1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
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.
With a scream as low and keening as a widow's wail, the sirens
began to call, their screeching a knell tolling the funeral of
the entire world.
Wonder painted the faces of children as the rockets shot off,
missile silos in Oklahoma opening to allow their masters of death
to streak across the sky, flying to attack the enemy and
inadvertently kill the righteous and innocent along with them.
Towns froze. Traffic stalled. Everything stilled, silencing
voices so that all could be heard was the massive ignition of the
missiles being launched. It was a moment that no one should ever
have to witness, a harsh pill to swallow.
It was a moment that interrupted the joy and painted a scene of
exquisite anguish on the faces of those manning the Hellmouth.
The missile fell in Los Angeles, encompassing the city in
darkness and exploding in a shower of angry radiation, sucking
the electricity out and into the bomb itself. This swift blast
was followed by a stray bomb, missing its target and following
the path to Sunnydale, California, exploding on the land and
painting a fiery wall across the city, encompassing it in death's
angry wings.
A streak of vermilion whipped backwards as Willow tipped her head
back to scream, wailing with anguish as the fires came, screaming
Buffy's name and lamenting her horrible death. Pain and anguish
painted Xander's hazel eyes a murky black as he covered her with
his arms, tackling the ground in a futile but poignant final show
of courage. No struggle, no bravery, only a sad bow of the head
and removal of glasses as Giles accepted their fate, and then
glass shattered and walls caved in, as Sunnydale was ripped to
shreds.
Skeletons reached out in suffering, bones where fingers had once
been, caught in a fragile repose, horribly beautiful, like
dissected angels, before the second blast came with the sound of
a scream.
And it screamed her name.
*****
Eyes flashed open and alert, Buffy Summers woke, whole and
unscathed, scar-free and undamaged physically, twisted in tangled
linens in Melbourne. Not in Sunnydale. There was no Sunnydale
anymore - it had exploded in a pile of ash and hellfire, swiftly
destroying lives in a mess of nuclear blast. Or it had passed
away quietly and painfully in a phenomenally strong wave of
radiation drifting off of San Francisco and Los Angeles. She
didn't know which one was accurate.
She only knew that her nightmares were fantasies painted in a
melange of bone and blood.
The dawn had risen; soft light bled through the black sheet that
she had tacked up over the windows, filling the room with a quiet
unlike twilight, no matter that the clock informed her in its
lime green electricity that it was three in the afternoon. She
had slept only partially soundly, not kicking or flailing, but
still writhing in the bedsheets. It was a habit. A habit like the
heroin she occasionally smoked or the booze she liked consuming.
Yes, Buffy Summers was addicted to nicotine and nightmares.
The colors in the room were muted by darkness, melded into
shadows and indistinguishable from each other. She was ashamed of
her shaking fingers, combing them through her tangled mass of
multicolored hair and feeling sick from what she'd done to
herself and to the world. She hadn't saved them. They'd perished
there, all of them, the people that she loved and needed, and now
she was plummeting into a spiral of escalating hell in one of the
most beautifully doomed places on Earth. The image of Willow's
magnificently miserable face tipped back in a kiss of death
refused to abandon her mind, so poignant with her charred halo,
like Christ's crown of thorns.
Carmine fingers swept tendrils of magenta and maroon away from
her face, never smoothing and never calming the flyaway locks,
frizzed somewhat from humidity and heat. Air conditioning was a
luxury, but Buffy could afford it. Blood money, money stolen and
money thieved, and she hated what she'd done to get away from
Sunnydale. Hated how she'd robbed Giles blind and not been able
to save him.
Hated that she had fucked Spike the night before...
Startled, Buffy turned around at the memory of her rough
encounters with her peroxide enemy, expecting to find him in bed
next to her, undisturbed by her fit. Like he'd care anyway. But
her bed was empty; she was the only one sitting in it, and that
bothered her more than she'd like. Quietly, she tiptoed to her
closet and wrapped herself in a black silk robe embroidered with
vines, glimmering slightly and softly in the light, sheathing her
copper body in the finery of it. She carelessly tossed her
multicolored locks across her shoulders and padded softly down
the stairs, expecting to be blinded by the light of the glass
wall.
Instead, she found sheets tacked up, protecting the house from
poisonous sunlight, and the vampire she'd fucked sitting at the
kitchen table, eating Rice Krispies.
The sight of him was admittedly endearing. Wearing his black tee
shirt and black jeans sans expensive steel belt, Spike had his
bare feet propped up on the oak table and was reading the morning
paper, the bowl precariously perched on the end of the table, a
cigarette halfway turned into ash in the blown-glass ashtray. For
a moment, she just looked at him, drinking in the slim and built
lines of his body, stretched out underneath black cotton and
denim, skin as pale as bone exposed. He was a spare creature,
economical in design, like a piece of modern art architecture.
Slender feet that weren't tipped with black like his chipped and
bitten fingernails, long legs, taut abdomen that she had licked
last night, strong, capable arms, and a face that was strikingly
sensual.
And he was a vampire, a killer, but if one were to judge on the
basis of species, she was a member of a race of murderers as
well.
Sighing, Spike looked up at her, letting her know that he had
seen her the whole time, and flashed the front page of the
Melbourne Times at her. "AMERICA DAMNED". "Not a good time to
be
an American, luv," Spike said, and the Slayer shrugged,
descending down the stairs as her bare feet sank into the plush
carpeting.
"Not a good time to be alive in the first place," she countered,
"so I'll deal with my nationality."
Point conceded. Spike tilted his head in her direction and she
walked across the room to the table. He took his time to drink in
her body wrapped in the black robe that fell around her knees,
revealing her thin calves. Her mess of hair looked even more
ridiculous now, when all of the lights were on and her
multicolored hair shimmered like oil mixed with water - rainbows
liquefied. "According to this, Melbourne's reached Stage Two,"
Spike announced, tossing the front page at her. The paper had
slimmed quite a bit, once the sports section had been deleted.
Not a whole lot of rugby going on nowadays, Spike supposed.
"Which means that we should get royally pissed in celebration of
that." A snide smile curved his mouth upwards. "Not that you
don't get royally pissed to celebrate the sun going down."
Absently, Buffy gave him the finger as she read the headline,
scanning through the article. "I think that the media might be
biased," she murmured, reading the diatribe about America fucking
the whole world over.
"Well, I doubt that anyone's going to fine them for it, pet,"
Spike reminded. "In any case, you Yanks did start this whole
mess, no matter what anyone tries to tell me about Taiwan being
invaded by China. Using the nukes - *smart* move." His voice
dripped with sarcasm, though it usually oozed such a high level
of sardonic cynicism that he could fill an ocean by now.
Arching her eyebrow at him, Buffy put down the paper. "Well,
since you're so willing to pass judgement on the good old US,
what should we have done?"
Spike grinned. "Well, not what you did, luv. That's for bloody
sure."
Distance clouded her eyes rather than the black eyeliner she'd
taken so foolishly to, and Spike watched her with curiosity,
seeing liability in motion. It was almost beautiful, the way that
she took the weight on her too-slender shoulders and tried to
balance it enough to walk. Almost ethereal, if one liked pain,
and Spike had a thing for tortured women. Drusilla had been a
muse of misery, and Buffy was a goddess of guilt.
It snapped suddenly, and she stood up, wrapping her arms around
her and walking to the windows, expecting a better view than the
black sheets that she was met with. Sighing, she peeked through
them, and Spike ignored her, turning back to his soggy cereal and
craving a better meal. The blood pumping through her veins would
be a delicious feast, but he wasn't for killing her now. Not when
there was a wave of pain coming right for them both. "You know,
you Americans seem to have this whimsical attitude towards life
and death," Spike said, continuing torturing her with words and
guilt that she really didn't deserve. "Kind of funny, really. You
people just think that if you hit a button, you can win a war.
Too many spaghetti Westerns or some rot like that."
The beach was beautiful... Seas lapping at rocks and devouring
stone, white foam topping it like floating doilies. Her skin
ached for the sun, longed to stretch out on the sands and never
return to the land. Maybe she could float on the waters, turn
into driftwood, and float off to somewhere where she didn't have
to feel so bad. Feel so empty and yet so full all at once.
Emptied happiness, drunken guilt... She was a bottle that was
always being consumed.
"And I really don't know why China invading Taiwan was such a big
bloody deal in the first place," Spike said in the background,
droning on in a fashion that was grating on her nerves. "The Cold
War was a stupid sodding idea to begin with. Who really cares
about communism?"
Irritated, Buffy sighed, fogging the glass window with her
breath. "Spike, I actually paid attention in foreign relations.
We care about communism because it's wrong."
"Well, it's none of your bloody business if a nation of idiots
decide to make themselves pillocks," Spike said. "And you people
*certainly* didn't have to start pressing random buttons and
firing missiles everywhere. I was quite content without impending
doom."
Anger flooded her veins as she snapped, storming across the room
in a maelstrom of embroidered silk and coppery skin. Fury blazed
in her eyes like a building tsunami, and Buffy slammed her fist
on the table, threatening him with a cut of her eyes. "You know,
I'm *really* tired of your bitching and moaning," Buffy said, her
voice as harsh as the craggy cliffs outside of her home. "You
accuse and accuse, and yet you never stop to think of what *I*
did for a living. I saved the world. On a regular basis. I think
that you could put it on my calendar. 'Go shopping, write
chemistry paper, save world.' And did anyone ever thank me?
Anyone ever go, 'Hey, Buff, thanks for adverting Apocalypse'? No.
Instead, they go do exactly what I've tried to protect them from
- they destroy the planet."
So there it was. There was her anger, laid neatly out on a table
for all to devour and dissect. She had been betrayed, deceived,
and for a moment, Spike understood her. She had spent all of her
young life saving the world, being man's salvation, its Christ in
pastels, and it had spit in her face and thrown a knife in her
back. No gratitude from the world that she had endeavored to
protect. No care or regard to the girl who had once killed her
lover to save them all from Armageddon. It wasn't fair, not at
all, not for her.
Awkwardly, he stood up, not certain of what he was going to do,
and he surprised them both when he wrapped her in a soft embrace,
his fingers smoothing through her mass of multicolored hair,
trickling down over her shoulders in a tropical waterfall of
color. Cool arms bound around her back, hands splayed out across
her shoulder blades and lower back, and he moved one hand upward
to bind through her hair. He said nothing, not having any words
to try to comfort her. He just held her, pressing her face to his
chest, his cheek resting on the top of her frenzied hair.
The embrace surprised her, stunned her even, if only because it
was Spike, the vicious and the dangerous, and not someone who
cared. Not someone who would hold her, or love her, or thread his
hands through her hair like he was holding gold. "Not right,"
Spike murmured, his voice low and deeply appealing. "Not right
what they did. What they did to you... Wasn't right." She
supposed that this mumbled apology was the best she would ever
get from a creature like Spike, in all of his complexity and
cruelty, and she took it for what it was.
What she didn't expect was to want to cry because someone was
finally holding her. Because someone finally understood.
Slowly, carefully, she wrapped her fingers around the back of his
throat, claiming the nape of his neck as hers for the rest of her
life. Pale skin where paler hair met, as though he'd tried to
bleach himself albino. Red fingernails covered him, taking him
into the mess of color that she'd created, sensing a hurt there
that she'd never sensed before. Sensing vulnerability in someone
who'd never been vulnerable in such a way. Yet Spike could be
vulnerable in an incongruous way, a contradictory need that only
surfaced in times of emergency or anguish. When his world spun
off its axis, turning on the wrong poles, Buffy sensed a fear and
a fright that she never noticed when he was his wisecracking,
annoying self.
Softly, Buffy kissed the place where his neck met his shoulders,
that sweet juncture where vampires usually preyed. Destruction
wasn't her folly when she kissed him there, suddenly wanting
nothing more than to wrap herself in this predatory creature who
had made her feel like herself again. Made her feel gentle
instead of harsh, like velvet instead of cut glass. "You don't
have to go," she murmured. "I know that you thought that this was
a one-night affair, a brief encounter, and that's not..." She
cleared her throat. "Not what I want anymore."
He battled on whether or not to scorn her or embrace her. To
humiliate her or to accept her. In the end, he took the better
man's route, and it was an honorable decision rather than a
lecherous one. "All right," Spike whispered. "I'll stay."
As they moved upstairs and back to her beckoning bed, she shed
her robe, so that she ascended in the nude, and he admired the
strength and fragility of her, like a contradiction cloaked in
summer skin. Buffy was heartbreakingly beautiful, her hair
trailing down her back in a mess of ruined sunlight, and there
was no such thing as wholesome beauty anymore. It had all been
destroyed effectively, so that everything was tainted by the
fingerprints of the world. She was stained, and so was he, but in
different ways. Ways that made them fit together at last. She was
jagged, hard at the edges, slightly fractured and embittered by
the world, and he was softened by it. Their different pains made
them work together.
Softness replaced cruelty, barbs fading away to nothing more than
whispers or moans, as he peeled off his clothing and carelessly
tossed it on the floor. With a gentleness foreign to the both of
them, he laid her on the bed, murmuring words into her neck
rather than draining the lifeblood out of her. Leaving her alive
had become less of a taunt to her eventual death through
radiation poisoning and more of a need for her to be around. A
need for his only link to the world he'd lost.
The lovemaking was slow and sweet, something harshly different
from the rough sex against vinyl and the frenetic coupling
against glass. Claws turned to whispers, and she moaned as he
laid her gently on the bed, stretching her palms outward as he
kissed them, the calluses healing after her long absence from
holding splintered stakes. Slowly, he drew one finger in his
mouth, nipping slightly at her fingertips, and she took in a slow
breath, the pace of their previously hasty encounters slowing to
a soft lull. Lullaby instead of heavy metal. She threaded her
fingers through his hair, loving the bleached beauty of him, so
harsh instead of sweet.
She kissed him with a slowness, tongues moving back and forth,
sweeping across teeth and colliding in a mixture of frigidity and
fire. Copper skin moved underneath porcelain, both of them worn
to a brittle fragility in an ode to the cruelty of the world
around them. She parted her legs in acquiescence to his need,
thighs opening for him to enter. Spike moved in, gently, an inch
at a time, and then his fingers moved between them, softly
coaxing her towards climax, a spiraling sweetness unlike him. It
was gentle. It was forgiving. Redemptive and almost healing. He
forgave her for what she'd done, for what her entire nation had
done. He forgave her for leaving, for running away from
Sunnydale, and when she finally came, it was in a kaleidoscope of
relieving ecstasy, a thousand different colors shimmering instead
of the achromatic shades of black and white that she was
accustomed to.
Groaning, he came inside of her, cool quietude invading her
heated skin, and they laid there, curled up into each other,
clinging to the last thread of Sunnydale and America. The land of
the free and the home of the brave - this coupling was the last
remnant of it.
Slowly, languidly, she fell into sleep.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15