Chapter 5
Shift
Willow looked confused when I approached her and seized her hand. Without a word, I dragged her from the computer, out through the glass doors and into the snow.
She fell in step, her brow furrowed, her stiff fingers loosening in my grasp.
"This a date?" She purred.
"Shut it Rosenberg, I am on my last nerve." I said, but I did not release her hand.
"So where are we going." She said. I just pulled her along. She seemed perfectly fine with holding my hand, and strangely, it didn't feel strange at all. Like a memory. She chuckled and swung our clasped hands playfully. Childlike, innocent games to her. How split in two she was.
But then, as we began the climb up the ridge, she must have realised where I was taking her. Only then I felt the resistance in her hand. She tried to stop us, to pull us away but it was like the strength fell away from her. I pulled her onwards, to the scene of her crime.
"Please, don't" She said, weakly. "Please."
I was practically dragging her by the time we got to the pit she had dug. The snow covered it, but the stench of burnt paper and plastic still hung in the air.
I finally went to release her hand, but she was clutching mine now, her other hand came to join it. She gazed down into the small pit with a nauseated, haunted look.
I felt her trembling. Felt her press against me, the warm buzz of her body against mine.
"Alice." She whispered through shaking lips, her eyes rimmed red. "Take me away from here. Please. I promise, I will do anything."
"You know I see things." I said. "Why hide?"
"You haven't seen it, Alice. You haven't heard her. If you had, you wouldn't make me. Wouldn't… please… just…"
"I need answers Willow." I said. She gazed at me with glassy eyes.
Then...
Her lips where on mine, hot and salty. Fingers curled about my face, warm against the snow bitten air. And comfort filled me, for the first time since… oh, time is so hard to grasp. I melted into the kiss, familiar and new all at the same time. A memory? A vision? I sank in, losing myself, drawing her into a deeper kiss. Her groan vibrated through me as my tongue slid across hers.
Mine. Home. Safe. Time. Warm. Belong. Time. Time. Time! Alice!
Her hands slide over my neck, wrapping around me, and I draw her in closer. My love. My Willow. How long has it been? When did we?
Wait.
This isn't right. I am slipping again.
Wait.
Buffy?
I pull back, confused and burning with shame. Willow gazed at me, her pale face flushed and dreamlike. She stepped back, a hand rising to the mouth, wiping at the thin trail of blood.
I tasted her. Rich and salty, sparking on my tongue, delicious, wrong.
"Willow, I'm… what? I feel lost. Where? We weren't supposed to be like this yet. Were we?"
"It's growing, isn't it? I thought we were safe this far but it's… she… we need to run, Alice. The Hellmouth… "
"From beneath us, it devours." I say, the words coming to me like from a vision. "But you knew. You know…" I look down at the small pit and it reminds me of why we where here. "The prophecy, Willow. Tell me."
"You don't understand. It wasn't a prophecy. It was a spell. It was a trap."
"What did you do?"
"It's in motion now, the three who see... three seers on the juncture or three rivers. Trivia? Don't you see? Forks. Trivia. Diana. It was the plan, all along."
A darkness blew through me, and willow looked up at the sky, cowering. She pulled me close again, burying her head into my neck, mewling nonsense. I wanted to wrap her up, protect her, run with her. Like we have together a hundred times, running and running as the hunter comes. I fall into a vision, my skull full of screams and ecstasies, of my lover Willow and I holding each other, hunting and running, over and over as the darkness spread over the wastes of what was once Civilization.
No. That isn't past. Isn't present. It's sliding again, and I am lost. Where am I now? Who is in my arms? Buffy? I remember Buffy. When she died. When my stake found her black heart over the ashes of my family.
Buffy.
I see her now, naked, her face filled with bliss as I make love to her. The scorching heat of her mortal body as my fangs pierce her throat, sending her over the edge. The love in her burning for me as my venom steals her life away.
Shift. Shift. Crack. Shuffle.
"Buffy?"
Pain. My skull feels torn apart, like the wolves have seized me. Torn apart like Tara Maclay.
Shift.
A warm summer's day, the california sunlight falling on two mortal woman standing in a bedroom... Of Willow and Tara, human, smiling, in love.
A gunshot and blood on a shirt, and the world shifts again.
I am staring at a crater, a town falling into a hole, The Scythe in my hand. I look down as my entire past slides away, my sister asks me a question and for once I feel free. I smile.
Shift.
I am lying in the snow, the cold ground at my back. Willow has long gone, her scent fading, but the taste of her blood on my lips.
I try to sit up, try to let time suffuse into me once more. I am Alice Cullen. Yes, I am Alice Cullen and it is late December in 1994.
I know this time. I know this place. It is exactly one week before it happens.
It is one week before the world ends.