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2.1.1 WALLS/ FORM/ WORD Eurynome the neverending
descend: to proceed in a sequence from more remote to nearer or more recent thread: to make one's
way, usually cautiously, through a hazardous situation
2.1.2 WALLS/ FORM/ WORLD funny that it's the vampire who brims over with feeling, whether he's dealing in brutal honesty, tender excess, or now eternal pain. souled or unsouled, he is the very poster child of risk, revealing everything, his highwire act intact without a net, there isn't even any seam between the emotions of the demon and the man. the point of view differs when he shifts but he never holds anything back, there is a continuity in him that will not be denied. the Slayer on the other hand keeps bits of her self squirreled away in locked compartments, in storage lockers that she never enters, layers of herself she does not recognize or will not acknowledge, turning to dust on cold metal shelving. she has turned inward, sharing nothing, swallowing the bile of living, the responsibility of caring too much, the nightmare of duty without end, the slow drip of endless slaughter, she is still so nearly too raw to touch. in her bleak heart they have all already left her, as they have all conspired to bring her back. only the vampire pushes past those boundaries she sets, he just won't quit trying to reach her, hold her, save her every night, when all she can feel is the hard edges, slamming against the wall of the house coming down around them. she doesn't see him at all inside that violent world to which she was returned. those reinforced walls she built specifically to keep him out slammed into place the same night all those other walls came down. so she used his body and denied him access to her soul: left him, soulless, with nothing to go on but sensation. he felt her urgency and mistook it for depth of feeling. how could he fathom otherwise, inhuman? so the question is, how to
let go, what note will shatter all these useless boundaries that the Slayer,
fearing herself inhuman, hides behind?
2.1.3 WALLS/ FORM/ MAKER Among later Greek writers there is a persistent tradition of a maze or labyrinth dance in Crete, in which the dancers pursued a winding course, suggestive of the devious passage of a maze.... Dances of the maze type are common to many early peoples in various parts of the world. (Lillian B. Lawler, The Dance
in Ancient Greece)
2.2.1 WALLS/ DIVINATION/ PROPHECY The Slayer of the End of
Days shall forge alliances between humans and demons and mystical forces,
in contradiction to all the accepted laws of nature. She will build the
walls between the worlds, and by the strength of her will when the moment
comes she will bring them down. She will inspire from all who stand
with her both loyalty and love, till death and beyond, protecting those
she trusts with the power of love even as she herself patrols the distant
ramparts of infinity.
2.2.2 WALLS/ DIVINATION/ TARA Tara? I'm still here. I wouldn't leave you to walk alone in the dark. I don't know what I am any more. Am I a monster? Oh. No. Never. I see such light around you, and your heart is pure. Then why do I feel so wrong inside? You were broken, a little. The urn broke too soon. And Willow should never have called on Osiris. But you're mending. Trouble is, there's a collision of destinies going on around you, and that's enough to confuse anybody. You mean a whole other 'one girl in all the world' kind of a thing? Yep. Think of yourself as becoming. Not looking dark, though? Inside? Nope. Same old bright Buffy, I promise. I really miss you, Tara. I won't go away.
2.2.3 WALLS/ DIVINATION/ FATES there is no seeing past her present on this canvas.
2.3.1 WALLS/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF EVIL So read the scroll. We've been a long time tracking it down. Before there was light, in the darkness, where chaos breathed on the face of the waters, the lines were drawn. In the shape of a double spiral, life and life were made in the eddies of whirlpools before time began, before the puny race of man. Two separate races were shaped to fight and breed their bloodlines back into one another, to populate the earth under cover of darkness, and to share their power. But it came to pass that one race set itself above the other, inventing Order, and held the Peace they wanted by waging war. And as one died, another was called to maintain the Law and kill the Other. And so over time the Slayers claimed dominion over that other race, who denied their right to do it, and the race of men were made from the ribs of Slayer descendents. And the Slayers passed for human as civilizations rose and fell, but they stood apart, because they were Older. And from the ribs of the Other was made the race of demons to populate the netherworlds, and to bedevil the race of men. But as the Slayer Elder line continued, so did the Elder line of the Order of Aurelius. For both Elder Races were drawn to one another, as they were always meant to mate, and fight, and die together, until the end of the world. Well, of course that's why
Angelus was meant to be sitting at the Master's right hand, come the day,
you must have known that? You just can't send a poet out to do this kind
of work, even if he does have a better track record with Slayers. What
on earth is becoming of this family? Two vampires with souls, two aborted
attempts at mating. Gypsy curses. Human weakness. And nobody caring enough
to hold the family together. Darla, *Darla* of all the unholy, staking
herself for love of a child? And nobody even has a theory yet to cover
that one, so we can't say whether we ought to welcome Connor into the family
or not. Nobody seems to want to stay dead, slayers or vampires, nobody
takes pride in this family anymore, there's hardly anyone left to do the
rituals, and Dru's beginning to look like the most sensible one of the
lot. At least she got out of town, and then stayed gone. We need a strategy
meeting. Bodies are gonna dust. If the Firm gets ahead of us on this, they
might just decide to take us off the board. They should never have let
humans into their strategy sessions, they never live long enough to see
the big picture.
2.3.2 WALLS/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF BALANCE This emergency meeting has been called to discuss a matter of grave import, the final disposition of the current Slayer. I'm sorry, sir, I'm just wondering which Slayer you're referencing here? The one in office. The one who holds the line is still safely under lock and key. Now, if I may continue? Thank you. If we had a Watcher in place, we could close the situation down quietly at this point without attracting any undue interest. As it is, we are left with a choice of unpleasant options. One, we can tell her what we know, let her make the choice herself. Too risky, in my professional opinion. She's never been malleable, her reactions are unpredictable, and she doesn't trust the Council. Still, those very qualities could translate into assets for our cause. She has a habit of confounding prophecy, after all, as well as all our recommendations. Age and experience are on her side now. Judging from the confidential reports I have been receiving lately, it is already too late for that kind of intervention, now that there are pheromones involved. It's an abomination, and it has to be stopped. According to our analysts, some sort of bond may have been formed, against all the laws of nature. What you really mean is, against the laws of the Council. Lydia, please. This is not a formal debate, and there are not two sides to every question. Two, we can send in a wetworks team to take her out, without prejudice. Does the situation really warrant such a drastic move? Unquestionably. There is far more at stake than one lone Slayer. And Slayers are always expendable, by definition. But that would be murder. Nonsense, this is the work we have to do. We are sworn to protect this world. The real question is whether the team might be up to the job. This Slayer hasn't lived so far beyond her time without perfecting her version of animal cunning. If our people take their shot, and lose, things could spiral out of control. Ladies and gentlemen, please. I think we all know what has to be done. This organization has devoted millennia to one simple agenda: ensuring that the Vampire Slayer comes together with her prey for one purpose and one purpose only. To slay one another in battle. And never to mate. It is our duty to fulfill this mandate. We were born into this charge. Now that the time is at hand, we must stand against the forces of darkness. I'll dispatch our best team, forthwith. I understand that there are a number of innocent parties out there in the field, still guarding her back. Her little helpers we interviewed two years back, presumably. What about them? This is a war. We call that
collateral damage. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Meeting adjourned.
2.3.3 WALLS/ CHORUS/ FORCES OF GOOD I thought she was never afraid, Giles. And I was afraid all the time, that people would find me out, that I just couldn't control.... Well, we know that didn't turn out well. But her, I knew there were small things, like the hospital fear. And she hated being drowned. But I didn't know.... She feared having to kill the people she loved. Yes. I guess I just couldn't imagine, then, what that would be like for her. She became afraid to love them, in case she had to kill them later. After Angelus opened the portal for Acathla. Once, but never again. And she couldn't face, later, the prospect of having to kill her sister. And then this year, me. And
Anya. And Spike. All-too-real possibilities. I could understand it in my
head, I could even accept her right of judgment, the luxuries of not-saying
she didn't have. But in my heart I still couldn't understand why it made
her so remote.
2.4.1 WALLS/ SOLILOQUY/ ANGEL He hates Angelus. Still, you know, he was the only one to beat him. No matter what the old man did to him, he never lost. Naked, buggered, bartered, brutalized, broken, you couldn't ever get him to give up unless he thought by doing so he was protecting Dru. Otherwise he was as senselessly intransigent as he was defenseless. Wonder the old man didn't beg for mercy himself, when he looked into those blue eyes and saw the boy's judgment. It wasn't logical. There was no possible gain to his version of defiance. But, truth to tell, I did admire that in him. He never gave an inch, that fragile boy. And he hates me. Pity we may have burned and beat out of him, over the years, but his contempt lives in his eyes. I know why. I never did as well, against Angelus. I was afraid of him, and I gave over both times I lost the soul. I keep him chained within, walled up, and rigidly contained, but the boy sees us both here waiting. He has the long memory of a born poet. He sees no virtue in all my protestations. Nothing to choose between the demon and the man. His body knows, intimately, indelibly, we are the same. And he will never surrender. I have been cursed. Empty, the demon entered. Against my will, as punishment, I got the soul. There is a monster in me; I am the monster in me. I struggle every day to make myself a better monster. But he is still a man. We could have killed him, but we could not make him other than he was. Rage and necessity have made a killer of that poet, but he is still alive, intact, inside. He set out deliberately to restore that soul; it was a choice he made. If every day he struggles with himself to become better than the day before, I should respect him for it. He is never afraid to risk everything he is and has against one throw, no matter what he loses. Instead I sit here thinking
to myself not only that I should have staked him, but that maybe even now
I can find a way. He simply knows too much about the nature of this beast.
If Buffy learned from him even a little of what he knows.... I sit here
thinking that my unlife is worth more than his in the balance: good deeds,
much expected, people who care for and depend on me, a son to raise. What
has Spike ever done to make him worth more than me? I am the Master of
Los Angeles. I fight today as a champion on the side of light. But even
if I stake him, he has still won again as he has always won against us
both. He does not bother to set out defenses against our certain predations.
No matter what we do to him, we both know he will still be the better man.
2.4.2 WALLS/ SOLILOQUY/ SPIKE Why did I ever let her in? I meant to kill her, killed two already, sort of my raison d'etre, innit? Mutual non-aggression pacts with Slayers, what the hell was I thinking?, should have unleashed it. Best advice I ever gave that wanker, fists and fangs and bugger the art of it. Fighting with her was art, all balance and flow, yin and yang, and once it was started it always came to seem like a sodding shame to stop. No end to that dance. Eternal. And she was beautiful, insides and outside, such a wonder when she finally looked at me, I felt all chosen too. A bleeding revelation. Warm hands, cold heart, I thought, she felt, so raw, I couldn't bring myself to stay outside her. Dru was right, I should have, could have, not yet, stayed intact myself. Floating in the air all around me, too right, blood boiling inside the cold inside. On my merry way; wanting the best for. Neutered twice, Spike the Pathetic, empathetic. Why didn't Angel warn me, lame as always, was he drawn to her himself like that, a moth to flame? Maybe I misjudged him, just a little. To kill this girl you've got to love her, fair advice, but that's my fatal flaw. I just didn't pay attention to the fine print, look where it's got me. Eternal rest. No peace. Supposed to get easier, isn't it? Still all alone in the dark, still wishing that I could cut it with her. Cut her with it. Cut it out. Before she touched me, we were almost... friends. Comrades. If I'd known she would shut me out after, like nothing, like less than dust, I might have had the strength to push her away. But at the time, it felt like revelation. I was so sure I had reached something in her, broken through all the barriers she raised against feeling to protect herself. Instead she used that contact to break, brutally, the connection. Was it something in me, some evil arising, that made a trainwreck out of my best intentions? I meant well, there's an epitaph. I meant to be the kind of man who would never hurt her. And forgot, as she never did, that I wasn't a man. And then, going soulful, frightened her more: she saw Angel in my eyes and had to kill him again. I couldn't die for her, being
dead already, but I gave all I had, my heart that did not beat, my soul
she could not bear to look at, my body she could no longer bear to touch.
So much pain in her I would have liked to take away. So much pain in me
she couldn't bear to look. And so, impasse. In the middle of darkness,
the walls kept shifting. Still, she could always find me when she came
looking. So I did dare to hope someday she might let me give her comfort.
2.4.3 WALLS/ SOLILOQUY/ BUFFY If this is a labyrinth, shouldn't I be holding string?
2.5.1 WALLS/ ECHO/ WITNESS ARIAS I know this one! Dawn is the key, born to unlock the door. Which door? All those doors on the stairway down, I'm thinking. Buffy comes down those stairs past all those frames to where Spike waits the night she's resurrected from the dead. Right. Dawn complains that Buffy won't let her in. Okay, so the walls in the house keep being breached. What else? It's strong in the chthonic imagery: Buffy gone to ground in the trenches. The earth reclaims her body under ground when she's dead. She has to claw her way out of the coffin and back up to the world when she is resurrected. In Grave, Willow BlackEyedGirl tells Buffy she took her from the earth, and now the earth wants her back, and then the elementals come out of the walls below ground to reclaim Buffy and Dawn. And metaphorically, Buffy so guarded, of course, like she's been way back to Riley leaving, when her mom died, when she told Giles in Intervention she didn't think it sounded right when she told him she loved him. But the spirit guide told her she was full of love. And she jumped for Dawn. Joyce is in the wall in Restless. And Xander blames the wall in The Body. Xander's the heart of the Scoobies. He blames Buffy's walls for a lot of their problems: it's the start of their huge argument in Selfless. Because she holds everything inside these days. CrazySpike in Lessons tells her the source of the problem is in the wall. And two eps later, he's still trying on his own behalf to "wall up the bad parts, put your heart back in where it fell out." She certainly did a fine job shutting him right out in Season 6, poor bugger. She shut everyone out. Loss of affect. It's a thing.
2.5.2 WALLS/ ECHO/ MEMORY Ah, love, let us be true
(Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach)
2.5.3 WALLS/ ECHO/ INVOCATION Dark Ones, The Slayer walks tonight in your kingdom.
2.6.1 WALLS/ PLAINSONG/ BARD'S TALE And the Slayer came to the
keeper of the second gate. "Let me through", she said. "Where is your token?"
"I come unprepared. What would you have from me?" "All the walls around
your heart." "Done." And the gate opened, and the Slayer walked through
empty-handed, her burden lighter. And descended the stairs.
2.6.2 WALLS/ PLAINSONG/ LYRIC seven
seven
seven
a hundred
seven
seven
2.6.3 WALLS/ PLAINSONG/ BALLAD i live inside a tower of glass
i built it up to hold the pain
if i could live inside the walls
if all the walls inside the halls
the dances we have dallied in
i move through valleys of the damned
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