between those who've known each other for a long time.
"Spike hasn't been human for quite awhile," Kurt offers to their other two companions as he picks a comfortable seat on the grass near Spike and with a good view of the sunset. "However he may look, he is a vampire."
Talon raises an eyebrow. "A vampire? Right." He pauses, as if waiting to see if Kurt will come out and say that he's joking with them. "Sitting in the sunlight," he observes wryly before he finishes with conviction, "There's no such thing as vampires."
Spike raises an eyebrow at him as he gives Talon a good long look. "Right mate. And there's no alligators in the sewers either."
He seems to have hit a sensitive point; Talon growls, his wings tensing again as he curls a hand into a fist and advances on the vampire. Spike is ready to meet him instantly, and such is easily visible in the tension of his muscles and how his feet gather under him, though there is little obvious movement from him.
"Peace, friends!" Kurt jumps up, gesturing placatingly at Talon. "I will not say that Spike meant no offense, since that would be a lie, but do not listen to him." He reaches out to take Talon's arm, pulling the other closer and guiding him to a comfortable seat on the grass. "Come and watch the sunset and do not listen to him, ja?" He offers the winged man the whiskey bottle, a gesture that causes Spike to scoff.
Talon sits, since there seems to be little else to do in the face of this blue man's desire that they all watch the sunset as a group, and takes the bottle as he glares at Spike
Kurt gestures to Zelgadis to join them when he notices the other man hanging back. "Please sit with us! And you should not listen to Spike either."
Letting his cloak fall back easily to trail behind him on the grass, rather than be clutched around his body as it usually is, Zelgadis sits beside Talon and takes the bottle when it is handed to him. "I wouldn't worry about that too much," he murmurs. "I'm too thick-skinned for him to get to me." He eyes Talon, hoping the other man won't take the comment the wrong way.
Spike grins. "Handy that," he says, a jerk of his chin in Zelgadis' direction indicates he is speaking of the other man's stone skin. As Zelgadis leans over to pass him the bottle, Spike grabs him by the wrist. Zel's eyes flash as he breaks the grip easily; he eyes Spike warily as the vampire holds up his hand. "Sorry," he says again, obviously not. "Just wanted to see how good you were." Zelgadis glances the other man over. He can see that Spike is a person who is constantly testing those around him, even- and perhaps especially- those who might call themselves his friends; though, by the hard edge to the blonde's smile, Zel would guess that there are few who do so. He holds the bottle out to him again and Spike takes it.
"What is a vampire anyway?" Zel asks. "I've never heard of such a creature, where I'm from."
Spike grins, but it is Kurt who answers. "A vampire is a soulless creature of evil, that cannot bear the touch of any holy item," he explains easily, continuing, is a voice that is oblivious to the irony of his words, "or of sunlight."
Zel trades glances with Talon and they both look at Spike, who keeps grinning, and then at Kurt. "And that fiery thing in the sky there we're all looking at," Talon says, "that still the sun?"
Spike is laughing now, softly but increasingly louder as he cannot keep the sound contained. "Christ, bloody nubes I'm telling you," he manages to get out, Talon mantling again at the implied insult. But Spike passes the bottle to Talon with easy camaraderie. "It's this place," he deigns to explain. "It's not real."
"That's not true," Kurt breaks in, glancing at Spike with disapproval. He accepts the bottle as Talon passes it back in his direction untasted, still smarting. "This place is real, it is just that the... rules, perhaps you could say, do not always apply."
"Rules?" Zelgadis turns to contemplate the sky, painted with brilliant oranges and purples as the sun lingers for a long moment just above the horizon. This is certainly the longest sunset he's ever seen, though he can't think of a time he ever sat and watched the process before.
"Ja," Kurt continues. "In this place there are no rules as there are in the world you know. Though," he grins, looking particularly elfin, "I would not try anything as dramatic as Spike's sunset watching until you have been here for awhile."
"So," Talon begins in disbelief, "if I wanted to I could just walk all the way to the sun?"
"Not with that attitude." Spike steals the bottle from Kurt and takes a long swig. "What Kurt's trying to say is, before you can break the rules you have to believe they can be broken.
"Just so." Kurt glares at Spike as he snatches the bottle away and passes it down to Zel.
"So, if I believed strongly enough," and Zelgadis' voice is the voice of one who wants terribly to believe, "in this place I could alter myself? I could return to my human form?" They're all looking at him, he can tell, but he keeps his eyes on the orange sky.
"Ja," Kurt says softly in affirmation but his voice is heavy with disappointment.
Talon glances at Zelgadis as if seeing him for the first time. He looks at all three of his companions as if wondering something, but his eyes rest finally on the orange sky. "Could you?"
Zelgadis and Kurt both glance at him, but Spike chuckles, laying back full on the grass. "Maybe not such a nube after all," he murmurs, stretching out on the grass, head pillowed on folded arms.
"What do you mean?" Zelgadis demands of the winged man beside him.
A grin pulls at the corner of Talon's mouth at Spike's sidelong compliment. "Once my name was Derek Maza," he says, his voice even, but he raises one hand before his face and his claws curl in the gathering darkness. "I was as human as none of us are now." Zelgadis shifts slightly, but Talon continues. "I longed at first to return to my human self. Then I came to accept my altered form. But now I think..." He glances at Zelgadis, seeing if he understands, and turns to Spike, who he knows does. "I think the person I have become could never be contained in such a form as I used to have."
There is silence for a few moments, as the last remnants of the sun sink below the horizon, but then Spike is chuckling again. "Excellent, mate; smashing even." He snatches the bottle from where it lies half forgotten on the grass in front of the group and takes a swig before passing it to Talon.
Talon takes it and looks at it for a moment. "I hate this stuff," he grumbles before he too drinks.
Spike turns to Zelgadis, but he's really talking to everyone and only to himself as he stands, raising welcoming hands to the night sky in a gesture not so dissimilar from the one Kurt had used earlier. "These two, they do it with names," he says conversationally. "Derek is who Talon used to be, but he can't be that person anymore and he knows it. Kurt, sometimes he calls himself Nightcrawler but he knows Kurt is who he really is. Me?" He shrugs. "I named myself too, but where William stops and Spike begins is a bloody hazy line." He snatches the bottle up from the ground and drinks the last of it. "The thing is, knowing it." He looks at Zelgadis. "Accepting it. Christ, took me more than a hundred years and a right dreamy little bit before I got around to knowing I could accept it, that I could have both." He holds the bottle upside down and when no liquid drips out of it he hurls it over the edge of the cliff, all of them listening as it smashes against the rocks. Spike stretches, then turns to Talon with a reckless grin. "Ready to walk to the sun?"
Talon stands, looking out at the sky. "Not tonight I think." He smiles at Spike, revealing his pointed teeth. "Perhaps tomorrow."
Spike laughs, thrusting hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and sauntering back the way from which he had come earlier. "Tomorrow then." Kurt trails after him, hands also in pockets, the pair of them like shadows in the growing darkness. Talon and Zelgadis follow, because it seems right rather than because there is no other option. Turning to glance at them, Kurt's eyes are glowing embers in the gloom and his smile is a warm flash of white in his dark face.
"I don't suppose either of you fence?" Kurt asks, wistfully. "Spike's terrible."
"Actually..." Zelgadis speaks hesitantly, but the glance he exchanges with Kurt is bold in the darkness and he smiles.
