Fic: Light of the World
Nov. 23rd, 2003 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleTitle: Light of the World
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Lindsey/Wesley
Rating: soft R
Summary: She asks why you're going back to the city, and you tell her you don't know. It's just where you need to be. Got the Call.
Notes: This was supposed to be written way back when for the Lindseyficathon. I think it was for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
violetsmiles… Fear my run-on sentences and my lack of quotation marks.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was Jasmine.
You get the Call in San Antonio. Been working at a bar, coupla nights a week, you and your guitar on the stage that's barely big enough for you both, singing through the smoke and the clatter of glasses. Hick place and they don't tip for shit, but it's not L.A. and that's good enough.
So it’s a Sunday, and later you'll think 'damn' and 'best day for it' and just 'damn', but right that moment you're halfway through a song and when Tina yells for everyone to hush you're pissed. There's an emergency news broadcast, she says, and you remember turning on the news two years ago one morning in September, and you think: fuck. Oh, fuck. Then she turns up the sound on the TV and everyone just. Stops. Talking.
There's a few weeks after that when the world's not quite real, and you love everyone, and more and more you're getting the sense that there's somewhere you need to be.
Tina asks why you're going back to the city, and you tell her you don't know. It's just where you need to be. Got the Call. She smiles - when'd you ever see her smile, before? - and opens the register to give you money for gas.
You don't sleep, barely eat, because you don't have the time. Got to get to L.A.
**
Nobody questions your presence. You join the pilgrims outside the Hyperion and light your candles. The sun rises, and Wesley and Gunn arrive back with a group of people, and when they see you you're welcomed like the Prodigal Son, and you go inside with them.
You want to see Jasmine, want it so bad you could die with it, but she's away. Wesley takes you into his office, shows you the map of the world with pins stuck in it. What is this, the war room? you ask, and he smiles, sheepish, knowing you're kidding. Like anyone'd think of war when they can have the love of Jasmine. Not everyone knows about her, though, and that's where she's gone, to find those who haven't heard. She's traveling along with Angel and her father (Angel and Darla's son, Wes tries to explain, but that doesn't make any sense). And you hate that you can't be in her presence, but she has to find the poor bastards still living in darkness.
Where are they right now? you ask. Wesley scans the map, points at a red tack in Asia.
They'll be in China for a while, he says. Visiting the provinces. We're holding the fort here.
His shirt's covered with blood that probably isn't his own, not unless the British bleed blue.
Demon?
He describes the nest they took out, animated and proud as a little kid, and you think that here's a guy who really loves his job. You envy him.
You hitch a hip on his desk, trying to look casual. Need another pair of hands? Both of you automatically look to your right hand, and you grin. At least fifty percent non-evil.
We don't have much need of a lawyer, he says, careful, like he's trying not to offend you.
Works for me, you tell him. You weren't planning to offer legal counsel, not that anyone here needs it.
There's a second when you think he's going to turn you away. You've never been more scared in your life.
We patrol from sunset to dawn, he finally says. Only team members live in the hotel. There are lots of empty rooms, take any one you like.
Maybe you fall in love with Wesley at that moment. Maybe most of it is relief, or gratitude.
**
The night after your arrival, you kill your first vampire. Your first week, your team takes out four Skilosh demons without a scratch to show for it. Supernatural attacks are down eighty-nine percent from the same time last year. Wes tells you this in one of the informal debriefing sessions that have become habit after patrol.
You've been there a month when Gunn leaves, on remote orders from Angel. He's needed to head up a team in New York.
You can't sleep, and you come down to the office, and you walk in on Wes and Gunn saying goodbye. And it's a shock because you knew - the link between the Faithful doesn't let you read minds, but you know feelings and non-specifics - but you didn't know with your own eyes. You're not jealous. Jealousy doesn't exist, now, and you barely remember it.
You go back upstairs. Three floors away, and you can feel them. Close your eyes and there are hands on your body, a mouth over yours. No shame in reaching beneath the sheet, touching the aching hardness there. Jasmine's world has no shame.
You're not jealous. You're not.
**
When you fight, you're not Lindsey MacDonald. You're just part of the team. One body, one mind. A group of humans who move like a wolfpack.
The demons don't stand a chance.
**
You okay?
Wes looks up from his texts. Someday you're gonna ask him where he got the gash across his throat.
It's nothing, Lindsey. Gives you that smile he probably thinks is convincing.
He feels… you tilt your head, trying to grasp the sensation. Melancholy.
You straddle the empty chair, facing him across the desk. You can wait this out longer than he can.
He sighs, puts the pen down, and says a name. You expected 'Gunn' or 'Charles' or even 'Angel'. This is somebody else. You frown.
You never heard him mention this Fred guy before.
Turns out he was a she, and exactly a year ago she betrayed them. Betrayed Jasmine. Lucky the bitch is long dead, or you'd want to get your hands around her neck. Never occurred to you before that you could feel Jasmine's love and turn bad anyway, and it's like being thrown into icewater, because if her, if this Fred, why not you? Wouldn't be the first time you let the good guys down. Wolfram and Hart may be gone from this dimension, but you're still here, aren't you? Still potentially not good, or not good enough.
Wes must feel what you're feeling. He leans across the desk, grips your hand tight, and says a bunch of nice things about redemption and loyalty. Fred was crazy. Fred was a monster. Fred wasn't strong.
Not like you, Lindsey. Not like you at all.
**
Nights are slacker than they used to be. There're less things that go bump in the night for your team to kill. Los Angeles is almost completely purified.
You patrol. You help take out the few vamps and demons too stupid too get out of the city. You swap jokes with the rest of your team. You stop to talk to the devoted outside the hotel. You walk in the garden, and you think that you could die oh-so-peacefully there among the wildflowers and the scent of jasmine.
You watch the sun climb the sky, into the air that's not so polluted as it was before the new pollution laws. At noon, you listen to the hourly radio broadcast. You bask in Jasmine's love, here in the garden where she was named.
Afterwards, you climb the three flights to Wesley's room.
You don't knock. He doesn't look surprised to see you.
The drapes are pulled back. You try to remember if this is the first time you've seen him in sunlight, or just the first time you've really looked.
Neither of you speak.
**
It's like double vision amplified to all the senses, because you're touching him and tasting him and moving with him, but there's the link, so you're him, too, feeling through his skin and looking at yourself through his eyes. This is not like anything you've ever felt, except the first time in that bar when you heard Jasmine talk to the world.
You stay in bed 'til near sunset. You can't seem to stop touching him. Not sexual, not all the time, 'cuz neither of you are seventeen anymore, but it's goddamn weird to brush your palm against his chest and feel the tickling yourself.
You talk some, mainly about Jasmine.
You think there's gonna be a new Bible? you murmur, not caring about the answer so much as wanting to hear him talk.
The Gospel of St. Angel, he suggests, laughing softly against the crook of your neck. Will you write a Book of Lindsey?
You trace your fingers across his chest, writing on his skin invisible words about how he looks in the dying sunlight.
This is your gospel.
**
From the roof, the banks of candles on the sidewalk look like fireflies.
You rest your arms on the ledge and look out at the city. Hundred-percent demonfree, you say. We did it.
A year ago, you might have asked what you were supposed to do next, but it's enough to rest. Jasmine will tell you when she needs more. She's coming back - the news has been full of nothing else. Wesley removed the last red pin from his map yesterday. His paper world is covered in the dark blue he uses to represent enlightened regions.
Far across the city, there's fire flickering against the sky. Watching the Monument's eternal flame, you give silent thanks to those whose names are carved on the marble sides. They died so Jasmine could continue to be with you. Most major cities have something similar. Wesley took you there, not long after you came to L.A., and showed you Lilah Morgan's name. Must be a story behind that, you know, but you never wanted to push.
Where were you? he asks. You understand what he means.
I was in a bar, you tell him. I heard Jasmine talk, and the world was different.
He says, she walked through the door and I fell to my knees. We all did. Where was the bar?
The place name's right there, ready to be spoken, but you can't quite remember. Something pretty. Two words.
Doesn't matter, you say.
A moment later, you forget that he ever asked.
**
You are the body Jasmine.
She smiles beatifically from the television screen in the corner of Wes's - now your - bedroom. You are my people. Every one of you. You are one.
You are the body Jasmine.
**
Every soul in Los Angeles knows she's coming back today. Seems like there's not an inch of free sidewalk outside.
She comes straight to the hotel from the airport. This is where she began. Concentrate, and you can feel her progress through the city by keeping track of the upsurge of joy moving from block to block.
When she walks through the door, flanked by her family, the rest of your life pales into nothing. You loved her yesterday, but you know now how foolish that was, to believe you truly loved her without being in her presence.
You move forward, all of you, stopping when you know it's right to stop and falling to your knees before her. She looks around at you, beaming her love and her infinite mercy.
If there was ever a part of you that was called Lindsey MacDonald, a part that thought and felt and fucked things up and loved to sing and fell in love with all the wrong people, then it's gone. For a moment, you feel it, the sweeping away of the memories. There's a microsecond of loss. But then there's just Jasmine, Jasmine, all around you.
You are the body Jasmine, and this perfect world is your Paradise.
END
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Lindsey/Wesley
Rating: soft R
Summary: She asks why you're going back to the city, and you tell her you don't know. It's just where you need to be. Got the Call.
Notes: This was supposed to be written way back when for the Lindseyficathon. I think it was for
violetsmiles… Fear my run-on sentences and my lack of quotation marks.In the beginning was the word, and the word was Jasmine.
You get the Call in San Antonio. Been working at a bar, coupla nights a week, you and your guitar on the stage that's barely big enough for you both, singing through the smoke and the clatter of glasses. Hick place and they don't tip for shit, but it's not L.A. and that's good enough.
So it’s a Sunday, and later you'll think 'damn' and 'best day for it' and just 'damn', but right that moment you're halfway through a song and when Tina yells for everyone to hush you're pissed. There's an emergency news broadcast, she says, and you remember turning on the news two years ago one morning in September, and you think: fuck. Oh, fuck. Then she turns up the sound on the TV and everyone just. Stops. Talking.
There's a few weeks after that when the world's not quite real, and you love everyone, and more and more you're getting the sense that there's somewhere you need to be.
Tina asks why you're going back to the city, and you tell her you don't know. It's just where you need to be. Got the Call. She smiles - when'd you ever see her smile, before? - and opens the register to give you money for gas.
You don't sleep, barely eat, because you don't have the time. Got to get to L.A.
**
Nobody questions your presence. You join the pilgrims outside the Hyperion and light your candles. The sun rises, and Wesley and Gunn arrive back with a group of people, and when they see you you're welcomed like the Prodigal Son, and you go inside with them.
You want to see Jasmine, want it so bad you could die with it, but she's away. Wesley takes you into his office, shows you the map of the world with pins stuck in it. What is this, the war room? you ask, and he smiles, sheepish, knowing you're kidding. Like anyone'd think of war when they can have the love of Jasmine. Not everyone knows about her, though, and that's where she's gone, to find those who haven't heard. She's traveling along with Angel and her father (Angel and Darla's son, Wes tries to explain, but that doesn't make any sense). And you hate that you can't be in her presence, but she has to find the poor bastards still living in darkness.
Where are they right now? you ask. Wesley scans the map, points at a red tack in Asia.
They'll be in China for a while, he says. Visiting the provinces. We're holding the fort here.
His shirt's covered with blood that probably isn't his own, not unless the British bleed blue.
Demon?
He describes the nest they took out, animated and proud as a little kid, and you think that here's a guy who really loves his job. You envy him.
You hitch a hip on his desk, trying to look casual. Need another pair of hands? Both of you automatically look to your right hand, and you grin. At least fifty percent non-evil.
We don't have much need of a lawyer, he says, careful, like he's trying not to offend you.
Works for me, you tell him. You weren't planning to offer legal counsel, not that anyone here needs it.
There's a second when you think he's going to turn you away. You've never been more scared in your life.
We patrol from sunset to dawn, he finally says. Only team members live in the hotel. There are lots of empty rooms, take any one you like.
Maybe you fall in love with Wesley at that moment. Maybe most of it is relief, or gratitude.
**
The night after your arrival, you kill your first vampire. Your first week, your team takes out four Skilosh demons without a scratch to show for it. Supernatural attacks are down eighty-nine percent from the same time last year. Wes tells you this in one of the informal debriefing sessions that have become habit after patrol.
You've been there a month when Gunn leaves, on remote orders from Angel. He's needed to head up a team in New York.
You can't sleep, and you come down to the office, and you walk in on Wes and Gunn saying goodbye. And it's a shock because you knew - the link between the Faithful doesn't let you read minds, but you know feelings and non-specifics - but you didn't know with your own eyes. You're not jealous. Jealousy doesn't exist, now, and you barely remember it.
You go back upstairs. Three floors away, and you can feel them. Close your eyes and there are hands on your body, a mouth over yours. No shame in reaching beneath the sheet, touching the aching hardness there. Jasmine's world has no shame.
You're not jealous. You're not.
**
When you fight, you're not Lindsey MacDonald. You're just part of the team. One body, one mind. A group of humans who move like a wolfpack.
The demons don't stand a chance.
**
You okay?
Wes looks up from his texts. Someday you're gonna ask him where he got the gash across his throat.
It's nothing, Lindsey. Gives you that smile he probably thinks is convincing.
He feels… you tilt your head, trying to grasp the sensation. Melancholy.
You straddle the empty chair, facing him across the desk. You can wait this out longer than he can.
He sighs, puts the pen down, and says a name. You expected 'Gunn' or 'Charles' or even 'Angel'. This is somebody else. You frown.
You never heard him mention this Fred guy before.
Turns out he was a she, and exactly a year ago she betrayed them. Betrayed Jasmine. Lucky the bitch is long dead, or you'd want to get your hands around her neck. Never occurred to you before that you could feel Jasmine's love and turn bad anyway, and it's like being thrown into icewater, because if her, if this Fred, why not you? Wouldn't be the first time you let the good guys down. Wolfram and Hart may be gone from this dimension, but you're still here, aren't you? Still potentially not good, or not good enough.
Wes must feel what you're feeling. He leans across the desk, grips your hand tight, and says a bunch of nice things about redemption and loyalty. Fred was crazy. Fred was a monster. Fred wasn't strong.
Not like you, Lindsey. Not like you at all.
**
Nights are slacker than they used to be. There're less things that go bump in the night for your team to kill. Los Angeles is almost completely purified.
You patrol. You help take out the few vamps and demons too stupid too get out of the city. You swap jokes with the rest of your team. You stop to talk to the devoted outside the hotel. You walk in the garden, and you think that you could die oh-so-peacefully there among the wildflowers and the scent of jasmine.
You watch the sun climb the sky, into the air that's not so polluted as it was before the new pollution laws. At noon, you listen to the hourly radio broadcast. You bask in Jasmine's love, here in the garden where she was named.
Afterwards, you climb the three flights to Wesley's room.
You don't knock. He doesn't look surprised to see you.
The drapes are pulled back. You try to remember if this is the first time you've seen him in sunlight, or just the first time you've really looked.
Neither of you speak.
**
It's like double vision amplified to all the senses, because you're touching him and tasting him and moving with him, but there's the link, so you're him, too, feeling through his skin and looking at yourself through his eyes. This is not like anything you've ever felt, except the first time in that bar when you heard Jasmine talk to the world.
You stay in bed 'til near sunset. You can't seem to stop touching him. Not sexual, not all the time, 'cuz neither of you are seventeen anymore, but it's goddamn weird to brush your palm against his chest and feel the tickling yourself.
You talk some, mainly about Jasmine.
You think there's gonna be a new Bible? you murmur, not caring about the answer so much as wanting to hear him talk.
The Gospel of St. Angel, he suggests, laughing softly against the crook of your neck. Will you write a Book of Lindsey?
You trace your fingers across his chest, writing on his skin invisible words about how he looks in the dying sunlight.
This is your gospel.
**
From the roof, the banks of candles on the sidewalk look like fireflies.
You rest your arms on the ledge and look out at the city. Hundred-percent demonfree, you say. We did it.
A year ago, you might have asked what you were supposed to do next, but it's enough to rest. Jasmine will tell you when she needs more. She's coming back - the news has been full of nothing else. Wesley removed the last red pin from his map yesterday. His paper world is covered in the dark blue he uses to represent enlightened regions.
Far across the city, there's fire flickering against the sky. Watching the Monument's eternal flame, you give silent thanks to those whose names are carved on the marble sides. They died so Jasmine could continue to be with you. Most major cities have something similar. Wesley took you there, not long after you came to L.A., and showed you Lilah Morgan's name. Must be a story behind that, you know, but you never wanted to push.
Where were you? he asks. You understand what he means.
I was in a bar, you tell him. I heard Jasmine talk, and the world was different.
He says, she walked through the door and I fell to my knees. We all did. Where was the bar?
The place name's right there, ready to be spoken, but you can't quite remember. Something pretty. Two words.
Doesn't matter, you say.
A moment later, you forget that he ever asked.
**
You are the body Jasmine.
She smiles beatifically from the television screen in the corner of Wes's - now your - bedroom. You are my people. Every one of you. You are one.
You are the body Jasmine.
**
Every soul in Los Angeles knows she's coming back today. Seems like there's not an inch of free sidewalk outside.
She comes straight to the hotel from the airport. This is where she began. Concentrate, and you can feel her progress through the city by keeping track of the upsurge of joy moving from block to block.
When she walks through the door, flanked by her family, the rest of your life pales into nothing. You loved her yesterday, but you know now how foolish that was, to believe you truly loved her without being in her presence.
You move forward, all of you, stopping when you know it's right to stop and falling to your knees before her. She looks around at you, beaming her love and her infinite mercy.
If there was ever a part of you that was called Lindsey MacDonald, a part that thought and felt and fucked things up and loved to sing and fell in love with all the wrong people, then it's gone. For a moment, you feel it, the sweeping away of the memories. There's a microsecond of loss. But then there's just Jasmine, Jasmine, all around you.
You are the body Jasmine, and this perfect world is your Paradise.
END
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no subject
on 2003-11-23 12:18 pm (UTC)::loves::