Back After A Weekend - And Fic
I don't know whether to count myself lucky that I was away when LJ went down...but I s'pose it was better than just generally missing a weekend.
Anyway, I'm posting Chapter Five of History - sort of again, but it went a bit squiggly before, and editing won't help because it was (relatively speaking) ages ago.
Thanks to amarasaa for the beta, and I hope everyone remembers that this isn't mine.
Previous parts can be found here.
Warnings: Death/grief, graphic violence (upcoming)
Are you such a dreamer
To put the world to rights?
I stay home forever,
Where two and two always makes five.
She ran, ever faster as the sun set. The wind rushed past her ears and she could hear nothing else.
A stone slid under he foot. Her footing failed, and she fell to the ground, feeling pain and tasting blood.
She stood up, shakily, and brushed a hand across her bruised lips. They were slick with blood: she’d bitten her tongue.
In front of her was a rock, which glistened with spots of her blood.
Buffy blinked, and a tree flew past her vision. She was in a car, a jeep - no, a Land Rover, which Samuel had hired to take them to the dig.
She shook her head, uncertain that all the details had come back to her. Why were they going to the dig, again? She couldn’t quite remember. It was to find an amulet or something, but she swore that they had already found it.
In the instant that the memory came back, she wondered at her own stupidity. Then, as it developed, she conceded to her belief that there would be another one, waiting for them. She felt secure and human once again.
She looked to her side: Samuel was driving. It struck her that she should find it odd, and amusing, that Samuel would drive a car like this: the same way that she had when Giles first showed her his convertible. For some reason she didn’t, and she couldn’t seem to drag the humour out of herself either.
Looking out of the window again, she concentrated on the road signs and the tarmac, although they seemed to fade constantly from her view. When she looked at her hand, resting on the door, it seemed lifeless and detached. It was too pale, too clean and held nothing of the power that it should.
Holding her hand to the light, it was at once cast into shadow as the sun went behind a cloud.
Her hand. It was odd really. It had seen so much blood, yet there was still no mark on it, no stain or scar. Others should be able to see what she had done. She hadn’t been conscious of it, of course, as it had happened long ago. But that didn’t matter.
She had run, hoping to escape her atrocities. It surprised her though, how far her reach must have been. She knew now, as she had weeks ago, that it was futile to try and escape. She still ran, however, chased by the other, who pushed her further and further on. She didn’t know why, but guessed it was the other’s guilt. She was not blameless in all this.
The bright sunlight came as a surprise. Buffy put her hands over her eyes, trying to reduce it as they adjusted.
She could still feel a darkness, edging her peripheral vision. It frightened her.
They parked the car just after midday, and had lunch on a picnic blanket not very far from the road. Buffy was a little disappointed to find that it consisted of nothing more than sandwiches (filled with cheese and some brown stuff she didn’t recognise) and tea from a flask. She ate it without complaining, however, and sat a little away from the others, tuning out the conversation.
After lunch came the walk to the dig site, which, according to Samuel, was on a plateau in the mountains. It was a long walk, and Buffy felt her mind soon go elsewhere.
An urge to run grew constantly within her, and the surrounding scenery seemed to speed up in response. Several times, she found herself walking faster than the group and having to be called back by an irritated Dawn.
“Buffy! You don’t even know where we’re going!”
But she felt as if she did.
The dig, when they reached it, was not as Buffy had expected. A small cluster of tents littered the area, which was oddly very sandy. A middle-aged man caught sight of them and came over, wiping his hands on his trousers. His greying hair was mostly covered by a hat, which was wide rimmed and brown, giving Buffy the impression that he was trying to look like Indiana Jones. It didn’t quite work. Even though his white shirt was rolled up above the arms (instead of being worn normally), it was far too clean cut, and failed to hide the fact that he wasn’t in great shape.
“Hello!” He sounded friendly enough, she supposed. “Mr. Mamdani?” Samuel shook the man’s hand.
“It is nice to meet you.”
“Yes, you too. I’m Richard Pumney, Professor of Prehistoric Africa at UCL.”
“I am Samuel Mamdani, as you are aware. These are Miss Buffy and Miss Dawn Summers, and their companion Mr. Andrew…”
“Wells,” Andrew supplied.
“Yes, well, it is lovely to meet you all.” He seemed at a loss for a moment. Finally, he took an apologetic stance. “I’m sorry that I can’t stay with you, but I believe that there is something requiring my attention in Tent Four. Please feel free to wander round, though.” He indicated the tents behind him, and then wiped his brow on the back of his hand. He was definitely a British guy in a place to hot for him: clamminess was in no way similar to rugged Indiana-sweat. “Everyone knows you’re coming, and should be as helpful as possible.” He finished in a slight rush, and left with a nod.
“So,” Dawn said. “How long are we gonna wait before we decide that there isn’t an amulet waiting for us?” She turned to Buffy with a hard, sarcastic look on her face.
“I…I don’t know, Dawn!” The amulet had gone out of her mind. The place was familiar, though wrong, and it was giving her a headache. The Indiana-wannabe had distracted her, but she was feeling it again now, strongly. “You’re the one who wanted to come, so enjoy yourself!”
She thought Dawn was going to say something in response, but she couldn’t bear to hear it, wanting silence. She walked away, towards the group of tents.
She fell, sobbing, to the ground. Heat and exhaustion caused her whole body to ache: a dull, quaking pain with her head as the centre. She grasped at the surrounding sand, part of her connecting it with the plains of home, which she missed, bitterly.
The other part of her jeered at her weakness, but it was soon smothered by fatigue.
That night, she didn’t sleep, but instead lay, eyes closed but awake, shivering as the ground cooled.
“Buffy?”
The sound of her name startled her. She jumped, and turned around. There was a guy standing there, with pinched, weasel-like features unsoftened by the sun, who, after a couple of seconds, she realised she recognised.
“Oh, hi! It’s Dom, right? From the museum?”
“Dave, but yeah.”
“Oh, sorry! Dave. I’ll try and remember that. And you had a friend called Alex, right?”
“Right.”
“Is he, um, here too?” She hoped he wasn’t. Although her conversation with him didn’t quite reach the top ten of her worst, it got pretty close.
“No.” Dave chuckled at her (probably) obvious relief. “No, he had to stay in London and try and get some work done.”
“Oh,” she replied. “That’s a shame.” Dave shrugged.
“He’s had four months to do it.”
Not wanting to say “Oh” again, Buffy lapsed into silence. Dave didn’t look like he was going away, so she assumed he had something to say. After a couple of minutes, he spoke:
“It’s really quite nice here, isn’t it?” She looked around, slightly startled. They were standing on the opposite side of the tents to where she had come from, towards the edge of the plateau. And, although it worried her that she had kept walking while she had the vision, she was impressed by the view.
“Yeah. It’s beautiful.”
Dave nodded. “I’ve always loved Africa. When I was little, I used to beg my mum to take me on safari. She did, once, when I was ten, but that was it.”
“I used to want to be an figure skater,” Buffy said without realising. “I had lessons, and Dad used to take me and Dawn to a Disney on Ice show every Christmas, while Mom did our Christmas shopping. Dawn would always complain, but…. I think my mom was a bit disappointed when I gave it up.”
“Ah. You see, my mum didn’t want to encourage me. She and my step-dad were keen on me being a dentist, like him.”
“Sounds…fun.” He smiled.
“Oh yeah. Luckily, though, it turned out I was bloody awful at science, well, anything biology-related anyway, so, after school, my mum let me do my own thing. It didn’t half piss Jeremy off - my step-dad.” He grinned, and Buffy found herself smiling too. “They never said anything, but I think my dad was into the same sort of stuff…well, old stuff of some description, anyway.”
“I guess you don’t get on with your step-dad, huh?”
“Not really. He’s not violent or anything, but we disagree about pretty much everything there is to have an opinion on. I think it gets on his nerves that I’m the “spitting image” of my father - this is according to my mum, who got slightly pissed at Christmas and told me.”
“What…what happened with your dad?”
“Died. In a car crash when I was about two.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. That must have been horrible.”
“Nah, not really. I don’t remember him at all.”
“Still…”
“It doesn’t matter.” He was silent for a couple of seconds, and then said, “Anyway, you don’t wanna hear my life story. I came over here to see if you were all right, since Dawn and Andrew were a bit worried and reckoned you’d give them a complete bollocking.”
“What?” Buffy turned red. “They shouldn’t have asked you to come, I mean, we barely know you.”
“Ah. But you would’ve bollocked them.”
“I don’t even know what that means!” Dave laughed. Buffy tried to feel insulted, but there was nothing mocking about it, and for a moment she found herself laughing with him.
“Still,” he continued, after he had stopped laughing. “I can understand if you want to think. The air up here’s fantastic: clears your head right out.”
“I think my problem’s more that I think too much…or something.”
“Really? I never seem to have the time to think. That’s partly why I love it here, away from all the noise of the city. I mean, think about that village over there.” He pointed to another side of the plateau, far away from the dig site, where a group of dwellings were. “They’ve lived round here for centuries, their lives only changing when we and our ways get a hand on them. If we lived like they did, we’d get bored after about a week and a half, but they seem perfectly content.” He sighed. “That’s what I call life, but I’m not sure if I’m ever gonna get it.” He looked back at her, and seemed slightly startled, as if he’d forgotten she was there.
She turned away, hoping to make him feel better, and looked at the village. After a couple of seconds, the light falling on it turned to dark, and the western materials on the huts disappeared, replacing themselves with skins. This view mixed with reality, and the pictures phased in and out of each other. She blinked, trying to stop it, but it continued.
“I’ll see you around, Dave.” She heard herself say, dazedly.
“Yeah.” He sounded confused. “Yeah. I…I, er, should be getting back anyway. Plum’ll be wondering where I’ve gone.” She didn’t know who ‘Plum’ was, but didn’t ask, and began to walk towards the village, succumbing to the change in light.
She stood away from the village, looking at it by the light of the moon. She should be wanting to destroy it, to knock the primitive houses to the ground. Somehow, she couldn’t summon the rage from inside herself. It was tempered always by that other force, the one that took over in the daylight, but was silent in the dark.
Not that the dark let her be as she was. In the dark she was nothing, and felt no love, no hate and no joy. The village was safe from her, for the time being.
She had no cause to run further. The other would not chase her. This would be her resting place.
Some part of her felt pain, that she would not be able to live with the people, but she could not understand it, since, before, they would have been dead by now.
She now stood at the edge of the village, and had caught the attention of a number of the children. An older woman held them back, scolding them in a language that Buffy didn’t recognise.
She took in the scene, and the rest of the surroundings. A fire was being built in the centre of the village, presumably in preparation for the coming night, and men and women carried out various other tasks.
The village was set against an outcrop of mountain: craggy rocks dotted with coarse bushes. The dark entrance of a cave stood out in the sunlight, and drew her attention. Purposefully, she began to walk towards it, ignoring the others in the village.
She approached the entrance, its blackness consuming her sight. A man ran in front of her.
“Ymirira! Toyenza coyengara! Erio mtuwana!”
“You’d be surprised how well I cope with danger,” she replied unconsciously, brushing past him. “Besides, I’m not asking for permission.”
The man continued to yell, but she no longer heard him. In her mind, it was dark, and as she entered the cave, the dark became consuming.
Oh go and tell the king that the sky is falling in
When it's not
But it's not
But it's not
Maybe not
Maybe not
-Radiohead, 2+2=5
[Chapter 6]
By the way, speakr2customrs, I'm really sorry if I offended you before. I realised yesterday, while slightly drunk, that I might have and I really didn't mean to.
Quinara.
Anyway, I'm posting Chapter Five of History - sort of again, but it went a bit squiggly before, and editing won't help because it was (relatively speaking) ages ago.
Thanks to amarasaa for the beta, and I hope everyone remembers that this isn't mine.
Previous parts can be found here.
Warnings: Death/grief, graphic violence (upcoming)
Are you such a dreamer
To put the world to rights?
I stay home forever,
Where two and two always makes five.
She ran, ever faster as the sun set. The wind rushed past her ears and she could hear nothing else.
A stone slid under he foot. Her footing failed, and she fell to the ground, feeling pain and tasting blood.
She stood up, shakily, and brushed a hand across her bruised lips. They were slick with blood: she’d bitten her tongue.
In front of her was a rock, which glistened with spots of her blood.
Buffy blinked, and a tree flew past her vision. She was in a car, a jeep - no, a Land Rover, which Samuel had hired to take them to the dig.
She shook her head, uncertain that all the details had come back to her. Why were they going to the dig, again? She couldn’t quite remember. It was to find an amulet or something, but she swore that they had already found it.
In the instant that the memory came back, she wondered at her own stupidity. Then, as it developed, she conceded to her belief that there would be another one, waiting for them. She felt secure and human once again.
She looked to her side: Samuel was driving. It struck her that she should find it odd, and amusing, that Samuel would drive a car like this: the same way that she had when Giles first showed her his convertible. For some reason she didn’t, and she couldn’t seem to drag the humour out of herself either.
Looking out of the window again, she concentrated on the road signs and the tarmac, although they seemed to fade constantly from her view. When she looked at her hand, resting on the door, it seemed lifeless and detached. It was too pale, too clean and held nothing of the power that it should.
Holding her hand to the light, it was at once cast into shadow as the sun went behind a cloud.
Her hand. It was odd really. It had seen so much blood, yet there was still no mark on it, no stain or scar. Others should be able to see what she had done. She hadn’t been conscious of it, of course, as it had happened long ago. But that didn’t matter.
She had run, hoping to escape her atrocities. It surprised her though, how far her reach must have been. She knew now, as she had weeks ago, that it was futile to try and escape. She still ran, however, chased by the other, who pushed her further and further on. She didn’t know why, but guessed it was the other’s guilt. She was not blameless in all this.
The bright sunlight came as a surprise. Buffy put her hands over her eyes, trying to reduce it as they adjusted.
She could still feel a darkness, edging her peripheral vision. It frightened her.
They parked the car just after midday, and had lunch on a picnic blanket not very far from the road. Buffy was a little disappointed to find that it consisted of nothing more than sandwiches (filled with cheese and some brown stuff she didn’t recognise) and tea from a flask. She ate it without complaining, however, and sat a little away from the others, tuning out the conversation.
After lunch came the walk to the dig site, which, according to Samuel, was on a plateau in the mountains. It was a long walk, and Buffy felt her mind soon go elsewhere.
An urge to run grew constantly within her, and the surrounding scenery seemed to speed up in response. Several times, she found herself walking faster than the group and having to be called back by an irritated Dawn.
“Buffy! You don’t even know where we’re going!”
But she felt as if she did.
The dig, when they reached it, was not as Buffy had expected. A small cluster of tents littered the area, which was oddly very sandy. A middle-aged man caught sight of them and came over, wiping his hands on his trousers. His greying hair was mostly covered by a hat, which was wide rimmed and brown, giving Buffy the impression that he was trying to look like Indiana Jones. It didn’t quite work. Even though his white shirt was rolled up above the arms (instead of being worn normally), it was far too clean cut, and failed to hide the fact that he wasn’t in great shape.
“Hello!” He sounded friendly enough, she supposed. “Mr. Mamdani?” Samuel shook the man’s hand.
“It is nice to meet you.”
“Yes, you too. I’m Richard Pumney, Professor of Prehistoric Africa at UCL.”
“I am Samuel Mamdani, as you are aware. These are Miss Buffy and Miss Dawn Summers, and their companion Mr. Andrew…”
“Wells,” Andrew supplied.
“Yes, well, it is lovely to meet you all.” He seemed at a loss for a moment. Finally, he took an apologetic stance. “I’m sorry that I can’t stay with you, but I believe that there is something requiring my attention in Tent Four. Please feel free to wander round, though.” He indicated the tents behind him, and then wiped his brow on the back of his hand. He was definitely a British guy in a place to hot for him: clamminess was in no way similar to rugged Indiana-sweat. “Everyone knows you’re coming, and should be as helpful as possible.” He finished in a slight rush, and left with a nod.
“So,” Dawn said. “How long are we gonna wait before we decide that there isn’t an amulet waiting for us?” She turned to Buffy with a hard, sarcastic look on her face.
“I…I don’t know, Dawn!” The amulet had gone out of her mind. The place was familiar, though wrong, and it was giving her a headache. The Indiana-wannabe had distracted her, but she was feeling it again now, strongly. “You’re the one who wanted to come, so enjoy yourself!”
She thought Dawn was going to say something in response, but she couldn’t bear to hear it, wanting silence. She walked away, towards the group of tents.
She fell, sobbing, to the ground. Heat and exhaustion caused her whole body to ache: a dull, quaking pain with her head as the centre. She grasped at the surrounding sand, part of her connecting it with the plains of home, which she missed, bitterly.
The other part of her jeered at her weakness, but it was soon smothered by fatigue.
That night, she didn’t sleep, but instead lay, eyes closed but awake, shivering as the ground cooled.
“Buffy?”
The sound of her name startled her. She jumped, and turned around. There was a guy standing there, with pinched, weasel-like features unsoftened by the sun, who, after a couple of seconds, she realised she recognised.
“Oh, hi! It’s Dom, right? From the museum?”
“Dave, but yeah.”
“Oh, sorry! Dave. I’ll try and remember that. And you had a friend called Alex, right?”
“Right.”
“Is he, um, here too?” She hoped he wasn’t. Although her conversation with him didn’t quite reach the top ten of her worst, it got pretty close.
“No.” Dave chuckled at her (probably) obvious relief. “No, he had to stay in London and try and get some work done.”
“Oh,” she replied. “That’s a shame.” Dave shrugged.
“He’s had four months to do it.”
Not wanting to say “Oh” again, Buffy lapsed into silence. Dave didn’t look like he was going away, so she assumed he had something to say. After a couple of minutes, he spoke:
“It’s really quite nice here, isn’t it?” She looked around, slightly startled. They were standing on the opposite side of the tents to where she had come from, towards the edge of the plateau. And, although it worried her that she had kept walking while she had the vision, she was impressed by the view.
“Yeah. It’s beautiful.”
Dave nodded. “I’ve always loved Africa. When I was little, I used to beg my mum to take me on safari. She did, once, when I was ten, but that was it.”
“I used to want to be an figure skater,” Buffy said without realising. “I had lessons, and Dad used to take me and Dawn to a Disney on Ice show every Christmas, while Mom did our Christmas shopping. Dawn would always complain, but…. I think my mom was a bit disappointed when I gave it up.”
“Ah. You see, my mum didn’t want to encourage me. She and my step-dad were keen on me being a dentist, like him.”
“Sounds…fun.” He smiled.
“Oh yeah. Luckily, though, it turned out I was bloody awful at science, well, anything biology-related anyway, so, after school, my mum let me do my own thing. It didn’t half piss Jeremy off - my step-dad.” He grinned, and Buffy found herself smiling too. “They never said anything, but I think my dad was into the same sort of stuff…well, old stuff of some description, anyway.”
“I guess you don’t get on with your step-dad, huh?”
“Not really. He’s not violent or anything, but we disagree about pretty much everything there is to have an opinion on. I think it gets on his nerves that I’m the “spitting image” of my father - this is according to my mum, who got slightly pissed at Christmas and told me.”
“What…what happened with your dad?”
“Died. In a car crash when I was about two.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. That must have been horrible.”
“Nah, not really. I don’t remember him at all.”
“Still…”
“It doesn’t matter.” He was silent for a couple of seconds, and then said, “Anyway, you don’t wanna hear my life story. I came over here to see if you were all right, since Dawn and Andrew were a bit worried and reckoned you’d give them a complete bollocking.”
“What?” Buffy turned red. “They shouldn’t have asked you to come, I mean, we barely know you.”
“Ah. But you would’ve bollocked them.”
“I don’t even know what that means!” Dave laughed. Buffy tried to feel insulted, but there was nothing mocking about it, and for a moment she found herself laughing with him.
“Still,” he continued, after he had stopped laughing. “I can understand if you want to think. The air up here’s fantastic: clears your head right out.”
“I think my problem’s more that I think too much…or something.”
“Really? I never seem to have the time to think. That’s partly why I love it here, away from all the noise of the city. I mean, think about that village over there.” He pointed to another side of the plateau, far away from the dig site, where a group of dwellings were. “They’ve lived round here for centuries, their lives only changing when we and our ways get a hand on them. If we lived like they did, we’d get bored after about a week and a half, but they seem perfectly content.” He sighed. “That’s what I call life, but I’m not sure if I’m ever gonna get it.” He looked back at her, and seemed slightly startled, as if he’d forgotten she was there.
She turned away, hoping to make him feel better, and looked at the village. After a couple of seconds, the light falling on it turned to dark, and the western materials on the huts disappeared, replacing themselves with skins. This view mixed with reality, and the pictures phased in and out of each other. She blinked, trying to stop it, but it continued.
“I’ll see you around, Dave.” She heard herself say, dazedly.
“Yeah.” He sounded confused. “Yeah. I…I, er, should be getting back anyway. Plum’ll be wondering where I’ve gone.” She didn’t know who ‘Plum’ was, but didn’t ask, and began to walk towards the village, succumbing to the change in light.
She stood away from the village, looking at it by the light of the moon. She should be wanting to destroy it, to knock the primitive houses to the ground. Somehow, she couldn’t summon the rage from inside herself. It was tempered always by that other force, the one that took over in the daylight, but was silent in the dark.
Not that the dark let her be as she was. In the dark she was nothing, and felt no love, no hate and no joy. The village was safe from her, for the time being.
She had no cause to run further. The other would not chase her. This would be her resting place.
Some part of her felt pain, that she would not be able to live with the people, but she could not understand it, since, before, they would have been dead by now.
She now stood at the edge of the village, and had caught the attention of a number of the children. An older woman held them back, scolding them in a language that Buffy didn’t recognise.
She took in the scene, and the rest of the surroundings. A fire was being built in the centre of the village, presumably in preparation for the coming night, and men and women carried out various other tasks.
The village was set against an outcrop of mountain: craggy rocks dotted with coarse bushes. The dark entrance of a cave stood out in the sunlight, and drew her attention. Purposefully, she began to walk towards it, ignoring the others in the village.
She approached the entrance, its blackness consuming her sight. A man ran in front of her.
“Ymirira! Toyenza coyengara! Erio mtuwana!”
“You’d be surprised how well I cope with danger,” she replied unconsciously, brushing past him. “Besides, I’m not asking for permission.”
The man continued to yell, but she no longer heard him. In her mind, it was dark, and as she entered the cave, the dark became consuming.
Oh go and tell the king that the sky is falling in
When it's not
But it's not
But it's not
Maybe not
Maybe not
-Radiohead, 2+2=5
[Chapter 6]
By the way, speakr2customrs, I'm really sorry if I offended you before. I realised yesterday, while slightly drunk, that I might have and I really didn't mean to.
Quinara.