Talking Drum | Simon woke up and for a second couldn't remember where he was or what had woken him up. As the day's events flooded back to him, he smiled into the darkness. Turning on his side, he could barely make out the clock on the mantle. He reached out and twitched the curtain, and the porch light leaked into the room enough for him to make out the time. Two-thirty. Simon held the curtain open a little longer, looking at the picture frames lining the mantle on either side of the small clock before letting go of the curtain and rolling onto his back. He drew in a deep breath, holding it in his lungs for a long moment in a wishful attempt to freeze time. He didn't want to lose this sensation, this intuition that this is what it must feel like to be home. The texture and fragrance of the house was pure female. It was Buffy. It was Dawn. Though he only knew her through the photos on the wall, it was their mother as well. This house was completion: sister, soul mate, mother... home. He was exhausted but wired. His body resonated with his surroundings. Every time he closed his eyes, his lids wouldn't obey, as if held open by invisible springs. In the dark, he could see the outlines of the frilly things in the room. Lace curtains, picture frames, a porcelain lamp. They all bore the unmistakable mark of the female energy of the dwelling's occupants. The sense of rightness and comfort soon gave way to a familiar queasiness, followed soon by an unwelcome light. Like fireflies spontaneously generating from a dimension darker than night, the purple and magenta streaks began to emerge from the void. This wasn't like any migraine he'd had. This was no waking dream. Distantly, Simon realized he was asleep. The purple-red fireflies increased in frequency and grew larger as their rhythms began to change from random energy to pulsing synchronization. The pulses began to circle and engulf him, like being trapped in a jet turbine. There was a fluttering sensation in his chest that grew to pounding, like his heart was touching the edges of the flapping fan blades. A voice whispered: "Remember." There was a distant scream and the turbine blades metamorphosed into a brilliant strobe. Light illuminated and concealed the room around him with the rhythm of a heartbeat. Flash - Darkness. flash - Darkness. flash - Darkness. The dark intervals distorted, becoming indistinct two-dimensional images before shifting again into motion. flash - |
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He was so tired of running and longed to lie down and rest, but he refused to surrender. Each time he thought he was certainly at the limits of his endurance, when his legs begged to stop, to bend and lower his shaking body to the ground, a distant light encouraged him to fight back. He forced himself to keep going. In the distance, he could see the end of the long torch-lit passage. The haze shining in his eyes mingled with the strange light flickering into the passageway... |
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He was standing in a darkened library, and there was a woman with him. She was rail-thin, raven-haired with cobra eyes. He couldn't avert his gaze from hers. They were joined eye-to-eye by invisible glass threads, but the threads shattered when the woman made a furious gesture across him with her hand. Crimson-polished talons sliced deeply into his neck. The woman retreated as the corners of her mouth moved upwards, a delighted smile. Simon's hand moved reflexively out to protect himself with such a force that his ring came off his hand, shooting through the air shattering a small figurine on the mantle and embedding shrapnel into the wall like buckshot.
Dawn had been tossing and turning, unable to find a comfortable position in which to fall asleep. She repeatedly flipped the pillow over to feel the cool relief of the other side, but her face was so flushed that it made the pillowcase feel as warm as if it had just come out of the dryer. She kicked out the sheets and blankets and flung them back, but within a matter of seconds, she was chilly again. When she pulled the coverings back over her, she was too warm, almost feverish. She felt like she had had too much caffeine, but the discomfort was somehow pleasurable. I wonder if this is how Buffy felt when she met Angel? Or Willow when she and Tara first...
flash - Simon blinked, and discovered he and Dawn were together, part of each other, seeing through the same eyes. Looking around curiously, he realized they were in the kitchen, a butcher knife in their right hand. The blade tip pierced the skin of the left arm, but curiously, there was relatively little pain after the initial incision. The sticky warmth flowed out, life draining away. A chill washed over their body. flash - It was pitch black. There was a tremendous weight on his chest, pressure on all sides of his body and firmly pressing in on his limbs, trunk, and head. There was a rough, damp and gritty substance encasing him. Gravel and tiny stones pressed on his exposed skin, a duller sensation of discomfort through the fabric covering his body. flash - Now he was clawing furiously, lying on his back, thrusting upward. Gritty chunks of soil and rock forced their way under each nail with each movement of fingers and hands. flash - Confused, he turned to find himself a phantom observer at a freshly tamped-down gravesite. The dirt mound began to jostle. Something emerged from the ground. flash - He turned and found himself outside Dawn's house, late at night. Agitated sounds emanated from one of the ground floor windows. Through the lace of the curtains, he could see two girls engaged in an emotional exchange. flash - He turned again, and was in the living room. Someone was knocking at the door. He moved into the foyer as the doorknob turned and the door gently swung open. There was a woman standing there, her expression confused, and shocked pain reflected in her eyes. There was black soil embedded in her ears and lining the rim of her nostrils, eyes, and lips. The dirt exaggerated her face's once gentle lines like overdone stage makeup for a Shakespearean horror. flash - He could see himself through a veil of deep red from the edge of the doorway. The pain was excruciating, saturating every muscle. As it passed all tolerance, the sensation ceased and he was - flash - - again looking at the woman. She firmly grabbed him on each arm just below the shoulder and he cried aloud at the painful grip. Five deep bruises appeared on his arms as her fingers dug in deeper and deeper. "How could you do this to me?" she screeched, her voice tinged with pain and betrayal. Simon couldn't take any more, and shook his head at the images and sensations unfolding in this chamber of terrors. He screamed, a shout of fury. NO! This is not my memory! flash - There was a loud ripping sound like stiff paper torn to pieces. The woman's body instantly vaporized. A thin wisp of white smoke trailed out the door, swiftly slithering across the front lawn and finally disappearing in the direction of the graveyard. The scene vanished into another flash - of absolute white. |
| Somewhere downstairs, someone screamed. Dawn sat straight up in terror, her adolescent romantic restlessness forgotten. She rolled off the bed onto her feet and tore out of her bedroom into the hallway and reached for the stair railing but missed and hit the back of her hand. She instantly felt the bruising pain radiate across her hand, but got a grip on the railing and took the stairs down two at a time, crossing the foyer in a panicked leap. "Simon?" Dawn called out, as she flipped on the light. She looked over to see Simon sitting straight up on the bed, his face contorted in terror. Buffy was right behind her, and immediately switched on a second light as she asked Simon what had happened. |
| Buffy perched on the edge of the chair, and Simon sat on the sofa bed facing her. Dawn sat next to Simon, uncertain. |
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Simon was still sitting on the sofa bed, the comforter wound in his fingers, his face drawn. "Not just a nightmare. It was... The woman in the picture," he whispered, nodding his head at the pictures lining the fireplace mantle. "She... she'd come back." Buffy's face paled, and Dawn gasped quietly. Simon closed his eyes, unable to speak, his lips drawn in a thin apologetic line. "I'm sorry," he added softly. "I have... I have these dreams, sometimes. I didn't mean to hurt you. I wouldn't have said... 'cept that usually they're right. Once, when I was with Jessie - she was my, uh, girlfriend, she's my ex-girlfriend now." Simon gave Dawn a half-smile, trying to reassure her, and Dawn did her best to smile back, still dismayed. "Jessie had a bad time of it as a kid," Simon continued. "I had a dream like the one tonight, about her. It was really... horrible. We didn't go out much after that. She said that she had enough problems of her own without her boyfriend picking her nightmares out of her head and rerunning them in Technicolor." Simon looked away from Buffy, still embarrassed. "But I guess I just have to get used to weird dreams about other people that are completely wrong, since this is the third..." He shrugged and looked away. Buffy and Dawn exchanged a pointed look, and Dawn bit her lip. Steeling herself, Buffy took a deep breath. "Simon," Buffy started, then stopped and tried again. "What do you mean, the third? You've had this dream before?" Simon shook his head. "No, a different one." For a long time, he didn't say anything. Then he seemed to come to a decision, looking at Buffy, his jaw set in a stern line. "I was in Hell." Buffy watched his face, impassive. "For about a year. Thought I'd die." Simon half-smiled. "Was almost sure I had. And you - you got me out." Buffy nodded. "I didn't remember anything," he continued. "You couldn't last in there, remembering." For a moment his eyes flashed, and he was underground again until it passed. "One year." Buffy interjected. "That's an hour, maybe less, in our dimension." "I've been told that. Although I'm not sure exactly how old I am, anyway. So I just say it was a year. But then I was out. With no memory. And I didn't want to be in LA, so I wandered for awhile." As he spoke about life on the road, he seemed to calm down. Apparently whatever he'd suffered stung worse when repeated. "At first I was looking for you, in a way," he explained, inclining his head at Buffy. "Then just looking for someplace to call home. I ended up back in L.A., and met a waitress named Anne." "Anne?" Dawn's voice returned suddenly at the mention of the name. "She'd started a shelter. Tall, blonde, and somehow reminded me of Buffy. She gave me a shot, you know? There aren't a lot of people willing to take chances on some skinny runaway." He glanced around the room quickly, and at the people who'd taken him in. "Just the special ones," he mumbled, embarrassed. "Anyway, I started working as a cook at the shelter, then got a job, and it started to straighten itself out. I didn't have to know who I used to be. I got along with people. Anne depended on me a lot, for the younger kids. The brand-new kitchen model Simon was okay with me." He grinned. "But the dreams." Buffy mentioned suddenly. "Otherwise you'd still be there, right?" "Yeah." Simon waited a bit, and the sisters waited with him, while he fiddled with the edge of the comforter. After a minute, he continued speaking. "I, uh, I dreamed of Anne... getting a tattoo. I told her, and she was freaked that I knew how she'd gotten it, and the guy she'd been with. She wasn't happy at first, but we kept talking... And that's when she told me..." "She'd been there too." Buffy's voice was flat, but kind. Dawn quietly made her way to the chair by Buffy, sitting down on the arm next to her sister. Not touching, but close enough. Simon looked at Buffy, startled. "Right. How'd - oh, yeah. Stupid me. Anne had been there, too. And then, I guess about five months ago..." Simon bit his lip and whispered very quietly. "I dreamed that you'd died." Someone inhaled sharply, and Simon glanced up to see Buffy's face had gone white as a sheet. "I'm really sorry," he blurted. "I've got to sound like the biggest weirdo. I'm sitting here telling you I had a dream about you. It's like a bad soap opera," he joked, not feeling it was terribly funny at all, "and I'm really sorry. If you want me to go, I'll-" "No." Buffy's mouth formed the 'o' carefully, lips tight and pale. "No. You can stay. Just... keep talking." Dawn's hand crept into hers, and she held it tightly. "They, they weren't... memories, about... escaping... because I'd had a couple of those. It was a dream about you flying. Falling... a long way. I was afraid it meant that you'd died. Other dreams I have about people, they come true, or they were true. I dream people's memories, I guess. But this one, it was too much, and told Anne. I had to know who you were, and if something had happened to you. I couldn't let her hide it anymore." "So she told you, and here you are?" "Not 'zactly. First she said it wasn't my business. She seemed to know a little bit more about you, but she didn't want to tell me. At first I thought it was because she didn't want to remember." The corner of his mouth quirked up. "Who would? But that it wasn't the reason, I thought. It was like she was protecting you. Like you'd been running from something awful too." Yeah, her ex-boyfriend, Dawn was tempted to say, but looked at Buffy's face and kept her mouth shut. "So I stopped talking to her about it," Simon continued. "Respecting Anne's privacy or something, and yours, but after a while, she told me she knew a detective who could find out. She said he'd know if anything had happened." A ghost of a smile played at Buffy's lips. One guess who that detective might be. "Anyway... Anne came back from seeing the detective and told me you really were dead. I asked her if I could visit your grave, because I felt awful. In a way, almost like it was my fault, since I dreamed it, but she said that was silly." "What happened then," Dawn prompted, when Simon didn't say anything else. "Nothing... until a month ago. I had the dream again... but - backwards." "Like falling up?" Dawn's eyes were big, but her voice was still quiet. Simon nodded. "I think by that point I'd driven Anne halfway out of her mind, so she told me the name of your town, and said I could do what I wanted. What I really wanted was to visit the grave, leave flowers, or just, I don't know. I wanted to thank you, even if you weren't able to..." His voice trailed off while he thought about it. "I owed you that much. It took me a month to save up the bus fare. But she was wrong," he said hastily. His face was still faintly pink. "I searched all the newspapers and couldn't find an obituary, or any mention of a grave, and then I met Dawn... and came to your house, and you're just walking around, and I felt like the biggest sucker in the world, you know? That's why I didn't tell you the truth at first." "Hey, aren't you dead? isn't the greatest opening line I've ever heard." Buffy grinned, the lines disappearing from her face. "I get that." "I figured you'd think I was insane. Or tell me to get away from Dawn and have me run out of town." He grinned, relieved. "Nah. That's Spike's job." "Uh -" |
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"Never mind." Buffy mused absently. She ran her fingers through Dawn's hair while her sister half-pouted back at her. "Want to stay with us, at least for another night, before you go back to L.A.?" "Sure." He looked surprised, but grateful. "If it's not too much trouble." "Do you want to call somebody? Anne? Just to let her know where you are?" "I can try, but the shelter's phone was still disconnected when I left. I'll call tomorrow, if their phone's fixed. If you don't mind, I mean. No biggie. Anne's not the kind to freak out." He smiled. Satisfied, Buffy gave him a light tap on the arm by way of a goodnight, and took Dawn by the wrist. "Uh... goodnight!" Dawn called, over her shoulder, and Simon gave her a little tired wave. Upstairs in her own room, Dawn let her pent-up emotions spill out. "Wow!" she squeaked. Buffy grinned at her, sideways. Irrepressible as ever. She sat on her sister's bed for a moment, watching Dawn do a small dance of triumph. "Tomorrow night, we can rent a movie or something. Get a pizza. Celebrate." Buffy laughed as her sister collapsed on the bed next to her, still grinning widely. "We'll invite Spike," she added. Dawn gasped. "Kidding." Buffy rolled her eyes. "Only if you tell him it's a double date," Dawn replied sweetly, and Buffy creamed her with a bed pillow. |
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