InsaneJournal

Fic: The Downward Spiral (Faith/Angel)
Author: thenyxie
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: F/A --but it's really all about the B/A
Prompt: Sounds of Snow
Summary: It's winter in LA. Except that it's not.
Notes: Written for the 50_elements challenge. These ficlets/drabbles are going to comprise pieces of one whole story, but are not going to be posted in any particular order.
Previous parts can be found in the Master List here


The Sounds of Snow

I press my fingers against the frosty glass. I leave no mark behind, no trace to show my passing. I cannot feel the cold. Only hear the tiny clink and clatter of ice crystals, falling to the earth, millions of them, like music for an instant as they touch. Before they are absorbed and robbed of their unique beauty.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Faith says. But it’s just something to say. She already knows my thoughts. She was there that fateful morning in Sunnydale. She saw. She remembers.

“Angel?” Her hand on my shoulder, such concern in her voice. But there is trepidation in her touch now, and that’s new. She’s afraid of getting too close.

She should be.

The soft flowing fall of feathery light stars from the heavens that dissipated against her skin as they walked hand in hand. The sound of salvation, and new beginnings.

I'd known once, on that snowy day—-that miraculous, unforgettable day—-who she was, what we meant to each other and what I might yet become.

I had hope. Love. A reason yet to live.

Her bones had shattered like ice. An empty, failing sound that extinguished hope. Destroyed love.

“Angel? What are you looking at?” And now Faith sounds worried.

I run my fingers across the smooth glass, my eyes drawn to the rime of frost at the corners of the pane. I blink, and then—

The sky above LA stretches out over the cityscape, dark gray and dully threatening. Rain drizzles from the skies, gradually picking up speed as thunder rolls in the distance.

“It’s just rain,” Faith says, frowning, beside me now.

And then I remember myself. It’s June in LA, and the summer’s not quite scorching yet, but getting there. Has it ever snowed here?

It seems like I ought to know.

"Angel?"

This Slayer's heart still beats. Her bones would still break and shatter like ice at my whim, if I willed it. Instead, I sink into her and she takes me in, and we writhe and flail and fall, both of us lost without her. Both of us painted in the mezzotint of ice crystals, pointillism in hues of white and blue and black. Shapes indistinct, out of focus.

I no longer know who we are meant to be.





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