Author: Meltha
Herein lie a few 100 word fics written for the Open on Sunday Livejournal community. Each is in response to a challenge. Expect spoilers up through the end of both Buffy and Angel, and ratings ranging from G to soft R.
Click here for Drabbles from 2003-2004
“Promise you won’t get mad,” Dawn said as Buffy glowered up at her.
“The last time you said that, you’d glued the cat to the ceiling.”
“I was six! Will you ever let that go?” Dawn said.
“Quit changing the subject. What did you do?” Buffy asked, dreading the answer.
“Maybe I’d better just show you,” Dawn said, handing her a magazine wrapped in brown paper.
“You’re reading porn?” Buffy asked, raising an eyebrow, then frowned in confusion. “Playboy? Dawn, are you a lesbian?”
“Uh… no,” Dawn said.
Suddenly, Buffy screamed so loudly the Council’s windows shattered.
“YOU’RE MISS JULY?!”
“I have an idea,” Drusilla said dreamily.
Whatever she was about to say would either make Spike completely ecstatic or cause immense pain. If he was lucky, both.
“Oh?”
“I want to be Miss America,” she said.
“Dru, you’re English. The rules say Miss America has to be American,” he explained gently.
“Princesses needn’t follow the rules,” Drusilla sniffed. “Daddy said. Unless they were Daddy’s rules.”
“Well, crown or no, you’re my princess,” he said, nuzzling her.
“Shall I show you my talent?” she asked wickedly.
Spike’s original assessment was right: ecstasy and pain. He’d have given her a 10.
“No.”
“Will you get over yourself? It’s not that big a deal, Angel!” Cordelia said, fuming.
“No.”
“It’s okay. I can switch,” Fred offered quickly. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“You said blue is your favorite color,” Cordy said, “so you’re keeping it.”
“Don’t even look at me,” Gunn said. “Mustard’s lucky.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Wesley sighed. “When Cordelia instituted Game Night to help Fred adjust back into normal social perameters, I had thought things would be less melodramatic. Here. Angel can be Professor Plum, and I will make the great personal sacrifice of being Miss Scarlett.”
Guy with fire spurting from his arms? Dead. Swarm of enormous insects? Dead. But Spike knew trials always came in threes.
“What’s next?” he asked. “Wrestling a barracuda underwater? Staying in the sun until I fry?”
“You must answer a question,” the demon said. “If you answer incorrectly, you perish. If you succeed, you have proven yourself.”
Spike leveled a steely gaze at him.
“Ask away.”
“What was the name of Fred Flintstone’s boss?”
Spike stared at him, then said, “Mr. Slate?”
“That’s been bothering me for months! Very well,” the demon said, sounding relieved. “We will return your soul.”
“Wake up! It’s starting!” Drusilla squealed, shaking Spike.
“It’s the middle of the day,” he moaned. “I’m not getting up to watch some stupid soap opera!”
“Dark Shadows is not stupid!” Drusilla said. “Turn on the telly or no treats for a month!”
Grumbling, Spike hauled himself out of bed and flicked on the television as the eerie theme music started. He joined Dru on the couch, resigned to torture. Then Victoria Winters walked on screen, and he started paying attention.
Decades later, his choice of pseudo-Gothic soap operas may have changed, but it was still his guilty little secret.
“So, this guy is in the jungle and goes, like, completely bonkers,” Dawn began, knowing Spike wasn’t paying attention.
“Uh-huh,” Spike said as they walked down Revello Drive, keeping a wary and hopeful eye out for trouble.
Dawn gave him an impatient look.
“Then he paints his shack pink and hangs kitten posters,” she finished.
“Hang on, bit,” he said, stalking towards the neighbor’s shrubs. A muffled cry and an explosion of dust quickly followed.
“Are you listening to me?” she called.
“You said Kurtz redecorated in pink and kitties,” he answered. “I think you need to reread the book.”
Kennedy was gone. After the group moved to England, she became restless, tired of the constant repetition and duty of being a slayer. When a Victoria Beckham lookalike started flirting with her, she’d simply run off.
Willow was devastated, and some of the new slayers were nervous how she might handle the loss of another girlfriend. Buffy, however, had the solution.
“So, milk or dark chocolate Godiva ice cream?” she said. “What’s your pick?”
Willow smiled at the girl on the other side of the door, invited her in, and they spent the rest of the night watching Steel Magnolias.
“Willow,” Andrew asked nervously, “can I ask you something?”
Willow looked up from the tomes she was researching for Giles and took a deep breath, hoping whatever question was coming wouldn’t be as annoying as it probably would be.
“Okay,” she said. “Shoot.”
Andrew looked almost scared, then finally blurted out, “Is the Dark Side of the Force really stronger than the Good Side? Cause I think Yoda looked sorta suspicious in that scene, like maybe he wasn’t really telling Luke the truth, and I figured if anyone would know…”
Willow stared at him, then sighed. “Veiny-er, yes. Stronger, no.”
“Rupert,” Spike wheedled, “don’t you lot support fairness and sharing and kindness to little old ladies and the like?”
“While you’re old enough to qualify as a senior citizen twice over,” Giles said, “you are hardly a lady.”
“Fine,” Spike snorted. “Keep the bloody Cadbury. Clog your arteries. See if I care.”
He stalked off, slamming the front door.
“Was the chocolate on the counter?” Willow asked.
“Yes. Wait… was?” he said. “He palmed it?”
Willow nodded.
“Wonderful,” he said. “I ate the real one. That one’s filling is most unusual.”
A sudden yelp echoed outside.
“Garlic,” he explained, grinning.
Angel didn’t get out much in 1960. He’d perfected the art of being a loner and generally a guy parents told their children not to speak to. He preferred it that way.
He did have one pastime, though: golf. Of course he couldn’t play it, but he watching it on TV was almost like being there. He considered it a harmless hobby. He was wrong.
The U.S. Open happened, and Arnold Palmer won. He remembered whooping in exultation, followed by a feeling like intense heartburn that smacked of danger.
Angel sighed and turned off the TV. No more golf. Check.
Every new Slayer remembered where she was on The Day. Some wept, some laughed, some filled with purpose, but some had stories a little more bizarre.
Betty Lou had been playing leapfrog with the other girls in her third grade class, a game she hated. She was the shortest kid, and she was stuck trying to jump over Beulah, who towered over everyone else at well over five feet tall.
Then suddenly, as she was preparing to leap, the rush went over Betty Lou.
It took the custodian three hours to get her down from the top of the flagpole.
Joyce knew she had to get Buffy out of the city and into a nice, quiet suburb where her future would not involve burning down gymnasiums.
When Joyce brought in the newspaper, she noticed a cutting paperclipped to the front page.
“Come to beautiful, friendly Sunnydale! Reasonable house prices! A school system with old-fashioned values! A police force looking out for your safety! Call us today for a free brochure!”
“I’ll have to look into this,” she thought.
From across the street, Giles smiled. Now all he had to do was wait for the Slayer to come to her destiny.
Dawn walked nervously into the Italian salon.
“Nice day,” the stylist said in thickly accented English.
“Can you do this?” she asked, handing him the picture.
He looked at her critically, then nodded. Minutes later Dawn felt scissors snipping much closer to her head than ever been before. When he was done, she breathed deeply, ready to see the same haircut that changed Audrey Hepburn’s fate, and opened her eyes.
“Uh…” she said.
“What you wanted, si?” he said.
“Uh… si,” she admitted, staring in shock at the result.
Dawn wore a hat for the next five months. Stupid movie.
“Are you sure it’s not sideways?” Buffy asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Willow sighed heavily. Willow loved her best friend dearly, but she was starting to think taking her to the touring art exhibit was a big mistake.
“How can you tell? It’s just a bunch of squares,” Buffy said.
“It’s a lot more than that!” Willow said, shocked. “That’s a genuine, real Mondrian! It’s a commentary on society and modern life!”
“Huh,” she said, shrugging. “Still looks sideways to me. Where’s the gift shop again? They had the cutest little knock-off dress with this pattern on it.”
Angelus enjoyed chess. The game had infinite possibilities for luring the opposition into a sense of security only to close the jaws of a trap around them, checkmate, game over. In those first few days, he was delighted to find Drusilla’s new darling William was a very able player. His rook was especially deadly, and while he played with an abandon that mirrored his kills, his thoughts were clear, concise, well-planned. He was a challenge.
The game was, of course, only a prelude to metaphor. Angelus knew the easiest way to defeat William was to capture his queen. Checkmate. Delicious.
“You don’t got nothin’ to complain about, kid,” he said through a fume of alcohol-tinged breath. “You’ve got the nerve to bother me about your stupid shoes?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Xander said backing away slowly.
“If you’ve got holes in ‘em, that’s your fault. We spend too much money on you as it is: three lousy square meals a day. By the time I was sixteen, I was running a forklift at the docks, not going to some sissified school.”
“Right, okay,” Xander said, “I completely apologize. They’ll totally be fine until summer.”
Superglue would have to do.
“I’m sorry, but it’s a lousy name,” he said, staring in horror at where his wife’s finger was pointing in the baby name book.
“What’s wrong with Charity?” she asked icily. “It’ll contribute to the baby’s consciousness raising.”
“The kids will tease her,” he said. “You might as well name her Poverty or Handout.”
She made a face, then flipped to the next dog-eared page in the book.
“Harmony?” he asked.
“It’s Charity, Harmony, or Karma,” she said, and her hormones made her voice sound just shy of murderous.
Harmony never knew how close she’d come to being Karma Kendall.
No one noticed at first. Dawn had always been the baby, so maybe it wasn’t unusual that she didn’t become an adult in the group’s eyes, at least for a while.
But once she stopped growing, she stopped changing. At thirty, she could pass for eighteen, and while the new Slayers were envious, when she turned forty and still looked the same, Buffy knew there was a problem.
Fifty came. Seventy. Ninety. Generations came and went, but not her. Perhaps Angel or Spike might have helped her adjust if they had survived. They all went on, but she was left.
“It wasn’t!” Andrew yelled, stamping his foot.
“It was,” Spike said, looking the picture of reason except for the glee dancing in his eyes.
“That’s…,” Andrew blustered, searching for a bad enough word, “sacrilege!”
“Okay,” Xander said, entering the living room. “What’s going on?”
“Spike says Longbottom Leaf is marijuana!” Andrew said, nearly in tears.
Xander glared at Spike like he’d just told a five-year-old Santa wasn’t real.
“It’s not,” Xander said firmly, and Andrew exited, sniffling but vindicated.
“So is,” Spike muttered.
“Obviously,” he admitted, then left to wrest a frozen pizza from the ever-increasing village of adolescent girls.
When she was a kid, Gwen loved watching the autumn leaves. She’d sit by the window and try to count them as the wind shook the branches of the oak tree outside. Each one pirouetted through the air, graceful and light as air.
One day, Gwen was playing with another little girl, and she forgot about her problem, and it happened. The other girl looked like one of the leaves as its stem broke loose from its branch, hovering for a split moment before it fell, but this time with a heavy, wrong sound.
Gwen didn’t watch the leaves anymore
“Honey, you seem upset lately,” Joyce said, looking up from the laundry she was folding. “What’s wrong?”
A thousand replies rose to her mouth, each one more forbidden say than the next:
“I have a life you know nothing about”
“I’ll probably be dead before I turn twenty.”
“I turned the man I love into a monster.”
“I hate getting up in the morning, I hate eating, I hate climbing out my window at night, I hate slaying, I hate myself…”
Instead, Buffy smiled in a way that never touched her eyes and only said, “Just the usual. No big.”
To Spike, hate and love were so closely entwined they breathed one another’s air.
It happened with violence, changing from his human loathing of it to his embrace of it when dead.
It happened with Angelus, tormenting him with Drusilla until Spike realized he wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Most perversely, it happened with the Slayer, who saw him as filth. He wanted to poison her with himself, drink the purity of her brightness and fill himself with it to his fingertips.
The only hatred he had that was unmixed with love was his hatred of himself.
“It’s not about hate,” the Master explained to Darla as he caressed the cheek of the terrified human hanging from chains in his Court’s main hall. “Hatred is a petty, human thing. We are beyond that.”
Darla looked at the young man, her demonic face showing no sign of emotion except.
“Then we should take no pleasure in the kill?” she asked.
“Childe,” he said, smiling fondly at her, “I didn’t say that. Charles! Bring out the pincers!”
He turned an inhuman gaze on the man.
“You see,” he said calmly, “hatred just gets in the way of the fun.”
It didn’t begin as hate. At first it was fear and sadness eating at her insides until finally it fermented into hate deep inside her belly. It never boiled to the surface, but it came close.
When Xander cracked one too many stupid jokes.
When Anya was carelessly cruel.
When Giles left.
When Dawn cried.
When Willow’s expression was concern laced with pride, like she expected thanks for bringing her back.
It stabbed her gut like the stake that had been there months ago.
But the rage slept at the sound of Spike’s voice, and for that, she hated herself.
“Five!” bellowed Xander, waving his arms wildly.
“Five?” asked Giles.
“This is the fifth hole, right? Last time, you made me yell four,” Xander said, searching angrily through his bag for another ball.
Giles considered telling him he should call “fore” each time he hit a wild drive, but as he realized the ball had landed three fairways over, with previous attempts ending in a thirty minute search through the rough and a concussed squirrel, he gave up.
“Let’s go back to the clubhouse,” he said. “We still have time to make it to Petey’s Putt-Putt per your original suggestion.”
“I’m telling you, it’s a conspiracy!” Spike said from his perch on the couch, a bag of Doritos laying abandoned on the floor after he had tossed it away in disgust. “There’s no way they should have taken that show off!”
“Which one got cancelled this time?” Angel asked, putting down his newspaper as a lost cause.
“Bloody network cancelled the one about the secret cross-country race, just like they did that one about the space cowboys,” Spike said, pointing an accusing finger at the TV. “It’s revolting.”
“Happens to the best of them,” Angel said with a knowing sigh.
Though lovers be lost, love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
-Dylan Thomas
Dawn came up too quickly in L.A. Buffy would have preferred staying in bed, looking at the cracks on the ceiling and feeling her old life, her old self, ebbing away like low tide. But the diner was open early, and she often walked to work in the surreal morning twilight. Then, without warning, dawn would show up, the sun vomiting light over the street.
In darkness it was easier imagine he had never existed, she had never killed him, she didn’t still love him even when he wanted to destroy her. Even in death, he still held her heart.
We learned them all in school: angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominions, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim. Sister read the names of the celestial order aloud in class, and each one sounded like a precious, sparkling gem on her lips.
“Remember, girls,” she said to us, “that all heavenly beings are male. In the fall of Eve, women became so tainted that no angel would ever wish to soil itself with our form.”
I wept to think there was no angel who would want me, save perhaps a fallen one. When my Angel appeared, I knew how right dear Sister was.
Illyria was god-king of the primordium, as far beyond human comprehension as the light of a star was beyond a child’s grasp. Of course, things do change sometimes.
“What is the name of this thing?” she said, holding the object as though it were a bug.
“It’s a chocolate bar,” Wesley said, glancing up from his work.
“I slayed the metal beast in the corridor, and it spewed forth dozens of these,” Illyria said, sniffing it.
“That would have been a vending machine,” Wesley dead-panned.
Carefully, she took a miniscule taste.
“Perhaps,” she said, “I judged your race’s ineptitude hastily.”
Weeks passed after the ritual with the Orb of Thessula, but no trace of Angel or Buffy appeared. Finally, Willow stole one of Giles’s books on astral projection.
Carefully, Willow concentrated on the sword thrust through Acathla, determined to find the soul of the last person who touched it. At first, nothing happened, but then…
Fire. Faces distorted in demonic glee. Pain beyond imagining. Scent of burnt flesh. Darkness. Fear. Despair soaking through her.
Willow woke screaming. Three years later, the vision still haunting her, she broke the laws of nature and sanity to bring Buffy back from the grave.
“They’re unhappy, Lindsey,” Holland said, smiling paternally. “The Senior Partners gave you this project as a test. You don’t want to let them down.”
“I don’t plan to,” Lindsey assured him with a grin that had gotten many cheerleaders into his backseat in high school. “I have a secret weapon.”
“Really?” asked Manners.
“If Angel won’t turn Darla, I’ll bring in the reserves,” he said, opening the office door. Drusilla stood behind it, patting scarlet droplets from the corners of her mouth.
“Your secretary was very sweet,” she said, gazing unsettling at Holland.
“My boy,” he laughed, “you’ll go far.”
“My, um, my report is on Ab-abraham Li-incoln,” the girl whispered.
“Tara,” Mrs. Ballard said sharply, “I haven’t heard a word you’ve said. Project your voice.”
“S-s-sorry,” she said, blushing. Her heart was racing, and her sweaty hands were making her paper damp. “Abraham Lincoln was b-b-born in eighteen-oh-n-nine…”
A spitball hit her forehead to gails of laughter. Tara bit her lip, fighting against tears.
“I suppose that’s all we can expect from you,” Mrs. Ballard said. “You may sit down.”
The next day, the whole class came down with nasty colds, but strangely, Tara never so much as sniffled.
Giles hated the Watchers Council from the first day he saw them training potential Slayers. They were drilling them in fighting movements over and over until the exercises became mindless, and he knew mindlessness was what they were meant to achieve. A person without a personality was easier to control, and it was also easier for a Watcher to send her to face near certain annihilation. He saw the motions of each girl were synchronized so completely that they appeared to be mechanical, following the signals from the other Watchers.
Silently, he promised himself he would never be a puppeteer.
Buffy was twelve when the first nightmare had made her wake screaming. At the time, Joyce blamed it on her watching too many scary movies with her friends. She had calmly told her vampires were just a myth.
Buffy was fifteen when Joyce had her committed for thinking she was some terrible thing called a Slayer. A few weeks later she had been released, and they’d moved to Sunnydale to start over.
Buffy was seventeen when Joyce saw her stab someone through the heart with a wooden stake and watched as he dissolved into dust. Joyce’s nightmare was only beginning.
Drusilla told her mother it was just a game. When her sisters and she walked in the park, they would guess which of their neighbors they would see first, what day the tulips would open, what color the carriage parked next to the curb would be. Drusilla was always right. When her sisters realized this, the questions became more serious. Does Jimmy love me? How many children will I have? When will I die?
Her mother struck her across the face for pretending to know more than anyone should know, but she was already sobbing because she knew the answers.
Dracula was the most annoying being Spike had ever encountered. Not only did the vampire spill their secrets to some author, but he had the worst fake accent ever. As for the wager they’d had about whether or not the ponce could seduce Dru, he was certain he hadn’t (her bloomers weren’t really “proof”). Still, every year, he got revenge.
“Trick or treat!” yelled another tyke.
He opened the door to reveal a toddler dressed not even as Dracula but as Count bloody Chocula.
“Kid, you get the whole damn bag of Snickers,” he giggled, dumping it into his pillowcase.
Cordelia was the belle of every Sunnydale ball. She was the prettiest, richest, most popular girl in school, and everybody understood she would be Queen C for the rest of her life.
Apparently, the people of Los Angeles hadn’t been told this. She was living in a dive. Nobody knew her, and as unbelievable as it seemed, they didn’t want to. There were even girls who might possibly, if someone squinted hard, be prettier than she was.
Cordy stared into the bathroom mirror, willing herself back onto her throne.
“Okay,” she said to her reflection, “I’m gonna be a star.”
William was often sick as a child. Even when he could go outside, he couldn’t run about with the other boys, so he had no friends. To keep him company, his mother brought him a stuffed bear. His eyes lit up, and he immediately named it Ted.
Ted lived in William’s wardrobe many years. When William brought Drusilla to his mother, she climbed the stairs to his bedroom and pulled the bear out.
“You will be Miss Edith’s friend,” she said.
William never said anything about her discovery, but he smiled when he saw the bear and doll having tea.
Xander was adjusting to Willow being a witch. It was neat she could float a pencil, although he couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to make fire shoot out of ice. However, going shopping with her had suddenly become icky.
“But I ordered fifteen newt tails,” Willow said, frowning at the man behind the counter.
“You said eye of newt,” he said firmly.
“The spell says tails,” she said.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I only have eyes for you.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “There can’t be much difference.”
Xander swore to himself he was not going to carry that bag.
Anne was her fourth name. Her first one wasn’t worth remembering. Chanterelle had sounded pretty, but it wound up being embarassing. Lily happened after she saw an Easter bouquet. She wanted a clean slate, and they looked fresh, pure. But after that place, she needed something more than a blank canvas. Buffy had been strong, and maybe some of that would come with her name. She needed that. She needed to be Anne.
When she walked into the diner, no one bothered noticing she was new. It was a little step towards a new life, but she would keep walking.
Buffy stood on the porch a long while before knocking. She hadn’t been home for months. She’d wanted to forget this place existed. No matter how hard she tried to run away from the destiny that was forced on her, it followed.
Then there was the matter of her mother kicking her out for having that destiny. She wouldn’t ever understand Buffy hadn’t chosen her calling and didn’t even want it. Buffy wasn’t sure if she was about to get a hug or a slammed door.
Yet another battle. Great. Just what she needed. She took a breath and knocked.
Cordelia had very few friends. Harmony, Aura, and the rest of the Cordettes weren’t really friends. They were followers, but she didn’t trust them. Buffy, Willow, and Giles were trustworthy enough, but the truth was she didn’t like them. Then there was Xander. No matter how often she told herself he wasn’t hot, they wound up in a closet. She’d never admit it, but he was fun. Still, totally not a friend. At least there was one friend she could count on.
“Wrap the diamond pendant,” she said to jeweler.
It was true. They really were a girl’s best friend.
With several dozen girls packed into one Cape Cod, it was bound to get overwhelming sometimes. Most of them didn’t speak English, and they were all frightened, hungry, and homesick. Giles never seemed to consider how she was going to feed them on a fast food paycheck. Then Faith showed up and, after everyone conviently forgot she had tried to kill them all, ripped into her for not knowing everyone’s name.
At night, Buffy cried, wishing for her mother, a future, a life somewhere other than the mouth of hell, but she always muffled it. The girls needed their rest.
Darla loathed humanity on principle, but she loved the noise they created. Vampires were, after all, dead, and the Master’s court felt particularly lifeless. But humans knew they wouldn’t live forever, so they surrounded themselves with colors, light, music, beautiful clothes, fine food, whatever they could afford. She loved to drink it all down, the whirl of their dancing making her cheeks pink. Paris, Venice, Madrid, she sped from one place to another, never quite finding what she was seeking because she never knew what it was. All she knew was she wanted to be the center of the dance.
There was a little girl who lived with her mummy, daddy, and sisters. They were very happy until their throats were ripped out. Only one was left.
There was a little girl who had a daddy, a grandmummy, and a knight. They were very happy until the daddy stopped loving them and the grandmummy left and the knight loved another lady. Only one was left.
There was a little girl whose grandmummy, daddy, and knight all died. Only one was left.
Then she found a boy with daddy’s growl and grandmummy’s eyes. She kissed him. They lived happily ever after.
Now that the vampire version of herself had gone back to whatever reality she belonged in, Willow, being a very thorough person, decided to list things she had learned.
1. Do not get bitten.
2. Leather is naughty, but Angel looked at me that way when I had on the outfit. Naughty = good?
3. I’m as master-like as an Easter bunny, and who finds those frightening?
4. I seem to be oddly attracted to myself.
“This is disturbing,” Willow said, then crumpled the list, and threw it away. After all, it’s not like she would ever really be bad.
Buffy and Dawn went to San Diego with their father for a week, but things didn’t go as planned. He left them alone at the beach house every day. Deeply bored, they competed over who could find more shells. Dawn won, obviously.
Five years later, she used those shells to make a frame for Buffy’s birthday. It was still sitting on her windowsill after she died. Dawn picked it up, knowing she’d never collected them. She wasn’t real, and her sister wasn’t real anymore either.
She found out shells crush when you hold them tightly, and they cut like razors.
Willow had tried being a Girl Scout. It was her mother’s idea; Sheila claimed it would make her less susceptible to male attempts to squash her spirit. Willow thought the uniform itchy, but the campfires and cookies were fun. However, trouble was inevitable.
“They’re my best friends, Mrs. Jones!” Willow said, her face falling. “Why can’t they be Girl Scouts too?”
“Only girls can be Girl Scouts,” the leader said, staring at Jesse and Xander. The manual hadn’t covered this. “Boys have to be Boy Scouts.”
Willow stopped going to the meetings, but oh, how she missed the Thin Mints!
The sound of skin sizzling is making Buffy nauseous, but she can’t move, not to stop Spike’s self-mutilation, not to run away. Instead, the sick, obscene scent of burning flesh hangs in the church, and she stares in horrified fascination.
Her history professor said penitants during the Black Plague flagellated themselves to ward off the end of the world, or at least their own damnation. That lesson is now permanently embedded in her mind. Slowly, she backs away from the scene, her eyes still fixed on him.
“I’m sorry, Spike,” she whispers. “I can’t do this.”
And he is alone.
Angel had seen borders change so much he could barely recognize the geography of his childhood. He had seen man fly, first in aircrafts like giant dragonflies and later in steel ships destined for the moon. The diseases that had once claimed the lives of many were completely exterminated. Music bore little resemblance to what it had been, and sometimes words slipped past his lips that were so antique they confused his friends.
Darla had told him vampires never age but remain the same. It was the world around him that he had to watch burn down time and again.
When she was little, the good sisters warned her about the seven deadly sins. She berated herself for little lapses into vanity or envy, weeping at night into her pillow when she had looked at a boy and thought of kisses and fallen into the pit of lust. Always she feared one day she would burn in Hell, the crackling of flames haunting her nightmares.
Now it was different.
William licked the sensitive spot behind her ear, her body rising beneath him.
“What do you want to do now, pet?” he murmured.
“I want to burn,” she growled, “burn, burn!”
After the final battle, Buffy knew they needed to remember the fallen, but how? For weeks she sat at a desk in the temporary Council headquarters, drawing up plans for memorials: eternal flames, statues, plaques. None of them felt right. Finally, the perfect idea came to her.
They bought a parcel of land in the countryside, and they set to work planting. When spring came, a blazing field of flowers bloomed, tulips and lilies, irises and hyacinths, every color of the rainbow, one for each girl who had been one in a generation. Somehow, she felt they could finally rest.
Lorne had lived with Angel for months and restrained himself heroically. Every evening the vampire glided down the stairs of the Hyperion, and Lorne held his breath, hoping this time would be different. It never was.
Finally, he’d had enough. He kicked in the door of Angel’s bedroom, strode across the room, and, swinging open the closet doors, dumped armfuls of clothes on the floor as Angel watched in utter confusion.
“Lorne, what are you doing?”
“We are going shopping, puddin’. You are getting some color in your wardrobe if it kills you… again. But from now on, black? Out!”
Illyria was perpetually cold. Wesley had noticed it the first time he tried to hit her only to be repulsed, not just by her inhuman strength but the chill of her flesh that told him undeniably that Fred was gone. Fred had been warm, and not just her skin, but her voice, her eyes, her laugh. All of them held Texan sunlight.
He wasn’t sure if Illyria slept; her eyes remained open. Possibly she chose to ignore him after they finished their nightly rutting. But as he lay beside her, staring at the ceiling, he knew her chill was contagious.
Angel had forgotten what snow felt like. He’d seen it last in Montana, the vacant white expanses stretching endlessly to the distant horizon. Snow was a desolate thing, reminding him of his solitude, the single figure in black marring the white landscape. But as flakes fell softly from the Southern California sky that Christmas and he reached his hands towards them in wonder, letting the chill soak into his hands until he felt truly awake, snow became the symbol of his link to humanity.
Then a kid hit him in the head with a snowball. It rather broke the mood.
Sesame Street had settled down for the night, and not one cute, preschool-aged tot was to be seen. A light still shone dimly from Bert and Ernie’s appartment, and the only sound was coming faintly from deep within Oscar’s apparently bottomless garbage bin.
“That is my kinda dame!” Oscar cheered wildly as he watched Cordelia Chase on his TV set once more snapping wittily at the Scoobies. She was the absolute Queen of the Pithy Put Down. “Yeah, baby! Work that miniskirt! I haven’t seen gams like that since before Maria had Gabby. Oooh, if only TV shows were real…”
April Fools was a miniature version of hell. Cordelia was sure of it. Her boss had an attitude problem so large she made Shannen Doherty look zen. Customers were worse; everybody was either in a bad mood or shoplifting, and if anything disappeared on her shift it came out of her paycheck. But the real proof she was in hell was her shoe size. Standing so much was making her feet swell, but there was no way Cordelia Chase would ever be caught dead in size 10 shoes, not even if her feet were bleeding all over the crummy carpet.
Angel and Wesley were drunk. After a long day, Angel had sought solace in some very old Scotch. When Wes asked to join him, Angel was numb enough to nod.
“You’ve been alive for a quarter millenium,” Wesley said, gazing at him blearily. “Who’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?”
Angel blinked owlishly. “Which part?”
“Pardon?”
“Which part of her? Best eyes was Audrey Hepburn; best figure, Marilyn Monroe; best lips was Buffy. But Florence Nightengale had the best legs.”
“How could you see Florence Nightengale’s legs with all those petticoats?”
Angel gave him a look.
“Oh. Of course.”
Hidden in a tree, Spike admired Buffy fighting two newly risen fledges, her arms and legs flashing in the moonlight like quicksilver. The thought she might lose never crossed his mind until one vampire grabbed her stake while turning to dust and threw it 300 yards, leaving her weaponless. Panic crossed her face. Spike was half out of the tree, but he remained undiscovered as she wrenched off her high heel and buried the stiletto in the remaining vampire’s heart.
“Thank you, wooden heel fad,” she mumbled, hobbling lop-sidedly home on one broken heel.
Spike laughed quietly. What a woman.
Willow’s eyes were glued to three words, solid and undeniable in black ink, written in a hand that was deliberate and unmistakable: vino de madre. They weren’t simply an ingredient in a spell; they were the key to bringing Buffy back. But that wasn’t all those words meant. She knew they were a signpost on a dark path, one that a thousand books screamed had no return.
Willow shut the book with an annoyed snap. It would be over in just a few minutes, she told herself. But some part of her knew that it would never really be over.
As Spike the Vampire Slayer was surrounded by the fiendish Scoobies, he knew he was doomed. Buffy the Bloody had simply proven too adept in combat.
“Told you before, sweetheart,” she purred as she pinned his arms. “You’re drawn to the darkness. Now that’s where you’ll stay.”
As she bit into his neck and then forced his lips to her throat, he felt his soul depart. Strange, he thought. Though he probably wouldn’t be accepted by her gang even without a soul, he couldn’t help thinking he was going to have much more fun than he had under Watcher Snyder.
Making love to Buffy had been everything Angel had hoped, but suddenly something was wrong. He wanted to scream, but the agony was beyond it.
“What was that?” he said when it ended.
When Buffy opened her eyes in answer, something about her frightened him.
“That’s what we look like to other people?” she said, smiling slowly. “Not bad! But I don’t want to be trapped again, so…”
She grabbed a stake, and too stunned to react, Angel turned to dust. The demon in Buffy’s body blew him a kiss and strode into the night, reveling in its regained freedom.
He gave the big lug credit for trying, but if Lorne weren’t already green, he’d be turning it. Angel’s singing was appalling
“Sweetpea?” he said delicately, startling him from what he’d thought was a private concert. “I know vampires get gifted with youth and quick healing, but pitch? Not so much. Ang, punkin’ bun, do not attempt Aretha. Messing with the Queen of Soul is a big n-o.”
“Lorne?”
“Yes, Angel?”
“Get out of my shower.”
Lorne blushed orange and fled, suddenly realizing where he had followed Angel’s off-key notes. That was it. He was moving out of the Hyperion.
Buffy hates living on the Hellmouth. A mouth is something that speaks, screaming or pleading, tempting or cursing. A mouth is something that can devour what is put in front of it, chew it up, and spit it out. A mouth is something that can vomit forth disgusting things that should be kept inside. All of those make sense to her. But it’s when she realizes that a mouth can kiss, that hell can make her lips burn for another touch that she tells herself she won’t see Spike again tonight.
But the mouth of hell still swallows her whole.
Father has come home for the day from his work, and the holiday is lovely this year. Melinda has become engaged to Stephen. I only hope when I am eighteen I too shall meet someone as kind and loving as he is to my eldest sister. Mother is pensive, though. Perhaps the good sisters at school have told her about my insisting that Agnes and Margaret not play by the oak tree last Thursday just before the great branch broke.
But tonight is Christmas Eve. Mother is calling us in to dinner, and I am full of joy this night.
Melinda’s first child has been born. She has named her Anne and let me hold her today.
I didn’t mean to see, but I knew at once there was going to be a little mound in the churchyard with her name upon it, and a date three years off. It took my breath away and I became faint. I told my sister it was because I had not eaten yet today.
I may be wrong. I pray God I am, and that He lifts this curse from me.
Mother suspects. She watches me closely. I know I am a disappointment.
I was in the kitchen grating carrots today, and it happened again. This time mother was there. I seized up as the pictures came to me, a horrible image of a bloated face. A woman has been murdered and thrown into the Thames, and not by human hands. The bowl on my lap clattered to the floor, and mother looked up to see me doubled over and shaking.
I tried to pretend it was only the pangs of Eve’s curse, but she knew it was a lie. She slapped me for my presumption against the Lord.
I am very tired.
Catharine and Joan sewed in the parlor today as I played the piano. I have been happier lately, for there have been no visions. Mother smiled at me, a true smile, and complimented me on my playing.
Father is away, recalled to the coal mines in Newcastle, and I miss him dearly. I think no one is dearer to me in this world than Daddy, but then a shadow passes before my eyes, and I pray to the Virgin to let the images go away before I see them properly.
I know they will return. I am not penitent enough.
Joan has followed Melinda down the aisle, and I am once more a bridesmaid. Today should have been happy, but my sinfulness marred it. As I watched her dance with Jonathon, I saw again. Darkness is in his heart, and I saw my sister covered in bruises with a gash in her lip, all at his hands. The next moment the room was full of laughter, and Joan was a lovely, blushing bride led through the waltz by a seemingly devoted husband.
I became sick in the garden. I do not want to know secrets, but my frailty betrays me.
Father is home again, and the company should not call him to revisit the mines until after the new year. I wish I could let my mind be at ease, but no; the pictures flood my mind if I allow myself any leisure at all. If I remain busy, I might escape my sin. Idleness is my enemy. Thus I now scrub and mend, wash and bake, scour and pray at all hours, but the nights, oh, what can I do with the nights! Sleep must come upon me, and my mind betrays me! Something terrible approaches, like distant thunder.
Lent draws to a close, yet I am still filthy of heart. It doesn’t matter what humiliations of the flesh I visit upon myself. Kneeling on gravel, dried peas in my shoes, leather cords that bite into my flesh beneath my clothes, none have been of any avail, for the images grow stronger.
Joan is unwell, and though the family pretends it is illness, I know her illness carries the name Jonathon, and she should heal if he let her alone. He will not. She will die soon.
I fear that she will be the fortunate one among us all.
I went to the good father today, desperate for the absolution of the holy Church. I wished for words of comfort, but found none. The priest is the mouth of God, and within the confessional, he holds the power to forgive sins or hold them bound. I sought salvation, but he saw the truth. I am damned. The worst of all fates is mine. I am to be burned, and nothing will save me now. It doesn’t matter how busy I am now or how fervently I pray. I have been cast aside. My death will lead me into hell.
They passed near me tonight. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I saw the glint of eyes in the darkness, eyes of demons, yellow as devil flame. Darkness is battering against the door, pounding for entrance, yet I know it will not come in unless it is bidden. Joan’s ghost flits from room to room now, screaming, yet only I can hear her. A thousand murdered faces press against the windowpanes. I have grown pale, Mother says. She is frightened of me.
She should be. I have seen the face of Death, and it is mine.
Catharine is dead. She was found in her bed, her throat slit and crimson staining her skin like a rose. I know he was here. They don’t believe me anymore. I believe they think I might be the one who is doing this. The animals are all dead. The windows are painted with bloody fingerprints, spelling out things I don’t understand but that make others gasp.
Melinda will be next. I tried to tell her, but she slapped me and said not to threaten her. I wasn’t.
Sometimes I wonder if I will weep blood if I cry long enough.
I will join the good sisters. Nothing is left for me except perhaps the hope something better lies beyond, that I shall hear “te absolvo.”
They blamed me. They were right. I didn’t hold the blade, oh no, but if I were not cursed, I wouldn’t have drawn their eyes, and then Catharine would not be rotting, nor Melinda found hanging from the attic gable. Poor Anne, poor little lamb at the slaughter.
This world swims in blood, and my soul screams like the damned, for I am, you see. Nursery rhymes are true, and Jill shall come tumbling after.
It’s quiet inside me. The screaming is still there, singing through me like a heartbeat, though my Daddy says it is nonsense. All the thumping is gone, and the bright spark that lit me is quenched, like a candle that’s been blown out but still smokes a bit. I shall never be alone again he says.
I know I’m still cursed. I know he’s lying. Grandmummy shakes her head at my weeping, calls me names, says I know nothing. I wish I knew nothing. Knights topple from horses, angels fall back into grace. I shall hide from the sunlight alone.
William gripped the etiquette book so tightly the spine creaked. Feverishly, he consulted the pertinent chapter.
“When a gentleman wishes to make the acquaintance of a lady whom he has not had the pleasure of meeting formally, he has several options. The easiest of these is attending a ball at which the lady makes an appearance. He may then appeal to the master of the ballroom to introduce them.”
William glanced at Cecily across the ballroom, then looked wildly for the master.
It was Higgins. In school, William hadn’t permitted him to copy from his term exam.
He was doomed.
Joyce’s handwriting had been ordinary, legible, comfortably simple. At one point it had been all over the house, Buffy supposed, on bills and grocery lists and a thousand other incidental things that make up life. Most had been gone for a long time now, removed before she returned from heaven. Once in a while she’d been confronted by it, maybe in the address book or previous years’ taxes. But now that Sunnydale was gone, nothing remained of her mother’s writing, not even the inscription on her tombstone. It was that thought that made her realize the totality of her loss.
“You’re out of your mind,” Spike scoffed as he tipped back another mouthful of dreadful American beer.
“I am not! Wonder Woman would so win,” Andrew pouted as he took a swig of Yoo-Hoo.
“Against Catwoman? You can’t believe the bird in knickers and a bustier would best Eartha Kitt in a skin-tight catsuit,” Spike argued, gesturing so wildly with his bottle that half of it spilled on the floor.
“Who’s Eartha Kitt? Halle Berry played Catwoman, or Michelle Pfeiffer if you’re old school,” Andrew said with certainty.
Spike sighed, pitying the newer generation for their lack of the tradition.
“Leonard!”
“It’s 3:00 a.m., Myrtle.”
“She’s doing it again!”
“Doing what, Myrtle?”
“She’s sneaking in her bedroom window! I bet she’s a drug dealer. Or a prostitute! A drug-dealing prostitute! It explains her wardrobe.”
“I have to go to work tomorrow, Myrtle.”
“You retired ten years ago.”
“Then I’ll get another job in the morning, Myrtle.”
“Teenagers like her are destroying this country’s morality.”
“Go to sleep, Myrtle.”
“Fine! One night that delinquent will sneak in our window and murder us, thanks to you!”
“Goodnight, Myrtle.”
“I bet she’s had sex.”
“At least someone has, Myrtle.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, Myrtle.”
The girl was gone. Probably it was best, Mrs. O’Connor thought as she stood on the doorstep of her trailer, staring at the Lahanes’ place. Anyone could see her mother’s illness was the only reason the girl had stayed this long, but now that the woman was dead, she hadn’t been surprised at her daughter’s disappearance. It was as though the ground had opened up and swallowed her, pulling her straight into the hell her mother had always told her would be where she’d wind up.
Mrs. O’Connor couldn’t help thinking hell would be a nice vacation after living there.
Angelus had the room to Drusilla’s right, and William the one to the left, each with a connecting door to her bedroom. It was understood that, as her sire, Angelus always had the privilege of deciding whether he would spend the entire night with her or simply screw her repeatedly into the mattress and leave, letting William take his place as sloppy seconds.
He never knew which was the worse nightmare: listening through the thin walls as the woman he loved screamed another man’s name, or the torture of knowing that man would never turn the doorknob of William’s room.
When Xander, Willow and Jesse were kids, their favorite game was spinning. They’d spread their arms and spin as fast as they could. The world would turn blurry, and one by one they’d fall to the ground, giggling, breathless, and dizzy. The last one to fall won.
Jesse had fallen first, barely more than a child.
Xander had fallen in Africa, prey to an ancient curse.
Willow was the last one standing. The spinning of the world around her made her breath catch and her footing stumble, but she continued the game until her time came to fall as well.
Buffy didn’t completely pass out after Angel had nearly drained her. She was still aware of the sounds around her, but she couldn’t move or respond to them. Her head was swimming with dizziness, and when Angel gasped in horror at what he had done and pulled her into his arms, carrying her through the dark streets to the hospital, she lay limp and lifeless, excused from reacting.
She still didn’t know what had made her dizzy: the blood loss, the shock that his control could break so completely, or the heady, insane wish that he would lose it again.
The young lady had bitten into his throat with a mixture of ferocity and delicacy that made no sense except the kind that made his blood rush through his veins and into her. He should be screaming and fighting. It wouldn’t be difficult to free himself, but he found he didn’t want to.
Dizziness flooded him, filling him with a euphoria he had seen in drunken men and silently envied. The world swung wildly in time to the insistent sucking of her lips, and he clung to it greedily, brought to a strange reality where stars spun before his eyes.
He saw her for the first time at the Bronze, dancing, impossibly young, the scent of her innocence strong enough to reach him on the other side of the room. Lights flickered over her hair, and for a second he found himself entranced, remembering sunlight from a century ago. Summers, wasn’t that her name? It fit. She was summer personified in all its naïve energy, never believing winter would come.
He shook his head, clearing it, remembering his purpose and hers. They were the same, after all. He was to kill her, or she would kill him. The dance began.
He’d made his share of deals with the devil, but never with the other side before. It still amazed him how small she was. Her innocence was gone, obviously, but he had other concerns, namely trying to stop the world from ending while winning back his ladylove. He had a good bartering chip with the Watcher at Dru and Angelus’s tender mercies, provided they hadn’t killed him, but he wouldn’t let her know that. If he had to fight on the side of goodness and light and cute kittens once, he had as good a reason as he ever would.
He’d never known a kiss could feel like that. It was brief, chaste, barely more than a peck, and that was what had tipped him off it wasn’t the bot. If his new plaything had a fault, it was a complete lack of subtlety. But this, over before it had barely begun, words unnecessary, it was too much too fast to take in, especially with his body reeling after Glory’s thrashing. When he realized the bot was gone for good, he couldn’t help being a little relieved. After having the real thing, the comparison would just have made him sad.
Buffy was back, dressed in white, her movements delicate, like she didn’t know what to do with herself anymore. It was the first time he had seen her this vulnerable since before Angel had turned, and it went to his heart with a pain that must be what a stake would feel like someday. Her heart was beating, and when he took her hands, they were warm, so she wasn’t a demon. Part of him was repeating prayers of gratitude he had forgotten long ago, but another part was horrified. She had returned, but he wasn’t sure Buffy had survived.
The last thing he was going to do was question why she had chosen now to give in to what he’d been dreaming of for over a year. It wasn’t how he’d pictured it, not that he’d been thinking of wine and roses, but the sheer violence she unleashed was a shock. In the back of his mind he knew this wasn’t about him, that he was a convienent body she could safely rip apart without her conscience getting in the way, that she’d hate herself and him when she returned to sanity. But just now, he really didn’t care.
It was really over this time, he thought. He’d died once before, so that part wasn’t new, but this time he was sure he’d stay that way. Buffy had left. He’d listened for the sounds of her footfalls dying away in the distance; she’d gotten out alive. Now there was too much light, brighter than anything he’d seen in ages, shooting from him, engulfing the Turok-Hans by the score. He realized he was seeing sunlight for the first time since he was a mortal, and something about it struck him as so ridiculously ironic that he died with a laugh.
She hadn’t even considered that it would work this time. Thus far she’d staked vampires through the pancreas, the lung, and the liver, or so Merrick told her. But this time the point had hit the heart.
The vampire had known what happened, and there was an infinite, suspended moment between them, his eyes widening in shock that was almost panic before they became grainy, dissolving into nothing, and Buffy found herself sprawled on top of a pile of dust that a moment before had looked human.
She tried to feel shame for her burst of savage triumph. She failed.
She appeared from the shadows like the return of damnation: sweet and soft, scented of roses and the bitter, metallic tang that hung phantom-like in the air wherever their kind went. She smelled of home, and no place had been home to him for a very long time. For a moment he wondered if he had gone mad, but she spoke to him, touched him, knew about the Initiative but didn’t care. She held before him the choice to return to the darkness with her, an apple from Eden polished to blood-red.
And he bit into it with fierce joy.
“Once upon a time, long before the human filth dwelt upon the fertile land, we were the rulers of this world,” the Master said longingly as took his newest charge’s chin in his hand. “The lights of the sky held no fear for us, and we lived in perfect joy and happiness. One day it shall be that way again, my childe.”
“But Great-Granddaddy, what did we eat if there were no humans?” Drusilla asked, eyes innocently wide.
The Master faltered. “We… we ate… you’re missing the point.”
“You sound like Sister when I asked who Abel married,” she giggled.
“Once upon a time, there were three hellgods, and they hated each other’s guts,” Glory explained to Dawn as the ceremony approached. “It’s not really important you know this, but I’m bored and, hey, you’re here.”
“So you’re one of the three?” Dawn asked.
“Right, kiddo. The other two punted my divine derriere into this craphole dimension all because I was a teensy bit creative in my punishments. And you know what the moral of the story is?”
“What?”
Glory glanced at the clock. The time was rapidly approaching, and still no Slayer.
“Never trust your siblings to save you.”
“Rain is angels weeping for fallen souls,” his mother had told him. “Thunder is the sound of the eternal gates closing behind them, and lightning is the flash of the everlasting fires.”
Personally, he’d always thought his mother was full of it, right up until he killed her.
As he lay in the alleyway behind the basement apartment where he lived, gasping in pain and drenched in rain that made his clothes adhere to his skin, he couldn’t help laughing silently. Thunder crashed and lightning streaked across the sky, and he had to give her credit. Ma had been right.
She hadn’t yet stopped sobbing, and the teartracks on her face were indistinguishable from the rainwater sluicing over both of them. He could smell Wesley’s blood on her. Stronger than that, he could smell desperation and fear. He knew that smell intimately, the desire to just give up and give in, let the darkness swallow you whole so you didn’t have to think about it anymore.
Slowly, Faith calmed in his arms. The rain abated until only a soft shower pattered over them both, two souls desperate for a benediction in the wake of the unthinkable things they had done.
His son was born. In the darkness and the cold water of his birth, still covered in a light coating of his mother’s dust, the only kiss she would ever give him, he opened his mouth and wailed at the inhospitable world around him.
Angel knew exactly how he felt.
Holtz’s eyes were burning hungrily in the darkness, and he couldn’t blame him. Here Angel stood, the monster who had murdered his family, and he was forced to witness the birth of his son. It wasn’t fair, but Angel would be damned again before he’d question miracle in his hands.
The end was nigh. When had had been a little boy in Sunday school and the preacher had told the story of Armageddon, he had always imagined it raining on that last day. Now he stood with a ravening host of Hell before him. Beside him was Gunn, his heart slowing even as he listened but a warrior to the end; Illyria, a Power who had once wielded unthinkable might; and… Spike, but then he couldn’t have everything.
As the rain spattered against the pavement, the champions went to do battle one last time, and the world faded to black.
Patrol was always slower in the rain. Normally Buffy would complain about her hair going flat, but the vamps had been relentless the last few weeks, so she didn’t mind an easy night.
After the preliminary sweep of the cemeteries, staking only one newbie, she went to the park and sat under a picnic shelter, listening to raindrops spatter against the roof. It was peaceful there, and for a moment she could almost pretend she was a normal girl.
Then, without bothering to turn around, she staked the vampire who had been creeping up behind her. Sighing, she headed home.
Another weekend was over, filled with an extra shift at Doublemeat, and a new work week had begun. Buffy dragged herself out of bed and forced herself to shower and dress. She hadn’t patrolled the night before, mainly because she couldn’t work up the energy. Dimly she remembered high school mornings when she had complained about going to class. It sounded like heaven to her now. Anything not her own life sounded like heaven. As she started her walk to work, rain began falling. Not even bothering to level an insult at the offending weather, she headed for her job.
Dreams still haunted his days long after the first decades of near-insanity brought on by guilt. In those dreams, he was Angelus again. The setting changed often: great cities and tiny hamlets alike. Sometimes Darla swept along beside him in satin, or Drusilla, grinning madly, danced in shadows, or William strode like a tiger through the dark, but often he was alone. All of the dreams ended the same way: death, countless deaths, a powerful flood of red pouring over him.
He would awaken drenched in sweat, terrified by the pleasure he took in his menace. His dreams betrayed him.
“Another martini, Mr. Smith?” the blonde asked in a sultry voice.
“That would be perfect, Darla,” he responded, trying not to drool.
As she minced away to get it, being sure her tail bounced enticingly as she went, she rolled her eyes. Men never, ever changed. Still, it was a decent gig, amusing in its way. The Gentlemen’s Clubs drew a few men with serious money, and she never lacked for tips.
And it she slipped a little something extra in their sidecars, gin fizzes, and martinis, no one could tell if she’d had a bit of a drink, too.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” Spike yelled, making several patrons stare.
“Shut up, you loud-mouthed imbecile,” Darla hissed through a perfectly motionless smile. “You’re going to get thrown out.”
He glanced at the security guards. “Ehm, right. Sorry. Didn’t mean to upset the lady. She looked like my cousin Mable from Sussex. My mistake,” he said apologetically. They left, then he repeated his question. “You. Here. Why?”
“It’s fun,” Darla said with a wink. “You?”
He looked at the bevy of rabbit-eared, fluffy-tailed beauties around him and sighed. “You even need to ask?”
“Dru dumped you again?”
“Yup.”
She stands before the glass in her new blue dress, its jet beads clicking together as she rises on tiptoe. All she can see is the room behind her and the dip in the bedcovers where Spike is sprawled, watching her with eyes that are a little worried, a little sad.
“Why can’t I see myself?” she asks, staring into the reflection of the empty room where they both are.
Long ago, people believed mirrors showed a person’s soul, but she knows Daddy’s soul casts no mirror-shadow.
“I don’t know, Pet,” he says quietly.
It’s the only answer there is.
There had been screaming and door slamming for weeks, but when Hank had finally walked away, it had been in complete silence. Perhaps there was nothing left to say.
Joyce stood in the bathroom and stared in the mirror critically. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman. She was no secretary not quite yet legal to drink, but she’d kept herself up pretty well with two children. There were some faint lines, flaws scattered across her face, but nothing that screamed “old lady.”
As she clicked off the light, she realized that even if she wasn’t perfect, she still didn’t deserve this.
Anya stood before the mirror, still wearing her wedding dress, looking at the girl reflected there. She should be dancing the Funky Chicken right now, watching Xander’s family drink themselves stupid while the demons tried not to wreak vengeance on the humans simply because of proximity, all the while happily anticipating lots of sex with her new husband on their honeymoon.
Instead, there was this strange girl in the mirror, staring back at her with run mascara: pale, sad, and weak. With a deep breath, that sadness turned to anger. Anyanka had never been weak, and never would be again.
The apocalypse had been averted. Spike laughed into his beer as he tallied up the Armageddons he had helped foil. “More than Angel has” was his pleased total, even if it included saving the world via “keeping Dru amused for eighty years” and “fetching a cranky Slayer chocolate.”
The demons of Wolfram and Hart were gone. He was now a free agent. He was at liberty to do whatever he liked. He was his own boss. He was… already pulling his cell from his duster’s pocket to ring Angel and find out what was up after less than two hours.
The Master paced impatiently in his prison. For many decades he had been trapped beneath the earth. Now, at last the night had arrived when the world would begin again with the human filth where they belonged: begging for mercy at his feet.
Collin had been gone long enough. Soon, the Slayer would appear, and her coming would be the start of all that glorious carnage. When dawn came, it would be to a new world. He smiled sharp as a knife’s blade. As he silently slipped into the shadows, he raised an eyebrow appraisingly at the Slayer.
Nice dress.
Andrew and Jonathon exchanged terrified glances in the cab of the truck. Hitch-hiking seemed like a good idea at the time, Jonathon thought. They needed to leave Sunnydale fast, neither of them had a car, and despite Andrew’s insistence he could hot wire anything, Jonathon wasn’t willing to wait around to see if Willow still wanted to turn them into newts.
At this point, Jonathon hoped they’d survive long enough to cross the boarder. Off to Mexico to begin again. Great; he had to live the rest of his life in a country where all the food made him gassy.
Angel stared at the closed door of his office. He had succeeded in his quest to erase the day from every memory but his own, but success had never less like a cause for celebration. He felt barren, hopeless, worse than he remembered during the lowest points in the last hundred years.
His thoughts drifted to Northrop Frye and his theory of archetypes, that each season had its own particular type of drama: winter for satire, spring for comedy, summer for romance, and fall for tragedy.
Fittingly, it was November, and Angel wondered if he would ever see summer again.
Some people didn’t fall in love; they stumbled into it or perhaps stubbed their toe against it. Spike wasn’t one of those people. When he fell in love, it was a bit like bungee jumping off the top of Pike’s Peak—without the cord.
His relationship with Buffy had been like that, a perilous descent at insane speeds towards a target that might just kill him if he was able to reach it without being dashed to death on a thousand jagged points first. But then, Spike always pitied the poor sods who never felt the rush of the plunge.
In the fields of Iowa, the trees were turning the ruddy shades of the sunset, but not the smallest stirring of change happened in Southern California, or so it seemed. The days were still warm, the sky blue, the breezes sultry. Riley found it unnerving. It was like time had stopped, a perpetual limbo.
He looked at Buffy’s sleeping face on the pillow next to his, and he knew the seasons weren’t the only things that refused to progress. The two of them grew no closer, and he couldn’t stay in limbo forever, even if parts of it were bliss.
Drusilla often hatched bizarre plans involving insane stunts that had nearly gotten her and Spike staked dozens of times, so when she crept up to him and whispered, “I have an idea,” he tended to shudder.
This time, however, his fears were entirely wrong. She wanted to try AB negative warmed up and poured over chocolate chunk ice cream. It turned out to be absolutely delectable.
“Pet,” he said, licking the bowl of his spoon, “this was brilliant.”
“I got the idea from a song on the radio,” she said, playfully tipping his nose in whipped cream. “‘Sundae Bloody Sundae.’”
Darkness surrounded Angel in a way he, with his centuries spent far from the light of the sun, had never before experienced. In his underwater coffin, entombed alive, the darkness was palpable, freezing his bones, driving his mind beyond insanity and into a place as dark as the ever-present blackness.
His son had done this to him, and the pain of that was sharp, but he remembered the sweetness of holding that warm little boy to his chest and singing the lullaby his mother had once sung to him. It was the one warmth the cold dark could not touch.
His daughter lay drowsing quietly in his arms, utterly trusting him, believing nothing could be wrong when he was here, singing her cradle song. She was on the verge of being too old for lullabies, but this time she permitted herself the relief the soothing words and gentle rocking gave her.
Holtz was being torn apart as he stared down at the still innocent face of his child, knowing she had never sinned against any living thing, yet she was damned. As the final notes filtered through the tears caught in his throat, he died as surely as she did.
Tara knew she was forgetting things: the name of the girl who fed her, the reason they were in this big car going down the road so fast they left trails of dirt like pixie dust. The man across from her wasn’t a pixie, but he smoked in sunlight. Something about that tugged at the back of her mind, but it slipped away.
When she looked out the window and saw horsies following behind them, she clapped and giggled. She liked horsies. She couldn’t understand why everyone else seemed scared of them. They were the only thing that wasn’t scary.
Her husband wouldn’t approve. He would say that his son must never be coddled or his way smoothed out before him, that he must learn from birth to be a strong, impassive director of a series of young, doomed girls. Simple pleasures and pleasantries were not for him.
But it was late at night, and her husband was asleep, probably dreaming of Council reports. She leaned over her little boy’s crib in the stark white nursery, and quietly sang him an old lullaby of nonsense and soft colors, kings and queens, hoping someday Wesley would find a spark of joy.
Willow’s grandmother was a sweet, gray-haired little woman with a dowager’s hump, orthopedic shoes, and cat’s eye glasses. When Willow’s parents left to attend philosophical conventions for weeks, it was her bubby who would stay with her and tuck her in at night. It was from her she heard her first lullaby, for Sheila didn’t believe in such nonsense.
“Now sleep, my treasure,” she would say to her with a kiss on the forehead, another new experience, “and tomorrow we’ll make chicken soup together. Yes?”
She would nod happily. They were Willow’s first lessons in the magic of curing herbs.
In her time, Faith had tried everything. At eleven she’d conned college boys into getting her booze at the local convience store. Cigarettes started soon after. By the end of her freshman year, she had tried pot, coke, uppers, downers, ecstacy, and heroin. There was only one conclusion she came to about everything she tried.
It all sucked.
Then one May evening when her Watcher rattling on again about honor and duty, she felt a wave of tremendous power wash over her from her toes to the roots of her hair. She’d been called. That power became her true addiction.
The truck from our old world went bumpy-bumpy-bump down a lot of streets before the growling noise stopped and we weren’t moving anymore. It was very dark inside my box, and very crowded, too.
Someone picked up my box and carried us up some stairs and put us down on the floor with a loud thud. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t very dignified. More time passed, and when Girl opened the box up later, it was the dark time outside. I was happy to see her, but when she hugged me to sleep, I could tell she was worried.
I sit on the bed every day and look around the room, waiting for my Girl to come home. I’m a patient piggy, but I’m getting scared that she won’t come back. Girl’s Big One used to come in the room. Sometimes she’d yell, and sometimes she’d cry. I wish she would have hugged me. It might have made her feel better. Maybe it would have made me feel better too. But Girl’s Big One doesn’t come in the room anymore. I think it makes her too sad. So I sit here, alone, and wait for Girl to come home.
Girl has gotten out boxes and is putting her things in them. Her friend Red Fur comes to help, and they talk and giggle and make plans about a place called call-edge. They seem happy, but sometimes Girl looks sad. She’s thinking of her Dark One then. He doesn’t come anymore, so she’s unhappy. I don’t like when Girl is unhappy. I hope call-edge cheers her up.
Just when I think I’m going to be left behind, she pops me in the last box and says, “Everyone needs a good education. Even piggies.” I get to go to call-edge too!
Strange things are happening that nobody seems to notice but me. There’s a new girl living in our house, and she has extra shiny fur. Girl and her Big One are acting really funny about her. It’s like they didn’t notice she just popped out of nowhere, kind of like Girl’s old Jack in the Box. I didn’t like Jack too much. He was kind of scary. Shiny Fur is kind of scary, too. She’s always sneaking into Girl’s room. When she leaves, she stuffs something of Girl’s in her pockets. I hope she doesn’t stuff me in a pocket.
It’s too quiet in my Girl’s room, quieter than it’s ever been before. People come in and out of the room, but they don’t say anything. They cry a lot, though. It makes me scared.
Today, Shiny Fur opened the door and looked around the room for a long time. Then she walked over to the bed and picked me up. She put me under her arm and carried me down the hall to her room. There are lots of stuffed animals here, but when she sleeps, she always hugs me tightest. I think she’s as sad as I am.
Girl was acting strange for a very long time. She didn’t smell right, kind of greasy and icky. She never smiled, and when she talked, sometimes she said mean things. I loved her, but I didn’t know how to help her. I don’t think hugging me is going to do the job.
A few weeks ago, things started to get better, or it seemed like it. Her eyes didn’t look faraway, and she started to smell better: more vanilla and less burnt stuff. But I don’t think she’s really happy. I think she’s pretending. I hope she gets better soon.
Bumpy-bumpy-bump, I’m back in a box and going for a long drive. This time the truck is bright yellow, the kind Girl used to ride to school in when she was a Little One. Things are quiet for a long time, but then Girl opens up my box and takes me out. It’s the dark time outside. There are lots of girls here, some scared, some sad, and some happy. My Girl looks like she’s had a hard day, but she’s smiling. It’s good to see her smile again.
“Anywhere you go with me, Mr. Gordo, is home.”
I agree.
When Drusilla was human, she was always an obedient child. But when her second daddy came, she learned sometimes he wanted her to disobey him so he could have the fun of punishing her. Even when she was naughty, she was doing what he wanted. Spike had cherished her like she did her dolls. He liked dressing her up and parading her before other demons, making them jealous. She was his favorite toy.
But now, standing outside his crypt after he nearly killed her, she was alone. She wondered what it would be like to be herself, and she smiled.
Spike loved the way humans were constantly coming up with something new for him to steal. He had a CD player three years before they became commonplace, even though he still preferred the sound of vinyl. He’d driven his fair share of just-off-the-line Mustangs, Bentleys, and Ferraris, even if his garage contained a DeSoto from the 1960s. In his own way Spike was both a modernist and a traditionalist, playing with the new toys but still holding fast to the old.
“Time travel through technology,” Drusilla had called it, and Spike, for his part, enjoyed being a time traveler immensely.
L.A. had been home most of Buffy’s life, and now she was back, even if it was only to visit her father. Everything was the same: the malls, the ocean, the sunshine, even most of the faces.
But it made her feel more alone than before, and she knew why. She was the thing that was different. No matter how far she tried to hide from her stupid destiny, it was going to keep tugging her back. Back to Sunnydale. Back to her own death.
She bought a lot of shoes that summer. It seemed like the thing to do.
Buffy didn’t care where the bus was going. She’d bought a ticket for the first one leaving that morning. She knew better than to hope she could leave her pain behind, buried in Angel’s dust-Angel’s, not Angelus’s,-but she couldn’t stay.
If she’d known there was a chance it might happen, he might come back to her… but she hadn’t. It was the final punch in the gut.
She had been disowned by her mother. She had killed her lover. She had been framed for murder. Getting out was the logical step. It seemed like the thing to do.
In the weeks after graduation, Angel’s absence seemed to grow. She couldn’t abandon the hope that some night she’d catch a glimpse of him watching silently in the shadows or quietly studying her from a mausoleum.
She’d lost Faith, though she didn’t see anything else she could have done. It stung. Buffy was again the only Slayer in the world, and as long as Faith’s coma continued, it would remain that way.
Alone. She would always be alone. She went to graduation parties and smiled at the right times and said empty words. It seemed like the thing to do.
Adam was defeated, the First Slayer was gone, the Initiative had pulled out of Sunnydale, and college was over for summer. Buffy had everything she could possibly want.
The nights were warm and peaceful, few demons causing trouble. Everything was exactly as it should be. Nice, happy friends in nice, stable relationships, and her own nice, normal boyfriend.
She remembered Giles complaining that every day was the same in California: too perfect. Despite all the reasons she should be happy, she wasn’t. Buffy could pretend really well, though. She’d gotten good at that. It seemed like the thing to do.
More bliss existed here than Buffy had ever felt. Shadows of this happiness had crossed her path briefly in life, maybe when she was little and playing in her backyard on the swings, but the reality of this joy was beyond her wildest yearnings.
She was complete, safe, comforted by what she had done in life for those she loved and those she had never met. Her soul floated in a warm bath of ecstasy, free from responsibilities and horrors, certain everyone was okay. She sighed and let her spirit be at peace. It seemed like the thing to do.
Sunlight poured from the sky like heaven had been ripped open… again. Buffy tried not to think of that as she walked beside Dawn in the idyllic cemetery, certain Willow wouldn’t destroy the world now.
But things itched at the back of her mind as she took tentative steps towards returning to life. She knew it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing was ever going to be simple again, not that it ever had been. She plastered a smile on her face and wondered how often her mother had done the same without her knowing. It seemed like the thing to do.
It was over. They’d won. A future of limitless possibilities ranged before Buffy, or so it seemed for a while before the euphoria wore off. Before, she had been Dawn’s sole support, and the weight of the responsibility was almost crushing. Now, dozens of young girls were looking to her for guidance. She also had no money, no job, and no home.
Italy seemed nicely distant from her former life. She wanted to be frivolous for a while, so when a cute guy named the Immortal asked her to dance, she said yes. It seemed like the thing to do.
The library table was littered with books. Willow was sleeping on Oz’s shoulder while Xander unsuccessfully tried keeping himself awake through high-sugar junk food.
Suddenly, the entire group woke as Buffy yelled, “I don’t believe it! I’m in here!”
“You found the prophecy?” Giles said, instantly alert.
“Nope, but I’m in the Bible,” Buffy said, pushing the book towards him.
“’…then the community, deciding the case between the slayer and the avenger of blood…,’” Giles read aloud. “Buffy, this is in reference to someone accidentally killing a person with a rock.”
“So? Still says ‘slayer.’ Right there,” Buffy declared adamantly.
Nearly four hundred years have passed since the last time Darla saw sunlight on her skin. In the time that she has been back, she has had too many opportunities for introspection, and what is most disconcerting to her is the hole her previous human life has become. She can remember her vampire self in perfect detail, but not who she was before the Master came. Sometimes she thinks she remembers grass perfumed with heather, the sun dappling a path before her, and her legs, shorter than they are now, running full tilt towards someone, but she cannot remember who.
Illyria was not capable of the petty human emotion of nostalgia. She could remember a time so long ago that these worthless beings would be unable to comprehend the valley of centuries between then and now, and she had no doubt she would exist into a future so distant from the present that she would watch galaxies change their courses. Moments meant nothing to her. But they had to the shell: Sunday morning pancakes, first grade spelling bees, songs by the Dixie Chicks, the smell of Wesley’s cologne. Unbelievably, Illyria found it possible to be jealous of the human filth.
Lethe’s bramble had a clean smell, which makes sense since it wipes the mind free of troubles. Tara stared at the branch that she had pinned to her dress on a whim without taking the time to note what it was. With everything that had been going on, who could blame her?
But now she knew, and it confirmed her worst fears. Willow’s power was starting to overshadow her conscience. As flower lay crumpled in her palm, Tara wondered bitterly if the memory it had stolen from her was as terrible as the realization of what her lover had become.
Cordy distinctly remembers not giving Doyle permission to die. He hadn’t asked her before he’d belted Angel, and he sure as hell hadn’t asked before he jumped on the beacon of death and fried. He hadn’t asked her for that kiss either, just taken it and given her the visions as a freebie.
Like most freebies, they sucked.
Cordelia is angry he didn’t ask her first whether he was allowed to die. She would have said no. How dare he give himself to save their lives when she wanted him alive and dating her? How dare he make her cry?
England was a cool shade of green. Willow had been there weeks before she had been able to recognize that simple difference between Sunnydale, where lawns were unnaturally bright and the sky was so blue that nobody really looked at the grass anyway. Here in the countryside, colors were soft and natural, somehow kind and embracing.
The landscape reminded her of Tara’s soul. Her body might be on the other side of the world, but if she sat beneath an oak after a summer shower, she felt as close to her as she would if she stood beside her grave.
Buffy wasn’t supposed to die. Xander had always accepted he was going to wind up like Jesse, dead from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Buffy was the warrior, the one who could handle herself in battle and would never be stupid enough die.
But she had taken the dive from the tower. He’d seen her do it, and now they were burying her. He remembered the time the Master almost killed her and he’d brought her back. Over her grave, he nodded at Willow. If there was any way he could do it again, he would.
Love had never been part of Wesley’s arrangement with Lilah. Sentimentality had no place in their relationship, if it could even be called that. All he had known was that he was in hell. Was it any wonder he had cleaved to another fallen angel, that they had taken perverse pleasure in one another?
She was dead now, though still in the employ of Wolfram & Hart, somewhere. Their time together wasn’t hearts and flowers, but when he thought of her, he remembered her with something akin to warmth. He often wondered if he was the only one who did.
Prison gives people a lot of time to think. Usually, the things they think about are ones they’d rather forget. Faith’s experience in jail was no different. She remembered those she killed, the hatred in Wesley’s eyes, the death-fight with Buffy. She was responsible for those memories, so she accepted their pain.
But when she thought of her mother, she started to feel sick: drug-induced beatings, strange men she had to call Daddy, and death found at the bottom of a bottle. Those memories, ones she didn’t make for herself, haunted her like phantoms of who she could have become.
Talking to Illyria is enough to make Gunn feel nauseous. After he’d left the hell dimension where his heart was ripped out of him day after day, he was led back into the real world.
His heart continues to be ripped out of him every day. Each time he sees Illyria walking through the hallways of Wolfram & Hart, twisting her neck so torturously that he thinks it might snap, he’s reminded it was his greed that killed Fred and replaced her with this abomination. Sometimes he wishes he were back in hell; other times, he thinks he never left.
“Liam!” she giggles, deliriously happy. “I knew you’d be back!”
Angel has relived this scene too many times not to realize he’s dreaming. He tries to wake himself, but as usual it’s no use.
“Sweet Kathy,” says a voice, and he sees himself as he was, “not even death could keep me from my little sister. But would you have me stand on the doorstep until Judgment Day?”
She throws open the door, welcoming Death with open arms. Angel recoils at the memory, guilt welling inside him until he feels he’ll explode. Only then does he wake, sobbing in agony.
Eardrums were spontaneously bursting as far away as Fresno, Lorne was certain of it. Still, he managed to keep a smile plastered on his face even if his eyes were squinted in pain. It was some comfort that Angel looked like he was ready to die of embarrassment from having to sing yet again. Thankfully, Wes, Cordy, and Gunn hadn’t come along for the ride.
“That’s enough, Poppa Poptart,” Lorne said, shaking his head to clear the ringing. “I’d say the danger has passed.”
As Angel skulked off stage, Lorne knew he’d never be able to listen to Cats again.
Spike had never realized a place like this existed on the Internet. For free, unless you wanted to have little pictures with daft sayings on them next to your entries or were a techno-geek and had the desire to monkey with backgrounds and the like, you could write anything you pleased in happy anonymity while still opening it up to the public for perusal and comment.
After he finished reading an erotic and highly descriptive bit of fanfic written about Passions, he hit the “add as memory” button. Yep, he decided. He was going to like LiveJournal a whole lot.
When they had first come together, Willow had thought their relationship was going to be everything she had ever wanted. Granted, she’d had disappointments in the past. Things hadn’t gone well with some of her other attempts at making things work. But this time, she had been sure she had found the one who would last for years, but sadly, her eyes were drawn lustfully to another, and soon she knew she had to break things off and follow her heart.
“I’m sorry,” she said, patting her computer, “but the new model just has so much more memory than you.”
The Master savored the blood of the Slayer as it still clung to his lips. Exulting in his newfound power and freedom, he pondered what should be his first act.
The slumped girl in his arms, apparently lifeless though he could barely hear a heartbeat. She resembled a smashed daffodil, lovely and ruined.
“I believe you deserve a little reward for your generous gift to me,” the Master said in a deadly tone as he slashed his wrist and held it to her mouth. “Perhaps you’re interesting enough to have around for a millenium or two.”
And the stars hid.
Oz and Cordelia watched intently as Willow continued to recite the spell in a language none of them, including the witch, knew. With a final repeated cry, the orb lit brilliantly, and on the other side of town Angel’s eyes filled with matching light.
“That was kinda neat,” Cordy said, looking at Willow.
“Yeah,” she replied, a strange smile spreading across her face. “Yeah, I think I might be able to get used to a body like this.”
“Huh?”
Oz caught the change in scent, but it was too late. Angelus’s transported demon cracked their necks in a single blow.
The Mayor was annoyed. Snyder stared up at him, blathering on about order, about “his school,” and the giant snake rolled its eyes in weariness. Happily, the situation could be remedied easily enough. The snake opened its jaws wide and consumed the principal in a single bite, swallowing him whole before looking for the Slayer.
But Snyder did not seem to be going down smoothly. The demon began to roll around on the ground in agony before it died.
“Well, I’ll be,” Giles said, kicking the corpse. “Snyder did have one virtue.”
“What?” Xander asked.
“He was a choking hazard.”
Joyce frowned in her sleep. In her dream, she walked down the driveway of the home she and Hank had bought shortly after Buffy was born, but the picket fence was all wrong.
“Why is it painted red?” she said aloud, reaching out to touch the sharpened wooden slats.
“It’s a good color,” Buffy said from behind her. Joyce turned to look at her. She was three years old at most, and she was holding a tiny wooden stake dripping blood.
While her back was turned, a matching stake pierced Joyce’s heart from behind.
“No family,” grunted the First Slayer.
Dawn was bleeding. She could feel it soaking through the sacrificial dress, running over the ends of her toes. Buffy had come. She’d never really doubted that she would. She listened to her sister’s final message to her friends, her declaration that this was what she had to do, that she was fine, telling her to live.
The dive from the tower seemed to shake the fabric of the universe, and Dawn remained watching.
When at last the body hit the pavement below, she smiled.
“Mission accomplished,” she said. “Now for stage two. I’ll be a god in no time.”
Xander cradled Willow in his arms. He could feel the moment when the darkness left her, the second when what he held ceased to be a vessel of pure darkness and became his friend again. He remembered holding her like this before so many times: in grade school when the others had picked on her, in those moments stolen from Oz and Cordy, when Buffy had died. He’d always held her.
“I’m so sorry, Will,” he whispered, “but there’s something I have to do.”
When the knife pierced her throat, there was nothing but the smallest cry before she died.
The Scoobies had passed their moment of joy following the closing of the Hellmouth, but now they realized their number was sadly diminished. There had been several who hadn’t lived to see the victory. Spike was gone; Amanda was gone; and half of a couple was left mourning one who had not survived. The others tried to say things in tribute, but there was only one who really spoke from her heart.
“Personally,” Anya said as she patted Willow’s shoulder while the bus drove away from the pothole that had been Sunnydale, “I never liked Kennedy. You can do better.”
They watch TV a lot. It’s a way of being with Dawn without having to talk. That’s good, because talking inevitably leads to someone saying Buffy’s name, and neither of them wants to deal with the hole she left.
So they watch TV. Anything. Everything. Masterpiece Theatre and the Dukes of Hazard. Felicity and Seinfeld. Whatever will fill the void a bit.
One day, as Spike watches her in the flickering light, he knows she’s healing. Animal, the crazed Muppet drummer, is in the midst of a classic smash-and-trash music session accompanied by cries of “WOMAN! WOMAN!”
And she smiles.
The utter absence of sound that has infected Sunnydale unnerves her more than anything else in her life. Olivia had expected to have a pleasant weekend with Rupert. Instead, an almost otherworldly sense of foreboding hangs over her head. According to him, it is not her imagination, but she can’t quite bring herself to believe it yet. Still, she can’t sleep, and she decides to venture towards the kitchen to make some hot milk.
A glance outside the window and a scream that passes her lips in an explosion of silenced terror turn her world permanently topsy-turvy. Nightmares are real.