Shadow Boxer
By Zillie
Rating: R for language and violence and maybe sex. But I can't say now.
Don't know if this will be a standalone or a series. I'll see if there are any reviews.
She hated sand. This beach. The gritty pieces of rocks under her fingertips. Rubbing, trying to get into her pores, under her skin. So many things she noticed now. She hadn't known she hated sand. Now she knew she did, Golden California Girl should be all wind, water, sun and sand. All of which were grating. She was not a california girl anymore though, she was all moonlight and cold marble, with stars twinkling down and wickedness flowing from freshly dug graves along with the stench of death. Why the hell was she in Europe? She still couldn't remember. A self-induced amnesia which came into place whenever a certain painful memory came 'round the corner. I. Don't. Want. To. Be. Here. She stood up and walked away from the beach, not looking back not making another conscious decision as she walked back to her room and picked up the phone. Plane Ticket. 1 person. L.A. Yes, a nighttime flight would be fine. Payment? Credit Card. Thank you too. She sat back onto the bed. Waiting for the hour to pass before the ride to the airport. The stiff flowered fabric of the blanket seemed ugly. Mom would've hated all these tacky florals.
I'm going to go back. I'm going to rebuild. I'm going to move on, from moonlight on headstones roaming hand in hand, skin like ice within hers. Cold concrete against her back and cobwebs above her head. Move on from yielding to boys with oceans for eyes whose soul ate at her and called to her every aching moment.
But now. This was Buffy Reborn. She had wandered through this world for a year now, changing her looks and her state of mind. Here was a girl with dark hair and a nose ring. A girl whose insecurities she painted on her clothes and on her eyes. She could do this. She could walk into that office in L.A. and slap the hell out of her first love and walk away without saying a word. She knew she had things to get done. The Slapping of Angel was an amusing sidetrack. It was a slap he had coming for a few years. It would give her a giggle after attending to Darker Things. The apocalypse she hadn't averted. The walls crumbling and glues coming undone. The seams of the world coming loose. Merging with others. Nothing quite so bad or dramatic. Just things walking and talking that shouldn't. Demons becoming scarce. Reproduction had come to a stand still. An epidemic of Infertility. The world retwisted and put through the dryer. No one had noticed the spell; the small girl who started wishing the world away, there was no Prophecy for modern spells and children Who Did Not Belong. Outside of Time, Outside of Life and Death. The Ending of a cycle. Buffy hadn't seen. She hadn't known. There wasn't a thing to do but go on living. And she was, she knew this was her path as she walked past the tribal wars in Africa, the overpopulation in Asia, the apathy of Europe.
Airplanes were rather ridiculous, she thought. Stuffy and herded like cattle to Imminent Death by swinging blades. She was eager to get off and into the dry California heat. 4 o'clock in the morning do you know where your Slayer is? She was sure that someone didn't know. There were so many of them these days. All too Eager and untrained running amuck punching holes in car doors on accident. Women were powerful now; there was a lack of balance between the sexes. In some countries these women were hunted and slaughtered. In others they were worshipped, or caged or studied by those that could hold them.
She walked up the steps in black corduroy pants and sandals. Wolfram and Hart with all that searing power flowing in the walls, it repulsed her naturally, just as a vampire in the night would send a tingly message through to her brain, this place reeked of an omniscient malevolence. It did not welcome her into its fold. She merely laughed. She knew what she was here for and needed not ancient beings tsk tsking her. The smile on her face stayed as she glided through the glass doors, passed security and into the open corridor. Random looks of recognition from some of the staff, a few shocked, a few running like hell. She looked up. Angel stood at the top of a flight of stairs. His face hardened, confused. Her smile grew as she walked up the stairs and raised her hand. It froze. A flash of white hair and smell of leather.
Spike!
His smell was everywhere.
What??!!
'The hell...' She whispered as she ran past Angel and up the stairs towards the figure in black whose chin quivered and eyes were full of that soul trying to crawl into her. No.
' You are dead. Why are you here. You are not supposed to be here.' She said in a shaking full voice. Her finger pointed in accusation firmly while her knees struggled to keep her up. They failed and she fell. Her arms wrapped around his knees and her head pressed to his thigh, the tears and resignation of a year's loneliness pouring out of her like a gas leak.
' You Aren't supposed to Be anymore. You were burned from my mind like a lit match into water. They gave me the Forgetting of You. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE. You aren't supposed to be….. Why did you come back…? Why didn't you come back to me?'
The things she said under her breathe were fragments of a promise to her. The Gift that Was Given. The Forgetting of Something that Hurt. She built this life out of the ashes of that gift. The gift that the missing pieces of her heart were never remembered or seen. She was an empty shell, a clean slate. All the heartbreak came back. His leaving and the months of wandering and apathy that had lead to the fall of many Important Things. The sobbing continued even as she was picked up and laid down on something softer. A masculine whispering of Regrets and explanations, a comforting of little importance from the vessel of that Glowing Burning soul. The soul that would not let her forget the pain she had caused it. The pain of a man denied and denied and used. Her pain continued to spill out as others left. Leaving only the broken man and half made woman.