TITLE: Near-Life Experiences
AUTHOR: tanith
RATING: R
SUMMARY: On the road with William, Anne, and Zoe. Sequel to "Dry Kind of Love."
ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.
FEEDBACK: Need it now more than ever. akirgo@yahoo.com
SPOILERS: Through Older and Far Away for BtVS, and season 2 for AtS, then AU. This installment takes place several months after the end of DKoL.
DISCLAIMER: Some are mine. Most are not. If you can't tell, thenthat's kind of cool.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, I was starting to feel guilty because I promised this and then didn't deliver. So here's the start. This is very much a WIP, much more than DKoL was, so my apologies in advance if chapters take longer. This is just the prologue, though, so I promise an update within the next couple of days.
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This is her day now. Only that's not the right word anymore; days and nights have swapped, and her new life is lived by the moon. Very feminist, she thinks, however irrelevant. So this is her 24 hours, then. This is her life.
She wakes with the setting of the sun, whole body coming awake, fast and sudden. There are no hazy moments between consciousnesses anymore. Her eyes fly open in the dark, and she gives herself a moment to stare at the ceiling, counting the cracks or the little holes in the soft foam tiles. Her mind is inevitably drawn to the image of those same kind of tiles scattered over the charred ground, their edges crumbling to ash, far away in La Jolla. She shakes the memory away, reaches her arm across the empty space between the beds and taps her father lightly on the shoulder.
He comes awake slowly, sucking in unneeded air and yawning. In the back of her mind, she knows this is wrong: he is like her, he should wake as she does. But his waking is instead mirrored in her mother; her parents are tangled together with more than just crumpled bedsheets.
They rise and dress, and walk together to the car under the glow of the streetlamps. She pauses beneath one, letting the yellow light wash over her before continuing on her way.
They drive all night, stopping only for gas and for a half hour break at a middle of nowhere diner where their waitress is invariably named Flo. She comes back from washing her hands to find her parents making out in the booth, bodies pressed against the sticky, plastic cushions. They pull apart, guiltily, when she coughs, but she doesn't say anything, just sits and takes another bite of her burger, extra rare.
Sometimes she hates them.
After their meal, her mom goes off to use a pay phone, and her dad sits sour-faced in the booth, muttering to himself. She slips away, too, ostensibly to wash her hands again, but instead she approaches Flo. Words are exchanged, along with a small scrap of paper. As she heads back to rejoin her parents, Flo pats her on the head and calls her a "sweet little thing."
Once, such a comment would have offended her. Now it just makes her sad.
They pile back into the car, leather sweeping across the seats, and drive on until she begins to feel that warning tingle race up her spine. If her father feels it, too, he doesn't say anything.
They check into another random motel, paying cash in advance for one night's lodgings, no questions asked. Her parents drift off to sleep as the morning comes, but only after the first rays of light are drifting through the blinds can sleep claim her.
And then Zoe Barnet dreams of sun.
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TBC