Floridays
I know, I should be working on typing up and patching together the bits of A and O that I have written down. I should be figuring out exactly what I'm doing for the Death-by-athon, due in two weeks.
But I've been thinking about Florida, since I'm going to be there in t-minus-two weeks, and found the spot underneath the enthusiasm for seeing my college buddies again where terror lurks.
I burned a helluva a lot of bridges getting out of Florida. Soon I'll find out just how many still stand.
Thinking about that has put me in a weird place. And from weird places emerge weird fics.
The difference between this one and A and O? Both are long. Both require more of my brain power than I used to think fanfiction should. Both take things in a rather messed up direction from cannon.
With this one, though, I know where it's going. I don't know how it ends, but I know the route it takes to get there. And unlike the route to Florida, it takes a lot of dark, twisted turns along the way.
Enjoy.
To say that the change occurred from one moment to the next would not be entirely accurate. It seemed to Xander that there was no definitive split between when he was in Africa, and when he was . . . somewhere else. He couldn't identify the moment that it occurred to him that he was not walking along the streets of Johannesburg with Malia, but lying on his back in the dirt.
Later, looking back on the event, he would recall a subtle sense of time loss, but he couldn't be certain if he had sensed it, somehow, at the moment of his "awakening", or if he were assigning the feeling to what was one of the oddest of his memories.
Simply put, Xander was there, and now he was here.
"Here" was not an easy place to identify. The world seemed to curl up around him at the edges, in cliffs of brown, gray, and green, with a spotless blue disk hovering above. His back felt arched, and he could feel his skin itch under the sun's glare. He blinked up at the sky for a moment in confusion, then pushed himself up to a sitting position.
He was in some sort of valley, or hole, right at the center. Scrubby bushes coated the ground, interspersed with dry, weak looking trees that clung to the constant incline, seeming, in places, to defy gravity. He slowly stood.
He was barefoot, he realized, as his feet came in contact with the rough, gritty dirt. In fact, his ankles and shins were bare to about the mid-point, where his jeans, which had somehow become ragged, frayed, and heavily stained, began. He rubbed his arm.
There was something familiar about the place he stood, though he knew he hadn't seen it before. A faint memory tingled at the back of his brain. He rolled his shoulders, feeling something stretch across his torso with the movement, and realized he was shirtless.
Two strips of leather crisscrossed the center of his chest. There was a small weight on his upper back, and he reached back in a simple, strangely familiar gesture, and slid a thin staff from its holster.
He blinked at it for a moment as he held it loosely in his right hand. It was perhaps three-quarters as tall as he was; when he rested its sharpened point on the ground, it reached to his lower ribs. He leaned on it slightly. It took his weight easily, though it was only about an inch in diameter and it bowed slightly. The wood was both strong and flexible, and if the dark stains spattered over the intricately carved surface were any indication, it had been used in battle. It was topped with a sort of sling-shot, the wood gently forking out for the last three inches, with a circle of stiff, black cloth creating the sling itself.
He'd never seen anything like it before, but when he lifted it off the ground again and spun it in his hand, it felt as though he'd held it many times. It was, like everything else about his current situation, both reassuringly strange and terrifyingly familiar.
Or was that the other way around?
He had to talk to Giles about this. He had to talk to Willow. First, he had to figure out where the hell he was and how to get to the nearest pay phone, as he was pretty sure he didn't have his satellite phone with him. He turned toward the cliff on his right and grimaced.
The first thing to do was to get out of this hole.
The incline of the ground increased steadily as he walked, and though he questioned its existence, he was glad to have his staff with him as his trek became increasingly difficult. Small pieces of stone cut constantly into his bare feet, and the low lying bushes scratched and gouged his legs. He gritted his teeth against the pain and kept climbing. When he reached the cliff wall, he allowed himself to look up.
And up.
And up.
It looked really, really tall. He shut his eye for a moment, rubbed his arm, and groaned. Then he slid the staff back into its place on his back, spat on his hands, grabbed hold of the nearest bush, and dragged himself upwards.
Twenty feet up, he found a small, somewhat clear ledge, and he allowed himself a moment to catch his breath.
From this angle, the valley seemed even bigger, stretching easily over several miles. The cliffs undulated slightly back and forth in front of him, and he began to get a sense of the shape of this place he had ended up. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had been here before. It seemed to almost rattle against his skin, and he realized with a start he was rubbing his arm again. He gave his biceps a quick squeeze before forcing himself back to his task.
Forty-five feet up, maybe thirty or so from the top, he spotted the sign. It was wedged into a split in the cliff-face, faded from its original irridescent green, and tangled into the wall-hugging bushes, but it was still legible.
"Welcome to Sunnydale."
He almost laughed.
He twisted as far as he dared to peer over his right shoulder at the valley--crater, rather. He pictured his home town stretched out on top of the wild landscape. Sure enough, the crater's dimensions matched the town to a T. He could pick out the corners where Angel's mansion had stood, and where the UC campus had been. On the other side, he could almost see the house on Revello Drive, its lights on, welcoming him home. He started to giggle slightly, but caught himself. His hands twitched where they clutched at the bush. There, in the center of the crater, where he'd found himself only maybe an hour before, was where the high school had stood.
Of course.
He'd woken up on the hellmouth.
The last thirty feet of the climb were remarkable only that he'd managed to climb them. While he'd been in better shape in Africa than he had ever been before, he knew he shouldn't have been able to scale the sides of the cliff. He could feel his muscles burning and twitching as he leaned, gasping, against the chainlink fence that topped the cliffs and circled the crater. He winced as his left hand circled his right arm unconciously, his own skin feeling like sandpaper under his palm as he rubbed slightly. He paused for only a moment before turning to face the last bit of his climb, this time straight up and over a metal, barbed-wire topped fence.
He was going to get out of Sunnydale if it killed him.
His pants caught and ripped on the edge of the barbed wire as he tipped over and fell to the ground on the other side of the fence, taking another chunk of fabric out of the knee of his left pant leg. He giggled slightly to himself as he lay on the ground, curled into a half-fetal position. His home town was determined to keep dragging him back in, but he'd shown it. He'd escaped. He snorted into the dirt, then sneezed violently as spots danced in his vision. He was very, very close to passing out.
"Woah."
He shut his eye and hugged himself. Now he was hearing things.
"Hey, um, dude."
A hand reached out, briefly tapped at his shoulder, then dissappeared.
"Dude, you okay?"
Xander peered up, rolling over onto his back. The sun had set slightly, making his shadow stretch out across the gray gravel. A girl, no more than seventeen years old, tops, stood leaning against a dark blue sedan, her hands shoved into her jeans pockets. Her black hair curled slightly towards her face as it brushed her shoulders, which rose and fell in a baffled fashion.
He nodded slightly, sitting up. The world spun once, but then seemed to settle down. He considered standing.
"Um, hey, I know it's none of my business and all," The girl cocked one hip to the side, and tilted her head in the opposite direction. Xander wiped sweat from his eye and rubbed his arm. "But, dude, why didn't you just use the stairs?"
Xander blinked. He followed the drift of her head.
Sure enough, about ten yards away, stood a sign post.
"Sunnydale Sinkhole" it read. "Please keep to the official walk ways." An arrow pointed at a gate in the fence, from which a stair railing lead down into the crater.
Xander slumped back to the ground.
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But I've been thinking about Florida, since I'm going to be there in t-minus-two weeks, and found the spot underneath the enthusiasm for seeing my college buddies again where terror lurks.
I burned a helluva a lot of bridges getting out of Florida. Soon I'll find out just how many still stand.
Thinking about that has put me in a weird place. And from weird places emerge weird fics.
The difference between this one and A and O? Both are long. Both require more of my brain power than I used to think fanfiction should. Both take things in a rather messed up direction from cannon.
With this one, though, I know where it's going. I don't know how it ends, but I know the route it takes to get there. And unlike the route to Florida, it takes a lot of dark, twisted turns along the way.
Enjoy.
To say that the change occurred from one moment to the next would not be entirely accurate. It seemed to Xander that there was no definitive split between when he was in Africa, and when he was . . . somewhere else. He couldn't identify the moment that it occurred to him that he was not walking along the streets of Johannesburg with Malia, but lying on his back in the dirt.
Later, looking back on the event, he would recall a subtle sense of time loss, but he couldn't be certain if he had sensed it, somehow, at the moment of his "awakening", or if he were assigning the feeling to what was one of the oddest of his memories.
Simply put, Xander was there, and now he was here.
"Here" was not an easy place to identify. The world seemed to curl up around him at the edges, in cliffs of brown, gray, and green, with a spotless blue disk hovering above. His back felt arched, and he could feel his skin itch under the sun's glare. He blinked up at the sky for a moment in confusion, then pushed himself up to a sitting position.
He was in some sort of valley, or hole, right at the center. Scrubby bushes coated the ground, interspersed with dry, weak looking trees that clung to the constant incline, seeming, in places, to defy gravity. He slowly stood.
He was barefoot, he realized, as his feet came in contact with the rough, gritty dirt. In fact, his ankles and shins were bare to about the mid-point, where his jeans, which had somehow become ragged, frayed, and heavily stained, began. He rubbed his arm.
There was something familiar about the place he stood, though he knew he hadn't seen it before. A faint memory tingled at the back of his brain. He rolled his shoulders, feeling something stretch across his torso with the movement, and realized he was shirtless.
Two strips of leather crisscrossed the center of his chest. There was a small weight on his upper back, and he reached back in a simple, strangely familiar gesture, and slid a thin staff from its holster.
He blinked at it for a moment as he held it loosely in his right hand. It was perhaps three-quarters as tall as he was; when he rested its sharpened point on the ground, it reached to his lower ribs. He leaned on it slightly. It took his weight easily, though it was only about an inch in diameter and it bowed slightly. The wood was both strong and flexible, and if the dark stains spattered over the intricately carved surface were any indication, it had been used in battle. It was topped with a sort of sling-shot, the wood gently forking out for the last three inches, with a circle of stiff, black cloth creating the sling itself.
He'd never seen anything like it before, but when he lifted it off the ground again and spun it in his hand, it felt as though he'd held it many times. It was, like everything else about his current situation, both reassuringly strange and terrifyingly familiar.
Or was that the other way around?
He had to talk to Giles about this. He had to talk to Willow. First, he had to figure out where the hell he was and how to get to the nearest pay phone, as he was pretty sure he didn't have his satellite phone with him. He turned toward the cliff on his right and grimaced.
The first thing to do was to get out of this hole.
The incline of the ground increased steadily as he walked, and though he questioned its existence, he was glad to have his staff with him as his trek became increasingly difficult. Small pieces of stone cut constantly into his bare feet, and the low lying bushes scratched and gouged his legs. He gritted his teeth against the pain and kept climbing. When he reached the cliff wall, he allowed himself to look up.
And up.
And up.
It looked really, really tall. He shut his eye for a moment, rubbed his arm, and groaned. Then he slid the staff back into its place on his back, spat on his hands, grabbed hold of the nearest bush, and dragged himself upwards.
Twenty feet up, he found a small, somewhat clear ledge, and he allowed himself a moment to catch his breath.
From this angle, the valley seemed even bigger, stretching easily over several miles. The cliffs undulated slightly back and forth in front of him, and he began to get a sense of the shape of this place he had ended up. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had been here before. It seemed to almost rattle against his skin, and he realized with a start he was rubbing his arm again. He gave his biceps a quick squeeze before forcing himself back to his task.
Forty-five feet up, maybe thirty or so from the top, he spotted the sign. It was wedged into a split in the cliff-face, faded from its original irridescent green, and tangled into the wall-hugging bushes, but it was still legible.
"Welcome to Sunnydale."
He almost laughed.
He twisted as far as he dared to peer over his right shoulder at the valley--crater, rather. He pictured his home town stretched out on top of the wild landscape. Sure enough, the crater's dimensions matched the town to a T. He could pick out the corners where Angel's mansion had stood, and where the UC campus had been. On the other side, he could almost see the house on Revello Drive, its lights on, welcoming him home. He started to giggle slightly, but caught himself. His hands twitched where they clutched at the bush. There, in the center of the crater, where he'd found himself only maybe an hour before, was where the high school had stood.
Of course.
He'd woken up on the hellmouth.
The last thirty feet of the climb were remarkable only that he'd managed to climb them. While he'd been in better shape in Africa than he had ever been before, he knew he shouldn't have been able to scale the sides of the cliff. He could feel his muscles burning and twitching as he leaned, gasping, against the chainlink fence that topped the cliffs and circled the crater. He winced as his left hand circled his right arm unconciously, his own skin feeling like sandpaper under his palm as he rubbed slightly. He paused for only a moment before turning to face the last bit of his climb, this time straight up and over a metal, barbed-wire topped fence.
He was going to get out of Sunnydale if it killed him.
His pants caught and ripped on the edge of the barbed wire as he tipped over and fell to the ground on the other side of the fence, taking another chunk of fabric out of the knee of his left pant leg. He giggled slightly to himself as he lay on the ground, curled into a half-fetal position. His home town was determined to keep dragging him back in, but he'd shown it. He'd escaped. He snorted into the dirt, then sneezed violently as spots danced in his vision. He was very, very close to passing out.
"Woah."
He shut his eye and hugged himself. Now he was hearing things.
"Hey, um, dude."
A hand reached out, briefly tapped at his shoulder, then dissappeared.
"Dude, you okay?"
Xander peered up, rolling over onto his back. The sun had set slightly, making his shadow stretch out across the gray gravel. A girl, no more than seventeen years old, tops, stood leaning against a dark blue sedan, her hands shoved into her jeans pockets. Her black hair curled slightly towards her face as it brushed her shoulders, which rose and fell in a baffled fashion.
He nodded slightly, sitting up. The world spun once, but then seemed to settle down. He considered standing.
"Um, hey, I know it's none of my business and all," The girl cocked one hip to the side, and tilted her head in the opposite direction. Xander wiped sweat from his eye and rubbed his arm. "But, dude, why didn't you just use the stairs?"
Xander blinked. He followed the drift of her head.
Sure enough, about ten yards away, stood a sign post.
"Sunnydale Sinkhole" it read. "Please keep to the official walk ways." An arrow pointed at a gate in the fence, from which a stair railing lead down into the crater.
Xander slumped back to the ground.
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