Lyric Wheel Story
Oct. 24th, 2003 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darcydodo
-
Title: The World We Made
Characters: Oz, Giles, Willow, Devon, Ethan, the Master, Xander
Spoilers: None. Wishverse, parallel with "Halloween"
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui, Sandollar, 20th Century Fox, and whoever else may have a hold upon them; I do not mean to infringe upon any copyrights.
Author's Note: This was written for the fifth, Halloween-themed round of the Buffy and Angel Lyric Wheel. The lyrics I was sent are here.
Thanks: to Dana E. for the lyrics.
There are moments of true horror, where flashing panic or insidious paranoia do not begin to approach the desperate, retching sickness that you suddenly feel, insides not turning to water because you have no insides; just a sudden, empty shell of body, barely even flesh, perhaps a vessel too fragile for such purity of emotion. And in this life of never-ending tears, grit, uncertainty, Oz remembers such moments with crystal clarity, every last one. They are, surprisingly, exceedingly rare.
Things that happened when he was little seem as though they should be silly, now, when he thinks back on them. The horrendous, grinding crunch as his babysitter stepped on a wind-up car. He feels his eyes freeze wide, disbelieving despair clawing at his mind. A moment's tearful gasp as a favorite Christmas ornament, glass, shimmering, slipped off the nodding, needled bough and smashed on the floor. Brilliant rainbows sliding down the wall as it falls, he tracks it with his eyes, so slow in its descent, muscles paralyzed with horror, splinters glittering like fragments of ice beneath the tree. And yet each time he does reflect, tries to shrug off the unhappiness that such memories bring, he feels the still-furled scream knotting his belly, is aware that it will never change. As a child, Oz knows, you feel things more intensely, and these moments accumulated, left their clawed tracks across his psyche, he's sure; really, he just tries not to remember.
Then he grew up. Made friends, got given a guitar one fine birthday, started the band with Devon. Happy memories, for so many years. Horror was, he thinks, strangely absent from those halcyon days of not-quite-childhood; days spent browsing bookshops, listening to records, experimenting with pot and sex and music. It all blends into a contented blur, like the just barely buzzing thrum of a stilled guitar string. Days of peace just waiting to be shattered.
It came less than a year ago, that moment of unreality, the world as he and everyone knew it turning inside out and upside down. Arriving at school and hearing the squeals of Cordelia and her clique about their traumatic experiences the night before, and the gradual understanding of what had actually apparently happened, and finding that for once it was real, that it wasn't another attention-seeking ploy on their part. And then the swift depletion of the student body, friend after friend after acquaintance after stranger disappearing into the black of night, before the town mayor imposed a curfew to protect his remaining people. And the strange happenings of Sunnydale weren't quietly whispered between gossiping neighbors any more; words like death and vampire rode every lip.
But those days of unrest and confusion weren't branded so clearly in Oz's mind either; they were simply part of his life, now, as was the gradually forming nucleus of resistance, organized strangely enough by the quietly respectable librarian who had taken up his position at the high school not long before their world fell apart. No, it was more recent incidents that had taken up residence in his memory, screamed abject fear and loss at him every time he shut his eyes. Scenes replaying, trying to find escape routes that somehow end differently than what he knows to be the crippling truth.
"Oz." He turned, the sound of his name pricking his ears. Giles was standing in the door to the library, a book in his hand.
"I'm very sorry to have to lay this on you, but Principal Snyder has requested that my, ah, fetch-and-carry gang, as he so charmingly put it, serve as chaperons to trick-or-treating children tonight. Apparently the Mayor, in an attempt to boost morale, has lifted the curfew for tonight, as Halloween is, traditionally, a quiet time for vampiric activity." A faint smile quirked Oz's mouth as he watched Giles unconsciously remove his glasses, polish them with his handkerchief. "I felt strangely moved to acquiesce to Snyder's demands; perhaps it was the particular way he mentioned school service and the yearly talent show in the same breath. So I fear that I'm asking you and the others to forfeit your freedom this night, of all nights." The spectacles were replaced, adjusted. "Could you possibly find Devon and Larry and Nancy and relay this assuredly unpleasant news?"
A slight nod, signaling acceptance of fate. "Why no vampires?"
Now a smile touched Giles' lips, as well, and Oz could see him slipping into lecture mode. He loved how such passion for his subject fueled the staid librarian, whenever a relevant query was posed. "A rather interesting question, academically speaking. Theories differ, but the two prevalent ones are either that they find the idea of capering ghouls and demonically-garbed children too crass to associate themselves with, or else that it is a matter of age-old tradition. Halloween was originally a time to banish dark spirits, you understand, so that it is always conceivable that the tradition originated with creatures of darkness laying low for their own preservation, later continuing to do so out of respect for custom. Vampires are very oriented around rituals, as it happens." A wry look flickered across his face. "I suspect that you didn't wish to hear such a lengthy discourse, when you were clearly headed somewhere."
Oz shook his head, amused. "Not really; we have band practice, but I can be late. Rehearsals are kind of on hold these days, anyway. I'll tell the others."
Oz was perturbed. He had started out the evening with five children in his care; now he had three children, a glowing, lacy-winged pixie, and what could probably best be dubbed a werecat. At least, he thought to himself, none of his charges had turned into psychopathic killing demons, as others apparently had, as evinced by screams drifting shrilly across the crisp autumn air. Marshalling the terrified youngsters, he swiftly navigated the streets to his house, ushered them inside.
"Stay here," he told them, as emphatically as he could. Kissed his worried mother's cheek, promised that he would be careful. Slipping extra stakes into his waistband and slinging a crossbow and trank gun (how his mother had fretted when she'd first seen the fearsome yet crude artillery of his weapons chest), he headed out again into the darkness, locking the door behind him.
Four blocks away, he came upon a crouched, shaking figure; started with surprise when it raised its head ("Devon!") and gazed back at him with chalky face, eyes pitted black with tears.
"They changed, man," his friend choked out, sorrow and fright thickening his voice, "the children, they turned evil and ate the woman giving them candy." He passed a trembling hand across his eyes. "I thought nothing was supposed to happen tonight." Desperation, now, fingers knotting on Oz's corduroy lapels. "Didn't Giles say so?" Oz hooked calming hands around Devon's wrists, pulled him to his feet. "He said no vampires. This is something different." Coaxing him, supporting him, urging along his first few steps, teaching a toddler how to walk. "C'mon, Dev, we need to find Giles." Tracing the familiar twists of Sunnydale's residential streets, weaving in and out of the thicker shadows cast by crooked-armed trees, he sensed Devon loosen up after a while, felt an easing of the other boy's weight against his shoulder. "It's cool, Dev." Never were falser words spoken. "Giles'll sort this in a jiffy."
A nod, whispered above his head, because he couldn't see it in this dim night. Then, a pause, a sudden hissed intake of breath, as dusky figures appeared out on the sidewalk ahead of them. Boy and girl, dark and bright-haired respectively, moving with loose-limbed grace. But moving away, Oz thought rationally, and he watched with approval as they melted back into the darkness which had seemed to spawn them. And to be perfectly honest, his mind continued, working to counter the niggling fear that was trickling its way icily down his chest, it's unlikely that they were vampires. Two unaccompanied humans, and they didn't attack? They'd be missing a good easy kill. Besides which, there was always what Giles had said about vampires and Halloween. It just didn't seem likely.
They were about three blocks from Giles' apartment when he saw the pair again. Huddling against a lamp post, the boy's arms wrapped protectively around the girl's shoulders, chin nestling in her hair. She was idly tracing a finger along his wrist, apparently content within his embrace. Oz thought, upon seeing their faces, that they looked oddly familiar, in the way that a much-published painting, ignored in the pages of art books and magazines, springs out boldly, filling in half-conceived of lines and colors, when you finally come across it in reality, and still you can't place it. He began to turn to ask Devon, realized that his friend was staring at the pair with an odd sort of hungry fascination. It unnerved him, sealed his lips around the question he was about to pose.
"Help us," said the girl, in a strangely calm, detached voice. "We're scared. There's monsters out here."
Then the boy raised his head, looked straight at them, handsome features intense with some unreadable emotion. "The world's changing, inverting, chaos overwhelming all. We don't... like chaos. Help us."
Oz was shocked into stillness. There was clearly something wrong with this pair, yet he had no idea what. Something in his mind was still insisting vampires, but he labeled it paranoia and cautiously tucked it into a corner, having a certain amount of faith in Giles' fearsome understanding of the Hellmouth and its inhabitants.
And then, without being sure why, he and Devon were following them, lured by an unheard siren's call, striding quickly to keep up with their casual lope. As they went along, it began to percolate his consciousness precisely where they were going, and panic gelled his limbs once more. The Bronze. Vampires after all. Yet he didn't stop, and now he did know why; two streets away, and Devon showed no signs of stopping, the haunted eagerness still glazing his eyes. He wouldn't abandon Devon, though it meant his death.
At the door of the Bronze, now, the wall covered with colorful tatters of flyers from nearly a year ago, the small blackboard by the entrance tilted askew. Inside: as desolate as during the yearly fumigation, and yet not, because there were yellow-eyed fiends perched on the faded pool table, the couch with split seams. And a red-eyed, bat-faced vampire, clad in black, and, leaning nonchalantly against a wall, a smallish man who was evidently both human and unafraid. Oz eyed him with curiosity, uncertain. He was a mystery, but the vampire he could put a name to. The Master.
"We've brought some, Master," said the boy, and it was indeed a name and title all at once, deeply reverent.
"White Hats," added the girl, and distaste dripped from her words.
The Master studied Oz and Devon, smiled. "Well done, my sweets." He turned to the human. "So, my sorcerous friend? Do they fit your need?"
The man narrowed his eyes in thought, then grinned. "So long as they bring me Ripper," he replied with glee, "rather little else matters."
The boy approached Devon, slung a seemingly companionable arm around his shoulders. "This one's staying here with us." He smirked at Oz, flashed his game face briefly and suggestively. "You're going to go get your librarian friend and bring him here." Cocked his head to the side, gazed from beneath lowered eyelashes. "After that, who knows what's going to happen? We could kill you. We might chase you. It would be such fun."
The Master breathed out a little pleased sigh. "Such zest," he murmured, mostly to himself. Then, "Willow, you follow this one. If he doesn't do as we've told him, you have my express permission to do with him as you like." The girl, Willow, smiled, and it wasn't pleasant. Oz's stomach curdled.
"I knew you'd help us," she told him, then added, "though really I hope you don't. I'm hungry."
Panic mazed the familiar streets as Oz raced along, heading for Giles', not knowing if he should try to escape the path that had been dictated for him. He could sense her somewhere in the darkness, a panther stalking her prey. The moonlight ghosted through the clouds, silvered fine wisps of fog that drifted through the sky; glowed on the empty black streets that lay before him. His brain spat words in the confines of his skull, too late, too late, distractedly pulsing beneath his attempts to organize possible routes of escape. Devon would be lost to him, he knew, but he couldn't believe it, had to hope that there was still a chance of rescuing him. Gone, gone, too late, was the silent echo. He could feel the edges of his lips turning white with anguish, knuckles paling as his fingers clenched tightly into his palms.
At last, Giles' street. The numbers flicked higher as he passed, glancing left or right, 3509, keep running, 4018, just six blocks, 4521, almost there, then dashing up the stairs, into the courtyard, pounding heavily on the door with his heart beating in his mouth. "Giles, Giles, it's me, it's Oz!" Distress cracking his voice. Then the door opens and he's inside, steady hands on his shoulders, a calm, even voice soothing away his worries. Except his worries couldn't be soothed away, the mounting panic that threatened to flood his senses couldn't be stayed.
"They've got Devon, Giles, they took him, and they want you, and she's out there, Giles, waiting for me, hunting me," and he'd never strung so many words together out loud in his life since he discovered books and saw how one could make words flow silently on a page so much more beautifully and significantly than by saying them out loud.
A glass was pressed into his hands, and he took a swallow, mindlessly expecting tea; choked on the warm burn of scotch. The shock went a long way towards clearing his mind, and he regarded Giles mutely.
"I'm afraid," said Giles, "that you've just made precisely zero sense to my apparently ageing, English brain. Why don't you retrace that story a bit more coherently." So Oz did, told him everything; the wind that had picked up and howled around their small group as they passed from house to house, the change that had come over some of the children, his abject blindness as he stared at Willow and her dark companion, not seeing them for what they were until it was far, far too late. Then, at the Bronze, the Master, the human....
"Ripper?" Giles' face was suddenly drawn and astonished. "He said Ripper?" Oz nodded, puzzled, described the man at Giles' request, unprepared for the viciousness and anger of his hissed response.
"Ethan Rayne." Giles stood, paced to the window, hands clenched into fists. "I might have known. I might have sensed him here. How dare he meddle with you children?" But he looked at Oz's white features, and though the line between his eyebrows deepened, he pressed his lips together firmly, shook his head. "He's made himself powerful allies, the slippery bastard. All set up and waiting for me." Not answering Oz's nebulous, unspoken question. One fist slammed into his other hand, made a crack that caused Oz to jump. "But he has no idea who I am any more." It seemed to Oz that Giles was thinking out loud, now, musing half-told secrets into the silence of the room. "He's expecting me to come after him without a second thought. And I would." He focused on Oz, again, and there was pain in his features. "But it's not so simple now."
Oz shook his head, a sharp, definitive motion. "We're going for Devon."
Giles smiled bitterly in reply. "We certainly are, Oz. However, you know as well as I that it's purely a trap, nothing more, nothing less, for all concerned. Oh, Ethan might think that he'll be able to take some sort of vengeance on me, he's arrogant like that, but I'd wager that the vampires with whom he's dealing are only planning to use him." He paused, and Oz wondered if he was going to clean his glasses, but instead he continued, a weary note in his voice. "Chances are that we shall die in our attempt. But there may be some way to gain the upper hand. Something they're not expecting."
Oz stared at Giles, and an image of the two vampires curled against the lamppost flashed into his mind, the memory of their words surfacing.
"It was true," he said, unthinkingly.
Giles' brows jerked towards each other in confusion, and Oz registered his own words. "What they said," he clarified, "was true. The monsters, the chaos; they're not digging it." He was sure now, and he leaned towards Giles, fingers tightening around the glass he still held. "It's their deal with Ethan that's bugging me. We're being a thorn in their side, right? So they're using him to get us. But he doesn't have to break the spell once we're dead, and if he's dead...."
Comprehension dawned on the librarian's face, sent him dashing across the room to pull a book off a shelf. He opened the book on his chess table, leaned on the heels of his hands as he read, shoulders hunching. Eventually raised his head, removed his glasses, looked thoughtfully at Oz as the ritual of spectacle-polishing ensued.
"You may indeed have something there, Oz," he said, carefully. "Some rituals are, once completed, bound entirely to an item, rather than the caster's own life force. Sometimes killing the caster will even trigger extra, disastrous manifestations, a kind of parting gift, if you will. And, knowing Ethan, he'll have worked as hard as possible to save his own skin in the chance of something backfiring." He frowned again. "I can't see, though... tell me, how precisely does this help us?"
"We convince Willow," said Oz, "to help us break the spell. She kills Ethan instead, first, for imposing chaos and depriving the vampires of meals. In the confusion, we'll rescue Devon." But his words sounded flat, and the plan seemed anything but tenable, spoken out loud. He deflated, slumping down in the couch, mumbled, "Was worth a try anyway, I thought."
To his surprise, Giles was nodding thoughtfully. "You're perfectly correct that it's a terrible plan, but I can't see that it hasn't got some merit at the same time." Worry shifted across his face. "You realize, I presume, that you'll have to be the agent of this persuasion. I'd wager that I hate Ethan's guts too much to sound convincing."
Oz shrugged philosophically. "Figures."
Silence reigned in the streets of Sunnydale, those still human locked up tightly in their houses, hoping to ward off with doors and bolts the horrors that had encroached upon this night. Oz stood still, in the darkness surrounding Giles' house, trying to sense Willow's presence. Nothing. So he gave up, began walking, certain that she was aware of him.
Soon enough, her voice froze him in his tracks. "You're alone," she told him. "You're not supposed to be alone."
Cool fingers brushed the back of his neck, made him jump, struggle against every instinct that was screaming run, run, fight, panic. He swallowed. "I'm alone. I wanted to talk to you."
"Talk? Talk's boring." Still she didn't move into his line of sight, and he wasn't going to turn around. Just that much able not to play her game. "There's no fun in talk, but I could chase you. That would be fun. Track the scent of your fear; you smell so very tasty." Now she crossed in front of him, smiled lazily. "Eating you would be fun, too." But she wasn't in game face, and Oz's momentarily flopping heart resumed a normal, if rapid, pattern of pulses.
"Willow," he said, and she looked delighted. "Think about it. This spell that Ethan's cast, it's depriving you of food. Think of..." he swallowed again, hard, forced out the words. "Think of the children."
She shrugged, careless, said with certainty, "We'll kill him. Just you first."
Oz shook his head frantically. "That won't work." Then, at her obvious disbelief, "Giles told me that the spell won't be bound to him, that killing him could result in a backlash."
Willow rolled her eyes at his evident denseness. "So we'll have to torture him until he undoes it. Shucks." She leaned towards him, lips close to his ear, whispered, "But thanks for the tip."
To Oz's relief, she moved away again, so that her face was visible in the faint wash of the streetlamps. He could see her staring at him hungrily, and her eyes flashed yellow.
"If I kill you," she told him, "your librarian will be so, so sad. And then he'll come to the Bronze, and we can kill him. It's just as easy as waiting until you're both there."
Her smile this time showed sharp teeth and fangs, and she knocked away the cross that Oz tried to extract from his waistband. It clattered as it hit the pavement, skidded.
"Ooh, food," said Willow, eyes focusing bright on his neck, hand snapping around his throat before he could pull back. She raked her tongue along the curve of his jaw, sniffed in deeply. "So tasty, I could just eat you. Oh wait, I'm gonna." Oz felt her teeth hard and slick against his skin, an intense thrill of pain as she sunk them in deeply, snarling. An involuntary cry escaped his lips, and he jerked away with as much strength as he could muster, fell heavily on the ground. His hand closed around the cross, clutched it tightly, its edges ridging his palm. Willow hissed in annoyance, and he thrust it blindly towards her, scrambling away as he did so. Found his feet, fled, up the steps to Giles' apartment, in the still-unlocked door, nearly colliding with Giles, who had heard his cry and was coming to investigate. Stopped, gasping for breath, turned to see Willow standing just outside, glaring in with yellowed eyes and ridged brow.
"You're never coming in," Oz told her, pressing his palm to his neck, feeling Giles' reassuring presence at his shoulder, "just so that's clear."
She folded her hands behind her back, leaned against the open door. "I'll wait for you to come out," she replied. "They'll kill your friend soon enough, when you don't show up. Xander's hungry too." Red tongue-tip traced white teeth. "I'm just sorry I won't be there to watch."
That was a knife in Oz's gut, with a frosted, twisting blade, and he turned to Giles, his anguish written across his face. Giles looked somber. "I think," he said to Oz, "that I'm going to have to argue in the interests of common sense. She's evidently going to kill us the moment we leave. And even if we somehow made it to the Bronze, Devon won't still be alive." He laughed, humorlessly. "Maybe they'll at least kill Ethan, too."
Oz nodded unhappily, acquiescing the point, feeling blood pool in the hollow of his collarbone, trickle down to the hem of his shirt. He'd known from the time he left the Bronze that Devon was gone, that he'd never see his friend again, or that if he did, it would be on the wrong end of a stake. One more name for the Sunnydale death toll. Despite knowing that they would have died anyway, it felt like he was condemning Devon to death, fashioning a noose, while the Master and Willow and... Xander... all stood around watching, laughing. He was sure that Devon's cry of desperation as he slipped out of his trance, realized too late what was happening, would ring forever in his ears.
At some point in the night, Willow began to tap her foot idly, eventually muttered something and disappeared into the blackness beyond the courtyard.
They sat there, still, in the lamp-yellowed room, each not quite weeping for what they had to give up, for the uncertainties of tomorrow. Gradually, Oz's expression hardened, and anguish froze solid in the pit of his stomach. No more tears, now or ever. Only the desperate emptiness of loss, again, and again, and again. He wanted to scream but didn't, and the silence extended, swelled, stretching between boy and man, lost in their own thoughts and bonded by absolute determination to do what must be done, waiting for the dawn to come.
END
The Wake of the Medusa
by The Pogues
The guests are stood in silence
They stare and drink their wine
On the wall the canvas hangs
Frozen there in time
They marvel at the beauty
The horror and despair
At the wake of the Medusa
No one shed a tear
Sit my friends and listen
Put your glasses down
Sit my friends and listen
To the voices of the drowned
In the moonlight's ghostly glow
I waken in a dream
Once more upon that raft I stand
Upon a raging sea
In my ears the moans and screams
Of the dying ring
Somewhere in the darkness
The siren softly sings
Out there in the waves she stands
And smiling there she calls
As the lightning cracks the sky
The wind begins to howl
The architects of our doom
Around their tables sit
And in their thrones of power
Condemn those they've cast adrift
Echoes down the city street
Their harpies laughter rings
Waiting for the curtain call
Oblivious in the wings
The casket is empty
Abandon ye all hope
They ran off with the money
And left us with the rope
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Date: 2003-10-24 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-24 04:37 pm (UTC)*kicks lj for good measure, for not sending me half my comments*
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