Author’s notes: This part takes place between ‘The Gift’ and ‘Bargaining’, and after ‘The Last Knight’. The quotes in bold italics are dialogue parts from the respective shows this is a crossover of.
The NightCrawler
by Belladonna
Chapter 1
~Faith, Love and Hope~
“You’ve always had faith in me
You believed in me when I did not believe in myself.”
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Ah, faith is something very special that is owned by humans. It might be their most valuable and precious thing for it is absolutely pure. Their faith comes from their hearts and their souls and it is something that nobody can ever steal from them.
Faith, believing my children means the ability to trust; but why shouldn’t you trust somebody else when you cannot believe him?
But what does faith really mean? For all your life you were told what it means to believe, believe in Him or in yourself or in whatever it was that others wanted you to believe in. You were always told what it means to believe and what belief has to mean, has to mean for you.
But do you really know it or do you just believe in what you were told all these years?
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“You saw the light in my eyes.”
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Could faith be the light that is shining deep inside us, only to perish in the darkness of our world again? In the darkness that makes our reality, that forms it? Could this belief be the faith of the church, which dictates us the things in which to believe, which we should believe in and behind which all else is fading? Oh my beloved children outside, if that truly would be, then I will cry for you tonight, like I do cry for myself.
Belief is so much more and the same time exactly what you have been told. Nothing more and nothing less and it is upon yourselves to seek faith for yourself, to find something you can believe in and then to hold it for you.
Or is that light more likely something we wish for and in which this our faith, the same faith we cannot grasp with our hands or we never might be able to find at all resides?
But then, maybe this light is just the warming shining of our love, a love that we feel for the people who are close to us and that warms us when we receive their love.
Love; it is such an easy word and the same time the hardest one on us that our language possesses. There are so many different kinds of love. The love that we feel for those people who are dear to our hearts, our family and friends; the love which binds us to our soul mates and unifies our hearts for eternity but also the love that makes our existence so much more painful and full of torment, for it is that which is not returned and sears us from deep within.
Ah, yes my children, love is a quite harmful thing, for it cuts deeper than the sharpest sword and caresses us the same with its gentle hand, touching us with tenderness and causing us even deeper and stronger pain than the sword would ever be able to.
Are you really ready for love yet, for a sacrifice that huge? Ready to give up everything you are for it, all what you possess?
Or is it more likely that this light is the pale shimmer of hope that we have hidden so deep inside us, far deeper than everything else and that slowly threatens to break towards the surface, trying to get out? Oh you sweet hope, destroyer of all our dreams and creator of new life, of our future. Each day we walk on this earth, every night we are hoping for a tomorrow and for that it will come and be the way we wish it to be; that we are able to spend this tomorrow, our future with those dear to our hearts and lives.
Our hope, just another piece of that which pushes us forward in our lives; forward in our constant struggle to understand the sense of it all? Or more our striving for knowledge, the search for ourselves and what we are, have been or will be one day.
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“Now I have that faith, I have that belief
And I can see the light.”
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How I wished I had had your faith, your trust in the mortals and all that which makes them. But how can we believe when we do not possess souls of our own?
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“I know you’ll never love me.
I know that I’m a monster,
But you treat me like a man…”
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How can we love when we are nothing more than soulless monsters and how can we even expect to be loved by others?
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“This is the work that I have to do.”
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You always had been the exception; you had made their faith your own and discovered it for yourself. You had loved them and were loved by them, something that could never be accomplished by me during all the years of my existence. Their hope, the hope of the mortals and all their dreams were also the hopes and the dreams that you dreamt with them; which you’ve experienced and lived, and that kept you alive. Their faith, their love and their hope, they have always been yours and neither I nor the centuries could ever manage to change that. Especially not I, never.
For me, all this had never been so clear like it had been for you. I have never seen this before or been able to and now it is already too late to correct my mistakes. But maybe I can do this here, change something or at least even try.
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“Give my love to my friends…You have to be strong now. The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave, live for me.”
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Still, can we truly continue living just like that, that easily? With all the knowledge that all that has happened might be at least to a certain amount our own fault, because of us? Are we really able to overcome it so easily and go on, like nothing had happened? As if nothing had changed at all?
Just simply like that?
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Somewhere in Sunnydale, in the middle of this small Californian town at three different places three different people were found on this night, that couldn’t have been more apart from each other.
But in this night they were more similar to themselves than they might have dared to dream of or could have imagined without ever having met together, for they all felt the same pain, the pain of loss in their hearts, might they beat or not.
And all had something else in common. It were tears of sorrow and grief that fell down their cheeks at these words, either spoken, heard or felt.
Because these words were meant for all three of them; meant for themselves and for those they had lost recently.