Everything existed in a halfway state now. Halfway between waking and sleeping, between life and death. In a rare moment of lucidity, Fred compared them all to Schrödinger's cat, trapped in the in-between with no one to open the box and determine the outcome. Trying to live while waiting to die, which, as it turned out, wasn't as bad as it seemed, once you gave up.
All consequences were essentially inconsequential to the walking dead. He thought it explained quite a bit about both Angel and Angelus.
As the weeks passed, Buffy began to spend more and more of her time asleep, sprawled shrouded beneath the makeshift bedding. With little else to do, he would sit in the room and listen to her breathe. Occasionally, he'd curl up beside her, his hand spread possessively over her belly, states of potential layered like Schrödinger's nesting dolls.
It was funny, the efforts the body went to to propagate the species, even with extinction 'round the corner. He'd never felt any particular urge for children of his own—too many uncertainties and too much that could go wrong. He still didn't, and didn't have any regrets knowing they'd die before potential became reality. Just an odd disconnected connectedness to the experience.
Days came and went in a blur, indistinct and shapeless. Fred slipped from her room while he and Buffy were sleeping, leaving behind one last drawing—on paper this time—of an elephant (at least he assumed from the context it was an elephant, though it more closely resembled a tapir) trudging off to a pile of bones. On the back was a short, apologetic letter of explanation and the last lines of "The Hollow Men". He burned it for fuel with the rest of her possessions.
On the last night, he gathered the remainder of the candles and set them around the room. Lit them one by one until it was close to bright. Buffy's wraith-like figure, all angles and bones except for the slight curve of her stomach, glowed silver in the flickering light, the ends of her hair faded to white from months without retouching. He watched her until the candles began to sputter, then crawled next to the still form and drifted off to sleep.
There. All done.
Now to get dressed and go play.
Ah, Plei. So very painful.
So, I was going to work on my remix story tonight, but I see that I've got
thousands
of posts to catch up on in Bitches and Buffy. Maybe I'll do that instead.
Of course. Plei knows that painful and lovely are synonyms to me.
Triptych is, for whatever reason, the only story (series, I suppose) of mine I can re-read on a semi-regular basis without feeling the urge to cut off my writing hands.
It's also the only one I will willingly admit to really liking.
to cut off my writing hands.
I now picture Plei having a box full of multi-purpose hands. Need a screwdriver? Give Plei a second to attach a Phillips or Robertson. Barbeque? Spatula on the left, fork on the right. GoGo GadgetPlei!
I now picture Plei having a box full of multi-purpose hands. Need a screwdriver? Give Plei a second to attach a Phillips or Robertson. Barbeque? Spatula on the left, fork on the right. GoGo GadgetPlei!
Well, you know...
It's steampunk or somethin'.
But, I guess if I cut off the writing hands, I would also lose the hugging hands, and the shampoo hands. Never you mind.
Damn. Yes, I have read them before, but damn. You SO sell me on this pairing, Ple.
And, Connie? Still loving the Ethan. Just gets better on the rereading.
It's very slow, this. Research intensive and not easy to write. Besides the fact that it doesn't yet have a plot.
~~~
The door swung open and they swaggered in, confident beyond anything he’d imagined was possible.
Inside, the museum’s hallowed halls were dark, the stairs wreathed in shadow and the corridors filled with gloom. So many times his father or his grandmother had brought him here, when he was a mere mortal, a puny living thing. Then he’d be awed by the sheer magnificence of the building—from the pillars that flanked the front door to the massive and echoing galleries. Now, in the darkness, the two-day-old vampire found he was no longer in awe.
Drusilla laughed, her head flung back and her eyes wild. A few dancing steps at a time, she floated up the staircase, her eerie laughter rebounding from the stone walls and sending shivers down William’s spine.
“We ought to be quiet,” he said, a little doubt in his voice.
“Quiet? No, William, the moon is singing. Lady Death is holding a party, and she wants me to be there.” She gestured, a wave of her hand that meant ‘the party is upstairs’. “The gentleman must take me up.”
He took her by the arm as he if was taking her into any other dance hall, and the pair paraded along, through the dim corridors, past the rows of glass cabinets. He would have stopped to look at the latest items-- the carvings from the Great Stupa at Amaravati, or the Leadenhall Street mosaic—but she wouldn’t have it. They must dance.
So dance they did, stately ballroom steps, round and round until William was tired and a little dizzy. New-found vampire strength, it seemed, took a while to really settle in. He stumbled, and Drusilla fell, smashing into a cabinet.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped, reaching out a hand to try and help her up, but she only smiled at him.
“It glitters,” she said, running a hand through the shards of glass, uncaring that her skin tore and bled. “Like stars on earth.”
