Wish Upon A Demon
by UrbanGoth
Okay. So Maybe Oz IS A Little Different.
[reviews]
NOTES: I'm running out of chapter titles.
Bugger.
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Buffy moves me around to the side of her and shuts the door. Setting off on our little jaunt to Giles' appartment - good job she knows where we're going incase he doesn't live at the same place - she starts a little skip in her step. I can't help myself and join her in her jubilation. Besides, not like I want cold, depressive Buffy around again for too long. My Buffy gets sad at times but the feeling that this Buffy despairs about herself and her calling is a little too obvious.
She's so beautiful. Even though I can see that the smile on her face is almost purely for my benefit, it shines through the dusty twighlight and the sparkle in her eyes tells me that I am perhaps the tiniest morsel of salvation she's been looking for.
I can't even hear what she's saying to me. Something about Cleveland. I don't know. Maybe about Cleveland in my part of town? Nope. I'm clueless. She could be talking about cheese grating badgers for all I care and I'd still nod and smile, just to keep the grin playing on her features. I like to think I make her happy.
We pass one of the numerous graveyards bestowed upon Sunnydale, there were possibly - probably - more here, and I see the sun pass behind a crypt. She's stopped talking now and is scanning the graveyard, her ears pinched upward, eyes dancing over the short grass. She's feeling them out, I can tell. I've seen Buffy do this many times. It's like she can smell them, or taste them. She lets go of my hand and I might have whined a little, lacking the warmth and safety of her tiny but powerful fingers, but I'm not sure. Still my only concern is her.
I know it's only twighlight so, really, vamps can't come out yet but still, the hair on the nape of my neck jumps to attention and I honestly couldn't tell you if it's through fear or excitement. Being with Buffy, whichever Buffy, makes me feel more safe than if I was in a 7 inch think iron suit. My Buffy would go to any length to protect me. I don't think this Buffy is much different.
Satisfied that I'm safe, she returns to me, walking on my right, the side closest to the cemetery, and takes my hand in hers again. I bite my bottom lip and listen to the wind, closing my eyes, just feeling her.
Perhaps not the best of times to question this but my mind floats over the word 'gay'. I don't think I'm gay. But then how do you know? People say, when it comes to things you should just KNOW, that when you know, you'll just know. But how do you really know? Maybe they're just lying to make it sound simpler than it actually is.
Hm.
So. Plan B.
Okay... Gay icons... Do I even know any gay icons? Gayiconsgayiconsgayicons... How do they become icons anyway? Is there a special iconologist who just points at them and says "There you go, you're an icon." I wonder if he has a uniform? Or she? Would it have a lit--
Tangent alert.
Back to subject matter.
Hm. Gay icons didn't work. Plan C then? Mental undressage. Undress who? Undress Halle Berry? Undress Angelina Jolie? Undress Joan Crawford? Undress Buffy? Hm. Ever noticed that if you think a word too much it loses it's meaning and just becomes confusing? Perhaps it was a bad idea anyway. She's right next to me. She can probably smell what I'm thinking.
Settling on kinda gay, along with the compulsory squint when saying it, I've decided just to go back to feeling Buffy - in the clean way - and let my thoughts once again list just why I'm so drawn to her.
I know they're trivial, these things - walking on my right, guiding me by hand, giving me clothing - but they mean the world to me. They make me important to her.
I guess that makes me pretty important.
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We're half way across town now and it almost feels like I'm back in my own Sunnydale. There's no visible fire anywhere, the shops are closed and sat comfortably between each other and no gang war has attempted to contact us yet. The only thing that betrays this place is not my home is the stifling air of tension and Buffy's posture. Her frame has visibly shifted and she's on full alert now that the night has settled in.
Suddenly, I find myself against a cold granite backboard. Huddling in a sheltered shop door, the shadows, once again, being one of my protectors, I can feel the other right beside me.
"Buffy, what is it?" I whisper to her anxiously.
"Vampire." She rasps, her head tilted slightly away from me, listening for the demon's movements.
"I can help if--" Cut off sharply by a strong index finger on my lips I freeze, and watch her, waiting for some sort of signal. Catching my eyes with hers, I exhale deeply and the condensation catches on her finger. She hesitates a little in leaning to say something, then grins maliciously.
"Stay." Is the only word she says, and then turns the stone corner. Shaking my head slightly I slide down the wall, my heart finally slowing down, maybe skipping a beat now and then, mouth dry from the extreme adrenaline rush I just got from being that close to her lips.
Still shaking my head I reach the floor with a small thud, and whisper to no one and everyone: "Oh goddess."
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[Not going far she says. He's only in the next cemetery she says. Just a little jog SHE SAYS.]
My chest is heaving. Absolutely and completely heaving. I'm sure it wants me to die for putting it through that. Standing up I emit a little noise due to the stitch in my side.
"Are you ok, Will?" She asks me. Still a little hunched over, my chest still complaining, I glare at her sideways. The Eye of Shame. It's a power in it's own right. No wonder I made such a good teacher. "If it makes you feel any better you're in better shape than most." She looks a little guilty and immediately searches around the graveyard for the vamp we were chasing. Or somewhere to hide from me.
"I think I saw him dip behind one of the crypts." Buffy says professionally. "I'm gonna check it out." Swinging around one of the headstones, she stalks soundlessly up to the crypt and round to the back. I wait where I am, trembling a little, not sure what to expect.
Seeing her round the other side of the crypt, I sigh. Half because she wasn't hurt, half because he's still out there somewhere and I've got all night to look forward to this torture. I swear Buffy shaves decades off my life expectancy.
Beckoning me to her with a small hand motion, I obey and move as quietly as possible to be near her. Upon arriving, I notice what she was so confused about. You can see the back of every crypt, more or less, from this one. Obviously he's not behind them.
"Inside them, Buffy. It would make more sense. Check inside the crypts."
She nods viciously and sets to work.
It's odd, now I know I'm looking at the reason she sits upright and is always so sensetive to the atmosphere and surroundings. She crouches down and moves around the side of the old stone box, under the window so as not to be seen. Her right hand is gripping the stake firmly and her boots, no matter how heavy they really are, may as well be made from air. She stands on no ill-placed stick, makes no leaves rustle. Even her breathing can't be heard. And as the moonlight paints her expression, I see a cruel grin and the sharpest eyes in existence.
She's hunting.
And I'm hooked.
She moves from crypt to crypt gracefully and I tag along, mentally arguing with myself as to if cheese was clumsy and noisy, or chalk was. Well, whichever one it is, I'm that one. My sneakers crackle in the darkness, clothing rubbing against other bits of clothing making that horrid 'zwoosh' noise that always happens with frictionised fabric. Frictionised... Is that a word?
There are so many of them as well, all lined up, one after the other. Crypts, not words. And everytime she opens a door, prompting me to, once again, start slightly shaking in anticipation, once again, there's nothing but blackness inside and, once again, we move onto the next building. It's actually beginning to get a bit disappointing and I can see her in her eyes that she's not having as much fun as she was.
Gently, we move around to another door, and she grips the latch, careful not to make a sound. I, as always, stand off to the side a little, waiting unshiftingly beside her, for her. It creaks open slowly, after years of sitting unmoved and unoiled, swinging into the black room.
We wait.
And wait.
Still waiting.
"Nothing." She admits to me quietly, careful no one else heard. "God." She sighs, and starts moving again. I gently grin. Only Buffy could get pissed off because there were no monsters around.
Or not.
In a shadow of the voice I associate with Buffy Summers, I hear her say it.
"Mom?"
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It's hideous. Her hair is a tangled mess of soil and moss, barely resembling the perm I had got used to seeing it in. It's stuck thin and rigidly out of her skull and the mud has made it clump together in places.
"Mom?" She repeats.
Her skin's dirty and has leathery appearance to it, stained from the endeavor she must have gone to to get out from under 6 foot of packed in soil. No dogs dug up Mrs. Summers. Mrs. Summers dug up Mrs. Summers.
"Mom?" A third time.
But the only thing I can see, excluding the patches of decomposed skin, excluding the torn and withered burial clothes, excluding the bent and broken form she stands in, the hunch, one leg turned slightly in, one shoulder hanging down, is her eyes.
They are completely white. No irises. No pupils. No life. Nothing. Just white.
"MOM!?" My head jerks to Buffy. Her face has changed colour. I had imagined it to be a pale colour but it isn't.
She's bright red and panting heavily.
"MOMMY!?" She cries. "LISTEN TO ME! LISTEN!" She's screaming at her mother, physically leaning into her face, shouting, trying to get a reaction. Any reaction. She grabs Joyce's right shoulder and vigourously shakes it, moving her whole body. Mrs. Summers just stands there. The way she's stood, I think she's looking behind me, through me. I don't think she can see anything. Or feel much.
She can't feel Buffy's shortcut fingernails as they rake down the tattered white sleeves covering her arms. Can't see how desperately the slayer is trying to provoke a movement. Can't hear how drilling the sobs are wracking her little girl's body.
She's completely broken. Her knees give way and she sinks to her mother's ankles, a crying, hopeless mass of pain.
I want to touch her but I'm frightened. I don't know what of. Hysteria is a volatile thing. You knever know what to do for the best. You think that you should say something, but they may not hear you. You think that maybe you should reach for them, but fear they'll react badly, turn on you. But she can't seem to be able to move. She's just laid there, hugging her dead mother's legs, screaming for her to come home. Screaming that she's sorry, that she never meant it to be this way. That's she's alive really. I told her so.
Suddenly I wonder if I am that morsel of salvation she needed.
"Come home!! Please!" She shreiks up to white eyes and rotting flesh. And her head hangs low into the skirt next to her cheeks. "Please." She begs through tears.
And I realise that I haven't moved. Can I? Can I really move? Should I? Maybe if I just left... I could find Giles. He could just get rid of me.
"Please don't leave me." Immediately I drop to the floor and wrap her in my arms. I don't care if she's talking to me or not.
I can't leave her. I just can't. Not like this.
"Buffy." I say quietly into her waiting for a response I know I won't get. "Buffy." Trying to touch her somewhere inside. Somewhere that hasn't been touched in a long time. "Buffy we have to go. It's not safe." Trying to appeal to the protector in her. "Please Buffy," I beg slowly, "we can't stay here. You can't stay like this." I'm still getting no answer.
Looking back up at Joyce I wonder how in hell I'm not curled up with Buffy. Mrs. Summers was not my mother, but she was my friend. She never turned me away.
Please, Buffy, get up. "Please, Buffy, get up."
Nothing. She is still sobbing. Still rambling between tears.
Okay, resolve. Magic magic. Please, Goddess, let this work.
Using every ounce of physical, mental and magical strength I own, I focus on Buffy, and pull at her with the arms I had covered her with earlier. I can feel a shift. She doesn't want to move but she's exhausted. She can't hold out much longer. Again, I tug at her body from where my arms are under hers, trying to drag her away from this corpse. She's fighting me and it hurts. It hurts that I'm fighting my best friend. It hurts so much it burns. But the fire stems in the fact that she has no idea what to do. As long as I have known Buffy, and I cannot see this being any different, she is a control freak and will go to any measure to stay in it. And when she loses it, she doesn't know how to deal. Until now, I never understood just how significant that was.
Finally I get a bigger shift and her arms have beed dislodged.
"No! NO! Let me GO! Mom!" She's screaming again. She sounds like a child. Anyone would think I was killing her. She's still reaching out for her, trying to hold on.
"Buffy!" She continues reaching for Mrs. Summers body. "Buffy look at me!" Her arms droop as all of her hope dies, but still she looks to the body. "Now!" Her head jerks to mine and I let my own hang low for a second, bracing myself for the expresison to come. Bracing myself for her eyes. Anger, pain, fire. Whatever. I can take it. The last thing Buffy needs if for me to faulter. To cry. So I look up.
And I cry. Because she has never looked so beautiful. Glinting fervently at me, her tears run from her eyes and down her cheek relentlessly, flashing in the silver of the moon. Her hair has barely changed, remaining in the plaits she had been donning since my arrival, but a few panicked strands had strayed from the tie, and wavered nervously in the night wind. I gently tuck them behind her ear and wipe away a tear hopelessly, knowing that it will be replaced by another instantaneously.
I told her. "That is not your Mother." She wimpers at me, and I cry more. "She's dead." The delicate creases of pain in her forehead expand as her face contorts into a picture of pure sadness. She is so beautiful. Something catches my eye in the distance. What is that? A cat. It was pretty fast. Maybe I should check it out. Could be so--
"I know." She says finally, voice high and riddled with guilt. Immediately my attention falls to her. "And it's my fault."
"Buffy, you can't save everyone. It is not your fault."
She snorts before crying again and I realise that there is more to this than I had ever suspected. Kissing her forehead and wiping her cheeks I take her in my arms.
"Come with me. Tell me a story."
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And she's told me everything. The girl. Cleveland. Everything. Her Mom. What happened.
Everything.
"Will?" Her voice is so small, so low, so quiet.
"Yeah?" I smile over at her at she sits opposite me on the dirty yellow quilt of a double bed in a one-room, one-bathroom, motel hotspot.
"Please stay with me. Don't go." I know I can't promise anything. I could be zapped out of here at any moment if Giles figures out what happened. Or if Anya told anyone.
I hazard a glance at her and she catches and searches my eyes, silently asking to be held. Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and pray that the torture to come won't be too severe. I lean back against the raised pillows, lift my left arm and she huddles against me, wrapping me tightly in her grip. Oh Goddess.
Looking down at my knees, I softly tangle my fingers in her hair, trying at best to soothe the broken wonder on my lap. Her breathing slows and I feel my own relax in time. The arms enveloping me are warm beyond belief and I can feel the heat of them digging into my skin, creeping into my blood stream.
Moving from this position is going to be the hardest decision I will ever make.
No question.