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Annie Sewell-Jennings
E-MAIL: Auralissa@aol.com
SUMMARY: After the world is destroyed by nuclear apocalypse, Buffy and Spike meet up in Australia for what may be the last summer on Earth. Buffy/Spike
RATING: NC-17
SPOILERS: Post-"Restless"
Author's site: http://geocities.com/anniesjennings/index.html
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story was inspired by the story of "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute, as well as the updated version of the story as soon on Showtime, starring Armand Assante, Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown. The film is poignant, exquisitely shot, and subtly moving, as it displays the end of humanity in a very calm and remarkable way. I can't stop thinking about the movie. I dream about it. I contemplate it. I fear its possibilities. And I am inspired by it.
Thanks to Phillip-Morris, the unwitting sponsors of this work. Without my Marlboros, I don't know where I'd be. <plug plug> Also thanks to Alanna, for making me read "Iolokus" (XF genre by MustangSally and RivkaT, and a truly inspired piece of work) and therefore helping me acquire the bitterness that inspired Buffy and Spike's dysfunctional relationship in this piece. The Mooselet will always kick ass. Most of all, thank you Heather, for keeping me on the right track and keeping me writing this story, no matter what reservations I may have had about writing two fics inspired by the same film. This one is the fleshed-out version of what I truly wanted to write, and I'm glad that I could take the time to write this story in the way I wanted to write it.
Lights still flashed.
Noise still echoed.
And all in all, the world kept turning...
And she kept breathing.
Silver light flickered maniacally inside the confines of the
warehouse that had been converted into a dance club by the
desperate and frightened youth of Melbourne; the factory where
gigantic fans swirled underneath the insane beat of electronica
and added to the thickness of constant bass. Christmas tree
lights decorated the poles and twirled through the club, and this
was her world now. This was her kingdom, her Hell and her heaven,
all decorated by gaudy lights and glass bulbs that flickered
frenetically. This was where she would end up dying.
It was as good a place as any.
Streaks of crimson and magenta flickered through her white-blond
hair and hung in her face as she slugged back a drink. Liquor
wasn't really hard to acquire nowadays. It was just a thing. Just
something that she could drink if need be. Something to numb the
pain. Something to take away from the fear of what was going down
around her. It's the end of the world, girlfriend, a voice from
the past murmured in her ear, and she shook it off. Shook it all
off. This was just a dance, just a ball, a millennial festival
that was planning on lasting until the end of days actually came.
It was an escape that ran nonstop, twenty-four/seven, and she was
there for most of it. Sometimes she was fucked-up, out of it
because of booze or drugs, but she was always there nonetheless.
The bar was crowded. The dance floor was jammed. Beautiful young
people wearing nearly nothing or nothing at all, fucking so that
they didn't have to feel and drinking so that they didn't have to
die. She had fucked half of them before, so that she could
escape, and it was just a fuck so it didn't really matter.
Nothing really mattered now. Not when the world was crashing
around them, on the brink of destruction, and it wasn't her place
to save it. Not this time.
So maybe she was going to drink to that tonight.
To the world that she had nearly died trying to save. To the
world that had stabbed her in the back.
A strangled laugh erupted from her coated mouth. Oh, yes, she was
drunk already. Drunk and fuzzy, like a peach. A memory floated
through her alcohol-muddled mind; it was a memory of peaches.
Their soft, lovely flavor, the texture like skin... She missed
fruit. Missed peaches. Missed bananas and apples and pomegranates
that would coat her fingers like blood. Fruit was now almost
impossible to find. Farmers had abandoned their crops for other
climates, finding no point in feeding a country that would
probably die. Yes, the fruit were the real victims of the war.
Yes, she was probably drunk.
A braid of bright red hair fell in her eyes, and she irritably
swatted at it with her hand, her skin pulsating with the colors
of the nightclub. All clubs were supposed to be closed, and
curfews had been issued, and yet she had ignored them all
carelessly. Most of the youths had, and the police allowed them
their freedom. After all, what was left? Schools were emptied and
drunkenness ensued. Liquor laws be damned - the Armageddon was
approaching.
And so what if Buffy was afraid.
The flicker of a cigarette lighter sparked, and she lit the
slender Marlboro between her lips. She had once been so repelled
to smoking, hating the idea of inhaling poison, but soon the
poison would be everywhere. Fuck the lectures that claimed
smoking took ten years off her life - they were ten years she
would never see. No matter if the world made it through this
crisis; Buffy would die before she reached thirty. Such was the
curse of the Slayer.
She thought about dancing. She oftentimes did. Sometimes she
would sleep with men, but lately she found herself mixing up
their faces. Their features would shift, move and blur, until she
was gazing at the imprinted memory of a former friend, or a loved
one, or even a lover. And she would find herself fucking her
past, but it never went away. The world was crumbling all around
her, and yet it was still alive. Somewhat.
Multicolored threads of hair fell in her eyes, and she let them
hang, resigning herself to the wildness of this new world,
refusing to fight it. Why should she? What good would it do now?
Smoke curled from her cigarette, performing its own slow and
sensuous dance as it trailed toward the ceiling, and Buffy
exhaled thin, distilled smoke from between her lips. Her skin
glittered, her body displayed in a shirt that barely covered her,
and yet she still felt dead inside. Numbed with fear. Everything
was changing, and the entire world was held in suspense, waiting
for the possible horror that could be unleashed any day now.
All that she could do was finish her cigarette and start another
one, chain-smoking until the dominoes all fell.
"You know, that's a nasty habit."
The voice was familiar. Not even vaguely familiar, but
indefinitely familiar. Horribly familiar. Everything familiar was
terrible anyway, if only because it was in fact familiar. The
low, murmuring sneer. The taunting apparent under layers of North
London and bass. These were elements that she recognized
instantly.
Sighing, Buffy turned around. "You're one to talk, Spike."
The vampire smiled. Seeing him brought pangs of nostalgia and
longing for others, for her family and for her friends, for those
she loved and for Sunnydale. For California. For America. It
didn't matter who this man was, or what he was, because she knew
him and recognized the world that she loved inside of his glaring
lapis lazuli eyes. Everything that she had left behind,
everything that had died, was inside of her enemy's eyes. It
pained her to see them there, to see the life that had been so
effectively and permanently extinguished, smoldering in the ashes
of the vampire's eyes.
Leather crackled as he sat down, and she closed her eyes briefly,
hurt by the lingering smell of America on his clothing. Bitterly,
Buffy turned her head, exhaling a stream of smoke from between
her painted lips. "Why are you here?" she asked, her voice low
and hollow, even to her own ears.
That chuckle... It was the sound of taunting, of old
battlegrounds and of a time when life had been complicated but
still plausible. "Looking to get drunk," Spike said, his black
nail polish chipped and incongruous, revealing the glimmering
moonstone of his fingernails. A low gaze covered her from head to
toe as the vampire inspected her. "I take it that you've already
accomplished that. You look plastered, Slayer."
Slayer... She flinched, grateful to the errant locks of hair that
fell in her face, concealing the deceitful reaction to Spike's
barb. She wasn't plastered. Not yet. She was tipsy, but not so
drunk that she couldn't remember. She could still remember the
shimmering excitement of battle, or the laughter of Willow, or
the dark passion of Angel. No, she wasn't drunk enough yet.
"There are a dozen other bars in this city, Spike," Buffy said
darkly, still smoking her cigarette and refusing to look at the
arrogant, angular face that had returned to haunt her. "Go have
your fun somewhere else."
She heard the grind of a cigarette lighter from beside her, and
smelled the scent of burning tobacco add to her own mentholated
brand. The sound of his false exhalation and the murmuring trails
of his cigarette smoke wafted towards her. "Well, you know, I
heard that this was a pretty good dive," he said. "Heard you're
here an awful lot. Shagging whomever you want, whenever you want,
and all that. So I figured that maybe I'd come here, get a decent
drink, and maybe end up getting a good shag from someone as
lovely as you." The last words were a taunt, a sneer, as all of
Spike's words were. Insults were his specialty. His talent. He
excelled at making her bleed.
Spike knew her.
Oh, and did he know her well... It hadn't taken him long to track
her down once he found out that she was in Australia, following
her from Sydney to Queensland and finally down to Melbourne, to
the warehouses and factories that the angered and confused youths
had claimed as their own. Perhaps they should have them - after
all, if there was any fun that could possibly be had in this
fucked-up mess, then it should be had. But Buffy Summers had been
having more than her fair share of fun.
And the girl sitting before him was barely her.
Heavy makeup coated her face, liquefied rubies staining her lips
and streaks of carmine marring her teased and long white-blonde
hair. Glittering jewels had been pasted carefully on her eyelids
and cheeks, so that she shimmered like a fragmented gemstone.
Black eyeliner had been applied with a heavy hand, taking away
the carefree and fresh California girl image that she had once
exhibited, and a slender strap was sliding down her shoulder as
she smoked, revealing skin that was as bronzed and beautiful as
ever. The red snakeskin dress clung to every curve, and it
shimmered as she moved, like her glittered skin. All of these
unholy children wore similar attire, from her platform sandals
revealing vermilion toenails to her multicolored plastic
bracelets.
And it was not just her new look that was different. It was her
attitude. Her emptiness. Her hollow eyes and her concave voice.
She was a ghost, a phantom, as though she had already died. It
was disappointing. In a city filled with urchins who were
terrified or numbed by fear, Spike had hoped to find some fire in
the Slayer. He had hoped to find something interesting. And all
he found was a shell of a girl, fragile and breakable.
Her scarlet fingernails tapped her cigarette impatiently, and she
signaled to the bartender. "Hornsby for me," she ordered, and
then she turned to Spike, giving him a long and irritated glance
underneath her sparkling eyelashes. "And a Guinness for him. Put
it on my tab." Nodding, the bartender went to get her drink, and
she sighed, crossing her legs and revealing bare thigh due to the
high slit of the dress. "Consider it a going-away present."
Spike arched his eyebrow at her. "You're planning on leaving?" he
asked, and she shook her head coldly.
"No. You are."
Two brown bottles were placed in front of the old enemies, and
Spike took a long swig of the strong beer, swallowing it and
feeling the alcohol burn down his throat, radiating throughout
his body. "And where would I go, ducks?" he asked pointedly.
"Back to the Hellmouth? In case you haven't noticed, the
Hellmouth's expanded. Matter of fact, it might just have covered
the whole bloody Northern Hemisphere." A snide and bitter grin
twisted his generous mouth. "So I think I'll just stick out here
in Melbourne, thank you very much."
Frustrated, Buffy shook her head, not believing what was going
on. Of all the people to escape a nuclear war... Of all the
people to meet her in Melbourne... It had to be *Spike*. Of
course. He seemed to survive anything and everything. "What is
*with* you?" she asked. "Does being an asshole somehow make you
invulnerable to radiation?"
Sweetly, Spike tilted his head at her. "If it does, luv, then I'd
say you've got a long life ahead of you."
Buffy clenched her jaw, looking away at the crowds of people
dancing around her. Bodies writhed and glistened with sweat and
body glitter underneath the pulsating strobe light, and a hunger
to join them seized her. If she walked away from him, if she
moved onto the dance floor and went home with somebody else, and
then packed up and left the city, she might escape. She could
move down the coast, near the places where the cliffs were rocky
and the grass shimmered like precious stones, and drink herself
into sleeping through the apocalypse. And she wouldn't have to
face him.
"Whatever, Spike," she muttered, preparing to abandon him, and he
grabbed her wrist, encasing the fragile bones and cheap bracelets
inside of his strong hands. Furiously, Buffy fought him,
struggling against his grip, glaring at him venomously, as if she
could poison him with her eyes.
"Now, you're not going to get away just yet," Spike sneered.
"I've got quite a few things to say to you, Summers, and you're
not leaving until I've gotten my way through it. So don't think
that you can run off somewhere and ditch me in the middle of this
pisser of a city like I'm one of your ninnies, because Spike's
not exactly neutered anymore." With that, he growled at her, low
and primal, guttural and visceral, and she glared at him, hating
him with a vengeance and a passion. "So sit your ass down on that
stool before I rip your bloody throat out." With that, he threw
her onto the stool, watching with a twisted glee as her wrist
bruised from the raw brutality of his grip. It was as though his
fingerprints had been tattooed on her skin.
Silence hung between them, though the noise in the club was
almost deafening. Someone three chairs down had taken out a
slender plastic straw and was snorting cocaine freely. Another
girl was giving head to a young boy. Nothing mattered. No
privacy, no public law. It didn't matter now. And she was sitting
here with a vampire that she hated, her wrist bruised and her
blood boiling, as Spike calmly resumed smoking his cigarette and
took a long drink of his beer. "Do you think that just because I
left Sunnydale I'm not the Slayer anymore?" she said coldly, a
ruthless note entering her voice.
"No," Spike said, his words slicing into her like a dagger. "I
know you're not the Slayer anymore."
The impact and intention behind his words wasn't lost on her. So
what if she'd changed? How could any of them possibly expect to
stay the same when the world had changed around them? Environment
influences the individual, and consider Buffy Summers a victim of
atmosphere. Buffy flicked ash from her cigarette into a chipped
glass ashtray coated in the remainders of dozens of other smokes.
She then leaned in close to him, so remarkably close that he
could feel her breath on his mouth. It was the first time that
someone had breathed that close to him in ages. "I could kill you
if I wanted to, Spike," she said lowly. "I could take this
barstool and stake you right here in this club, and everybody's
too fucked up to notice or care. So if I were you, I'd leave
right now before you really pissed me off and go somewhere that's
else. Got it?"
There was a smoldering look in her seafoam eyes, as though dead
ashes were still simmering, waiting to be extinguished. "I'm not
leaving," Spike said. "I don't fancy being alone right now, pet,
and judging by your bed-hopping lifestyle, neither do you. It was
a real pisser to get out of America before the shit hit the fan,
so I'm planning on enjoying myself here down under. And pissing
you off was always enjoyable." He flashed one of those devilish
and predatory grins, so conceited and arrogant, so egotistic and
self-assured that she envied him, and then took her cigarette
from between her fingers with remarkably sharp reflexes. After
taking a hit off of it, he exhaled it into her face and grinned.
"Got it?"
Furiously, she took her cigarette back and ground it out in the
ashtray, refusing to taste anything that had touched his wicked
mouth. "You said you wanted to say something to me," she said,
pulling out her pack of Marlboros and procuring another
cigarette. After lighting it and exhaling a stream of smoke in
his face, she arched her eyebrow. "Are you going to bullshit
around it or is there actually a point to all this verbal
sparring?"
Satisfied, Spike leaned back in his barstool, gripping his beer
in his hand and taking a good long swig before resuming smoking
his own Marlboro Reds. "You fucked up big, Slayer," he said,
chuckling to himself. "Abandoning Sunnydale for Australia the
first chance you got, robbing Giles blind so that you could run
away... You know, they all died back in California, on the
Hellmouth, and you managed to survive this all, just to die here.
I think that's rather funny. Makes me respect you a little,
ducks."
Selfish... It had been selfish. But the nightmares... The
screaming of sirens, the rockets blasting through the air while
streams of smoke fluttered behind them, and then the crashing of
screams followed by an everlasting silence - all had haunted her
dreams. She had prophesied it, knew it from the sensation of
dreaming of the future rather than the past, and she'd had no
choice but to run. Run to the place where all would be safe. Run
to the coral reefs and the endless party, the ball to last them
through the apocalypse, and she'd *tried* to warn them all. Tried
to get them to safety. But they didn't believe her... None of
them had *believed* her...
"I couldn't save them," Buffy whispered, her voice soft and
hushed with the guilt of surviving. "I couldn't save any of them.
I tried, tried to warn them, tried to get them to leave the
country, but none of them listened to me. And I got so scared..."
She cut herself off before she revealed too much, before he knew
what lay beneath the girl clad in glitter and snakeskin, the
betraying serpent that she was. "How did you get out?"
Spike exhaled and shrugged his shoulders at her. "Drusilla. She
contacted me. Told me that the whole thing was falling to pieces
and that Miss Edith was going to have a tea party in Sydney, or
something of the like. You know Dru - always garbled and great."
Buffy might disagree with him on the "great" part, but she
understood. Drusilla had also dreamed of apocalypse. The two had
always been bound together somewhat by their prophesies and
power, something that semi-disgusted Buffy. "So I followed her
down here." He shrugged. "She never came. The bombs dropped and
Drusilla was still in Brazil when it happened." He shook his
head. "She's probably still out there somewhere, wandering
around, but not for long."
"Why?" Buffy asked, and Spike smiled snidely at her.
"Radiation might not hurt vampires, but it does hurt people," he
said. "In fact, it pretty well knocks out anything left living.
So that means that the restaurant's closed to us bloodsuckers -
once you people go, our time's limited. Maybe we'll get by
feeding off of each other for a while, but it's dead blood.
Borrowed blood. So you can add vampires to the endangered species
list."
It was a thought that had never even crossed her mind - the fate
of the vampires of the world. They were as doomed as their human
counterparts, damned by the mistakes of mankind, all because a
couple of military men had decided that a war was worth killing
off the entire human race.
For a moment, even just a glimmering of a moment, Buffy felt some
sympathy for Spike. It was camaraderie born of being survivors in
a world where no one could really survive. The feeling of having
to watch the world die...
"I'm sorry," Buffy said in a hushed voice, tapping her cigarette
on the ashtray. "No one should have to do this. No one should
have to watch all of this."
He agreed.
The music throbbed, beating and moaning, and Spike turned his
head away from her briefly to take in the life that she had
decided to lead. It was a maniacal life, one born of anger and
despair, one where life was an emptying glass and the liquid had
spilled over into strobe lights and enraged music. He caught
sight of a young girl and her lover passing by, their bodies
moving in synchrony, crying in a melange of bass and soprano.
What once would have pleased him now only gave him pause - for
the same thing would happen to him soon.
"You want to know something about your old enemy Spike?" he
asked, not taking his eyes off of the despairing couple. "He's
terrified of dying." The irony in that statement was evident and
thick, and she didn't comment on it. "After all I've done, after
dying once myself, I look at this all and think 'I don't want to
die like this'." His voice softened. "I don't want to die like
this."
Softly, her hand brushed over his, and he was startled by the
whisper of fingertips coated in scarlet. "Neither do I."
The loose possibility of fingers entwining remained; she cupped
his hand in hers and looked at the world around her. It wasn't
fair. Not for any of them. No one deserved this sort of heinous
fate, doomed to walk the earth until the mistakes of others
claimed their lives. The soft whisper of a cigarette being
extinguished in glass interrupted the silence between them, and a
slower song began to pervade the atmosphere, taking over for the
hyperactive beats and rhythms that had been set up.
The Slayer turned her head and looked at the vampire sitting next
to her. Impossibly dark and luxurious eyelashes covered his
penetrating blue eyes, and she saw in his face the etchings of
weariness and fear, his lips slightly parted and his other hand
holding his head, black fingernails digging into lightning hair.
Empathizing with him was strange to her, but he understood how it
felt. How it was to lie in wait for the inevitable, knowing that
the world had crumbled and would continue to deteriorate until
there was nothing left but the Earth.
And yet when she looked into his angular face, those dramatic
cheekbones and the straight, aquiline nose, she saw her old life.
Saw the days of impassioned fighting and battle, of love and
laughter, rather than panic and desolation. Saw the friends who
had died for nothing. Saw her lovers and her dreams, her
extinguished fantasies and hopes. It was like looking into
immolation, and rediscovering memory. All of her efforts to bury
her past were exhumed by this villain that she had once sought to
destroy.
Now all she felt was the desperate need to autopsy her life
through Spike.
Hushed breath hung between them as the song continued, with
nothing but low piano and the voice of Nick Cave. "Why did you
try to find me, Spike?" she asked, and he opened his eyes
halfway.
"Because I thought I might kill you," he said. "But there's no
point in it now. No point in being enemies when the world's going
to end." He shrugged a little, and took another swig of beer. "I
don't know, Slayer. Maybe you had the right idea coming here.
Fucking your misery away. It's not like there's a lot of high
hope left."
No, there wasn't.
Her fingers wrapped around his, twining through the tapering
porcelain. "This is a good song," she said, and he knew what she
was asking for. What she was inviting. And why the hell not? It
wasn't as though there was any reason to hate her now. Burying
the hatchet was easy when she'd be dead within months anyhow, and
he would follow her to her grave soon. And so he nodded, and
followed her to the dance floor.
The rapid pulsation of light had stilled to nothing more than
ethereal and eerie blue, drowning the teeming crowd in electric
cerulean, moths and dust shimmering in the light. Dancing slowed
to a quiet rhythm, the youths of Melbourne falling into a silence
as they all began to think of what was approaching. The storm of
radiation, the winds pushing downward to the south, bringing the
foolery of the Northern Hemisphere to extinguish the last candle
of humanity.
Slowly, awkwardly, the two came together; she linked her arms
around his neck and his fingers splayed across the frenetic
snakeskin fabric coating her back. It was strange, foreign,
unlikely and otherwise impossible, and the enemies refused to
look at each other as they formed an unusual embrace. Slowly, she
began to dance with him, the coolness of his body heartbreaking.
Her skin would soon be that cold. That dead. That lifeless. All
for nothing... "What a waste," she whispered, and he reached up
to touch her hair, a frantic mess of color that didn't
necessarily make her alive.
Sighing, she pressed her cheek to his chest, listening to the
silence of his dead heart, and her eyes closed, fear suffocating
and swallowing her. She had warded off death a thousand times,
avoided Apocalypse and diverted disaster. But this time there was
nothing to stop it. Nothing to fight.
Fingertips drifted shakily to the base of her skull, and Buffy
wondered how it had come to this. How it had come to a dance with
her enemy in an abandoned Australian warehouse after nuclear war.
Yet it felt relieving to dance with Spike, to partake of pleasure
and refuge with someone who had lost as much as she had and had
shared her memories. He understood her, perhaps. She understood
him. Luxurious slowness propelled her to him, and Buffy's fingers
curled underneath the lapel of his leather duster, aching for the
girl who had died in Sunnydale.
Aching for herself.
Piano and aching bass murmured through the club, and Buffy looked
up at him, watching as he looked down. She saw everything that
she had once loved about herself inside of his fathomless eyes,
touched by centuries. The entire history of man and its madness
was etched in Spike's piercing and intense lapis eyes, forever
engraved in blue. She wondered what would happen if she tried to
tap into that. Tried to steal the memories of man. Slowly, she
closed her eyes, and craned her neck forward, and pressed her
mouth to his.
The velveteen of her ruby-coated lips was soft and warm,
inviting, memorable. He hungered for her as well in spite of who
and what she was, or perhaps *because* of who and what she was.
She was the Slayer. She was his enemy. But she was also familiar.
She was all he had left in the world, and whether it be love or
hatred, he kissed her back and felt the memory of what life had
once been like in her mouth.
The kiss ended softly but quickly, nothing more than a whisper of
passion suffocated by a scream of sorrow, and they pulled away,
looking at each other with startled expressions. Fearful
expressions. They were the looks of those who had sinned, of
those who feared the possibility that stretched between them, and
of those who were going to die.
The song ended, and silence ensued, not a single person in the
club speaking. They were all that was left of humanity, these
crowds of youths frightened and afraid, haunted by their memories
and by all that was destined to come for them. It would be their
last summer, their final season in the sun, before the years
would end with a stunning swiftness. The end of days was coming,
and there was no avoiding it now.
It was time to leave; people were beginning to head for home,
even though the party would continue without them. Buffy was
tired, exhausted from being confronted by her past, and she
pulled away from Spike, looking at him underneath eyelids painted
and bejeweled. "Where are you going?" she asked, her voice husky
and slightly hoarse from smoking too much too soon.
"Don't know," Spike said, his voice low and equally raspy. "Where
should I go?"
Uncomfortably, she took his hand in hers, and swallowed
reservation. "With me."
And the party was over for her.
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