Fic: The Sappho Files: Salvation

[Owl]

The Sappho Files, Part 1: Salvation.

this is my first fic. I hope you enjoy. Please reply. Thanks.

disclaimers...
The usual: not my characters except for the ones that are. There are some real historical figures here, and I do not claim that any of this happened, except, of course for those events that really did transpire. Oh, and the poetry translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. I don't claim that they are very good compared with the originals, but... they are pretty accurate.
insert any disclaimers i forgot.

Previously: Restless: W/T back painting scene
The Wish: Giles: ?Yes, I know that Cleveland has a lot of demonic activity.(paraphrase)
Everything up until doublemeat palace.

The Sappho Files: Part 1: Salvation
1: introductions

Hey there, little kitten. I see the way you?re looking at me, all suspicious. You?ve got on the who, what, when, where, and why face. Who am I? Why am I here? Where?s Tara? Well, little kitten, you?re asking the wrong questions. But, I?ll tell you the story anyway. My name is Attis. No, really. Oh, don?t tell me you haven?t heard the name. I know your mommies are big Sappho fans. I know you were there when there was nakedness and paint and poetry?Only, that was a dream wasn?t it? Maybe you remember anyway? Okay. Crash course in Sappho. Famous lesbian poet. In both senses of the word. 2600 years ago. I?m her girlfriend...or at least I was? We lived on the island of Lesbos?that?s where you get the word lesbian from. From Sappho. You can call me Ariel. After the Plath poems. I?ve been calling myself that lately. Easier for you to pronounce anyway.
You know, we really should start somewhere else. Somewhere far away from here. Don?t worry. Things will be Taracentric in due time.
Cleveland. Not surprising, right? Great place for demonic activity, as you probably know. A terrific place for the activities of people like me for that matter. It?s not actually fair to call me a person anymore. There isn?t really a category. I?m one of a select few. We called ourselves the Godcursed, or that?s what it comes down to in English. Sorry, I don?t actually speak kitten, so English will just have to do. I?m the only one left, as far as I know.
Anyway, I was having a terrific time of it in Cleveland. I had a nice little tattoo parlor. Pretty little autoclave, pretty little needles. I?m not sure you would?ve liked it, really. I got it from the previous owner? one of my real customers. I was having some very nice downtime. Until I got this call. The smell.
Very smelly redhead.
Let me tell you, this girl was pungent. You know the smell, right? That miserable, ?I?m in love, and my heart just got squished because I did something horribly stupid so the girl I?m in love with left me? smell. That smell, you know. Ok, too much time on the job here. That almost sounded like Willowbabble.
I admit, I was excited. I can?t help it. It?s part of the curse. I finished with my last tattoo, packed my bags, and I was off. I have this special method of fitting a lot of stuff into a small bag. That?s important when you?ve been around as long as I have. You collect a lot of stuff. Now that?s something you really wouldn?t know about. You?re still so little. Another thing you wouldn?t know about is bicycles and trains. I don?t drive like other folks. Oh, I try to keep up with technology, but cars are just scary. Every minute of driving is just like sixty seconds of near accidents. I don?t do cars. So I cycled down to the station, and got on the train to Sunnydale. Sure, they don?t like it when you bring your bike on the train, but I have my ways of convincing people. You ever see that Star Wars movie? You know when Luke does the Jedi mind trick thing? Right. That thing?s real. Really. Only it isn?t Jedi. It?s Jah-Dei. I don?t know how Lucas could?ve found out about it. The Jah-Dei keep themselves really secret. That?s one of life?s great mysteries.
Oh. Sorry, am I boring you? You want to hear about Willow? Yes. Where was I? On the train.
I close my eyes, and Willow dreams.
She dreams of a man. Sergei Esenin. You haven?t heard of him, have you? Didn?t think so. Kittens really not big on poetry, huh? He was a very famous Soviet poet. And he killed himself in 1925. Willow witnessed his death in her dream. This is what she saw:
A blonde man embraces another man, one of his best friends. The friend leaves, and the blonde man, who has obviously been drinking writes on the wall in his own blood. He writes: ?Goodbye, my friend, goodbye/ My dear one, you are in my heart/ this predestined encounter/ promises future meetings/ Goodbye, my friend, goodbye/ don?t be sad, or furrow your brow/ In this life, it is nothing new to die/ but then, to live is nothing newer.? He hears a voice, and the voice says: ?It is time, Sergei.? Now, this is all in Russian, of course, and Willow doesn?t speak Russian. But she understands. I?m translating for your benefit, of course. Not that it matters, right? Anyway, she sees the friend walking down the street. He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and reads it. Scrawled upon it is same poem that the blonde man was writing on the wall. The friend spins around and begins to run back towards the apartment. He cries out ?Sergei!? but it is too late. The blonde man has hanged himself.
In the middle of the night, Willow stirs from sleep and cries out, ?Sergei!?

I know this because I have seen it. I have seen her mind, her memories. When she woke in the morning some of those memories had changed. She remembered that dream, for one thing. Wouldn?t you wonder if you could suddenly understand Russian? You?d wonder if you understood anything. She didn?t notice that some of her memories?the ones she was trying to avoid remembering...had been borrowed, looked at, and returned, reshelved.

[This message has been edited by WillTara (edited February 04, 2002).]

[Kel]

Owl i have to say that i love the way you've written this and i look forward to the next part. there is more right? cause i want more, losts more and soon!

Kel

[Aria]

More please I loved it. I have been toying with the idea of doing a Sappo related fic after I finish the one I am curently writing, but you have beaten me to it and I am glad. You have done it so much better than I could have. I want more soon!! That is an order...lol. Well I am off to try and get through the snow that is now making it impossible to gt anywhere. Hmm Starbucks nummy, yes must get to Starbucks.

------------------
Piffle

[KittyKo]

Hm, this is quite interesting and intriguing. Got my attention.

[Owl]

The sappho files
Update!

Thanks for your supportive replies! Here's a little more....And more to come later. It gets more involved, i promise... Strange things in store for Willow and Tara...Here goes...

The Sappho Files: Salvation
Part 2: History

You should know why I came here. I’d like to say that I came here to help, but I can’t. The smelly people call me, because they want…no, make that need help. Because they desperately need to be with the person they are missing. But the kind of help I give rips into them and tears them apart. I’m Jeckyll and Hyde. Half of me wants to help, while the other half relishes in the kill. I can be very brutal.

Willow didn’t know she was calling me, no. It’s like Anya when she was a vengeance demon. Only I don’t eviscerate people. And I didn’t choose this life.

Speaking of Anya, when I got to Sunnydale, the first thing I did was… actually, the first thing I did was get set up in my new place. Same old place, really. New town. Alright, but the second thing I did was go to see Anya. That is ,I went sniffing around Red’s haunts. Research. Call it stalking, if you want to. My plan was to find out about her, and become somebody she could relate to. The first place I went was the Magic Box. It had her stench all over it. It was late, they were closed, and I knocked on the door anyhow. I consider breaking in to be impolite. Anya came to the door and motioned at me that they were closed. But I could sense her weakness. I held a wad of money up to the window. She opened up.
This is what happened next:

She said, “Welcome to the Magic box. How can I assist you?” In that practiced way, with that proud smile, knowing that she’d gotten it out more or less the way Xander had taught her. Her eyes were positively aglow. Like one of those scary kids they print on coke cans during Christmas. I’m not wrong, am I? There’s something that’s just plain wrong about those kids.

I told her I wasn’t there to purchase any wares, and the glow in her eyes burnt out and turned to ash. I started to explain that I was looking for some information on some redheaded witch, but then… I realized something. I recognized something in her steely gaze. This was no ordinary human. This was Anyanka. We had had quite a few run-ins, she and I.

Vengeance Demons. Always trying to steal my customers. “Don’t you wish? Don’t you wish…?” She was a fierce competitor. In fact, I saw her so often that we eventually became friends. We even worked together sometimes. But one day, she just dropped off the radar screen. Now I know what happened to her.

Her unhappy expression turned abruptly to horror when she noticed my shirt. It was a bright red t-shirt, with a big old yellow hammer and sickle right smack in the middle of it. Very threatening. She looked at me like she was ready to grab the nearest battle axe and behead me.

She stammered something like, “Who do you think you are, coming in here and waving all that money around at me? What kind of sick trick is this? You are NOT going to convert me to your disgusting cult! I am not sharing my money… or my things… or my… Xander… with anyone! So you can just…” She stopped like a vamp in sunlight when recognition hit her.

Anyanka wasn’t a big fan of the old USSR, but I was. It was the last place we’d seen each other. There were so many ill-fated love affairs that I nearly had too much work. And the people loved poetry madly. But the place did bad things for Anyanka’s Job-satisfaction rating.

We did the girly screaming, and hugging and the obligatory fussing over the wedding ring, which, I know you don’t understand because cats are cool and nonchalant and do not engage in such silliness… I wonder if werewolves are really some kind of Werecats…

Anyhow, five minutes later we were off to the Bronze to meet Xander. I had to explain everything to him. Almost everything. All about me. And I think I’ve kept you waiting long enough, so I’ll tell you what I told him.

When I walked the earth as a true human, I walked with Sappho. I was completely in love with her. I still am. Well, as you probably know, there were a bunch of really emotionally disturbed gods around then, and they were always falling in love with the mortals. I was unlucky like that. You won’t believe me but it’s true. Poseidon saw me walking along the beach one day, and he decided he was in love with me. Not good for me. I rejected him. Looking back, I realize that it was not a wise decision, but I had no other choice.

Do you know what they used to do to you, if you rejected them, little kitten? They would curse you. The standard curse involved being forced to bear the pain of the god in question until such time as the god was dead. They thought that was really clever, since they were immortal. But they didn’t realize that immortality did not actually mean that they couldn’t die. They’re all dead now. But I’m still here. Because my god wasn’t stupid. He cursed me with immortality and charged me as the bearer of his pain until I fell in love again.

As you can tell, not dead yet.

The part of the curse that involves killing people goes like this… A customer calls to me for help. It is always the same thing. They need their lover back. I come and assimilate into that person’s world, and I bring them Sappho’s gift. That is, I bring them poetry. But eventually, it becomes too much, and the person is overcome with grief and he does himself in. It has happened so many times. With Sappho’s gift comes Poseidon’s pain, and her fate.

The story is that she committed suicide by jumping from a cliff and into the sea. But she wasn’t herself. I know because I watched her die. Poseidon had me locked down, and he made me watch. When he made her into the world’s first Ophelia.

Stupid Drama queen gods.

Excuse me. Right. The Bronze. Anya, Xander, and delicious ale. I had gotten myself terribly sloshed in the process of explaining all of this and feeling sorry for myself. That’s why I didn’t feel it… or rather, smell it… when Willow came in. She came right up to the table. She wasn’t supposed to see me yet. In case she recognized me later. And I wasn’t ready to get that close. Especially not with all that beer in my belly. She walked right exactly up to the table, and all my senses came rushing back to me. The putrid breath of her longing hung thick in the air, and my insides felt like a Fiorel demon was trying to bust its way out.
I got up and ran out into the night.
Straight into Mr. Peroxide himself. The all-too familiar face of William the Bloody.

[This message has been edited by Owl (edited February 06, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by Owl (edited February 06, 2002).]

[Owl]

Update to this here thing...

Sorry it took me so long...

copyright concerns:
Buffy and all those characters belong to Joss Whedon/Mutant enemy of course.
t.s. eliot from Harcourt brace.
mayakovsky is my own translation. It is a fragment from a big old poem i know as "neokonchannie," er.. "unfinished" if you want more info feel free to email me at redaccordion@aol.com ... that aside, here it is....

Part 3: Effulgent

Okay. Now, let’s just get one thing straight, shall we? I was not responsible for any of William’s poetry. I offered him my help, but he refused. He thought that his poetry might really be good. But on the night he realized that his poetry did, in fact, suck, and he was ready to give in to me, that stupid vampire bit him and decided to make him her special project for the next couple of centuries. He had called to me, and he should have been mine. He was rank. God, how that man stank. He was in love, and hurt, and angry.

He smelled the same way when I ran into him outside of the Bronze. Only vampires really do have a sort of dead smell to them. And a blood smell. Only I could tell he had been drinking the butcher’s special. No fresh human blood in his belly. And the…well, the girl was different. In more senses than one. Interesting choice, I thought. So actually he smelled quite different. But he did smell in love and hurt and angry.

I drolled, in my best British accent, “William….” I was in the mood to harass somebody, having just proven myself to be a supreme idiot, and he made a great target.

He turned and faced me. It was obvious that he didn’t recognize me. “What’s it then? Can I do something for you?”

I just had to laugh at him. This vampire who had once been such a pitiful human being and was now clearly even a poor excuse for a bloodsucker was so puffed up, and so cocky. He had to be shown his place and shoved into it. I brushed my hand over my face, and the tattoos all disappeared. Neat little trick. He took a step back when I said the word, “Effulgent.” His face dropped and I thought to myself, “Mission accomplished. That was easy.”

I’ll spare you all the fuzzy, cuddly details of our reunion. Of course I teased him without mercy about the slayer. But mostly, I wanted information. Somehow, I got the feeling that he knew my girl. I could smell her on him. Even brief exchanges leave their mark. Now, don’t look at me like that…. I bet you think that Spike would never betray a friend like Willow. He stood up to torture from Glory for Dawn and all that. But Glory had nothing on me when it comes to torture. She went for the outside. But sometimes it’s what’s inside that counts. And sometimes, a person can’t control what he says.

He tried. I asked him nicely for information, and he said no. He did his best impression of Willow’s resolve face, even. But I always get my man. It is a truth, that too much of anything hurts. Even too much napping, or eating or catnip. Now, if I give you a dose of poetry, it carries in its lines concentrated emotions. For Spike, I decided on something a little silly, and something British. You’ll like this. I had him recite from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. There is nothing funnier than hearing a cocky vampire say those things in public. But, we were starting to gather an audience, so I gave him one last squeeze, and let him stop. He looked at me, exhausted, and told me the basics. That kind of poetry’s like a really intense extended tickle. There’s no fighting it.
“Willow Rosenberg. Red hair, green eyes. Slayer’s bestest friend. Gay, 1999-present. Good with computers. Smart kid. Student over there at the University. She’s a witch, a big powerful witch. You don’t want to be on her bad side. Except she’s not practicing at the moment on account of Tara leaving her. And on account of getting the little bit hurt. That’s the slayer’s little sis, Dawn. Now, Tara- that’s red’s girl. Was her girl. She’s a witch, too. Red did a couple of memory spells on her, and she left. Oh, and she… that’s red…was getting taken in by the magic. The dark stuff. She hasn’t been the same since….”

That was more than I needed to know. I let him go then, but I could feel him watching me as I left. I knew he was headed back into the bronze to warn Willow as soon as he thought I’d gone. I turned the corner and backtracked. I snuck up the catwalk and watched him trying to figure out how to warn her of danger without letting on that he actually liked her. He said.

“Hey, red. Look, I’ve got some information that concerns you being in grave danger and if I don’t tell you and something happens to you, Buffy’ll have some nice sun-baked Spike dust for breakfast. So, here it is, then. There’s this lady, with these sort of tattoos all over her face and will now and again join into the fray/ And they Bark bark bark bark/ Bark bark BARK BARK/ Until you can hear them all over the Park.+”

Well you can imagine the look on his face when he realized he was stuck on some twisted T.S. Eliot loop. I let him get his buggers and soddings out while Willow looked on angrily, and then…..

“Bugger! Effulgent! EFFULGENT! Eff…” He turned and ran off then. Presumably to his crypt. I amuse myself trying to imagine the lecture he got from Buffy later, if Willow even told her about it.

I was dying to get a couple of haikus and limericks in, but it had all simply happened too fast. Now it was time for the next phase of my mission. It was time for Sunnydale to get a new student, and time for me to get a new look. Since Spike had so helpfully told Willow about my tattoos, I decided to go from sideshow geek to geek chic. And it wouldn’t hurt to learn a little more about computers. I was off to the mall and then to the espresso pump. I won’t bore you with the details there… Boring, boring, boring. I had some guy down at the coffee place teach me everything he knew about computers, and get me hacked into U. C. Sunnydale’s system. All this- terribly boring. The fun part was getting myself hacked into Willow’s memories. She would remember me as the quiet girl in the back of the class with dark hair and glasses.

There is no doubt that it is a violation to break in through someone’s dreams. But there is no other way, and this is what I do.

Late at night, Willow gets ready for bed. She’s been having trouble sleeping lately, but not tonight. Tonight, she is mine. From my room across town, I feel that she has settled in. She is ready. I close my eyes, and Willow dreams.

She dreams of a man. This man is tall and the little hair he has is dark. His presence is somehow huge. His eyes are dark and deep, in a way that is slightly off-putting. The year is 1930, the place, a dingy apartment in Moscow. He, like the blonde man in her other dream, had been a major poet. This was Vladimir Mayakovsky. He had, at one time, been friends with the blonde man, but he had denounced him at his death in 1925 because he had committed suicide. Now he was going to do the same thing. He spun the wheel on his revolver, and placed a single bullet in its chamber. He had played this game before. He had written his last letters. He recites one last fragment.
Again, Willow understands a language that she does not speak.
It is past one o’clock.
You should have gone to bed
In the night the milky way streams silver
I am in no hurry
And lightning telegrams…
There’s no reason for me to wake and disturb you
And as they say the incident is closed
Love’s boat has crashed against the daily grind
Now you and I are quits and it is useless to list
Mutual hurts sorrows and pains
Look at what a quiet settles on the world
The night has wrapped the sky in a starry mantle
In such hours as these one rises to address
The centuries, history, and all creation.

He raises the gun to his head and pulls the trigger.

In her dream, Willow finds herself suddenly on the street. She is in a daze. An old woman comes up to her and grabs her arm roughly, but her grip is weak.
She looks into her eyes, and the old woman says,
“Iva – tvoe spasenie”

In the morning, Willow stirs from her sleep, and mumbles, “Iva – tvoe spasenie” and feels a strange surge of anger.

[This message has been edited by Owl (edited February 10, 2002).]

[Aria]

Yea, and update. Owl you've made my day. Well the day is only 26 minutes old as it is 12:26 am, but lets say that its a good way to start the morning. As for being slow...hon you know how slow I am so you have nothing to worry about.

------------------
Piffle

[This message has been edited by Aria (edited February 11, 2002).]

[Owl]

Update.
Going to try to finish this soon. Between reading all the great fic on this board and writing and grading papers, I have really been ignoring this. I'm trying to learn from the other writers on this board, but instead, they just make me jealous.
This one's short and it surprised me a little. But It's a plot point. here you go:

Part 4: Lost in the translation...

I found Willow later that day in the library at U.C. Sunnydale. She was hiding behind a pile of books in the foreign language section. This was exactly what I had hoped for. I walked up to her table, and – completely forgot to whisper in my excitement.

“Rosenberg – what brings you to our section of the library? Slumming in the modern languages…I can hardly believe it. What’s up?”

She looked up, startled. Completely shaken out of her groove. She recovered and said, “Oh… hey there, Ariel. Yeah, I’m just looking up some stuff… you know. Languagey stuff. How have you been?”

“Yeah, long time, no see. I mean, I haven’t seen you in class lately. If you want my notes for Dr. B’s class…or we could get together and go over what you missed…” As I was saying this I moved over to her books. She had her notebook open to a page covered in the Cyrillic alphabet and her transliteration of the words from her dream. She was obviously stuck on the last one. She had all her possible spellings for “spasenie” in a column on one side in black pen. At the top, in green, she had the translation for the rest of it. “Willow. Your.”
I opened the dictionary to the right page for her, and told her, “this is spelled wrong. It’s this one – it means “salvation.”

She looked at me with a smile and said, “Thanks. Geez, I don’t know how long it would have taken me to figure that one out. ‘Salvation.’” Then she mumbled to herself, “That doesn’t make any sense. Never trust your dreams to make sense. 'specially when they aren't even in english. or latin...”

Not wanting to draw it out any further, I made my move. One thing I learned from her accessible memory – that's the memories she was pushing away – was that she liked music, and even more so – musicians. I had seen a lot of memories of hers about this kid Oz while she was dreaming that first time. I know how to use such weaknesses to my advantage. I decided I'd just have to be in a band myself. I congratulated myself on my acting when I said, very stoically, “No problem. Look, I’ve gotta go now, but my band is gonna be at the bronze tonight if you want to come. I’ll bring my notes with me. A-and you can bring Tara, if you want.”

Wham! This little scenario was going perfectly. Textbook manipulation. The look on her face when I said that told me that I was really on my game. No stopping now. Time to bring out the sympathy… and the Giles. I took off my glasses and there it was: “Oh Dear…. I’m sorry. I… I didn’t know. Are you ok? Do you need to talk about it or anything?”

She smiled a little and answered, “No, I’m alright. But thanks. I’ll be alright. You go get to wherever you’re going. I don’t want to make you late.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Really. Maybe I’ll see you later.” She said with a little uncertainty.

“You’re coming then? Great. I’ll be watching for you.” I grinned, then turned and walked away. I could already hear the sweet music of victory. I waited until I got home to do the little pre-victory victory dance. Now to get myself a band….

Willow looked down at her notebook one last time before she gave up on trying to understand. I had hoped that she would be able to answer this question that had plagued me for so long. What does it mean?

She said out loud, “The willow tree is your salvation.” And thought to herself, “Great. I spend all day figuring this out, and the only revelation that I get is that my brain is kinda cheesy. And weird. And really, really morbid. Maybe it is time for some brainless fun. There’s nothing like loud music to drown out the din in my head. To the bronze, then!...After I’ve finished my homework.”

[Aria]

All I can say is Yea for Owl, and sorry I havn't posted sooner! Did you say grading papers!! Scary thought...yes I say very scary. Think I will stick with writing crappy screenplays and making medicore films...*chuckle*.

------------------
Piffle