A/N: This is my last BtVS fic ::sob::. I've decided to bow out with the show and start concentrating on original fic. Thank you beyond words to everyone in the Buffyverse for your support over the past two years. This fandom has been such a tremendous part of my life; it's so sad saying goodbye. Keep on writing :O)
Disclaimer: All belong to Joss and Co.
Feedback: Please. Review or indiechick5@aol.com.
Darkness. Flames. Ashes. Bodies. Blood.
Those things and almost nothing more were left of Sunnydale, California. The town that had seemed as immortal as some of its Children had finally met its demise, eaten alive by the very force that gave it its prowess.
The Hellmouth did not devour from beneath like it promised. It opened up and let its teeth loose, its ivory army of chomping, foaming soldiers spilling onto the streets, and sat back and watched as life was ground and ingested from every food group in town. Humans, vampires, demons, plants, animals, no type of organic creature was spared from its ravenous appetite.
Only a few, an unfortunate few, managed to keep themselves off the menu. They were scattered throughout the wreckage, bloody, broken, and wondering what the hell happened. They had survived; most of them by hiding, a few by sheer luck, a few by playing dead, and a *very* few despite their efforts to fight the inevitable. The damned noble and brave.
The damned.
A blond vampire wandered dazedly through the chewed-up-and-spit-out leftovers of the town. He was filthy and gashed, bare-chested except for a torn duster draped haphazardly over his shoulders, walking on glass and death in an aimless stride. His nightfire eyes were glazed, red-rimmed, unfocused, his human mask taut and exhausted. He wore an ambiguous expression of shock. The things he'd seen in the past twenty-four hours were things that not even his dozen decades of mayhem and carnage had prepared him for.
The battle had been lost in a matter of hours; the months of relentless training and tiresome research and long-winded motivational speeches had amounted to nothing. The girls were picked off like weeds in hand-to-hand combat, torn apart carelessly, vengefully. They had been nameless to the vampire, but the incredible brutality with which they were destroyed hurt his soul to think about.
The witch had died first, after the girls. Majickless, bleeding, held in the arms of the boy who'd been with her since childhood, she gasped her last breath, whispering, "I can hear her singing to me now." A simple knife was her ironic end, skewered in her stomach. The vampire had watched her power drain away, seen the life leave her body in gales of red. The light faded from her eyes so quickly it hurt him.
The boy, the Watcher, and the principal were the next to go, all in one fell swoop. They'd led a band of the Hellmouth's monsters into what was left of the school, hoping to deflect their fatal attention from the Slayer. The three men had the upper hand in the battle until the end, when the floor gave way and they fell down, down, past the basement, past the ground, into the toothless, gaping jaws of the Mouth itself, lost forever in God-knows-where. The Watcher and the principal fell fighting, screaming, but not the other one. He knew his card had been played and wanted his last moments quiet, dignified, brave; a *man's* death to cap off a life lived by a boy.
The Slayer and the Key died last, toward the end of their efforts. It was the second time the vampire had seen the Chosen One die for her sister, though this time her sacrifice was in vain. An Akahs demon snapped her neck while she was fighting it away from the younger girl; he tossed her body aside like it was a broken wishbone. The vampire entered the scene just in time to see the Akahs crack the Key's skull open and throw her in a heap with her sister.
In a fit of white-hot rage and grief, the vampire had hurled himself upon the demon, growling and animalistic, blindly ripping into it until blood and filth covered them both. There was barely a piece of the Akahs left intact when he was through. He had desecrated it.
The vampire took the bodies of the Slayer and her sister and brought them to a graveyard; there was no way in hell he was going to allow them to stay in the open battlefield where any number of evil beings could come and claim them as some kind of perverse treasure. Most of the gray tombstones had been cracked and knocked over, but this was familiar territory. He carried them to where their mother was buried and laid them out over the scorched grass on top of her grave, positioning them so they were holding each other. They looked up at him through unseeing eyes, their lovely faces cut and bruised; he felt sick as he covered them with dry brush and flicked a match into the pile. He watched it ignite, then rose to his feet and took off running before the sickening scent of burning flesh could reach his nostrils.
The vampire continued listlessly through the debris, numb and blurry. He saw nothing, felt nothing, thought nothing as he walked. He didn't know where he was going, just let his body move where it willed. It took too much effort to think, and there was too much danger in letting any thoughts in. All he wanted was to curl up in a warm patch of sunlight or fall onto a nice piece of pointed wood. "Ashes to ashes," he muttered.
Time passed. It could have been seconds, minutes, hours, he had no idea. But it passed, and that's all that mattered. It put more distance between himself and the events of the previous day.
He was still walking when a noise caught his attention-- the first thing to distract him out of his hazy horror since the battle. It was barely perceptible, barely a whisper from the phantom silence, but it was there. Someone was saying his name.
So he stopped. Stood still. Listened.
It came again, from behind him, this time with a hint of shifting debris. He would have been alarmed if the inflections of the voice hadn't been so weak and so familiar. He turned around and listened again.
"Spike…"
A few feet to his left, more debris shifted. He forced his eyes to focus on the source of the noise, peering through the unyielding darkness until he made out a human form laying face-up on the ground.
It was the demon girl.
"Anya," he said.
He half-floated to where she lay, dropping to his knees next to her as his numbness gave way to a bittersweet cocktail of panic and relief. In the heat of the battle he'd lost track of her; in the aftershock she'd been wiped from his mind. Now he reveled and recoiled in her familiar face.
"Spike," she whispered again, barely moving her lovely blood-stained mouth. "It's over, isn't it." It was not a question.
He nodded. His hand gently brushed her matted hair away from her half-closed eyes. "There's no one left."
She swallowed hard. "No one?"
"'Cept you and me, sweetheart."
She was silent a moment. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" he asked her.
"I'm going to die soon," she said. "I'm sorry that I'm going to leave you alone."
He was still for a second, dimly shocked. He looked down at her body, saw her limbs were bent at odd angles and her clothes were soaked crimson. "God, Anya," he whispered. "Are you in a lot of pain?"
She weakly shook her head. "I barely feel anything at all."
He gave an involuntary nod. The life was steadily draining from her, he could feel it; he groped for something soothing to say. "Better that way, luv."
She took a rasping breath before agreeing, "I suppose so."
They said nothing for a languid while, just stayed motionless beneath the hungry stars, her head cradled in his lap, one hand curled in his. He stroked her face with his palm, the same way he did that night in the shop, calmingly, tenderly, reverently, though this time without the seduction. Her eyes were locked on his, finding comfort there once again.
"It's odd," she said softly, breaking the silence. "I spent a thousand years… a thousand years causing death. And this is my first time experiencing it… firsthand."
He tried to ignore her labored speech pattern. "It's not so bad," he replied. "Things just slide away, fade without a fight. Dying hurts. Death is what numbs the pain."
She nodded, flinching a little at the effort. "So it seems." She closed her eyes. "You know… what else is odd?"
"Hmm?" he asked, his thumb tracing her temple. The pulse there was weakening.
"This," she said. "Us."
He was about to ask for clarification when she went on.
"I've known you… for four years," she said. "You've had so many roles… in my life… in that short time. Enemy… friend… annoyance… confidante… lover… ally." She smiled a little. "For some reason… I'm not surprised that I'm dying… in *your* arms."
He smiled back at her. "Seems we've always showed up for each other at the right time, huh?"
"Yes." She gave his hand the strongest squeeze she could muster. "Thank you, Spike… for all of it. It's always been… comforting… knowing you understood me. You were the only one."
He felt tears well up behind his eyes despite himself. A sudden urge to cling to the demon girl jolted him, but he resisted it, knowing her time was approaching a rapid end. She was so beautiful here in her placid acceptance, in her mortal grace. So he leaned down, pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, then one onto her bruised lips. "It was my pleasure," he whispered.
She started to say something else to him, then stopped and gritted her teeth. A shudder ran violently through her body.
"Anya…?"
"It's close," she gasped. "The dark is… closing in… oh, God..."
He bit back a grieving sob. "It's okay, luv. It's all right. I'm here."
The shuddering continued for a few moments, racking her body with more and more force. Her breath came in short, dry bursts as her lungs struggled to fill themselves with air. Her face was contorted in pain, eyes clenched shut, her hand gripping the vampire's with an unreal strength.
Then she fell still.
She took one long, even breath, and opened her eyes. "I'm sorry," she told him, gaze glistening. "Please don't be lonely."
He shook his head and said, "It's not your fault, luv."
But she didn't hear him. She was gone.
And when the sun rose, he was gone, too, silken ashes covering her body in a death shroud.
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
END