Subject: [DarkSlash] Black Mercy Files 6: Fire, Eat My Soul (Buffy/Twin Peaks C/O: Final) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 11:20:33 -0000 From: "sycoraxil " Summary: Rupert Giles and his whitewicca offsider Doug Mercer have travelled to Twin Peaks, after a reported sighting of Dale Cooper, an MIA FBI Special Agent. Along with John Constantine, an irascible but matey darkmage friend of both of them, they soon find that the town is on the edge of its own private apocalypse. Disclaimers: Giles and Ethan Rayne belong to Joss Whedon and UPN, the Twin Peaks characters are the property of David Lynch, John Constantine lives in the DC Vertigo Comics subuniverse. Doug Mercer is my own original character. Setting: AU, Buffy Season Six. Things are going to end up differently at the end of "Seeing Red," with painful consequences for two of the characters in this fic. Long Long Way To Go (Phil Collins)(C) (1982) While I sit here trying to think of things to say Someone lies bleeding in a field somewhere So it would seem we've still got a long long way to go I've seen all I wanna see today While I sit here trying to move you anyway I can Someone's son lies dead in a gutter somewhere And it would seem that we've got a long long way to go But I can't take it anymore Turn it off if you want to Switch it off it will go away Turn it off if you want to Switch it off or look away While I sit and we talk and talk and we talk some more Someone's loved one's heart stops beating in a street somewhere So it would seem we've still got a long long way to go, I know I've heard all I wanna hear today Turn it off if you want to (turn it off if you want to) Switch it off it will go away (switch it off it will go away) Turn it off if you want to (turn it off if you want to) Switch it off or look away (switch it off or look away) Switch it off Turn it off _________ And Giles sat in his room, sobbing to himself, as Constantine knocked at the door. Through his tears, the ex-Watcher looked up, and the trenchcoated man swallowed to himself. He knew why Giles was reacting like this, particularly given what had happened on this day several years ago. "I can't go with him, John. I'll end buggering things up. I don't want to be this weak. I don't want to be the one whose vulnerability ends up betraying my protege and my best friend. But it hurts. For some reason, it hurts like hell itself. I thought I'd locked the memories away somewhere, but I can't. I keep thinking about her, and the pain inside is tearing me apart." Constantine nodded toward his friend and reached down, touching Giles' hand, saying nothing. As Giles looked up, through his tearstained face, Constantine blinked back his own tears: "Say it, mate. Say her name." "Janna. Janna Kalderash. Jenny Calendar." As he stepped toward the wooded clearing, Doug felt the turmoil in his friends mind, and looked away. He didn't want to intrude, and he could guess why Rupert's grief for the woman whom Angelus had murdered before they could reunite was ravaging his friend's soul right now. He steadied himself as Hawk drew up in his police vehicle: "Douglas, you are a brave man." "Thanks, Hawk. Goddess, what can I say? I'll get that bastard for what it did to Harry, I swear it. It won't get away this time." "I've...taken precautions. Constantine had a vision. It involves the destruction of this town." Doug nodded: "Wise move. If I don't see you again, Tom...don't go easy into the night, man. Go out fighting." Doug stepped into the Black Lodge and came face to face with his adversary. He saw Annie's broken and bruised body and felt the residue of Dale Cooper's whitesoul in the air around him. Then Cooper's dark doppelganger turned toward him and formed a tableau. It was Giles. He was in some sort of dusty shop, and he was fighting a younger darkmage, and he was tiring, and. And. No. Stop. For Goddess' sake, stop. It's just a mindfuck. It's not happening. It... "It's the future, Douglas. Several months from now, your friend will try to stop a darkmage from looting a repository of darkmage texts. He will fail, and the darkmage will drain the magic and life from him. He will die because you weren't there in time to save him. Your best friend will be obliterated. You will fail." "Shut the fuck up!!" Doug blazed, his eyes full of green fire. He wasn't going to listen to this. He knew what had happened to Dale Cooper in his moment of epiphany and betrayal. He had seen his beloved Annie dead and his doppelganger had seized the moment to obliterate his own soul and steal his body. Well, tough shit. It wasn't going to happen to him. This cancer made incarnate was preying on his mind, it was showing him this deliberately, to throw him off. And if that was a time distort spell, then. Yeah. He caught the momentary pulse of aftertime and saw a blur as a female figure caught the darkmage and broke his neck. Doug pushed what he had seen out of his mind. He felt the fabric of the earth and its myriad causeways of energy and matter and magick and causality and his presence within it, a complex network of existence and humanity and... love. And in that moment, Dale Cooper's dark image realised that it had lost, and lost forever, as the facade of the Black Lodge started to blow apart. As Doug battled his way back toward the portal that would take him away from the collapsing hellnode, he saw a familiar figure. He had greyer hair now, but it was still recognisable as: "Cooper?" "Mercer. Thank you for freeing me." "Take my shoulder, mate, we'll get you to safety." But as he knelt, he saw that Dale Cooper was grievously injured and a tear came to his eye: "Aw no. Mate, I wish I was a healer. I wish I knew how to knit you back together again." "Thank you, Douglas. Because of you, I won't spend eternity trapped in this corner of hell." "You never deserved to, Dale. Uh. Someone's here to see you." Doug could see a gentle golden and white tear in the fabric of existence, and there was a woman silhouetted in it. As he watched, Dale Cooper got to his feet and then he was in her arms and Annie kissed him back. With gentle sound, the tear righted itself, as Doug walked out through the portal, into the outside world. He found himself a couple of miles away from the town and looked out over a scene of devastation as it burned, for, at the same time that he had defeated the Black Lodge and its evil, a tidal wave of malignant festering raw power had torn itself away and moved over the town like a primal wavefront as it shattered buildings, detonated anything flammable, and burnt out of control. But Giles and Constantine had done their job well, and no-one was left there to watch. Twin Peaks was destroyed in an instance, but the network of people who had lived and loved and suffered in hell's tributary were not there to participate in the downfall. As they watched it burning, Giles came from the black helicopter where Skinner was waiting, along with Fox Mulder, John Doggett and Dana Scully. He gripped Doug's shoulder: "I'm proud of you, old friend. You freed the people of this town from what had cursed their lives. You faced temptation and you overcame it." Doug managed a shaky smile as he hugged his old friend, but as he looked up at Constantine, the older man saw that Dougie's face was caught in a moment of intense fear and pain. He nodded at Doug, who could see Constantine had started to cry himself, soundlessly. He realised that this might look like a victory over evil and death, but it was most ambivalent. As he watched, John Constantine walked away, as he realised that he would never see his mate Ripper again, and it felt like a knife twisting in his gut. As Doug and Giles walked from the death throes of the hellshard town, Doug realised that he didn't know how long he still had with his friend, but he promised that he would make Giles' last time on Earth one of firm friendship, respect and brotherhood. Even when there is brilliant light, the shadows are never far away.