Title: To Carthage They Came (Chapter 1)
Author: Chris
Rating: PG-13
Summary: About 6 weeks post-Prologue. Willow's in England, Buffy's at her new job, and Dawn's on a mission for Anya. Spike, for the moment, is still somewhere in Africa.
A/N: The pace is moving much more slowly than I'd planned. Good thing I didn't say how many chapters :-) In case you missed it, the Prologue is at http://www.geocities.com/cxyzjacobs/btvsfic/chrisindex.html
Feedback: Chocolate is good, feedback is better. Chocolate + feedback is heaven.
-- -- -- -- -- --
Tendrils of smoke rise from yellow-orange flames that lick the still night air. The lessons are always at night. The old ones need the power of the fire and the clarity of the night for their teaching. Lucid moments do not last, and the protections they lay make it harder for him to fight free to the surface. But there is no help for it. He must live, and he must learn.
The night feels wild, but Spike is oblivious. He stares at the flames from beneath the hood and mutters to the voices in his head. A hyena howls at the moon, drawing his attention. He looks up, a startled bird with wide, innocent blue eyes, catching a star as it falls into the darkness. His own howl accompanies its disappearance, and he stands to stare at the fires. Fists ball up in rage, and the innocence in his aspect shifts.
***
"You will burn." Daddy dearest knew, even then.
Strength is, must be, cold and brutal. There is no place in this world for poetry.
He sees the book in the fire, its pages sending out black smoke, thick and sour. His life, his liberty, up in flames.
The church will have him.
He hears his mother cry.
They bury him with a cross.
***
The boy pulls Spike's head into his lap when he collapses and begins to weep. He slips the kalimba into the vampire's pocket with the other supplies. The music will not soothe tonight, but he will need it when the time comes.
-- -- -- -- -- --
Hiding from the cold wind under the wings of a weeping oak, Willow watches the graying landscape. Even though the village has a milder summer season than much of England, today is a miserable day. The sharp, spitting rain suits her mood perfectly. Off in the distance, she can see the town, with its quaint pubs and thatch-roofed cottages. Quiet, even in tourist season, and just the place for a coven of great power to congregate.
The edges of her mouth tilt crookedly as her hand reaches down to pull absently at the green grass beneath her. Leave it to Giles to bring her to a place even more steeped in power than a Hellmouth.
She leans back on the tree and closes her eyes against the shooting pain that follows any attempt to concentrate. In the weeks she's been here, she has learned much. But only when she is distant from people, the sounds and smells of life that surround their bodies, can she locate even the smallest measure of the woman she was.
Focus, they say. You have to re-learn, as if you have never touched power. She'd thought at first that the magic was gone, that she'd 'burnt out' her source. That was a dream, wishful thinking. A prayer.
The second they removed the shield, she felt it flooding through her veins, that fierce, throbbing sensation that tickled at her fingertips and danced behind her eyes. The agony that once gripped her only in the night blazes through her body, until she drops to her knees on the dirt floor of the cottage. She wanted to beg, to tear her hair and scream for relief from the power that throbbed in her soul. But the raging emotions were caged in her mind. She lacked the capacity to express them.
It should be as simple as a child's game to her. But it isn't. Nothing is easy any more. For every inch of control she gains, there is a mountain of pain to fight through. She feels it building now -- the little boy in his mother's kitchen, crying for another cookie. The old man, stubbing his toe on the tile as he steps precariously over the threshold into his dingy old kitchen. The wracking sobs of the fisherman's wife, upon learning of her husband's infidelity, again.
And there is the hazy, omnipresent pain. It lingers, taunting her with her loss: the old woman's grief at the passing of her husband, the sudden absence of a love that grew for 50 years. The lack is a slowly turning knife in Willow's gut, sharper and more intense than reliving the ecstasy of slick, fear-soaked skin ripping deliberately from the flesh it was meant to contain.
With an iron will, Willow pushes the images away and the bile down. She has a task to perform. Deliberately, she calls hazel eyes to mind. Not the fatherly warm brown, but the hard, cold agate of the judge.
Ahhh. She feels it. A tear is near to forming. She opens her eyes in startlement and stares intently at a small shrub.
There.
Willow rises and walks through the now streaming rain toward the greenery. A pale hand darts in and pulls out a small brown bundle. A wren, struggling to breathe. Inhaling deeply, she closes her eyes and cups the tiny bird in both hands. She doesn't need words for this. A yellow glow surrounds the tiny creature briefly. The air stands perfectly still for a moment, and the world turns over.
The bird flies, and Willow collapses in a heap, drained.
-- -- -- -- -- --
Buffy stares out the window, watching the sun set behind the new hill on the bluff. Every time she sees the rubble Willow left behind, a shiver runs through her. Such destruction, and from her best friend. The big gun.
Restive, she gets up from the desk and walks through the shabby house toward the kitchen. If her spidey senses are in tune, tonight is shaping up for quiet. No Bubbas or Billy Bobs or Juniors showing up to stake Neanderthal claims to the women and children sheltered in the complex hidden beneath the simple one-bedroom house.
For the most part, this new job working for the Sunnydale Battered Women's Shelter has been a sanity saver. The pay isn't all that much better than slinging burgers, but it comes with benefits, and not just the insurance kind. Flexible shifts have been a godsend, and, major bonus, being a security guard doesn't require a uniform or leave a nasty smell.
Buffy stops at the door that ostensibly leads to the basement and listens. She is tempted to go down, but it only reminds her of where they are, and that she can leave when most of them can't. With a little shrug of her shoulders, she moves into the kitchen.
She owes the cop who put her in touch with the rescue group more than a simple thanks for getting her out of the grease and into a position where she could use her dubious talents to their fullest. She likes this job more than any other she's tried, and there have been quite a few. Most of the time, she enjoys it more than slaying. She's always been at her best when she is helping someone, and here – so much helping is needed.
There have been some fun moments, too. It's especially satisfying to see shock furrow those wide-browed foreheads when she picks them up and throws them down the walkway. A few are dumb enough to come back for more, but most run for the hills.
The runners often have haunted eyes, shadow selves lurking behind dull pupils. They know what they've done--what they continue to do--is wrong, but are helpless to do anything about it. Sometimes, seeing the too-familiar love living behind their big words, she even feels a little sorry for them.
But, only until she remembers the women's faces. All of the women have haunted eyes. Eyes deadened by years, even decades, of survival. Eyes that tell of the lies singing in their souls, laying blame for others' evil deeds.
Buffy's thoughts drift away on a flash of blue and the hollow echo of an empty crypt. She feels a rush of anger filling her veins to wash away the sadness. These men are boys, really. That is the real problem. None of them can face up to their actions, take responsibility. Work it out like the adults their hormones make them out to be.
They run. They always run.
With a rough jerk, Buffy twists her hair back into a knot and heads for the sink.
That's the real problem with the new job. The house is located in an isolated area of woods near the bluff. When the orange glow of the afternoon begins to fade behind the trees, and the quiet of evening comes upon the house, she can't help thinking.
Thinking is always, always, of the bad.
Mindless repetition will break the endless circling of her thoughts, so she attacks the dirty dishes with a vengeance, scrubbing away memories of the men in her life as she deals with the remnants of an afternoon snack with her favorite munchkin.
A smile creeps over her face as she remembers the best twenty minutes of every day. Chocolate chip cookies with her sister. It doesn't get much more normal than that. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, getting with the normal. And she hasn't missed trash day in weeks.
Normal tasks, normal girls, normal boys, normal lives.
If she works at it, she could manage most of those. Three out of four wouldn't be bad. Buffy towels off the last dish and walks back to the desk to pick up the phone. She's determined to do better at this normal thing, and Officer Mabry is as good a place as any to start.
.
-- -- -- -- -- --
Dawn sighs and shrugs her shoulders to loosen tight muscles as she digs the shovel into the rubble once more. For two weeks running, Dawn's been sent out scavenging for relics to restock the Magic Box. She dislikes working at the temple excavation far more than working in the shop. It wasn't enough for Anya to insist on her working at the Magic Box through the spring semester. The slave-driving demon wants her entire summer, too.
With a loud expletive that Buffy would have been shocked to hear coming from her mouth, Dawn flings the shovel across the rubble pile and sits down, sucking on the third torn fingernail of the day. A small sigh escapes her lips as she stares at the mess her hands have become. She isn't going to find anything in this spot. It's riper than the trash pile on Thursdays, and deader than a door nail.
But Anya is right -- there is *something* in this wreckage. Dawn can feel it. Sometimes it comes to her in indistinct whispers. Other times, it thrums her insides as if invisible hands pluck her guts like a bass guitar. There is something with power here. Of that she is certain.
So, resent the heat and the physical labor she may, but she'll keep at it for as long as it takes to find whatever is pulling at her. If she finds what's lurking in this pile of rubble, she'll be free of Anya forever, and they will have to give her credit for being valuable in her own right.
Behind her, she hears the rumble of tires on gravel. She rolls her eyes. And there's 'Dad' now. Wiping the sweat off her forehead, Dawn picks up her tools and bags and heads for Xander's truck. Air conditioning!
As she hops into the cab, she notices a thin stream of smoke floating up from a pile off to the east. A little thrill runs through her at the thought that her task might soon be over. Mentally noting the location, she slams the door behind her with a sly grin.
Only a little more time until they'll see her for what she really is.
-- -- -- -- -- --
The world swims around him, and the shift into now shakes his bones. His head feels like it has exploded, but there is something soft, comforting him.... He bolts upright as his eyes open to find a small brown hand stroking his forehead. He remembers. The quick roll away from his caretaker is instinctive.
Still in Africa. And the goddamned soul hasn't changed a thing. Except that apparently, he's a loon in the care of a bunch of buck-toothed natives.
Time escapes him in great chunks, but he knows he's been here for weeks.
They watch the white robe flap at his ankles as he stalks away. It's his way. They know by now not to expect his cooperation. The anger that consumes him when he lives in the present is a barrier to understanding, and they leave him to do the work of recovery.
Apart from the faces of his salvation, he slams a fist against the trunk of the tall, bare tree.
He came here to get what she needed. And he can't leave until he has it. He thought it was the soul, but now he knows: it is himself. He is what he has always been. Once a child, lost and unwilling to fight for what he believed; then a man, unable to achieve his desires; at the last, for the always, a vampire, steeped in blood and decades of blind destruction, thrilling to the hunt for the sake of the chase and the glory.
A waste of space on the planet, man or monster.
A vise grips his temples, and he runs barefoot through the sand, holding onto the present with every fiber of his being. An assonant tune plays in the back of his mind. He has this chance, if he will take it.
A cool British voice hovers in his mind "Has it occurred to you that there may be a higher purpose?"
An image dances through his brain. Dawn, eyes glinting blue ice. He shivers at the malice in them.
He grinds the heel of his hand between his eyes, trying to resist the pain flooding his senses. It is too much for him, and he succumbs, alone in the desert.
-TBC-