Deep
Title: Deep
Creator: TheFoxinator
Rating: T
Setting: Post-"Chosen" AU (Sorta complies to some comics canon but not much)
Summary/Prompt: Smudge: The Creepy Heap from the Deep (AU)
Word Count: 783
Buffy’s not gonna lie. It’s totally wiggy being back at the crater. Also not so much a crater as it is a lake now. Or maybe it can be both.
“What do you see?” Xander asks her through her earpiece.
“Water. Town stuff.” Buffy squints in. The water rises pretty high, high enough to cover all of the buildings. A few rocks that used to be ground for her to patrol jut out of the lake. “I don’t see anything from up here. I’m going in closer.”
The crater sides and steep and possibly still unstable and Leah triple-checks that the climbing gear is secure before Buffy starts her climb down.
Even wiggier than being here is remembering how close she came to having to climb her way out the last time she was here. Or how she might not have made it out at all. How easy it would have been to be all the way down at the bottom of the water if she’d let herself spent another second on fire.
It feels like she climbs forever, but things get a little more level eventually, a few feet away from the water. “This is the worst beach I’ve ever been to,” she says to Xander and Leah and whoever else is listening in to their communications.
“Just look for any monsters that might be eating people,” says Xander.
“Couldn’t they put, like, a fence up?” asks Buffy.
“Slay the monster, start a petition,” says Xander.
Buffy wanders a little closer to the edge, turning the Scythe over in her hand. “Those don’t really work.” Then she squints into the distance. “Whoa. Sun Cinema.”
“What?” asks Xander.
“I can see the sign. It’s not very deep.”
She trails along the shore. The water is deep and dirty and polluted and smells really bad. Garbage floats along the surface. There are trashcans and cars and metal tables that might have once sat in the Espresso Pump washed up that she has to step around or over. No corpses so far at least. She doesn’t want to stumble upon Anya’s decomposed body. Also she doesn’t want to say that aloud to Xander.
“Buffy?” asks Leah.
“Yeah?”
“Just making sure we’re still connected.”
“Yeah.”
She remembers the last time she was this isolated in Sunnydale. She wandered the streets on her own, without her home to return to. Alone. Feels kinda familiar.
Even with Xander in Scotland with her now, she still doesn’t feel quite like she’s… right. She doesn’t belong with the new generation. Too cynical for the excited ones, too experienced for the terrified ones, too cut off for any of them.
Willow and Kennedy in Brazil. Supposedly. She hasn’t heard from them in over a month.
Giles in England or Cleveland or somewhere, she’s not even sure.
Dawn in Berkley. Maybe she and Leah will go visit her before they leave. They can meet Kenny, Dawn’s boyfriend who is otherwise known as the only thing Dawn wants to talk about when she calls Buffy now.
The Scoobies don’t have a place for her, the other girls don’t have a place for her.
It really does feel familiar.
Except last time Spike had come for her.
Just like there’s something coming for her now.
“Whoa.”
“There’s a whoa?” asks Xander.
“There is definitely some whoa.”
The water is moving. And not gust-of-wind moving. Something-moving-in-it moving. There is some demon that’s managed to make its way into the Sunnydale Lake Crater. It looks pretty big too, even though Buffy can’t actually make out its appearance through the murk and heaps of garbage.
How does anything live in all that garbage?
The creature rises from the Hellmouth’s depths.
It’s dark grey in a somewhat spotted pattern towards its sides. Big and smooth-skinned and definitely big enough to be behind those reports from those spooked thrill-seeking teenagers. It rises and Buffy can see it now and see it’s
“It’s a narwhal.”
“A narwhal?” asks Xander.
“Narwhals live in the arctic,” says Leah. “It’s really warm here. Are you sure?”
“It’s definitely… it’s definitely staring at me.”
It’s totally staring at her. Like, really, really intently. And Buffy stares back at it.
She can’t quite make herself look away.
There’s something. Something she can’t quite think of.
Do narwhals normally have blue eyes?
Something important. Something familiar.
She stares at the narwhal and the narwhal stares back.
Then, hoping in the back of her head than Leah and Xander have both turned off their headsets for the time being for no real reason, she asks, “Spike?”
She’s never heard a narwhal make any noises at all before, but she has no doubt that that was an affirmative.
Creator: TheFoxinator
Rating: T
Setting: Post-"Chosen" AU (Sorta complies to some comics canon but not much)
Summary/Prompt: Smudge: The Creepy Heap from the Deep (AU)
Word Count: 783
Buffy’s not gonna lie. It’s totally wiggy being back at the crater. Also not so much a crater as it is a lake now. Or maybe it can be both.
“What do you see?” Xander asks her through her earpiece.
“Water. Town stuff.” Buffy squints in. The water rises pretty high, high enough to cover all of the buildings. A few rocks that used to be ground for her to patrol jut out of the lake. “I don’t see anything from up here. I’m going in closer.”
The crater sides and steep and possibly still unstable and Leah triple-checks that the climbing gear is secure before Buffy starts her climb down.
Even wiggier than being here is remembering how close she came to having to climb her way out the last time she was here. Or how she might not have made it out at all. How easy it would have been to be all the way down at the bottom of the water if she’d let herself spent another second on fire.
It feels like she climbs forever, but things get a little more level eventually, a few feet away from the water. “This is the worst beach I’ve ever been to,” she says to Xander and Leah and whoever else is listening in to their communications.
“Just look for any monsters that might be eating people,” says Xander.
“Couldn’t they put, like, a fence up?” asks Buffy.
“Slay the monster, start a petition,” says Xander.
Buffy wanders a little closer to the edge, turning the Scythe over in her hand. “Those don’t really work.” Then she squints into the distance. “Whoa. Sun Cinema.”
“What?” asks Xander.
“I can see the sign. It’s not very deep.”
She trails along the shore. The water is deep and dirty and polluted and smells really bad. Garbage floats along the surface. There are trashcans and cars and metal tables that might have once sat in the Espresso Pump washed up that she has to step around or over. No corpses so far at least. She doesn’t want to stumble upon Anya’s decomposed body. Also she doesn’t want to say that aloud to Xander.
“Buffy?” asks Leah.
“Yeah?”
“Just making sure we’re still connected.”
“Yeah.”
She remembers the last time she was this isolated in Sunnydale. She wandered the streets on her own, without her home to return to. Alone. Feels kinda familiar.
Even with Xander in Scotland with her now, she still doesn’t feel quite like she’s… right. She doesn’t belong with the new generation. Too cynical for the excited ones, too experienced for the terrified ones, too cut off for any of them.
Willow and Kennedy in Brazil. Supposedly. She hasn’t heard from them in over a month.
Giles in England or Cleveland or somewhere, she’s not even sure.
Dawn in Berkley. Maybe she and Leah will go visit her before they leave. They can meet Kenny, Dawn’s boyfriend who is otherwise known as the only thing Dawn wants to talk about when she calls Buffy now.
The Scoobies don’t have a place for her, the other girls don’t have a place for her.
It really does feel familiar.
Except last time Spike had come for her.
Just like there’s something coming for her now.
“Whoa.”
“There’s a whoa?” asks Xander.
“There is definitely some whoa.”
The water is moving. And not gust-of-wind moving. Something-moving-in-it moving. There is some demon that’s managed to make its way into the Sunnydale Lake Crater. It looks pretty big too, even though Buffy can’t actually make out its appearance through the murk and heaps of garbage.
How does anything live in all that garbage?
The creature rises from the Hellmouth’s depths.
It’s dark grey in a somewhat spotted pattern towards its sides. Big and smooth-skinned and definitely big enough to be behind those reports from those spooked thrill-seeking teenagers. It rises and Buffy can see it now and see it’s
“It’s a narwhal.”
“A narwhal?” asks Xander.
“Narwhals live in the arctic,” says Leah. “It’s really warm here. Are you sure?”
“It’s definitely… it’s definitely staring at me.”
It’s totally staring at her. Like, really, really intently. And Buffy stares back at it.
She can’t quite make herself look away.
There’s something. Something she can’t quite think of.
Do narwhals normally have blue eyes?
Something important. Something familiar.
She stares at the narwhal and the narwhal stares back.
Then, hoping in the back of her head than Leah and Xander have both turned off their headsets for the time being for no real reason, she asks, “Spike?”
She’s never heard a narwhal make any noises at all before, but she has no doubt that that was an affirmative.