The Looking Glass

Chapter 7

(Flashbacks in italics)

He scraped the utensil against the edges of the bowl, swirling the thin red sauce like a funnel cloud. Connor lifted his hand, watching the soup dribble around the edges of the spoon and drip back into the bowl. It splashed, rippling the surface. A chunk of pasta shaped like an 'o' plopped to the surface, floating across the sea of tomato-scented mush.

"Appetizing," Wesley groaned. He poked at his own meal, a can of green beans so old they'd begun to form one giant, puke-green bean. Across from him, Buffy stared down at her own bowl of spaghetti soup with tomato flavoring. Her spoon still sat on the table, untouched.

"There's something lacking in the nutritional value of a post-apocalyptic diet," the slayer mumbled, staring into Angel's mug of cold pigeon's blood.

"But it's nice to hear that the carnage and mayhem hasn't led to a loss of your sense of humor." Wesley replied, scooping another spoonful of liquid bean into his mouth. His lips scrunched together under a mustache of stubble.

Angel glanced up into her face as he wrapped a hand around the handle of his mug. She may not have lost her ability to pun in the most inappropriate situations, but it was obvious that the slayer was missing a piece of her humanity. Her once bright green eyes seemed vacant, dispirited, and lifeless. Even in the midst of her joke, her mouth remained turned down; her lips dry and chapped from exposure. Her skin was nearly as dry, tinged a permanent shade of sickly, sooty grey, and heavily scented with the sour musk of fear. Beside her, Angel looked almost healthy. Unlike the mutated vampires that hunted amongst the demon horde, Angel's flesh retained a pale porcelain glow. Certainly the pickings had been slimmer since the End, but vermin still seemed to thrive in the dingy roosts of Los Angeles.

"So, what brought you to L.A.?" Connor asked, wiping a fleck of tomato sauce from a strip of hair sprouting on his chin. "Hopefully it wasn't the food."

"I don't really know," Buffy replied, staring down into her soup again, as though it might hold the answers. "I don't even know…where we are."

"We're in the basement of my old office," Angel began, sitting back in the pale blue Formica chair. "When the End came, we were holed up in an old hotel across town, the Hyperion. There was an earthquake, the big one. The hotel couldn't take it, not with the storms that hit."

Buffy nodded beside him, remembering a series of violent electrical storms that descended from the treacherous clouds still hanging in part over the cities.

"Gunn died when the hotel came down, buried in one of the sewer access tunnels. We lost Spike around the same time. He disappeared in the rubble, and we assumed…"

"Illyria fled when the horde started coming through," Wesley sighed into his tin can. He closed his eyes and removed his glasses with a trembling hand.

"And Cordy…" Connor finished, looking across the table into his father's eyes. Angel dropped his chin to stare at the floor. "Cordy passed away a few weeks before it started. She had a…a vision. But we weren't able to really decipher it."

The chairs groaned as Connor and Wesley pushed back from the table. Wesley mumbled under his breath, complaining about a lack of sleep, and followed Connor down the dark hall past the elevator shaft. A moment later, a door latch clicked against its frame, followed shortly by a second similar sound. Angel lifted his mug silently from the table and pressed it to his lips, pouring a bit of the bitter blood down his throat.

"We didn't know anything," Buffy began, holding up her head between her hands, her elbows resting on the table. Bits of blond hair stuck out between her fingers. "There were no books on the subject, no prophecies. This was the third time we faced It, and we lost. Willow and I tried to formulate a plan, to think outside the box. We tried to sort out a vision quest, into one of the prophecy dreams I had. You remember them? I kept seeing it…for weeks I dreamed of nothing else. Carnage. Death. Hundreds of slayers falling down where they stood. In the dream, we spoke to them, the slayers of the past, of the present. They told us we didn't have a chance if we couldn't engage in hand to hand, right there on the field with It.

What else was I supposed to do? What else could I do? Giles and the others, they researched for days, weeks without sleep, looking for another answer. And I trained them. I worked them to the bone. I swear they were crying mutiny. Willow and Giles, they even went to the oracles, to the Powers that Be. We'd never been there before, never had to seek them out. They told us we'd messed with the natural order, that when the last girl died, the line of slayers would end. No matter what, we were going to lose."

The Formica chair squealed against the floor as Buffy got abruptly to her feet. She stood still behind the table, her hands hanging limply at her sides. Her forcefully beating heart shoved blood through her system of veins, and a faint redness bubbled into the sallow color of her skin. A few feet away, Angel quietly stood, watching her apprehensively.

"They all died. I watched every one of them die."

"But we'll spare you." It cackled, crossing it's arms over it's chest. It had her smile, her pouty pink lips. A mane of golden blond curls dipped around it's shoulders, beautiful and clean. It wore her clothes, not covered in blood nor torn by her scuffles. It was her, normal and perfect.

"We'll spare you. Go on living, Slayer. Go on striking…fear…in the hearts of demons." The First Evil grinned, mocking her.

"But I'm the one afraid."

Buffy trembled where she stood, embracing herself at the chest as though suddenly cold. Angel moved quickly around the table, pulling the slayer into his arms. Gently, he pulled her cheek against his chest, resting her bandaged head upon his heart. Her muscles were tight under his hands, as though she were restraining herself, holding back her instinct to fight.

"There's more," she whispered, tucking the cozy blanket around her shoulders. The bed springs echoed quietly as she squeezed tighter into Angel's embrace.

"I'm listening," he replied, stroking her hair.

"Dawn…" she choked, coughing on the name. It had been the first time she'd spoken it aloud since before the End had come. "She's missing. And Willow, and Giles."

"We'll find them," Angel frowned, nudging her head up with his shoulder. Her eyes were dark and wet, full of anxiety, shadowed with lack of sleep. "We'll find all of them."

"No." Buffy muttered with a cold succinctness. "Xander's dead."

--

Buffy sat uneasily on the edge of a chair, fingering the sharp point of the stake she'd carried since she'd left home. The kerosene lamps had been extinguished, and the room was mostly dark. A short stream of orange light filtered over the bedroom threshold where she'd awakened only a day earlier. The shadows of Angel's legs broke the beam as he shuffled around the corner of his bed, reaching for clothes in a chest of drawers.

"It's time," Wesley grunted as he ran down the stairs and stalked across the empty sitting room, stopping to lift the strap of a duffel bag over his shoulder. Connor emerged from the dark hallway, a backpack slung over his shoulders, and a sword clutched in one hand. Angel was the last to emerge, darkness following him out of the bedroom as he blew out the stove's fire.

Buffy followed them down a short set of cement stairs and into the sewer access tunnel. The pipes smelled strongly of sulfur, residue from the storms that had seeped into the city water supply. The drains were mostly empty now, and for the first time, Buffy's boots didn't splash through ankle-deep sewage.

"Come on! We need to move faster." Wesley called out from ten feet ahead, turning a corner. His feet echoed loudly through the empty pipes. Connor shoved his sword through the straps on his backpack and ran faster down the sewer, followed closely by Buffy and Angel. The scent of salt and sea mixed with the sulfuric residue, creating an even more unpleasant smell.

Connor poked his head out of the manhole and flicked his gaze in either direction. The cries of the exodus hung in the air like the faintness of Monday morning traffic, but the flow of their march had no yet reached the ocean. Quickly and quietly, the foursome scrambled out of the tunnels and onto the asphalt. Buffy thrust a boot heavily against the locked entrance onto the dock. It sprang open with little effort and swung loudly against the chain link fence. Together they descended, down a flight of stairs and onto the floating concrete dock.

Several of the boats had disappeared, taken by their human or demon masters to parts unknown. Several more had sunk to the bottom of the marina, and ten feet of mast stuck up at an odd angle from a slip near the end. Wesley led them out to one of the only intact vessels remaining. He'd lined the bow of the ship with fluorescent orange gas cans, and he'd spread out a map of the marina on a short table in the middle of the covered cockpit.

"There's blood and food below, blankets and life jackets, and some of the better demon volumes. We'd best get going if we want to avoid being seen, or caught, by the horde." Wesley suggested, following the makeshift crew aboard.

"We'll sail through the night," Angel muttered, looking down at the map as the boat drifted out of its slip. He slung his hand over the wheel, adjusting the rudder's alignment. "Wes and Connor, you'll take the day shift."

"And you're sure she's there?" Connor asked, looking warily down the steps into the main cabin.

"If I know Willow," Buffy mumbled, her eyes fixed on the ocean spreading out beyond the breakers. "She'll take Dawn to the place she feels safest."

"And that is?"

"The home of her coven, in England."

So concludes "The Looking Glass". This story will resume in a second part called "Down the Rabbit Hole." Are you disappointed by the cliffhanger ending? Just think of it as the half-season break! Buffy the Vampire Slayer will resume with "Down the Rabbit Hole" soon.