The mist clears and it's bright again.
The sky is beautiful;
But there are girls running through bone scattered gardens crying.
The world has gone to hell.
There is nothing left to defend.
A little one, her face stretched so tight with youth that even her smiles look pinched, sprints.
Buffy runs beside her.
They find the rune traced portals Willow set for them
A place to slip through.
She looks at Emma, the little girl with brown eyes who is crying, as they stand at the edges of a bird bath and a plant pot respectively.
They have found the two doors
The rest is up to Will.
She'll send them away till the fires cool down.
Willow's disembodied voice whispers in different tongues.
Gentle flames envelope the crying child and carry her away to a new life as someone different, someone who's safe.
Buffy turns back to look at him, the man who is chasing her, and she actually smiles.
All bones and sinew covered by black leather,
It isn't god like-
-The way she holds herself-
But it's noble.
The bird bath bursts into flame and green wreathes around it.
Buffy hopes that she lands somewhere quiet.
Funny how things work out.
One breath and-
She's in a rusty car and it's speeding down an alley toward a man holding a metal pipe.
He steps aside and she sees the spikes embeded in the wall behind him
the one she's speeding towards.
Her foot hits the brake as quickly as the spikes forcibly shatter her wind shield
The fear that's supposed to snap her into a new skin, help her forget, is put on hold.
She kicks the driver door out and rolls away before the pipe is lodged down her throat.
He wants to kill her
And he is human
But there's something wrong something foreign to his eyes that isn't.
So she fights back,
jumps over the crunched car and lunges for him
If she hadn't he might have let her live
Let her be
But she still has the left over air taken by Buffy in her lungs
In her veins
And she remembers
For now she is Buffy still
And she is not afraid
Dexter is at first confused because the man who should be in the driver seat of the car is a girl
His mind races with the unpleasant new variables.
He drops the pipe.
The car halts
she tumbles out of it too small girl in a murderer's clothes
But he's thrilled when he sees the look in her eye.
She knows what he is
And she'll kill him for it.
He is almost disappointed that she won't last long
She is so small
And he's been at this far longer afterall.
The trap wasn't set for her but she moves like a person who has fought before-
No hesitation
-Killed before-
-She seems to know fighting personally-
-Surviving-
-She's survived before-
But she isn't smarter than him.
He pivots out of her way when she makes to crack him in the chest with her tiny brown fist
He could grab her hair or hit the back of her neck
But decides to let her break her hand against the brick wall first
It shatters like glass-
-The brick-
-not her hand.
And suddenly she is faster.
Was she toying before?
He is curious now.
Her arms are twisted round his neck pulling him down to her level.
"Go." she breaths hot in his ear.
Her breath is sour and desperate.
Maybe she's not a killer then.
He's struck, no, not so much struck as passively curious,
by how young she is
And how strong her fingers are.
Rita asks later about the finger shaped bruises on his collar bone and neck.
He lies.