Disclaimer: This story is a work of fan-fiction. All used characters don’t belong to me and I just borrowed them. The only profit I hope to achieve with this story is the pure pleasure of the reader.
Author’s notes: The story had actually not been intended being a crossover at the beginning. It had started with Chapter 2 as a single story but after re-watching the finale of Forever Knight has blossomed into this series that has become this slight crossover between Buffy and Forever Knight now.
The whole series takes place after ‘The Last Knight’ from Forever Knight and begins after ‘The Gift’ from Buffy. The story will follow loosely the events of Season 6, so will be kinda spoilery for it from the beginning of Buffy Season 6 to current events as far as I know them. This story will consist of several short stories or vignettes if you wish with a loose red line through them and focus on several sole characters along the way.
This is an experiment of mine trying out a different way of telling a story, so please let me know how you like it or what you think of it. The story changes between monologue parts and usual storytelling, change of font does always mark that change.
The NightCrawler
by Belladonna
Prologue
~Childer of the night~
The night was black, a deep darkness clinging onto it and all that was underneath those endless skies. Night had fallen down over the small town called Sunnydale and it seemed like it would be a normal night, a night just like each single previous one had been already and the following nights would be too.
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The night is dark, darker than most of you might imagine it to be or are able to and no matter how hard we try to turn away from her, from the black and to strive for the light, that much harder she draws us back towards her, back into the comforting darkness of endless night.
She embraces you, always holds her hands protectively above you and takes you as her own like a lover might do that is holding you in his or her arms, close to the heart might it beat or not.
The light, so bright and warm it is to you, so searing can it be, it consumes you and all you are, ever were or would be one day and it always will be the darkness of the night, in which you seek sanctuary when the light is becoming too bright and blinding.
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The inhabitants of that small town were in their houses, they either were sleeping or simply were inside; the windows closed like were the doors. They did it instinctively, sought out the safety that their homes gave them and it only were a rare few who remained outside after the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon.
The people were not afraid from going out of their houses or into the dark; they did not even fear it. No, even though the darkness sought out to draw them inside herself, she never managed to cloud them wholly.
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And the darkness, she will never reject you, my Children, my Childer, for where else might you go when the light burns you?
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They were the Children of the day, the Children of the sun and the darkness had no power over them, even if the night still tried to dampen the light or to conquer it, to take it completely.
And still it were the Children of the sun that fell prey to the darkness all the time, again and again.
The same way like it was the Children of the night who were burned by the sun, by the light that despite all the darkness still was shining inside their hearts.
The night might have been like thousands before had been and like many identical nights would follow.
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This eternal lady night; she will never reject you my children, for she will never change towards you. She will remain like she is and shall never change at all. Not for all eternity and all will remain as it was.
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But it wasn’t, because for the Children of the night it never would be the way it had been before.
For the Children of the Night cried tonight.
They cried out in joy these nights, crying out with excitement and passion in celebrating the downfall of an enemy, revelling the feeling of freedom for the moment for it would not be long before another one would be chosen to stand against them.
Someplace else one of them cried out also, weeping for the same fallen hero whose perish the others celebrated. This Childe of the night wept for the loss of his beloved and out of his own failure in protecting her, preventing this tragedy from happening. He had yet to understand that there had been nothing for him to do to change the outcome of it. No matter how hard he wished for it.
It simply would never be the same that had been and he knew that all too well.
But it was so much harder for these special Children of the night whose dead hearts, hearts in which until now the borrowed life of others had beat had been filled with love; a love that managed to even warm the coldest of such hearts.
Even the ones that had stopped beating a long time ago.
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The night is your sanctuary, the darkness your safe haven and who knows that gentle embrace better than you, who you are out there, you my Childer of the night; that you know what it means for you, what you’ve had to give up for her and had to helplessly watch loosing again.
By the hand of another, or your own.
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This night was indeed different from all the others and exactly in this night, a newcomer had arrived in Sunnydale, his grief not unlike that of the true Childer of the night especially one.
And the newcomer’s tears, which fell silently down his cheeks, were blood red, just like those an other one had shed earlier.
Part One - Faith, Love and Hope