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This is the way the world ends Not with a bang, but a whimper. - T. S. Eliot Spring 2003 California Desert With a gasp, Buffy wakes up. Her eyes open, wild and mad
she sees him. In confusion, in fury she jerks his arm sending the car into
fishtail across the desert highway. "Fuck." He mutters managing to braek the truck's
movements. Shifting the car into park he looks over at her, the tremble in
his hands betraying the sardonic tone of his voice when he says, "Christ
Slayer, lots more effective ways stopping the car." She looks away from him, noticing the slight slump of his
shoulders from the corner of her eye. She doesn't bother and doesn't care to
decipher the move. She's tired and worn. She's utterly and finally spent.
Instead she rests her hands in her lap and looks out the window. She's
temporarily amazed by the brightness of the stars overhead and how beautiful
they seem when everything else around them is suddenly so ugly. So very ugly. She looks back at him, his hands still wrapped around the
steering wheel, his eyes fixed dazedly out towards the stretch of asphalt and
desert in front of them. And she remembers that she'd wanted to say
something, but now it's impossible. Impossible to find words because there
aren't any. "I can't find the right words," she tells him,
she didn't mean to speak, "They don't exist." "Buffy?" He asks, his hand reaching for her bare
shoulder and his eyes fixed pointedly on her. She moves to shrug his grip
away but stills when she sees his eyes. He's been crying. For a few seconds
she feels herself soften and let's her hand clamp over his, but only for a
few seconds. "Keep driving." She tells him releasing her
tenuous grasp and looks back towards the darkness, "Just. Just keep
driving. Spike does what she says, he always does, and steers the
car back onto the highway. They continue their strange odyssey in silence. *** They'd been driving for a couple of days now, no clear
direction, no plan. The first afternoon they spent in motel. A hovel of a
place it was with natty bed linens and a tiny television full of static.
Which was just as well because the only channel broadcasting was CNN. Buffy
kept it on all day fueling the tremble of her arms, legs, lips, her entire
being and she wouldn't shut it off. He'd tried. Numerous times he had tried
to coax her away from it. "Love, come to bed." "Buffy, pet the shower has warm water." All she'd done though was sit in front of that blasted TV,
eyes trained to the images and sounds that poured across the screen. Spike though, Spike couldn't watch, the images made him
remember the all too real chill of Dawn's lifeless cheek. He couldn't fathom
Buffy's ability to sit in front of the TV for hours, watching the world she
died to save end itself, along with most of her friends and her sister, on
live television. He'd long since given up prompting her away from the
visual carnage when she let out a low, giddy laugh, the television fettering
into silence. She crawled into bed and saddled next to him, her hands twining
around the hem of his tee shirt. She rested against him, relaxing into a tiny
sigh, she didn't flinch when he buried his face into the crook of her neck. Then she slept and he watched the rise and fall of her
chest with each breath. When she let out a sad murmur hours later he didn't
have to imagine what nightmares drifted through her mind. They were the same
as his after all. More or less. *** By the time dawn was beginning to stretch across the dark
horizon they hadn't passed any more motels but Spike remembered a mineshaft
not too far off from where they were. Back in the fifties he and Drusilla had
spent a night there after as Drusilla put it the sun had come out to play. It was dank, wet and dark but the other alternative didn't
look all that enticing to Spike. Didn't matter if life was turning out to be
a platter of hell on a rotating smorgasbord or not, he still wasn't warming
up to the idea of being burnt to bloody extinction. "Sun will be up in less than an hour." He tells
her as he pulls the SUV off the road and is met with silence as the
vehicle shimmies against rock and sand. *** Buffy pulls her hair into a messy ponytail and surveys the
lifeless terrain around her. Miles of desert void of greenery and life. It
seems impossibly appropriate. Even more so with the faint glow of morning
around them setting everything in a dull sepia. She realizes she likes the
darkness better. The sun would be up soon and she couldn't remember how
many had risen and fallen since they left Sunnydale. For a second she thinks
to ask Spike but stops when she turns to look at him, a cigarette dangling
loosely from his lips as he rifles around the back of the truck tugging out
blankets and a camping lantern. The absurdity, the pure absurdity of the situation defeats
her and she looks away, back out towards the horizon. She appreciates that he
doesn't call out to her after she hears the sound of the truck's doors
closing. She knows, as she always knows these things, that he's gone into the
darkened cavern and left her alone. She doesn't follow. Not now and maybe
never. No, she only watches the morning take over night and tries really hard
not to think about Dawn, Xander or Anya, all dead. Or Willow. Willow that
she'd left behind at Revello Drive. She just watches and remembers that she can sleep on a bed
of bones if she has to. She could stay here forever. *** Spike watches Buffy from the shadows, his golden girl. He
wants to call out to her, touch her, hold her, anything at all but he
doesn't. Knows he's not welcomed or invited, so he finally turns away and
moves further into the recesses of the cavern. He drops the gear on the ground and digs through his
pocket for the Zippo and sets the torch lantern aflame. The darkness doesn't
bother him but he'd be damned if he'd have Buffy shucked up in it all day.
Not if he could help it at any rate. After settling himself on the ground he reaches for his
flask, savoring the taste of the alcohol and the sweet blessed oblivion he
hopes it'll give him. If he just drinks enough, just enough he'll be able to
tame the jagged corners around him. Maybe even lessen some memories and make
them softer even. If only. Instead he thinks Buffy out there alone where she oughtn't
be. She should be home, snug as a bug in her bed with her kid sis a room over
sleeping the sleep of little girls and not the one she'd been given. Not
death. They all had seen the news reports, heard about the
epidemic but hadn't really though much about it. Evil was afoot and all that
rot. From beneath you it devours, right? Bloody right, Spike thought even now, his jaw hardening at
the enemy that had really struck. The one they couldn't touch, not even Buffy
in all her glory. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he took another swig of his flask and
closed his eyes against the memory of Willow, translucent almost and crying
on the couch. They'd known right away, the house was thick with death, he and
Buffy could scent it out with out thought. He'd gone sick into a potted plant when he saw the Bit
laid out upstairs. He wanted to drink himself into a bloody stupor then. Now
he would, he figures uncapping the bottle and taking another long swallow,
his eyes trained towards the tiny bit of light that led to Buffy. He didn't
even notice the weight closing them. *** It's somewhere in that state between sleeping and waking
when he finally sees her again. It's her hair against his neck, her hands on
his body, a little too softly for the girl he knows. So he opens his eyes and finds her awash with the fiery
glow of the torchlight. Orange and yellows dance across her naked skin and he
let's his hands reach for her with uncertainty. Because he knows, deep down,
that he shouldn't and that she shouldn't but they do anyway. Her eyes are
wild and a touch mad but her lips are soft. Soft enough that for a second
Spike thinks he's still asleep, that this isn't Buffy above and on him, warm
fevered skin, but a dream induced apparition. When she pulls away he watches his hand reach up, his
finger tracing the slope of her lip, lips that sadly tremble to release cries
that still haven't come. Not yet and not once, not one tear but Spike knows her
heart isn't hardened. "Spike?" She manages, nothing short of a yellow
flame in the darkness, skin bronzed and so alive, washed in so much death. "Say you love me," she tells him and moves in
closer, pebbled nipples dragging across his chest, the heat from her breath
tickling his ears, "Say you need me." "You know I do Buffy." He fairly whispers
against her, when her lips meet his again tugging away only so she can look
down at him again. The same glint, a tinge of madness and desperation is in
her eyes, "Say you'll never leave me?" He marvels at the question. He'd could cut himself on her
heart and never, he never would, "Never Buffy, never sweet girl." She pillows herself around him, her hair fanning out
across his dark denim of his jeans. And Spike can't tell if it's him or her
that's shaking when she speaks again, "I'll leave. I'll leave and you
have to promise to find me." He doesn't answer and she doesn't want him to. Instead
they lay there, Buffy warm, flush and naked against him, her hand snaking up
under his tee shirt in a touch he doesn't feel. *** They hit their first town two nights later, and Buffy's on
her knees. The headlights of the SUV bounce against her face but don't
distract her as the asphalt digs into her flesh painfully before her palms
fall across dew-wetted grass. She retches up the only food she's eaten in days, and she
doesn't stop when there's nothing left. Her body jerks in spasms, she can't
stop though there's nothing left. Spike's there behind her, a hand catching her hair,
holding it away from her face and the mess she's making, while the other hand
moves in soft circles against her back. She supposes he thinks he's soothing
her, it's just that he can't, but she doesn't have to tell him that. Not now,
not yet. She won't push him away, she thinks blandly, a hand wiping
at her mouth as she falls back into him, and his weight holds them both as he
rocks just a little on the balls of his feet. "I left her there." Buffy whispers, horror clear
in her voice as she lays her head against his denim-capped knee. "Hush, Love. No other option." He returns, hand
still petting soft circles along her back. "There was." "Couldn't stop it. You couldn't. Not some nasty you
could've slayed Buffy. Not your fault it happened. A Slayer, even one like
you, can't stop everything. This wasn't your business. You couldn't fight
it." He hushes against her neck. The vibration tickles sad shivers up her body, and she
pulls away from him. He watches her, his head tilted to the side, and she
sees now that he doesn't understand. That he could never understand. Buffy picks up the newspaper she dropped to the ground.
The paper feels itchy in her hands, but she holds it up, pointing to the
headline he's already seen. It's three days old. 80,000 dead, death toll still on the rise. She doesn't recognize her own voice when she speaks,
"What if there's no one left?" "Love-" He begins and she drops the paper to the
ground, her hands reaching for his mouth covering it with frantic fingers. "No. Shh." She hushes him, and buries her face
against the cotton of his tee shirt until he's all around her. *** The next evening Spike wakes up in another dingy motel
room, the air is stagnant. Lifeless. He realizes she's gone. Next Part *** |