The Looking Glass
Chapter 6
(All flashbacks appear in italics)
The springs of the mattress squealed horribly as the slayer sat bolt upright, damp locks of hair slapping the back of her neck. Her throat was dry, hoarse from screaming. Eyes, itchy and red, jumped in their sockets as she took in the accommodations. The brick walls that enclosed her seemed to glow, radiant with the golden orange light of a piping hot fire inside an old iron stove. Sheets as red as blood were tangled loosely around her hips and legs. Buffy reached up with one scratched, raw hand to rub the blur from her vision. The darkness of the room seemed to close in when she moved her hand away again. The fingers brushed vaguely against the corners of a bandage. Pain, as if triggered by her faint memory, rushed up from every direction, throbbing along the temple and down the spine. A groan escaped her chapped lips, and the slayer slid off the edge of the bed, her feet smacking against the cold cement floor.
"Stake," she mumbled to herself in after thought, turning wildly back to the tousled bedding in search of her weapon. The sheets kinked and smoothed under her erratic touch, searching. The bed blurred, her hands blending into the bedding as though she'd dipped them in a pool. Buffy stumbled, yanking her hands back, looking down at them as though they might be stained a crimson hue. The door yawned open a few steps away. Perhaps her weapon lay beyond its mouth.
The slayer grunted as she shoved one foot forcefully in front of the next. The frame loomed, taunting her steps. In her difficult perception of the visual world, Buffy watched the doorway expand and contract, mocking her attempted exit. The slayer threw out an arm to grope for the frame and slammed painfully against it, misjudging the distance between her self and it. Pain shot through her, culminating in a black and blue shoulder. In the door, she shook her head, pushing away a blinding spot of pain, the strange red-stained vision that seemed to color her eyes.
A small Formica table sat to her right, surrounded by four matching chairs, all of them painted a pale blue. A refrigerator and a wall of cabinets completed a quaint kitchen. A well-worn sofa sat on the other side of the room, across from a chair and a wall of bookshelves. Several of the books had been pulled out, leaving dusty black holes like missing teeth. In the middle of the floor sat a simple, battery-operated radio. The soft melodic hum of white noise dribbled from its speakers.
Buffy tripped out of the doorway, turning away from the silence of the collected rooms. She had a stake to find, a world to protect. There was no use dillydallying in comfort where she could get used to the scenery. At the end of a dark hallway, under a faint spotlight of day, a lonely staircase wound around a hollow elevator shaft. She lurched toward it, taking a running stride into an unseen but quite solid mass hidden in the darkness. Buffy bounced backward, wobbling on unstable feet into a fighting stance. Her hands rose up in front of her, curled into fists. She straddled the floor unsteadily, waiting. Blood began to seep from the gauze square taped haphazardly to her forehead with adhesive bandages. It swirled in a stream along the side of her face.
Her opponent moved into the soft light of the sofa room, spread by the dancing flame of a kerosene lamp. He'd been roughed up by the apocalypse or the days thereafter. His human face was badly scarred. Soot collected around his nostrils, his ears, the corners of his mouth. A crop of dirty brown hair sprang up from his scalp and cascaded around his neck and ears. He lifted his hands, a slow and thoughtful movement, in front of his body. The palms, dirty and blistered, faced out to her. The fingers curled slightly. Buffy's eyes jumped from the raised hands to his marred face, and back again. The hallway swelled, and her stomach gurgled and groaned as though seasick. The slayer dragged back her arm, and shoved it forward. His chest seemed to contort around her hand for an instant, and then he was thrown back. The wall vibrated as he hit.
Behind her, a man's voice shouted her name. The slayer pivoted and threw another erratic, forceful punch, sprawling another body against the floor. The radio buckled and slid out beneath him, crashing into the back of the sofa. Buffy turned back toward the vacant hallway and scampered down it. She dragged herself up the staircase, each foot stuck fast as though seeping into quick sand. The stairs led up onto a higher floor, bathed in the uncovered spotlight of a street lamp. The unending night was still upon her. She couldn't have been out for long. Buffy shoved both hands against a crumbled doorway bleeding light into the elevator. The room behind it looked like every other room she'd seen since the end. Two of the four walls had been partially demolished. Chunks of cement cluttered the floor and the outlying sidewalks. Rungs of rusted steel rebar stretched from the remains like fingers amongst rubble. A single desk had been turned on its side like a shield. It was charred, blackened on one side, and the legs were shoved against an intact wall. The computer that had likely sat atop it once was no more than a melted paperweight, crumpled in upon its self and thrown pathetically on the floor. Shattered glass, which covered much of the floor, crunched beneath the soles of Buffy's boots.
Beyond the dismantled wall that fronted the office, Buffy could hear the yowling, crying horde. The barest touch of purple dawn had begun to taint the night sky. Strangely, though she faced out into the street, the exodus had no presence here. Their cries were farther out, distanced from this place. Buffy bent down in the broken frame of a former window, holding one hand feebly against her blood-soaked bandage. She sorted through the fragments of glass and lifted from that pile a large wedge. Her fingers wrapped tightly around the glass stake, piercing her dirty skin. She stood slowly, dropping the hand on her head for balance.
He hadn't been standing there before, a dark human shadow in front of an intact wall. A door stood open behind him, as though he'd just come through it, en route to another place. In the radiant spotlight, she could see that his arms were full of tin cans. Even the labels were visible, and Buffy salivated when she made out a few. There were Spaghetti O's and chicken soup, along with stewed tomatoes and green beans. Slowly her red-tinted gaze rose back to his face, his eyes slit against the light. She raised the wedge of glass like a knife, hesitating.
He watched her stand as he emerged from the darkness of the hallway, standing in the glow of artificial sunlight. The scent of blood was ripe and pure, and as she turned to face him, he could see why. A thick trail of blood was sliding down her face, pooling briefly in the hollow dip of her collarbone. A second stream had dripped down over her eyebrow, and one of her eyes was stained red. The cans fell instantly from his arms, clanging heavily on the dusty wooden floor. He stepped toward her cautiously, noticing the glint of reflected light in the piece of glass she wielded. She'd gripped it so tightly that rivulets of blood bubbled around the sharp edges. It was difficult to tell whether she noticed the pain. Her knees shook as he approached, and in her chest, he could hear her heart beating with inhuman rapidity. The scent of terror was intoxicating.
The glass dropped, shattering as it hit the floor. Buffy's parched lips parted slowly, her hoarse voice tripping over the words she tried to form.
"Angel?"
Her knees wobbled again, and the vibration of instability washed over her like a crashing wave. The legs gave out, and her eyelids collapsed, shutting out the spotlight. Her hands fell against her sides, and she fainted. Angel's arms stretched out suddenly, catching the slayer as she dropped limply toward the ground.
She stood over him for the last time, the chain of a silver cross wrapped around her fingers. The grass buckled as she knelt down beside the grave, her fingers digging into the damp soil. Buffy scooped away a handful of fresh dirt, squeezing it into a ball. The cross glinted in the afternoon sunlight, a memory of times that had long since passed. The cross fell down along its chain as she held it out over the hole and dropped it delicately upon the dirt. Tears welled in her eyes as she dumped the ball of soil back upon the grave, and patted it with both hands.
She stood with effort, clutching the stake against her body like a shield. The short cement staircase led her back out onto the street, leading her away from the wilted house. The paved sidewalk was cracked in some places, torn up in others. She lifted her feet to avoid a perilous chunk threatening to trip her. The house faded into the distance, and Buffy Summers never looked back.