Only A Memory
In Georgia, the legend saysAnother night, walking around in the dark with an axe. Another night, bootheels scraping against broken asphalt. Big green leaves fill the field, covering everything. In the moonlight, she could see shadowy shapes -- a tree, suffocating under the vine; a barely recognizable car, complete with fins, like that horrible thing Spike drove.
That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house.
The glass is tinged with green, even so...
--James Dickey
Buffy was in poor shape. 14 hours from Rome to Atlanta, with layover in Munich. She hadn't been in Munich itself, but she hated the airport. Europe was her beat these days, not the South, but a young Slayer was missing and duty called.
Stupid duty.
She had spent most of the the previous week being shown around the Pigalle by a new French Slayer. Algerian French, who insisted on wearing a head scarf on patrol. That was a new one on Buffy, but whatever worked. Paris wasn't nearly as pretty as that movie set it out to be, with Ewan MacGregor running around with Nicole Kidman, and she encountered way too many American voices, both in the victims and the vampires. She barely had time for a night's sleep before she flew east.
She left her rental, still with her bags in the trunk, parked in front of the Slayer's mom's. Khalilah's mom's place. Just her, the axe, the muggy air and the creepy big leaves crawling up everything. She had asked some questions before heading out, but none of the answers pointed to anything concrete.
She felt the exhaustion pulling at her limbs, at her eyes. Nothing would feel quite as good as lying down and resting, if only for a few moments. Her fingers were numb, and she couldn't tell if she was holding the scythe too loosely or too tightly. The car, off in the field of green, looked like something she could sit on, something she could lean on. She walked through the shadowy green to the hood of abandoned car. She put the axe down next to her and closed her eyes.
"No sleepin' on the job there, Slayer. No rest for the righteous, eh?"
Her eyes opened with a start. She had to ... she had to do what?
"Us wicked, we get a good twelve hours of rest. Which just goes to show you that you can't trust everythin' you read, no matter what ol' Hudson says."
"Wait. I'm supposed to be ... somewhere."
"Well, you are somewhere. You are crashed out on the hood of my lovely DeSoto, which is parked in a particularly dark and creepy part of town. In doing so, you are gettin' in the way of a good night o' fun. That is somewhere." She heard a something ruffle as bootheels clicked lightly around her. She didn't dare open her eyes. "You should be somewhere else, Slayer. Dustin' my kind as they make their nests, I suppose. What you shouldn't be is sleeping. On. My. Car."
That voice. It couldn't be. It was Spike's voice, and he's ... he's ....
"Well? Is that it? Did some big nasty pull out the Slayer's tongue? Is that it, then? I must say, I much prefer this bit as a duet. Most things go better with two, don't they, luv?"
"There's a ... girl. I'm supposed to be saving ... someone." The words came haltingly. She had trouble making her thoughts go. There's something missing here. Something wrong.
"Yes, of course. You here with the 'S' on your chest. Any thoughts on where it might be, or are you just going to come slap me around again? Before you go bruising the favorite parts of my anatomy, Slayer, I think you're going to have to give me a better idea of what in dear old Sunnyhell you think is going on."
Buffy made an effort to stand up. She heard her bootheels hit gravel. She opened her eyes, taking in a landscape she knew well. The access road behind Restfield. Back in Sunnydale. But isn't Sunnydale....
"There's a girl missing."
"Is it that sister of yours? You should tag her, like a lion on one of those nature shows, chase her around with one of those radio things. Your boy should be able to scare one of those up right quick, I imagine. Those contacts of his."
"My boy?" There's a fog.
"Yes, your boy! Riley the big, stupid super-trooper. Him and his merry bag of gadgets." The exasperation was clear in his voice. She still didn't dare look at him, for some reason. "Is none of this getting through there?" She looked up at the voice. The voice she knew. Red shirt over a black t-shirt. Gold chain around the neck. Bleached hair slicked back like he never could look in a mirror.
Spike.
It can't be. He died.
Of course he died. He's a vampire.
Something. Is. Wrong.
"No. Not Dawn. A girl...."
"One of your brood?"
"Yes. No. Yes." She tried to sit up, but her legs muscles ached and a pain in the small of her back bit sharply. "I don't know."
"You are in no shape to hunt down anything, Slayer." She felt cold arms wrap around her, lifting her. "Mum and the bit'll be worried about you. I'll just give a lift, and you'll be off to neverland in your own bed."
The urgency kept tugging at her thoughts. She couldn't connect it to a who or a what. It was just that there was something that needed to be done, and she couldn't afford to hide in his arms anymore. Hide from the world. She had to stand, to act.
She leaned in, resting her cheek on his shoulder as he walked. He smelled of alcohol and cigarettes, and something else. Something new. Like ... like mulch.
That brought out a laugh, a loopy giggle that echoed in her head. Like he planted daisies to push up.
"Slayer." She saw the lights fly by, but she didn't feel the engine, or the bump of the road. He's at the wheel and she's fuzzy, sitting across from him on a big bench seat. There was that one time they rode together. He played his horrible music. She had fun giving him crap about it. At the time, it was the only thing that made that creepy waste of time bearable.
Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go -- I wanna be sedated...
The slightest bit of melody comes through speakers. The vocals just barely come to the surface. The pain in her back was beginning to dull.
"That's it, Slayer. You rest. Spike'll protect you from the gruesome things. You just shut your pretty eyes."
"But ... I gotta ... m-m-mission." But Spike would protect. He protected Dawn. He fought the time demons. But that was -- when was that?
Can't control my fingers, can't control my brain...
She saw the handle to an axe across the dash. Like the fire axe at the school. That mom had used to protect her. To protect her from Spike.
Spike would protect her from the world.
No. That's not right.
She reached for her axe. A quick stop could make it fly, and that could be bad.
She felt his cold hand on hers. "No."
She pushed it back and reached again. "I said, No."
She punched him hard with a left, then reached forward. As her fingers ran over the handle, she saw a flash of light, then darkness and green. Then, something out of the corner of her eye.
She saw a girl's face. Eyes closed. Black braids falling over her ears. Brown skin in shadows, folded and limp in in the back of the car. She knew that face. The other slayer.
There is a dark power rising in Sunnydale.
Images danced before her eyes. Him with a stick outside chem. Him inside her, with the walls falling down around them. Him, with Dru beside him, fading from vision and she surrendered to the pain. Him, blood running down his chin. Him, boot flying into the girl's face in an abandoned church.
And she was in his car.
The scythe was in her hands in an instant, swinging in the tight distance of the front seat. The blade slipped through his neck like it was made to do just that. His torso slumped in the seat as she pushed herself back, out of the car. She rolled up in a ball as she pulled reached for the handle. The door wasn't there. It was a second before -- she had felt it -- but now it was gone. She jumped immediately to her feet, in stance, the wooden point of the handle out, looking for a target.
There was none. Just the moon, the leaves and the remains of the car. Her heart beat hard and fast in her chest, pumping adrenaline into her body, preparing her for a fight.
She looked around, behind her, to each side, above and below.
Nothing moved.
Not the leaves.
Not the body in the car, which let off a mulchy smell and started turning green.
Not even the girl.
It was hard to see her, now, with her head clearer. She was covered with leaves and vines, which struggled and snapped as she pulled. The vines had tendrils that bit into her skin on her back and head, leaving a trace of blood when removed. Buffy had started pulling vines from her own hair when the girl started to stir, starting with shaking and coughing and then attempts at words.
"Daddy?"
Buffy pulled the girl to her feet and held her with one hand, the scythe in the other. She was anxious to get away from there.
The jostling brought focus to her eyes. "Who?"
"Hi. I'm Buffy. Are you..." Kendra? She shut that out of her mind. "Are you Khalilah? The Slayer?"
"How...." She struggled to move her feet. "How long?"
"I'm not sure. Days." Buffy pointed back at the car. "Do you know what it was?"
"It was Daddy. Used to be, in the summer, Daddy would come and drive me up to the Banks to visit Gramma Pamela and the cousins." She looked down. The beads in her braids rattled against each other. "But he gone. You kill it?"
"I cut off its head. That does it for most things, but I don't know what this is." The girl -- Khalilah -- started to get her feet beneath her, so Buffy loosened her grip. "If that didn't do it, I want to look it before we try this again."
"I heard that." Khalilah pushed her braids back, out of her face, and turned toward Buffy. "That thing. What was it for you?"
Buffy stepped high above the leaves, trying to avoid getting tripped up.
"If you don't wanna tell me, you ...." She was silenced by a loot as they got back to the highway.
"No, no, no. I will. He was...." Gone. She took a moment, wiped her eye. "I trusted him. He was a friend."
And they began pushing themselves down the road.