Transference
By iridescentZEN
Disclaimers: The characters are not mine.
Rack feels death.
He could always feel it. Felt it the day his daddy died of a heart attack. Could feel that tingle go right up his arm and explode his heart. Boom. Rack watched his father drain away before his eyes, the bastard glaring at him right up until his eyes glazed over.
They never did get along.
Probably had a lot to do with fists and belts, but Rack's not one who lives in the past.
He lives in the future.
He felt it in his mother. Her thin lips puckered around a cigarette. He became the smoke she was sucking in, rolling around in her lungs. The chemicals that blackened them a shade more each time. The feel of cancer eating away at her insides, one tiny bite at a time. Like an ant bite. Only it takes a while to realize that a single ant is part of a colony. That together they can swarm and eat you alive.
He'd say, "Mama, you shouldn't smoke those."
She'd roll her eyes and say, "Shut up, boy."
So, he did. Let it eat at her. Watched Death's slow but steady work of art. It took years. When she'd light up a cigarette he would shudder, because he knew what was coming, what he'd be feeling. It was horrible. That feeling so deep, and so dark that soon he became it; knew nothing else.
When his mother lay on her deathbed, he shook his head. "Told you not to smoke those."
She wheezed, and gasped, working up just enough breath to say one last time, "Shut up."
In the end, he realized that was exactly what she wanted. That puffing two packs a day was getting her closer and closer to what she yearned for. The nothing. Mama always resented that he tried to take it from her, tried to make her stay in this Hell on Earth.
Some people use other means to kill themselves. Mama's cigarette acted as her gun and every time she lit one up she shot herself in the head.
He gets that now. There simply is no changing some people. There are always the ones who want to bow out early. He considers them the weak ones.
Rack always gets the digit, the year they are going to die with the cause. It comes to him in a flash, instantaneous and unavoidable when flesh meets flesh. Sometimes if the person's energy is particularly strong there no need for any contact at all.
The magic helps. He developed it early on. Helped that he had no friends and that he used it as a tool to bend the world to his will. He could have made his mother forget she was a smoker, but he didn't care enough to try.
Only way he can bear to live with his power is to feed off of it. He can live with these precognitive skills that he didn't ask for and doesn't want. He can shake a man's hand and feel heart disease and laugh it off. Fuck a woman and see a wrecked car and smile; tell her she tastes delicious and hey she might want to watch out for that telephone pole.
All the little boys and girls have expiration dates stamped on their foreheads, and he's the only one who can see it.
It's part of the reason why he lives like he does. A parasitic warlock, feeding off of magic, easing his own pain and theirs. The bond lasting for days, sometimes months, and they sure do make beautiful demon babies. He doesn't lie to himself. He likes the way they beg for more, too. Likes that they need him like the air they breathe.
It eases his thought process. Helps numb the wound. It helps fade the chalk lines around their bodies. Splattered blood across their faces. The bullet holes shadowing their flesh. Disease eating at their insides, gnawing on their bones.
There's something different about her. He knows the age and the way she's going before he goes through the door. 27. Vampire.
It's the power that mystifies him. There's so much of it packed into her tiny frame that he thinks it can't possibly be containing it all. It overrides all the magic in his den, including his own. It has been a long time since he's been able to find someone powerful enough to give him a real high. That's what his forays into the dark arts have always been motivated by. She knows what he wants too, even if she plays it like shes naive.
Not computer help. Not money. She knows what he wants, and she knows she's going to give it to him, because he can feel her need pulsating around them.
Rack gives her just enough juice to get her defenses down, and catches a flash of how she's going. Dark haired, dark eyed vampire with revenge on his mind. He gives Amy enough magic to send a newbie into an overdose, teleporting her out of there at the same time. Girl makes a demon enemy in a few years. It won't be pretty for her.
Rack and his Strawberry. All alone.
There is darkness within her, a darkness he recognizes. That is something he craves, something he's attracted to.
It's the only thing he understands.
She's not new to the dark mojo. Hazel eyes have read archaic spells born on the tongues of demons; her mouth has uttered words older than time. Her magic has saved people, has given a vampire a soul. She has defended the Earth against a Hell God. She's risen dead flesh and breathed new life into it.
It might not seem worth it in a few months.
For hours they are under one another spell. A constant give and take that goes from metaphysical to physical, and he's never quite felt this way before. Like he's with an equal. Like he has known her forever. It is when he's within her, searching for release, that he sees his own expiration date.
Age 38 by the hand of Willow, and he lets out a chuckle, because he can't think of a better way to go.
He will ride that wave just like he's riding this one.
Rack won't see her again until it is time, so he kisses her lightly on the forehead. He helps her get her clothes because they are both still a little wired. She's tugging on her shirt, her eyes wide and black, her balance unstable.
His own eyes are swirling silver, and he knows that when she looks at him she sees herself.
Their fates are entwined that way.
"See you soon," he says, teleporting her out of his den.
Months go by, and he doesn't think about her. Doesn't feel her magic in the air because she has stopped doing it to win back the love of her woman. He thinks it's a waste, but he knows it won't always be that way.
Rack serves his customers with the same lack of compassion he always has, and waits for her.
Waits for her some more.
Patient ... like the smoke that swirled in his mothers lungs.
He's sitting in his den after nearly sucking the energy of his last customer dry when he feels it.
A throbbing in his veins.
He feels death.
There is thunder rolling in his heart, in his brain.
Pure fury and it's her.
It's no surprise when she's at his door.
Rack says truthfully, "Hey, babe. I've been waiting for you."
The last few minutes of his life are a blur as he feels her hand on his chest. "Tell me Strawberry, what is it that you want?"
And he waits for those precious words, "I just want to take a little tour."
There is burning. His blood is boiling, cooking him from the inside out. Only he can't feel anything. Just her hand, a torch on his chest. He sees her face with eyes so black they are fathomless, and for the first time he can't read the emotion, can't read what it is she needs.
There is something he wants to do. He would like to warn her but he can't find the words. Can't seem to get his lips able to function again. Can't seem to get enough power to tell her telepathically. Sucking up his power is sucking up his essence.
In other words, he's leaving her a little gift. Staining her with his impurity.
Soon she's going to know.
Going to know how everyone on this Earth that she shares space with will die, when they will die.
It's going to hurt, and she will be desperate for her own end. More desperate than she is now.
Rack wants to warn her, but it's getting dark.
Even though she has lit a fire in him it casts its light on nothing.
He wonders if the stain will stick when she's turned into a vampire.
Embers smoke and burn out. Little orange specks and all he can taste is ash.
She kisses him lightly on the forehead, and he wishes that he could feel it. Wishes that he could interpret the coldness of her gaze.
The flames die down and all that remains of him is afterglow.
It's there, mixed in with the tingling in her hand, in her arm, that shoots straight up to her brain. It's downloading into her system even as she sucks the life right out of him. Rack's lips are moving like he wants to tell her something but he can't get the words out, and she gives him a cold smile to show that she really could care less what he has to say. He's nothing to her. It's his power that she wants. It's his power that she's getting.
What she takes from him, she becomes.
Watches the life flicker out in his eyes, watches as he leaves her and thinks he's lucky because he's done.
It will be nice when she's done, and she can rest.
Willow's not an idiot. She knows when she's done she won't end up where Tara is. There is no little comfy Heaven dimension for someone like her. Someone who plays with people's brains and rips them out of Heaven.
In the middle of her unholy rage she feels it. She feels death.
She whips her head around with a confused look at Dawn because Willow's mind is telling her 21 and there will be no apparent cause, because the monks simply want Dawn back. They need to pour that energy into a new mold.
Willow's talking, while she takes them to the Magic Box, but she's not even listening to her own words, because it's Buffy she's reading now. Age 46. She wants to go out like a warrior, but in the end it's just a small little lump in her breast that will take her out. Willow can feel it in her own, hard cancerous tissue that Buffy will know is there, but will never get taken care of.
Because she's the Slayer. They don't die of breast cancer.
Willow is so angry that she's not really registering this information. Figures it's just part of the power package and it won't matter anyway, because when this kamikaze mission blows out, she won't be here and screw them anyway.
Touches Anya and gets a flash of next year. A vicious looking sword and Willow can feel the pain in her back, through her chest, the heat and the rip of flesh separating. It doesn't stop her from throwing the demon into the wall.
Willow's busy. No time to process or analyze.
No time to wonder about these insights.
Fighting Giles, and there's not a moment to spare a thought that he's going comfortably at 92 years of age and in his sleep. She causes him more pain then, because she knows whatever she does to him isn't going to kill him, knows she's being tricked and manipulated, but she feels like a marionette anyway. Has felt like one her entire life. Never in control and she knows someone's pulling her strings, making her dance.
Up on Kingman's Bluff, Willow can feel it in Xander from where he's standing. 32 years of age. When the cause comes up she falls into his arms and cries because he of all people deserves to go peacefully. He's going to die saving Buffy; she thinks he wants to go that way, but it doesn't make the arrow in his gut hurt any less. That numbing pain and the slow ebb of life and she's sobbing because it isn't fair, it won't be fair.
Crying about the future in the present because she's already there.
The tears won't end. She cries for Tara. For herself. For Xander and Anya. She cries for Dawn, who will not so much die as simply fade away like she never existed, because she never really did. She cries for Buffy, whose perpetual denial will kill her.
Willow will salt the Earth with her tears, because she cries for them all. The living beings who will be snuffed out as easily as a candle's flame. The people with the expiration dates. The babies being born, the same souls coming back to try to figure things out one more time before nature robs them of their breath again.
Willow feels heart attacks, aneurysms, aids. The heavy depression weighing down all the people with blood-tinged razor blades, and cocked guns and can feel their cut flesh; she can feel the cold metal wrapped with their warm lips. Plugs are being pulled, chests stop rising and eyes glaze over.
There is too much all around her, and she only wants it to stop.
In England, Willow can rest comfortably in Giles' presence. In his arms. He's one of "them." The naturals, one lucky enough to get a peaceful end.
It's quiet out here in the woods, in the meadow. She listens to the birds, watches horses and does her best to tune out how all the members of the coven are going to die. She's thought about the warnings she can offer her friends when she goes home. Tell Buffy to get a mammogram. Would that even change anything? If she tells Xander, will the vision and date simply change to something else? If Buffy's mammogram warns her in time, will it change to a tumor in her brain? A trip down the stairs? A knife in the gut?
She's not entirely sure a warning to Anya wouldn't simply kill her sooner. Make her paranoid and unstable. Sadly, there is not a thing she can warn Dawn about. There's no way to warn her that one day she's going to be doing dishes when she'll fall to the floor and never get back up.
When Giles tells her about controlling her powers, she wants to laugh, because he doesn't know the half of it. Doesn't understand the true punishment she's received.
Sometimes she finds herself thinking of Rack. She knows this curse came from him. She doesn't think he did it on purpose; it's just a side-effect from draining his life force and absorbing it into her own. She wonders if he had it all his life.
And isn't it funny how Buffy always thought death was her gift?
She finds Spike in Sunnydale High's basement. Hardly close to him at all and she sees blinding sunlight in his eyes and only feels peace.
There are dozens of potentials. Dozens of girls, and of course, Andrew. She sees the end for them all. One's going to kill herself soon. One's already dead, but if she gives that away she'll have to explain other things. Best to let that run its course naturally. The First can't do anything but taunt them and she's tried the warning thing, but they always die anyway.
She's shared a drink with Kennedy and felt the girl unable to breathe. Trying desperately to draw breath into lungs only flooded with blood, but Willow can still smile. Later she can kiss those lips, very much alive, and forget that within years they will be cold and blue.
She doesn't bother remembering the numbers anymore.
A hug from Fred and Willow smiles and says hello, thinking '56' and 'stroke' while continuing with conversation. She gets vibes from Conner but can't read him at all and she frowns at Wesley because he's muddled, like the powers that be haven't planned it yet.
A tentative conversation with Faith brings up age 74, kidney failure. Shell be in a coma when she goes. Willows glad that Faith will have a long life. It's been a while since she's felt anyone who would make it over 60.
When she hugs Angel she sees only the yellow glow of an immortal. Instead of his death, she sees her own. Age 27, Angelus' fangs buried in her neck. Feels the pull as he draws her blood out and can hear her scream echoing in her own ears. She wants to scowl at him and say, "Jerk!" She wants to grab a piece of wood and turn him to dust, to a fine grain, but she knows if she does that it will just change to something else.
Time in England taught her that she can't just tinker with the universe because she doesn't like the world around her, because she wants to change it to fit her vision of how it should be.
Like everyone else on Earth from the moment she inhaled her first breath came the knowledge that one day she will take her last.
So as she hugs Angel, she stands taller to whisper in his ear, "When it happens, I won't blame you."
A vampire now, Willow fully expected the curse to go away, to no longer see the year and the cause of death. She hoped that it would transfer to Angelus when he killed her. Leave him with it, because he's the sort of demon who would enjoy it. Tormenting people with precise knowledge of how they were going and when.
Vampires suck your blood, not your essence. It's still trapped within, sharing traits with a demon.
Willow still has the power, but it's different now. When she shares energy or shakes a hand she sees only the present, the cause of death - herself.
End