ITLE: 'Seeking Sanctuary' 8/8
AUTHOR: Pythia
DISCLAIMER: The Slayer and her Watcher are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Sandollar Productions, Kuzui Enterprises, 20th Century Fox Television and the UPN Television Network. The story is written for the pleasure of the author and readers, and has no lucrative purpose whatsoever. Please do not reproduce this story anywhere without the author's consent.
Posting Note: * * implies emphasis and { } indicates thought.
Dougan MacDougan stared into the teeth of the wind, guiding his boat through waters that were choppy from the unsettled weather. The grey lines of the Sully shimmered on the horizon, its crags mellowed into the sky by morning mists and the drift of winter cloud. For once, the familiar sight didn't lift his spirits; he was too worried about what he might find once he reached the island. The young woman's face had haunted him, all the way back to Clanlarris and through all the days since. He knew it was none of his business, but he hadn't been able to let it go. She had carried so much pain with her - and while the sacred island offered refuge to the hurt and the heartsick, there was a fear in his heart that she had been beyond help. Beyond all reach.
He'd cursed himself for leaving her, for not staying to see that she reached the man safely -for not making sure that there'd been someone there to take her in. And he'd prayed that, if the man *had* been there, their meeting would have been a welcome one, and not the cruel and bitter consequence that he feared.
He'd been witness to how fragile the man was, how close he walked to an edge no soul should ever choose to cross. He'd found refuge on the Sully, in seeking Isolde and living in her shadow - but he hadn't found healing and he hadn't found peace. Not the peace of heart he desired.
The man had seen too much, *done* too much; he carried it in his eyes, and it had weighted his heart, encased it in stone. Mac had felt the power in him that first day, but he'd never seen it. It was chained by his sorrow, a cloak of despair that clung to the Englishman like a shroud.
The young woman had come wrapped in that same cloth, and Mac feared that it might have been more than either could bear. If the weather had been better, he'd have been back the next day - but the sea had kept him home, and his heart had kept him awake through the long nights of winter storm, and the chill days that followed them.
There was a hint of sunlight peeking through the haze by the time he brought the boat to rest beside the tumbled quay. It gilded the tips of the Sully's peaks and sent cloud shaped shadows dancing down their slopes. The ferryman stepped off the gunwales and looped the mooring hawser around the nearest stone bollard, frowning a little as he recognised new damage wrought by the storm. The stone causeway had been there a long time - but in the end, time, wind, and weather would drag it down into the sea.
He walked down the sturdy length that remained, pausing to kiss his fingers and rest them respectfully against the keystone at the causeway's end. Its carvings had long since vanished into vague bumps and hollows, but he could trace them easily in his mind. The circle for light, the cross for sanctuary and the tree for life; Isolde's blessing, carved here many centuries ago. They were carved, too, at the base of her altar, incised there with deep and determined certainty. He'd said as much, that first day - and the man had gone to find them, turning back the raised sod that covered the stone and unearthing their freshness to the light of day.
Mac had pondered the wisdom of that; the need to discover the past and bring it, stained by time, into the present. 'We are what the past has made us,' the man had said, and then he'd sighed, a deep and weary sigh.
'Aye,' Mac had answered, 'but past is past. Where's the reason in digging it up again?'
The man had sighed a second time,more wearily than the first. 'So that we remember who we are,' he'd said. 'So that, what was done, has meaning. We should never forget. The worst possible sin is to forget …'
Except, of course, that *that* was exactly what he'd wanted to do, and couldn't, and that was the burden he carried and the reason he delved into history, because the present was too hard to bear, and the future had no meaning for him. Not any more.
There were days Mac cursed his gifts, that told him too much and yet not enough to know what needed to be done.
The beach was littered with storm debris; sea washed shapes of wood, piles of deep water kelp ripped from its anchorage, the drape of a barnacle encrusted net, an unlikely twist of chain, and the occasional dead fish. Gulls were scavenging among the reek of seaweed, and his approach sent them wheeling up in protest, a flutter of wings lifting, like angels, from among the stones. Their flight obscured his view, so that he emerged, dazzled by whiteness and deafened by raucous defiance, into the space before the croft almost before he was aware he'd reached it.
Isolde was dancing on the strand.
Not the staid and sturdy saint, captured in manuscript and medieval stone; this was the true power of the Sully, a lithe and lovely thing, a creature of grace and strength, clad in white and outlined by radiant light. Her knight, her eternal defender, moved beside her - a figure dark beside her brightness, yet charged with a light all his own. For a moment, Mac looked back a thousand years or more, seeing the souls that had cleansed the Sully of an ancient evil and made it a sanctuary for all time - and then he blinked, and everything focused, and the vision was gone.
Well, not *entirely*. There were two figures moving on the beach; the young woman, and the Englishman. They were - the old man blinked a second time - *fencing*. With a pair of deadly looking swords that danced and clashed and whirled with determined delight. He'd have thought - from the first glance, from the clearly uneven nature of the match - that the man would have had the better of such a slender lass in moments. But she was holding her own. *More* than holding her own. She was forcing the pace and laughing with it, driving her opponent back up the beach, darting in to strike and slash with wild abandon. The man was defending himself with remarkable skill, but for all his parries and his counter blows, he could not hold his ground. He was being forced to retreat - and that finally proved his undoing.
A slip, perhaps a step on an uncertain stone, betrayed his balance; he staggered under the next blow, his sword slewing sideways, and his body hastily twisting as steel thrust forward to take advantage of the misstep. A lithe foot swept out - and the man was lying flat on his back, a sword point at his throat and the young woman grinning down at him in triumph.
"Gotcha," she crowed. "Still got it, still swinging it, *still* number one on the hill."
"Ah …" The man was gasping for air, his lungs heaving from effort. "Quite. Umm - you - do - know," he added a little breathlessly, "that it is usual for a knight to be - gracious in - victory, as well as defeat?"
"Yeah?" She was still grinning broadly. "You yielding?"
"No," he answered matter-of-factly, threw his sword up to knock hers from her hand - and swept her feet out from under her with a remarkably agile twist of his own.
"Hey!" she protested, turning the tumble into hasty back flip that took her several feet back down the beach. "No fair!"
"Serious combat never is," the Englishman declared, easing himself up into a sitting position and wincing as he did so. "But …" His hands went wide. "I yield. Consider that a - dying twitch."
"Not in a million years," his opponent retorted, with decided feeling. She walked back up the beach and offered him her hand to help him up. "That is, a big no to the dying thing … where you're concerned. Twitching, I get. Just 'cos something's down, don't mean it's out. Got it."
"Good," the man smiled, brushing sand off his jeans. "I think that'll do for today, don't you? We can … do this again tomorrow."
The young woman grinned, dipping down to recover both weapons. "Wassa matter, Watcher-mine?" she teased. "Out of practice?"
"Yes," he shot back, his voice still a little breathless. His head tipped in the old man's direction. "Besides, we have a visitor. Good morning, Mac."
"Good morn," Mac acknowledged warily. He didn't quite know what to make of the two of them - the man in his jeans and his thin dark sweater, and the woman wearing what appeared to be one of the man's white shirts, belted in around her waist. She was barefoot and bare-legged, and her hair was caught back at the nape of her neck. They both looked as if they ought to half freeze to death in the sharpness of the wind - except that he was sweating, and she was flushed and glowing.
The difference in her - in the both of them - was breathtaking.
"Oh," the young woman had reacted. "Umm … er … hi. Good to see you again."
"Aye," Mac agreed, looking her up and down with quiet approval. "You too, lass. 'Tis a fine sight you are for a man who'd feared to find what had become of ye. A fine sight indeed."
She looked down at herself and blushed a little. The Englishman smiled at the sight - a quietly proud, loving smile that his tangle of beard did nothing to hide. Mostly because the smile started in his eyes - and, now that that shuttered, shattered look had left them, it seemed that he had very expressive eyes.
They spoke volumes, and all without a word.
"I guess I - I worried you a little. The other day." The young woman hugged the swords to her chest, reminding him again - for a moment - of the saint he'd thought her to be. "I-"
"No lass," he interrupted gently. "There's no need for explanations. The Sully is a place that offers sanctuary, and I can see you found it here. And you," he added warmly, turning to consider the Englishman with quiet amusement. "I said you wouldna find what ye were looking for, digging in the past. Hope and healing doesn't come from a grave."
"Actually," the man said, still considering the young woman with that soft and certain smile, "that's *exactly* where it came from, Mac. I hope you've brought milk. Buffy drank the last of it yesterday, and I have strong objections to drinking tea made with that god awful dried stuff."
"I have it with lemon," she smirked, earning herself a momentary glare that made the old man smile. He glared just that way at his Janet when she teased him, and for much the same reason.
"Aye, well, I prefer a drop of the 'uisge beatha' myself. But that's not for the like of you, lass. And the man here - drinks one or the other, but never mixes the two."
"I should think not," the Englishman noted, sounding slightly scandalised. Mac grinned. He wasn't above a little teasing himself.
"I've the milk, the mail, the weekly shop and a few gifts for the lass," he said warmly. "I'd a mind she might be in need of a warmer thing or two, and Janet looked out some of our Morag's for me. She's- a - no need of them now."
An anxious look flitted across the young woman's face and she glanced at the man with some concern - but he smiled and nodded, knowing what lay behind that particular turn of phrase. "It can't be long, now, can it Mac? A month? Less than that? He's about to become a great grandfather," he explained, and the young woman looked relieved - and a little surprised.
"Really? I didn't think you were *that* old."
"*Buffy*." The man's admonishment was pained. "For heaven's sake. You've been spending too much time in Anya's company."
"Ah now," Mac chuckled, "there's no harm in honesty. And I'm flattered. They do say I'm as old as the hills and only a little younger than the sea. But what do folk know?"
"More than they think and less than they believe," came the answer, wrapped in quiet certainty. "Buffy, you should - um - get yourself inside. You'll catch a chill stood around like that. Mac and I can unload the boat and … um … "
" … *I'll* go put the kettle on," she finished in mock martyrdom. Her half turn and flounce towards the croft was meant to be equally feigned high dudgeon - but she paused at the steps and turned back, the mockery and teasing replaced by a sudden and anxious concern. "You won't be long, will you?" she asked.
"No," the man assured her gently. "Not long. We'll be right back."
Her response to that was a grateful smile - albeit a slightly haunted one. "'Kay," she said and vanished into the croft, leaving the two men standing on the strand.
"She's a little … fragile, right now," the Englishman explained. Mac nodded.
"Aye," he said. "There's a soul that's seen a storm or two. But give her safe harbour and time to repair - and she'll be ready to face even the roughest seas with confidence."
The Englishman smiled a little sadly behind his beard. "I hope so," he sighed. "I just wish she didn't have to."
They turned and walked down the beach together, the Englishman with his hands thrust into his pockets and the old man watching him from the corner of his eye. He hadn't given up his burdens, but he was carrying them with greater confidence, walking with a firmer step and standing a little straighter under their weight. Miracles happen, but rarely overnight - and there was, Mac suspected, still a long road ahead for both the man and the young woman who had sought refuge at his side. But they would be walking it together - and together, he surmised, there was very little that they wouldn't be able to overcome.
{The end of a tale - or a new beginning …}
He'd wondered back then, which it was he might be witnessing. Wondered, as he ferried a pale ghost to this place of sanctity, whether he took her to her final rest, or to find a second chance at life. He knew now that it was both - and neither. That this was just a pause in a much longer tale, the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. The man at his side was the kind they used to write sagas about, back in the days when Isolde was young - and the woman? The woman, if not Isolde herself, was still cut from that same holy cloth, chosen to serve the world. They had both been wounded in a war he had no way to measure - wounded to the heart and seared through to the soul. The Sully had given the man sanctuary - and with it, a place where she could come. A place of safety.
And now she was here, perhaps they could both begin to heal.
END