Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
~*~
When Buffy left the cemetery, she thought she heard the roar of distant thunder. But there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Buffy would've liked a storm. It would've washed off all the earth that still clung to her from climbing out of her grave. But, as it was, the thunder was just a noise, dry, sterile, meaningless. It wasn't even thunder, then, not without lightning.
As Buffy got closer to the roaring sound, she realised that it wasn't thunder but merely some motorbikes. Demons on motorbikes. They dismounted when they saw Buffy. They spoke to her, but Buffy wasn't listening. She didn't reply to their threats.
She just killed them. It wasn't a violent action, there was no malice behind it. Buffy didn't care that they outnumbered her, or that she had no weapon. It was just a chore. Her job.
So Buffy didn't hear their threats, their curses, or, later, their pleas. She heard the words, right enough, but there was no point in paying them any attention. They were destroying her home town. It was her job to stop them from doing that. So she did.
It didn't take Buffy very long. She didn't fight with balanced fighting style she had used to use, with equal weighting on defence and offense. Nor the careless rage of the berserker, always moving forward. Even outnumbered, the demons couldn't beat someone who simply didn't care whether she won or not.
Buffy even killed the one who surrendered and put down his weapons. Mercy was pointless.
Buffy would've liked to have taken a motorbike, but she couldn't drive. So she just walked on, the blood of the demons she had killed drying on her hands.
Buffy killed several other groups of demons before coming to the place where the thunder of motorbikes was coming from.
There were around twenty demons, cheering as four of their comrades on motorbikes wheeled around, taunting someone with chains, whipping them out to lash viciously at the person.
Buffy.
Except that it wasn't, because she was Buffy. She might not be the same Buffy that she had been, but she was still Buffy. So the person the demons were whipping with chains couldn't possibly be her.
The most reasonable course of action would've been for Buffy to run away. There were too many demons for her to deal with.
And that was probably what Buffy would've done, had she been afraid of dying. But she wasn't. These demons needed to die, and she would kill them. The fact that she might die while doing so was irrelevant.
Buffy crashed into the group with a looted sword in either hand. Half a dozen were dead before they even realised what had happened.
Some panicked, which was useful. They hadn't expected someone to attack them in that way. They had been secure in the knowledge of their strength in numbers. They had been complacent, and now they were afraid.
Some ran. Some tried to defend themselves, and died. Some banded together and attacked Buffy from various angles. They died too. Not because Buffy was more skilled than them. But because, when they cut her, she didn't care. She didn't stop, didn't slow down, as the swords slashed her. She only bothered to block the death thrusts, because those would interrupt her work. And Buffy only bothered to give death thrusts, because crippling them would be pointless.
Then Buffy stood amongst a group of corpses, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Some were serious, but Buffy didn't care. There were still the demons on motorbikes to deal with.
One drove closer, but not within reach of her swords. They'd seen her use them, and they were afraid. He lashed out with his chain, and Buffy caught it. Two of her fingers broke audibly, but she held on, ignoring the pain. She pulled, and the demon was yanked from his motorbike. A colleague of his, driving too fast, ran him over.
Buffy whirled the chain, aiming it at the demons. Unpractised with such a weapon, she missed. She ignored the taunts, ignored the chains that snapped out at her (they missed too) and tried again.
She hit one. He died. One of the demons hit her leg, which snapped. Buffy buckled, but got up again. She had always thought that you couldn't walk on a broken leg. Apparently that was untrue. It hurt, but that was irrelevant.
The demons, seeing her still standing, still fighting, even after everything, lost their nerve and drove away. Buffy didn't care. She knew they wouldn't come back.
Buffy hobbled towards the prone form of... herself. Her robot self, she saw as she drew closer. It was even more damaged than she was.
Buffy didn't know if the Buffybot felt pain. She assumed it didn't. She did know that it had emotions, though, or at least simulated ones.
Had Buffy been her old self, she would've appreciated the irony. One Buffy, broken, battered and bleeding, in pain but not caring. And another Buffy, also broken, battered and bleeding (if only battery fluid), caring but not in pain. As it was, Buffy couldn't understand the irony of the situation.
All she knew was that she had done her job. The demon threat had ended. Oh, there might be a few stragglers, but the majority were dead (like she was), the threat with them.
Buffy didn't feel any satisfaction from this. Not even the pleasure she always felt from Slaying something, which, after Faith, she had always been just a little guilty about. She felt hollow.
The hollow men appeared. Perhaps they'd always been there, and Buffy simply hadn't noticed.
"Do you see now, child? Your life is empty, meaningless, and sterile. You have no place here. Let us show you the way back." One whispered.
Buffy didn't answer. She was armed now. The hollow men may not have actively tried to harm her, but they wanted her dead, and in her book that made them things to be killed.
Buffy thrust for a head with a sword. The blow connected, although Buffy didn't feel any resistance. She supposed that there wasn't enough substance for her blow to connect with.
The hollow men shifted slightly where they stood. Buffy noticed that they all leaned on each other, as though each was incapable of supporting their own weight. "You cannot kill us. We are dead." One whispered.
"Like you." Another whispered.
Buffy ignored them. She might've carried out her duty for today, but there would be other days. She would fight and carry on fighting until her body died.
She touched the Buffybot, which awakened. Buffy assumed that it had shut down when the demons had overwhelmed it. No, her. Buffybot was at least as human as Buffy herself was, if not more so. Buffybot made no comment upon seeing Buffy.
Together, they limped back to their house. The hollow men were gone, although several pieces of straw floated on the wind.
Sometime later, they stood outside it.
Except that Buffy knew that this wasn't her house. Not really. She liked her house. She liked returning to it after a night of Slaying. But now, looking at it, she felt nothing. There was no sense that it was hers. That she had ever liked it, loved it, lived in it.
For the first time, Buffy began to think that she just might give in, go with the hollow men.
The door burst open. Dawn and Spike erupted through it. Dawn said "Buffy?", voice thick with an emotion that Buffy couldn't identify, couldn't empathize with, and couldn't even sympathize for.
Spike said nothing. He merely sat down as though his legs had been cut from under him, and he cried silently, tears streaming down his cheeks.