Fic: Writing on the Wall (Or Is That Just Graffiti) [The Wish]
Rather bizarre inspiration struck last night for The Wish, so here's a relatively short prequel to Wish!Buffy's appearance. You didn't think it was her watcher who sent her to Sunnydale, did you?
Title: Writing on the Wall (Or Is That Just Graffiti?)
Author: Quinara
Stats: PG-13/R for swearing; ~2300 words; technically canon-compliant.
Characters: Buffy, Dru, Spike - gen, or switch up the pairings whichever way your goggles fancy.
Summary: Wanna tell me what I'm doing here?
Warnings: None in particular. Some cavalier thoughts about death.
Writing on the Wall (Or Is That Just Graffiti?)
“Hello, dearie.”
Buffy looked up, breath ragged. Five vamps’ dust was settling in a ring around her - not bad for ten minutes work - but now there was this new woman, standing at the end of the alleyway and out of the light. All she wanted to do was go home, but the end never came, it seemed, as with long, sweeping steps the new vampire walked forward and slipped seamlessly into the floodlight.
“That’s right, look at me.” She smiled, nodding slowly, her skin bleached white in the fluorescence that shone on her. “Come a long way to see you, I have.”
Usually vamps didn’t talk this much. When they did their voices were much uglier to listen to, not lilting like this one’s, not inspiring her to that wanderlust she’d heard about; they didn’t latch hooks into her skin and pull her forwards, bring her closer and into the light.
Thankfully, Buffy wasn’t much of a talker, so when her feet had dragged her to within the vampire’s range, she instinctually brought up her stake and stabbed, mind still in a daze. Of course the vampire dodged away, flitting backwards with a swish of her skirts and a childish, playful giggle.
That broke the spell, at least. Again Buffy stabbed, but the vampire seized her wrists quicker than a whipsnake, tightening her fingers until the slayer was forced to drop her weapon with a gasp. There were no thoughts as the pain lanced through her, just the car-ruined silence of the night. The sound of her empty life.
Buffy looked up into the vampire’s eyes, wondering whether it was death or madness she could see in their expression. Given that the seconds were ticking on, she was remarkably alive for someone so incapacitated. Remarkably not kicking her enemy in the shins. “The hell do you want?” Buffy asked, the words almost like a surrender as speaking made her feel her exhaustion in every muscle of her face.
“Not meant to be here at all,” the vampire mused, before sighing petulantly. “So many new faces at the party; why are you the one the birthday girl invited?” Coming to her senses with a kick of adrenaline, Buffy struggled, jerking forward to bring up her knee between the woman’s legs. But again the vampire moved too quickly, spinning Buffy against the wall and slamming a hand against her throat. The grim line of her mouth promised that Buffy would find her neck crushed if she even so much as flinched. “Best keep still, little butterfly,” she chided. “Else you’ll tear your wings on the pins.”
“Gonna ki- me,” Buffy forced herself to say, spitting clumps of air past her vocal cords, “At lea- can the cr-zy.”
The vampire leaned in close, confiding in a whisper, “Not me who’s going to kill you.” She nodded once, smirking now. “The Last Post’s coming, good little boys on trumpets, but they never let me play.” Gingerly she brought her free hand to Buffy’s face, running the black tip of a long, red fingernail along the line of the scar she found there. It tickled, a cold frisson rippling from Buffy’s face all through her body. Then, “Should never lie,” said the vampire, her humour sharpened to a razor’s edge. “Why does your face lie?”
I don’t know. Buffy could still feel the blade that had sliced through her skin, but she’d long forgotten the demon that had been wielding it. It had been a point of pride, on first becoming the Slayer, to never learn their names, always forget their faces and never fucking reify their existence. Just like she never acknowledged her ability to use words like ‘reify’ - even if it came in handy when Douglas tried to cripple her with his intellect.
Honestly, if she’d stayed the ditz she’d been before her mom had got killed, she’d have been screwed long before now by her watcher’s attempts at over-complicating information. Not that the world wouldn’t be better off, but it was nice to stick it to him on the sly, hit up the library for a dictionary and work out exactly what he was trying not to tell her.
The vampire giggled again, drawing Buffy back to the rather urgent circumstances. “How sweet your mind sings,” she said. “But, really, you should be a good girl and make everything right again.” Dropping her voice she brought her lips to Buffy’s ear, soft against the cartilage. “Go to Sunnydale. They’re waiting for you.”
With that Buffy’s stomach flipped, the shock of the word so sudden it almost hurt. Sunnydale: she knew that name. Her mom had wanted to move there, after the great gym-burning incident, but Buffy had been so embarrassed, so mortified, that she’d wanted to get as far from California as possible. It hadn’t been anything like her call, but she’d begged and pleaded and intercepted her mom’s job application so that she never heard back from the gallery. She’d seen it shatter her mom’s confidence that only the museum in Cleveland had wanted her and her experience. And even then she’d been glad. God.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Buffy almost didn’t notice the vampire take her hand away, a gentle kiss pressed against her ear. She certainly didn’t think about following her.
The thought took root in her mind, that she could lay it all to rest, be free of all the demons that possessed her. Shit; Sunnydale…
Living the life that Buffy did, she could act on her thoughts almost immediately. It took ten minutes to get her stuff together, which was longer than it should have taken, considering her stuff consisted of a roll of cash, some toothpaste, needle-and-thread and three two-dollar thongs. Also weapons, obviously, but she didn’t need anything else - and she certainly didn’t need to check in. Douglas would figure out where she was soon enough.
After that it only took another twenty minutes for her to hoof it to the bus station, where she bought her ticket and got told she had half an hour to spare. Getting away from her life was very, very easy.
In the time she had to wait, she took the opportunity to wash, taking over the farthest sink in the bathroom as she pulled off her top and lathered pearly pink soap over the skin not covered by her bra. The shirt was next, dunked and soaped and rinsed and wrung, followed by five minutes under the hand-dryer before she put it back on. All with only two death-glares and one pointed nod to her barely-hidden crossbow; she had to be getting meaner-looking.
That was pretty much her goal in life these days: look mean, get left alone. It was easier.
Walking back to the waiting area, however, she was prevented from taking her spied-out plastic seat. Instead she caught the eye of one of the people coming in from the buses, trudging across the scuffed faux-marble floor. Like her he didn’t have a bag; he was dressed in black, all apart from a whisper of red beneath his long leather coat, and he had the most god-awful hair she’d ever seen. Platinum blond and shellacked - nice.
Strike the earlier ‘people’ thought, because he was definitely a vampire.
“You,” he growled after a second, stopping as the sorry trickle of his fellow passengers carried on out of the building.
“Me,” she replied, reaching for the stake in the back of her combats. Apparently she was a tourist attraction these days.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you, making Dru jet off without me.” She ignored him, walking straight out the back of the building as she brought her stake into her hand. His footsteps were close behind. “D’you know how long I’ve been following her?” She had another talker on her hands; this really was her lucky night. “In fact, never mind…”
She’d been expecting the change, so the moment he tried to grab her from behind she crouched, flipping him over her head and into the darkness of the bus station’s parking bays. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she could see the four men cutting a drug deal slip away. Good.
The vampire was up again, but she punched him in the face, pulling back her hand as he tried his girlfriend’s trick with her wrist. It might be late and she might be tired, but she could still damn well learn from her battles. The shiver her damp top was giving her probably helped too, since it was keeping her far too awake.
“You know, I’m sorry you couldn’t hold her interest,” she found herself saying as she jumped the leg he swept low. “But d’you think maybe I’m not so much to blame as you, boring her to dusty death?” It felt right to taunt this one, for some reason. Maybe it was the hair. “Because I’m sensing some of this rage is projected.”
Her heart was hammering fast even before he clocked her in the face - once, twice, again - and then, despite the punch she returned straight after, as he cornered her against the breeze-block wall. However, it sped to pneumatic drill speeds as he crushed her against her crossbow. (Why was it still strapped out of the way, hidden from the humans under her baggy jacket?) Another hand against her throat cast the errant, probably delirious thought into her mind that she needed to get some sleep; there had to be time for sleep on the bus, if she lived to make it there. She had to sleep this week.
Now the vamp was talking. “Listen, Little Bo Bitch”, he said. “I know a lot more about you than you do about me.” His face was almost undefined in the darkness, some gloom from the terminal filtering out to shade the shadows, but nothing more. Yet still she could feel the intensity of his glare, the anger in his face and hands, though the grip on her neck was actually lighter than an hour ago. “Maybe I can’t kill you, teenybopper vision superstar that you are, but I wouldn’t be casting stones you can’t take back.”
“Who are you, her monkey?” His hand was loose enough that she could still speak normally; it was almost as if he wanted her to talk back. “She train you in the cryptic doublespeak?”
After a moment he snorted, and there was the crunch of his face slipping out the game face she hadn’t realised he’d gone into. “You ever think what you’d be like, things were different?” he asked, every word laced with mockery she couldn’t understand. “’Cause Dru’s seen it.” And then, for some reason, he put a hand on her leg, touching the d-ring on the side of her combats, about halfway up her thigh. “See you wearing skirts up to here - ” His fingers slid up the seam, and all she could think was that he was kidding himself if he thought she found pressure on khaki sexy. “ - and then slit higher besides. She’s seen you dancing and flirting and fucking someone very close to both of us. Apparently it’s your destiny.” Now he inhaled, the air rushing past her cheek, before letting out a sound that was almost like a moan. He stank of drink. “Oh, love - ”
She’d had enough. With a knee and a twist she wrenched herself free, twisting still to knock him down to the ground. “I don’t do destiny,” she spat at him as he laughed, lying back with a hand indolently on his chest. The thought flickered in her mind that maybe she should tell him she didn’t do vampires, either. “I’m getting out of town because…” Because, shit, some vampire bitch had told her to. Maybe this was the downside to following whims so damn fast. “Because I do what I like and I’ve spent way too much on a ticket.” Just on time she could see her bus’s headlights turn off the road and into the station.
Still the vampire laughed, as he clambered to his feet and looked at her, his face now clear in the light of the terminal’s doorway. “You don’t know the half of it,” he said, eyes boring into hers. “But I’ll tell you what - you decide to kick fate to the curb, you look me up. I’m putting my name on your dance card.”
“Deal,” she replied, as the tannoy announced her bus and more people came to join them at the exit. She thought about pulling her crossbow, trying to finish this now, but, really, was there any point? “Now get out of my sight.”
As the enormous vehicle grumbled to a halt and its headlights dimmed, the vampire slunk away into the shadows. He was going to kill someone, lots of people probably, in the time it took her to go on this trip. And yet she found it very difficult to care.
Wearily she made her way onto the bus, sitting not so far from the emergency exit but as far from everyone else as possible, and wondered really why she was going to Sunnydale, a place she’d never been. OK, so going there was probably the last thing her mother had ever asked of her, but her mother was dead. It wasn’t as if some stupid pilgrimage was going to change that. So, really, why?
Looking out the window, restlessly staring into the night even as they pulled away and slowly left the Hellmouth, she knew she didn’t have a clue.
“You got a light?” a fellow passenger asked her.
She didn’t look round, and really she should have ignored them, what with it being a No Smoking bus. Instead she said, “No.”
Title: Writing on the Wall (Or Is That Just Graffiti?)
Author: Quinara
Stats: PG-13/R for swearing; ~2300 words; technically canon-compliant.
Characters: Buffy, Dru, Spike - gen, or switch up the pairings whichever way your goggles fancy.
Summary: Wanna tell me what I'm doing here?
Warnings: None in particular. Some cavalier thoughts about death.
Writing on the Wall (Or Is That Just Graffiti?)
“Hello, dearie.”
Buffy looked up, breath ragged. Five vamps’ dust was settling in a ring around her - not bad for ten minutes work - but now there was this new woman, standing at the end of the alleyway and out of the light. All she wanted to do was go home, but the end never came, it seemed, as with long, sweeping steps the new vampire walked forward and slipped seamlessly into the floodlight.
“That’s right, look at me.” She smiled, nodding slowly, her skin bleached white in the fluorescence that shone on her. “Come a long way to see you, I have.”
Usually vamps didn’t talk this much. When they did their voices were much uglier to listen to, not lilting like this one’s, not inspiring her to that wanderlust she’d heard about; they didn’t latch hooks into her skin and pull her forwards, bring her closer and into the light.
Thankfully, Buffy wasn’t much of a talker, so when her feet had dragged her to within the vampire’s range, she instinctually brought up her stake and stabbed, mind still in a daze. Of course the vampire dodged away, flitting backwards with a swish of her skirts and a childish, playful giggle.
That broke the spell, at least. Again Buffy stabbed, but the vampire seized her wrists quicker than a whipsnake, tightening her fingers until the slayer was forced to drop her weapon with a gasp. There were no thoughts as the pain lanced through her, just the car-ruined silence of the night. The sound of her empty life.
Buffy looked up into the vampire’s eyes, wondering whether it was death or madness she could see in their expression. Given that the seconds were ticking on, she was remarkably alive for someone so incapacitated. Remarkably not kicking her enemy in the shins. “The hell do you want?” Buffy asked, the words almost like a surrender as speaking made her feel her exhaustion in every muscle of her face.
“Not meant to be here at all,” the vampire mused, before sighing petulantly. “So many new faces at the party; why are you the one the birthday girl invited?” Coming to her senses with a kick of adrenaline, Buffy struggled, jerking forward to bring up her knee between the woman’s legs. But again the vampire moved too quickly, spinning Buffy against the wall and slamming a hand against her throat. The grim line of her mouth promised that Buffy would find her neck crushed if she even so much as flinched. “Best keep still, little butterfly,” she chided. “Else you’ll tear your wings on the pins.”
“Gonna ki- me,” Buffy forced herself to say, spitting clumps of air past her vocal cords, “At lea- can the cr-zy.”
The vampire leaned in close, confiding in a whisper, “Not me who’s going to kill you.” She nodded once, smirking now. “The Last Post’s coming, good little boys on trumpets, but they never let me play.” Gingerly she brought her free hand to Buffy’s face, running the black tip of a long, red fingernail along the line of the scar she found there. It tickled, a cold frisson rippling from Buffy’s face all through her body. Then, “Should never lie,” said the vampire, her humour sharpened to a razor’s edge. “Why does your face lie?”
I don’t know. Buffy could still feel the blade that had sliced through her skin, but she’d long forgotten the demon that had been wielding it. It had been a point of pride, on first becoming the Slayer, to never learn their names, always forget their faces and never fucking reify their existence. Just like she never acknowledged her ability to use words like ‘reify’ - even if it came in handy when Douglas tried to cripple her with his intellect.
Honestly, if she’d stayed the ditz she’d been before her mom had got killed, she’d have been screwed long before now by her watcher’s attempts at over-complicating information. Not that the world wouldn’t be better off, but it was nice to stick it to him on the sly, hit up the library for a dictionary and work out exactly what he was trying not to tell her.
The vampire giggled again, drawing Buffy back to the rather urgent circumstances. “How sweet your mind sings,” she said. “But, really, you should be a good girl and make everything right again.” Dropping her voice she brought her lips to Buffy’s ear, soft against the cartilage. “Go to Sunnydale. They’re waiting for you.”
With that Buffy’s stomach flipped, the shock of the word so sudden it almost hurt. Sunnydale: she knew that name. Her mom had wanted to move there, after the great gym-burning incident, but Buffy had been so embarrassed, so mortified, that she’d wanted to get as far from California as possible. It hadn’t been anything like her call, but she’d begged and pleaded and intercepted her mom’s job application so that she never heard back from the gallery. She’d seen it shatter her mom’s confidence that only the museum in Cleveland had wanted her and her experience. And even then she’d been glad. God.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Buffy almost didn’t notice the vampire take her hand away, a gentle kiss pressed against her ear. She certainly didn’t think about following her.
The thought took root in her mind, that she could lay it all to rest, be free of all the demons that possessed her. Shit; Sunnydale…
Living the life that Buffy did, she could act on her thoughts almost immediately. It took ten minutes to get her stuff together, which was longer than it should have taken, considering her stuff consisted of a roll of cash, some toothpaste, needle-and-thread and three two-dollar thongs. Also weapons, obviously, but she didn’t need anything else - and she certainly didn’t need to check in. Douglas would figure out where she was soon enough.
After that it only took another twenty minutes for her to hoof it to the bus station, where she bought her ticket and got told she had half an hour to spare. Getting away from her life was very, very easy.
In the time she had to wait, she took the opportunity to wash, taking over the farthest sink in the bathroom as she pulled off her top and lathered pearly pink soap over the skin not covered by her bra. The shirt was next, dunked and soaped and rinsed and wrung, followed by five minutes under the hand-dryer before she put it back on. All with only two death-glares and one pointed nod to her barely-hidden crossbow; she had to be getting meaner-looking.
That was pretty much her goal in life these days: look mean, get left alone. It was easier.
Walking back to the waiting area, however, she was prevented from taking her spied-out plastic seat. Instead she caught the eye of one of the people coming in from the buses, trudging across the scuffed faux-marble floor. Like her he didn’t have a bag; he was dressed in black, all apart from a whisper of red beneath his long leather coat, and he had the most god-awful hair she’d ever seen. Platinum blond and shellacked - nice.
Strike the earlier ‘people’ thought, because he was definitely a vampire.
“You,” he growled after a second, stopping as the sorry trickle of his fellow passengers carried on out of the building.
“Me,” she replied, reaching for the stake in the back of her combats. Apparently she was a tourist attraction these days.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you, making Dru jet off without me.” She ignored him, walking straight out the back of the building as she brought her stake into her hand. His footsteps were close behind. “D’you know how long I’ve been following her?” She had another talker on her hands; this really was her lucky night. “In fact, never mind…”
She’d been expecting the change, so the moment he tried to grab her from behind she crouched, flipping him over her head and into the darkness of the bus station’s parking bays. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she could see the four men cutting a drug deal slip away. Good.
The vampire was up again, but she punched him in the face, pulling back her hand as he tried his girlfriend’s trick with her wrist. It might be late and she might be tired, but she could still damn well learn from her battles. The shiver her damp top was giving her probably helped too, since it was keeping her far too awake.
“You know, I’m sorry you couldn’t hold her interest,” she found herself saying as she jumped the leg he swept low. “But d’you think maybe I’m not so much to blame as you, boring her to dusty death?” It felt right to taunt this one, for some reason. Maybe it was the hair. “Because I’m sensing some of this rage is projected.”
Her heart was hammering fast even before he clocked her in the face - once, twice, again - and then, despite the punch she returned straight after, as he cornered her against the breeze-block wall. However, it sped to pneumatic drill speeds as he crushed her against her crossbow. (Why was it still strapped out of the way, hidden from the humans under her baggy jacket?) Another hand against her throat cast the errant, probably delirious thought into her mind that she needed to get some sleep; there had to be time for sleep on the bus, if she lived to make it there. She had to sleep this week.
Now the vamp was talking. “Listen, Little Bo Bitch”, he said. “I know a lot more about you than you do about me.” His face was almost undefined in the darkness, some gloom from the terminal filtering out to shade the shadows, but nothing more. Yet still she could feel the intensity of his glare, the anger in his face and hands, though the grip on her neck was actually lighter than an hour ago. “Maybe I can’t kill you, teenybopper vision superstar that you are, but I wouldn’t be casting stones you can’t take back.”
“Who are you, her monkey?” His hand was loose enough that she could still speak normally; it was almost as if he wanted her to talk back. “She train you in the cryptic doublespeak?”
After a moment he snorted, and there was the crunch of his face slipping out the game face she hadn’t realised he’d gone into. “You ever think what you’d be like, things were different?” he asked, every word laced with mockery she couldn’t understand. “’Cause Dru’s seen it.” And then, for some reason, he put a hand on her leg, touching the d-ring on the side of her combats, about halfway up her thigh. “See you wearing skirts up to here - ” His fingers slid up the seam, and all she could think was that he was kidding himself if he thought she found pressure on khaki sexy. “ - and then slit higher besides. She’s seen you dancing and flirting and fucking someone very close to both of us. Apparently it’s your destiny.” Now he inhaled, the air rushing past her cheek, before letting out a sound that was almost like a moan. He stank of drink. “Oh, love - ”
She’d had enough. With a knee and a twist she wrenched herself free, twisting still to knock him down to the ground. “I don’t do destiny,” she spat at him as he laughed, lying back with a hand indolently on his chest. The thought flickered in her mind that maybe she should tell him she didn’t do vampires, either. “I’m getting out of town because…” Because, shit, some vampire bitch had told her to. Maybe this was the downside to following whims so damn fast. “Because I do what I like and I’ve spent way too much on a ticket.” Just on time she could see her bus’s headlights turn off the road and into the station.
Still the vampire laughed, as he clambered to his feet and looked at her, his face now clear in the light of the terminal’s doorway. “You don’t know the half of it,” he said, eyes boring into hers. “But I’ll tell you what - you decide to kick fate to the curb, you look me up. I’m putting my name on your dance card.”
“Deal,” she replied, as the tannoy announced her bus and more people came to join them at the exit. She thought about pulling her crossbow, trying to finish this now, but, really, was there any point? “Now get out of my sight.”
As the enormous vehicle grumbled to a halt and its headlights dimmed, the vampire slunk away into the shadows. He was going to kill someone, lots of people probably, in the time it took her to go on this trip. And yet she found it very difficult to care.
Wearily she made her way onto the bus, sitting not so far from the emergency exit but as far from everyone else as possible, and wondered really why she was going to Sunnydale, a place she’d never been. OK, so going there was probably the last thing her mother had ever asked of her, but her mother was dead. It wasn’t as if some stupid pilgrimage was going to change that. So, really, why?
Looking out the window, restlessly staring into the night even as they pulled away and slowly left the Hellmouth, she knew she didn’t have a clue.
“You got a light?” a fellow passenger asked her.
She didn’t look round, and really she should have ignored them, what with it being a No Smoking bus. Instead she said, “No.”